CNN’s Belief blog has some good quotes from the co-authors of the book Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture .
Carson Mencken says conservative Christians tend not to think too much about UFOs and Bigfoot:
The people who believe literally in the Bible don’t have room for it. More conservative denominations of congregations are less likely to believe in the paranormal; those with more liberal backgrounds are more likely. Spiritualists are strong supporters of the cosmic, hard-core paranormal. To atheists, it’s all hooey.
One of the book’s other authors, Christopher Bader, adds this great line:
You’d think Bigfoot people would understand people who believe in UFOs. But they think, `Those UFO people are crazy.’ They don’t see themselves as similar to people reading their auras.
Bigfoot is obviously fake (unlike Yeti and chupacabras) but I wouldn’t say that cryptozoology necessarily conflicts with the Bible. I’m not sure about UFOs either (didn’t Ezekial see one?), though I suspect believing in ghosts is unscriptural.
What do you think? I’m not asking whether you actually believe in any of those things (though you’re free to say so) but whether you think it conflicts with the Biblical faith to believe in them.
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