I had never heard of the “Third Man” phenomenon until reading this fascinating Wall Street Journal book review. People in extreme situations, such as explorers stranded on a mountain peak or shipwreck survivors, have reported the sensation of being accompanied out of danger by an invisible companion who offers them encouragement and guidance.
Believers might say: But of course! We are accompanied through life by an invisible friend. According to Michael Novak, for example, “God made humans to offer them his friendship and companionship.”
Scientists, however, can “evoke the sensation of a shared presence by stimulating the brain with electricity,” according to Wall Street Journal reviewer Michael Ybarra. The author of The Third Man Factor posits a possible evolutionary value to such a neurological sensation. The fact that we can electrically induce a hidden companion doesn’t mean that we are not walking with Jesus, but it does point at the very least to the unfathomably complex relationship between our consciousness, the sub-conscious workings of our brain, and the external world.
Interestingly, the Moslems believe that a mythical person named Hizir rescues travelers. There is some information about this here: http://khidr.org/hizir.htm
Presumably, these are the manifestations of an underlying neuorological sensation common to all humans.
I emailed a copy of the review to an acquaintance who is a practicing Roman Catholic, and she responded that she had had a similar experience with an invisible companion during a period of danger. She identified The Third Man as her guardian angel. The question of course arises why we all don’t have guardian angels, particularly very small children. When a toddler wanders off into the woods and perishes there, you have to wonder why the guardian angel didn’t keep the child alive until rescue arrived, or just lead him or her out of peril.
According to the Bible, God made humans in order to glorify Himself not “to offer them his friendship and companionship.” It’s fine if you do not agree, but that’s the predominant view of why God made humans according to the Bible. Don’t try and change it in order to make the opposition look more stupid. That being said, I can’t speak to what Catholics believe on the subject, and that seems to be where most of your outrage is usually directed.
Susan:
There may simply be less guardian angels than human (or humans requiring such services). Or maybe even that they have other functions/duties and, therefore, from time to time, are, unfortunately, busy with other stuff.
But those possible explanations shouldn’t suggest they don’t exist.
C’mon, Trent–let’s not split hairs. “Glorify himself”/”offer friendship and companionship” both sound cut from similar material (and no low-brow references to “whole cloth,” either, as we have known to issue from cynics).
Gene, your post raises some interesting questions. If there’s a finite number of guardian angels, how do they allocate their resources? How is the decision made to allot someone a guardian angel? What are the criteria? And, if guardian angels are often busy with other matters–too busy to save a child, say–what are their priorities?
Ah the Catholic outrage complex. Help, help, I’m being oppressed!!
Not that I’m proposing this as true, but couldn’t the experiments be read as a possible validation of “guardian angels” and the like? The part of the brain that provides this sensation could be an interface, so to speak. The “guardian angel” (or equivalent depending on whatever religious tradition one is speaking of) provides some kind of stimulation to that part of the brain, causing the human to experience the presence of the “angel.” Again, I’m not such an intervention is what is happening, but seems possible to me.
If I eat an apple, I taste the apple via my tastebuds and sense of smell, which transfer that information to my brain. Let’s say a food scientist replicates a food additive that tastes just like an apple. I eat the food additive and say, “hey, that tastes just like an apple.” That doesn’t mean that the apple I previously ate didn’t exist or that I didn’t taste the real apple — it just means that the apple additive replicated the taste sensation that I had previously experienced.
Again, I’m not saying that this is what is happening. Personally, I tend to doubt it. But it seems like a legitimate argument to me…
That’s true, Mark. But it doesn’t explain why some people have guardian angels and others don’t.
The guardian angels are probably too busy dancing on the heads of pins to rescue people.
And presumably a food additive that tastes like an apple would have the same molecular formula and structure as an apple, or at least the same as the molecule(s) that give the apple its flavor.
An invisible friend offering encouragement to those stranded at sea but who fails to offer to carry them back to shore while walking on water somewhat less than divine; it sounds like a different sort of problem of being lost diagnosed by Dr. Thomas Szasz: “If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.”
Speaking of those stranded at sea, or at least in a tidal pool, I suppose you could argue that Teddy Kennedy had a guardian angel and Mary Jo Kopechne didn’t.
@gene berman
I think there’s a huge difference between God creating people to “offer them friendship and companionship” and God creating them for His own glory. One makes God a worshipper of people, which would make him an idolater. The other says that God worships Himself, and therefore obeys what the Bible says is the most important commandment to “put no other gods before me (himself)”. God is the inventor of logic, and if you can see Him as contradicting Himself (and basic logic) then He becomes very easy to look at as a joke as the blogger does.
This is one of the things that drive the Sheldrake style mystics nuts. There must be a reason, a purpose, a goal to existence, thus to all nature. I’m not saying they are religious, but intelligent design appeals to them.
I commonly hear that it’s de-humanizing to think all our emotions are merely electrical impulses in our brains.
My Guardian Angel is real and I’m imaginary.
Religion is so prevalent in so many societies that it seems reasonable that some psychological phenomena and underlying disposition to belief is normal. Since human capacity to understand abstract concepts and theorize has long exceeded our actual knowledge of processes in nature, it isn’t surprising that belief in something would serve to fill the gap. This particular example seems to support the idea that the highly active human mind manifests many coping mechanisms. Certainly many people would wish to be rescued from danger while at once being overwhelmed by it. It seems a very interesting finding.
The Jewish tradition gives several accounts angeles the most famous account is the pool of Bethesda, where an angel who would enter the water at certain times to heal the sick. Christ once healed a crippled man by his words alone and before the angel appeared, but because it was on the Sabbath he was suspected of disobeying the law.
As to the brain wave theory,there is some speculation that with a sophisticated computer program and electronic probes on a preserved brain stem, that a “real” life could be simulated by various elctronic stimulations produced by the computer program on the brain. The idea has been discussed in Cartesian circles for decades and is nothing new, novel, or even very interesting for those who can distinguish the senses from the whole of human life. Or to put it another way, those who still recognize the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.