Angels Most Likely Just Lucid Dreams

Personally, I consider the Bible a work of fiction.  Sadly, many people don't.  Modern-day Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians believe that everything in the Bible is the inspired word of God written by the hand of man.  Anyone who still believes in angels needs to calmly consider that the angels reportedly seen in Biblical times were most likely either hallucinations or lucid dreams.

That's the conclusion of a 2011 study done with lucid dreamers at the University of California Los Angeles.  The study lasted exactly 30 days.  In that month, 30 volunteers were asked to try to have an out of body experience and look for angels.  The study wondered if the events of I Kings 19: 4 - 6 could be reproduced.

Not familiar with those events?  Don't worry -- here are the verses in the King James Version (KJV):

⁴But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.
⁵And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.
⁶And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.




Each of the 30 volunteers followed the dreaming and OBE practices from the Out- of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles. For purposes of the study, an OBE and a lucid dream was considered synonymous.

Of the 30 volunteers, only 6 were experienced lucid dreamers.  24 claimed that they had a lucid dream and 15 had lucid dreams of angels.  9 managed to see both one or more angels and ate something.  One volunteer claimed to see the archangel Gabriel himself.

The study brings up three major points:

1. If intense lucid dreams of angels can be created in a controlled setting, then that shows that anyone who clams to have seen angels should not be taken seriously.
2. Anyone who really wants to dream about one or two specific subjects can successfully do so.
3. You may dream about angels whenever in the City of Angels. 

Okay, I'm kidding about the last point.

Image of angel and Jesus by Carl Heinrich Bloch from Wikimedia Commons.