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The sense that there is a "third man" ? a ghostly companion giving support in difficult times.

"The theories for explaining the third-man experience vary widely. Ron DiFrancesco, the 9/11 survivor who walked out of the South Tower, is convinced that a divine being was by his side, and indeed a spiritual interpretation is common. Scientists, by contrast, have discovered how to evoke the sensation of a shared presence by stimulating the brain with electricity. [One mountaineer who had the experience] leans toward the idea that the third-man phenomenon is a survival strategy hard-wired into the brain. 'The body is inventing ways to provide company,' he says."

Think of why this sense that someone is with you would have had survival value in human evolution. Think too of how the someone who seems to accompany survivors of extreme ordeals might also accompany those who die and never tell their stories. Don't assume the "third man," if you ever see him, will save you. He may comfort you as you give up the fight to stay alive. On the up side, you will probably feel quite wonderful.

"Imagine the impact on our lives if we could learn to access this feeling at will," [says John Geiger, author of "The Third Man Factor."] "There could be no loneliness with so constant a companion. There could be no stress in life that we would ever again have to confront alone."

Response #1: Religious people have learned to access that feeling at will. Response #2: It's not a "learned" "feeling," it really is God/Jesus/your guardian angel. Response #3: We need the feeling of loneliness to get us out of the house and connecting with other people, without which there will be no survival of the species, so therefore ? if the scientific evolutionary theory is the true one ? then the "third man" phenomenon must remain a sometime thing. Response #4: If #3 is correct, then how can religion have survived? Response #5: Therefore, there is a God. Response #6: No, therefore religions require rules that ban or limit masturbation and push believers into marriage and procreation.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 27, 2009 (boomark / email).