Who were the Lords of the World? Because their arrival predated recorded history by eons, we cannot cite any hard evidence. But we have a body of circumstantial evidence as to their character and nature: they had to be exceptionally spiritual folk. This the Bible tells us in Revelation [21:8]; "But the fearful, and ubelieving,and the abominal, and muderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Sure looks like these people aren't going to be welcome in the City of Heaven. Small wonder, as such as these would be disrupters, and on a journey to the stars we couldn't afford to have these types around. And this lake of fire; could it be the Sun?
There is no other candidate for identification as this fiery lake. According to the celestial mechanics of the Solar System as outlined earlier in this series, all matter will one day return to the Sun. Might be a good idea to head out before that happens. And it will happen! In fact, given the infinite reaches of this Universe - there are others - we may with some degree of certitude posit that this is a regular occurrence in the cosmos.
Much of what has been covered thus far is validated by the information found in Genesis, chapter six. Here we find that " sons of god saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took unto themselves such as they chose as wives." This passage tells us two things; that the Lords were Christs ( sons of god ) and that their interest in the daughters of men were to produce children. As to the designation, Christ: this is the spiritual state of absolute humility and dependence upon the Spirit of the Universe. Fundamentalists tell us that Jesus was the only begotten son of God; the Nicene Creed tells us that he was not begotten, and the man himself made no allusion to the subject. But he did tell his disciples, " Think not what you will eat or wear ... your Father knows ye have need of these things." Stock 'christian' thinking is a morass of confusion, contradiction, half-formed thoughts, and outright lies. The Bible clearly states that it was the ' sons of god ' that mated with native women - when they were fair. One must wonder what they were like before they were fair, and whom the Lords were taking to wife then.
The Lords of the World are a model for what forward thinking seers envision for certain members of our race: those with the right stuff to borrow from the title of a motion picture of years ago. Such people would have to demonstrate a nearly perfect dedication to the mission, a matchless capacity for co-operation, a loving spirit free of judgement, condemnation, greed, and deviousness of any kind; they would be free of envy, jealousy, covetousness, and self-seeking. This would be the ultimate one-way trip and no consideration would be left to chance.
The Lords of the World were Christs, and if we survive to realize this sunlime dream, we must find such character, dignity, humility, and grace, from among our own.
That is truly why we are encouraged to adopt virtues akin to sainthood; not that we must be somber, morbidly serious, or wear hair shirts - that is just an act put on by those who believe that such demonstrations are valid. No, God loves a cheerful spirit, one who spreads love and joy in his path, who makes others smile and feel good about themselves, and who turns his back on no one who truly wishes to follow the True Path to redemption.
Make no mistake; we are talking about the very survival of our species into perpetuity. The smugly complacent, self righteous who claim to be 'saved' are whistling in the wind. They speak of brotherly love but practice intolerance, they claim to be seekers of truth but their minds are set on an outlandish fable that has been relentlessly hammered into their minds. They fail in the basic spiritual ideal of Live and Let Live. The self same people who bridle at being on 'hold' for five minutes yet have been waiting over two-thousand years for Jesus to return. Why would the man wish to retuirn? After all he gave us a pattern of living to assimilate but which we have all but totally ignored. Who bombs abortion clinics? The descendants of those who set fire to those who didn't agree with their preposterous ideas, and who to this day make war on any person or group they deem unworthy.
To be contimnued.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
The Beginning - Part Five
Given all that has gone before in this series ( and I only ask that you consider the possibility that it could be true ), we would now be at the time when the Lords of the World had come down to the newly found Earth. Also, given what we know about the field of biometrics, they would not have been free to wander as they pleased. They would not have wished to trigger epidemics of diseases among the denizens of this place, and wouldn't have wanted to suffer any local maladies for which they might not have any immune responses. And they would be quite different from us, their descendants.
For one thing, they would be bigger and would live much longer. This is because they would have been living in an environment of lower gravity for nearly a thousand years. Being subjected to the heavier gravitation of the new world they would have settled in mountains where gravity would have been somewhat lighter, thus the reference to ' being on high '. They would have lived longer as their bodies would endure longer in the lower gravity of the City of Heaven, but this would evolve to lower lifespans over time. After all, the effects of gravity are with us from the very first; all our lives the force of gravity presses us to the surface of the Earth unrelentingly. With advancing years the body tends to wear out under this strain and this degenration may be abated by exercise and proper nutrition - and a fit spiritual condition.
The Lords would have been a genetically isolated race, and would therefore face the possibility of eventual inbreeding, thus would need a fresh source of genes. At this time, Evolution would have progressed to the mammalian stage and there would be several species of proto-man: largely ape-like but already having the earmarks of intelligence; binocular vision, stereo audition, opposed thumbs, and the ability to stand upright. Any race capable of crossing space would certainly have great knowledge of Genetic Engineering, and would have set about trying to elevate one of these species to their own physical profile. This would be one factor in the longevity of early mankind, as with the Generation of Adam.
The Lords, having a gentic propensity toward longer lives would have imbued their offspring with this same property. This alone would not account for the whole, but would be only one factor. Another would be the gravitational forces in play during those early times as the Earth spun more rapidly on its axis. It is presently slowing at about one second per century. Going back four-million years, we may safely conclude that the force of gravity was considerably less. Some contemporary textbooks have shown depictions of Brontosauri standing in lakes, that the buoyancy of the water would help in supporting their massive weight; in fact today, those 70 ton beasts would hardly be able to stand, but in a gravity of lower intensity would stand and get about handily.Finally, the earth possibly being as close to the Sun as Venus, the year would have been a little more than two-thirds its present length. The evidence of tropical vegetation and hotter climates revealed through paleontology is quite consistent with this conclusion.
The Fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis is that God made man in [His] own image and likeness. I have no quarrel with that except that it is overly simplistic. My view, which I hold in common with many others, is that God creates everything, and that this process is eternal, without beginning and without end. The Time of the End only seeks to describe the way in which mankind came to be on the Earth, and to suggest a higher purpose for our kind than we are presently demonstrating.
Authors and playwrites have based their work in large part on the tragi-comic nature of man: the higher aspiring sense, and the lower, baser, and meaner side of human nature. If God is as we see the Spirit of the Universe; Good, True, Beautiful, Peaceful, Orderly, and Harmonious; wouldn't [He] have created man in the same image? And since God ( the Spirit of the Universe ) is All Things Everywhere, just what form would this image take?
Creationism is a crippled fantasy replete with loose ends, unsubstantiated ' facts ', contradictions, and a narrow outlook that fails to consider any other alternative. Ask a question they can't answer and their reply accounts some ' divine ' censorship, according to which we are not supposed to know these things. To such as these ' faith ' is blind, like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand in the belief that he can't be seen. None think about the things that we do know, like how to build hydrogen bombs, ICBMs, chemical and bacterial weapons. Why do we know how to make these things yet are not supposed to question the divisive, prejudicial, and destructive ideaology that enables these things to flourish? In fact, we might ask why it is that man has a lower nature at all?
Homo Robustus, the earliest proto-man known, was a creature of the wilderness, a very dangerous place. This was the environment of the ' quick and the dead ' and without the penchant for hunting, stalking, and killing, our race would have died out eons ago. It was killing for survival and it took skills that we, today, call anti-social, but which were quite appropriate for the time. From the first time two clans fought over a carcass to the present day when we engage in Resource Wars, mankind has been killing its own kind in ever more sophisticated and dreadful ways.
The violence depicted in the Bible chronicles the Lords' efforts to curb these fatal instincts and to imbue their offspring with a new sense of spiritual awareness. Yashueh of Capernaum ( Jesus ) was a Lord of the World; his teachings bear witness to this truth: Worhip God above all things and love thy neighbor. In the Beatitudes he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
Where are the peacemakers?
In his new book, "The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire." The author, Cecil Bothwell, documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in that Rev. Graham couldn't bless. In fact, he reveals that during the horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President, Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam! In a 13-page letter, that Rev. Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated: "There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the South?...Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night destroy the economy of North Vietnam." Mr. Bothwell underscored that such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks, would probably "kill a million people and wipe out an already poor nation's agricultural system" He added that the advice in Graham's transmittal "fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the air war north and west."
There is more. After the deadly Kent State U. affair, (May 4, 1970), where four
students, who were protesting the Nixon-Henry Kissinger-inspired bombing of Cambodia, were killed by Ohio's National Guard troops, Rev. Graham invited the mostly unbalanced Nixon to address his crusade. It was held in Knoxville, TN. While parents of the students were still grieving and burying their dead, Rev. Graham shamelessly shilled: "All Americans may not agree with the decision a president makes--but he is our president..."
Also, every chance Rev. Graham got he ripped into antiwar protesters in this country, while the Vietnam inferno was raging. After a large pro peace demonstration in late 1969, he railed in a letter to then President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the protesters were "radicals and those seeking to overthrow the American way of life." When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, in 1967 against the war in a sermon at the Riverside Church in NYC, Rev. Graham, jumped right in and tagged his criticism as "an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who are in Vietnam." When Dr. King marched for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Graham was no where to be found. And, after Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis, TN, he couldn't be bothered to attend his funeral either.
Rev. Graham made a career out of sucking up to U.S. presidents. Mr. Bothwell wrote how he loved those "endless photo-ops" at the White House, and how he was lways, "so eager to shake the hands of...despots, movie stars and industrial kingpins, and to offer grandiose approval of their greatness. Obsequy, more than money, seemed to drive the man--though his pockets were never empty." Fortunately, not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham's bogus act. One of my favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks. He had a built in b... s... detector. This is what President Truman had to say about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: "Graham has gone off the beam. He's...well, I hadn't ought to say this, but he's one of those 'counterfeits' I was telling you about. He claims he's a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president. I just don't go for people like that. All he's interested in is getting his name in the paper."
Wait a minute! Wholly Christian Empire? Isn't that what's going on today? The cretin who currently ocupies the White House referred to the war in Iraq as a 'Crusade', a label that must have set the Arab world's teeth on edge. And the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio is stumping for a broader military adventure in the Middle East; one that is supposed to lead to the Battle of Armageddon, which ( according to him and his ilk ) must happen before Jesus returns to Earth. Oh, and the Jews will all covert to ' Christianity ' too!
Where are the peacemakers????
To be continued.
For one thing, they would be bigger and would live much longer. This is because they would have been living in an environment of lower gravity for nearly a thousand years. Being subjected to the heavier gravitation of the new world they would have settled in mountains where gravity would have been somewhat lighter, thus the reference to ' being on high '. They would have lived longer as their bodies would endure longer in the lower gravity of the City of Heaven, but this would evolve to lower lifespans over time. After all, the effects of gravity are with us from the very first; all our lives the force of gravity presses us to the surface of the Earth unrelentingly. With advancing years the body tends to wear out under this strain and this degenration may be abated by exercise and proper nutrition - and a fit spiritual condition.
The Lords would have been a genetically isolated race, and would therefore face the possibility of eventual inbreeding, thus would need a fresh source of genes. At this time, Evolution would have progressed to the mammalian stage and there would be several species of proto-man: largely ape-like but already having the earmarks of intelligence; binocular vision, stereo audition, opposed thumbs, and the ability to stand upright. Any race capable of crossing space would certainly have great knowledge of Genetic Engineering, and would have set about trying to elevate one of these species to their own physical profile. This would be one factor in the longevity of early mankind, as with the Generation of Adam.
The Lords, having a gentic propensity toward longer lives would have imbued their offspring with this same property. This alone would not account for the whole, but would be only one factor. Another would be the gravitational forces in play during those early times as the Earth spun more rapidly on its axis. It is presently slowing at about one second per century. Going back four-million years, we may safely conclude that the force of gravity was considerably less. Some contemporary textbooks have shown depictions of Brontosauri standing in lakes, that the buoyancy of the water would help in supporting their massive weight; in fact today, those 70 ton beasts would hardly be able to stand, but in a gravity of lower intensity would stand and get about handily.Finally, the earth possibly being as close to the Sun as Venus, the year would have been a little more than two-thirds its present length. The evidence of tropical vegetation and hotter climates revealed through paleontology is quite consistent with this conclusion.
The Fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis is that God made man in [His] own image and likeness. I have no quarrel with that except that it is overly simplistic. My view, which I hold in common with many others, is that God creates everything, and that this process is eternal, without beginning and without end. The Time of the End only seeks to describe the way in which mankind came to be on the Earth, and to suggest a higher purpose for our kind than we are presently demonstrating.
Authors and playwrites have based their work in large part on the tragi-comic nature of man: the higher aspiring sense, and the lower, baser, and meaner side of human nature. If God is as we see the Spirit of the Universe; Good, True, Beautiful, Peaceful, Orderly, and Harmonious; wouldn't [He] have created man in the same image? And since God ( the Spirit of the Universe ) is All Things Everywhere, just what form would this image take?
Creationism is a crippled fantasy replete with loose ends, unsubstantiated ' facts ', contradictions, and a narrow outlook that fails to consider any other alternative. Ask a question they can't answer and their reply accounts some ' divine ' censorship, according to which we are not supposed to know these things. To such as these ' faith ' is blind, like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand in the belief that he can't be seen. None think about the things that we do know, like how to build hydrogen bombs, ICBMs, chemical and bacterial weapons. Why do we know how to make these things yet are not supposed to question the divisive, prejudicial, and destructive ideaology that enables these things to flourish? In fact, we might ask why it is that man has a lower nature at all?
Homo Robustus, the earliest proto-man known, was a creature of the wilderness, a very dangerous place. This was the environment of the ' quick and the dead ' and without the penchant for hunting, stalking, and killing, our race would have died out eons ago. It was killing for survival and it took skills that we, today, call anti-social, but which were quite appropriate for the time. From the first time two clans fought over a carcass to the present day when we engage in Resource Wars, mankind has been killing its own kind in ever more sophisticated and dreadful ways.
The violence depicted in the Bible chronicles the Lords' efforts to curb these fatal instincts and to imbue their offspring with a new sense of spiritual awareness. Yashueh of Capernaum ( Jesus ) was a Lord of the World; his teachings bear witness to this truth: Worhip God above all things and love thy neighbor. In the Beatitudes he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
Where are the peacemakers?
In his new book, "The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire." The author, Cecil Bothwell, documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in that Rev. Graham couldn't bless. In fact, he reveals that during the horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President, Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam! In a 13-page letter, that Rev. Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated: "There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the South?...Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night destroy the economy of North Vietnam." Mr. Bothwell underscored that such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks, would probably "kill a million people and wipe out an already poor nation's agricultural system" He added that the advice in Graham's transmittal "fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the air war north and west."
There is more. After the deadly Kent State U. affair, (May 4, 1970), where four
students, who were protesting the Nixon-Henry Kissinger-inspired bombing of Cambodia, were killed by Ohio's National Guard troops, Rev. Graham invited the mostly unbalanced Nixon to address his crusade. It was held in Knoxville, TN. While parents of the students were still grieving and burying their dead, Rev. Graham shamelessly shilled: "All Americans may not agree with the decision a president makes--but he is our president..."
Also, every chance Rev. Graham got he ripped into antiwar protesters in this country, while the Vietnam inferno was raging. After a large pro peace demonstration in late 1969, he railed in a letter to then President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the protesters were "radicals and those seeking to overthrow the American way of life." When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, in 1967 against the war in a sermon at the Riverside Church in NYC, Rev. Graham, jumped right in and tagged his criticism as "an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who are in Vietnam." When Dr. King marched for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Graham was no where to be found. And, after Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis, TN, he couldn't be bothered to attend his funeral either.
Rev. Graham made a career out of sucking up to U.S. presidents. Mr. Bothwell wrote how he loved those "endless photo-ops" at the White House, and how he was lways, "so eager to shake the hands of...despots, movie stars and industrial kingpins, and to offer grandiose approval of their greatness. Obsequy, more than money, seemed to drive the man--though his pockets were never empty." Fortunately, not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham's bogus act. One of my favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks. He had a built in b... s... detector. This is what President Truman had to say about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: "Graham has gone off the beam. He's...well, I hadn't ought to say this, but he's one of those 'counterfeits' I was telling you about. He claims he's a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president. I just don't go for people like that. All he's interested in is getting his name in the paper."
Wait a minute! Wholly Christian Empire? Isn't that what's going on today? The cretin who currently ocupies the White House referred to the war in Iraq as a 'Crusade', a label that must have set the Arab world's teeth on edge. And the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio is stumping for a broader military adventure in the Middle East; one that is supposed to lead to the Battle of Armageddon, which ( according to him and his ilk ) must happen before Jesus returns to Earth. Oh, and the Jews will all covert to ' Christianity ' too!
Where are the peacemakers????
To be continued.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Beginning - Part Four
In the first three installments of this series I have set an outline of the material contained on http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net : arguments that point to the very real possibility that the earth was visited and colonized in ancient times by visitors from another system. To those who would scoff at such an idea, I can only reply that the belief systems that have been in force for centuries have done nothing to ease the burdens of mankind here on the material plain. They have, in fact, aggravated the situation and led mankind to the very brink of self destruction. On only has to look at the fragmented state of organized religion to see where Ignorance and Superstition have led. And the future? Who dares to look ahead to the next twenty years? The next fifty? Oh, the Millennium is here alright; not the slam-bang apocalypse that the mind-benders have coerced the fearful to believe, but a period of a thousand years. With more then 992 years to go,well...
The world needs a new vision; one of hope, togetherness in common cause, and the full realization that mankind is a vital part in the scheme of Creation. What better validation can there be for our own ambitions in outer space than the possibility that it's all been done before. As we dream of one day going out to the " final frontier " we may find a new energy and resolve in the story of the Lords of the World. This story is told in the Bible as we suggest in the eBook, The Time of the End, the centerpiece of the website. So let us go back some four-million years and try to imagine what happened whn the occupants of the City of Heaven first discovered the tiny star about a light-year away.
We have been out here in deep space for some nine-hundred years. Our Celestial Home has provided well for us; we simply perform the duties that are required to maintain it. It is roughly in the shape of a potato; about seventeen miles long, six miles wide, and five miles high. Enclosed within the City's 240-foot thick walls is a completely self-contained, 100% renewable ecosystem, powered by Nuclear energy and additional supplied of radiation from the surounding Universe.
Since the discovery of the little white-hot star, hope has grown that our journey may be nearing its end. Thus far, a spectral analysis has shown that it contains all the right elements to sustain life as we know it. As yet, though, there is no way to determine of there is a planet the poper distance from the star that it be habitable.
But we will have to make that determination as quickly as possible.
We are travelling at an incredible high rate of speed and, so, will have to decide on a course of action. The sooner we know if there is a satellite the right distance from the star, having an atmosphere, and dry land, then we will know whether to steer our ship against the star's primus motus to slow down, or to align ourselves with it and " slingshot " farther out into space.
First, to determine the existence of the planet we have set up a viewing room. On one wall is a monitor, at the center of which is a telescopic view of the star with a green circle surounding it to represent the ideal distance. There are eight to ten people always in the room, a pair of yes always fixed on the screen for the first indication of the planet's presence. We are looking for a tiny point of light somewhere on that green circle, and some of our observers have been heard to say, "Oh, let there be light!"
And what do you know? Yes, we saw the light right where we wanted it to be, and " it was good." So ended the first Day of Discovery, when we were close enough to see the first indication of our new home.
At length we also determined that there was an atmosphere, and when we got close enough to observe the surface detail of this new world, we were temporarily shocked by what we saw: only water and steam! Some even suggested that the steam arose because the water was boiling, but cooler heads decided to send a mission closer to see if dry land " would appear." It did, and we settled into an orbit around what came to be called Jupiter.
To be continued.
The world needs a new vision; one of hope, togetherness in common cause, and the full realization that mankind is a vital part in the scheme of Creation. What better validation can there be for our own ambitions in outer space than the possibility that it's all been done before. As we dream of one day going out to the " final frontier " we may find a new energy and resolve in the story of the Lords of the World. This story is told in the Bible as we suggest in the eBook, The Time of the End, the centerpiece of the website. So let us go back some four-million years and try to imagine what happened whn the occupants of the City of Heaven first discovered the tiny star about a light-year away.
We have been out here in deep space for some nine-hundred years. Our Celestial Home has provided well for us; we simply perform the duties that are required to maintain it. It is roughly in the shape of a potato; about seventeen miles long, six miles wide, and five miles high. Enclosed within the City's 240-foot thick walls is a completely self-contained, 100% renewable ecosystem, powered by Nuclear energy and additional supplied of radiation from the surounding Universe.
Since the discovery of the little white-hot star, hope has grown that our journey may be nearing its end. Thus far, a spectral analysis has shown that it contains all the right elements to sustain life as we know it. As yet, though, there is no way to determine of there is a planet the poper distance from the star that it be habitable.
But we will have to make that determination as quickly as possible.
We are travelling at an incredible high rate of speed and, so, will have to decide on a course of action. The sooner we know if there is a satellite the right distance from the star, having an atmosphere, and dry land, then we will know whether to steer our ship against the star's primus motus to slow down, or to align ourselves with it and " slingshot " farther out into space.
First, to determine the existence of the planet we have set up a viewing room. On one wall is a monitor, at the center of which is a telescopic view of the star with a green circle surounding it to represent the ideal distance. There are eight to ten people always in the room, a pair of yes always fixed on the screen for the first indication of the planet's presence. We are looking for a tiny point of light somewhere on that green circle, and some of our observers have been heard to say, "Oh, let there be light!"
And what do you know? Yes, we saw the light right where we wanted it to be, and " it was good." So ended the first Day of Discovery, when we were close enough to see the first indication of our new home.
At length we also determined that there was an atmosphere, and when we got close enough to observe the surface detail of this new world, we were temporarily shocked by what we saw: only water and steam! Some even suggested that the steam arose because the water was boiling, but cooler heads decided to send a mission closer to see if dry land " would appear." It did, and we settled into an orbit around what came to be called Jupiter.
To be continued.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The Beginning - Part Three
The diminishment of lifepans between the personages of Adam's generation and those of Shem's descendancy, plus the possibility of the Earth being closer to the Sun than at present and experiencing shorter years according to Kepler's Laws, called for a blind test. It was at this point that I sat up that entire first night, with a new energy and focus, and leafed through the entire Bible looking for longevity data on people who came later. The list that resulted from this search may be found in Chapter One of the book, The Time of the End, located on the website http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net. It shows a consistent downturn in length of life for all the personages named, right down to David, who was old and infirm at seventy years of age. This called for a re-examination of Genesis 1.
The first verse of Genesis is one of the most misunderstood, misqouted, and misleading, collection of wrods ever put on paper. "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, the world was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved across the abyss." Before we can understand what this verse actually says, we must first recognize what it doesn't say.
What this verse doen't say is that the Universe and the world did not already exist.
The Universe is not even mentioned, and as for the world we are told that it was without form and void. Can something be without form, yet exist? Gravity exists, but without form: We can't see gravity, only its effects. Air is without form. A thought has no form except the vision in the mind of the beholder.
Form is a physical perception; it's how we distinguish things, by what they look like. So we may reasonably conclude that while the world did exist, it could not be seen. Neither could the third satellite of Jupiter on that cold night in November, 1974: it was too far away! And even when in sight, it wasn't the satellite itself that was seen, only the light reflected from its surface. Suddenly things started making sense and I regarded the first three "days" of Genesis.
During the Scopes Trial of the 1920's Clarence Darrow asked William Jennings Bryan: "If the Sun wasn't created until the fourth day, where did the light in the first day come from?" This question is never asked by Fundamentalist " believers " because there's no answer to it from their point of view. But the answer seems to come naturally from the new perspective that I was discovering: it was already there!
I was taken back to that night in November of the previous year when I was watching Jupiter through my little telescope and the satellite appeared. "Let there be light!"
A simple interpretation of the first three days resolves itself into an interesting combination of factors: the very things an intelligence travelling through space would require of a newly discovered star system;
1. Is there a planet the right distance from the star?
2. Does it have an atmosphere?
3. Is there dry land on its surface?
Imagination is such a wonderful faculty; it allows us to derive sense out of nonsense, order out of chaos, and is the foundation of every great achievemnt of mankind. Was I onto something? Could it be that an approaching intelligence aboard a celectial ark, a "City of Heaven", observed the Sun as I had observed Jupiter, looking for a planet the right distance off? It makes sense.
The whole idea of visitors from the stars seems absurd to many, yet the Chariots of the Gods captured and held the imaginations of millions for a while. Then it went the way of all novelties, into obscurity. The reason must be prejudice, that set of pre-conceived ideas that disallow any but the beliefs that have been drummed into people's heads from childhood. According to the " literal interpretation " of the Bible, [God] is a person eerily similar to Zeus, who rules from on high like an Oriental potentate, and who one day decided to " create " everything from nothing.
There are some serious things wrong with this idea.
First, characterizing God as a person diminishes the Spirit of the Universe. Truly spiritual people regard God as the Spirit of the Universe ( of Universes ), All Things Everywhere, and in All Things Everywhere: the only Singularity that exists.
All things are a part of the Whole as Dualities, their states or conditions being described as Binaries: basically there or not there. Relegating God to the status of a person reduces [Him] to a Duality, something less than the All in All. An individual, if he exists, must be somewhere. If he is somewhere then there must be places where his isn't present. Old Time Religion tells us that [God] is somewhere, though none can say exactly where except it's a place called Heaven. And you have to die to get there! That's the " literal interpretation " of the Bible. And exactly what is a Literal Intepretation?
Nonsense. Something is either literal or it's an interpretation. Can't be both. If great volumes of water are falling from the sky, it's raining - literally. There is no interpretation necessary. Of course we could be stanting under a dirigible that is dumping balast, or in the midst of a forest fire with an aircraft overhead dropping water onto the blaze, but these would be facts as well. Now, let's consider an interpretation.
You lend a man twenty dollars. Is it a loan? Though you may interpret the transaction as such, it truly isn't a loan unless it's repaid. If it is never repaid it's a gift, regardless how you choose to think about it. As far as the Fundamentalist interpretation goes, there are serious flaws with the idea.
If [God] created everything from nothing, then [He] violated [His] own Natural Laws. The basic law of Physics is that Energy cannot be [created] and cannot be destroyed.
Also, if [God] staged this whole event as a prelude to creating man, then [He] really went overboard! In Medieval times when the Earth was flat and covered by a clelstial dome ( like a cake dish ) studded with precious jewels, the idea of "creation" was easier to swallow. But it fails in light of modern knowledge, the Universe as we now know it to be: billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and billions of stars. Whew!
Is it reasonable to suggest that our system was discovered by an intelligence travelling through space? If not, then why is mankind so fixated on the heavens? Are we seeking our roots? Space travel is a fact; we are doing it. Today we zoom to faraway places aboard aircraft capable of speeds in excess of 500 MPH. Didn't we begin as naked savages poling around on rafts? We've come a long way. By the same token, are not our present ventures into space alagous to primitives paddling around in dugout canoes? What great Cruise Ships will we build in space, the " final frontier " in years to come? Celestial Arks outfitted for journeys of a thousand years or more - Cities of Heaven?
To be continued.
The first verse of Genesis is one of the most misunderstood, misqouted, and misleading, collection of wrods ever put on paper. "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, the world was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved across the abyss." Before we can understand what this verse actually says, we must first recognize what it doesn't say.
What this verse doen't say is that the Universe and the world did not already exist.
The Universe is not even mentioned, and as for the world we are told that it was without form and void. Can something be without form, yet exist? Gravity exists, but without form: We can't see gravity, only its effects. Air is without form. A thought has no form except the vision in the mind of the beholder.
Form is a physical perception; it's how we distinguish things, by what they look like. So we may reasonably conclude that while the world did exist, it could not be seen. Neither could the third satellite of Jupiter on that cold night in November, 1974: it was too far away! And even when in sight, it wasn't the satellite itself that was seen, only the light reflected from its surface. Suddenly things started making sense and I regarded the first three "days" of Genesis.
During the Scopes Trial of the 1920's Clarence Darrow asked William Jennings Bryan: "If the Sun wasn't created until the fourth day, where did the light in the first day come from?" This question is never asked by Fundamentalist " believers " because there's no answer to it from their point of view. But the answer seems to come naturally from the new perspective that I was discovering: it was already there!
I was taken back to that night in November of the previous year when I was watching Jupiter through my little telescope and the satellite appeared. "Let there be light!"
A simple interpretation of the first three days resolves itself into an interesting combination of factors: the very things an intelligence travelling through space would require of a newly discovered star system;
1. Is there a planet the right distance from the star?
2. Does it have an atmosphere?
3. Is there dry land on its surface?
Imagination is such a wonderful faculty; it allows us to derive sense out of nonsense, order out of chaos, and is the foundation of every great achievemnt of mankind. Was I onto something? Could it be that an approaching intelligence aboard a celectial ark, a "City of Heaven", observed the Sun as I had observed Jupiter, looking for a planet the right distance off? It makes sense.
The whole idea of visitors from the stars seems absurd to many, yet the Chariots of the Gods captured and held the imaginations of millions for a while. Then it went the way of all novelties, into obscurity. The reason must be prejudice, that set of pre-conceived ideas that disallow any but the beliefs that have been drummed into people's heads from childhood. According to the " literal interpretation " of the Bible, [God] is a person eerily similar to Zeus, who rules from on high like an Oriental potentate, and who one day decided to " create " everything from nothing.
There are some serious things wrong with this idea.
First, characterizing God as a person diminishes the Spirit of the Universe. Truly spiritual people regard God as the Spirit of the Universe ( of Universes ), All Things Everywhere, and in All Things Everywhere: the only Singularity that exists.
All things are a part of the Whole as Dualities, their states or conditions being described as Binaries: basically there or not there. Relegating God to the status of a person reduces [Him] to a Duality, something less than the All in All. An individual, if he exists, must be somewhere. If he is somewhere then there must be places where his isn't present. Old Time Religion tells us that [God] is somewhere, though none can say exactly where except it's a place called Heaven. And you have to die to get there! That's the " literal interpretation " of the Bible. And exactly what is a Literal Intepretation?
Nonsense. Something is either literal or it's an interpretation. Can't be both. If great volumes of water are falling from the sky, it's raining - literally. There is no interpretation necessary. Of course we could be stanting under a dirigible that is dumping balast, or in the midst of a forest fire with an aircraft overhead dropping water onto the blaze, but these would be facts as well. Now, let's consider an interpretation.
You lend a man twenty dollars. Is it a loan? Though you may interpret the transaction as such, it truly isn't a loan unless it's repaid. If it is never repaid it's a gift, regardless how you choose to think about it. As far as the Fundamentalist interpretation goes, there are serious flaws with the idea.
If [God] created everything from nothing, then [He] violated [His] own Natural Laws. The basic law of Physics is that Energy cannot be [created] and cannot be destroyed.
Also, if [God] staged this whole event as a prelude to creating man, then [He] really went overboard! In Medieval times when the Earth was flat and covered by a clelstial dome ( like a cake dish ) studded with precious jewels, the idea of "creation" was easier to swallow. But it fails in light of modern knowledge, the Universe as we now know it to be: billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and billions of stars. Whew!
Is it reasonable to suggest that our system was discovered by an intelligence travelling through space? If not, then why is mankind so fixated on the heavens? Are we seeking our roots? Space travel is a fact; we are doing it. Today we zoom to faraway places aboard aircraft capable of speeds in excess of 500 MPH. Didn't we begin as naked savages poling around on rafts? We've come a long way. By the same token, are not our present ventures into space alagous to primitives paddling around in dugout canoes? What great Cruise Ships will we build in space, the " final frontier " in years to come? Celestial Arks outfitted for journeys of a thousand years or more - Cities of Heaven?
To be continued.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Beginning - Part Two
One of the features of this 34-year investigation is the uncanny way some act or event, random and in-the-moment,has a bearing on some future even to which the first act seems totally unrelated. Here I encountered one that directly bore on the problem presented by the disparities of Genesis, chapters 5 and 11. There could only be one reasonable explanation for the diminishing life spans of Shem's generation: the length of the year.
Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630)is noted for his three Laws of Planetary Motion, the third having to do with the periodic orbits of planets. This law states that the periodic rotation of a planet is related to that planet's distance from the Sun: the closer to the Sun the shorter the year. Could the Earth have been closer to the Sun in these earlier Biblical times? There is every reason to believe so.
Consider that if the Sun were the size of a 6-foot weather baloon, the Earth would be the size of a dime 140 yards away. Pluto, at its farthest distance from the Sun would be more than three miles away. Now, with greatly improved observational gear we have detected planets even farther out! And all these bodies are held in thrall of the Sun's mighty gravitation. Where else could the planets have come from?
If the Earth was at one time closer to the Sun than at present it would mean that it emerged from the Sun, and with the other terrestrial planets moved away from the star. One only need consider how this could have happened.
The Sun appears yellow in the sky but is truly white-hot, possibly a White Dwarf remnant of a nova, and is very hot. The hotter a star, the more unstable it is. We are well-aware that there are solar storms that spew hot gases hundreds of thousands of miles into space; could such an eruption been so violent that a gout of these superhot gases were blown far enough away to achieve orbit? Possible, but not the only cause. Maybe there was a collision.
Galaxies often collide with one another: there's no impact as the bodies in both are so far apart that these galaxies simply move through each other. During these moves they very likely exchange components. If a planet in Galaxy B wanders too close to a star in Galaxy A, it will be captured by that star. There is evidence that this actually happened, and to understand this more fully we will have to consider how a star is formed. It takes billions of years.
There are tiny particles of matter everywhere in the universe and they are constantly colliding with one another. When two of the particles combine their gravitational forces also combine and a chain reaction ensues. Higher gravitation attracts more particles, which further increase the gravitational force, which attracts even more particles, and so on. Stars form more quickly on the outskirts of a galaxy than at or near the center of the system. Near the center of our own Milky Way there are super-giant stars that could contain a million suns!
The reason for this is that a particle accumulation on the way to becoming a star encounters some pretty heavy competition from its neighboring giants. The forming mass is trying to pull matter into itself, while the other stars are trying to pull it away. Thus it takes hundreds of billions of years for one of these stars closer to the center of the galaxy to form.
Not so out here in the "boonies". Out here a star may form rather more quickly owing to the absence of competition. And if two galaxies are colliding edge-on, then something pretty dramatic is possible.
Imagine two systems, disks rotating counter-clockwise, coming together edge-on. Our Sun would be in one system and in the other, a forming star much smaller and earlier in its genesis: a cold, dark body. If this smaller body were captured by the Sun's gravitation the two bodies would approach one another at closing speed. Absent any colateral resistance, the smaller body would be attracted directly toward the Sun. If it passed close enough the smaller body could ignite and drag a stream of gas in its wake. This stream of gases could very well extend far enough out to orbit the Sun. How could this happen?
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that a body in mition tends to remain in motion, in a straight line, until acted upon by a force capable of stopping or altering that motion. The italicized phrase is one that is often omittied in the statement of this law, but it is vitally important to our understanding.
If the stream of gases, having extended out many millions of miles into space, turns back to the Sun it will be accelerating rapidly. The Sun moves, so it's eminently possible that the stream of gases moving at ever-higher degrees of acceleration and, so, moving in an ever straighter line, would pass behind the Sun on its way out into deep space. The Sun, of course, would pull the stream back and thus would begin an orbiting function in which the stream of gases would gradually expand away from the Sun. To understand this process, let us consider this as happening on a clock face.
Imagine that this stream of hot gases is orbiting the Sun in a counter-clockwise direction while the Sun is moving toward 12 o'clock. In the 12- and 6 o'clock positions the stream would be either croosing in front or behind the Sun. At the 3 o'clock position it would be moving in the same direction as the Sun, and opposite at the 9 o'clock point. One more fact and we'll be ready to run our model.
This fact is: No material body can store energy beyond that which gives it its physical properties; shape, density, texture, etc.. Any additional energy imparted to a material object must be thrown off. When a golfer tees off, the head of the driver comes into violent contact with the ball. The ball, unable to store this excess energy translates this energy into velocity as it takes off down the fairway. From the moment it begins its flight until it comes to rest, the ball is reacting to the energy of the driver. This example bears on the model we are considering in that an enormous energy would have been generated in the collision between the Sun and the captured body - this would have to be dissipated, but it would be an extremely long process owing to the enormous masses involved.
Returning to our clock model, when the stream of gases is at the nine o'clock position it is moving in the opposite direction as the Sun. The gravitational influence of the Sun would be fully engaged in drawing the revolving mass closer to itself: this is the Winter Solstice, when Earth and Sun are closest together. From that point it would continue in the six o'clock direction, trying to maintain a straight-line path, until overcome by the retreating Sun's gravitational force. This force would mount, acting upon the escaping mass in the manner of an elastic band stretched to its limit; then it would snap back! The gaseous stream would the be thrown out by the phenomenon that has come to be known as the " slingshot effect " and would describe a huge semi-circle winding around to the three o'clock position. That would account for Spring and Summer, when the Earth and Sun are farthest apart. Now imagine this taking place over the course of billions of years. As the gasses moved farther from the Sun they would cool and resolve themselves into spheres in accord with the Fundamental Law of the Universe. This law exists, though it has been ignored by the scientific community, or perhaps its been overlooked because it is so simple. No complicated, convoluted equatins necessary.
The Fundamental Law of the Universe is: Energy is all there is; everything is energy, and it is present in an infinite supply. There are also two corollaries to this law; that the Universe ( one of many ) constantly tries to achieve two states that it can never realize: Equilibrium and Uniformity.
The non-uniformity of energy has some areas of the cosmos more densely energetic than others. In the case of our model, as the gases condensed into solid form, these forming bodies would gather the remaining " loose " energy unto themselves, and planets would form. These bodies would continue migrating away from the Sun as long as the energy from the intial collision remained unjettisoned. This would account for the discovery of traces of organic life on Mars.
Returning to Kepler, as the minor planets moved away from the Sun they would experience longer periods of rotation ( years ), and this would account for the longevity of the generations of Adam, and later the Generation of Shem. But obviously these would not be close-ordered descendancies: Shem would have come much later. As to the indications of life on Mars, it could very well be the case that the Red Planet once occupied the ecosphere, the region of space currently occupied by the earth. Creation could then have commenced in the seas that were certainly present on Mars, continuing to the point when Mars flew farther out of this friendly region and into the colder regions of the Solar System. Then the process would have stopped, the atmosphere would have dissipated, the water would have frozen, and for all intents and purposes the planet would have died. This would also explain the Asteroid Belt as being the " splatter " from the explosion: loose material that was too distant to be drawn into the spheres of any of the planets. Only oe question remains; what was this object that collided with the Sun? The answer: Our other star!
Jupiter is a star, though not a very spectacular one. This body owes its credential to the fact that it emits half-again as much energy as it receives from the Sun.
With its twelve ( or more ) satellites, Jupiter is that center of a small solar system of its own, and it is this system that provided the key to understanding Genesis. This is the seemingly unrelated event mentioned earlier.
The mansion in which I was living in 1974 was located on a hillside in Upstate New York. It had a fire escape that led up to a platform at roof level. At the time I had a reflecting telescope with a six-inch mirror which I set up on the platform and aimed at Jupiter. There were other objects in the sky that I briefly observed, but I kept being drawn back to Jupiter.
Jupiter has four " moons " that are visible from the Earth using a small telescope. It is rare to see all four at the same time, but at least one is always visible. At one point, when I was observing the system there were two satellites showing. I went indoors for a short time, and when I returned, a third satellite had appeared. When I saw this the thought flashed through my mind, "Let there be light!"
To be continued.
Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630)is noted for his three Laws of Planetary Motion, the third having to do with the periodic orbits of planets. This law states that the periodic rotation of a planet is related to that planet's distance from the Sun: the closer to the Sun the shorter the year. Could the Earth have been closer to the Sun in these earlier Biblical times? There is every reason to believe so.
Consider that if the Sun were the size of a 6-foot weather baloon, the Earth would be the size of a dime 140 yards away. Pluto, at its farthest distance from the Sun would be more than three miles away. Now, with greatly improved observational gear we have detected planets even farther out! And all these bodies are held in thrall of the Sun's mighty gravitation. Where else could the planets have come from?
If the Earth was at one time closer to the Sun than at present it would mean that it emerged from the Sun, and with the other terrestrial planets moved away from the star. One only need consider how this could have happened.
The Sun appears yellow in the sky but is truly white-hot, possibly a White Dwarf remnant of a nova, and is very hot. The hotter a star, the more unstable it is. We are well-aware that there are solar storms that spew hot gases hundreds of thousands of miles into space; could such an eruption been so violent that a gout of these superhot gases were blown far enough away to achieve orbit? Possible, but not the only cause. Maybe there was a collision.
Galaxies often collide with one another: there's no impact as the bodies in both are so far apart that these galaxies simply move through each other. During these moves they very likely exchange components. If a planet in Galaxy B wanders too close to a star in Galaxy A, it will be captured by that star. There is evidence that this actually happened, and to understand this more fully we will have to consider how a star is formed. It takes billions of years.
There are tiny particles of matter everywhere in the universe and they are constantly colliding with one another. When two of the particles combine their gravitational forces also combine and a chain reaction ensues. Higher gravitation attracts more particles, which further increase the gravitational force, which attracts even more particles, and so on. Stars form more quickly on the outskirts of a galaxy than at or near the center of the system. Near the center of our own Milky Way there are super-giant stars that could contain a million suns!
The reason for this is that a particle accumulation on the way to becoming a star encounters some pretty heavy competition from its neighboring giants. The forming mass is trying to pull matter into itself, while the other stars are trying to pull it away. Thus it takes hundreds of billions of years for one of these stars closer to the center of the galaxy to form.
Not so out here in the "boonies". Out here a star may form rather more quickly owing to the absence of competition. And if two galaxies are colliding edge-on, then something pretty dramatic is possible.
Imagine two systems, disks rotating counter-clockwise, coming together edge-on. Our Sun would be in one system and in the other, a forming star much smaller and earlier in its genesis: a cold, dark body. If this smaller body were captured by the Sun's gravitation the two bodies would approach one another at closing speed. Absent any colateral resistance, the smaller body would be attracted directly toward the Sun. If it passed close enough the smaller body could ignite and drag a stream of gas in its wake. This stream of gases could very well extend far enough out to orbit the Sun. How could this happen?
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that a body in mition tends to remain in motion, in a straight line, until acted upon by a force capable of stopping or altering that motion. The italicized phrase is one that is often omittied in the statement of this law, but it is vitally important to our understanding.
If the stream of gases, having extended out many millions of miles into space, turns back to the Sun it will be accelerating rapidly. The Sun moves, so it's eminently possible that the stream of gases moving at ever-higher degrees of acceleration and, so, moving in an ever straighter line, would pass behind the Sun on its way out into deep space. The Sun, of course, would pull the stream back and thus would begin an orbiting function in which the stream of gases would gradually expand away from the Sun. To understand this process, let us consider this as happening on a clock face.
Imagine that this stream of hot gases is orbiting the Sun in a counter-clockwise direction while the Sun is moving toward 12 o'clock. In the 12- and 6 o'clock positions the stream would be either croosing in front or behind the Sun. At the 3 o'clock position it would be moving in the same direction as the Sun, and opposite at the 9 o'clock point. One more fact and we'll be ready to run our model.
This fact is: No material body can store energy beyond that which gives it its physical properties; shape, density, texture, etc.. Any additional energy imparted to a material object must be thrown off. When a golfer tees off, the head of the driver comes into violent contact with the ball. The ball, unable to store this excess energy translates this energy into velocity as it takes off down the fairway. From the moment it begins its flight until it comes to rest, the ball is reacting to the energy of the driver. This example bears on the model we are considering in that an enormous energy would have been generated in the collision between the Sun and the captured body - this would have to be dissipated, but it would be an extremely long process owing to the enormous masses involved.
Returning to our clock model, when the stream of gases is at the nine o'clock position it is moving in the opposite direction as the Sun. The gravitational influence of the Sun would be fully engaged in drawing the revolving mass closer to itself: this is the Winter Solstice, when Earth and Sun are closest together. From that point it would continue in the six o'clock direction, trying to maintain a straight-line path, until overcome by the retreating Sun's gravitational force. This force would mount, acting upon the escaping mass in the manner of an elastic band stretched to its limit; then it would snap back! The gaseous stream would the be thrown out by the phenomenon that has come to be known as the " slingshot effect " and would describe a huge semi-circle winding around to the three o'clock position. That would account for Spring and Summer, when the Earth and Sun are farthest apart. Now imagine this taking place over the course of billions of years. As the gasses moved farther from the Sun they would cool and resolve themselves into spheres in accord with the Fundamental Law of the Universe. This law exists, though it has been ignored by the scientific community, or perhaps its been overlooked because it is so simple. No complicated, convoluted equatins necessary.
The Fundamental Law of the Universe is: Energy is all there is; everything is energy, and it is present in an infinite supply. There are also two corollaries to this law; that the Universe ( one of many ) constantly tries to achieve two states that it can never realize: Equilibrium and Uniformity.
The non-uniformity of energy has some areas of the cosmos more densely energetic than others. In the case of our model, as the gases condensed into solid form, these forming bodies would gather the remaining " loose " energy unto themselves, and planets would form. These bodies would continue migrating away from the Sun as long as the energy from the intial collision remained unjettisoned. This would account for the discovery of traces of organic life on Mars.
Returning to Kepler, as the minor planets moved away from the Sun they would experience longer periods of rotation ( years ), and this would account for the longevity of the generations of Adam, and later the Generation of Shem. But obviously these would not be close-ordered descendancies: Shem would have come much later. As to the indications of life on Mars, it could very well be the case that the Red Planet once occupied the ecosphere, the region of space currently occupied by the earth. Creation could then have commenced in the seas that were certainly present on Mars, continuing to the point when Mars flew farther out of this friendly region and into the colder regions of the Solar System. Then the process would have stopped, the atmosphere would have dissipated, the water would have frozen, and for all intents and purposes the planet would have died. This would also explain the Asteroid Belt as being the " splatter " from the explosion: loose material that was too distant to be drawn into the spheres of any of the planets. Only oe question remains; what was this object that collided with the Sun? The answer: Our other star!
Jupiter is a star, though not a very spectacular one. This body owes its credential to the fact that it emits half-again as much energy as it receives from the Sun.
With its twelve ( or more ) satellites, Jupiter is that center of a small solar system of its own, and it is this system that provided the key to understanding Genesis. This is the seemingly unrelated event mentioned earlier.
The mansion in which I was living in 1974 was located on a hillside in Upstate New York. It had a fire escape that led up to a platform at roof level. At the time I had a reflecting telescope with a six-inch mirror which I set up on the platform and aimed at Jupiter. There were other objects in the sky that I briefly observed, but I kept being drawn back to Jupiter.
Jupiter has four " moons " that are visible from the Earth using a small telescope. It is rare to see all four at the same time, but at least one is always visible. At one point, when I was observing the system there were two satellites showing. I went indoors for a short time, and when I returned, a third satellite had appeared. When I saw this the thought flashed through my mind, "Let there be light!"
To be continued.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The Beginning
The new computer is a dream but there are some issues that have to be ironed out before I can access the Internet and update the website http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net from the new hard drive I had installed yesterday. It's a 60 Gbyte disk containing Windows XP to allow me to work with files from my old ME version. The technician is working on it, so for now I am hors de combat. The weather is lousy, cold and rainy, and I am in my cozy little place late at night recalling another night, almost thrity-four years ago, when I picked up a Bible for the very first time.
The weather on that night was also lousy but it was a typical Upstate New York snow storm. This part of the state has only two seasons, Winter and August, and this was early February. Snow flakes the size of poker chips were adding to at least a foot of accumulation on the ground, and everything else. Like now, I stayed indoors. Actually I spent a lot of time in the house, a twenty-room mansion on a hillside - the liquor store delivered.
To say that I was a mess at that time would be an understatement; I weighed 260 lbs., had a slight heart problem, high blood pressure, a bad back, brochial asthma, and could break a sweat climbing a flight of stairs. About a month ealier I had stopped drinking after a three-week binge around the holidays. I'm a recovering alcoholic with nearly twenty-seven years free from that curse; today I am in perfect health: I offer this for whatever message it may have for you with regard to the mission I believe was given me on that night. There are typical reasons why people turn to the Bible but mine was the furthest removed from any of these: I was looking for something - one thing, but when I really got into it I found a whole lot than I'd never imagined.
I was watching television that night, lounging on a setee in pajamas and a robe, when something strange happened. It was as though my brain went out of sync; the program I was watching became nothing but a set of figures moving on the screen of which I couldn't make any sense; the dialogue became a garble of unintelligible sounds, yet I wasn't particularly alarmed. 'Maybe I'm tired,' I thought, although I wasn't feeling very tired - but as a fat, sickly blob of organic material I didn't exactly have a spring in my step at any time. I picked up a book and tried to read, but this wasn't working either: though I could recognize individual words, I couldn't knit them together in as little as a sentence that had any meaning. I put the book down and settled back to collect my thoughts. Then it happened!
It wasn't much, just a thought that popped into my mind: the Chariots of the Gods. This was a popular series of books, a television special hosted by Rod Serling, and a movie, suggesting that the world had been visited by travellers from the stars. These presentations captured the minds of millions at the time, around 1973, and then faded into obscurity. I had no opinion on the matter; it was an interesting idea and I could see the possibility of such a thing, but wasn't truly committed to the idea. But there was one aspect that piqued my interest, and that's what made me go to the Bible: the idea that some of the Biblical passages suggested a high technology in those ancient times; Ezekiel's wheels in the sky, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by nuclear weapons, the electrical properties of the Ark of the Covenant, and so on. That was it! I would go through the Bible and see if I could find similar references.
Suddenly my mind was clear, I was focused, and felt a new energy filling me. I started going through the book page by page, beginning with the first book of Genesis. Just having begun, I stopped at the fifth chapter describing the Generations of Adam and wondered at the length of life shown there: people living over nine-hundred years! That's a long time; I wondered about it for a minute or so and decided that we will probably never know what that's all about. I continued reading and ran smack into Genesis 11.
This is where the Generations of Shem are listed. These folks lived a long time, sure enough, but not nearly as long as Adam's list. Shem lives 600 years and the rest of the team shows drastic diminishments of lifespan, down to Terah who dies at the tender age of 205 years.
Ah! Maybe there's a clue here! If this is a trend, then poring over the rest of the Bible should show a continuing diminishment of vital durability later on. Then something else happened.
As I paged through the book, I noticed that I was now able to "snapshot" the text: that is, I could register everything on a page with a single glance! I have never been able to do anything like this, before or since. It got me through the Bible by morning, as I compiled a list of everyone for whom length of life and, if possible, the age at siring . And the list showed exactly what I anticipated, right down to David who lived only seventy years but was old and infirm. As to my enhanced reading ability, it quickly vanished at this point and I wondered if perhaps I'd imagined it.
A few years ago I was listening to the radio and a commercial came on. It was a speed reading course and the man talking said that with this technique one could see the entire contents of a page - at one glance!
Something didn't make sense here. For one thing the decline in longevity depicted here was much too rapid to be party to a close-ordered descendancy. I drew a graph ( can be seen on the website ) and concluded that this couldn't be. Then I drew a second graph, using the third quadrant of an ellipse with a 3% eccentricity, about the same as the Earth's orbit. This graph is also shown on the website, and shows that these personages must have represented dynasties spread over a vast length of time. Again, doubt settled in, as the Generation of Adam would have dated back Four-Million Years!
At the time the earliest man only dated back 500,000 years with Zinghjanthropus. But the graph still showed 4-million years, so I continued on that basis. Since then the presence of homo sapiens has been rolled back to 6-million years. Armed with this indicator I proceeded to re-examine Genesis 1.
To be continued.
The weather on that night was also lousy but it was a typical Upstate New York snow storm. This part of the state has only two seasons, Winter and August, and this was early February. Snow flakes the size of poker chips were adding to at least a foot of accumulation on the ground, and everything else. Like now, I stayed indoors. Actually I spent a lot of time in the house, a twenty-room mansion on a hillside - the liquor store delivered.
To say that I was a mess at that time would be an understatement; I weighed 260 lbs., had a slight heart problem, high blood pressure, a bad back, brochial asthma, and could break a sweat climbing a flight of stairs. About a month ealier I had stopped drinking after a three-week binge around the holidays. I'm a recovering alcoholic with nearly twenty-seven years free from that curse; today I am in perfect health: I offer this for whatever message it may have for you with regard to the mission I believe was given me on that night. There are typical reasons why people turn to the Bible but mine was the furthest removed from any of these: I was looking for something - one thing, but when I really got into it I found a whole lot than I'd never imagined.
I was watching television that night, lounging on a setee in pajamas and a robe, when something strange happened. It was as though my brain went out of sync; the program I was watching became nothing but a set of figures moving on the screen of which I couldn't make any sense; the dialogue became a garble of unintelligible sounds, yet I wasn't particularly alarmed. 'Maybe I'm tired,' I thought, although I wasn't feeling very tired - but as a fat, sickly blob of organic material I didn't exactly have a spring in my step at any time. I picked up a book and tried to read, but this wasn't working either: though I could recognize individual words, I couldn't knit them together in as little as a sentence that had any meaning. I put the book down and settled back to collect my thoughts. Then it happened!
It wasn't much, just a thought that popped into my mind: the Chariots of the Gods. This was a popular series of books, a television special hosted by Rod Serling, and a movie, suggesting that the world had been visited by travellers from the stars. These presentations captured the minds of millions at the time, around 1973, and then faded into obscurity. I had no opinion on the matter; it was an interesting idea and I could see the possibility of such a thing, but wasn't truly committed to the idea. But there was one aspect that piqued my interest, and that's what made me go to the Bible: the idea that some of the Biblical passages suggested a high technology in those ancient times; Ezekiel's wheels in the sky, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by nuclear weapons, the electrical properties of the Ark of the Covenant, and so on. That was it! I would go through the Bible and see if I could find similar references.
Suddenly my mind was clear, I was focused, and felt a new energy filling me. I started going through the book page by page, beginning with the first book of Genesis. Just having begun, I stopped at the fifth chapter describing the Generations of Adam and wondered at the length of life shown there: people living over nine-hundred years! That's a long time; I wondered about it for a minute or so and decided that we will probably never know what that's all about. I continued reading and ran smack into Genesis 11.
This is where the Generations of Shem are listed. These folks lived a long time, sure enough, but not nearly as long as Adam's list. Shem lives 600 years and the rest of the team shows drastic diminishments of lifespan, down to Terah who dies at the tender age of 205 years.
Ah! Maybe there's a clue here! If this is a trend, then poring over the rest of the Bible should show a continuing diminishment of vital durability later on. Then something else happened.
As I paged through the book, I noticed that I was now able to "snapshot" the text: that is, I could register everything on a page with a single glance! I have never been able to do anything like this, before or since. It got me through the Bible by morning, as I compiled a list of everyone for whom length of life and, if possible, the age at siring . And the list showed exactly what I anticipated, right down to David who lived only seventy years but was old and infirm. As to my enhanced reading ability, it quickly vanished at this point and I wondered if perhaps I'd imagined it.
A few years ago I was listening to the radio and a commercial came on. It was a speed reading course and the man talking said that with this technique one could see the entire contents of a page - at one glance!
Something didn't make sense here. For one thing the decline in longevity depicted here was much too rapid to be party to a close-ordered descendancy. I drew a graph ( can be seen on the website ) and concluded that this couldn't be. Then I drew a second graph, using the third quadrant of an ellipse with a 3% eccentricity, about the same as the Earth's orbit. This graph is also shown on the website, and shows that these personages must have represented dynasties spread over a vast length of time. Again, doubt settled in, as the Generation of Adam would have dated back Four-Million Years!
At the time the earliest man only dated back 500,000 years with Zinghjanthropus. But the graph still showed 4-million years, so I continued on that basis. Since then the presence of homo sapiens has been rolled back to 6-million years. Armed with this indicator I proceeded to re-examine Genesis 1.
To be continued.
Friday, December 14, 2007
New Tests
Yesterday I had Windows XP installed on my new computer but am still unable to get to my website to update it. The technician, also a friend, is doing this for me for next to nothing. The upgrade took longer than he anticipated but he stayed with it; he will be back in a day or two with the proper drivers to finish the job.
His brother, also a friend, is a preacher of the Evangelical persuasion and we have had a few heated discussions about the Bible. Heated but friendly, and this is a new experience for me. While I have avoided Fundamentalists of every stripe in the past, the discussions I've had with this man have been very enlightening. And to some extent disturbing.
The philosophy of http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net is precisely as the title suggests: the union of the two principal faculties of our species. The main difference between our beliefs is that this Christian preacher denies the efficacy of the mind in dealing with spiritual matters. Hisview, as is that of so many, is of a God who rules as in the words of Emmett Fox, an Oriental potentate who constantly interferes in the lives of men, favoring some, condemning others, and in general demonstrating a personality and temperament that has caused many to turn away from the spiritual path. That is unfortunate, as the only path remaining to many seems to be the hedonistic, materialistic ways of the world. The line drawn in the sand is between faith without reason on the one hand, reason without faith ( or faith entirely dependent upon reason ) on the other.
I was a great fan of the original Star Trek television series. Great show; they did it all and did it right the first time, and the subsequent revisions just didn't measure up. Compared to the original, these "new generation" versions were of a darker hue, more somber, and resembled soap operas rather than adventures at the " final frontier ". But there is one character from the original that has influenced thinking with regard to intelligence.
Mr. Spok was portrayed as a mental giant but without normal human emotions. Still, there was something ungenuine about Spok; while presented as the supreme pragmatist, he did what was needed to save the Enterprise and it's crew from the dangers encountered in the many episodes. He was loyal to captain, crew, and ship: a human emotion. A purely reasoning being would have made the best choices in his own interests, quite independent of any other concern. So it seems that the Vulcan wasn't as devoid of feeling as he has been interpreted. And this brings us back to the Bible and the " literal interpretation " given it by Fundamentalists. Just as Spok was seen from one view, disregarding the subtleties that pointed to another interpretation of his character, so do the Fundamentalist Christians hold to one view of the Bible without any regard for alternative views: It's the "word of God" and that's all there is to it! This position is flawed in very much the same way as Spok's personna, and the discrepancy is just as subtle. The key to understanding is basic and involves the " literal interpretation " of the Bible. There can be no such thing.
If a huge volume of water is falling from the sky in droplets, it's raining. This is a fact, not an interpretation. Now suppose someone borrows money from you and promises to pay it back at a certain time. It's a loan; right? No: that's an interpreatation because if the amount is not repaid it's a gift, regardless what you call it. Scams are promoted in ways that invite specific interpret-ations; become wealthy with little or no work, earn big money while sleeping, fire your boss, and all that buzz. The "marks" who fall for these rackets interpret them as " opportunities " when in fact they are con games. People who avoid these pitfalls ask questions, and investigate these so-called opportunities before committing. These wiser ones know the difference between what you can earn and what you probably will make: they know that " up to " also includes zero.
I our work we have distinguished between Good and Evil; Good is Truth, Reality is Evil - not bad, just Evil, which we equate with the appearances of the material world. Truth is Knowing, Reality is Believing, the difference being that Truth is constant, Belief changeable. The Heart is the seat of Truth, the Mind the Realm of Reality, and the union of the two is the object of our effort. Reality is about appearances, appearances are often deceiving, therefore Evil. Jesus told us to "Resist not Evil": in other words, don't pay attention undue attention to appearances.
The chief difference between Truth and Reality is that Appearances may be molded to craft a particular belief: one only has to look at the pathetic dog and pony show that Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State, put on at the UN Security Council, claiming Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction". When these proved untrue the administration cast about for other reasons to justify the war that has so fat claimed over a million lives; and this very fact alone decribed the lie as clearly as any hard evidence could: Only Reality requires justification; Truth is its own justification.
His brother, also a friend, is a preacher of the Evangelical persuasion and we have had a few heated discussions about the Bible. Heated but friendly, and this is a new experience for me. While I have avoided Fundamentalists of every stripe in the past, the discussions I've had with this man have been very enlightening. And to some extent disturbing.
The philosophy of http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net is precisely as the title suggests: the union of the two principal faculties of our species. The main difference between our beliefs is that this Christian preacher denies the efficacy of the mind in dealing with spiritual matters. Hisview, as is that of so many, is of a God who rules as in the words of Emmett Fox, an Oriental potentate who constantly interferes in the lives of men, favoring some, condemning others, and in general demonstrating a personality and temperament that has caused many to turn away from the spiritual path. That is unfortunate, as the only path remaining to many seems to be the hedonistic, materialistic ways of the world. The line drawn in the sand is between faith without reason on the one hand, reason without faith ( or faith entirely dependent upon reason ) on the other.
I was a great fan of the original Star Trek television series. Great show; they did it all and did it right the first time, and the subsequent revisions just didn't measure up. Compared to the original, these "new generation" versions were of a darker hue, more somber, and resembled soap operas rather than adventures at the " final frontier ". But there is one character from the original that has influenced thinking with regard to intelligence.
Mr. Spok was portrayed as a mental giant but without normal human emotions. Still, there was something ungenuine about Spok; while presented as the supreme pragmatist, he did what was needed to save the Enterprise and it's crew from the dangers encountered in the many episodes. He was loyal to captain, crew, and ship: a human emotion. A purely reasoning being would have made the best choices in his own interests, quite independent of any other concern. So it seems that the Vulcan wasn't as devoid of feeling as he has been interpreted. And this brings us back to the Bible and the " literal interpretation " given it by Fundamentalists. Just as Spok was seen from one view, disregarding the subtleties that pointed to another interpretation of his character, so do the Fundamentalist Christians hold to one view of the Bible without any regard for alternative views: It's the "word of God" and that's all there is to it! This position is flawed in very much the same way as Spok's personna, and the discrepancy is just as subtle. The key to understanding is basic and involves the " literal interpretation " of the Bible. There can be no such thing.
If a huge volume of water is falling from the sky in droplets, it's raining. This is a fact, not an interpretation. Now suppose someone borrows money from you and promises to pay it back at a certain time. It's a loan; right? No: that's an interpreatation because if the amount is not repaid it's a gift, regardless what you call it. Scams are promoted in ways that invite specific interpret-ations; become wealthy with little or no work, earn big money while sleeping, fire your boss, and all that buzz. The "marks" who fall for these rackets interpret them as " opportunities " when in fact they are con games. People who avoid these pitfalls ask questions, and investigate these so-called opportunities before committing. These wiser ones know the difference between what you can earn and what you probably will make: they know that " up to " also includes zero.
I our work we have distinguished between Good and Evil; Good is Truth, Reality is Evil - not bad, just Evil, which we equate with the appearances of the material world. Truth is Knowing, Reality is Believing, the difference being that Truth is constant, Belief changeable. The Heart is the seat of Truth, the Mind the Realm of Reality, and the union of the two is the object of our effort. Reality is about appearances, appearances are often deceiving, therefore Evil. Jesus told us to "Resist not Evil": in other words, don't pay attention undue attention to appearances.
The chief difference between Truth and Reality is that Appearances may be molded to craft a particular belief: one only has to look at the pathetic dog and pony show that Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State, put on at the UN Security Council, claiming Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction". When these proved untrue the administration cast about for other reasons to justify the war that has so fat claimed over a million lives; and this very fact alone decribed the lie as clearly as any hard evidence could: Only Reality requires justification; Truth is its own justification.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Taking It On!
I've been offline for a few days while changing systems. For the past seven-plus years I have been running Windows ME on a Compaq Presario 5000. Great machine, great system, but like all of us it started having a growing number of what Southwest Airlines call "maintenance events": that's when they get rid of old airplanes and get new ones.This installment is the first on my new Gateway GT5465E running Windows Vista Premium. The reason for calling attention to this trifle that means nothing to anyone but myself is to admit that, for a while I was hesitant; lots of bad reviews about Vista flavored my judgement. Me? Scared?A little, if you must know. After all I have a great stake in my Internet access; beside my website http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net I also do background checks, skip traces, and other computer-based applications for a lawyer and a couple of property owners. And I keep track of my finances and physical fitness activities ( bicycling {300 to over 400 miles a month},and weight lifting {ooof!} on the computer. Well, now I am going to submit MY review of Vista!
I LOVE IT!!!!!!
Oh, there are some programs that don't work on the new system; but am I defeated? NO! For one thing, I'm not playing Chess ( and risk a concussion every time I lose my Queen ). Instead I am having a techie friend over tomorrow to install a second, 40-Gigabyte hard disk in the same box, with Windows XP, and a few other things. Two computers in one, and XP will run all the old ME programs that Vista isn't ready for yet.
I'm still treading my way through the many features, you know: finding everything. But it's a pleasure, especially as I took a leap of faith and landed safely.
I LOVE IT!!!!!!
Oh, there are some programs that don't work on the new system; but am I defeated? NO! For one thing, I'm not playing Chess ( and risk a concussion every time I lose my Queen ). Instead I am having a techie friend over tomorrow to install a second, 40-Gigabyte hard disk in the same box, with Windows XP, and a few other things. Two computers in one, and XP will run all the old ME programs that Vista isn't ready for yet.
I'm still treading my way through the many features, you know: finding everything. But it's a pleasure, especially as I took a leap of faith and landed safely.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Getting it Straight
We live in perilous times as anyone who browses the Internet can readily see. The many crises we face are largely the results of our own foolish actions throughout recorded history. Our thesis in The Time of the End - Announcing the Millennium is that much of our trouble stems from a warped view of reality, much of it fostered and maintained by organized religion. Our aim is not to attack anyone but rather to present a saner, fact based, and understandable view of God, the world we live in ( Purgatory ), and where we are headed.
Just to settle the matter of the Millennium: it's here. At one minute past midnight, December 31, 2000, all hell didn't break loose as the Ignorant have taught the easily convinced to believe. In fact the Church of Rome and its recalcitrant spin-offs have been predicting the end of the world for centuries. It hasn't happened yet and won't for about two billion years more, but that doesn't mean that we aren't in the end times.
The question is; the end of what?
We believe it should be the end of; wars, rumors of wars, the desecration of our lovely planet; the ignorance, superstition, and apathy, that promote divisiveness among ourselves, largely due to the polyglot religious beliefs that infect the souls of many. Where religion should bring people together in common cause, it has instead served to drive men apart.
Recognize the fellow at the top of this page? Kind of looks like Jesus; no? Of course it could be God getting his beard tweaked by the nearly nude nymphet. But wait! The Roman Church tells us that Jesus is God; so what's the difference? Either way this is a mighty presence, designed to scare the daylights out of you unless, that is, you've been "saved". But if you haven't, look out!
This God/Jesus is sitting on his throne judging us, even though Jesus told us to "Judge not lest ye be judged." That's a contradiction, one of many in the Church's teachings, and that kind of spoils the whole concept, so let's just ignore it. We mustn't let facts get in the way of "faith".
Actually, the guy on the throne in the picture is Zeus, the Greek god of Olympus, the template that the Church used to create God in the image and likeness of man. This "God" has so many flaws of character that if a man demonstrated these same pathologies, he would be locked up in an asylum.
The Millennium is here alright. Just a reminder: a millennium is a thousand years, and we have barely scratched the surface of this one. With some 992 years to go, the propects look pretty dim. But there is hope, and that's what our effort is all about. Visit the website;
and see what you think. You might like it once you get into it. And if you don't agree with it, that's fine! We won't set fire to you.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Forbidden Territory
The central theme of this blog is a spiritual one and seeks to couple the two cardinal faculties of mankind, faith and reason, into a seamless, mutually supporting philosophy. I believe we have succeeded; the ebooks and articles on http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net are the result of over thirty-four years of investigation. We have applied mathematical precision to this task: that any argument put forth in these writings submit to the principal law of Mathematics, i.e. if it is a logical, understandable part of the whole ( like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle ) then then the structure holds; otherwise the entire project is flawed. The basic mathematical law I refer to states that a given Truth must hold in every conceivable instance of application: if there is but a single exception, the argument is either a conditional truth ( a reality ), or it is outrightly false.
One might ask; why bother with all this? And, quite honestly, there was a time when I couldn't have answered this question. I didn't know why this interest captured my attention so completely, except that it was exciting and fun! The actual work was sporadic, depending upon the nature and means by which the bits and pieces came to my attention, but it was always on my mind. I can't account for this except to say that I have ( had ) the sens of being taken over by some warm and loving power that seemed to be guiding my every move. As time went on and I got to see the elegant logic and beauty of this work I became willing ot be led no matter where this journey would take me.
I'm not a mystic. Didn't see Jesus, my head is not bathed in light, and the only visions I can claim are those that anyone with imagination can easily identify. This has been a purely intellectual pursuit, but over time it has given me a new faith, a new understanding, and a boundless love of life. And all this with a sense of humor. A friend once asked me if I truly love evrything. To which I replied, "I love every scorpion in the Mojave Desert." My friend looked puzzled and asked why. "Because they stay in the Mojave Desert!"
To clear up another point: I am not interested in saving the world. I have pursued this interest out of the growing belief that this is my prupose in life. It's for my spiritual advancement; I only wish to share it with others who are seeking an alternative to the Ignorance and Superstition that is at the heart of most religious belief. I recognize that there are people who are so steeped in traditional "christian" dogma that they will reject outright any and all of the ideas I represent. Fine! These people are locked up behind a wall of prejudice, drummed into their heads from earliest childhood and presented to them by self-styled authorities who ladle out a witch's brew of love and fear. And to ensure its survival the authorities have advanced the idea that it is wrong to question their beliefs, yet it is quite all right to question, even attack the beliefs of those who do not agree with them. It's called missionary work, sort of a spitiual "regime change." Of course the real reason for the ban on discussing religious matters with such as these is that it's many contradictions pose questions that have no answers. Better they not be asked.
My position is this: visit the website, read what's there, and question it to your heart's content. If this philosophy has any merit it will stand on its own; no smoke and mirros, no evasions, no convoluted explanations: just simple, straightforward facts that you can verify for yourself. Actually, I owe a debt to the "christians"; they've been handing out Bibles all over the place. Now all it takes is to open the book and read what it says, without the fancy dancing of selective interpretation. Do this and you may find that;
The Exodus was actually a reign of terror,
The Israelites didn't want to leave Egypt,
Moses was not a great teacher but a harried underling,
Isaiah did not predict the birth of Jesus, and
Jesus isn't coming back.
This is only a very short list of the truths contained in the Time of the End. Read it and maybe we can head off the fabatics who are so convinced of their noxious and oppressive belief systems that they are actively working to bring the Battle of Armageddon about. They do not for a moment believe they are wrong; and that isn't faith: it's ideaology. It isn't Truth.
The Time of the End? Could be all wrong, but that's for you to decide.
One might ask; why bother with all this? And, quite honestly, there was a time when I couldn't have answered this question. I didn't know why this interest captured my attention so completely, except that it was exciting and fun! The actual work was sporadic, depending upon the nature and means by which the bits and pieces came to my attention, but it was always on my mind. I can't account for this except to say that I have ( had ) the sens of being taken over by some warm and loving power that seemed to be guiding my every move. As time went on and I got to see the elegant logic and beauty of this work I became willing ot be led no matter where this journey would take me.
I'm not a mystic. Didn't see Jesus, my head is not bathed in light, and the only visions I can claim are those that anyone with imagination can easily identify. This has been a purely intellectual pursuit, but over time it has given me a new faith, a new understanding, and a boundless love of life. And all this with a sense of humor. A friend once asked me if I truly love evrything. To which I replied, "I love every scorpion in the Mojave Desert." My friend looked puzzled and asked why. "Because they stay in the Mojave Desert!"
To clear up another point: I am not interested in saving the world. I have pursued this interest out of the growing belief that this is my prupose in life. It's for my spiritual advancement; I only wish to share it with others who are seeking an alternative to the Ignorance and Superstition that is at the heart of most religious belief. I recognize that there are people who are so steeped in traditional "christian" dogma that they will reject outright any and all of the ideas I represent. Fine! These people are locked up behind a wall of prejudice, drummed into their heads from earliest childhood and presented to them by self-styled authorities who ladle out a witch's brew of love and fear. And to ensure its survival the authorities have advanced the idea that it is wrong to question their beliefs, yet it is quite all right to question, even attack the beliefs of those who do not agree with them. It's called missionary work, sort of a spitiual "regime change." Of course the real reason for the ban on discussing religious matters with such as these is that it's many contradictions pose questions that have no answers. Better they not be asked.
My position is this: visit the website, read what's there, and question it to your heart's content. If this philosophy has any merit it will stand on its own; no smoke and mirros, no evasions, no convoluted explanations: just simple, straightforward facts that you can verify for yourself. Actually, I owe a debt to the "christians"; they've been handing out Bibles all over the place. Now all it takes is to open the book and read what it says, without the fancy dancing of selective interpretation. Do this and you may find that;
The Exodus was actually a reign of terror,
The Israelites didn't want to leave Egypt,
Moses was not a great teacher but a harried underling,
Isaiah did not predict the birth of Jesus, and
Jesus isn't coming back.
This is only a very short list of the truths contained in the Time of the End. Read it and maybe we can head off the fabatics who are so convinced of their noxious and oppressive belief systems that they are actively working to bring the Battle of Armageddon about. They do not for a moment believe they are wrong; and that isn't faith: it's ideaology. It isn't Truth.
The Time of the End? Could be all wrong, but that's for you to decide.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Big and Little
Question: What is the tiniest nation in the world?
Answer: I am.
Seriously. Think about it.
As a citizen of the United States I enjoy a sovreignty that is defined by the Constitution: I am a sovreign citizen. That means I have certain rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are protected under the Bill of Rights and as long as these are in force I have a measure of security. And freedom. I am free to think of myself as a little nation, one among the many others that I daily come into contact with. Maybe if all people thought of themselves as nations, we would all be better off.
Seriously. Think about it.
The United States has become the world's biggest debtor nation; our government borrows and spends more money than we can ever hope to recoup over the next three generations. I don't.
As the tiniest nation in the world I have an economy just like the big one. I engage in trade with various businesses, spend money, and receive goods and services. In this sense I am in the import/export business; I export labor of various kinds and import money with which to buy the commodities I need. In all this I manage to keep Production ahead of Consumption, and I'm the better off for it. I even have a budget surplus each month. I even save money! And I don't have any debt! Congress, are you listening?
It's sad to note that so many of my brother and sister nations are in such overwhelming debt; credit cards, sub-prime mortgages, exhorbitant medical costs, and the "essentials" that mark people as successful are, in fact, impoverishing them. Look at where gasoline prices are going: this time next year a gallon of gas will be $8.00, but not for me: I don't own a car. Don't need one as I live in a city with everything I need an easy walk from where I live. And if I truly need a car I can just rent one, do what I need to do with it, then return it.
I ride a bicycle everywhere. My transportation costs are zero most months, and when I have to have the bike repaired, get new tires, or just have it periodically overhauled, it's inexpensive. I ride a twenty-five year-old Gitane 10-speed that has over 23,000 miles on it; ten months out of each year I ride over three-hundred miles, and about half that time, over 400. I don't have to choose between food and fuel; food is my fuel. And I am in superb health. Big Pharma doesn't have its hooks into me, and if dctors had to depend on people like me for a living they'd starve to death.
That's what I do. And there are things I don't do that are equally important.
I don't invade my neighbors' homes and try to tell them how to live.
I don't hand my money over to perfect strangers to "manage" for me. They make money whether I win or lose.
If something is broken, I fix it instead of running right out to buy a new one.
I rarely purchase anything at retail, even new clothes. I'll share a couple of these strategies with you on another post.
But most importantly of all, I don't import the panic and frenzy of the outside world. I don't watch televion news or read newspapers: I don't want to cloud my conscious mind with a lot of trash that I can't do anything about. I keep up with world events on the Internet where I can get a variety of in-depth commentary. I am at peace because I believe that what's going on "over there" is not as important as what is going on in my own sphere of influence.
I could go on and on, but will close with another question.
If a tiny nation like I can manage to live within my means, why can't the Big One do the same?
Answer: I am.
Seriously. Think about it.
As a citizen of the United States I enjoy a sovreignty that is defined by the Constitution: I am a sovreign citizen. That means I have certain rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are protected under the Bill of Rights and as long as these are in force I have a measure of security. And freedom. I am free to think of myself as a little nation, one among the many others that I daily come into contact with. Maybe if all people thought of themselves as nations, we would all be better off.
Seriously. Think about it.
The United States has become the world's biggest debtor nation; our government borrows and spends more money than we can ever hope to recoup over the next three generations. I don't.
As the tiniest nation in the world I have an economy just like the big one. I engage in trade with various businesses, spend money, and receive goods and services. In this sense I am in the import/export business; I export labor of various kinds and import money with which to buy the commodities I need. In all this I manage to keep Production ahead of Consumption, and I'm the better off for it. I even have a budget surplus each month. I even save money! And I don't have any debt! Congress, are you listening?
It's sad to note that so many of my brother and sister nations are in such overwhelming debt; credit cards, sub-prime mortgages, exhorbitant medical costs, and the "essentials" that mark people as successful are, in fact, impoverishing them. Look at where gasoline prices are going: this time next year a gallon of gas will be $8.00, but not for me: I don't own a car. Don't need one as I live in a city with everything I need an easy walk from where I live. And if I truly need a car I can just rent one, do what I need to do with it, then return it.
I ride a bicycle everywhere. My transportation costs are zero most months, and when I have to have the bike repaired, get new tires, or just have it periodically overhauled, it's inexpensive. I ride a twenty-five year-old Gitane 10-speed that has over 23,000 miles on it; ten months out of each year I ride over three-hundred miles, and about half that time, over 400. I don't have to choose between food and fuel; food is my fuel. And I am in superb health. Big Pharma doesn't have its hooks into me, and if dctors had to depend on people like me for a living they'd starve to death.
That's what I do. And there are things I don't do that are equally important.
I don't invade my neighbors' homes and try to tell them how to live.
I don't hand my money over to perfect strangers to "manage" for me. They make money whether I win or lose.
If something is broken, I fix it instead of running right out to buy a new one.
I rarely purchase anything at retail, even new clothes. I'll share a couple of these strategies with you on another post.
But most importantly of all, I don't import the panic and frenzy of the outside world. I don't watch televion news or read newspapers: I don't want to cloud my conscious mind with a lot of trash that I can't do anything about. I keep up with world events on the Internet where I can get a variety of in-depth commentary. I am at peace because I believe that what's going on "over there" is not as important as what is going on in my own sphere of influence.
I could go on and on, but will close with another question.
If a tiny nation like I can manage to live within my means, why can't the Big One do the same?
Friday, November 23, 2007
The Sound of Silence - Spooky.
The pitiable state of the world today begs for a unifying principal to bring people together. Just recently I appeared at the courthouse for jury duty; it was the third time in five years, and for the third time my number didn't come up. I knew it wouldn't ( my juror number was so high that it wouldn't have come up if I'd sat there for two days ), but I had to stay until dismissed so as not to risk a contempt citation. I don't like contept citations. Something was different about this crowd ( about 400 people in the jury room ) that set it apart from the other two times.
The other times the people who congregated in the jury room were open and engaging, and I met several new people. But this crowd sat in silence, hardly looking up from the iPods, cell phones, Blackberries, and sundry other gadgets they were playing with. It was spooky. It was a long two and a half hours for one as garrulous as I am.
I like meeting people. Social intercourse is a vital part of a well-adjusted society and the free exchange of ideas is necessary to the concensus of opinion which defines and unifies a people. It will be my intent in this blog to present an alternate, hopefully sensible, view of our nation, the world, and it's people. Most of this material will be from my website;
http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net
It has been on the Internet for six years and has been well-received by visitors from around the world. The ebooks and articles represent a compilation of thirty-four years of research and investigation. My colleagues and I are currently working on a set of video presentations that will appear on YouTube, with expanded formats on the website. Hope you enjoy the experience.
The other times the people who congregated in the jury room were open and engaging, and I met several new people. But this crowd sat in silence, hardly looking up from the iPods, cell phones, Blackberries, and sundry other gadgets they were playing with. It was spooky. It was a long two and a half hours for one as garrulous as I am.
I like meeting people. Social intercourse is a vital part of a well-adjusted society and the free exchange of ideas is necessary to the concensus of opinion which defines and unifies a people. It will be my intent in this blog to present an alternate, hopefully sensible, view of our nation, the world, and it's people. Most of this material will be from my website;
http://timeoftheend-faithandreason.net
It has been on the Internet for six years and has been well-received by visitors from around the world. The ebooks and articles represent a compilation of thirty-four years of research and investigation. My colleagues and I are currently working on a set of video presentations that will appear on YouTube, with expanded formats on the website. Hope you enjoy the experience.