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My take on religion

The ultimate answer to the ultimate question is, "Where did God come from?" The correct answer is that he just is. You aren't supposed to ask. You're just supposed to accept it. And if you don't you'll be burned at the stake.

But that is like saying that this super computer, with its software, it circuits, its power supply, simply exist. Nobody built it, nobody programmed it. It just is. Or even more. It is like saying that a being with high intelligence, capable of abstract thought just simply is. Has knowledge that doesn't come from learning or experience. Has an energy source.

This being one day decided to create a universe. It somehow had the resources to do so. I seem to be the only one who ever lived who even contemplates this.

I believe it was in Carl Sagan's book, "Cosmos," that I read where mariners from different lands met and discussed and thought. Isn't it easier just to say that the Universe always existed. But how can atoms that clump together to form stars, planets, quasars and black holes just simply exist? Even if it wasn't always in the form it is now.

But in fact it does. Which leads to a rephrasing of the original question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" And if physics is accurate, "Why is it so complicated?"

I have no problem with a god being part of the universe maybe even the universe being god. Which means that God is much more complex than we realize.

Of course there are the people who have his cell phone number and tell us that evaluation isn't true, and the world is only 6,000 years old and you are going to Hell if you don't think so. And you just have to accept things on faith.

People who say that word written four thousand years ago passed on from oral tradition, and filled with inconsistencies is literally true, and you must not question it or else. I remember a bible I had that had footnotes that said, "Meaning of this Hebrew word is uncertain," That meant that scholars had to use educated guesses to interpret the passage. Plus some of it is distorted in translation, yet it is the LITERAL truth.

While the word of God is written in the rocks, and the stars and in DNA but one is sinful if he reads and interprets that.

I find church boring. It is amusing to me how people think that if you go to a particular building at a particular time and sit through a service that somehow transforms you. At best you can get a good speech surrounded by boring ritual. And I don;t like the modern music, and in traditional services the hymns have been simplified so that old ladies can play them.

I went to a service with a lady friend and tried to discuss it with her afterward, but she didn't remember anything. Then she yelled at the slow car in front of her.

I find religion fascinating and study it. I find Hinduism and Buddhism appealing because of the belief that god resides in you. You just have to work to bring it out. Here is an excerpt from a book I'm writing. “I think the gods speak to us who don’t believe because we are the only ones who will listen. Everyone else thinks they already know what the gods have to say.”
“And the gods always seem to tell them what they want to hear.”

Kenedy Assassination

I haven't posted in a long time. First I was too busy. Then I got ill. I'll do a brief post. I have never had much interest in the Kennedy Assassination. About all I have read are a few articles in history magazines and I've seen a few TV shows.

Nothing I've ever seen has convinced me there was a conspiracy. For one thing, the question nobody has ever asked, why Dallas? Of all the times they could have picked to assassinate him, why there and then? Wouldn't they have examined his daily or weekly routine to figure out the best time and place? Of course the answer might be that it was a break in Kennedy's routine, a time when he might be more vulnerable. But how far ahead of time would the vast number of conspirators known about the trip to Dallas? All the people from the highest levels of government, the CIA, FBI, Cuba, the Soviet Union, the Men in Black would have had only a short time to hatch all their elaborate plans.

And it all could have been for naught if Kennedy had used the protective cover on his car.

And to be such a vast conspiracy they sure did a sloppy job. Or maybe that was part of the plan to make it look like a lone assassin doing an amateurish job. It is amazing to me that "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" (a History Channel series -- I hate how they cater to sensationalism) could within in a few month's time be able to all agree on something. If even my Phi Theta Kappa group (the honor students) couldn't coordinate then how could the CIA, FBI, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the Men in Black?

Maybe that is why the plaza was crawling with assassins, one on the Grassy Knoll, one in the sewer drain, one in the car behind him, one in an orbiting UFO.

Well I heard that Court TV did an investigation where they concluded that if there was a second assassin on the Grassy Knoll then he missed.

Another group on a TV show said that the car was not near the sewer drain at the time the shots were fired.

You could probably pick any president and be be able to find reasons someone would want to assassinate him. With Obama it might be White Supremacist. If the attempt on Reagan had been successful there would probably be Reagan Assassination conspiracy theorist.

People go over and over the records. I heard a guy, I think on the radio, say that Oswald asked for a flight to Washington and the Assassination Buff thought that was significant. Maybe he just wanted to go to Washington.

I read an article where the author said he knew a buff who said that a certain individual who the author dubbed, "The Name" was the one who did it. Different buffs have different people who are, "The Name."

There are many loose ends in the case and unanswered questions and people keep poring over it but to me there just seems to be nothing there. Someone compared it to putting a clean white sheet out on the lawn. The longer it is out there the more soiled it gets.

I can remember the death of Princess Di. How that seemed to be a pretty straight forward story, but now people have started whispering conspiracy.

One thing people overlook is that they see things after the fact. How do you know that shooting someone is going to cause a certain thing to happen? How often have things worked out the way you thought they would? One example of this might be the Janet Jackson infamous Wardrobe Malfunction. My theory, based on seeing it in slow mo, is that they planned it and it was deliberate. Justin and Janet may have thought everyone would think, "Hey Cool! Did you see that?" and were surprised at the outrage and had to do some CYA.

And conspiracies are based on going doing some elaborate scheme to bring about a simple outcome. For example that Nine Eleven was an elaborate deception involving remote controlling the aircraft and placing implosive charges in the Towers. All so that the U.S. could go to war against Afghanistan. Seems to me there are simpler ways that you could go about getting into a war, such as the Tonkin Bay Incident.

And if it was a huge conspiracy that involved so many people and is still active, then what have they been doing in the forty plus years since? And it was Benjamin Frankiln who said, "Three can keep a secret if two are dead." In over forty years someone would have spilled the beans.

Some people sleep comfortably, secure in the knowledge that a vast secret group of people control everything. I for one will continue to put SOME faith in my fellow man and even my government.

Masonic Conspiracy

I recently saw a show that had the premise that many of the founding fathers were Free Masons so they dictated our constitution. They implemented all our laws, and they really run things behind the scenes.

According to this show, just over one third of the delegates to the Constitutional convention were Masons so that proves that they controlled the whole proceedings and dictated the entire constitution along masonic ideas.

One third is not a quorum, and anyone who knows anything about the conflicts among the delegates, the heated debates, the impasses, and the compromises they finally worked out, would see that one third of the group could not have possibly controlled the proceedings and gotten everything their way.

I think it is entirely plausible that some of the Mason's ideas did make it into the constitution. At their meetings they debated the ideas current at the time. So the part of the show where they showed excerpts from the Masonic rulebook and compared them to passages of the Constitution is likely accurate. But the idea that they are some kind of sinister shadow government just doesn't hold water.

And theses shows never tell you what the agenda is supposed to be. The Masons, to me, seemed to be good people who were trying to do good things. I believe it is also possible to find out quite a bit about this "secret" society.

I think it is in, "War And Peace," where one of the characters joins the Masons and the readers sees some of the inside and gets a taste of some of their values. And it is good stuff.

Conspiracy people also say that Mozart was murdered because his opera, "The Magic Flute," revealed too much about the Masons. It seems actually the Masons financed the Opera to help Mozart who was in bad financial shape. And Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto, lived to a respectable old age.

The show also brought up the old bit about the one dollar bill having Masonic imagery on it. One of the talking heads on the show said that only one person on the committee to design the official seal, which appears on the dollar bill, was a Mason, Ben Franklin, and his ideas were rejected.

The images on the bill came from the 18 century version of clip art. A source that may well have been used by the masons, but by other people as well.

And what is supposed to happen when you look at the symbols? Are they supposed to hypnotize you so that you start walking toward the nearest lodge to enlist?

My Take On Crop Circles

I listened to Art Bell once and some guy came on who sounded real laid back who said crop circles are my life. Seems he actually made his living going around studying crop circles. Where can I sign up?

I worked with a lady once who said she'd seen lights in the sky while in the middle of the ocean on a navy ship. She said strange metals had been found at crop circles. I said they might find strange metals if they looked elsewhere in the field.

The crop circle guy seemed to be on a spiritual quest, not a scientific one. There are people who have gone out, and using simple tools, created an elaborate design in only a few hours. This puts a burden on a real scientist who shows up to study a crop circle. They have to rule out any possibility that the crop circle was man made.

Since it has been proven that humans can create crop circles, a legitimate scientist, upon arriving at a crop circle, will assume that it is man made unless he can prove otherwise. UFO researchers, like the new age guy on the Art Bell show, assume that every crop circle is automatically of extra terrestrial origin.

UFO researchers have examined wheat sample from a circle to show that the wheat has supposedly been stressed, and they have found metals, like I mentioned before. A real scientist would get specimens from other areas of the wheat field and compare them to the ones found at the site. A legitimate scientist shares his work with others to see if they get similar results. Scientist also have this thing called peer review where other scientist look at their work and see if they think his claims are valid. It can be very difficult to get a claim accepted by the majority of scientist.

For example. People have claimed for years to find evidence of a human presence in South America earlier than the accepted date. Archeologist Tom Dillehay found a site at Monte Verde Chile. Only after the evidence was examined by numerous scientist was his new date recognized as valid. Crop circle investigators should face the same scrutiny.

And crop circles being an attempt by aliens to communicate makes no sense. Why would extraterrestrials make patterns in one medium that is only around during part of the year? Why would they choose a rural location instead of an area of high habitation? What message could they be trying to communicate? Anyone trying to make contact would use something simple. In the movie "Close Encounters" it was musical notes. Any intelligence using pictures would start with simple shapes then probably take a mathematical approach.

The Egyptians did not have helicopters or aircraft. That is a fact! Some hieroglyphics in the Temple of Osiris at Abydos appear to depict highly developed crafts of different levels of technology, specifically a 1960s era helicopter, a submarine like the Civil War Hunley, some form of flying saucer of the far future, and a jet plane with a tail that is too big.



Acording to www.catchpenny.org “The glyphs are a result of both erosion of the stone surface (evident elsewhere in the temple) and the process of filling in and re-carving the stone to replace some of the original hieroglyphics. The technical term for such a surface that has been written on more than once is a palimpsest. The usurping and modifying of inscriptions was common in ancient Egypt throughout its history. The Abydos glyph was modified at least once in antiquity, and perhaps twice. Some of the filling has fallen out in places where the older and the newer inscriptions overlap, and the result is unique and odd-looking.”

Glyphs super imposed.

“The text is part of the titulary of Ramesses II and can be translated as "The one of the Two Ladies, who suppresses the nine foreign countries." This replaces the royal titulary of Seti I that was originally carved into the stone. More technically, the actual "helicopter" seems to be a portion of the psd.t sign and the X3s.t sign on top of each other, with portions missing. An apparent change in scale also mucks things up.”

Glyphs in context.

Like I have said in earlier post, we know about Ancient Egypt. There are numerous artifacts and lots of writing. The Egyptians were conservative. They maintained the status quo, thus Egyptians were not innovators and thus were not interested in experimenting with advanced technologies. “If the ancient Egyptians had vehicles such as helicopters, submarines, and jet airplanes, one would expect to find some evidence of this other than in a single inscription on the lintel of a single temple. This type of large machinery requires a vast amount of support (including fuel, parts, factories, etc.) but there is no trace of any such support in all of Egypt. The Egyptian literature is also bereft of any boast, much less passing mention, of advanced aircraft.”

All artifacts found are Bronze Age type. The Persians were able to defeat the Egyptians (would that have been possible if the Egyptians had had advanced technology?), and Alexander the Great was later able to defeat the Egyptians, and he did not pick up helicopters from them.

The Egyptians would have had no use for a submarine. They sailed up and down the Nile, going North by drifting with the current going south by sail. They hardly ever ventured into the open sea.

More On UFOs

Here are several observations that have a bearing on supposed UFO sightings.

One: I was walking across campus one day when I ran into my roommate. He was staring at something and saying that he felt the way Mosses must have felt when he encountered the burning bush. He directed my gaze to a plant under a magnolia tree that had branches that spread wide out but it was clear underneath. The lone plant was one of those long ones that tapers to a point. A slight breeze caused it to sway, while nothing else around moved. There wasn't much else around. I didn't think the phenomenon was all that spectacular. It didn't compare in magnitude to a burning bush.

Two: I was watching an airplane flying by in the small town I lived in at the time. The airplane was towing one of those advertising signs. Across the street was a building. The airplane flew toward the building, got square with the building, and then I was momentarily jarred when it passed in front instead of disappearing behind. The airplane turned out to be a small radio controlled aircraft rather than the big manned airplane I'd thought it was.

Three: I was walking at night and saw a group of six circles of light that spun about in a circle, the circle getting wider and narrower as they danced. In the fog the apparitions appeared to be only ten feet away. This was an astonishing illusion, as I knew that the sky light that projected those beams was far away.

Now if I had not known about the skylight, and had been drunk, or eager for a religious or mysterious encounter, like my roommate had been. I might have thought I'd seen a UFO. And the radio controlled plane shows when something is in the air and you have no visual cues to judge scale, you might think you saw something strange when it might just be something ordinary. And it shows how easily UFO photos can be faked.

Four: I was laying semi awake on my bed in my apartment once, and saw what appeared to be a kid, dressed in a down jacket, like what had been in fashion in the 70s, this happened in the 80s. I tried to call out, "What are you doing here?" or something like that. As I did so I awoke, and the vision vanished. I did not feel scared, I did not feel a presence, I did not feel anything except a mild bemusement. In no way did I think I had seen a ghost, and I have never had that kind of dream experience again. In that apartment or elsewhere.