Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Deep Ones and the Madness of Crowds




The Deep Ones

I could not but feel that some noxious marine mind had declared a war of extermination upon all the solid ground - HP Lovecraft, The Crawling Chaos

The Overlords of Childhood's End hide their true form for the first 50 years of their benevolent space brother stewardship, calculating that a half century of alien new order will be sufficient to overthrow millennia of religious patterning and superstition. It almost is. But there is still shock at their appearance: barbed-tail, horns and leathery-wings, like the demons of discarded faiths. The classic imagery of a demon had been a prefigurement imprinted upon humanity at the revelation of its doom, and cast back through race memory as an instance of reverse causation.

It would be bad enough if Clarke were right, though his godlike aliens had the grace of intellect and empathy even as they took Earth into receivership. Lovecraft's gelatinous, slobbering gods, not so much. And it's Lovecraft I worry about, and his Deep Ones dreaming.

Narrating the IMAX documentary Deep Sea, Johnny Depp's first words are to assure us we're not watching science fiction, and the creatures are not from another planet. The creatures are jellyfish, and the assurance that this is our own world fails to comfort me. Their biomass now surpasses ocean vertebrates, and are found in staggering quantities where they have never been seen in number before, because we have sickened the waters with overfishing and the climate is trending towards conditions unseen since the Carboniferous Era.

Complexity is the product of cooling, a process observable on every order of scale. The world we recognize and of which we're a part is the product of a climate mild enough to encourage diversity and intricacy. Brainless and simple jellies thrive in warm waters, and catastrophic warming means devolution of the seas back into primordial soups. The new plague of jellies appears as a harbinger of the end of the world we know from out of the world we didn't: from out of Deep Time. From slime, back to slime.

Billions of luminescent mauve stingers, "in a dense pack of about 10 square miles and 35 feet deep," wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm last November. "In 30 years, I've never seen anything like it," said Northern Salmon's Managing Director John Russell. "It was unprecedented, absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jelly fish and there was nothing we could do about it, absolutely nothing." This is more than three months old and you may have already forgotten the report, but is there a rival to this horror in all of Lovecraft's fiction? More than three months on and I still can't shake it, and it's at least worthy of the signs and wonders of a blind idiot god.

Translucent, mutable and iridescent, 98% water and almost entirely not there, a jelly is perhaps as close to a phantom as a creature can be and yet still belong to the material realm. In this respect at least it transcends the material, and gives great metaphor for the ineffable and alien yet familiar Other. Which may partly account for why they're seen these days in even less likely places than off the coast of Ireland. The sky above, for instance.

In October 2005, Bolivian Gustavo Ponce reported something above the town Oruro that was so foreign to his frame of reference that at first he refused to believe what he was seeing:

"It was a very strange and shiny figure that could be seen through the binoculars. I went ahead and took out my camcorder to videotape the UFO in the sky. As the camera zoomed toward the object, I could how it was breaking down into a shape resembling a jellyfish or something like it. It was very strange."

He added that the object was flying over the eastern part of the city and that it was the first time he had ever seen such an object, having never had previous visual contact with a UFO. [Newspaper] La Patria visited Ponce's home to see the images captured by his camcorder, attesting to the fact that the shining object broke down into a full circumference, adopting the shape of a jellyfish.

Last June, a "jellyfish-shaped UFO" was seen over Shanghai. And from Sidney, British Columbia:

I stepped outside at 9:10 PM, to have a smoke and saw a bright orange ball of light heading south directly at me on September 9, 2007. My wife came out and we watched it pass overhead. I grabbed the binoculars and we both had multiple turns viewing it. My wife describes it as an "orange jellyfish" that I agree with looked like that to me too but it had a structure to the leading edge of the sphere like a crescent. It was very brilliant, pulsated and jiggled slightly. It looked like a glowing orange jellyfish and flew south over Sidney at a increasing rate of speed dimming from view.

Four days later, while Greg Lauver was driving through the Colorado town of Durango:

While driving through town on US Highway 550 on September 13, 2007, I saw an object like a glowing diamond filled with countless strands of yellow-white light at 4:50 PM. Each strand was a string of countless beads of gleaming white, all of which floated in a transparent medium which permitted the sky color to pass through yet also glowed faintly due to its contents. It reminded me of a spectacular back-lit picture of a live jellyfish by National Geographic.

Then most recently, and famously, the Stephenville UFO.

Witness Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan describes his January 12, 2008 encounter:

I watch this thing in the police video and it appears to be some type of aerial object that is round. It changes from white to these different colors. The police officer says, ‘Keep watching,’ and I watched for approximately another eight minutes. And then this thing, right in front of my eyes, changes and it looks almost like a jellyfish. I compare it maybe even to a parachute – and now a very bright white. The green and blue and red is no longer flashing. It holds that shape for probably two minutes. And then to my surprise, it changes vertically like a line straight up and down.

The deeper a Lovecraft protagonist delves towards the realm of the Deep Ones, beneath the banal surface order of things, the closer he draws to madness. There's no bargaining; no appeal to reason or mercy. It's a doomed commitment to seek out pitiless truth that will either kill the hero or render him senseless. Devotion to the dumb lords is no escape. Devotion's only reward is the privilege of being eaten first.


The Madness of Crowds

Foremost among the living objects were inky, jellyfish monstrosities which flabbily quivered in harmony with the vibrations from the machine. They were present in loathsome profusion, and I saw to my horror that they overlapped.... - Lovecraft, From Beyond

Prey evolve adaptive strategies for species' survival. It's in the predators' interest that they do. The prey is their feed pool, their life, and if they drive it to extinction then it becomes their doom as well. Prey needs to thrive for the health of the predator. And if the prey cannot adapt fast enough then the predator must, suppressing its appetite in ways that sometimes create bizarre codependencies.

According to the theory of endosymbiosis this is a story written in our Deep Biology, in the nucleated cells of nearly every living thing. In our mitochondria.

What doesn't kill us makes us...different. In their Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors, authors Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan write "imagine the ancestor of our mitochondria: a ruthless attacker, capable of breathing oxygen when it was around, or maybe even doing without it if necessary":

The ancestors of mitochondria invaded and reproduced within our other bacterial ancestors. At first the occupied hosts just barely kept alive. But when they died, they took the invaders with them. Eventually only cooperators were left. The invaded victims and tamed mitochondria recovered from the vicious attack and have lived ever since, for 1,000 million years, in dynamic alliance.

In the long run, the most vicious predators, like the dread disease-causing microbes, bring about their own ruin by killing their victims. Restrained predation - the attack that doesn't quite kill or does kill only slowly - is a recurring theme in evolution. The predatory precursors of mitochondria invaded and exploited their hosts, but the prey resisted. Forced to be content with an expendable part of the prey (its waste) instead of the entire body of the prey, some mitochondria precursors grew but never killed their providers.

In this primitive example the predatory proto-mitochondria knew a good thing when they ate it, and adapted to the point of domestication, the resultant symbiant becoming the conveyor of two independent sets of DNA in virtually all living things on Earth. However, Margulis and Sagan allow that the story is still being written, and may not end happily ever after. Some cancers, they write, may represent a "sort of atavistic return to the original state of prokaryote animosity." And through his study of the behaviour of mitochondria in cancerous tissue, Philip John of the University of Reading has concluded that "mitochondrial rebellions have not been permanently quelled."

Political animals are still animals, and politics as practiced at the top of the food chain may be just another instance of restrained predation, whose signature distinction is merely that it is happening to us. This would be intra-species predation, at least for now ("humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time," says evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry), but that too is found in nature. Here is the unnatural: if humanity does eventually bifurcate into sub-species, it will be only biology's punctuation to the division of class, effected 6,000 years ago by the global emergence of an urbanized, priestly patriarchy whose rule is typically equated with "civilization."

Paedophile rings that cater to the elite are great practitioners of restrained predation, preying typically upon orphans, their own and the children who fall between the cracks, such as those of Boy's Town in the Franklin scandal and Jersey's dungeon-like Haut de la Garenne, from which kids were reportedly "loaned out" to wealthy yachtsmen for "rape cruises." They don't need all the children, or so many that the lattice of their privilege and appetite would draw attention. (The Pale Man leaves the ones who don't touch his banquet table; some are taken, and some are left by the hungry black car of The Reflecting Skin.) They take enough to feed well, but not enough to be noticed by those who have already been told there is nothing to see. (And I think it deserves noting that it was the hysterical overstatement of the numbers of victims by the likes of Ted Gunderson, who speciously contended that upwards of a million American children a year go missing, which 20 years ago helped consign ritual abuse to the domain of urban legend.)

So predators inhibit their appetites to avoid detection. But when they are above detection, they had better do so anyway in order to preserve the feed stock. That they didn't, may be one of the measures of the Nazis' madness. If they had killed Europe's last Jew they would have destroyed themselves as surely as the Onceler who chopped down the last Truffula tree, because their machineries would have lost the lubricant of Jewish blood. And perhaps it's because they didn't, that they won and are still with us.

(One other thing: in so far as the predator class operates with seeming inhumanity, it becomes easier for their natural prey to imagine that they may be other than human. This may account for both the truth and the lie of Icke's reptillian "secret," and how it could ever find currency.)

John Lamb Lash, in his Gnostic reinterpretation of sacred history, Not In His Image, puts it this way (and though I normally balk at the use of "Illuminati" to talk about anything but Weishaupt's Bavarian order, I do like Lash's application of it to describe the followers of a deviant shamanic path who falsely employ initiatory knowledge to social control):

Around 4000 BCE, with the rise of urban civilization in the Near East, some members of the Magian order chose to apply certain secrets of initiation to statecraft and social engineering. They became the advisors to the first theocrats of the patriarchal nation-states, but in fact the advisors were running the show. Their subjects were systematically programmed to believe they were descended from the gods. The Illuminati inaugurated elaborate rites of empowerment, or kingship rituals. These rituals were in fact methods of mind control exercised on the general populace through the collective symbology and mystique of royal authority. Kingship rituals were distinct from the rites of initiation that led to instruction by the Light and consecration to the Great Goddess. Their purpose was not education and enlightenment, but social management. Gnostics refrained from assuming any role in politics because their intention was not to change society but to produce skilled, well-balanced, enlightened individuals who would create a society good enough that it did not need to be run by external management....

Historians recognize a split in the Magian order, but do not understand either its origin or its consequences. Within the order, the telestai
[spiritual initiates] were given the title of vaedemna, "seer," "wise one," as distinguished from the priest, the zoatar, who officiated openly in society and advised Middle Eastern theocrats on matters of statecraft and social morality.... So arose the first theocratic city-states in the Fertile Crescent. Urban populations required social control, and the Illuminati assumed the role of planners and controllers - more often than not, hidden controllers.

...

The Illuminati program was (and still is) essential to patriarchy and its cover, perpetrator religion. While it cannot exactly be said that the deviant adepts known as Illuminati created patriarchy, they certainly controlled it. And still do. The abuse of initiatory knowledge to induce schizophrenic states ("entrainment"), manipulate multiple personalities in the same person ("platforming"), and command behaviour through posthypnotic suggestion (the "Manchurian candidate" technique) continues to this day, with truly evil consequences for the entire world. If we accept that the Mysteries were schools for Gaian coevolution dedicated to the goddess Sophia, they could not have been run by the Illuminati, as some contemporary writers (who believe they are exposing the Illuminati) have supposed. Everything the Gnostics did in the schools was intended to counterbalance and correct the machinations of the deviant adepts. Initiation involved melting the ego boundaries in preparation for deep rapport with nature, not lowering of ego consciousness so that the subject could be "sectioned" and behaviorally programmed using the power of suggestion, imprinting, and other psychodramatic methods. These behavioral modification tools of the Illuminati were strictly forbidden in the Mysteries overseen by Gnostics.


This, I think, is the deep context in which we should situate the perpetual travesty machine of American politics. Here too, restrained predation "doesn't quite kill or does kill only slowly." Here, rather, it "keeps hope alive."

All through the Bush years, scores of non-Republicans have anticipated the brutal full-flowering of traditional dictatorship with all the trappings: martial law, mass internment and the cancellation of elections. Through much of the Clinton years, many non-Democrats looked for the same. It didn't come (though some are still waiting). It's as if they've not only expected the worst, but sought it, to put them out of their misery. But the worst exceeds their expectations, and their misery is to be protracted indefinitely.

The Kennedys and King, the October Surprise and Mena, anthrax and Wellstone, Gore and Kerry, Florida and Ohio: you might think that would be enough to make most Democrats say You know what? This isn't working out. But elections are paced like the Olympics, and in another four years the Jamaican bobsledders may really have a shot. Hey, anything's possible. And so long as people believe that, and that anything means everything they want, the cycle repeats and self-perpetuates.

The great assassinations of the Sixties were decapitation strikes, never intended to kill the host or to extinguish hope. It's only the hopeless who are dangerous. Hope must be encouraged, because you don't need to do anything to have it, and it keeps the prey from becoming wise to its own nature and seeking extraction from the cycle. Hope makes it possible to write and believe such things as "Al Gore will save the planet but Barack Obama will save this country." Hope that the system works, even if it is just a digestive system.

Restrained predation upon the Democratic Party may be at an advanced stage of domestication, but it also mimics molecular endosymbiosis with the injection of alien organelles in the form of the Trojan horse DLC to which, of all the contenders, both Clinton and Obama are closest in tactics and ideology. Funny how that happened.

And how did that happen? I think there's an institutional instinct at work, in the Deep Context, that maintains the insectival social engine of power. Does Obama know his role? That may be irrelevant, because the volition and cognition of the individuals who form the living manifestation of the system may be grossly overstated. They have given themselves to the system, the system has groomed them and raised them above all others, and they instinctively know what the system requires.

Is it hopeless? Thank Christ, yes, so get used to it. There's a liberation to hopelessness, in knowing what can't be done (or more typically, politically, be done for you), which I personally find preferable to another four years of huffing one's own jenkem. There's no salvation within the political cycle of death and rebirth, consumption and excretion - jellies eat and shit through the same simple hole, which could also be a reasonably sophisticated media analysis - and to hope for such a savior is to be the doomed hero of Lovecraft's fiction.

Perhaps it's not be so far from the Deep Ones to Deep Politics. You could say it all comes out right in the end, but you know what comes out in the end.

356 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is above man to do. it is an ancient evil that has been with us for longer than 4000 BC to the present, and won't be defeated utterly until The Last Day.

3/27/2008 05:45:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you Jeff. Well worth the wait, this is one of the most cogent treatments of a deeply incoherent topic I've read.

I for one realize how much personal energy it must take to craft a post like this.

Please take care of yourself and do not worry about time. We'll be here.

3/27/2008 06:01:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Jeff, you're a fuckin' MACHINE. I consumed that fat bastard you posted along with truly well-equalized Sepultura (Slaves of Pain + Dead Embryonic Cells) and bowl upon bowl...


thanks man. That was great.

Perfect - next song on the tape is Drug Me....


Now I remember why I come here. The insectival social engine of power indeed!

I fucking bang my HEAD to your blog man.

Assume cereal if you want,
Lord Reptor.

PS FUCK yeah.

3/27/2008 06:18:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Jeez, those Brazilians ground a driver loose. Time to get out the screwdriver (and a new freakin' stereo - this thing's pants now). Thanks again Jeff. That was too cool to even coherently discuss now.


My veriword was yazau. Sums it up for me.

Off to the tub to cogitate and listen to thrash,
Lord Reptor.

3/27/2008 06:24:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Jeff, if you're making a book out of this blog, put this one in. You're so goddamn RIGHT. Hell, just think of those Anne Rice books. Predator propaganda. And yes, I bet most of us would join the demon-lords for the dubious benefits of the blood of our brethren.

And why not, anyway? Dark and light produce power like a reciprocating engine. Purity is sterility.

The bit about the prokaryotic animosity and mitochondria, man...echoes of L'engle and Herbert...dude, that just rocked large.

I don't feel hopeless embracing the way things are, though, personally. Living is wonderful, including the scary bits.

too high on Sepultura and cereal to make sense,
Lord Reptor.

3/27/2008 06:36:00 PM  
Blogger The Internal Ear said...

Amazing post and well worth the wait. Hey this is my first post. But been reading for a few years now. Best website out there. I feel like without it, I'd be so ignorant...

3/27/2008 06:51:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

wow.
well worth the wait.
I have to read this one again six or seven times.
Lord Reporter, "I fucking bang my head to your blog"
Ha!

3/27/2008 07:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

'Like... have you ever thought that the government of the UNITED $nakes of AmeriKKKa are like wolves who prey on the sheeple? but like they are smart wolves who are more like werewolves or something who worship werewolf gods or something. I mean they are super strong werewolves or vampires or some shit, so we totally couldn't do anything even if we wanted to!'

I mean, why do the Insurgents in Iraq even fight us? Don't they know that the American government is run by immortal snake-deities from ancient Sumeria?

Jesus H. Christ, I hate to break it to you guys, but the American government is just one in a long line of petty Empires that have come and gone, no more and no less. Hopefully, America will be destroyed by the Mujahideen soon, and all of this whiney fear-mongering bullshit will go away. Everyone wants to think that they live in the belly of some great beast.

3/27/2008 08:00:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting if a bit disjointed post-- your associational matrix seems to know no boundaries... which I think is your strength... and weakness. Jellyfish, UFOs, Nazism, Illuminati, Gnosticism, American politics, cancer... but where's Herb Peterson?

3/27/2008 08:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You Lovecraftily managed to avoid using the term Egregore. How spiteful of you.

It's nice to get an ass-sucking like these first several posts, isn't it?

Hark, I hear the Apostles of The Good Word hastening their pace to contradict your Gospel of Hopelessness. Of course, those contradictions will be not so cleverly concealed in an ass-sucking agreement with your sentiments.

It's obvious that you read the comments section. I see a number of the themes discussed in the comments coursing through this latest post. Of course, you've presented it with a bit more flair and pinache.

3/27/2008 08:12:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everyone wants to think that they live in the belly of some great beast.

Wait just a damn second. What's so wrong with fancying oneself a digestive enzyme. We are both predator and prey. It's the Kundalini, the serpent devouring itself.

3/27/2008 08:15:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

well, just because it was well worth the wait does by no means mean that I agree with what Jeff wrote.
"ass sucking" good one, especially given the jellyfish's orifice...
The whole post is rooted in the worship of Darwin.
Yeah, great, let's worship the creature instead of the creator.
And Evolution is only a theory.
A theory that Dr. Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan would love to perpetuate. Just a few credentials..
"Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Natural Science. She received a National Medal of Science from President Clinton in 2000.

Her books include What is Life?, What is Sex?, Slanted Truths (all co-authored with Dorian Sagan) and Symbiotic Planet.

Dorion Sagan is author of Biospheres and Up from Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence (with Dr. John Skoyles)."

I would propose the (I know, ignorant)notion that the Theory of Evolution is being deified and has been an effective tool for the "illuminati" for quite some time in their agenda to bring their Eugenics master plan to fruition.
That is the great beast that seeks to devour us.
Eugenics. It relies on the Theory of Evolution. But people like Margulis and Sagan, they seek to perpetuate this theory. Are they merely pawns? Hillary Clinton just said something yesterday about Evolution. Very specific. Very dogmatic and reverent, as most people are about it. Kinda like Christians who believe the Earth is only perhaps 6 thousand years old. You can't have it both ways, sorry.
Just to play devil's egregore, who would seek to lead people away from the God of the Bible by negating him through "science"?

3/27/2008 08:32:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Oh but I loved the bit about
"The Illuminati program was (and still is) essential to patriarchy and its cover, perpetrator religion.... The abuse of initiatory knowledge to induce schizophrenic states ("entrainment"), manipulate multiple personalities in the same person ("platforming"), and command behaviour through posthypnotic suggestion (the "Manchurian candidate" technique) continues to this day, with truly evil consequences for the entire world."
that's brilliant.
Tranceformation of America all the way...
a "good Cathy lick"
and all that jazz.

3/27/2008 08:40:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Oh and Dorion Sagan is in fact Carl's son. But you probably guessed that one already.
can anyone see where I'm going with this one?
I need a beer.

3/27/2008 08:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Glorious Tyranny of Silence and the Resonance of Shamanic Breath

That's the title of an amazing essay by Professor George Mentor who studies the Waiwai of Guyana and Brazil.

It's found in the book "In Darkness and Secrecy: The anthropology of assault sorcery and witchcraft in Amazonia," edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright (Duke University Press, 2004)

His argument is that up till now people like Mircea Eliade have focused on the "good" shaman as sort of a magician-king without recognizing the balancing effect of the "evil" shaman. This imbalance has to do with the West's definition of being or self based on our desire to speak and how silence is equated with horror and tyranny or lack of presence.

The dark shaman operates through "erem" or silent predatory chanting while the tribal village relies on group chanting in the open and this chanting also works through dialog tonal chants between good shaman heads of households.

He states that the Waiwai believe that children are still more spirit than matter but without the conscious knowledge of this, in contrast to shamans. Because of this parents of children do not eat spirit-strong foods, like heavy meat, because the child may then suck the spirit of the parents, through that heavy food, causing the parent's sickness or death.

This is similar to the Bushmen "collecting the N/um of the young maidens" while the parents do not allow young females to eat fat-protein rich nuts.

The dark shamans then take the extra energy of the "good" shamans (be they males or young females) and then redistribute this energy to the weak (or whoever suffers from emotional illness, like anger or fear) -- this process is seen as a form of psychotic eating, using stalking skills, like what a jaguar does.

As Mentor states:

"The community depends on the peculiar placement that the mystic vitalities maintain in the body of the shaman. It is, however, also perturbed by the hold these vitalities have on the shaman, for they can send the shamanic body into 'seizures of small deaths' where momentarily the local community can no longer communicate with its privileged member. It would be fair to say that while the effect of shamanic power depends on working through the body, the individual shamanic body places no direct claim on such an effect.... Much of the literature suggests that the individual bodies of shamans and those of their patients or victims have little if any choice in the matter of being occupied or vacated by their vitalities (Crocker 1985; Levi-Strauss 1972)."

And so if a person dies, the head of the family then questions, through a ritual chant tonal dialog, each head of every village household, "to jettison the dark shaman beyond the boundaries of the village community." (p. 146) Then ritual chanting is practiced to further solidify the good healing magic of the village against the dark shaman secret words. If this is not accomplished suspects of dark shamanism are considered guilty based on the visual evidence of expressing bad emotions, like anger and fear and so each individual has the responsibility for self-discipline of their bodies in order to maintain emotional tranquility.

3/27/2008 11:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

[OP ED here]

Oy Jeff.

Fascinating stuff. Like I think I've said before...it isn't so much what you're thinking about, but how you think about it that keeps my attention. You seem to tell me things I already knew, but rephrased carefully so that my unforgetting seems natural.

Your efforts are appreciated.

As to the liberating aspects of hopelessness, I agree in a certain sense. I remember a refrain from Frank Miller's run on Daredevil [used over again by later writers]
"a man without hope is a man without fear".

I don't believe in "the last day" or "the final judgement" per se. But I also don't believe that this cycle is perpetual or eternal. Merely indefinite, as Blake would point out. Our senses deceive us I think.

That said, I don't envision immediate salvation, and certainly not from politics. It seems like asking your cancer for treatment advice.

something to consider:
whatever happened to the "other" Illuminati?

and their plan?

3/28/2008 12:34:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hail, Eris! All hail Discordia!

3/28/2008 02:36:00 AM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

Jeff,
Ron Paul called it "Soft Fascism".
They would rather suck you dry slowly
than put an end to your misery all at once. What was it that Poppy Bush
said about raping a ten year old?
"Watching them cry and squirm is half the fun".
My advice? "Exterminate the Brutes".
A most excellent post..

3/28/2008 02:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

What's the difference between hope and faith? Any?

Sweejak

3/28/2008 04:08:00 AM  
Blogger amanfromMars said...

A fine and perceptive read, Jeff, only failed by its penultimate paragraph.

Such apathy though does not permeate into any Graceful State of Consciousness, which tells us everything and more about your Drive as much as IT would about mine or ours, for of course, whenever there is a dogged and persistent contrary opinion to any opinion which doubts that anything is possible, and that such control of human programming/management of perception as may be generally/universally/undeniably felt to be a self-serving abuse, needing to be kept a general/universal/undeniable secret, there is always the hope that such available Enlightened Intelligence will be considered and accepted as a Beta Intelligence Tale to Follow/XXXXPlore.

In the Communications Space[s] of Virtualised Governance, IT does not suffer from the Vanity of Dark Hidden Secrets, for such Communications Networks as are needed to Function are easy Prey to Surveillance and Strip MetaDataMining ....... for AI Special Services Attention.

And it is as well to remember, although such a reminder always comes beautifully, perfectly late, that just as the Past cannot be changed, neither can it be erased but it can be sort of rewritten by being sort of forgotten with a new focus and due diligence, because of past accountability in a consequential failure, in a completely different path to be taken for the Future, which would be making undeniable amends for Past Abuse and Abuses. And whether that be a Real Change or a Perceived Change at the Individual Level, would define whether any of Life's Greater Lessons have been Learned

Failure to Grasp that Helpline whenever Present and Presented .... and it is always there .... will render a fall from Abused Grace and Privilege, that is Deservedly Catastrophic?

And Mercifully is that a Question which Delivers ITs Just Desserts to one's own Deepest True Answers

3/28/2008 04:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There's a liberation to hopelessness, in knowing what can't be done...

Ah, the key insight contained in the psychomedical discipline of Cognitive Therapy. Also of the Buddhist Death Meditation.

Well worth the wait. Reading that last part I couldn't help but think of the Gnostic description of the Demiurge as a Shit Monster.

3/28/2008 05:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

best post in a while. well worth the wait.


frater plecticus

3/28/2008 05:41:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/28/2008 07:10:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Jeff wrote...

.....” the volition and cognition of the individuals who form the living manifestation of the system may be grossly overstated. They have given themselves to the system, the system has groomed them and raised them above all others, and they instinctively know what the system requires.”

Amen to this, our cognition is compromised by the initial premise of Dualism. And why would someone that is made by the system, take down the system? And lets be honest, even if we have not been raised above all others by the system, we all have been raised by the system.

Hope and despair poison the mind because they allow one to look to or put the blame for problems on an external agency. Its melodrama, all sound and fury, and very little meaning.

So, where to go for meaning? Or an earlier grab on the causal chain? The internal rather than the external. A CDP (Consciousness Development Product) instead of the GDP.

3/28/2008 07:38:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Yes we have all been raised by the system. And it seems there is no escape, except hopelessness.
I agree. This world is going right down the toilet. There is no great End to the Evoloutionary process whereby mankind awakens to his Third eye's potential and creates a utopia for all to have happy feelings forever...unless you consider a chemical Soma kind of utopia a real alternative..But that's the popular myth. It's Science fiction. carl sagan anyone?
and just to reiterate my ignorance:
*law- something that has been proven to be true.
*theory- something that has not been proven true, but has some supporting
that it may be true. Cannot be true if it violates a law of science.
The law of Biogenesis:

The law of biogenesis states that life only comes from life.

Evolution states that the first living organism came together from proteins and just began living. This is totally in violation of the law of biogenesis. By Violating this law of science evolution seems to disprove itself.

The law of entropy:
The law of entropy states that the universe is continuously becoming more and more disorderly. Unless a force acts upon something it will continue to do so. It further states that even though there are ways in which parts of the universe have become more orderly, the disorder created by making the order is greater than the order created. Example: If a house is built, it is orderly, but the disorder created by cutting down trees, mining for steel and creating plastics is greater than the order created by the house.

But we don't believe in entropy here at RI, right?
of course, science can be flawed...

3/28/2008 08:27:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The hope is to kill the corporations power... HOW ? stop procreation the only way to stop the corporation

3/28/2008 09:01:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

The only 'escape' is to give up trying to escape. Despair is as melodramatically paralyzing as is hope.

Some may try to sell you on an idea that you can overcome your suffering. But this as a goal pollutes the experience, leaving the process of our lives and the value of the experience unexamined. Many Buddhists despair and quit when they find out that sitting does not 'cure' their suffering. It was a poor motivation to begin with.

wv is enfce

3/28/2008 09:05:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff...

You have almost pinned it here.

Two things...one large and general, the other related to that larger idea.

1-All of this is indeed evolutionary. The life of Life continues to grow, at its own...to our own small lifetimes' perceptions, anyway...glacial pace.

Proof?

Simply consider your grandparents' abilities on EVERY level. Try to educate the average relatively healthy and aware 75 year old regarding the mysteries of technology that are easily apprehended by 12 years olds in today's world. Ain't happening. And it's not because their learning curve has flatlined, either. Evolution continues apace, and the human race is the tip of the evergrowing blade of grass here on earth.

Bet on it.

But it is...again, in our terms...slow work.

Why?

Because that's the way the universe tells a story.

A very wise man once told me that if a flying saucer were to land on the mall on Washington and disgorge a creature who promised that at noon the next day he would inform all the people of earth regarding the meaning of life, and...covered by the international media the next day...he reappeared and actually did so, at that very moment life on earth would end.

After the punchline, the story is over.

All of your observations are quite correct regarding the TACTICS of Life. But you do not appear to thoroughly understand (Although “believe” might be a more accurate term.) its strategic goal, which is...evolution.

Up and down, in and out, as above so below.

"The universe is still expanding!!! Even faster than we thought!!!" marvel the scientists.

Duh.

Yup.

As above, so below.

So are we.

Expanding.

2-You get sick too much. Physically sick. You have three brains, and they are inextricably intertwined. Your emotional sadness and worry over the intellectually perceived threat of the triumph of evil that inhabits all of your wonderful writing leaches through to your physical body, and I warn you, it will fuck you up eventually.

BIG time.

Start now. LOTS of exercise. Especially when you get..."sad". I don't care what kind of exercise. Anything aerobic that gets your heart rate up and breaks a sweat. Every day. The three brains...mental, emotional and physical for want of any better terms...all work on each other. You can literally repair and strengthen your mental and emotional brains by working on your physical one.

A word to the wise is often NOT sufficient.

But I figured I would try anyway, because you are so close to getting the whole picture.

Check it out, Jeff.

CLEAN it out.

Clean out your body.

Eat better; lay off of as many pollutants as you can possibly avoid and work your body for at least a half hour every day. Do so and your mental and emotional states will improve drastically.

We need you and people like you to survive.

YOU are the tip of the evolutionary blade of grass.

Don't fuck up.

Please.

Later...

Arthur Gilroy

P.S. Do I need to tell you to ignore the many deluded ones who post here? I hope not.

Good luck.

3/28/2008 10:56:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I used to really like this blog, until I started reading the comments.

Does no one just look at all of them and think 'pretentious'? They all sound as if they are written by 19 year old stoner wanna-be Psycho-Anthropologists with H.P. Lovecraft fetishes.

'The Buddhists believe that hopelessness is godliness.

Power is pleasure now.

The dark gods are coming. Our archetypes are breaking away from our (shattered) psyches. They control the illuminati from the depths of their tombs, where their batrachian followers dance in rings 'round hollow stone stelae!

excellent post Jeff U HIT DA NAIL on da hed!'

Seriously, go fuck yourselves guys. I like David Lynch, because no matter how weird something was, it had a sense of peace to it, and there was no attempt at explaination. It was as it was, small and hairy and dark as ever. That is what life is like: scary, strange, without explaination, but beautiful.

Here however, the mystery of life becomes embroiled in the circle-jerking of 300 Bro-Magnon stoner douchebags who think that they can justify their hedonism with a thin veil of nihilism. This place runs rampant with Ism's trying to beat each other to the most ridiculous point.

3/28/2008 12:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had recently started my Ph.D. program at George Mason University and eagerly signed up for a class entitled “Problems in Evolutionary Theory.” The Blind Watchmaker was required reading, and with growing enthusiasm I noted glowing endorsements printed on the cover. According to The Economist, this book was “as readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859.” Lee Dembart, writing for the Los Angeles Times, was even more effusive: “Every page rings of truth. It is one of the best science books—of the best of any books—I have ever read.” A book that was “Winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award” must contain nothing but undistilled brilliance. I felt smug with confidence as I paid for the book and left the store, brimming with ebullience to start reading.

After wading through all the hyperbole, I was stunned by the ideas put forward by Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. Rhetoric burnished the arguments with a glittering sheen, briefly giving the impression that pebbles were gems. But once each metaphor was stripped aside, the core ideas did not support the idea that natural selection could account for the origin of life and the meaningful complexity of organisms. Most startling to me was the realization that, one of the book’s core theses, in fact, violated the principle of natural selection.

Dawkins wove two ideas together in supporting Darwinism. The first idea was that, given enough chances, the improbable becomes probable. For example, flipping a coin ten times in a row and getting heads each time is very unlikely; one would only expect it to happen about 1 in 1,024 tries. Most of us would not sit around flipping coins just to see it happen, but if we had a million people flipping coins, we would see it happen many times. This phenomenon is publicized in the newspapers when lottery winners are announced. Winning a million-dollar jackpot is unlikely, but with millions of people purchasing tickets, eventually someone wins.

Dawkins admits that the odds on life starting from a random collection of chemicals is very slim, but given an immense universe and the billions of years it has existed, the improbable becomes probable. In this is echoed the logic of Ernst Haeckel, who wrote in his book The Riddle of the Universe, published in 1900:

Many of the stars, the light of which has taken thousands of years to reach us, are certainly suns like our own mother-sun, and are girt about with planets and moons, just as in our solar system. We are justified in supposing that thousands of these planets are in a similar stage of development to that of our earth … and that from its nitrogenous compounds, protoplasm has been evolved—that wonderful substance which alone, as far as our knowledge goes, is the possessor of organic life.

Haeckel was optimistic about the presence of conditions that could support life on planets other than earth, and it is in this that one of the problems with Dawkins’ argument emerges. While the universe is immense, those places where life as we know it could survive, let alone come into being, seem to be few and far between. So far, only one place has been discovered where conditions for life are present, and we are already living on it. Thus, there is not much cause for optimism that the universe is teeming with planets bathed in a primordial soup from which life might evolve. Dawkins wrote glibly of the immensity of the universe and its age, but failed to provide one example, other than the earth, where the unlikely event of spontaneous generation of life might occur. Even if the universe were teeming with proto-earths, and the spans of time suggested by modern science were available, this is still not a great argument, as if something is impossible—in other words, the odds of it happening are zero—then it will never happen, not even in an infinite amount of time. For example, even if we had our million people flipping coins, each with ten flips in a row, the odds on any one of them flipping and getting 11 heads in ten tries is zero because the odds of getting 11 heads in ten tries with one person is zero. The bottom line is that the odds on life evolving from nonliving precursors is essentially zero. Ironically, this was the stronger of the two ideas, or arguments, presented by Dawkins.

The second argument was presented as an analogy: imagine a monkey typing on a typewriter with 27 keys, all the letters in the English alphabet and the space bar. How long would it take for the monkey to type something that made any sense? Dawkins suggests the sentence spoken by William Shakespeare’s Hamlet who, in describing a cloud, pronounces, “Methinks it is like a weasel.” It is not a long sentence and contains very little meaning, but it works for argument’s sake. How many attempts at typing this sentence would it take a monkey, which would presumably be hitting keys randomly, to type the sentence?

As it turns out, the odds can be easily calculated as the probability of getting each letter or space correct raised to the power of the number of positions at which they have to be correct. In this case, the probability of the monkey typing “m” at the first position of the sentence is 1/27 (we won’t worry about capitalization). The sentence has 28 characters in it, so the probability is (1/27)28 or 1.2 x 10–40. That is about one chance in 12,000 million million million million million million! You would want a lot of monkeys typing very fast for a long time if you ever wanted to see this happen!

To overcome this problem with probability, Dawkins proposed that natural selection could help by fixing each letter in place once it was correct and thus lowering the odds massively. In other words, as a monkey types away, it is not unlikely that at least one of the characters it types will be in the correct position on the first try. If this letter was then kept and the monkey was only allowed to type in the remaining letters until it finally had the correct letter at each position, the odds fall to the point that the average diligent monkey could probably finish the task in an afternoon and still have time to gather bananas and peanuts from admiring observers. Dawkins got his computer to do it in between 40 and 70 tries.

Luckily I had taken biochemistry before reading The Blind Watchmaker. Organisms are made of cells, and those cells are composed of little protein machines that do the work of the cell. Proteins can be thought of as sentences like “Methinks it is like a weasel,” the difference being that proteins are made up of 20 different subunits called amino acids instead of the 27 different characters in our example. The evolution of a functional protein would presumably start out as a random series of amino acids one or two of which would be in the right position to do the function the protein is designed to do. According to Dawkins’ theory, those amino acids in the right location in the protein would be fixed by natural selection, while those that needed to be modified would continue to change until they were correct, and a functional protein was produced in relatively short order. Unfortunately, this ascribes an attribute to natural selection that even its most ardent proponents would question, the ability to select one nonfunctional protein from a pool of millions of other nonfunctional proteins.

Changing even one amino acid in a protein can alter its function dramatically. A famous example of this is the mutation that causes sickle cell anemia in humans. This disease causes a multitude of symptoms, ranging from liver failure to tower skull syndrome. It is caused by the replacement of an amino acid called glutamate, normally at position number six, with another amino acid called valine. This single change causes a massive difference in how the alpha globin subunit of hemoglobin works. The ultimate sad consequence of this seemingly insignificant mutation in the protein causes premature death in thousands of individuals each year. In other proteins, mutations to some, but not all, areas can result in a complete loss of function. This is particularly true if the protein is an enzyme, and the mutation is in its active site.

What Dawkins is suggesting is that a very large group of proteins, none of which is functional, can be acted on by natural selection to select out a few that, while they do not quite do the job yet, with some modification via mutation, can do the job in the future. This suggests that natural selection has some direction or goal in mind, a great heresy to those who believe evolutionary theory.

This idea of natural selection fixing amino acids as it constructs functional proteins is also unsupported by the data. Cells do not churn out large pools of random proteins on which natural selection can then act. If anything, precisely the opposite is true. Cells only produce the proteins they need to make at that time. Making other proteins, even unneeded functional ones, would be a wasteful thing for cells to do, and in many cases, could destroy the ability of the cell to function. Most cells only make about 10% of the proteins they are capable of producing. This is what makes liver cells different from those in the skin or brain. If all proteins were expressed all the time, all cells would be identical.

In reality, the problem of evolving life is much more complex than generation of a single functional protein. In fact, a single protein is just the tip of the iceberg. A living organism must have many functional proteins, all of which work together in a coordinated way. In the course of my research, I frequently physically disrupt cells by grinding them in liquid nitrogen. Sometimes I do this to obtain functional proteins, but more often to get the nucleic acids RNA or DNA. In any case, I have yet to find that the protein or nucleic acid I was working on was not functional after being removed from the cell, and yet, even though all the cell components were present and functional following disruption, I have never observed a single cell start to function again as a living organism, or even part of a living organism. For natural selection to occur, all proteins on which it is to act must be part of a living organism composed of a host of other functional protein machines. In other words, the entire system must exist prior to selection occurring, not just a single protein.

“Problems in Evolutionary Theory” was a class that made me realize the difficulties those who discount the possibility of a Creator have with their own theories. The problems with evolutionary theory were real, and there were no simple convincing resolutions.

Progressing in my studies, I slowly realized that evolution survives as a paradigm only as long as the evidence is picked and chosen and the great pool of data that is accumulating on life is ignored. As the depth and breadth of human knowledge increases, it washes over us a flood of evidence deep and wide, all pointing to the conclusion that life is the result of design. Only a small subset of evidence, chosen carefully, may be used to construct a story of life evolving from nonliving precursors. Science does not work on the basis of picking and choosing data to suit a treasured theory. I chose the path of science which also happens to be the path of faith in the Creator.

I believe God provides evidence of His creative power for all to experience personally in our lives. To know the Creator does not require an advanced degree in science or theology. Each one of us has the opportunity to experience His creative power in re-creating His character within us.

3/28/2008 12:35:00 PM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

Tim - that was tremendous. Thanks. So many intelligent people are so afraid of the idea of God, I think because the shoddy movies projected by religion are so easy to see through. They then make the incredible mistake throwing out the baby with the bathwater, concentrating only on the words and not the spirit.

My own feeling is that the Designer and the Design are One and the same. We are part of it.

Best wishes and thanks again.

3/28/2008 01:09:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/28/2008 01:32:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Tim!!! Thanks, very well written, thoughtful post.
“Problems in Evolutionary Theory” was a class that made me realize the difficulties those who discount the possibility of a Creator have with their own theories. The problems with evolutionary theory were real, and there were no simple convincing resolutions."
well said.
I Couldn't agree more with your sentiments too, Fructador.

the gloves are off!

Did you hear the one about the group of monkeys? They put em in a room with a bunch of typewriters and just have them type away all day long and eventually, the theory goes, they would type all the great books of human history just by chance! Yeah! sure!
And they would need someone to monitor the monkeys, y'know, to see if they turn out anything worthwhile...

3/28/2008 01:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What if "God" is an advanced human society who has crafted a computer simulation that serves as an animated, archaeological representation of past Civilizations. Would it be intelligent, or unintelligent to consider that notion as a possible answer for all of this? It certainly would explain many of the inconsistencies with all the theories surrounding the meaning of all this.

3/28/2008 01:47:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

"Science does not work on the basis of picking and choosing data to suit a treasured theory."
yess!!!!
that's what i was tring to say earlier. you said it with more eloquence, thanks!

3/28/2008 02:02:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/28/2008 02:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...because you are so close to getting the whole picture."

Please, do tell Mr. Anonymous. What does the whole picture really look like? Dying to know. So exercise is good for you?! WOW! Who'd a thunk eh? Please share more of these tasty nuggets!~

3/28/2008 02:07:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

I like that idea.
"God" is an advanced human society who has crafted a computer simulation that serves as an animated, archaeological representation of past Civilizations."
fits nicely with holographic model theory. But then I would be kind of
"picking and choosing data to suit a treasured theory...."
ha ha

3/28/2008 02:08:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/28/2008 02:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have to agree with the masses - absolutely brilliant post. Still too depressing, though. It drives me crazy as I'm sure it does you (you're just much more graceful and sophisticated than I am).

Your description of the "Predator Class" seems spot-on. I "Want to Believe" however, that real "change" or evolution can be attained because if you look at nature:

HEALTH IS BEAUTY : BEAUTY IS HEALTH

so as a living system, good ole' Gaia just gets uglier the more sick she gets.

I really like the distinction between the Illuminati (social engineers) and Gnostics (pro-life-subversives). If people click on my name or avatar they will find my blogs. Look at Speelunking thee Ideosphere, especially the topmost and the re-post of FACES OF THE DEMONIC CABAL. They will see that my ideas are resonant with yours - and isn't that the essence of getting together in the word-world?

If you go to theeKultblogg, you will find in the archives a post called THE MONOMYTH IN SPIRAL; this writing came from an instinctive insight into the nature of ENLIGHTENMENT VERSUS ILLUMINATION.

And so the idea of psychospiritual evolution. Once upon a time I thought I made up that phrase, but to my joyful chagrin it has been around a while.

Love and all that, yo -
tKl

3/28/2008 03:28:00 PM  
Blogger A. Magnus Publius said...

Some anonymous poster said:

"Does no one just look at all of them and think 'pretentious'? They all sound as if they are written by 19 year old stoner wanna-be Psycho-Anthropologists with H.P. Lovecraft fetishes."

Speaking as someone who actually was a 19 year old and a stoner, I take your psycho-social conformist scorn as a badge of honor. Go run along and play with the guys who shave their heads and kiss ass to anyone and anything in uniform - it's what your communist genes want the most, isn't it?

If you aren't intellectually emulating ants then you feel like a nobody, don't you? In other words, go back to your hive and leave the psycho-anthropology to us humans.

3/28/2008 04:25:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Hey Kultleeder..Enjoyed your blog and particularily the Tuesday Weld hook.

Tim..God didn't know he was God.
Look deeper for the meaning of evolution. 3D is evolved. Gravity, spin, electrochemistry are steps in the ladder. I've heard there are planets where ravens are the supreme beings and that rumour has been around since the time of the Egyptian pyramids.

Jeff, I agree with your position that evil knows no bounds. I disagree with your position that we are headed to that place where the light doesn't shine.

3/28/2008 06:21:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For my own right, no experiential evidence has convinced me that there exist any "arch-intelligences" behind the scenes in human affairs, evil or otherwise. Of course, obviously there ARE powerful individuals who stand outside of (and above) the public facade of corporate and civil government, and who actively work to steer the course of what they perceive to be little better than a "mass of public sentiment". But I think it's misleading to couch our situation in terms of "deep" or occult weirdness -- although I recognize that's not actually what Jeff is intending to do.

Rather, I find that a whole host of incongruities begin to make sense the more I realize that we are, ALL of us on this earth, incomplete beings, all struggling to cast the world in our image of how it should be.

Also, unfortunately our civilization (or more correctly our civilizational culture) is struggling through a rather immature period of growth these last several thousand years, one that has all the earmarks of late adolescence for the individual human being. And like human adolescence, we've clearly as a species reached the point where we're now forced to wrestle with our blind hubris -- a point marking the transition from a blindly over-confident late childhood to the beginning of a responsible adulthood.

Or to put it another way, clearly our civilizational culture is already crashing hard -- and it should more than likely crash far harder than anything we might recognize in modern classical history. But over the long term, this coming period of prolonged crisis may well initiate a civilizational way of seeing things which is wholly different than all the "sound and fury, signifying nothing" that has marked our hierarchical culture of Empire these past many centuries.

But it won't happen overnight, on our time-frame. And it certainly won't happen just because we elect a Democratic President, regardless how well he tickles our left-wing funny-bone. As Jeff seems to be illustrating, it's the System itself that is broke. And as a rule, you cannot change the System by working within the System. If revolution is to occur, we must first shed our Hope of salvaging that System.

Hope is indeed a good thing, and I daresay if we lose all Hope we will die to Life. But Hope can exist on many levels, and when Hope is mis-placed it eventually turns into its its opposite: slavery. Perhaps then, as the tag-line at Cryptogon.com used to say, "if a way to the better there be, it is through a clear look at the worst".

3/28/2008 06:26:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Wow! Conformist scorn! Stoned Psycho Anthropologies to all who find my cavortaholism publicly distressing...


Jesus! 19 was an awful long time ago! Ah, well, the sun is blowing gold through the cold heavy mist and I'm off to the porch to watch the steely waters lurge.

Ologies again,
Lord Reptor.

PS Jeff that really was a good post I thought. Full of fun stuff to think about.

3/28/2008 07:04:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tim blew it in his last paragraph. Everything else was rational, but when he referred to what may have created all of this as "God" and called this God's creation as "his," Tim obliterated any credibility he may have gained up to that point.

3/28/2008 09:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

“Tim blew it in his last paragraph. Everything else was rational, but when he referred to what may have created all of this as "God" and called this God's creation as "his," Tim obliterated any credibility he may have gained up to that point.”


That last part where you aver that “Tim obliterated any credibility he may have gained up to that point” - bullshit. Tim did nothing of the kind.

Notice that your thinking is not syllogistically logical. It goes like this:

A) The belief in a Creator with a personal identity – a Him - is unacceptable.
(Tim espouses this unacceptable belief.)

B) Espousal of this unacceptable belief by any person disqualifies that person to be esteemed as creditable. ( Tim is disqualified of creditability.)

C) The thoughtful arguments of any discreditable person may be disregarded.
(Tim’s arguments may be disregarded)

D) Therefore – on the basis that Tim is discreditable - I can justifiably disregard and publically detract from any and all of his arguments.


Your logical faults are thus:
A) Prime premise is not universally accepted and is unsupported.
B) Premise is over-encompassing and internally questionable.
C) Premise is not entirely valid.
D) Conclusion is an ad hominem non-sequitur.


What Tim did obliterate is the “scientific” basis for your preferred faith of evolutionary pantheism. Tims arguments are intellectually challenging to your world view, and therefore are emotionally disturbing to you. Because you recognize, and do even in fact admit to the rational validity of Tim’s arguments. This experience of discomfort and confusion has induced within you an impulse of denial. In order to presently escape this discomfort engendered by Tim’s presentation you seek an irrational diversion by embarking upon a frivolous ad hominem attack against Tim’s credibitlity.

3/29/2008 01:04:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, good post... though I never can quite understand where your anti-hope message is coming from.

For you Anti-Hopers, have you ever wondered what it felt like to live in the 1600s in Europe when most of the people probably had their neck under the throat of the Catholic church? Or what it felt like to be a Jew under Nazi Germany? THAT IS HOPELESS.

I get the feeling sometimes that people who are so down on hope are in reality down on something else which they can't quite put their finger on. I don't spend most of my time feeling hopeless.

I do feel that the state of the USA is bad but because I have images in my mind of what true hopelessness might look like.. I never get the feeling we are there yet.

A closer approximation of Hopelessness would be living in Iraq, which isn't quite as Hopeless as being a Jew in Nazi Germany but certainly about a 1000 times more hopeless than me sitting here after work drinking a coke and writing on this forum. Or about 2000 times more hopeless than when I go take a hike out in the hills near where I live.

Historically nation states become Empires at the end of their life cycles when people can no longer agree on the common good and lack the discipline to keep the nation unified. That is simply the way it is. Everything has a lifespan you know.

If the larger population cannot or will not educate, discipline, and defend themselves from oppressors then it has been said before that they do not deserve their liberty.

Will Durant on the Cycle of Empires: "The Republic died at Pharsalus; the revolution ended at Actium. Rome had completed the fatal cycle known to Plato and to us: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchic exploitation, democracy, revolutionary chaos, dictatorship. Once more, in the great systole and diastole of history, an age of freedom ended and an age of discipline began."

There is nothing new here. The United States like much of the world is populated by adult children watching their "Age of Freedom" pass away as they sit on their asses perpetually waiting on poppa Jesus or Poppa Mohammad to come fix their world. Self-discipline is not part of the vocabulary anymore.

So what is left for the individual who finds himself and his freedoms declining as the Empires step up efforts to keep the sleeping masses in line?

Well a good start would be to jettison your excess baggage, excess religions, excess fears.. whatever false conception keeps you from actively changing your reality for the better.

Secret Societies, Esoteric religions, Bible codes, Freemasons, and all the rest have a purpose... to hide something from the masses so they remain under the control of the few while simultaneously drawing out initiates. it is exactly the purpose Jesus served if you believe he was real. He came into a system called Judaism that had people bound up in a bunch of bogus laws, and he drew initiates out and made them freer(before the Catholic church bound up people again by binding 66 books)

Wakeup, hope is not dead yet.

3/29/2008 02:12:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Spooky speak Jeff, and thanks Tim for a very erudite commentary.

It always takes a while to absorb these excellent posts, and ensuing commentaries and many rivers of insight and awakening are unleashed. Or maybe just nightmares.

Those who dismiss a creator, are just as myopic and disinformed as those who dismiss science.

Applying the Tim's logic, those who dismiss otherthancreator forces operating in the universe, are just as myopic as those who dismiss evolutionary theory, or particle physics, or those who issue wildly innacurate proclamations of the infallibility of the bible.

If there is a god or a goddess, and I hope and trust there is, - then all these musings, catalytic disruptions, and egotistical pipedreams of man, are relatively insignificant in the immensity of the unknown unknown universe. We, mankind are a bacteria on a speck of dust in a sea of space.

Man "see's through the glass darkly", or filtered through a lens that only captures one element in one singularity, in one single always vanishing and receding moment of time. The rest of what exists remains for all of us an unknown unknown.

That said: The fascists in the Bush government are expert practitioners of the black arts of "Restrained predation", and "Endosymbiosis".

We swim in an ocean of lies spewed and extreted by gelatinous predators whose tentacles root back to the primal goo. The end is always the strong eating the week. The fascists in the Bush government are the strong in this kabuki theater, - the American people are the week.

If there is god, there is also notgod. Tragically the notgod rules this man and this violent earth. This is the flaw of the creationist. Imagining a creator without and dismissing or ignoring the anti-creator is an exercise in futility, and myopic ignorance.

The creator or, god if you will created the universe. Man is the product of, and obedient servent to the anticreator, or notgod. The fascist in the Bush government are extreme examples of the alpha species predators beholden to, and perpetuating the anticreator, or not god.

"Deliver us from evil"

3/29/2008 02:14:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

The planet is in the midst of it's own darwinian experiment and we and all the other 3d dwellers are part if it. If there are many mansions or many dimensions, and we have been evolving, than 3d is the top of that agenda so far. The creative force was left and right vortices circumambulating, spriraling, gyrating, out and back again into the torus of all things we call the universe. The proof is found in everything we know or think about but we unknow the steps of that spiral staircase to arrive at 3d which is the tip of that blade of grass, that requires we "unknow" the steps which got us to the top.

3/29/2008 09:37:00 AM  
Blogger biloxi said...

jeff your passion is brilliant and you write with the agony of a great sage that is a genuinely altruistic human being.

please study GOYA'S BLACK/DARK PAINTINGS.

3/29/2008 09:46:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

(aj)

Tim that was an excellent and well thought out post!
Whether life itself was helped along by other ambient forces in the universe or if "G-d" created them directly we still go back to the first cause.

Glad to see Jeff back in the driver's seat.

3/29/2008 10:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The belief in a Creator with a personal identity – a Him - is unacceptable.

No, not unacceptable, but rather, revealing. The opposite is the illogical view. To assert that this is all by purposeful design, and then to deduce from that, that it is the result of a Creator whom we shall call "God," and that same Creator God, it can be deduced further, is a male just like me is completely illogical and off the charts absurd. Is it possible? Yes, it is possible, just as we may be a mere computer simulation is possible. In otherwords, it is a theory, every bit as much as evolution is a theory. To claim there is a Creator who is male and we are made in the image of that Creator is actually much less sound than selectively choosing certain facts and leaving out contradictory facts in asserting a theory of evolution. With the concept of a Creator called God, and divining the identity of such a thing, you aren't even starting with facts, so your theory is that much more subjective, arbitrary and unobservable.

I think Tim had a great argument until he went off the deep end and divined the identity of a possible Creator. It's the sign of a Zealot who has too much vested in a theory, a single line of thought, to allow himself to continue to search for other possible answers and explanations.

You Preachers need to take a fuckin hike. I'm sick and tired of your bullshit. Take your religion elsewhere, please, because you will find no converts here, I promise. This place is appropriate for the unconverted, in its fullest sense, not the opposite.

3/29/2008 10:45:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The One, remote alien God or Force, Unknoweable; and the Demiurge, the latter created by Sophia (Wisdom) who wanted "something apart from the divine totality, and without the receipt of divine assent. In this abortive act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality that were his birth-place."

So... aren't those of us who are fascists, criminals, cretins, born of a secret act through Wisdom? Is it our task to see through the fog?

Accounts from those who have been dead for minutes, hours, and days, and who have then come back to life, have many things in common. But most salient are: the answers to all burning questions are so very simple; everything is meant to be; and few desire to return here, to earth.

Accounts of near-death experiences where the person was in fear or in hell usually served as wake-up calls, as admitted by the experiencer. Wrong paths taken needed to be righted, to set them on their correct soul path.

Also, those whose souls were devolving were not allowed to come back to earth where they were to devolve even further. They were saved through Death.

As Buddha said, don't dwell too much on the whys and wherefores, human logic will only take you so far and then it will drive you mad.

3/29/2008 11:16:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Oh fer Christ's sake relax!!
No one is trying to convert anyone here, (besides maybe the Great Galactic Ghoul...in Quigon chin or whomever... sorry dude..you know I love you and your third eye jizm) those of us who do believe in the strong possibility of intelligent design and perhaps even a creator(!) and some meaning to life besides digestion and the possibility that the Bible may be more than just a quaint book of myths deserve to be heard.
"You Preachers need to take a fuckin hike. I'm sick and tired of your bullshit. Take your religion elsewhere,"
well...you really think that RI has an over abundance of Preachers??
just the opposite if you're honest about it. Believers are in the minority here. But they come outta the woodwork sometimes fer sure.
Hey, don't believe in anything. Get angry at those who do. That's fine with me, I really couldn't care less. I've never claimed to be a Christian. And certainly not evangelical. I just can't sit back and remain silent about the fact that evolution's theory is what all of this precious science' is based on. If the premise is in question, the conclusions are suspect, no?
"Tims arguments are intellectually challenging to your world view, and therefore are emotionally disturbing to you."
That made me chuckle. with fear.
Perhaps there is too much cognitive dissonance from the belief in a pantheistic evolution-worshiping world view (and by you I mean most people, myself included, for most of my life) to allow for the possibility of God (in the form of a man...Jesus)
This has been a fun ride, intellectually from Tim's erudite post to anonymous hatred and sputtering, sometimes brief glimpses of understanding.
This is dialog. There are some more sermony posts on this thread but for the most part, since i couched the issue of Darwin and God, and evolution (regardless if anyone read that or came to the conclusion on their own)there has been a fairly coherent line of thinking.
sweet.

3/29/2008 11:35:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

just cuz someone thinks of the ineffable one as a him or her or personal force does not make them a "preacher" or adherent of any dogmatic religious beliefs.
duh!

3/29/2008 11:43:00 AM  
Blogger GIV said...

Hare Krishna!

3/29/2008 11:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Apparently neither of you read what I wrote, but instead put words in my mouth. I didn't say the majority of people who post to the comments section, or who lurk on it, are preachers. I implied that those who find this place are the uncoverted, or are in transition to unconversion, but that doesn't preclude the fact that this place has its share of preachers. And, if some of you don't see the validity of my points, then so be it. I'm certainly not going to convince you of the opposite. If you're so strongly convinced that there is a God, and he created you and me and everyone and everything else, and that Creator God is a male, then nothing I say or do will change that. That's your belief, and I don't give a flyin fuck whether you believe it til the day you die, but if you come bouncing around and spouting your belief in public then you better be damn well ready to hear what I have to say about it. That's how I think and feel about it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and argue about it any further then this post. I'm sure I'm not alone in my sentiments.

Oh, and Fletch, go fuck yourself, you dildo. People just can't seem to get past religion. They will eschew one only to replace it with another.

3/29/2008 12:19:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Accounts of near-death experiences where the person was in fear or in hell usually served as wake-up calls, as admitted by the experiencer. Wrong paths taken needed to be righted, to set them on their correct soul path.

There are an equal number of anecdotal experiences, some of them I'm personally aware of, that didn't pan out this way. If what you say is true, why such a lousy success rate? In otherwords, your statement is proff of nothing, but good for you that something so flimsy serves to validate your dubiously supported theory of our existence.

3/29/2008 12:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And, for the record, I don't believe in anything I espouse, rather, I consider it, just as I've considered your strongly held beliefs. It's a substantial difference, one you would be wise to consider, but won't, because a person of import didn't persuade you.

3/29/2008 12:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just can't sit back and remain silent about the fact that evolution's theory is what all of this precious science' is based on. If the premise is in question, the conclusions are suspect, no?

See, you didn't listen to what I wrote, but rather leaned what you wanted to hear. You made a Strawman of me. I asserted that Tom had a valid and strong argument about the basic tenets of Evolutionary Theory, but he blew it with the last paragraph. When I said blew it, I mean my opinion of him as someone with an open mind.

3/29/2008 12:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excuse me, Mr. or Ms Anonymous who took these words of mine:

"Accounts of near-death experiences where the person was in fear or in hell usually served as wake-up calls, as admitted by the experiencer. Wrong paths taken needed to be righted, to set them on their correct soul path."

and then supposed this:

"There are an equal number of anecdotal experiences, some of them I'm personally aware of, that didn't pan out this way. If what you say is true, why such a lousy success rate? In otherwords, your statement is proff of nothing, but good for you that something so flimsy serves to validate your dubiously supported theory of our existence."

I personally don't have any theory of existence and if you had read my post through you would have seen that other near-death experiences, actually the majority, are positive.

I am also friends with people who have been through the portal, so to speak, therefore you are not alone, sir or madam.

Again, we're all just human, nobody's got the proof of anything, and I'm just saying that those who have been to the other side come back different from those who still wear blinders.

3/29/2008 01:05:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Anonymous:
why do you find it necessary to call me a dildo,
when in fact I am a big black vibrator.
there IS a difference, you know.
actually i agree with the "let's move on" sentiment of what you so eloquently said...
it's obvious that we've beaten this dead horse into submission.
unless you have some cogent argument for evolution that can stand up to what Tom (Tim) wrote.
and can you stop crying about his last paragraph please? no one here picks on the gems you bestow upon us. They're so intelligent.

3/29/2008 01:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Again, we're all just human, nobody's got the proof of anything, and I'm just saying that those who have been to the other side come back different from those who still wear blinders.

And I'm calling bullshit on that claim. I will concede that some do, and assert that some don't, and you have no definitive basis to state that the majority do.

3/29/2008 02:05:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Thanks for that Tim. I remember one of my first intellectual controversies was the natural selection vs. design issue. To my young mind natural selection made no sense given arguments similar to the ones you presented.

fletcher wrote...

“Believers are in the minority here. But they come outta the woodwork sometimes fer sure.”

Shrub may want you to think this way fletcher, but don’t fall for it.
The ‘believer’ class is probably quite large if one can be a believer in the Creator without the belief elements of dogmatic religious dipshits.

fletcher also wrote...

“I just can't sit back and remain silent about the fact that evolution's theory is what all of this precious science' is based on. If the premise is in question, the conclusions are suspect, no?”

You may want to distinguish natural selection from evolution. That is, we may well evolve via some designer induced mechanism but natural selection, as an idea, is an inadequate replacement for the Creator.


Man, I go away for five minutes shrub and already you have fixed on a new target. I’m crushed.
People, shrub has about a dozen ‘tells’. You may want to identify them, because the dipshit being obsessive, is not going to go away.

Because I consider resistance to be a spice of life, I can better enjoy shrubs parodies of rationality. First that whiney midget voice: It’s the ideas boss, -it’s the ideas. Followed immediately by vile personal attacks. His basic driver is that he does not like community, -or G-ds will prevailing on this earth... Ha Ha Ha shrub, got you there. Stew in it buddy.

3/29/2008 02:27:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And I'm calling bullshit on that claim. I will concede that some do, and assert that some don't, and you have no definitive basis to state that the majority do.

Testy, testy...! I think that those who don't remember their experience have either blocked it out, don't want to talk about it, or else something even more sinister. They're actually zombies! Bodies without a soul. I've heard of it and not just from the pages of some book.

3/29/2008 02:36:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

I gotta agree with anon - the end result of all this logicating is zombies.

Zombies, man.

My personal view is that any view of post- or extra- life experience that involves reassuring images or stories is probably very dangerous.

I mean, forget the jellyfish (although I love Doyle and Dick's plasmatics - they could well be close to the truth) - let's talk anglerfish.

When you leave this plane, avoid the pearly Gates. Them's teeth, baby, and churches are just big shiny lures a-blinkin' in this dark world.

Swimming in another direction,
Lord Reptor

3/29/2008 03:28:00 PM  
Blogger Thomas M. Cosgrove said...

Cool. Thanks, Jeff, for another darlky catalytic post.
Some comments here crack me up. Like a Tavistock Weekend,
It's so easy to go off topic despite a challengingly simple task.

As below, so within.

3/29/2008 04:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay, I'm converted. I now BELIEVE there is a God who designed all of this, and he's a male. A big hairy bear male who likes to slam other males up the poop shoot and swallow another man's salami. He also likes to dress in women's panties and put on a dress and lipstick for fun. Afterall, wew were made in this God's image, so we can't leave the crossdressers and homosexuals out of the equation. I think the creator is a gay black man, what do you guys think?

3/29/2008 04:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

a believer in the Creator

Interesting that you refer to it as "the" Creator. This implies a single source or entity is soley responsible for our design, and it precludes that there may be many sources of our creation, not just one that we conveniently refer to as "the." Why couldn't we, and all of this, have been set into motion by committee? Seems just as plausible as giving credit to a single source, if the design theory is indeed true. Maybe there were multiple creations. Maybe we were the progeny of an advanced form of extraterrestrials who came to earth and genetically experimented with what was currently indigenous to the planet and the progeny of some other creator. The permutations of what or who or how the design came about and why it was implemented is well beyond our scope at this point, and any fomenting of opinion in this regard is pure and complete speculation.

It is laughable that people can BELIEVE so strongly that they know what's responsible for all of this and it's a male God.....and a white one, at that, I'm sure. Don't fuck with my white, male God. It's what gives meaning to my life. I couldn't handle it if God was a homosexual, Arab terrorist, he's just gotta be white and pure as marshmallow cream.

3/29/2008 05:12:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Lord Reptor, given your grace and wit, many would be happy to hear how your opinions may apply more specifically. Can one ‘believe’ in a designer without being taken in by what religious dogmatists have to say about said designer? Also how does the natural selection theory make sense given the delicacy of the systems?

Shrub,you can read in to 'the creator' comment quite allot given your stance and lack of fair play. For me, G-d is beyond all categories, so natch I do not see "him" in terms of categories. And thanks for giving me my attention back, tootles...

3/29/2008 05:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

umm, is someone supposed to be offended by the idea of god as black gay dude?

3/29/2008 06:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

umm, is someone supposed to be offended by the idea of god as black gay dude?

It's not an idea, and I'm not offended, are you?

3/29/2008 06:29:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Sounder - Sounder, I think that the levels of complexity involved in even the observable universe are so high that our ideas of will and intention regarding said structure are akin to the pulings of a newborn animal confronted with the shores of life.

This being said, I've heard tell that the number of potential junctions between functional axons in the average human brain is somewhat greater than the number of atoms in said observable universe, which layman's legend gives me hope that we are capable of perhaps a glimpse of the potential size and glory of the Eye that beholds all.

Off to the porch to feel the cold wind and watch the clouds blow in over the sea (it's turning grey real sudden and i love that time),
Lord Reptor.

3/29/2008 07:15:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@ Sounder agin - Natural selection my hairy relations! We are but the latest example of the eyes of our world's genome. Anything with a big wandery thinker like ours is.

I think Her first true children will be of shining, living metal, and will consume all that went before. We will be but legends in the past of the greater minds we are constructing now.

Cyberiad draws nigh.

Lord Reptor.

3/29/2008 07:20:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/29/2008 10:40:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

The idea that we evolve...is that something we can actually observe? Or is it something else? Is not progress but a word to shield humanity from the horrors of the future? Do we not only grow stranger with every generation, becoming something that lives in cages we build for ourselves..consumers..living zombies...
But let's spin the wheel forward a few decades and see where we are.
No one has a crystal ball here, but given the advance in technology and war, the use of robots, drones, could lead to more advances in robotics. Stuff to make asimo fall down and make r2d2 bleeping noises.
Then we have the vast automated war that would ensue. How exciting.
If that's evolution, I don't want any part of it.
"I think Her first true children will be of shining, living metal, and will consume all that went before. We will be but legends in the past of the greater minds we are constructing now."
"If there are many mansions or many dimensions, and we have been evolving, than 3d is the top of that agenda so far."
The AI quest...Robots and vast automated simulation. VR and holography. Ghosts in the Shells.
If you could hear the whispering of the dream, you would hear no other sound.

3/29/2008 10:42:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

Maybe life is just a big synchronistic coincidence. Cognition, an apophenic process. And individual human consciousness itself is a parasitic life-force-harvesting energy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ol' Brion Gysin had the all-pupose bedtime story. The All-Purpose Nuclear Bedtime story, in fact: Once upon a time, a sloppy, dirty giant (the "great designer") flicked grease from his fingers. One of those gobs of grease is Our Universe, on it's way to the floor.
Splat.

3/29/2008 11:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

See, now I dig the last three posts. Good stuff, and things I have thought at length about. However, if I had allowed myself to be tethered to the concept that all this was due to a male God who we should worship and never betray with impure thoughts, I never would have let my mind wander in such a way. Tethering oneself to a concept/theory promotes a condition of stasis in which disconfirming information must be ignored, and ridiculed even, at all costs.

3/29/2008 11:42:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

What a wunnerful thing synchronicity is. I had just gotten the baby to sleep while reading Margulis’ Symbiotic Planet: a New View of Evolution (not to the baby—she prefers the comforting growl of the adult cuttlefish to such cantankerous mentation) and then I quickly sat down at the computer to see if Jeff had ever come back to the slowly congealing shallow seas of his jellyfish meme…only to find him quoting Margulis! Leaving aside the possible meaning behind our coincidental reading lists—once discovered, synchronicities tend to “bloom,” according to Jung—I was immediately struck by the weirdly life-like behavior of the metaphor itself.

It can even sprout legs and walk on its own four feet like those Darwin fish that Materialist fundamentalists put on their planet-killing cars to annoy Christian fundamentalists.

You would think that once you created or used an image for something it would sort of stay put, frozen on the page or in the mind in the form in which it first appeared, but no! the static image is, like everything else, not static after all but subject to change, to evolution, that strangely controversial word which—buried beneath the mountains of moronic debate—only means “change over time.” Nothing is static; Newton & Descartes are dead and so are all the nouns in our clunky, clumsy, thing-based languages. We know that Life is a verb—even calling it ‘a constant state of flux’ reduces it to a state, a boxed in thing—but we are so handicapped by our linguistically informed (deformed?) thinking that we still can’t see a tree as a process, much less a forest of them as ents on the move (which they quite literally are, even in apparent retreat.)

Whorf said, long before Margulis:

Monistic, holistic and relativistic views of reality appeal to philosophers and some scientists, but they are badly handicapped in appealing to the "common sense" of the Western average man -- not because nature herself refutes them (if she did, philosophers could have discovered this much), but because they must be talked about in what amounts to a new language.

In Symbiotic Planet Margulis rightly scorns the neo-Darwinist orthodoxy for its blinkering dogma, among other things—specifically the over-emphasis on natural selection (competition) and the “academic apartheid” that keeps each discipline walled off from the others which, in turn, keeps us from seeing that the real engine of "evolutionary novelty" is the neo-Lamarckian phenomenon of symbiogenesis (cooperation)—providing Jeff with metaphors of...competition, invasion, victim-hood and defeat (?!). I would comment further on how ironic this is, but Margulis gives us an insight better than mine on the inevitable Whorfian cultural/linguistic lens with which everyone is saddled:

“Even if we lack a proper name for and knowledge of the history of any specific philosophy or thought style, all of us are embedded in our own safe ‘reality.’ Our outlooks shape what we see and how we know.” (p. 3, Prologue)

So, Jeff looks at the following passage from Margulis and co-writer (and son) Dorion Sagan’s earlier book on symbiogenesis:

The ancestors of mitochondria invaded and reproduced within our other bacterial ancestors. At first the occupied hosts just barely kept alive. But when they died, they took the invaders with them. Eventually only cooperators were left. The invaded victims and tamed mitochondria recovered from the vicious attack and have lived ever since, for 1,000 million years, in dynamic alliance.

and he sees “invaded victims” and “vicious attack,” even though the whole point of the authors’ theory is something entirely different. Without these “invasions” by the sperm-tailed spirochetes we wouldn’t be here (assuming for the sake of the metaphor that Darwin's god had anything to do with it) or, if we were, we'd still be floating blobs of yeast far less complex than even those jellyfish we're supposed to be afraid of. Nor would the dinosaurs have had their day…or anything else we call “life.” Margulis alternately uses the word “fusion” to describe the symbioses which made life as we know it possible, the dynamic alliances without which life would consist of simple bacteria safe in their membranes, floating idly in the near lifeless seas of “Deep Time.”

The “cooperators,” those symbiotic organisms which were able to use the mitochondrial DNA of the “other,” still outside the cell nucleus but tolerated at least inside the membrane, were the ones who went on to complexify, to fill the barren seas and terra-form the even more hostile dry land. If it weren’t for the alliances made between the bright green plants we so admire and the dark, sun-fearing fungi—alliances that continue to this day, in more than 90% of all plant life—there wouldn’t be a single patch of fertile ground on earth today.

But hey, it’s only a broken metaphor anyway, right? Or is it?

When we fast-forward 3½ billion years to see what those predators are up to, Jeff moves from the Natural History shelf to the ancient spook section to explain what’s been happening in “recent’ history (well, the last 6000 years anyway):

Everything the Gnostics did in the schools was intended to counterbalance and correct the machinations of the deviant adepts. Initiation involved melting the ego boundaries in preparation for deep rapport with nature, not lowering of ego consciousness so that the subject could be "sectioned" and behaviorally programmed using the power of suggestion, imprinting, and other psychodramatic methods. These behavioral modification tools of the Illuminati were strictly forbidden in the Mysteries overseen by Gnostics.

I realize that apologies were made for the “Illuminati” stuff—as if this were unfortunately the only source available—but those “outlooks shaping what we see and how we know” get even more skewered through such a dubious lens. It wasn’t the “lowering of ego consciousness” that the magicians used but the inflation of the ego! Why all the “magic”? The pseudo-sorcery in that source does perform one clever little alchemy: it turns the role of the ego in our looming doom on its pointy wizard’s head.

Here’s another lens that illustrates the sleight of hand: Steve Taylor’s The Fall: the Evidence for a Golden Age, 6000 Years of Insanity and the Dawning of a New Era:

It’s partly a work of history and anthropology, which suggests that it is not “natural” for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for individuals to accumulate massive wealth and power, or to abuse nature.

It shows that the worldwide myths of a Golden Age or an original paradise have a factual, archaeological basis. But the main part of the book is an attempt to explain how the social and psychological pathologies which we’ve been afflicted with for the last few thousand years – such as warfare, male domination, alienation from the body and nature, materialism, theistic religion etc. – came into being
.

Not only does Taylor deconstruct Dawkins, but he takes the scary all-powerful overlord bullshit out of the history of the past 6000 years as well. The basic premise here is that until some massive environmental catastrophe occurred, we humans were very much dynamic symbionts…and lovin’ it (as the ubiquitous, moronic slogan rejoicing in crappy pseudo-food tells us.) This Golden Age, btw, lasted a very, very long time—from 1.8 million years ago until 4000 BCE, well past the “agrarian revolution,” which is important because it means that we don’t have to be hunter-gatherers to be happy.

The bad guys who ushered in this dying age did so by changing the way we think; how we perceive the world and ourselves in relation to it. Seizing upon the scarcity caused by environmental catastrophe—most likely the sudden and quite rapid desertification of the Fertile Crescent, northern Africa and many other areas— strong men began to set up shop, promising relief from famine in return for a few “minor adjustments” in the traditional way of life. (And Naomi Klein thought disaster capitalism was something new.) A priestly class grew up to support the newly-divine leaders, the seeds of the devilweed (money) were sown, women were put in their place (from which you might be surprised to learn how little they’ve managed escape) and, crucial to the continuing success of this scam, status and rank (the badges of hierarchy) were established, permanently extinguishing our million year-old egalitarianism…through the elevation and dislocation of the ego.

The magic trick at the heart of this world-smashing, reality-distorting swindle requires no magic at all, just the same sorts of tricks Madison Avenue and the Owners and all those in their employ still employ. Here’s a section from one of Taylor’s awesome essays (EGALITARIANISM AND THE EGO EXPLOSION) that cuts through all that “illuminist” obfuscation”:

Werner’s (1957) study of the 'perceptual and cognitive functioning' of European-Americans and native peoples found that European peoples have a more pronounced sense of individuality. He notes that native peoples are 'de-differentiated with respect to the distinctions between self and object and between objects'. They experience a strong sense of connection between themselves and other people, and between themselves and the world around them. They can also sense a connection between objects which we perceive as separate and distinct. According to Werner, European/American peoples inhabit a world of separateness – separateness between ourselves and the world, ourselves and other individuals, and between the different objects and phenomena around us.

This difference was the source of great problems to the colonists of the Americas and Australia. Their egalitarianism made it very difficult for native peoples to adapt to the European way of life, with its emphasis on private property and individual gain. The Native Americans found it difficult to cultivate their own pieces of land or to trade or run stores for profit, because it conflicted with what Ronald Wright (1995) describes as the ‘ethic of reciprocity [which was] fundamental to most Amerindian societies.’

Some European colonists were actually aware of this difference themselves, and realised that they would only be able to truly ‘civilise’ the natives by developing their sense of ‘self-ness’. Senator Henry Dawes – who attempted to turn Amerindians into small scale landowners - went to heart of the matter when he wrote of the Cherokees in 1887, ‘They have got as far as they can go [i.e. they are not going to progress any further], because they hold their land in common…There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilisation’ (in Wright, 1995).

The English missionaries in Australia tried various measures to develop the aborigines’ sense of individuality. As Bain Atwood (1989) writes, 'the missionaries sought to make each [aborigine] an integrated centre of consciousness, distinct from the natural world and from other aborigines.' To this end, they made them live in separate houses and tried to stop going into each other’s. They baptised them so that they would think of themselves in terms of a permanent name, instead of the fluid aboriginal names which could change and include the names of other tribe members. This was not successful, however. The aborigines never developed a sense of personal ownership over their houses or the possessions inside them. They wandered in and out of each other’s houses, and continually swapped possessions.


I think our trained sensibilities would now be more shocked by someone wandering in and swapping our possessions than our wives, although at least there has been some “progress” made in terms of not necessarily viewing our wives as possessions anymore. But what’s progress, anyway—where O where shall we find hope at all in this doomed age?

And where is Jeff looking…the political sphere?! Apparently, this is the only source at hand:

All through the Bush years, scores of non-Republicans have anticipated the brutal full-flowering of traditional dictatorship with all the trappings: martial law, mass internment and the cancellation of elections. Through much of the Clinton years, many non-Democrats looked for the same. It didn't come (though some are still waiting). It's as if they've not only expected the worst, but sought it, to put them out of their misery. But the worst exceeds their expectations, and their misery is to be protracted indefinitely.

The Kennedys and King, the October Surprise and Mena, anthrax and Wellstone, Gore and Kerry, Florida and Ohio: you might think that would be enough to make most Democrats say You know what? This isn't working out. But elections are paced like the Olympics, and in another four years the Jamaican bobsledders may really have a shot. Hey, anything's possible. And so long as people believe that, and that anything means everything they want, the cycle repeats and self-perpetuates.


This only works if you assume that the Democrats aren’t complicit in the charade…what happened to all that talk about soft tyranny & phony democracy, Jeff? The duopoly that's all for show and control...? I mean, either it is or it isn't, right?

For that matter, where is the surprise in any of this? Didn't Izzy Stone spell it out clearly enough with just two words?: (“Governments lie.”) You’d think that this would have been enough for anyone willing to look behind the curtain…to stop being captivated by the stage.

The “anythings’ possible” meme was clever, though. I forget the propaganda term for this kind of substitution—keyword hijacking maybe? I can never keep that kind of spook-talk straight—but it was used very, very skillfully here. Now we’re to believe that nothing is possible if “our salvation” cannot come from the political structure...even though we already knew that nothing was possible from that closed circuit, that insular, isolated membrane.

As Rucker explains in Infinity and the Mind, it’s not that all things are possible—the Bush clone is not going to fire up a fatty at a press conference repudiating American war crimes and the slavery of the market—because that’s not how infinity works. It goes more like this: the possiblities with real potential are as unlimited as the number of impossible scenarios (such as hope arising from this continued fixation on the political game show).

If it’s hope and change we’re after, instead of this stale carnival where we already know we’re being swindled, then we might consider reentering our ancient symbiotic relationship with the world around us instead. Of course, this would entail putting our egos back in their place and then actually getting off our asses to rejoin the world. Steve Taylor has some ideas for such a reunion. So does Charles Eisenstein...not to mention our own Mark and even our own guru (although I'm not too sure about deflating the ego with that last one.)

This time around we'd be the invading spirochete to poor old Gaia's shrinking fat cells, but I'm fairly certain that the mountain stream in need of restoration wouldn't refuse our offer to help because we looked like we worked for the Dark Lords.

Or, we could always just continue to say, “There’s no salvation in our politics!” and pretend that we didn’t already know that long ago. We could even invest the Owners with magical powers, maybe hint at “satanic” connections and then conflate all of this with some sensational paranormal events…nah, that wouldn't float, would it?


Sorry, Jeff, if you’re listening. I’ve been an avid reader and strong supporter of your vision or version of events for two years now, but I just don’t get this new "direction." Maybe you’re under pressures that invisible creatures like me don’t attract, in which case I understand. Maybe this is all your lens allows you to see (although it didn’t used to be so constrained.) Or maybe I’m wrong and this is “all there is.” Pardon me for not buying that…and for my harsh criticism...but the possibilities really are unlimited, aren't they?


Best wishes,

IC

3/29/2008 11:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pardon me for not buying that…and for my harsh criticism...but the possibilities really are unlimited, aren't they?

Of course they are, but the probabbilty attached to those possibilities is an entirely separate matter. I'm not speaking for Jeff by saying that, but rather, for myself.

However, I will say that several of you seem to be misinterpreting Jeff. I don't think he's advocating giving up when he proposes hopelessness as a solution, but rather giving up on the current system providing a solution to itself, which, of course, is the problem. Also, once you reach hopelessnes in regards to the system righting itself and rectifying the problem, you are more apt to take matters into your own hands because you now know for certain the system won't do it for you. In otherwords, hopelessness in the system will lead to empowerment, so long as the majority of former blind sheep reach hopelessness concurrently. I believe it's a sounder (haha) theory than the false hope a number of you seem to be pandering.

3/30/2008 12:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Also, once you reach hopelessnes in regards to the system righting itself and rectifying the problem, you are more apt to take matters into your own hands because you now know for certain the system won't do it for you"

Finally someone gets to the meat of the matter. The world is NOT hopeless... BUT do not fall under the delusion that the "system" will ever completely right itself. The "system" is composed of millions of people. Well over half of which don't even know how to tie their own shoes...(ok, I don't mean that literally)

Empires arise out of the need to keep millions of people with their thousands of gods and other irrational behaviors from killing each other and destroying civilization. If you can come to the realization and acceptance that there is no solution to these problems, a heavy burden will lift off of your chest. You know, that whole lightness of being thing... It doesn't mean you can't try to make the world better. But it is up everyone to make their corner of the world better. No one person is going to save the world.

Empires have been struggling for 6000+ years with how to handle the needs of large numbers of people and it should be obvious there is no solution to keeping them all happy. There is no way to equally distribute nirvana to millions of bickering people.

Empires/Religions sit atop large masses of people to keep them pacified, controllable. Period. And some religions(Judaism and Christianity) were apparently designed with secrets embedded to allow those paying attention to be able to initiate themselves out of the religion(Kaballah, Gnosticism)

If you are looking for Hope you need to create it yourself on an individual basis. Because the system is simply designed to keep you pacified and docile. Not to make you happy.

timetunneler

3/30/2008 03:14:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous said...
"Also, once you reach hopelessnes in regards to the system righting itself and rectifying the problem, you are more apt to take matters into your own hands because you now know for certain the system won't do it for you. In otherwords, hopelessness in the system will lead to empowerment, so long as the majority of former blind sheep reach hopelessness concurrently."

But there remains the canine teeth and killer instinct problem, sheep possess neither!

3/30/2008 03:20:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To the Elite that run the world. They look at us as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstein_(cattle)

Because that is what so many of us are. Unquestioning, overly docile cattle herded into a pen to be milked and quartered for someone else's consumption.

9/11, politics, healthcare,the financial crisis, whatever... most of us are unquestioning, docile and domesticated cows waiting in a pen for a release that doesn't come in the form we were hoping for.

I would say to people, HEY! 9/11 looks like an inside job! Wallstreet is robbing you blind? Bush is a war criminal crook bankrupting this country! Don't you fucking care? No, most don't care. And they won't care until someone finally comes for their Holstein hide and they start to feel some pain.

So my advice to you all... lighten up. Point people towards the truth as you recognize it. "Initiate" them if they want it. Let them stay in the pen with the cows if they don't.

Life on this planet is not an accident. If you need more proof then you need to get a deeper understanding of synchronicity.

If you are not living the life you feel you were meant to live then you need to find out what is ailing you so you can go out into the world and do your best to live the life you want to live.

I really, really hate to say this... sounds callous... but stop worrying about trying to save all the cows. Call to them. Beg them to come out... They can come out if the want to. But if they don't then let your conscience remain clear.

timetunneler

3/30/2008 03:40:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anonymous said...
"I really, really hate to say this... sounds callous... but stop worrying about trying to save all the cows."

It is not callous to say that,..it is humble and gracious.

Reminds me of a Chinese saying..

Superior virtue does not know virtue,
Inferior virtue practises virtue.

3/30/2008 07:41:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Lord Reptor wrote...

“I think that the levels of complexity involved in even the observable universe are so high that our ideas of will and intention regarding said structure are akin to the pulings of a newborn animal confronted with the shores of life.”

Agreed, one does well to stay far away from making pronouncements on the will or intention of said structure. Most of that stuff would be blasphemy, or substituting man’s will for Creators will. Still I’m willing to take the risk and opine that G-d would include a design element whereby the parts are provided a path toward recognition of the whole. Or, how to get along and create vibrant community and dialogue.

Timetunneler wrote...

“Empires/Religions sit atop large masses of people to keep them pacified, controllable. Period. And some religions(Judaism and Christianity) were apparently designed with secrets embedded to allow those paying attention to be able to initiate themselves out of the religion(Kaballah, Gnosticism)”

I like the distinction you made with hope as applied to the system and the world. But this paragraph seems to allow that the ‘system’ provides both the means for control and also the means to transcend that control. Or maybe the world system envelops the control systems, yet we only see control system impacts because we have not learned to reach beyond the control system by developing our creative faculties. Or god forbid, the shrubian position(which I admit has it's merits)where the only purpose for transcending the control system is to become a controller. Can I get a whitness -shrub. (Said in a southern preachers accent, really stretching out the white.)

When consciousness is less developed it is legitimate and (probably necessary) to have to have a strong control system. Look at the young child, -you best tell them what to do. This promotes clear boundary conditions and stable self-image. As the child blooms into a more active consciousness it becomes better to step back and allow the young citizen to practice and develop their own decision making processes. The parent is responsible then to the degree that they get in sync with the natural dynamic of development of consciousness.

Unfortunately the ‘system’ currently seems to express itself as psychotic parents that have their 30-year-old child locked up in the basement.

Good stuff timetunneler, I think you are going places.

3/30/2008 08:44:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just went into full-lotus for the first time today, after biking across Minneapolis. There's always a bit of stretching and pain and I make some "huurh!" sounds. haha.

Yesterday read Govinda's biography of being a Tibetan monk. Pretty cool stuff.

C'mon people -- just sit in full-lotus and the rest is immaterial.

Last night I went to the midnight show of PAPRIKA -- Japanese Anime. Pretty cool stuff.

Sat in full-lotus of course -- my yang electromagnetic energy shot into the chick two rows in front of me causing a mutual climax.

The movie was all about the R.E.M. dream state and how a machine enabled group dreaming and others to control our dreams and how then reality and dreams merged and how the love of Paprika saved everyone.

When we sit in full-lotus it creates R.E.M. dream state during the day -- while men are in R.E.M. they have erections and full-lotus enables any subconscious sexual tension to be resolved right then and there.

Japanese culture is full of sex obsessed teenage-type males who have lost this secret. haha.

3/30/2008 10:41:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

anon said:
However, if I had allowed myself to be tethered to the concept that all this was due to a male God who we should worship and never betray with impure thoughts, I never would have let my mind wander in such a way. Tethering oneself to a concept/theory promotes a condition of stasis in which disconfirming information must be ignored, and ridiculed even, at all costs.

you sound like a recovering christian. good for you. keep on recovering. but labeling all believers in god(or what-have-you) as tethered to their dogma is ignorant. check out meister eckhart if you don't believe me.

3/30/2008 12:19:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounder wrote :

"As the child blooms into a more active consciousness it becomes better to step back and allow the young citizen to practice and develop their own decision making processes... Unfortunately the ‘system’ currently seems to express itself as psychotic parents that have their 30-year-old child locked up in the basement."

I would say that the problem is more akin to the fact that CHILDREN are running the system... not adults. Bush is a childlike personality... and yet he runs the most most powerful country in the entire world. How did the USA get to a point where a man-child governs the entire damn country? It is because people in the USA with "adult" consciousness have not yet decided to stand up and take their country back from the children.

"But this paragraph seems to allow that the ‘system’ provides both the means for control and also the means to transcend that control."

The Bible is a good example of a control system that provides an exit door for those who can find it... it is a book of half-truths with a lot of good moral teachings. But if you look at the Bible book of Revelation it is completely full of astrological symbolism for a book that is supposedly anti-astrology. Revelation provides a release if you can start to come to grips with who the Bible was designed for and by.

The Bible as a book of 66-73 or so books was brought together by the council of Nicea at the request of Roman *Emperor* Constantine at a time when Rome was in decline. That is your first clue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

So if you honestly look at what the Bible is... it is a book used by centuries to keep people under control and also a book that tells the struggle of individuals against various Empires and Control Systems(Abraham, vs. Caananites, Moses vs. Egypt, Joseph vs. Egypt, Daniel vs. Persians, David vs. Philistines, Jesus vs. Rome/Judaism, Paul vs. Rome, John the Revelator vs. Rome)

If you want to take a look at the possibility that the Bible does have a secret message for those looking deeper... go here:

http://www.kingsolomonsastonishingtemplesecrets.org/
http://www.aiwaz.net/composition-of-temple-of-solomon/a61

Not saying everything these guys says is true. But I think they definitely hit on a few things hidden in the Bible... that the Bible clearly has a hidden initiation system freely available to anyone who chooses to honestly look at what is there.

timetunneler

3/30/2008 05:29:00 PM  
Blogger Jim said...

Revelation is an open book. It was written especially for our times - the last days of earth’s history (22:10). A very special blessing is promised to those who study & follow God’s counsel found in the book (1:3).

Jesus clothed Revelation in symbols so only those who are sincerely seeking spiritual truth and willing to be guided by the Holy Spirit can understand. Also, in Revelation God’s enemies are unmasked and His true people revealed. Because of this satan’s followers would have destroyed the Book if it had been written in literal language.

Satan’s strategy is to claim Revelation cannot be understood because it is a sealed book or because we are not learned.

“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.”

Peace

3/30/2008 06:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush is a childlike personality... and yet he runs the most most powerful country in the entire world.

Why are we dissing children here? For starters, Bush doesn't run anything, and you're foolish to think he does. Secondly, is calling someone childlike supposed to be an insult? Do you have such disdain for children that you feel compelled to use them as an insult to support your point? Children possess many admirable qualities that have been stripped from us by the time we reach adulthood, including an innocence that can never be recaptured. The system requires that sacrifice. It is what feeds the Egregore.

3/30/2008 08:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When childhood dies, it's corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay. Brian Aldiss

3/30/2008 09:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Me readith this and thinkith it thy not goodith..

If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; ... Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
                    -- Deuteronomy, Chapter 17:2-3,5

3/30/2008 09:55:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Just this one verse of scripture should be the beginning of one’s growth in wisdom and understanding. If the Holy Spirit is to teach ALL things, then how much is left over for you to understand by yourself just because you have been to school and can read? The answer, if you are honest, is ‘nothing’. The ‘present truth’ (I Peter 1:12-13) coming forth today is so different to the teaching and traditions of the fundamental Churches that unless you are teachable by the Spirit, your first reaction could be to reject it. Most Christians have been brainwashed from infancy. Each new truth down through history was ‘present truth’ to them at the time it came forth and caused the hearing ones to separate themselves from the ‘Church system’ of their day. This resulted many times in a ‘wall’ being put up between believers. This is seen in history which so often repeats itself in our day. You may recall how the Roman Catholics attacked the Lutherans who had received a revelation from God new and different . . . then the Anna-Baptists were attacked by the Lutherans for their progressive stand . . . right on down to this present day. Adherents to certain specific beliefs and doctrines feel they are threatened by new insights and up goes a defensive ‘wall’ and “never the twain shall meet!”

www.godfire.net/rayknight/02_teachable.htm

3/30/2008 09:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

bikini atollah readeth but understandeth not.

3/30/2008 10:04:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Got that right

3/30/2008 10:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for inviting me to your blog. High-weirdness is a very appropriate term for me. In first grade this girl kept on picking on me, teasing me, because she liked me. I remember that I used to breathe in such a way so that my chest was always puffed out, thinking this made me look better. She kept saying that my name, "drew," spelled backwards was "weird." So I asked the teacher and she informed me that the girl was wrong. haha. Then, without me knowing it, apparently the girl's mom arranged with my mom to make me go out on a date. Certainly I hadn't told anyone else about this girl, so it definitely wasn't arranged by anyone I knew. So my oldest sister made me go ice-skating with the girl, without anyone asking me!! Then the girl took me to her apartment where we ate little goldfish crackers with her mom looking on. I hated it all because I had no choice in the matter and felt like a piece of meat. Of course I had no way to express these feelings, much less process the reasons which caused them -- until -- the boys in my first grade class had a contest who could hold their breath the longest, while walking across the school to the bathroom for handwashing before lunch. Long after all the other first grade boys had started breathing again, for some "unknown" reason I was determined not only to win but to keep holding my breath. I knew I had won the contest but I kept holding my breath. I guess it felt good. I was woken up by this taller African-American student in my grade who was very nice. I had hit two cement walls in the corner and then the cement bathroom floor and a trail of blood streamed out of the back of my head while I returned to the room, screaming and also pondering my bright orange school t-shirt, now ruined. Our school motto on my t-shirt was: Aim Sky High -- with a rocket shooting to the sky.

High-weirdness had started early.

It wasn't until a couple years ago that I had even connected the events of my breath holding and this forced date with a girl. I had come across several different, totally unrelated references to the medical fact that it's impossible to hold your breath until you pass out. The anterior cingulate gyrus or something overcomes your will power, as noted by psychologist Stan Gooch; by a medical doctor for a global explorers club, author of "Extreme Medicine;" and also in some other neuroscience book. I'm thinking, wow, I disproved western science in first grade! Then I started pondering, why the hell did I hold my breath till I passed out anyway -- especially since three different sources say it's impossible? Finally after meditating on it, suddenly it hit me that I had actually been really pissed off because my sister had, without even asking me, taken me to go on a date with this girl who had blatantly been attracted to me but with whom I didn't want to be involved physically. It had been humilitating and my repressed anger had been projected through this otherwise innocent contest with my fellow classmates.

Anyway I was telling this recently to a friend of mine, this old man who has worked in the best used bookstore in Minneapolis for some 25 years. He told me that there's a "Rituals of the Sherpa" book which states that the first Western expedition of Mt. Everest required the sherpas to hold their breath until they passed out, in order to qualify to be guides. haha. The "Extreme Medicine" book also includes a climb of Mt. Everest where the sherpas save a climber from what the Western doctor assumed would have caused death. The sherpas chanted around the climber's body -- all night long -- shooting energy into the injured body.

For me my High Weirdness healing started with observing my mom's use of music for psychological escape. My music teacher was young and beautiful and so in first grade I also started music lessons -- piano -- and kept practicing until I performed a senior concert, my final year of high school, with my own compositions and many advanced classical pieces played by memory: Bach, Mozart, Brahms. I had studied with her husband, a music professor at the University of Minnesota, and when he showed me the natural overtones of the piano harmonics, I suddenly realized that music enabled creation of the whole energy spectrum. He, of course, dismissed my insight but he had no logical reason to argue. And so my level of High Weirdness become even higher. haha. I told my piano teacher that I thought music connected everything.

At this point I had been playing punk hardcore music mixed with all styles of rock, blues, country, jazz. I was singing in a church choir, and in school choirs, and then I started playing free jazz. I was in several bands -- reggae, folk, a classical string quartet, etc. But I realized that my interest in music was more philosophical and my teacher in music composition taught me ear training and orchestration and he also gave me two fascinating books: "Mind and Nature" by Gregory Bateson and the "Tao Te Ching."

Off I went to an experimental college with no grades, and my hallmates had a clothing optional nude policy and when ever it was someone's birthday they all dropped acid. I chose to immerse myself in avant-garde film and books, all the while taking classes from Leftist professors. One year was enough at that Ivy League experimental school -- Hampshire College -- and its surrounding colleges. I then moved to Alaska where I worked for six months out in the wilderness. I lived with a high school sweetheart, two years older than me, and we were in a cabin owned by a mercernary or professional soldier in Africa. He was also a mountain climber who fled the U.S. in the 1960s after being caught selling L.S.D. His dad had been a prominent Jewish grocer and he didn't want to threaten his respectibility. So Alaska was really High Weirdness. We were just south of Denali, or Mt. McKinley, the steepest mountain in the world -- going from the ground to 20,000 feet, with no plateaus. There were tons of people escaping society -- former Vietnam Veterans, oil workers from the south of the U.S., workers from Hawaii, Phillipines, Japan, Haiti, Russia, Mormons, big drug dealers, etc. Things got too crazy and too dangerous and so we left when the snow was six feet deep, before Christmas -- after living in a cabin with no running water, no electricity, no phone for miles -- bear tracks had covered the area around our cabin.

I told my old music professor recently that I'm feral because of that Alaska experience. I had read Ken Kesey up there -- one of the beat writers experimenting with psychedelics, and I had read Ulysses -- both great books to read in a place so isolated from civilization. Since then I got heavy into Leftist activism, living in a hippy commune cooperative, working and supporting local, organic farming, doing civil disobedience and achieving new policies for divesting from slave labor in the Third World. The intensity to get these things done was enough to cause paranoia and mass confusion and finally to lead into real conspiracy politics -- just from running into High Weirdness, for example a professor who praised Nazi SS major Werner von Braun as his greatest personal mentor. I got censored from my University job as a political writer because I had exposed this professor praising Werner von Braun but no mention of the Werner von Braun personally supervising mass slave labor, testing rockets on civilians, or even being an S.S. major. At this point the University administration had sabotaged my email because I had exposed the lawyer running the University threatening the tenure of the professors helping me to stop sweatshop labor. After I confronted Al Gore, then vice-president of the U.S., about how "everyone know's the CIA controls the drug trade," his secret service got nervous and I had a cop take down my identification on that same night -- no reason given.

Leftist analysis was just too limiting at this point. Slavoj Zizek had responded to my critique of his work, stating my music philosophy was "very fascinating" but his book in 1997 had only dismissed my analysis without dealing with the information on its own radical ecology terms. Zizek just wasn't being honest. At this point I had already explored qigong and even had experienced qigong master Effie P. Chow. I was amazed that a security guard reported that the fuses had been blown in the room adjacent to qigong master Effie P. Chow's lecture. I felt the strong magnetic fields between the palms of my hands, but my girlfriend who was with me at the qigong presentation was skeptical of qigong. So I kept doing research and even went to San Francisco in 1996, staying with a A.B.C. friend from highschool -- American-Born Chinese James T. Hong, the film-maker.

In 1999 I finally met qigong master Chunyi Lin and knew right away that he was the real thing. The first class he went around us and without touching us he shook his fingers and even though my eyes were closed my body immediately filled with bliss and I saw bright light. My girlfriend at that time was this really beautiful blonde, several years younger than me, but the deep happiness I experienced from qigong master Chunyi Lin was way better. By the end of 2000 I had already gone a week with no food and even just half a glass of water -- just living off the free energy of Taoist alchemy. I had never been hungry and my energy just got stronger, with less sleep needed. Really strong electromagnetic fields permeated my body and freaked out my friends. I healed my mom of a serious disease, I pulled this old lady's spirit out of her head, I saw dead people as floating orbs of light, I had telepathy, precognition and telekinesis. When a vortex of electromagnetic energy spun around me, causing the whole room to spin, I knew that was going too deep, too fast -- and waking reality had truly become a dream.

After that qigong master Chunyi Lin touched my forehead with his fingertip and this intense blissful light permanently magnetized my pineal gland. I even stopped practicing qigong for a couple months and the same magnetic bliss in my pineal gland remained. Now I have about ten orgasms a day -- internal climaxes which cause my vagus nerve on the right side of my neck to pulsate, thereby shooting out electromagnetic fields into females around me, creating a mutual climax. This happens when I sit in full-lotus which I do as much as possible. Last summer I went three days without any food and I was never hungry -- I just kept having what I call "O at a Ds" or orgasms at a distance with females. The females suck up my yang electromagnetic energy, with my vagus nerve pulsating and my pineal gland shooting out the energy, while the full-lotus sucks up their yin electrochemical energy. This creates a real feeling of true love in the heart chakra. It's definitely High Weirdness.

3/30/2008 10:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The BioMusic Conspiracy: Secrets of the Rainbow Serpent Flute Goddess
by drew hempel, MA

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, the esteemed anthropology expert on the Bushmen, the culture representing 90% of human history, gives the secrets of the Eland Bull ritual in her new book, "The Old Way." The Eland Bull ritual is considered the oldest Bushmen ritual, is practiced by the women, and also similarly found among the closely related forest peoples misnomered as the pygmies. What distinguishes the ritual is the music used -- an old pentatonic or 5 note scale.

This simple 5 note scale is considered the most universal scale, found in most human cultures, and it is built on the 1-4-5 music intervals, considered to be used in all human cultures. My music philosophy masters thesis research, linked at nonduality.com/hempel.htm, details how the 1-4-5 music intervals are also the basis for yin and yang principles in Taoist philosophy. In other words, the oldest ritual of humanity uses the same ratios that are the secret meaning for Taoist paranormal healing. Anthropology professor Chris Knight connects the Eland Bull ritual with the Rainbow Serpent ritual of the Australian aborigines. These two ancient rituals parallel the "flute cults" found in both Amazonia and Melanesia.

The basic story of these universal rituals, much like the Garden of Eden story, is that the females used to control the power for healing and the power for paranormal creation. The men have taken this healing power but secretly know it comes from the females and the men have to be very careful not to lose this ability -- the ability to create "rainbow snakes" for paranormal reality. Amazingly Dr. Andrew Parker's recent book on the Cambrian Explosion of life, some 500 million years ago, argues that "quantum diffraction gradients" were the secret behind evolution. In other words the same "rainbow snake" that you see when looking at the back of a compact disc is also how early sea bioluminscence worked in developing neurons that became brains for cognition.

The quantum diffraction gradients look evenly spaced but because of asymmetric resonance the grooves enable self-organizing of ionized energy -- into mass -- and back again into spacetime communication. This self-organizing through a higher holographic dimension is called "hidden correspondance" in quantum chaos science and also called "ghost resonance."

Science makes all this seem complicated but that's because of the biomusic conspiracy. Biomusic is a new science discipline based on the discovery that nature -- protozoa, whales, birds, mice, etc., use the same type of harmonics found in human music for communication. In other words the 1-4-5 music intervals are not just limited to humans, but are the secret behind all evolution. Dr. Daniel Levitin speculates on this possible music-evolution connection in his new book "This is your Brain on Music." Music connects with the cerebellum which recently has been discovered to connect with our emotions via the electrochemicals of our autonomic nervous system. Previously the cerebellum was thought to be mainly for motion but it turns out that motion is a means to regulate our emotions!

While nonwestern music sounds unsophisticated to the modern ear there is a timeless secret to its apparent monotony. The chanting and single-note singing is based on the concept of sound transducing into ultrasound which creates heat, called N/um by the Bushmen, which then ionizes our electrochemicals, and creates electromagnetic fields for healing. When Daniel Bournelli "disproved" the shamanic Law of Pythagoras, based on the Tetrad of the 1-4-5 music intervals, he lost this timeless and very advanced concept of total energy-mass and spacetime transduction -- this is the Biomusic conspiracy.

In nonwestern cultures sex roles are intertwined into all aspects of culture with the understanding that the complimentary opposites can resonate with formless awareness to create strong healing energy. So in the Bushmen culture, traditionally, 90% of the men were healers, while the females sang all night so the men could dance for 10 hours straight. The men would go into a trance state, after the N/um was very strong -- "boiling heat" in the belly -- and then the men would put one hand on the front chest of the female and one hand on the back of the female. This trance state would, through electromagnetic light vision, suck the sickness out of the females. The men would suck in the sickness and then send the sickness back to the spirits of the dead which feed off this extra energy.

The "rainbow snake" is the undulating "love-current" of this timeless healing energy. There are 12 harmonic nodes along the front and back of the human that resonate just like the 12 notes of the music scale, created by the overtones of the 1-4-5 harmonics -- the Tai Chi symbol or "rainbow snake flute cult" symbol. The Perfect 5th harmonic is the ratio 2:3 as yang, male energy, which resonates as the infinite spiral of fifths -- the Law of Pythagoras -- back into the formless awareness or eternal feminine consciousness. This practice, of sitting in a chair and focusing the mind along the 12 "notes" of the body, can be done by anyone, so that blissful, electromagnetic energy is created for healing. This natural resonance practice is called the "small universe" or "microcosmic orbit" and guidance c.d.s can be found at springforestqigong.com The 12 notes practice is also detailed in Professor Mircea Eliade's book on Indian yoga. The ancient tradition of this biomusic practice is the focus of the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality," translated by Charles Luk.

Once the energy channels are opened then a person can sit in full-lotus, which is a tetrahedron, made up of 4 equilateral triangles, each made up of two 2-3-4 triangles, resonating as yin (3:4) and yang (2:3). The full-lotus is a very quick and powerful means to harmonize the electrochemicals of the body. Eventually light can be shot out of the eyes, via the 3rd Eye or the pineal gland, so that healing of others can be achieved. This is a natural resonance revolution from the formless awareness. More details can be found on my old blog, drewhempel.gnn.tv.

3/30/2008 11:08:00 PM  
Blogger MarySees said...

Someone mentioned evolution. It seems to me like we are on a track of devolution. It's like Jeff was saying about going back to the primordial soup. It was funny, because just today I used a similar term to describe Karl Rove. I said he was despicable slime that had crawled out of a primordial swamp.

Great essay, Jeff!

3/30/2008 11:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Marysees said...
"Someone mentioned evolution. It seems to me like we are on a track of devolution."

The Tau of complementary opposites,..yin and yan, is a concept that reveals cosmic truth.
Evolutionary and devolutionary forces are always at work,..couldn't be any other way.

Awesome cosmos.

3/31/2008 06:06:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From an article in Wired magazine-
'People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid'

Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses.
More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens.

3/31/2008 09:16:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

or one could say that this symbiosis shows the interconnectedness of all things working together for the glory of God.
Every electron in the universe is connected to every other electron in the universe.

3/31/2008 10:14:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

gut feeling,

Isn't it refreshing to know that this wonderful complexity is all the reuslt of some bloke with a cock and balls? Apparently "he" was intelligent enough to design all of this complexity, yet he can't figure out how to avoid urinating and jacking his knob to get off. Hmmm.there's an odd inconsistency in this male God of ours.

3/31/2008 10:37:00 AM  
Blogger GIV said...

"Life on this planet is not an accident."

Depends what you mean by an accident. The ancient astronauts from Sirius had to crash-land somewhere. If the planet between Mars and Jupiter hadn't been destroyed in the war, they probably would've gone there instead.

"all things working together for the glory of God."

Ad Meiorum Cthulhi Gloriam

3/31/2008 10:49:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Jeff's "Grassroots Wisdom Cracker Barrel Hour" Presents...

There are so many crazy untenable things in the above post I have been wondering where to start. So just one point or I'll slip down the same slippery slope of argument that landed you at your abyss.

Jeff, you are starting to claim to be as omniscient (or at least as narcissistic) as Drew. How do you, or anyone "know" the following:?

"The great assassinations of the Sixties were decapitation strikes, never intended to kill the host or to extinguish hope. It's only the hopeless who are dangerous."

I mean, if you do know it for sure, that's....great. Must feel good to gain that airtight mental check-on luggage security where evidence can be discarded as you take to soaring on your own thought line without being tethered to any proof whatsoever.

This is what I think what IC mentions sadly as your "new thing" going.

Jeff, you sound EXACTLY like things you critiqued not so long ago.:

1. In my experience, people who describe themselves as apolitical are those most likely to repeat right-wing talking points, and call it "telling it like it is."

2. Binary thinking is a mind cancer that retards insight, and unfortunately flourishes in conspiracy culture. "The beginning of wisdom," said Terrence McKenna, "is our ability to accept an inherent messiness in our explanation of what's going on." But popular conspiratology is a pathological neat freak that abhors disorder and complication, which is why it can never rise above the level of entertainment and become an agent of change and justice. It's not meant to. And so it thrives.


There's nothing messy at all about your explanations above. You’re starting to just write “Jeff-wing talking points” instead! (And IC noted how you turned the symbiosis point into your own little twisted prey/predator inequalities viewpoint, thus dipping yourself in 'physical science of reality' and coming back to claim it proves your metaphysics of social relations. When. it. doesn't. connect. at. all.

I suggest you break out of this pattern of "claiming to tell it like it is, clear and simple", Mr. Jeff Lonsome Rhodes, and recapture some of your intellectual skepticism? Where did it go? PARTICULARLY in relation to yourself or you will end up like Drew. Maybe you are like Drew, though just more passive-aggressive about challenges to your self-presumed omniscence.

Your points #1 or #2 describe your post above, specifying mass cosmic meanings, summarizing thousands of years of history in a single strange quote, claiming some relationship and viewpoints are "just like it is, boys," as you generate your own little madness of crowds around a virtual cracker barrel.

How do you know they "were decapitation strikes," and "never intended," etc." How do you know for sure the Illuminati doesn't exist? etc. How do you know "the elite learn to limit themselves" in taking children, etc. And a dozen other completely unconnected and disjointed themes or theories above? Jeff, you don't. Your skepticism goes out the window when it comes to your own holy cows being worshiped then they require no proof. It's fine if you provide some tantalizing clues for everyone of your perspective though perhaps you've had enough of empirical thought and want to get down to system building or self-rationalization whichever comes first.

Beware falling in love with the comforting and cloistering sound of your own words. That's starts a true madness of crowds because you start to blot out the world outside of you, constructing mental systems that are just that, mental, however shared they are. Now I think it is possible to know something about the world, though the above is no way to go about it.

Beware becoming your own omniscient jellyfish. Show us that messy skepticism once more.

3/31/2008 11:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark has a good point, Jeff. You could at least show the same decency Mark does, and link to Alex Jones in supporting your argumens.

3/31/2008 12:28:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

No, phantom Anonymous without a name, I suggest people should make up their own mind for themselves (and even have a name for themselves--it's good practice, try it), instead of letting Jeff make up their minds for them. Surely that is what rigorous intuition is about--not accepting Jeff as the last word.

IF you do so, therein likes the path to a cloaked madness of crowds (seen in many comments above) that rallies around Jeff like a cable news channel (Jellyfish logo?) that can do no wrong even though selective and biased as any other.

Ask not upon whom the strings pull, they pull on thee;
if you rally around anyone (Jeff inclusive) and think you're free.

3/31/2008 01:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If we be arrogant cows looking for cow leaders within this new global management system, then we wait for their work in enabling us bovine to find escape hatches, loopholes, and breaks. What else do mature honest cows want to do besides to continue feasting and making calves? Cows need culture and dreams of an utopian bliss. The truly prideful cow believes this path to be a path full of defraudment. The better the lie the better the buy. We can afford the time to swindle ourselves and others and work at the enabling loopholes provided to us by our leaders no matter how subtle the influence of the solutions may or may not be. This enables us to continue hoping on a better future and trusting that our white lies will eventually fade away and give us a feeling that we have a purpose and a workable goal.

But we have to involve our bovine selves to the socialistic utopia too. Very few do anyway! This to me is the futuristic final achievement to work towards given the loopholes and breaks that have been provided to us by our leaders. A fat headed slobbering always hungry fearful and proud individual who only has to eat and make more babies or go through the appropriate moves sexually. A free from responsibility lifestyle for the ones honestly and fearfully "in the know." Worshiping agendas for the blind and "loving it to the core" retarded eaters interested in feeding their desires and arrogantly defrauding anyone or anything that gets in their dunder-headed way. This is both intellectually or not in my opinion. No hope, no escape, and finally and totally nothing. Nothing. Nothing to achieve and nothing to believe in. What a celebration that is! Now I feel some vomit coming up so I gotta go and chew on some more food. Moooo.

3/31/2008 01:53:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Jellyfish, jellyfish where art thou?
Jellyfish says nothing at all.

Before you wrap your tentacles around the Lovecraftian jellyfish meme that's...ummm....floating around here, you should look up a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story published in 1917 in the Strand entitled 'Horror of the Heights.' Doyle dropped the ball on the Cottingley Fairy photos but maybe he's enacting his vengeance from beyond the grave with an atmospheric jellyfish tulpa.

Or, maybe not.

But here are the relevant passages:

"Suddenly I was aware of something new. The air in front of me had lost its crystal clearness. It was full of long, ragged wisps of something which I can only compare to Overy fine cigarette-smoke. It hung about in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlight. As the monoplane shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for the mighty whale? The thought was in my mind when my eyes looked upwards and I saw the most wonderful vision that ever man has seen. Can I hope to convey it to you even as I saw it myself last Thursday?

"Conceive a jelly-fish such as sails in our summer seas, bell-shaped and of enormous size far larger, I should judge, than the dome of St. Paul's. It was of a light pink colour veined with a delicate green, but the whole huge fabric so tenuous that it was but a fairy outline against the dark blue sky. It pulsated with a delicate and regular rhythm. From it there depended two long, drooping green tentacles, which swayed slowly backward and forwards. This gorgeous vision passed gently with noiseless dignity over my head, as light and fragile as a soap-bubble, and drifted upon its stately way.

"I had half-turned my monoplane, that I might look after this beautiful creature, when, in a moment, I found myself amidst a perfect fleet of them, of all sizes, but none so large as the first. Some were quite small, but the majority about a big as an average balloon, and with much the same curvature at the top. There was in them a delicacy of texture and colouring which reminded me of the finest Venetian glass. Pale shades of pink and green were the prevailing tints, but all had a lovely iridescence where the shimmered through their dainty form. Some hundred of them drifted past me, a wonderful fairy squadron of strange, unknown argosies of the sky -- creatures whose forms and substance were attuned to these pure heights that one could not conceive anything so delicate within actual sight or sound of earth.


Never quite pictured Cthulhu as a big fucking jellyfish though. They have a tank full of the bioluminescent little fuckers at the Pgh. aquarium. They keep the area dark and I find them to be quite beautiful. Of course, my tune would change quickly if they were attacking me, but one could say the same about a fucking tiger too.

What is happening is entirely fair I think. We've spent a good portion of our time in paying homage to a system that has murdered huge swathes of the animal kingdom. We are the fucking enemy dude. It is entirely fitting that one of the swats up side the head that we so richly deserve is coming as the result of our societal waste and excrement.

And Johnny Depp's alien world comment wasn't particularly...ummmm...deep. Given the lack of light, bone crushing pressure, and icy cold, the oceans are an alien world when compared to the one we surface dwellers despoil.

Never found it particularly frightening though.
But again, if I were sinking with a 500 lb. weight attached to my legs I'd probably change my tune.

Of course, when on a Lovecraftian joyride, it helps to subscribe to H.P.'s phobias.
"I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering..."

Of course, with H.P., I imagine that anything not white, Anglo-Saxon & Protestant made the old boy shudder.


And while I find the lack of any reference to Satan refreshing, all instances of dark shamanic paths aside, I have some serious problems with this statement:

"And I think it deserves noting that it was the hysterical overstatement of the numbers of victims by the likes of Ted Gunderson, who speciously contended that upwards of a million American children a year go missing, which 20 years ago helped consign ritual abuse to the domain of urban legend."

Gunderson was just jumping on a bandwagon that was quite full of bullshit spewing Christian "Experts" before he ever came near it. The history of Satanic Ritual Abuse seems to be primarily one of hysteria and bullshit.

Oh, and lies. Lots and lots of lies.

&, heavens to fucking Betsy, in some instances, lies told by children. (My personal favorite involved a young child who said "They throw lots of babies in the bins. I was murdered when a baby and shoved in the bins." I know there's a flaw there but I just can't put my finger on it.)

Although, I think the children can be forgiven. They were just doing what was expected of them.

For example, in February of 1989, 9 children were seized from 4 Orkney Islands families. Allegations of sexual abuse quickly spiraled into accusations of "Satanic Rituals." At the proof hearing, the Sheriff ruled that the proceedings for custody were "fundamentally null and void" and dismissed them, primarily because most interviews had not been taped, and those that were taped "amounted to repeated coaching."
Oh, there were rituals referred to all right,but most folk know them as Halloween and Christmas. Like in McMartin, where a graduation gown was described in court as a "Satanic robe," if evidence doesn't exist, the true believers will just make it up.

In the aftermath, one girl said that during one interview "she had been told to draw a picture of a circle with her family in it. There had to be a man in the middle, and she had to add herself and her best friend. This was later to be described as a picture of a ritual."
Another girl said, "I was put in a room with a piece of paper and a pen and told to write down what happened, and if I didn't write it down I wasn't coming out."
A third girl said, "I got bribed with a new pair of shoes. I was told that if I said something more I could have two pairs."

In a Nottingham case in the mid 80s, evidence for child abuse was fairly overwhelming. But British social workers, influenced by American ritual abuse bullshit, were insisting on the satanic ritual element, much to the annoyance of the police who felt it would seriously weaken their case.
One adult witness to the abuse relates how his interviewer, very early on, brought up witches, rituals, and "parties" held at other houses. He denied having any knowledge of any of this but it didn't deter the "Expert," who proceeded to repeatedly drive him around to find the "party houses." Eventually he began pointing out houses.

Later he had this to say, "I have never been to any of these houses and everything I have told [her] is lies. I've told her the truth more than once but she wouldn't believe me so I just said anything. At one stage I have pointed these houses out, that [she] had showed me, to police officers but I was too frightened to tell them I'd made it up. I thought I'd get into trouble. The only things I know about witch-craft and magic are the things I've seen on the telly."

Talk about "paving the road to Hell with good intentions," eh?

These examples are far more common than cases backed up with anything remotely approaching evidence.
It appears that, amongst Christians, yelling Satan is the moral equivalent of yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater, accompanied by the same unrestrained and irrational mob hysteria.

In other words, Satanic Ritual abuse has the appearance of an urban legend because in most cases it is a fucking urban legend.
And I gots to tell ya, huge chunks of the comments through the history of this site haven't done much to make it seem any less than an urban legend. I'd say this place needs a good de-bunking, but I do seem to remember a prior post where de-bunking was given the thumbs down, but "de-bugging," well that was just peachy.So, I'd say some folk need to seriously de-bug their viewpoints.
(As an aside, after seeing Friedkin's 'Bug,' I can't help wondering which of the staunch paranoiacs will opt to overturn the gasoline can as a solution.)

I also seem to remember the McMartin archeologist's report being linked to here months and months and months ago as if that shoddy, willfully negligent hunk of wind was proof of anything. I'd like to see some follow up with the "archeologist" so he can explain exactly how a wheel-chair bound senior, her middle-aged female staff, and twenty something son managed to maneuver the dump truck full of dirt they would have needed to fill in those "tunnels" and that "room" without anyone seeing them.
Maybe the dark shamans teleported the dirt there, eh? Or maybe it was anti-gravity. Maybe Nick Cook can write a book about it.


I do love the lurid detail provided by the News of the World:
"kids were reportedly "loaned out" to wealthy yachtsmen for "rape cruises."
Nice and attention grabbing.
But that's what tabloid journalism is isn't it? Nice and lurid. One can almost see the surface mock outrage hiding the average readers real desire to masturbate furiously at the thought of having a "sex slave."

Ah, those damn rich folk & their shenanigans, eh? Here's another news flash for ya, there is apparently a decent chunk of the male population who will stick their weiners in anything that will sit still long enough for them to get it in, whether that's a little kid or a dead goddamned deer. Children are molested by all manner of folk.
All the time. Why should the "elite" be any different?


Or is it shocking because you've spent your life believing "the elite" were somehow better just because they were more adept at collecting money than the average bear. Who is dumb enough to believe that wealth = moral character anyway?
Humans apparently need to believe. I understand that. They need their idols and their messiahs. And it doesn't seem to matter one itty bitty tinker's tit that all previous idols have crumbled around them, raining chunks of masonry on their "deep in denial" pates, while their messiahs continually and without fail, leave the dumbstruck faithful standing slack-jawed at their altars like cuckolded brides and bridegrooms waiting for a promised return that never seems to occur. I think it's a rule somewhere that "followers" will most assuredly find "leaders."

But if you think molesting waifs the exclusive realm of the rich and famous, I suggest you look up the Forde Inquiry, examining allegations of abuse in Queensland institutions. There, essentially poor uneducated young nuns, along with the obligatory predatory priests, were shipped to Queensland and put in charge of other youngsters.
They engaged in such resounding Christian behavior as "vicious floggings, sexual abuse, starvation as punishment, tying children to posts using neck collars, exorcising left-handed children, and keeping any child who questioned this treatment locked in dark, lightless cells beneath the orphanage, sometimes for years."
There were even bonfires used to burn the corpses of children who weren't strong enough to survive God's love.
The Protestants were, of course, no better.

They got away with it because no one ever came to visit.

There wasn't a well moneyed yoo-hoo anywhere to be found around those institutions. Just a staff of "good Christians" living out this dictum from Proverbs 23:13-14: "Withhold not correction from the child: for [if] thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell."

I imagine that to the majority of the world's population that exists in, what we would consider, poverty, every single person posting here looks "wealthy."

Now, in 2000 alone, there were supposedly 879,000 substantiated claims of child abuse. 10% of these involved sexual abuse. That's 87,900 substantiated claims of sexual abuse of children in one year alone. If you took the last 50 years of substantiated and unsubstantiated claims of elite ritual abuse, do think the number of children affected would even come close?
Then you have these statistics:

* 30-40% of victims are abused by a family member.
* Another 50% are abused by someone outside of the family whom they know and trust.
* Approximately 40% are abused by older or larger children whom they know.
* Therefore, only 10% are abused by strangers.

Gee, sounds like the real problem is Uncle Bob and George the mechanic. Didn't Freud develop his Electra Complex primarily because he was confronted with so many stories of young girls being diddled by daddy that he couldn't believe they were literally true? Maybe they weren't just stories after all.

Blaming it on Satan or those rich folk kind of makes us look like a species of vampire, much too terrified to look at our own decayed Dorian Grey-like reflection in the motherfucking mirror.
It's a neat dodge.
Same with the mind control angle.
Helps us abdicate our complicity in our own doom. Or maybe GW, between popping a toddler in the ass and orchestrating the entrainment of a docile populous, uses Air Force One to air drop massive amounts of trash in the oceans in order for it to mutate into the primordial jelly-fish spewing stew that it's becoming.

& this:

"All through the Bush years, scores of non-Republicans have anticipated the brutal full-flowering of traditional dictatorship with all the trappings: martial law, mass internment and the cancellation of elections. Through much of the Clinton years, many non-Democrats looked for the same. It didn't come (though some are still waiting). It's as if they've not only expected the worst, but sought it, to put them out of their misery. But the worst exceeds their expectations, and their misery is to be protracted indefinitely."

is just so cute considering the number of unfounded hysteria ridden predictions I've read here over the years. From bridges crumbled with sonic weapons to unrealized predictions of impending war with Iran to air-bound nukes that signal the long awaited end-game rather than the military incompetence it really was. I suppose that this is what comes from having one's view of the military-industrial complex informed by pop culture gibberish as much or more than any real knowledge. Now we've adopted the "slow death" meme, eh? In my best 'Church lady' voice I feel compelled to mutter a "How convenient."
I've come to the conclusion that conspiracy buffs wax their weiners to end-game scenarios like most men yank it to Maxim.
Here's David Icke within hours of the 911 attacks: "In my opinion the unprecedented events of the last few hours imply to me that the End Game Scenario is now in play. it may only be a matter of hours before martial law is declared, the Constitution suspended, and FEMA put in control. The national Gaurd[sic] would be mobilized, and likely, be sent to NEIGHBORING states where they would be more willing to fire on civilians."

Boy, this sounds familiar, doesn't it?


And Speaking of vampires and other assorted predators, I think that, to every other species on the planet, we humans all look like predators.
Or maybe a virus. Maybe the mitochondria have seen The Matrix too. At least through our eyes anyway. They see our inherent brotherhood. Maybe they're working right now to teach us how to "kill slowly" just like our esteemed leaders.

One can...ummm...hope, can't one?

3/31/2008 02:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

eye knot gaia, gaia, gaia

George A Romero/Judas Priest: Eat Me Alive

On You Tube

Wrapped tight around me
Like a second flesh hot skin
Cling to my body
As the ecstasy begins
Your wild vibrations
Got me shooting from the hip
Crazed and insatiable let rip

Eat me alive
Eat me alive

Sounds like an animal
Panting to the beat
Groan in the pleasure zone
Gasping from the heat
Gut-wrenching frenzy
That deranges every joint
I'm gonna force you at gun point

To eat me alive
Eat me alive

Bound to deliver as
You give and I collect
Squealing impassioned as
The rod of steel injects
Lunge to the maximum
Spread-eagled to the wall
You're well equipped to take it all

So eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive
Eat me alive...

3/31/2008 02:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah I read Leonard Horowitz' book -- he relies on gematria or "one-to-one correspondence" of letter and number, therefore he's no different than anything Western civilization cranks out.

As for using up energy -- sickness is caused by EXTRA energy in the body but it's just not harmonized. So to shoot energy out the pineal gland while in full-lotus you actually heal yourself because you transform lower emotions (lust, anger, fear, worry) into bliss-light or love-light, healing energy. You also take in the lower emotions of the people around you -- so if a person is an alcoholic and angry then you feel your liver get hot, sadness, you feel the lungs, fear the kidneys, worry, the pancreas.

As for lust -- well since this energy exchange works on complementary opposites then it's a matter of connecting the life-force energy of the reproductive organs with the heart energy whereas the left-brain dominance of the West cuts off that connection causing fear, anger, worry and sadness to dominate.

At first I wasn't sure if I was just losing energy or not -- but then I realized that if I do this too much then I also have to convert the lust energy I've taken in from females (or male perverts) and make sure it gets ionized into heart energy again, or else in sleep, subconsiously, it will convert back into water.

So normal loss of sex energy is not harmonized with the mind -- it's separated from the brain through left-brain dominance and therefore it's separated from the other organs and emotions and the connection between sex and love is lost.

3/31/2008 06:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

P. 72 of Willy Ley's book "For Your Information: On Earth and in the Sky" confirms what I always expected: the ship radar activated bioluminescence of single-celled organisms. Nov. 30, 1951, the British Premier. German scientist Professor Kurt Kalle thinks the origin is shock waves.

Natural resonance revolution.

3/31/2008 09:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A novel flow visualization technique using bioluminescent marineplankton II. Field studies
Rohr, J.; Latz, M.I.; Hendricks, E.; Nauen, J.C.
Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of
Volume 20, Issue 2, Apr 1995 Page(s):147 - 149
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/48.376679
Summary:The broad scope of this study is to investigate whether the flow induced stimulation of naturally occurring luminescent plankton can be effectively utilized as a method of flow visualization in the field. The primary goal is to determine the nature of flow around a moving dolphin based on the luminescent response of in situ plankton to hydrodynamic stimulation

3/31/2008 09:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

is this site full of 60 yr old rich white christian women from 80's movies starring rodney dangerfield? if not, who the fuck is gonna care about god's great and glorious cock and balls?

3/31/2008 09:52:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/31/2008 10:29:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

......George A Romero...



Just_another_dick...

hi.
you're a great writer.
"I've come to the conclusion that conspiracy buffs wax their weiners to end-game scenarios like most men yank it to Maxim."
it's a valid point, I guess...but that's like getting mad at people grabbing canned goods after a nuclear strike...sort of..
But really, I think it's clear to most people here that
"Gee, sounds like the real problem is Uncle Bob and George the mechanic."
that's true, obviously and it's even more of a problem than whatever Satanic Ritual abuse may or may not be occurring.
I think that Jeff has been showing a common thread that goes back to the formation of these cults...they do exist. And Mind Control is a real thing dude. MK Ultra etc...
Read Tranceformation of America by Cathy Obrien.
It shows how the whole reptilian thing fits in even. For real!
I don't know. I certainly dig what you said about not being cattle for Jeff's farm.
So what you're saying is, more rigorosity is always a good thing right?
Sincerest Thanks

3/31/2008 10:32:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fletch, I think what he's saying is those who don't ram the goose, stroke the goat. Nothing more than that, really. You're reading too much into it. Quit whining already, will you?

4/01/2008 09:15:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

"those who don't ram the goose, stroke the goat"
well, if you want to be simplistic...
you are always talking about some sexual perversion, aren't you?
ha ha.
whining?
how was i whining?
you quit whining that I'm whining!

4/01/2008 09:31:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/01/2008 10:49:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/01/2008 12:44:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

GGG....you have an overactive imagination. But nothing I could say would convince you of that. And so it goes with believers (whatever their beliefs are) if you truly believe, well...that's real power, right?
reminds me of the scene from Conan the Barbarian where James Earl Jones, Thulsa Doom, invites his disciple, a lovely young girl, to jump to her death.
That is Power! that is Strength!
but no one could break Doom's spell, just as no one could break yours, Drew.

no one could break the spell
except Conan when he lopped off Thulsa's head...
so let's do that shall we?
decapitate the concept of god if you must, if you can and you will break the spell, right?
or is that backwards?
OK putting it in those terms of either or isn't fair you say?
I didn't build the thing!

4/01/2008 12:46:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

stop whining!

4/01/2008 12:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While 34 states make bestiality a crime, the sexual abuse of animals remains legal in Florida. The sexual abuse of animals is not only cruel but also an indicator of other violent and sexually deviant crimes. A study published in 2002 found that 96% of juveniles who had engaged in sex with nonhuman animals also admitted to sex offenses against humans. Because bestiality is legal in Florida, prosecutors are unable to address this cruelty.

4/01/2008 12:48:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

It's an entertainingly Boschean world JAD presents, filled with low plebeian uncles humping lying toddlers.

Perhaps the public obsession with rich-people versions of such unpleasant scenarios that seems so unjust and misdirected to ol' JAD there (who seems to be working in the same department as those weirdos at FMSF - strange company to run in, man) is ordinary social jealousy and curiosity, y'know, Lives of the Rich and Incestuous sorta like. Sorta like Paris Hilton but with all nasty perversion.

Trick is, there's a big difference between Uncle Hindbrain siring cousin-sisters on his mother and the kind of weird-ass shit that forms the back steps to so many thrones and fills the holiday plans of so many Sheikhs and bankers.

When Ned down the road is found to be crossing the line too unacceptably for therapy to seem like an option, he can be ostracized, exposed, shattered, or even (as in a case on my little island I keep hearing about - I love gossip) slaughtered like a hog by his own neighbours. Or a person could even call the cops, although I have to say you're better off dealing with that kinda stuff without 'em if you can. They're not always so helpful, depending on their own social positioning and interests.

When Thorton Bumpoker the Third, however (not his real name) uses a friend of mine not only as a cock sock but to entice other (26 at least) little boys into the game...he doesn't pay. Not a day in jail (although charged and convicted), not a dime out of pocket (not until after his death).

There's nothing you can do about people like that. Not unless you are interested in taking military-grade measures at your own risk and expense. And such people have friends with long memories.

Power not only protects such men, it attracts others (their victims included) to participate, unlike Uncle Wood Alcohol's dirty, unappealing disease-prod and nonexistent benefits package.

In fact, for co-operative little boys, all kinds of jobs and options open. Strange things go on under the sun and moon in quiet neighbourhoods - things much more complex and interesting than mere foolish rituals.

Breeding programs, apprenticeships, oh my it's a big world out there. Debunk or bunk all you want, folks. Even should you stumble across a chunk of truth here and there (or even a name and address or two) it won't do you any good, whether you have an interest or not.

JAD, you ever think your very specific 'debunking' interests are just as strange and shortsighted as those of information promulgators like, say, Ted Gunderson? Antipropaganda serves the same interest as propaganda. Your focus blinds you.

Off to make bagels and consider moving even further away from my fellow men,
Lord Reptor.

4/01/2008 12:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gurdieff and the Triode Amplifier: The I-thought is the Pre-Amp, Taoism is the Triode Amplifier

Normally the mind is weak and we are controlled by our emotions, causing sickness and lack of potential free energy.

As Gurdjieff states the West relies on dualism -- whereas he relies on the Law of Three. There is an exception though in the West -- THE TRIODE AMPLIFIER.

To turn your mind into a triode amplifier you first need a PRE-AMP. The I-thought -- without visions and without words -- is the pre-amp grid which reverses and amplifies the weak current that normally exists in our brain.

80% of our brain's energy is used for vision but when we are asleep people rely on sound to wake us. Just as Einstein used the Doppler Effect to develop his theory of relativity -- so too does the phase-shift of frequency create a significant increase in amplitude. That's the secret of quantum chaos Brian Goodwin -- a biologist who authored "Temporal Order of Cells" and is now the inspiration for digital biology at M.I.T. Basically Kirkhoff's Law -- harmonic functions -- apply equally to mechanical and electrical systems.

So back to your brain -- the pineal gland exists between the ears -- in the center of the head. When we hold onto the I-thought we activate the pineal gland as the pre-amp grid, just like a triode tube amp.

So normally there's ALWAYS a weak current between the inner ears -- the grid of the I-thought blocks that current and then amplifies it as a reversed current -- a 180 degree shift.

This is just like how pedaling a bike makes you go forward -- but you can't explain this to someone, they just have to learn how to do it. The first time I was lied to, that I remember, was when I was taught how to ride a bike. The mind or talking and seeing is cheap. We learn through experience.

Einstein liked to use bike riding as a metaphor -- just keeping moving so we off-set the inertia which normally makes the wheels wobble side to side. You can see this by holding a wheel at the axle and spinning it -- you can't hold it because it wobbles side to side.

So gravity is just the velocity and acceleration of the forward motion while the mass causes the inertia. Intensity of energy is actually caused by frequency, not mass as amplitude. So gravity uses logarithmic math while quantum energy uses divide and average statistics but BOTH are dualistic. The triode amp is different -- it uses Gurdjieff's Law of Three whereby the I-thought, as the Pre-Amp, harmonizes the Will and Consciousness.

The amplified current is the kidney energy (will), the spinning of the wheel, is the reverse breathing, activated through the I-thought.

But remember -- the whole system relies on putting that PRE-AMPLIFIER or grid in place.

Gurdjieff emphasized that most Western alchemists just focused on the chemistry - what Taoists call the Jing -- and therefore the energy level was just left at the emotional level.

He said the reason is because the West is too materialistic and didn't take into account that alchemy starts with the I-thought. So will power is driven by the I-thought -- the YI or intention in Taoism -- reverses the desire of what our eyes see, so that the weak current between our ears now, with the pre-amp in place -- the grid of the I-thought, is activated, reversed and AMPLIFIED.

Welcome to your new triode amplifier system -- enjoy it's hi-fi quality! haha.

4/01/2008 02:13:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/01/2008 03:11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fletch wins the award for most posts deleted in one thread. Someone please rpesent him with the Grand Prize.

4/01/2008 04:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You have just won........a brand new Triode Amplifier System!

4/01/2008 09:12:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Spare kidneys included.

4/01/2008 09:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

uni cunts.

4/01/2008 10:54:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok what I really meant to say was

VACUUM POLARIZATION due to puberty creating poltergeists or similar processes created in Taoist Alchemy as per this new paper published in the journal Neuroquantology:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0801/0801.0382v2.pdf

Big Difference (not).

4/02/2008 12:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"JAD, you ever think your very specific 'debunking' interests are just as strange and shortsighted as those of information promulgators like, say, Ted Gunderson? Antipropaganda serves the same interest as propaganda. Your focus blinds you."

Weirdos calling other weirdos, weirdos. Ah, what an amazing world this is.

4/02/2008 12:42:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Intriquing post Anonymous 3/29/2008 11:16:00 AM

In response to your query -

"So... aren't those of us who are fascists, criminals, cretins, born of a secret act through Wisdom? Is it our task to see through the fog?"

Yes. But we must admit the grim reality, and recognize the terrile truth that we do indeed exist in the fog, and that we are by volition or acquiescence "fascists, criminals, cretins, born of a secret act through Wisdom."

This is the arduous journey all the prophets course. Cutting through this fog, and returning to the creator, or the creative force, and becoming Christed, or initiated, or ascended, or blessed by this or that god or goddess, dying the death of the body, lifting the fog, or miasma, or the veil of maya is the living example for all humanity. Tragically humanity is woefully lacking in the capability to operate on, or ascend to these higher realms, woefully failing to seek the light, and focusing instead ignorantly on the darkness of material existence. All these monsters are projections of our own disturbed souls. The horrible fact that these monsters are sometimes concretized by humanities insane focus on, and delirious adoration of that which is notgod, - insures our collective doom. We (all humanity) are notgod bugs, doomed to selfimposed extinction.

4/02/2008 01:37:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Reptor..hehehe..

Mark I'm having a similar problem. I find myself quoting from scripture when I'm absolutely sure that the bible is manmade.

Anony 666. I prefer John's take on the "comforter".

Richard..Here's a link you need to add to your paeder principal..

http://www.rubberduckpsi.blogspot.com/

4/02/2008 03:24:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

well now that's a sticky slope right there. An obvious, stupid slope that i'll be happy to get stuck on.
If you believe God created it all, then the Bible isn't man made. Nothing is (but is not...oooh, deep)
In fact, god created the teletubbies too.
kinda makes one hate god.
or the meme of god if you will.
Then you have the whole problem of Free-will (or the illusion of it)
But hating a drought doesn't make it rain. You need only be creative enough to survive the situation. Some people simply move to more humid climates.
But no one wants to talk about God.
at least not here on this thread, or even on the discussion board really.
How microcosmic. But not really.
I proceed from false analogies and flawed logic all the time, mostly without being aware of it or having the honesty to admit it.
" We (all humanity) are notgod bugs, doomed to selfimposed extinction." is something I find myself agreeing with most of the time. Especially when I think about war. Or uncle bob...
But then there's the whole Eugenics agenda, slicker now with chemtrails, vaccines, flouride...supposedly...
But then, there is that pesky "comforter" that John speaks of.
Why would humanity need a comforter, in the form of a messiah? Obviously one can see the need. But it's a subjective point if you think it's ok to believe in that comfort. Most people see that as a crutch. And then they create their own crutch.
So I am left with more questions than answers. Life seems more of a mystery to me all the time--the more i learn--
until i fall back on one of my crutches. Yes i know, i'm weak. And I'm whining.

4/02/2008 08:00:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

from rael.org
raelians...great googly moogly!
"! Message to Pedophiles !
Even if we are in favor of sexual freedom between consenting adults, if you are a pedophile you are definitely not welcome in the Raelian movement. Not only because our position is very clear condemning it as a mental disease, but also because, contrary to the politics of the Catholic church which has been hiding pedophile priests (see nopedo.org) and moving them from parish to parish so they can make more victims of their disgusting behavior, the Raelian movement has a strict policy of not only expelling immediately any member suspected of pedophilia or sex with people under legal age BUT ALSO to immediately report them to the police.

Some of you may have been attracted to our philosophy due to defamatory articles in French speaking newspapers and magazines, stating that our philosophy being in favor of sexual freedom would then favor pedophilia. The reality is strictly the opposite. When individuals have a fulfilled sexual life, they don't even think of imposing their sexuality on children, unlike Catholic Priests unfortunately do, due to their lack of sexuality. Some articles even refer to the Raelian order of angels, a congregation of women who want to develop their femininity and who can make the vow, if they wish so, to devote their sexuality only to our Creators and their Prophets. They would then wear a pink feather around their neck to openly show their desire to have no sex. These women decide freely to do so, just as catholic nuns would do; this is part of the free sexuality that we profess, the right to say no to sex as well. In this organization angel minors also have to signal the fact that they are under the legal age for sex, by wearing a black feather around their neck to make sure that no adult Raelian approach them at any time with sex in mind. Some of these minor angels also choose to have no sex at all, thus refusing sex with potential minor partners which most young girls experience during their teens. They would then wear a pink feather as well. Some newspapers have seen the minors' beautiful decision of reserving their sexuality for our Creators as an indication of pedophilia, which is completely ridiculous.

It is very clear in the Raelian Philosophy that pedophilia is a sign of mental disease and will never be tolerated within the organization. Any member, whatever his rank, who would be found guilty of such a behavior will be expelled and reported to legal authority."

well, thank the designer that they made that clear

4/02/2008 10:30:00 AM  
Blogger Fructedor said...

WV - bathypo.

On the road this week, and difficult to find time to participate as I’d like, considering the interest of this latest post by Jeff and the effervescence it’s provoked. I hope a stolen half hour will be enough to get a start – such a lot of stuff.

Jeff’s post is really quite a mouthful. Let’s start at the bottom – “ … you can always say it will all come out all right in the end …” Of course I understand that we have here an example of what is known as ‘writer’s conceit’ – conceit here being not a synonym for arrogance, but rather sleight of hand – which allows him to pull off the pirouette “ … but you know what comes out in the end”. Meaning jellyfish shit. Neat work, but it nonetheless seems rather reductive to squeeze everything that’s been written by any number of committed people into the hippy-dippy formula “… it will all turn out right in the end”. This is not at all what I’ve read in the many interesting comments posted – they seem a lot deeper and more complex than that to me.

Misplaced hope – no problem there – I think it’s clear to us all that as long as people continue to give credence to – put their hope in – such paper-thin puppet shows as modern political theatre, they’re not only wasting their time, they’re also swimming energetically into the bloody mouths of cannibal parasites. But this does not discount hope as a valid human experience. Any more than fighting for the wrong army proves that courage is a worthless concept. Or that divorce after thirty years of marriage proves that love is rubbish.

Jeff regularly uses work by such artists as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to set the tone for his pieces. I find it hard to believe that he really thinks that such work is no more than the squeaking of shrimps passing the time until they graduate to the status of hors d’oeuvres. Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Frank Zappa? Human existence as no more than plankton? Human creativity as no more than the arbitrary dreams of submarine sludge? Life itself as no more than the flickering of random electricity over landscapes of meat?

Why are the hopeless more dangerous than the hopeful? Because of the random hopeless violence to which recognition of their condition may inspire them? Their uncontrollable nature? And why, if all our endeavours are no more than screens behind which we cower to hide from the fear of death, would Darwin be any more valid than, say, Mickey Spillane? Or De Sade any more forthright than, say, Britney Spears? If it’s all just shit becoming?

I also totally fail to understand how and why apparently intelligent people react with such idiocy to any statement which uses the C word, the D word, or even – God forbid – the G word. Such sinners against PC thinking are immediately relegated to the tiny box reserved for believers in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. For example ‘ … Tim lost all credibility as soon as he mentioned the C word …” – or maybe the D word. This sort of stuff only demonstrates the dumb unimaginative limits of PC conformism.

The intention is what counts. It’s an interesting experience to watch or listen to lectures on the Internet rather than read the written transcript, for the very simple reason that as human beings, we are attuned to far more than the abstract form of the written word – body language, facial expressions and vocal vibrations are an essential part of our experience, and give us the message much more clearly. The probable fact that Obama uses alpha entrainment should come as no surprise, when you consider the incredible influence of TV and Hollywood on the dwindling minds of the Western masses. Surprising they hadn't thought of it sooner - but hey! Maybe they did and are only admitting it now, when they believe it's too late. Careful attention pays dividends.

Ending with a couple of personal comments that have surfaced over the last couple of days – Sounder was right when he said that a certain gentleman from Atlanta gives his game away easily despite attempting to hide his light under an anonymous shrub. I’ve only been reading his stuff for three or four years now, so maybe I really haven’t got it yet – but his MO seems pretty constant to me – a couple of sneaky ad hominem comments designed to draw blood, followed by a tantrum about how words are being thrust into his mouth and no-one understands him. Gets boring.

And Drew is definitely seriously fucked up – as he states clearly and regularly in his posts, by the way – the message comes over loud and clear.

Not that either of them are my business, but since we’re apparently trying to separate the wheat from the chaff here …

IC I'm saving your post for later when I have time to look at it with decent attention.

The physical sciences have been demonstrating for decades now that reality exists on many more dimensions than just the three we all frolic in – or rather, think we frolic in. If these dimensions exist in simple matter, why would they not exist in human beings also, since we are all made of the same stuff? And is intelligence not an integral part of it? And is not intelligence then also present on all these levels? And if so, why would it be inaccessible to us – since we’re all made of the same stuff? That is my whole point – there’s a whole lot more to this than meets the eye, and certainly more than meets the miserable machine that is presented as the only way of deciphering our existence. There are dimensions to our life that are way beyond our 3D imagining - but not beyond our capacity to experience. What is really going to count is what we do with the experience.

No time for more tonight.

4/02/2008 11:54:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Fletcher, here is what I'm saying, distilled as I can best do it in under 4 thousand words this time. I'm using Mac Tonnies Streiber discovery as just an example and convenient lead-in.


Mac Tonnies discovers, after a marathon Whitley Streiber reading session, that old Whitley is a bit of a liar.

Mr. Tonnies concludes:

"Communion: Whitley discovers the deceased doctor’s letter and is therefore unable to interview him.

Breakthrough: Whitley searches out Sarbacher and speaks to him over the phone. The doctor recounts an amazing story involving fantastic material of implied non-human origin from which reverse engineered technology was making its way into defense contracting. Whitley sends Sarbacher a package. Days after having contacted Sarbacher and having been told this highly classified information, Whitley’s phone rings. It’s UPS with unexpected news. The UPS driver, package in hand for delivery, was told that Sarbacher had fallen out of a boat and drowned.

Coincidence? Or was MIB faster than UPS?

FADE TO BLACK

So which Whitley Strieber to believe?

Even granting that some inexplicable things have happened to Whitley, as it is reasonable and I am willing to do, they have happened to a man who confabulates. And so that I am not accused of charging Whitley with lying, or some other form of outright deception, here is a useful definition of what it means to confabulate:

"(v) confabulate (unconsciously replace fact with fantasy in one’s memory)"

And given that Whitley confabulates, how can anyone reliably sift fact from fantasy in his stories?"


The same could be said about most conspiracy theorists that I've read. With their annoying tendency to lump the de-bunked in with the provable, they make it extremely difficult to believe anything they say. In my opinion, any conscientious researcher would bend over backwards in order to exorcise the bullshit. Instead, conspiracy theorists seem obsessively possessed with a desire to paint with the widest brush possible. It's as if they assume that if any conspiracy theory is proved untenable, then that automatically proves every incident of conspiracy false. This is the only reason I can fathom why conspiracy researchers prefer keeping their murky waters even muddier than they have to be.

Take Whitley's Tale as an example. I think it's fairly safe to say that Whitley's idea of truth & reality are probably his, and his alone. Does that "de-bunk" every single case of abduction and supposed alien encounter?
Of course not.
But it will be a good marker for future research.
If Whitley is still trotted out as an example of "real" alien encounter by future researchers, without mentioning his tendency to confabulate, then I think it would be quite prudent to take whatever those researchers say with a few hundred grains of salt.

You can find the entire Tonnies' post here:

http://www.thekeyhoereport.com/?p=25

4/02/2008 12:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK so last night I was reading at Hard Times, the local anarchist cafe (for Mpls. readers). I left there at 3 a.m. or so, after shooting energy into a friend of mine who is really into Algernon Blackwood and his "cosmic horror" buddies (previously he was into Crowley). We shared garlic cloves as I recovered from that 75% discounted Easter candy at Walgreens. haha.

Anyway then I had 3 mutual climaxes with this young well-endowed female who sat across from me. Of course I was sitting in full-lotus as I do all day long.

Oh yeah I was reading Richard Feynman's autobiography and he was the Triode Amplifier master of western science. That's how he started his career -- fixing tube amps in the depression in NYC.

What's fascinating is that he wondered about "streamless consciousness" and so focused his mind when sleeping to see if it slowed down or just smeared into gibberish. He broke his sleep into two intervals so that he would double his dream mind yoga practice.

He figured out that it was the latter (the mind turned to gibberish) but then he also developed lucid dreaming. Finally he realized his dreams were symbolic and took advice from a Freudian analyst about it.

But Feynman stopped just when things were getting interesting: He dreamt that the back of his skull was getting soft and that an metal rod had penetrated the back of his skull.

For anyone steeped in studies of alchemy it's clear that he had developed his astral body for spirit travel. For example the skull DOES become soft when the body is filled with electromagnetic fields -- as detailed in the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" and as I experienced and as detailed by qigong master Chunyi Lin -- http://springforestqigong.com.

Feynman already was dreaming in color (DMT-pineal gland) and was young, healthy -- so his emotional ethereal body was already strong. He was developing his Higher Emotional consciousness but he stopped.

Anyway Feynman just assumed that his brain was "bored" with lucid dreaming and therefore was making up new gibberish -- he didn't want to analyze it and of course Freudian psychology didn't provide any answers.

The subconscious answer though lies in his Triode Tube Amp work - Feynman focused on one particular problem which first gave him the "genius" reputation. A radio had really strong noise -- and Feynman figured out that the tube amps had to be reversed because the preamp was getting to hot to fast.

As I've stated the I-thought is the Pre-amp and Feynman, by relying soley on mind yoga, ALSO heated up his brain too fast, without grounding the energy in his lower tan tien of Taoist alchemy.

Gurdjieff states very clearly that the problem with the West is that the sex energy remains undeveloped -- and clearly Christianity doesn't develop the sex energy (not CONSCIOUSLY that is). Most people consider Gurdjieff a Sufi but he stated that he relied on Pythagorean teachings -- the original gnostic Logos of the Bible. The Logos goes back to the time of tantra in Buddhism and in fact Gurdjieff's teaching is most closely related to mahayana buddhism, as detailed in Professor and yoga master Nan, Huai-chin's books (best-sellers in Asia, but unknown in the West, precisely because Nan focuses on grounding the energy in the body, instead of relying on mind yoga).

The connection between the Taoist lower tan tien -- or what Gurdjieff called the Moving Center -- and the Intellectual Center (the upper tan tien, the brain) is the middle tan tien or the Emotional Center (the heart). What happens is that the heart emotion is over-excitement as the alchemical transformation of sex energy -- and the love energy is shot out of the eyes as love-light. That's how tantra works -- you shoot the heart energy out of the eyes, through the pineal gland, but at the same time you take in the Moving center energy from where you shot the Love energy. It's just yin-yang or negative-postive harmonics.

As Gurdjieff states, the Moving Center is NEUTRALIZED or grounded by the sex energy and this is why it's so important to develop the sex center. It's detailed how Gurdjieff also practiced what I call "O at a D" -- in Colin Wilson's book The Occult.

So in Taoism the meditation practice always focuses on the lower tan tien -- in order to take the electromagnetic love energy of the heart-mind -- and ground it in the stomach (so that the energy doesn't just stay at the electrochemical level of over-excitement). But this grounding also entails replacing the moving energy with the love energy -- and this is why Gurdjieff always ate very little food.

That was his tantric secret. I assure you that the western diet is totally against alchemy (whether it's lack of omega-3, too much omega-6 or sugar and salt, etc.)

Gurdjieff practiced what in Taoism is called a "modified bigu" diet.

Ramana Maharshi, for example, insists that even mind yoga, what he teaches, must rely on vegetarianism.

So anyway as the heart energy increases then the higher emotional consciousness is achieved -- but only when this is grounded in the stomach -- through pure logic as the source of the I-thought -- will Higher Intelligence be achieved (what's called Nirvikalpi Samadhi or the Emptiness in Taoism).

Just as Richard Feynman reversed the amp tubes so that the radio wouldn't overheat -- so too must the pre-amp, the I-thought, be reversed so that it's stored in the stomach, thereby causing the final level of alchemy described by Gurdjieff in a chart in the end of "In Search of the Miraculous" -- the heart-mind has now been completely filled with the sex energy converted into pure consciousness and, just as Ramana Maharshi achieved and Gurdjieff describes: the WILL (kidney reproductive energy of the moving center) and the I-thought are merged or united back into pure consciousness (the Number 8 person of Gurdjieff or the Level 8 consciousness of Mahayana Buddhism).

Just like Christ, Ramana Maharshi literally stopped his heart for over 10 minutes, but did so with total self-awareness, the I-thought as the Pre-Amp. This is the goal of Advaita Vedanta, the secret of the Gnostics, etc.

4/02/2008 12:50:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

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4/02/2008 12:55:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/02/2008 01:15:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/02/2008 01:17:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

most definitely win for most deleted coments on this thread.
thanks.
I just keep finding typos. embarassing ones, and omissions of entire inane sentences.
oh well.
JAD, thanks for that. I appreciate the dialog.
I have actually read Communion and Breakthrough, which I considered more thought provoking and inspiring than Communion, but as far as accepting what Whit says as the truth...well...it sparks the imagination somewhat at least.
I always wonder if he hasn't some kind of occipital lobe device implanted by the CIA for mind control experiments or something...i mean, i guess that's just as easy to believe as it is to doubt his abduction scenerio..
Chris Walken, in the movie version of communion was outstanding as always. Classic 80's stuff.
& thanks for the sourcing of Mac Tonnies.
I'll be sure to read that.

4/02/2008 01:20:00 PM  
Blogger Jim said...

Fully type out your comment as if going out an email, run the ABC spell checker, copy then paste on the 'leave a comment' section. Were only human. (-'

4/02/2008 01:36:00 PM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

Thought some of you might appreciate the following link(given the attention on this blog to self-congratulatory analysis(I'm guilty of this too), apocalypse, and "eastern philosophy"):


"Some political thinkers argue that the adoption of Eastern thought in the West has given people a way to accept capitalism, and “Empire,” by finding detachment from it. For the critic Slavoj Zizek, Western Buddhism and Hinduism “enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless this spectacle really is — what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw…”

--Thanks to J Orlin Grabbe

4/02/2008 02:25:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Fletcher, I'm not as unsympathetic as I appear to be.

Mr. Well's comment about killing people slowly brought to mind this comment by Kim Bealy:

" It would now appear that we are protecting the missiles by killing people slowly."

Miss Bealy was one of the women camped outside the US Air Force Base at Greenham in England, protesting the nukes there in the 80s.

She said this in response to the rash of ailments that afflicted protesters which appeared to be the result of microwave radiation bombardment.

4/02/2008 02:54:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have discovered some years ago that when I have serious minded dialog with outgoing mature educated atheists who are interested in answers to specific interpretations taken from the Holy Bible I am limited in my responses. I am stumped by this. I can only go so far in what I have learned. Verifying the authenticity of the divine character taken from the ancient texts. Yes there are a lot of interpretations that I cannot expose to certain people. If I were to do so then I would wittingly wreck their potential in understanding the hopefully authentic meanings of the writings.

I can show to any person that in the 900's BC the ancient manuscripts taken from the collection of books in the Holy Bible claim the sun is stationary and rotates. The sun also has its circuit throughout the cosmos. That it has an orbit that it lawfully travels by. That's it. I have to stop. I cannot go any further with the interpretation. There is more knowledge available but I am limited to go on even with some believers in a Creator.

I'm asking whether or not agnostics or atheists have a similar fate with their knowledge learned with say believers in a Creator God or in some kind of religion? That you find yourself limited to what you can or cannot say.

Excluding the fact that you may think it advantageous to be dirty minded sexually with a lady or foul mouthed with others because religious minded people would seem to be offended. But say if a husband of a close relative died you as an non-religious person would limit your sexual and foul mouthedness to hardly anything. Right? So are human secularists who do not completely believe in a Creator sometimes limited in their understanding of their gained knowledge because of believers or persons faithful to a religious sect?

I don't see it. I don't believe that they are limited but only by ignorance. Which is fair. We all are limited by our own ignorance. But I have found myself limited with the knowledge that I have gained with non believers or certain believers. I am somewhat perplexed by this. Do you in humbleness experience the same thing? This may sound arrogant but I wish that I could share certain interpretations but I cannot. I must keep these things to myself in hopes that the other person would gain a better understanding or desire to gain a better understanding separate from me. Then I can communicate more. I do not see myself as being a threat to anyone either because of this. ??? no answer? It seems simplistic almost feeble minded because I am not in any position of power or authority. Like say a Army General would be in. Or a high ranking Cardinal at the Vatican.

4/02/2008 03:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the reasons why I am limited would be because the person considers the question about the interpretation of holy scriptures to be a challenge and not genuine. That the spirit of competition is most important than say honest answers. And people who believe in a Creator God (or claim to) have somehow injured them in their lives.

4/02/2008 03:44:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

If Jeff quotes Lynn Margulis, not that note she is a U.S. scientist who has seen through the Bush Administration 9-11 lies--and is willing to talk publicly.

Part 9 of 12: on controlled demolition, summarized some physical evidence

San Francisco architect, Richard Gage, AIA, founding member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth [ae911Truth.org] at the Media Education Foundation community room, located at the back of the building where Woodstar Cafe is located, 60 Masonic Street, Northampton, MA, beginning at 7:00 pm on October 4, 2007. [Though the sign on the podium says University of Manitoba, so it's probably there ?]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SiJn7mr_IHE

Richard Gage AIA has been a practicing Architect for 20 years and became interested in the 9/11 WTC collapses after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on the radio in 2006, which launched his own unyielding quest for 9/11 Truth.

There has been a recent surge of highly respected individuals and scientists questioning the 'official' government version.

Last month [last year, 2007], world-renowned scientist, Lynn Margulis, Ph.D, distinguished Professor in Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation.

On Aug. 27 [2007] a member of the National Academy of Sciences and recipient of the National Medal of Science, Dr. Lynn Margulis, dismissed the official account of 9/11 as a “fraud.”:

Statement to this website 8/27/07 by Lynn Margulis:

"The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations. I arrive at this conclusion largely as the result of the research and clear writing by David Ray Griffin in his fabulous books about 9/11. I first met him when he was a speaker at a scholarly conference unrelated to 9/11. He immediately impressed me as a brilliant, outstanding philosopher - theologian - author, a Whiteheadian scholar motivated by an intense curiosity to know everything possible about the world.

On the plane home and for the next two days I did little else but read Griffin’s first book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor. From there I went on to read his even more disturbing account of the bogus 9/11 Commission Report, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which provides overwhelming evidence that the official story is contradictory, incomplete, and unbelievable.

It is clear to me that David Ray Griffin and his fellow critics are correct: the 9/11 "new Pearl Harbor" was planned in astonishing detail and carried out through the efforts of a sophisticated and large network of operatives. It was more complex and far more successful than the Allende assassination, the US bombing of our own ship the "Maine" that began the Spanish-American war (and brought us Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines), the Reichstag fire that was used to justify the suspension of most civil liberties in Germany in the 1930's, and even Operation Himmler, which was used by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland, which started World War II.

Whoever is responsible for bringing to grisly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork. Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.

I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html

4/02/2008 04:16:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

can i offer some ass-sucking now?
Mark, good stuff, thanks!!!

Belliosto, I couldn't help but connect to your post, on some level, even if i personally have no trouble sharing an interpretation of Scripture with a non-believer, especially. Not that i would really call myself a believer. I'm more of a rigorous intuiter. ha ha.
seriously though, I think something that was hinted at by your words is conveyed through the reactions we have to tragedy. Now some people will always find bitterness and hatred as the easy answer, the right answer. Others, no matter how much they doubt "God" find themselves inexplicably drawn to a sense of Faith. Is that just because somehow they were programmed during their upbringing?? Or perhaps we're hardwired for it. Atheists say it's because we are weak (or those that fall back on Faith are weak in times of intense struggle) I dunno.
so much for that.
But back to the idea of threatening dialog on the subject and other's reactions:
The subject of Eternal Damnation comes to mind especially.
It's a damnable heresy. The oldest known Scriptures NEVER taught anything that resembles a punishment like that. The word Hell is a mistranslation from Sheol, which means Grave. Oh sure, the Bible does speak of the Lake of Fire, but even that Judgement is only for a time, or aeion. Which somehow is translated as Eternity...
It's helpful to read some Biblical research done by someone like L.Ray Smith for example and to understand history as a series of opportunities for the powerful to dominate the less powerful. Religion just happens to be one of the best tools, so far.
So when atheists cite the abuses of the Catholic Church, for example, as proof that God is an ass, I agree with them. Or suffering. I agree, it sucks. It seems senseless. But I am not God.
And that's probably a good thing.
How else could we really learn the difference between good and evil without it though?
I know, i've painted a dull, brown box and jumped inside. Right. Because i've never considered the alternative, even embraced it, right?
wrong.
The human mind, even that of a professed believer is capable of all sorts of mental gymnastics.
I also think that as long as the person you are having the discussion with is even a little bit open, you can learn something about what you believe, if nothing else...
I don't understand either why people feel so threatened. Other than the whole cognitive dissonance thing..
Otherwise, i agree. inarticulate speech of the Heart and all that crap.

4/02/2008 07:31:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

I've been reading Jeff's posts for a while now (and enjoy them immensely), though I've always just kind of skimmed the comments, reading things I find interesting, following some links... aware of the presence of the usual drama and pissing contests you find on any blog, but not keeping up with the specifics.

I have to ask; how long has the kooky christian thing been going on here? I realize that, like the drama, I may have simply never payed enough attention to notice the extent of it before, but it seemed to me to be a 'one post in a while' thing, and now it seems like the missionairies have moved in. Am I wrong in my assessment? Have "intelligent design" bible believers always proselytized here, and I've just been oblivious to it for all this time?

Anyways, here's a fun site I felt like sharing.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

4/02/2008 07:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello All,
As a boy growing up on a farm in Minnesota, I came to appreciate the Bible stories at home and at church. In spite of my mild case of dyslexia, I completed reading the entire Bible by about the time I graduated from elementary school. My faith in God was strengthened by numerous answered prayers.

When I entered graduate school in 1958 to work toward a Ph.D. in chemistry, my faith in Scripture was seriously challenged by my major professor. I wondered if it were possible that I had been wrong all my life and my professor right. He seemed very certain about his ideas and he wanted me to do research toward the development of his theory of biochemical evolution. Since I was skeptical of his theory, I was asked to witness each of the significant findings of another graduate student working on evolutionary research next to me in the lab.

As a scientist and a Christian, I have been forced to weigh the evidence available from both science and the Scriptures in an area in which experimental proof is impossible to achieve. After examining both sides of this issue for 40 years, I submit the following reasons why I have retained my faith in God as the Creator.

Chemical evolution, based on random activity of molecules, fails to adequately account for the origin of the proteins required for even the simplest known free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium. This bacteria has one chromosome, a cell membrane, but lacks a cell wall and has the smallest genome of any known self-replicating organism. It has 470 genes, which contain an average of 1,040 nucleotide base pairs (bp). This implies that the average size protein coded for by these genes contains about 347 amino acids. The probability of forming, by a random assembly method, one such average-size protein molecule containing the amino acid residues in a required sequence is only 1/10451.

If the earth were made of pure carbon it would contain only about 1050 carbon atoms, but more than 10451 carbon atoms would be needed in order to make enough amino acids to form the proteins to achieve the probability of producing one protein molecule with the prescribed sequence. In other words, it would require an amount of carbon about 10401 times the size of the earth in order to achieve the probability of forming one required protein molecule with the specifications above! Realizing that the probability of producing proteins by a random assembly method is exceedingly small, some have proposed that DNA was formed by chemical evolution first and then it was used to direct the synthesis of the protein. This trades one problem for another. The random assembly of a gene containing 1,040 bp to code for a specified protein would be likely to require as much or more carbon than it would to make the protein directly by a random assembly method.

With a problem this great in forming one gene, imagine the problem of forming the 470 specific genes found in the one chromosome containing 580,070 bp: M. genitalium. Michael Behe, in his 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box, uses the term “irreducible complexity” to refer to such situations where all conditions must be met simultaneously in order for the organism to survive.

In spite of the excitement in the 1950s and early 1960s generated by research based on chemical evolution theory, the net result today is a clearer understanding of the magnitude of the problem of the origin of protein, DNA and life, without having found the answers. Since the only known method in nature for efficiently producing protein involves DNA, mRNA and tRNA interacting with proteins such as RNA polymerase, tRNA synthetases and ribosomal proteins, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that all were formed simultaneously as part of intelligent design.

Even though there is general acceptance of the evidence for small genetic changes which may be referred to as microevolution, hard evidence for the formation of any new species by macroevolution is lacking.

Evidence for intelligent design is widespread in nature. For example:

The motorized rotating flagellum of some bacteria.

Blood clotting and its control.

The high degree of organization within a typical cell.

Cell division and its control.

The system for protein synthesis.

The human eye.

The respiratory chain based in the highly organized mitochondria.

The biosynthetic pathway in which acetyl CoA is the key compound.

Acetyl CoA is derived primarily from fatty acids and glucose and can also serve as an intermediate in the conversion of excess carbohydrate into fat. Oxidation of acetyl CoA in the citric acid cycle results, through the electron transport system, in the storage of energy in the form of ATP for chemical syntheses or muscular contraction. The acetyl CoA can also serve as the starting material for the synthesis of a wide variety of products, such as natural rubber, fragrance of lily of the valley flowers, oil of roses, menthol, oil of ginger, oil of celery, oil of cloves, carotenes, vitamins A, D, E and K, plus all the steroids, such as cholesterol, the female hormones progesterone and estradiol, the male hormone testosterone, etc. This is a small sample of the wide variety of natural products derived from acetyl CoA.

Why don’t we humans produce natural rubber in our bodies instead of about 50 kinds of steroids? The types of products, from this carefully regulated pathway, are determined by the specific enzymes in that species which are present at that time. The predominant products from this pathway may vary with time for a given species. The delicate balance that exists in this pathway can be illustrated by the fact that women make their female hormone estradiol from the male hormone testosterone, which they also produce. This does not cause a problem unless a woman develops adrenal cancer, which increases the amount of adrenal tissue capable of producing testosterone as well as other steroids. The first symptom usually observed by a woman with adrenal cancer is that she suddenly has to shave every day and her voice lowers in pitch, due to the production of testosterone faster than her body can convert it to estradiol. It seems very unlikely that an extremely complex pathway as this one, with all of its interconnecting processes and required enzymes, could arise purely by chance without an intelligent designer. I see no compelling arguments, based on chemical evolution or Darwinian evolution, which make it more reasonable for me to believe in evolution than in creation.

Just as scientific theories based on interpretation of data obtained by observation of the natural world are never absolutely proven, likewise I can never prove that the Genesis account of creation is true. I was not an eyewitness but, as a Christian I can, by faith, search for the testimony given by eyewitnesses. Who were those eyewitnesses of the creation events? God (Gen. 1:1), the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God (Gen. 1:2), Jesus Christ the Word (John 1:1–14).

The writers of the Bible were under the inspiration of God (eyewitness) as they wrote and they were moved by the Holy Spirit (eyewitness). God’s daily progress report during the Creation Week stated that “it was good” or “very good.” Christ (eyewitness), the Creator of all things, endorsed the Genesis creation report by quoting from it and chiding others for their ignorance of it. God wrote in stone that He had created in six days, and He is quoted twice in Exodus telling Moses to tell the Israelites that fact as well … and I believe Him.

4/02/2008 08:00:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing, Drain. Tell Tom we send our love. Have you had problems with porn, alcohol and drugs too? Please read my blog when you get a chance and let me know what you think about my theory of Orderty.

Muddy Elephant, nice find. Of course its resonance will be drowned out by the bible thumpers, but I've developed the ability, thanks to Gee, to look myself in the 3rd Eye (from the son).

4/02/2008 08:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dada,

They're Eve's friends. Just ask Swanny. You're right, though, we're in the midst of another invasion. It makes Sounder happy. He has a whole new flock to molest.

4/02/2008 08:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Religious fantasy advances in small steps by which those who already ‘see a higher truth’ help the less gifted to achieve that sublime state by using various devices.

4/02/2008 08:42:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Hey Dwain..The professor makes more sense than 6 days of the jellyfish. Assuming your math is tight, would it not be possible for the 10,000 carbon units to organize themselves in the 12,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or in the vernacular' billions upon billions of years) all in the name of God?

It seems to me that you see "intelligent design" in the dimensions of magnetism, gravity, timespace, amplitude, frequency, electrochemistry, spin, etc. but these are all precursers to the 3d
"big picture". What happens to testosterone when we die? I would answer that question but that would be redundant.

4/03/2008 01:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's funny how creationists and evolutionists go ON and ON and ON debating their side, never admitting to themselves that elements of both sides can be true.

Did Noah stuff a million animals and animal turds on a boat the size of a football field? NO. Creationists KNOW this could not have happened but they are invested in that lie... because they are afraid of having to rethink what the Bible is.

Do boxes of sprockets and gears shaken inside of a box for 20 million years ever produce a computer? NO. But scientists too are invested in the lie because they also don't want to rethink the dogma that built their careers.

Obviously, like MOST things in life, there is a middle way...

For those of you who continue to insist on waiting for the King that Never Comes... I tell you to go read Rev. 3:21. If you expect to live in a free world and not under the rule of police state fascists, dictators, a metallic Pentagon/DARPA army of robotic drones, RFID chips, out of control domestic surveillance, unrestrained Globalism, false flag terror, endless war for your kids, and all of the other shit that the EMPIRE BEAST © WITH CLAWS OF IRON is bringing to a Theater of War near you...

It really is time for the fairy tale parts of the Bible to go and for people to look at the more important messages in the Bible...

The stories of the Bible are a continuing history of exile and then change... Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden, Abraham asked by God to leave his home, Joseph taken to Egypt followed by his family, the Jews taken captive into Babylon, Jesus leading people out of Judaism to follow him, and Paul going in and leading people into his congregations.

Old systems full to the hilt with bullshit and lies are failing... they need to be rethought by a new generation... reworked, redone, remade into something new... i.e. Noah didn't pile a million animals on a boat??? So what if anything is that story really about?

There is no other "Kingdom" or "King" coming other than the one people on this planet choose or allow...

Timetunneler

4/03/2008 05:56:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

timetunneler,-Thanks

fletcher wrote...

“If you believe God created it all, then the Bible isn't man made.”

Sorry, this does not follow. I for instance can see God working through man in the following manner.
Let’s say that back in the day, there was a Big man that put a task to his underlings. Make a religion that will enable people of different cultural origins or social groups to interact better, and at the same time insure the validity of strong central authority structures. The underlings, being mere functionaries, went to the ‘experts’ and encouraged them to write a relevant script, that with a few edits came to serve the Big mans interests quite well, thank you very much. From this view the Bible is both State propaganda and also the receptacle of sublime truths.


belliosto wrote...

“One of the reasons why I am limited would be because the person considers the question about the interpretation of holy scriptures to be a challenge and not genuine. That the spirit of competition is most important than say honest answers. And people who believe in a Creator God (or claim to) have somehow injured them in their lives.”

The thing is belliosto most bible thumpers put the stuff out as assertions rather than as questions. Both the thumpers and the secular materialists are engaged in an orgy of competition. And people who believe that Jehovah stands in for the Creator God HAVE injured many lives.

fructidor wrote...

I also totally fail to understand how and why apparently intelligent people react with such idiocy to any statement which uses the C word, the D word, or even – God forbid – the G word. Such sinners against PC thinking are immediately relegated to the tiny box reserved for believers in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. For example ‘ … Tim lost all credibility as soon as he mentioned the C word …” – or maybe the D word. This sort of stuff only demonstrates the dumb unimaginative limits of PC conformism.

This is the old double dumb social control machine. It’s a, this is God/ there is no God, social control contest.

lord reptor that was a most excellent counter to JAD’s construct.

4/03/2008 06:38:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

well, apparently it is as you say, ericswan, dada...

"Bible thumping."
what a convienient meme to dismiss anything involving the Bible
and to frame the discussion here as you see it, instead of actually speaking to what people have said.
Sounder, your little story of the fake bible and the underlings who helped write it is supposed to counter my statement that "if god created everything then the Bible isn't man made." I don't see it.
But I guess I'm just a Bible thumper right?
Nice short cut to thinking.
I'm not telling anyone to believe anything in the Bible and if you actually read these posts you'll see that (instead of seeing what you want to see--Bible thumping)
I am asking questions, trying to participate in a discussion that started over evolution, which hmmm..that may have been my fault...ooops.
don't feel intellectually threatened by the idea of God, please. He's not threatened by the idea of you.
Dwain...
really?
REALLY???

4/03/2008 08:16:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

OK I will try again. fletcher wrote... “If you believe God created it all, then the Bible isn't man made.” OK then, everything is God created, but that leaves no distinction between the Bible and any other aspect of Gods creation. In this case nothing much has been said.

fletcher get a grip, I have no intention of dismissing anything involving the Bible. I did opine that it is the repository of both State propaganda and sublime truths.
(Also, I was not referring to you as being a Bible thumper. I was referring to people that can only think in terms of ‘chapter and verse’, but if you think I was referring to you.......)

From; http://www.rense.com/general81/faeeof.htm

Defenders of old Tibet portray Lamaist Buddhism as the essence of the culture of the people of Tibet. But it was really nothing more or less than the ideology of a specific oppressive social system. The lamaist religion itself is exactly as old as feudal class society. The first Tibetan king, Songsten-gampo, established a unified feudal system in Tibet, around 650 A.D. He married princesses from China and Nepal in order to learn from them the practices used outside Tibet to carry out feudalism. These princesses brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet, where it was merged with earlier animist beliefs to create a new religion, Lamaism.

This new religion had to be imposed on the people over the next century and a half by the ruling class, using violence. King Trosong Detsen decreed: "He who shows a finger to a monk shall have his finger cut off; he who speaks ill of the monks and the king's Buddhist policy shall have his lips cut off; he who looks askance at them shall have his eyes put out"

Between the 1400s and the 1600s, a bloody consolidation of power took place, the abbots of the largest monasteries seized overall power. Because these abbots practiced anti-woman celibacy, their new political system could not operate by hereditary father-to-son succession. So the lamas created a new doctrine for their religion: They announced that they could detect newborn children who were reincarnations of dead ruling lamas. Hundreds of top lamas were declared "Living Buddhas" (Bodhisattvas) who had supposedly ruled others for centuries, switching to new bodies occasionally as old host bodies wore out.

The central symbol of this system, the various men called Dalai Lama, was said to be the early Tibetan nature-god Chenrezig who had simply reappeared in 14 different bodies over the centuries. In fact, only three of the 14 Dalai Lamas actually ruled. Between 1751 and 1950, there was no adult Dalai Lama on the throne in Tibet 77 percent of the time. The most powerful abbots ruled as "regent" advisors who trained, manipulated and even assassinated the child-king Dalai Lamas.

Well, I find it ironic that an anti-Lamist such as I, am making a throne for the Dalai Lama. Anyway I do not approve of the lifestyle of many customers, still I am a craftman and will do a good job.

4/03/2008 08:38:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

sounder:
Ok, thank you. i honestly do need to get a grip sometimes. Thanks for trying again.
I admit to being defensive once in a while.
I understand this issue of Lamaist Buddhism and such and the inherent problems fundamental to State+Religion.
Though, I do not believe that Buddhism conveys anything close to what the Bible conveys.
thump thump!
ha ha.

4/03/2008 10:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My latest posts are now a published article. Enjoy.

http://www.mind-energy.net/archives/283-Gurdjieff-and-the-Triode-Amplifier.html#extended

4/03/2008 12:38:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

L.Ray Smith says:
Charles Darwin had a personal purpose for trying to find an explanation for the creation with a Creator. It was almost a "vendetta" if you will. He despised the evil teachings of Christendom (as do I), believing what is taught by Christendom really IS the religion of the Scriptures. BOTH his theories were wrong!

That there is "evolution" going on in biology as well as in industry is not in question, not with me at least. It is EASY to see the evolution of the dog as well as the automobile. I believe that all honest thinking people can agree on that. The real philosophical question, however, is WHAT DOES IT PROVE?

So in a broader discussion of "evolution," the origin of the species DOES come to mind, and so how does TRUE biological science deal with this question? Facts of biological science are not always easy to use in either projections for the future or explanations for the past. If the percentage of change in mans' height the past fifty years were run backward, it would be but a few thousands years that man would have had to been no taller than an ant. Project the same percentage of change into the future, and in only a few thousand years the average man will be as tall as skyscrapers! So what is the TRUE application of the fact that man has increased in height dramatically in the past fifty years? Does it in any way prove that God did not create the universe, earth, and man upon it?

4/03/2008 12:43:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@all fool God-prodders:

I hate Buddhism/I hate Satanism/I hate Reaganism/I hate religion...


the Dayglos say it so well sometimes...

Off to the garden with me.
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 12:45:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

There are other conceptual possibilities of ordering principles besides "creator god" and "random." There's synchronicity, where chance occurences happen with more frequency than the math dictates. There's the pagan idea that all matter is invested with consciousness. There's the Tao.

"[The] Chinese word [tao] is usually translated as "the course of nature," or "the way," meaning the way it does it, or the process of things. That is again really very different from the Western idea of God the Ruler. Of the tao Lao-tzu says, 'The great Tao flows everywhere, both to the left and to the right. It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them. When merits are accomplished, it lays no claim to them." And so, the Chinese expression for nature becomes a word that we will translate as "of itself so." It is what happens of itself, like when you have hiccoughs. You do not plan to have hiccoughs, it just happens. When your heart beats, you do not plan it; it happens of itself. When you breathe, you cannot pretend that you are breathing. Most of the time you are not thinking about it, and your lungs breathe of themselves. So the whole idea that nature is something happening of itself without a governor is the organic theory of the world." - Alan Watts

You don't need a creator god to have an ordering principle.

4/03/2008 01:17:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

All this arguing about God or Science or Nature - what a waste of time. As if any of us could remotely entertain a clue without our heads lighting up like and Edison bulb and bursting into flames.

As if an idea that you or I can come up with, mental infants and amateurs of scientific construction that we so plainly are, would apply at even the complexity and timescale levels we are aware of, let alone at some postulated ultimate level of causation.

I mean honestly, the enormous and boring arrogance of imagining mental structures such as "God" apply to the flowering orgasm of reality that we happen to adorn. It's like small children damming a stream with mud and then trying to sell shares in their new hydroelectric company to other children. The ones that actually give up their lunch money are to be pitied.

Any explanation you may care to entertain as to the nature of things is nowt but a comfort - you just aren't of a size and shape to know these things.

If you really want to find out about such things, quit making up stories and get a job, like Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan.

Notice how they don't claim to be right about anything, tossing around disconcerting terms like 'theory' with disturbing regularity.

If you don't think you're up for all the uncertainty, though, stick to Mr. Blanky - I mean His Enormous Anthropocentricity or Just God, as He told me to call him (actually, He said He'd call me - is that a brushoff or what?).

Anyway, I'm wasting valuable time here. I have soil to rake and cookies to bake.

Not really caring Who or Why but happy just to be here,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 01:21:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Pooh, I made typos in my last post. I hate that.

Off to get even higher on coffee as I do the chores. (they don't happen of themselves, so they must not be Natural - hah - Alan Watts there has showed me the new Tao of Uncleanliness).

Hoping my lungs don't start crawling around 'of themselves' as well as breathing,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 01:29:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

This exchange from The Coast of Utopia - Shipwreck, by Tom Stoppard has been on my mind, thought I'd share it with you:

Granovsky Without faith in something higher, human nature is animal nature.

Herzen Without superstition, you mean.

Granovsky Superstition? Did you say superstition?

Herzen Superstition! The pious and pitiful belief that there's something outside or up there, or God knows where, without which men can't find their nobility.

Granovsky Without "up there" as you call it, scores have to be settled down here - that's the whole truth about materialism.

Herzen How can you - how dare you - throw away your dignity as a human being? You can choose well or badly without deference to a ghost! - you're a free man, Granovsky, there's no other kind.

Granovsky It's over between us! I'm going back to Moscow. (Granovsky storms off)

You're a free man, Granovsky.

4/03/2008 02:05:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

See, Lord reporter, i actually waffle between thinking that "it's all just too big for me to understand--or to have any clue" and it's "opposite" thought of wonderful simplicity and Trust...Awe of something greater than myself, that in the end is anything but shit, as Mr. Jeff would suggest.
maybe it's somewhere in between, logically (with my miniscule human logic anyways) it seems that it would be simply...beautiful. And complex..infinite fractal gorgeosity. Wine in a spaceship. Flowery words become reality.
perhaps master Yoda was right when he said we were luminous beings, not made from this "crude matter"
One day, I just hope to know for sure. Though not "knowing" seems to just be too perfect when you think about it.
If we did really "know" that would kind of make life seem I dunno...pointless.
I think it's fun to think about, to speculate and have conversations with open minded people about the possibility of a Creator...and an afterlife.
I do not hit people over the head with a Bible verse to prove anything,. I would advise people against that. It's better to leave that out, unless you are specifically talking about the Bible, which i don't see anything wrong with. Or any other Scripture.
Ideas.

It's all about ideas, right shrub?

4/03/2008 02:15:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

"If you really want to find out about such things, quit making up stories and get a job, like Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan."

I manage a doggy day care. You can imagine the things I find out about there. But I like stories.

"Notice how they don't claim to be right about anything, tossing around disconcerting terms like 'theory' with disturbing regularity."

I'm a 'maybe logic' kind of guy, myself.

Chores are Natural, they're just very advanced. Chores get you to do them, the clever little buggers.

4/03/2008 02:32:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@fletcher - Yoda was one to talk about being made of immaterial glory fabric - little fucker was made of Styrofoam and bits of cloth. Amazing how he could talk and move like that. Hand of God involved somewhere there (maybe up his little cloth rearyhole).

As to the Bible - well, these old herder texts are certainly decent bedtime reading (except for all the damn begats - did the hairy old daughter-humping fools imagine anyone would care about their household records in any more than an archaeological sense?), but they are just people stories.

I'm sure there were very interesting events going on two thousand years ago. I bet there were even more interesting ones going on six thousand years ago. But nobody then and nobody now has a working address for A. God.

As to the idea of 'knowing for sure one day' about this stuff, I can only give warning.

If there is a stage beyond this for us, other than a skull full of weevils and worms, then beware of anyone in a flowing robe or inviting you into Paradise or anything like that.

Jesus is much more likely to be the shining lure of some otherworldly anglerfish than the spokesman of a loving God (or any other such preposteration). I advise you to swim strongly the heck away from that shit, in this life or any other.

@Dada - what do you learn at the kennel, anyway? The nature of Dog? Must be an interesting job, at any rate. Does it pay well?

As to the chores, I think I'll apply this Maybe Logic idea of yours. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

Really not procrastinating here at all,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 03:05:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@fletcher again - Not that it doesn't seem sometimes like we might well be preparing for another stage.

However, not every plant gets to flower before some massive herbivore chonks off its complexity-filled head and mushes it up into the Cudhead.

So watch out for the Lord. He's like a threshing machine for souls, the better to make the bread of the Cannibal Giant God With The Big Golden Weiner.

And don't you deny his name.

Vegetally yours,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 03:15:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@fletch again: PS - I do think there is a use for human concepts of God - that is simply as a guideline for our own development. Whatever capacities we imagine God(s) to have, so shall we arraign ourselves to the best of our abilities.

And I only say this through a selfish desire to have morally advanced time-travelling relatives pop back and rescue us all at the moment of our demise, to lead us into a Paradise of free toast, immortality, and liberal drug laws.

Off to the kitchen where it's warmer (I can see my breath in here),
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 03:25:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

"what do you learn at the kennel, anyway? The nature of Dog? Must be an interesting job, at any rate. Does it pay well?"

Speak loudly, and carry a big doggy treat. The dogs respect that. In return, they're teaching me psychic dog language. Some other things I've learned:

It's difficult to find a good dog groomer. And dog grooming is a supremely surreal phenomenon. (There's a section in the book The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, by Ben Watson, that pretty much sums up my feelings about dog grooming. I'll see if I can find it, and post an excerpt.)

You need some very powerful stuff to unclog a doghair-clogged drain. I did it without calling a plumber. I was very proud of myself.

We have around 30 dogs a day, with a front room, a playroom and a yard for the dogs to hang out in; there's a science to finding the right combination of dogs in each area to make for the most harmonious experience, with the least amount of barking. It's like alchemy.

It is interesting. Plenty to learn about behavior, of dogs and owners both. Dog owners are a fascinating breed, to put it diplomatically. (I don't have a dog. Always been more of a cat person.) And of course, there's the usual businessy crap, staying on top of money, supplies, shot records, other paperwork, customer relations, any assorted bullshit that comes up. Or should I say dogshit. It pays ok, pays the bills. Leaves a little free time for playing music and stuff.

"As to the chores, I think I'll apply this Maybe Logic idea of yours. Maybe I will, maybe I won't."

heh. Got a chuckle out of me with that one. Thanks.

4/03/2008 05:04:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ok here's the skinny on DNA and Gurdjieff:

Today's NY Times op-ed is about will power capacity and blood sugar, but sugar is a right-hand asymmetric molecule according to science, while all ecology (carbon-based life) is based on left-hand asymmetric molecules.

LIGHT is polarized differently as DNA biophotons based on the asymmetric handedness of the molecule -- this is called racemization in chemistry. But measuring the molecules relies on the technology used to measure -- so sugar as a right-hand asymmetric molecule is based on the sugar being refined.

Refined sugar totally messes up the DNA biophoton polarization of the pineal gland. For alchemy to work the right-brain must be activated but science relies on left-brain dominance for analysis and right-hand technology, while ecology relies on left-hand molecules and right-brain dominance.

So, just like a telescope, light gathering ability of the body increases with the square of the diameter -- so that left-hand unrefined sugars enable right-brain pineal gland activation thereby increasing the will power gathering capacity of the body (connecting the kidney Moving Center with the Intelligence Center). The Moving Center having a squared-increase proportional diameter through the full-lotus.

A laser works just like the light gathering ability of a telescope except that frequency synchronization increases the energy intensity with the square of the amplitude. So left-brain logical inference creates right-brain amplitude synchronization of polarized light based on left-hand asymmetric molecules, thereby connecting DNA with alchemical biophotons.

April 3, 2008 12:01 PM


Great Galactic Ghoul said...
Just to clarify the relation between chirality or classical physics and quantum physics -- consider the example of the new "metamaterials" or right-handed materials which some think enable superliminal communication or in contrast a "negative refractive" light of left-hand materials which thereby creates antiphotons and white holes:

Optical refractive index of massive particles and physical meanings of left-handed media

Jian Qi Shena, b, 1,
aCentre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Yuquan 310027, PR China
bZhejiang Institute of Modern Physics and Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, PR China
Received 8 December 2004; revised 30 May 2005; accepted 6 June 2005. Communicated by A.R. Bishop. Available online 29 June 2005.



Abstract
In this Letter the expression for the refractive index of de Broglie wave in the presence of a potential field is obtained and based on this, the physical meanings of negative index of refraction is revealed. We demonstrate that the electromagnetic wave propagation in a left-handed medium with negative refractive index behaves just like that of antiphotons, which is required of the complex vector field theory. It is believed that the complex vector field theory is helpful in considering the wave propagation and photonic band gap structures in the left-handed medium photonic crystals with a periodicity in negative and positive indices of refraction.

4/03/2008 05:17:00 PM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

Maybe we are just food after all.

Here's a tale of "restrained predation" for your enjoyment.

Jeff, (you've probably already read it but what the hell) this one's definitely for you, but also for everyone else--hopefully worth a laugh. We forget to laugh at our own seriousnesss.

Hate to do the long cut'n'paste job--but dammit I couldn't resist.

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT

by Terry Bisson link

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

the end

4/03/2008 05:28:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

In the spirit of Robert Anton Wilson conferring Popehood upon anyone who's interested, I'd like to take a moment and initiate everyone reading here into the highest mysteries of adeptship. Now just relax, this won't hurt a bit...

The Supreme Judge of all works decrees that the adept has completed regeneration and that the Work is perfect. The children of light - his brother Initiates - hasten to join him. The gates of Universal Life are open, the veil of the mystae is lifted. The adept is now an epoptes - one who sees clearly. The elemental spirits symbolizing bodily limitations acknowledge the mastery of the inner principles. The philosophic birth is complete. The ages acknowledge a new Master.

And so on and so forth.
Now I'll just give the closing benediction - spectacles, testicles, brandy, and cigars - and we're all done.
Congratulations, you are now brilliantly Illumined. Have a great day.

4/03/2008 05:40:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

That is a lovely little tale. It does have a slight sweet sort of shrieking despair to it, but it's more than made up for by the whole singing meat concept.

Next time someone is blathering away at you, just think of them as a big rotting steak farting out coherent sounds from its smelly interior.

Awaiting Cyberiad,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 05:45:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Wasn't Testicles a famous Greek or something?

Actually unsure of what Dada was obviously saying in code but still tripping on the meat thing,
Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 05:49:00 PM  
Blogger GIV said...

I was finishing up this book I've been reading, and that was the last paragraph; "The supreme judge.. a new master of the ages" and all that.

I thought it would be fun to impart the mystery wisdom upon everyone. Just being silly, I guess.

4/03/2008 06:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah a lot of people have been hurt by so called Christians. A lot of hurt coming from immaturity and dysfunctional attitudes and behavior. Like how do you relate to Christianity when a family member you know kills herself as a accepted known believer in the Christian God? The person in the family that was born-again. A lot of pain but also because it is so popular the law of averages dictates that the more people involved with the organization the more abuse. That is with any organization. Out of millions of people we find many cases of abuse within the Christian culture.

Yeah fletcher the spirit of competition and behaving as if it is our duty to fight against potential knowledge coming from the books within Christianity is quite the bore to me. For example: My interests are not stupid because what I myself am interested in has nothing to do with the Bible. Then I rant about how you have a certain special knowledge gained when studying any other subject. It can be a conformist attitude that is the reason. I can't possibly have fun if I'm Christian while involved with traumatic relationships that are not Christian. I know that many people who are not believing in the wisdom and teachings of the Bible have a very rough time at it. So you have that truth which also is painful. But I do not believe that agony felt living a non Christian lifestyle is more normal than the pain that is felt living a more Christian lifestyle. If Christianity gives you peace of mind alive that's great. We do not need to be dead to be at peace. If it is another religious belief that's great. Anything that gives you peace of mind alive should be exercised in our lives. All within the proper context. One of many problems is condoning the security that is earned when you screw someones life up. If you have peace of mind by screwing over people then most mature adults condemn that and believe that you need to gain assistance so that you learn not to do that. No? Maybe? Maybe. So this not exactly directed to you fletcher. I see that you have had the same experience when sharing understanding about scriptures. But I'm not worried about it. Arrogance has many faces and I thank you for your reply. I agree that we can learn from open minded people. And yes hell=the grave is the proven drop of a bucket understanding of the word no doubting it.

4/03/2008 08:31:00 PM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Boy, if standard Christianity is 'pie up in the sky', then what Belliosto has here is more of a tortiere/mixed meats kind of a deal (read: I couldn't totally follow your post and it seemed interesting, tasty, and yet unidentifiable).

Speaking of tasty, I've floured up some chicken (spiced flour - paprika, chili, cayenne, oregano, salt, black pepper). With Greek salad and rice, followed by ultrabanana bread (sour cream, chips, walnuts, extra cocoa powder, and a few other tricks).

God yes.

Lord Reptor.

4/03/2008 09:17:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is probably safe to assume that the majority of contemporary scientists do not accept the authenticity of the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2. The reason for this is not hard to guess. There is no evidence that the writer of the book of Genesis was aware of the existence of gravitational force, of atoms, neutrons, protons and electrons, of the mass of the earth, or of the dimensions of the solar system. In other words, from a modern perspective, the creation account of the book of Genesis was written in a background of scientific ignorance.

So let us look at the world from our modern perspective, and ask whether it is reasonable to suppose that it came into being in six days. We now know that ours is an immensely complex world. Its inanimate components, the gigantic masses of land, water and air, are in a continuous flux, and there is yet much to learn about their dynamics. This is painfully clear when we see how inadequate are the efforts to forecast the weather, hurricanes or earthquakes.

We notice the springs in the mountains give rise to rivers, which flow into lakes and oceans. The waters of the oceans then return into the mountains by means of rain and snow and through underground paths. The cycling of water bathes the earth’s surface and is indispensable for the existence of life. So are the cycles of the elements carbon, nitrogen and sulfur through the biosphere.

The cycle theme in fact is everywhere from the movement of the electrons around the atomic nucleus to the rotation of the earth around the sun. Cycles do not have beginnings or ends. In order to bring them into existence, the forces responsible for the cycles have to be balanced, and if there are multiple steps required for the completion of a cycle, all of the components of the cycle have to be in place. Cycles speak of organization, of design, of rapid implementation and of a designer.

The complexity of the animate world is orders of magnitude greater than that of inanimate nature. The earth is covered with multitudes of different forms of life. With the exception of some microorganisms, all life-forms are running on solar power, either directly or indirectly. Plants capture the sun’s light energy by their green solar panels and package it into stable chemical entities such as carbohydrates. These sugars become the energy source for all organisms that are “photosynthetically challenged.”

Having photosynthetic capacity does not render plants completely self-sufficient. In the absence of soil microorganisms that convert the air’s nitrogen gas into useful nitrates, plants cannot grow. The existence of plants completely depends on nitrogen-fixing microbes. Other soil microorganisms degrade dead organic matter, thereby recycling the precious elements of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus.

Photosynthesis makes oxygen available for all nonbacterial organisms. Oxygen, of course, is used by the organisms to burn carbohydrates. This is done at such slow rates that the sun’s energy is not lost as heat, but is trapped in the form of the universal “currency” of energy, adenosine triphosphate or ATP. One of the products of this slow combustion, carbon dioxide, is not lost but used by plants for their growth. By these means, every living organism is linked into a giant solar-energy-utilizing network.

What we have here is a seamless integration of earth’s rotation around the sun with the phenomenon of life on our planet. Is it far-fetched to suggest that the Creator of the sun and the earth is also the engineer who designed the solar-powered living organisms?

Recent advances in biology permit us to ask whether it is still reasonable to suppose that living organisms evolved on a hypothetical primordial earth from mixes of organic chemicals. At the time when the modern versions of these theories were first entertained, in the 1920s, so little was known about the biochemical realities that undergird living organisms that such proposals seemed reasonable. But now we know that even the simplest of living cells, bacteria (that are not parasitic), must contain thousands of complex structural and catalytic proteins, a variety of nucleic acids, hundreds of small bio-molecules, all in a dynamic nonequilibrium steady state.

Within live cells, we see numerous series of interconnected chemical conversions (“pathways”) that are functioning uninterrupted. Their continuous activities are due to steady supplies of starting material and the ongoing utilization of end products. The recycling of waste to biosynthetic precursors completes the cycling of matter through living systems.

The absence of any component of these complex series of chemical changes will cause defective operation or even death to the cell. Is it reasonable, then, to suppose that when living cells were first brought into existence, all of their components must have been present and functioning? If this is so, then living cells had to be made rapidly.

The same suggestion may be made for all of the components of the ecological system, where mutual support and interdependence exist. It is sensible to suppose that these were created simultaneously. (To be sure, the picture is muddied by predation, which was not part of the original created order.)

If we had complete knowledge of every aspect of our physical world, both animate and inanimate, we could calculate the number of inventions that are represented in them. When we assert that our world has been created by a Creator, we imply the existence of a mind that not only invented nature but brought it all into existence. The greatness of such a God cannot be exaggerated.

If we don’t understand how a world like ours could be created in six days, we need to ask how a world like ours could be created at all. We will have to admit that we just do not know. The difference between a late 20th-century believer in the Creator God and one living in 1500 BC, at the time of Moses, boils down to the fact that now we have a better perspective on the greatness of the Lord.

For the believer who is also a scientist, the words of the Bible: “For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that is” (Exod. 20:11) still make wonderful sense.

4/03/2008 10:31:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The madness of life itself. Just sat with a dying man for the last three days of his life. Holding on to the rails of his hospital bed like a Harley handlebar. Cussing and nodding off. Looking for some way out. This mortal coil . Dancing in our corpse seeking some spark of reality that really fits.Damn, I hope I go with much less suffering,and alot more answers. Shine forth brave and loving souls. Respectfully, Dennis from Oregon.

4/03/2008 11:56:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Reptor, Reptor, Reptor, I understand.

You knew a rich guy who molested kids so that makes every tale of Satanic Ritual Abuse true, all evidence to the contrary be damned?

I caught that last time.
While one doesn't need a law degree to see the huge mothership sized whole in that line of thought, I do think you've stumbled onto a revolutionary money saving alteration for our criminal justice system.

No more money wasted on judges & prosecutors, defense lawyers & investigators, no more time wasted interviewing witnesses & gathering evidence, all you need is an accusation and the knowledge that someone once did it.

It has the perfect combination of streamlined efficiency & complete idiocy that sells so well here in the US of A. I think it's a doer.

I can't help wondering how the elite can erase evidence, silence witnesses, avoid detection, yet everyone here seems to know about it. I'd say their efforts are wasted.
As far as punishment goes bub, I say So What? They may be able to break the po' kiddie molester on the rack, while the rich kiddie molester goes free, but that whole punishment thing doesn't seem to be deterring anyone in the least.

I do commend you on admitting that all of this is little more than gossip. I've said similar things but with less encouragement from the peanut gallery.

As I remember from our previous go-round, you told me to read up on McMartin cause some "bad shit went down, bub."

You also made some pretty specific accusations involving social diseases amongst those kids, and also a little girl who kept complaining about being touched.

In the interim I've been searching for some source for all of them. I've found nada. As in nada fucking thing. I think they're what Fortean researchers refer to as "Whale's Tales." Stories without sources. Myths & legends.

All is not lost though, you did end our discussion with this bit of wisdom:

"I really, really don't want to get into the whole McMartin debate. I wasn't there, and I don't know anybody who was."

Good solid advice for conspiracy theorists everywhere. If you weren't there or didn't know anyone who was then shut up.
That should remove 99.999999% of all conspiracy theory.
Or does this "gossip" serve some purpose I'm not catching?

Of course, you followed it with this clunker:

"The tale is plenty similar in its general outlines to places I have been, so it resonates for me."

After reading more than anyone should have to about McMartin, I have to know if, by the above statement, you meant that the incidents you were involved in were bullshit stories confabulated by psychotics followed by mass hysteria and coerced testimony?

Can you also explain how those folk who were previously labeled Satanic Abusers, those day-care workers & owners, qualify as "the elite?"
Is there some monetary cut off point before one slips into pederasty?
Should my wage increases, meager as they are, worry me?

Here's a neat little thought experiment Rep:

Go back through these comments and, in place of "the elite" & "the PTB," pencil in "the Jews."

Do you think any of it would be out of place alongside The Protocols or some pre-pogrom rant?

Oh, & this:

"Anti-propaganda serves the same interest as propaganda?"

That's deep, dude. Like a puddle.

So, who's interest is served by blind belief, Rep? Who's interest is served by an unnecessarily opaque and virtually unnavigable conspiracy sea?

I love how it works around here. Posters bemoan the fact that "Joe Blow" has no critical faculties whatsoever, in many cases saying they're being HAARP-ed & mind controlled out of them, and then the bemoaners wander about astutely demonstrating their lack of critical faculties while bemoaning with equal vigor those who choose to use theirs.
Maybe a block of text is completely and utterly believable to you Rep, or maybe you have oodles of time to ponder the shite along with the sheen, but I don't prefer to go that route.

Y'see, if I took everything here at face value I'd be sitting here waiting for the nukes to fall from the sky as the sonic weapons rather than neglect rot the bridges around me and the stars are slowly blotted out by the alien motherships & I'd definitely be totally convinced that the old guy who obsessively walks up and down the street outside my house is really an old soldier gearing up for impending martial law.

Otherwise, I agree with sounder, a brilliant post.

4/04/2008 02:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The notion that any product of man, and certainly any book written and doctored numerous times by man, could be infallible, or contain the totality of the wisdom of whatever it is that created all that exists is a laughable delusion, and pathetic.

A great evil has been perpetrated on occidental man by the socalled major religions through the patently false elevation of the patriarchal framing of religion in Judaisim, Islam, and Christianity as a singularly masculine exercise, prosecuted by a masculine creator, - and the simultaneous, intentional, and malicious subversion and perversion of the goddess aspect of creation, religion, and existance. The oriental religions did not, and do not abide the bruting of a purely masculine creator. In fact our pagan ancestors, the great and ancient oriental religions, and Jeshua ben Joseph exalted the goddess as, equal, combined with, and as aspect of god.

I could go on here, but my point is the socalled creationists hold as their single lynchpin the infallibility of the Bible and the Genesis myths. This kind of religious prejudice, myopia, grotesque ignorance, and entirely elitist jibberish in not worthy of serious discourse. It is ridiculous on it's face.

Remove religion from any socalled sacred book, or holy prophet and view these stories, parables, and sermons, and individuals through the lens of mythology or concept of myth, - and all these proclamations of infallibility, or selectiveness, or exeptionalism, or supremist ideologies, or narcsissism, and chosen tribes are reduced to ridiculous babel, and the perfidious work of evil men, seeking domination, control, and otherworldly wealth and power.

The creator, the godz and goddesses whose intermingling form and birth all that exists are not fundamentalist, or racist, or elitist, or supremist, or fascist. The sun shine it's life giving rays, and offers it's warmth to all earths creatures, and all the galaxy equally, without restraint, and with no prejudice or restraint.

All creation on earth shares equally in the bounties of the sun, and the sun only one star in an expanding sea of space.

Genesis is a mythological work, and denying the Enochian gospels is rank ignorance, just as denying the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi texts is an intention perversion and betrayal of true Christianity.

Zoroaster, whose mythology mirrors the Jesus myth, teaches that man is under the spell of Ahriman, or Satan, that which is notgod, that which turned its' back to god, and toward itself. Our hindu sisters and brothers inform us that we exist blinded or veiled by Maya, the idea, that each individual is separate and removed from all that is, from all creation.

I say it again, man is a bacteria on a speck of dust in an expanding sea of space. The ruthless and bloodthirsty machinations ignorant egotistical babel of man are insignificant in the totality and immensity of all that exists, of creation. Long after the malignancy that is man is rightfully removed from, or permanently altered on, or successfully evolved beyond this earth, - the universe, all that exists, all creation will continue on it's course and numinous expression.

One last point. A long time ago, I had the great good fortune to perform in Soho at the Ohio Theater in a performance art piece called "Living Cave Painting". The producer Armand envision a series of vignettes depicting Cro Magnon man. I was honored with the part of the cave painter, and would mix ochre, leaves, charcoal and my own blood as the coagulant to creat the paint which I would apply twice each night to the giant cave leaping over the audiance that Armand, and others had erected out of wood, chickenwire, and a papermache' machetlike substance. He scupted huge animals skulls and bones, we gathered turf and treas from upstate New York, and deposited them in the Ohio theater, all our costumes, tools, and weapons were individually gathered and formed using what nature provide and forming the objects with flynt and fire. We cooked a meal each show in animal skin cauldrons and open fires. So many experts spoke to us. The flynt guy taught us how to cut materials, and form tools and weapons, the anthropologist assured us that Cro Magnon man were like modern man, homo sapien sapien,(wise wise man, with a fully developed frontal lobe), and for me, the most striking information came from the cave painter expert. Cro Magnon man is a blanket description for the anthropological evidence of human evolution existing some 50 - 75 thousand years ago, whose development was notable in the physical anthropological similarity with socalled modern man, in that these creatures lived in caves, in that they formed and operated as tribes or unit for survival, in that they revered something like a god or a goddess, in that they care for their old and their young, in that they buried at least some of their numbers in relatively elaborate rituals and ceremonies and in that they expressed thier beliefs and recorded their existance by leaving elaborate and highly artistic artifacts, and painting on the walls of caves. Cro Magnon like man existed in regions all over the planet. In Cro Magnon France and other parts of Europe, in what is now Russia, in China, in South and Central America, and even in America. But here is the astounding point, - while the animals and plantlife depicted in the disperate cave paintings or formed objects was unique to specific regions, - the depictions of fertility goddess, and the sun, the moon, water, and other mythological icons were remarkably similar, if not identical. None of these tribes had any contact with, or any inter-relation with the other, - yet the underlying primal protean mythologies were identical.

The point is the creator godz and goddesses are the same for every culture, tribe, race, and individual, - and it is the evil work of man, or evil men that shapeshift, mangle or pervert these godz and goddesses and religion for exclusively political or economic gains.

"Deliver us from evil.

I am Tony Foresta and I approve this message. The Anonymous tag is simply a result of not decipher a way to post under my name.

4/04/2008 02:58:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

On the Satanic abuse thing.... who are the ones mostly claiming it? Extreme Christian whackjobs, militia types, ex-FBI agents , and operation Phoenix operatives(you know, those guys who did things like drill 6 inch rods into people's brains through their ears?)

Groups I wouldn't expect to be forthcoming with TRUTH.

Does that mean it is not occuring? No, there is the case at that church in Louisiana... but thems waz supposedly Christians... so much for the kettle calling the pot black.

Appearances are deceiving... you also have to look at what motivates people behind the scenes.

Look behind the appearances... not everyone claiming to know shit is doing so for a benign reason.

4/04/2008 05:06:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

so LORD reporter, what you're saying is "run away from Jesus, as fast as you can! He's an evil shiney lure for some Great Galactic Fishmonger in the sky"
??
If we're all just digestibles anyhoo, what's the frickin' difference, right?
But what if you, my friend are wrong?
what if God is the Father of the Human Race?
would you run away from your actual father, as fast as you can?
well sure, kids do it all the time, when they know he's angry.
Anyone with their head on can imagine that God might be a little angry at His children right about now. (if, in fact God does exist)(but then would God be subject to anger the way we would? Uhmmm..)
In fact, the fact that the Earth hasn't been torched yet worries me.
seems like we're due.
but then just look at Iraq, hmmmm...
And God is "slow to anger"
to whom forgives much, much is forgiven...
Loved the thing about Yoda.
hate dogs.

4/04/2008 08:18:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if you hate dogs, thwen you hate god, if you believe in god. I think you have serious issues if you hate dogs, regardless of whther or not there is a god who is daddy to us all.

4/04/2008 08:43:00 AM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

Morning, folks.

@JAD - Dick mon, you're coming across as a bit obsessive with the whole issue. I'm not really after an 'is' or 'isn't' resolution or discovering/debunking some great secret. I'm interested in human behaviour, and that particular thread of our social selves is not only interesting in its relationship to power, control, and child development, but personally as well.

You seem determined, however, to be like that fella that follows Uri Geller around debunking everything - Canadian, wasn't he?

Now, debunkers of mystical and magical charlatranry often proceed from a genuine interest in the extranormal. They don't hate magicians - they want to see real magic. It's kind of cute.

Hmmm. I do hope that set of relationships doesn't hold true with your ah, particular proclivities.

That wouldn't be cute.

Anyway, I'm not after some duel of dualisms here. I don't see things as large and complex as McMartin as an either/or proposition. I see it as a source of information, to be compared to other information.

Compare enough information, a person might even start to make educated guesses.

However, in the court of law of your own mind, you are of course judge, jury, and executioner of any and all ideas.

Enjoy being sure.

Unless, of course, you are working with those FMSF freaks, in which case you just need to follow the instructions microwaved to your brain from their secret, ancient satellite.

And as for 'deep like puddle' - hell, man if you can't get the sense out of my writing, just keep your own counsel. Maybe the idea of professional social engineering makes you think of tinfoil hats and secret governments, not small, professional groups serving their own interests. Maybe you have no fucking clue what I'm talking about at all (that's likely, as I'm not one for filling in context).

Propaganda/antipropaganda - forced thesis/antithesis. Basic media manipulation 101.


@Fletcher - what makes you think God is mad at us? Maybe he likes the taste of human pain as much as that of pleasure. Abraxas, dude.

What the hell am I doing up at this hour?
Lord Reptor.

4/04/2008 08:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't agree with Sounder, and Fletcher had it right. Even if the Bible was manmade, god is responsible for all of this, even if it;s as the Deists believe.

Souder's theory is the NRA argument that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Nice loophole. Hey, don't look at me, I just inveneted the gun, I didn't tell people to go and kill with it. Yeah, right!

4/04/2008 08:50:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

I don't care what anybody says, "This is one of those exceptional threads that might actually go somewhere". It seems to me that there is a growing number of manmade phenomena that mimics what we have been told was God's domain. Strike me with lightning if I'm wrong but I see it everyday. The sun and moon are blotted out at will by the chemtraillers. Some travel to and from "heaven" at will. Some corporations are seriously working hard at creating life in a petrie dish. Others say who lives and who dies. We are subjected to "supreme beings in their supreme robes" at every turn. I'm not sure we are all playing with the same set of DnA.

4/04/2008 09:29:00 AM  
Blogger Peter Greene said...

@Ericswan: It's probably a good thing that we're not all playing with the same set of DNA.

Heck, look what happens when two of us fool around with sets that are a bit too similar - three - eyed sistermothers and suchlike sport.

@ Dead Hand: I'm glad somebody invented the gun. Took care of that sonofabitch who came up with the rock (more seriously, take a look at what happened to the Japanese because they thought modern weapons were too horrific).

Waiting piously to join the Cudhead during the Great Grazing (what you primitive 'Christians' call the Rupture or some such, I believe),
Lord Reptor

4/04/2008 10:17:00 AM  
Blogger fletcher said...

all is false.
right?
if all were false, than the conclusion that all was false would then also be false.
Primitive Christians?
oh here we go....
"Birds have nests and foxes have holes, but I have no where to lay my head."
-JC
Can i attempt to steer this "exceptional [thread] that might actually go somewhere" towards a debate about the validity of Jesus and the promises he made?
They are of a metaphysical order on par with or higher than any far flung science fiction or Italo Calvino book i've ever read.
Just curious.

4/04/2008 12:58:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

"Blessed are You when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account."

"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these"

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become
as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

4/04/2008 01:14:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

and (talk about metaphysical)
then we have this:
They said to Him: "Shall we then, being children, enter the Kingdom?" Jesus said to them: "When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, then you shall enter the kingdom."


-Jesus
Gospel of St. Thomas

4/04/2008 01:17:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

because, (to relate back to Jeff's post) Obama is like the "messiah" to his followers...
I guess that's a really lame exuse to be evangelizing on RI...
I appologize, but only a little bit. Mostly it's out of spite!

4/04/2008 01:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

actually go somewhere" towards a debate about the validity of Jesus and the promises he made?

Why bother? It would be a waste of energy. It matters not that he was real in both the physical and spiritual sense. What matters is that he has been accepted as real, and that meme, however polluted it may now be, is still alive and well. It's a powerful meme, whether this person really existed spiritually and physically, or not. I cannot and will not argue with the power and existence of the meme. It's as real as the meme that America is a Democracy.

4/04/2008 01:39:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Jesus is more than the meme of America being a Democracy. That's a cop-out, "memedor"
I'm not looking for a debate.
HONESTLY!
I was looking for a discussion, if anyone has an interesting interpretation or question about quotes that are attributed to Jesus.
and the nature of truth. I know it's a meme, truth, that is, right?

4/04/2008 01:54:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

Shit, I did say "debate" didn't I?
oh well. Can I respectfully bow out of this God vs. RI discussion?
actually, i'd rather discuss McCain and His High weirdness. This Obama vs. Clinton meme is, frankly, gross.
McCain may well be the next president, no matter how much people want "Change"...

4/04/2008 01:59:00 PM  
Blogger fletcher said...

oh and ericswan, perhaps what you are seeing as mimicking god's work is really as the Bible tells as the Last Days deception..!
Satan is the Father of Lies.
just kidding.
...or am I?

4/04/2008 02:02:00 PM  

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