Aspies For Freedom

I've been mulling over this idea for a few days... especially with the advent and discover of life being technology... the ancient greeks had discussions over teleology and the "prime mover".   Which got me thinking about the idea, even if god / a creative force / aliens existed, it does not follow that any religion (book of myths and claims that their gods are real) on earth are true.

The below are links to Apple quicktime MOV files, so you will need the proper codec installed.  If you can't see it then follow the 2nd link

http://www.arn.org/mm/mm_movies.htm

http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/flagellum_all.htm

What do you guys think?  Has religious mysticism and mystic nature worship soured our ability to think objectively in these matters?

If they haven't, it's not for lack of trying.

I took Revelations literally and a Seventh Day Adventist said I was reading it wrong.
The point is, Genesis is not to be read literally either, I think a day is some unspecific, varying period of time and I think God uses science to create everything.

I'm also beginning to wonder if the antichrist is not some American president because, think about it, if you can eavesdrop on every electronic communication except for a landline, and annihilate continents with the flick of a switch, wouldn't it look to some first century observer like it was a god?  Except it is more like deus ex machina?

How much of Revelations is exaggerated?
Is giving life to the Beast simply putting the Beast on television?

First Century readers would have been familiar with descriptions of Rome as the city on seven hills, etc.
We'd be familiar with shock and awe, ICBM launches, mushroom clouds.
Ezekiel's description of the battle between the Kings of the North and the South looked a heck of a lot like Brezhnev preparing the paratroops to drop into Israel, no wonder Kissinger had his BVDs in such a knot.

When I was growing up my parents told me the anti-christ was the catholic church, all the references in revelation support it.  Remember also that revelation is symbolic, but the references to the name and power of god must refer to an apostate group of christians.

http://www.thechristadelphians.org/

Join their forums and dicuss, you'll probably have a ball!

Agreed.  Not to mention that naturalist philosophy is based on the assumption that we know the nature of the kinds of causes, universes and living beings that exist (which is quite the claim in and of itself!).

I like the idea that we are a mis-classified ape - not homo sapiens but, as T. Pratchett et al attest, pan narrans, the 'story-telling chimp'.

We tell ourselves stories about how the world works based on stories heard from others modified by our own life experience. But we only see/feel/hear a tiny narrow spectrum of existence. For instance, my pet rats seem to me to be virtually silent - that is because I can only hear their chatter when they lower their voices for my benefit! When young I could hear rat and bat squeaks, alas no longer. They haven't all shut up just because I'm getting old!

Birds can 'see' (? - I do not know what sense they use) magnetic lines of force and thermals which are undetectable by humans without sophisticated technology.

There are stars in our night sky with comet tails that are light-years long - we only found out about them when we looked with ultra-violet-light-sensitive telescopes.

We only think we see the real world because we usually have no way of perceiving most of it.

Scientific stories do have the edge over religious ones, if only because dissident thought causes slightly less controversy and it is occasionally possible to change the thought processes of the adherents to a particular theory by reasoned argument without having to (a) found a whole new scientific cult; or (b) die a horrible martyr's death.

However, religious story telling gives us 'reasons' to try to wipe out other people and scientific story-telling gives us the horrific weapons with which to do so.

Wouldn't it be nice if we, as a species, started telling better stories?

I do feel quite left out in these discussions, I have to wonder how the knowledge was gained by the folks involved... were these things specific special interests for a while, something you studied in school, both...??

Why don't I soak in knowledge the way you guys do?

I don't get it.  Bloody hell.

I know how you feel, Batman. I cannot often join in the threads about pop music/ films/ TV programs I don't have a clue what they are talking about, unless it is something one of my kids has just told me.

I read lots, I always have. Some of it stays in the old grey matter - and then I can post on here and look clever! I'm an avid fan of science magazines because they don't require me to follow intricate relationship scenarios. I absolutely LOATH 'women's' and 'gossip' magazines.

Most of what I read, especially fiction, seems to stay in the grey cells just long enough for me to follow the story, but as soon as I've finished, that's it. "The END" seems to throw a switch that 'deletes' all the character's names from my brain. It is really embarrassing when someone asks me about the book I've just read and I cannot remember anything about it!

The other thing that embarrasses me is when I meet people in the street that I sort of recognise, but I haven't a clue who they are, then I realise later that they are my neighbours. I have to know someone for weeks before I remember their name, and even then if I do not see them for a while I can forget it again.

But on this board it is quite easy - I only have to remember a small snippet of information, and I can google it - that's how I found out that I had read the term 'Pan narrans' in 'THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II:  THE GLOBE'!

Batman55, The Learning Channel's Doomsday: On The Brink sort of sounded way too similar to my reading of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and There's a New World Coming.  

Hal Lindsey had been expecting the Russkies to invade Israel as a prelude to the end times.

Then, wham bam!  Israel breaks a cease-fire with Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Leonid Brezhnev starts talking "I will say it straight...." "alone and drunk" to Richard Nixon "depressed [over the Watergate affair]"

I wonder if Hal Lindsey was feeling faint with fear about that moment.  

I am not sure if Israel prepared its nukes as alleged by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre in The Fifth Horseman (it's a story about NYC held hostage by Qaddafi's H bomb but it is loaded with backstory and allegations about Israel and its nukes) or The Sum of All Fears, or if the Soviets were sending nukes to Egypt as alleged in The Fifth Horseman

The Fifth Horseman was also when I got the idea that the President of the United States (suggested to be similar to Jimmy Carter in youth and peaceful philosophy, also who was prez when the book was written in 1980) was like a god, with its well-detailed discussion of presidental electronic intelligence and surveillance in addition to the nuclear football.  It said the President could order a nuclear strike and sit back and watch it happen on a big screen.

I wonder what kind of remote control that would be.

Batman55, watching TV (Learning Channel, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Discovery Times Channel, Military Channel) and reading books is a big part of knowledge.  Schooling is maybe less than half.  Schooling gives you a taste for learning so you want more and more and more.  It is never meant to satisfy all of it, just pique all of it.

Hm, more popular is the other idea - that chimps and bonobos are humans...

As for secular creation theories.. Well they are just what they are - theories. We will NEVER be able to reconstruct the first days FOR SURE:
I also read ones and interesting "alien theory". One russian mythologist interpreting cultural evolution as three-time alien intervention (in the early stone age, "inventing" agriculture; shortly after the flood, which he dates back to ~10500 BC - "inventing" writing; about ~4000 BC - what ancient myths describe as "war of gods", probably war of two alien civilizations (one of them is the one who came in the first and second time - and they lost that war). Quite an interesting interpretation of myths, which would actually explain similarities of many myths in different cultures, sometimes really bluffing ones (f.x. the flood happened in the morning in European and Mid-Asian myths - but at night in Oceanian myths) - but it's hard to believe in two(!) alien civilizations getting their interest in Earth and humans some thousand years ago.

thousands*

And does he have a bible-wers to link to his comment on this?
I dont read the bible literally eighter,and then it makes a lot of scence.

Interesting, I don't have either facial recognition problems, or problems with names, whatsoever... quite the contrary in fact.  I remember these things too well.

The thing that tends to throw me is when people go into deep philosophical and metaphysical discussions. For some reason, although I might understand the individual words and phrases, it gets too convoluted and difficult to follow. Maybe I'm just too much of a practical person rather than a deep thinker.