April 12th Show

[David Biedny]

Are those scenes from that Mel Gibson abomination? I've only scene some of the most gruesome scenes from that piece of religious propaganda, but I would absolutely categorize it as pornographic. The fact that so many Christians worship that film scares the shit out of me, it's a sad statement regarding humanity, and reason enough for advanced beings to treat us as little more than insects.

dB

 

[jpw.in.wi]

Are those scenes from that Mel Gibson abomination? I've only scene some of the most gruesome scenes from that piece of religious propaganda, but I would absolutely categorize it as pornographic. The fact that so many Christians worship that film scares the shit out of me, it's a sad statement regarding humanity, and reason enough for advanced beings to treat us as little more than insects.

dB

Sorry to offend you all: the point was totally missed, and the pictures are gone. I should have known better. What do you mean by "worship" of the film? And I'd agree that if an EBE watched that film they'd think twice about treating us as equals. "Crap, if that's how they treated that guy ....." (Did you watch it, by the way?)

That movie uses make up and fake blood to try to make a point about how the world responds to certain messages. It's something like the film clips of Islamic jihadists beheading Americans. As disturbing as it was, I watched one, not wanting to ignore their existence, that it would be a glimpse of the hellish reality that exists in this world. And I don't want to bury my head in the sand. Anyway ... never again.

 

[Gareth]

I completely disagree that watching a beheading is necessary to prove that you are aware of their existence. Either youre aware or youre not.

At least be honest with yourself. The only reason to watch one is to satisfy that primal urge to see messed up shit thats within every human.

 

[David Biedny]

Sorry to offend you all: the point was totally missed, and the pictures are gone. I should have known better. What do you mean by "worship" of the film? And I'd agree that if an EBE watched that film they'd think twice about treating us as equals. "Crap, if that's how they treated that guy ....." (Did you watch it, by the way?)

That movie uses make up and fake blood to try to make a point about how the world responds to certain messages. It's something like the film clips of Islamic jihadists beheading Americans. As disturbing as it was, I watched one, not wanting to ignore their existence, that it would be a glimpse of the hellish reality that exists in this world. And I don't want to bury my head in the sand. Anyway ... never again.

When the film was released, it was considered by many Christians to be something just shy of a holy relic - churches were sponsoring screenings to their members, including children, and much respect was paid to Gibson for having the "courage" to create this piece of religious pornography. I've seen just enough of it to know what the level of graphic violence is, and it's more than disturbing. And while I appreciate the sentiments behind your putting it up here, and the general point you're trying to make, I would just say that there is no consensus about what exactly someone named Jesus might have been put through, this is one story that has been heavily subverted and distorted over the couple of thousand years since it was supposed to have happened - and I'll not get into the whole issue of the earlier tales that so closely match the Jesus story.

Like you, I also brought myself to watch one of those beheading videos, and it made me physically ill. There are numerous examples of the depths of human depravity that can be cited without even needing the added cloak of religion or religious messages. We're a lot lower than we'd like to realize, animals through and through, with the added danger of intelligence and technological skill. Our capacity for good is perhaps not as ample as our destructive tendencies, and to attribute our emotions to that of an invisible God is folly, IMO.

dB

 

[marduk]

Not to crap on your beliefs but I just can't accept the idea of the earth being "alive". To me it's like saying if I took the chemical compounds that make up the human body and threw then in a drum and added water I'd somehow magically have a human being instead of a bucket of chemical sludge...

Some things are EXACTLY the sum of their parts.

Gotta disagree with you there, a rare thing indeed.

The earth is alive in the same way that we are. We are not individuals; the number of bacteria in our body vastly outnumber the number of human cells -- ten to twenty times. The bacteria are for the most part beneficial. They help regulate our hormones, digest our food, fight off bad bacteria, etc.

What I'm trying to say is that a human being is not a monoculture of one kind of cellular organism, we are a tribe of organisms hanging together for mutual benefit. We collectively consume food, oxygen, and water. We collectively excrete waste. We also collectively reproduce: these bacterial symbiotic cultures are passed down from generation to generation. It's the same story inside our cells... our mitochondiria are most likely captured and tamed bacteria that our cells learned how to use to create ATP (energy). They have their own dna seperate from the dna in the nucleus and are passed down through the maternal line.

The earth is the same -- it contains a host of symbiotic species working together in the web of life. We just don't see it that way because of a lack of perspective; if you were to ask a bacteria in our gut if it belongs to one big superorganism I'm sure it wouldn't see it that way.

The earth consumes sunlight. It excretes waste, unfortunately back into it's own biosphere. And it may just yet reproduce through it's new gametes: us.

A better definition of life is that it consumes energy to decrease it's internal entropy -- it's more organized within than without by eating. The earth certainly is alive by that definition.

I think the definitions of "organism" and "species" are very blurred and simply our species' attemt at creating platonic ideals: man vs ape, etc. The lines are relativistic and depend upon your perspective.

 

[David Biedny]

Extremely well-voiced, Marduk. You typed exactly what's on my mind.

The idea that we are somehow more complex - or capable - than a planet, just strikes me as funny. We are a cancer living on the face of this planet, we think we are the high and mighty, meanwhile, one big asteroid, one frikkin rock, and we're collectively toast. This planet is a system so intensely complex that we can't even predict the weather patterns more than a day or three out, we don't know much about what lies under the crust, we don't really know much about the actual history of the planet, so what makes us so grand? Rock & roll? Bacon? Religion? Hell, wipe out the insects, and all the life on the planet dies. Wipe out the humans, and everything will flourish. We are a subset of the life on this planet, not the majority player - the ants outweigh us two to one, in a fair fight, they win quite easily - and we sure as hell can't control much of anything that goes on around us. Drop a human in the middle of the ocean, unprotected, and that big brain is going to end up as an appetizer to a less-intelligent shark. So much for superiority.

The intelligence of this planet is beyond our current intellectual reach, and for my money, so is most of what we call the paranormal. I suspect that, confronted with the actual truth of what a typical UFO is, our brains would not be able to comprehend the actuality of it's source and purpose. We're simply not evolved enough, IMO.

dB

 

[marduk]

Thanks very much David, and my vote is bacon.

I do have hope that we can figure this phenomena out though. My logic is this:

1. whatever it is has obviously taken somewhat of an an interest in us, i.e. we're not completely boring
2. we've noticed them notice us
3. We can think in the abstract: we can talk about billions of light years as if it's blase even though we don't actually have the ability to actually contain that understanding. We have no point of reference. This ability to abstract and manipulate these abstractions give rise to concepts like i (root of -1) and infinity that have no empirical existence - they aren't measurable. They exist only in the domain of the rational. My hope is that we can come up with some at least abstract idea of wtf is happening here through the same means: marrying the empirical experience with the rational to come up with logical suppositions that we can go forward and test.
4. our mind is capable of emulating a universal computer and is hence capable of solving any problem that is provably solvable... given enough time. Whether the issue at hand is in fact solvable is another question!

 

[BrandonD]

I completely disagree that watching a beheading is necessary to prove that you are aware of their existence. Either youre aware or youre not.

At least be honest with yourself. The only reason to watch one is to satisfy that primal urge to see messed up shit thats within every human.

Totally agree. I've never watched one of those beheading videos and I don't plan on it.

Likewise, I don't need to watch "2 girls, one cup" to become aware of foul scatalogical business going on in the world. Someone once told me what that video was about, and just hearing it was enough for me.

It's obvious why someone would watch the cup video, but put that same video in some sort of twisted religious context and people can satisfy their morbid curiosities, and at the same time imagine that they are being very spiritual. Best of both worlds.

 

[Drew UK]

I guess that first one must define the concept of living. Biologically we equate living with respirating, that is in the case of animals, breathing oxygen, or in the case of plants, breathing in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. (Yes, I know there are other words than breathing that are used for plants.) When a person stops breathing for a period of time, the heart stops and we consider him or her biologically dead.
But then there is consciousness as a different concept of what is living. Are electrons alive if they know where one another are where ever they are in the Universe? The Earth is a living ecosystem. I have personal experience that leads me to believe She is alive. We are to the Earth as bacteria in our human guts are to us. I am not suggesting that humans have the mentality of bacteria, only that there is a symbiotic relationship. You might check out the Gaia Hypothesis on the Internet for the general concept.

This is so fundamental - and as a philosophy, it is one that I agree with.

Scientifically, it is not a leap to get use to either - mainly, only the hurdle is of the definition of consciousness, but has science pricipitated out the elements of consciousness-feeling in us either -

I give you stimulai and you respond, why? Because your sensitive to it - your touch,feel,see and smell, your receptors in your brain convert into electrical signals - and it automatically sends a signal to other regions of your body through neural pathways and then we get a response.

I think the key word here is automatic, that really you have no control over what them molecular interacations and electrical transformations are going to do - we accept them, have more of them, build up experiences of them - and eventually we lay down personalities/behaviour based on them. They are hugely complex in nature, and extremely numerous - but so is 6.7 billion people walking around the earth and the summation of all its component parts "living and non living" reacting together - who knows what the earth will do next?

So, unless we can have manual control of what them signals do - then it is only the emotive response that we attribute to them that we can ascribe consciousness - and that to pop everybodies bubble - consciousness creates itself in the brain as an illusion - and it is this illusion that we all follow.

For we are merely a piece of rock that will dissolve (respond) through electochemical stimulation on contact with acid -

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

 

[CapnG]

Gotta disagree with you there, a rare thing indeed.

That's not rare... people disagree with me all day!

We are not individuals; the number of bacteria in our body vastly outnumber the number of human cells -- ten to twenty times. The bacteria are for the most part beneficial. They help regulate our hormones, digest our food, fight off bad bacteria, etc.

True but irrelevant. I am alive, a rock is not; ergo the earth (which is mostly rock) is not alive as the parts that are alive are not rock and hence not earth.

The earth consumes sunlight. It excretes waste, unfortunately back into it's own biosphere.

The earth does not consume sunlight, it absorbs it. That is to say, the sunlight is there and the earth is simply in the way as the photons exit the sun and stream off into deep space. As for waste, how can anything the earth excretes be classified as waste? The earth doesn't "excrete" anything anyway, it simply exposes or conceals elements of itself as a consequence of interal geothermal activity. This is classical personification in it's most literal sense.

And it may just yet reproduce through it's new gametes: us.

That's a leap and a half. I'm not touching that one.

I think the definitions of "organism" and "species" are very blurred and simply our species' attemt at creating platonic ideals: man vs ape, etc. The lines are relativistic and depend upon your perspective.

That's as maybe but it has nothing to do with our definitions of living and unliving, organic and inorganic. The earth is a ball of mud in space upon which life flourishes by sheer luck alone. Were Mars warmer and wetter or Venus cooler and calmer life would no doubt exist in those places too.

All this "the earth is alive" business strikes me as nothing more than another form of human vanity declaring ourselves to be oh-so special that even the rock we live on is special because it's "alive". We really need to get over ourselves.

 

[David Biedny]

We really need to get over ourselves.

Oh yeah...

dB

 

[Siani]

I finally found some time to sit down and listen to this episode. The guy lost me when he started wittering on about crop circles following him from the UK to the US. Did the circles fly business class or economy?

I think the guests were sincere, in the sense that they believed their own BS. Unfortunately for them, I have no time for anyone who claims to have all the answers, and I couldn't listen to their interview in its entirety. I must have heard about 60-70% of the show, and although I was unimpressed with the guests, I enjoyed the way David and Gene kept probing, and challenged their far-fetched claims.

 

[David Biedny]

Did the circles fly business class or economy?

Siani, that made me LOL!

So everyone should realize that not every episode is going to be like the recent ones - we've had a string of hits, for which we're so happy - but it makes sense to have a range of folks on, if for no other reason that no one else will take some of these people to task. That said, I promise that we'll try to keep the ratios decent, and mostly feature interesting, credible folks. Of course, the problem is that there is a shortage of these folks in the paranormal world, and we need to do a show every week. Well, let it be said that you get what you pay for, so just remember that! 8)

dB

 

[marduk]

That's not rare... people disagree with me all day!

Just saying that I usually agree with you!

True but irrelevant. I am alive, a rock is not; ergo the earth (which is mostly rock) is not alive as the parts that are alive are not rock and hence not earth.

Good distinction, I missed your point. You are talking about the geology of planet earth while I was talking about the biosphere as a whole of planet earth. I agree. A rock's a rock.

All this "the earth is alive" business strikes me as nothing more than another form of human vanity declaring ourselves to be oh-so special that even the rock we live on is special because it's "alive". We really need to get over ourselves.

I think that most people may be talking about what I'm talking about: the biosphere as a whole can be thought of as a single superorganism. Not the geology.

 

[jpw.in.wi]

When the film was released, it was considered by many Christians to be something just shy of a holy relic - churches were sponsoring screenings to their members, including children, and much respect was paid to Gibson for having the "courage" to create this piece of religious pornography.

And children should NOT see this movie! Leaders of any church that promoted or even passively allowed that are a disgrace! But the poor judgement of certain viewers doesn't make a movie good or bad.

I'm not sure what you meant by saying some consider it almost a "holy relic". But again, how certain consumers view a movie is irrelevant to its quality. Speaking for myself, I was just glad to be able to see a movie that actually put all conventional cinema production/marketing "wisdom" aside to make a movie about that sort of topic, and which strove to be so realistic that the characters would even be speaking Latin and Aramaic. For making that sort of reach, and for putting his own money on the line, I think Gibson did show some real courage.

I seem to remember the real hysteria came from Abe Foxman and others who thought I shouldn't have been able to see this sort of film, because it was going to make me want to go out and beat up Jews. What a joke! Didn't he even send spies into the first screening of the film? I don't know about you, but I think that's a little odd behavior for grownups.

I've seen just enough of it to know what the level of graphic violence is, and it's more than disturbing.

As are other great films I've seen more than once, such as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. But I've never heard those described as "pornographic", or that people who saw those films need to "grow up", that the reason they went to see them was "to satisfy that primal urge to see messed up shit thats within every human."

... I appreciate the sentiments behind your putting it up here, and the general point you're trying to make ....

I thank you for that!!!! I'm glad at least one person looked past the pictures and actually read what I was trying to say with that post.

I would just say that there is no consensus about what exactly someone named Jesus might have been put through, this is one story that has been heavily subverted and distorted over the couple of thousand years since it was supposed to have happened - and I'll not get into the whole issue of the earlier tales that so closely match the Jesus story.

Today I listened to the interview with "Achyra S" that I think you're alluding to, the author of "The Most Important Book of Our Time," The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Myth Ever Sold. Yes, thanks to her scholarship in, count 'em, Archaeology, History, Mythology and Languages, Achyra reveals to the world the "true foundations" of Christianity!!!! What an insult to actual scholars, like say Aquinas, for one. If someone gets a hold of Col. Corso's time machine, we've really got to send St. Thomas a copy of Achyra S.'s book.

Honestly, Christopher Hitchens would have done a much better job. Could you get him next time? And maybe someone who actually knows what they're talking about to provide a counterpoint?

By the way, Achyra S. seems to have been a consultant on a movie called Zeitgeist. I found a website where Achyra S. could make a quick $250 simply by revealing the sources that back up the information she fed to the movie's producers that "proves" Christ was just the last in a long line of identical Jesus characters. She should go to Take The Zeitgeist Challenge. From what I read there, she's not very complete when it comes to footnoting her work.

Like you, I also brought myself to watch one of those beheading videos, and it made me physically ill. There are numerous examples of the depths of human depravity that can be cited without even needing the added cloak of religion or religious messages. We're a lot lower than we'd like to realize, animals through and through, with the added danger of intelligence and technological skill. Our capacity for good is perhaps not as ample as our destructive tendencies, and to attribute our emotions to that of an invisible God is folly, IMO.

dB

I agree! And I don't go around telling people, "You've just GOT to see the Passion!" I like to put at least one picture with my posts, and I chose--unwisely--to post pics from that film just because they had the sort of visual impact I wanted to go along with what I had written. You're right: all you have to do is watch about 5 minutes of the world news, and you'll find yourself out in the backyard waving "The Big One" in.

Anyway, this whole thing just blew up in my face, and I'm very sorry about that! (I know, I'm starting to sound like a broken record.)

Anyway, I've got to leave a pic or two, and since it's been a while since I've thought about Saving Private Ryan, here are some moments from that great film:

 

[CapnG]

I think that most people may be talking about what I'm talking about: the biosphere as a whole can be thought of as a single superorganism. Not the geology.

Right but to be clear the geology IS the earth. The biosphere is ON the earth and IN the earth but it is not THE EARTH and thus the earth itself is not "alive".

See? You actually agreed with me after all...

 

[David Biedny]

Today I listened to the interview with "Achyra S" that I think you're alluding to...

Nope, wasn't even thinking of her when I posted that comment. You know what they say about assumptions...

dB

 

[swatcher]

Thanks very much David, and my vote is bacon.

I do have hope that we can figure this phenomena out though. My logic is this:

1. whatever it is has obviously taken somewhat of an an interest in us, i.e. we're not completely boring
2. we've noticed them notice us
3. We can think in the abstract: we can talk about billions of light years as if it's blase even though we don't actually have the ability to actually contain that understanding. We have no point of reference. This ability to abstract and manipulate these abstractions give rise to concepts like i (root of -1) and infinity that have no empirical existence - they aren't measurable. They exist only in the domain of the rational. My hope is that we can come up with some at least abstract idea of wtf is happening here through the same means: marrying the empirical experience with the rational to come up with logical suppositions that we can go forward and test.
4. our mind is capable of emulating a universal computer and is hence capable of solving any problem that is provably solvable... given enough time. Whether the issue at hand is in fact solvable is another question!

Logic shouldn't be based on assumptions ;-)

 

[swatcher]

To: jpw.in.wi

Why do you feel the need to post such grahic pics

 

[marduk]

Logic shouldn't be based on assumptions ;-)

a) yes it should. You can either find flaws in my assumptions or logic. Logic is about internal consistency given assumptions or assertions. If you find flaws in my thinking, then please state them so I can learn from your greater wisdom.
b) very little discourse can be had without assumptions. Looking at your statement, you are obviously assuming that I speak english, don't understand formal logic, will check this board every so often, etc. Some of which are true and some of which are not. If you wish to go back to axiomatic thinking (i.e. I think therefore I am, etc) feel free.
c) I was stating the logic behind my hope that we can figure this thing out.

As Nietzsche said "Logic... rests on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world."

Hence the word hope.