The Paracast, Guests and Religion.

[Goggs Mackay]

I am very interested in the conversation that some of the religions could have a common thread. While I don't believe that ancient aliens contacted mankind. I do find it very interesting and a fun topic to get into. I would love to see somebody like Michael Heisser (I don't think I spelled that right) on the show refuting some of Sitchin and Von Danikens theorys. It might make for a good conversation.

cool, the arguement between TO and mike and yourself can be considered over. i can see that people type quicker than they proof read sometimes and thats ok. I only wanna say again that i think the bar for closing a forum should be very high as its censorship we are talking about!
gordon

 

[tyder001]

Well, after taking a step back and looking at T.O and Mike from a little different angle than I was able to do yesterday and last night. I agree with you. It should not be closed. As I said I brought some personal things that I had been thinking about and made a knee jerk post. I then compounded it. I would have been better off to just say "oh well, my bad" and moved on. Anyway, I didn't demand anything but I did ask. In retrospect I shouldn't even have asked. If you knew me you would know that it is out of my character to ever ask for a thread to be closed. I would like to tell you I suffered a blow to the head and plead temporary insanity. But, the truth is I brought some stuff up that I had been thinking about and didn't do it in a very "sane" fashion. I think this is the lamest I have ever been in a thread and I hope to present my side of things a little more rationally and calmly next time. But, for the record I retract my "request" for the thread to be closed. Especially in light of the fact that I have often been very outspoken about not wanting other threads closed.

Peace.

 

[trainedobserver]

I want a t-shirt with one of the pictures from this thread on it that says, "The Pope scares the Holy Shit out of me!"

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

I want a t-shirt with one of the pictures from this thread on it that says, "The Pope scares the Holy Shit out of me!"

LOL, good one T.O. The picture I posted of of 'ol Bennie grasping toward the little boys is rather disquieting, 2 say the least! I wonder if anyone checked their drawers after the service? If it had been me, I would want to help build the T-shirt factory... I'll buy one if somebody makes a good design!

 

[Angel of Ioren]

LOL, good one T.O. The picture I posted of of 'ol Bennie grasping toward the little boys is rather disquieting, 2 say the least! I wonder if anyone checked their drawers after the service? If it had been me, I would want to help build the T-shirt factory... I'll buy one if somebody makes a good design!

I'm not religious or anything, and I think your comment is funny Chris, but I think that referring the the Pope as "'ol Bennie" is what Tyder was referring to. Personally I don't care, but I can see how that can irk the people that do respect him.

 

[mike]

Its first thing in the morning here, so forgive me being late to the party.

Tyder as TO says above, you have been personal and nasty, and while you claim you were not to me, you also extended an olive branch..... why do that unless you felt a needs to make ammends for a misdeed.
Its very hard to have a reasoned rational discussion with someone so inconsistant.

It doesnt matter wether you asked or demanded to have the thread shut down, the bottom line is this line

I never tried to get the thread shut down

Its a lie, its not a mistake ,its not an error, you cannot pin it on reading comprehension. Its a deliberate false statement.
Its not as important a lie as claiming to have a PHD from MIT, but its still a lie.

Its irrelevant how you asked, the fact is you did TRY to have it closed.

And its the motivation for doing so i object to.

You did it because you didnt like the topic, no other reason

I know this because you complained of a double standard, You cited another example where a thread was allegedly closed because someone allegedly didnt like the subject

Because he is a hero to some folks here (and to at least one person here that I honestly like and respect) the thread was quickly closed.

Now your constitution affords you a few freedoms, one being freedom of religion the other being freedom of speech.

You tried to trample our freedom to express our thoughts on religion, for no other reason than discussions about religion make you uncomfortable.

When you failed in your objective to have the thread closed, you then hypocritically restorted (as noted by TO) to getting nasty and personal, injecting the very incivility you tried to use as justification to ask for the thread to be closed.

Youve used bullying tactics to try and censor a thread because you dont like the topic, and when this was pointed out, you reacted like a typical bully by pointing the finger back and crying foul, playing the victim card.

A disgraceful display frankly.

Youve used just about every trick in the book, calling for thread closure, baiting ,flaming ,trolling and derailing.

Hopefully youve run out of options and we can all get back on topic.

 

[mike]

So back to JPW's challenge

can somebody please take just one of the REASONS why the Church judges homosexual marriage to be wrong and refute that point? Seriously?

Since ive had no reply as to REASONS, i did a little looking myself

Q: What is the basis for Catholic teaching about the immorality of homogenital acts?

All Catholic sexual ethics rests on this principle: procreation is an essential aspect of human sexuality, so every genital act must be open to the possibility of conception. For this very same reason, Catholic teaching forbids contraception, masturbation, and pre-marital and extra-marital sex as well as homogenital acts.
The Vatican insists that procreation pertains to the very nature of human sexuality. That is, the Church presents this teaching as natural law, the ordering which the Creator built into the universe.

http://www.dignityusa.org/faq.html

By this rationale catholics themselves should stop having sex once they have decided they have had enough children, or when the wife goes through the change, so too infertile males and females should be subject to a prohibition against sex, since the genital act is not open to the possibility of contraception.

Strikes me as an odd and unworkable ruleset

 

[Goggs Mackay]

@tyder001 - it takes someone very sure of themselves to publicly take back something that previously appeared to be the only thing they could have thought and nothing else. for that, i salute you. any of us can get carried away and hurredly type something that is then there forever. nothing worse than looking back at something you said in public that now makes you cringe - i don't know which parts exactly you might regret posting but the only thing that matters is that you are willing to rethink. most people take a stance and then doggedly stick to it come what may, even if they actually change their minds - no-one likes to be seen to not stick to their guns, even when it could be detrimental.
so fair play to you. i hope if i decide i've written in haste that i will be man enough to step up and say so.
glad you are with us on these forums. it would be pointless if we all agreed all the time anyway and i don't want to be in a club of clones - i'll never learn anything new if that's the case!
tyder001 - big enough to admit a mistake in public? LIKE.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

now come on church! even the most innocent, virgin adult could not fail to see how that quite possible innocent idea for a stained glass window is anything but in reality!
there are many ways in which one could show a child kneeling as if in prayer with a fatherly touch of hands by a priest. it could have been beautiful but it's as if the person doing the glass for the window had a grudge and cleverly stuck one to the church when he made the window.
i contend it is impossible to not see the problem with that picture. even a eunuch, denied any adult sexual desires can still see what looks like a man of the cloth .........i don't want to even describe it for fear of offending someone. if i do not need to describe it then i've proved my own point anyway!
nice one pixelsmith!
gordon

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I have always thought that paranormal and anomalous activity may have been starting points for various religions and I think if you look at the paranormal subculture (or however you want to describe it) there are numerous religions forming from the emerging mythos as it churns on itself. The whole Annunaki business might be considered one such religious belief system.


@trainedobserver - exactly. virtually all mainstream religions that i've studied have some fundamentally anomalous happenings in them, quite often these happenings are utterly central to the backstory in many of them. it is exactly for this reason i think it is reasonable to question belief/faith in a religion just as much as it is to follow sitchin.
we may find out one day that paranormal things are one and the same as the many supernatural events told in the holy books. i personally have only had one paranormal experience in my life. it was witnessed by a friend too and it falls into the shadow people/ghost type category. we witnessed from about 10metres away an old woman who walked into a dead end - we followed and she had gone. there was nowhere for her to hide or disappear and our eyes never left the only entrance. if it had only been myself there then any mental abberation could explain it but there were two of us, narrating as it happened what we were seeing. considering i had never taken any drug/alcohol by that point i don't think it was auto-suggestion. i know it's not the most glamorous of sightings but nonetheless it is unexplainable by normal means (it happened within 50m of the house i lived in for 25+ years and we knew every inch of that area, so there could not have been any aspect to the event which could not cross our minds as an explanation.
my point is then that if i can see something i cannot explain, 20+ years later with everything i've learned since that night, then i can hardly call into question every paranormal happening in the holy books. i have no doubt many of these things were as reported by the people involved. my attitude to organised religion and holybooks remains however, that they are creations of man but some of the content may be as real as what i saw that night.
therefore i never make fun out of religion or believers. i don't believe, i don't have faith but i accept i believe i saw something that other people would scoff at. it would be hippocritical for me to say my experience was real but everything in the holy books is made up.
i just love the way these forum threads take on a life of their own and take us to places we had no idea we were going!
gorodn

 

[Goggs Mackay]

From the BBC: Joseph Ratzinger was born into a traditional Bavarian farming family in 1927, although his father was a policeman... At the age of 14, he joined the Hitler Youth.... World War II saw his studies at Traunstein seminary interrupted when he was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit in Munich... Muslims took offence when, in 2006, he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things....Then Jews were taken aback when a breakaway group of bishops was welcomed back into the Church fold, including one who was found to be a Holocaust-denier.

From: miskeptics.org: Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

He sure sounds twisted to me, and if you don't think he is evil-looking, you need to check with an eye doctor...

@chris - are 'we' sure that those pictures of pope benedict have not been photoshopped? i still think he looks creepy regardless but these pics are just so damn evil i wonder if they've been given a little help? either way it does not matter regarding him 'looking' evil. but if i was steven spielberg or some other movie director, i would cast him in a classic hammer horror alongside peter cushing and vincent price etc anyday!!
gordon

 

[mike]

I think holy texts do have a value, in that they are historical records, which chronicle events and societys long gone.
But for me thats it
The idea that they describe paranormal events has merit imo, but i question (other than as an historical referent) the value of those descriptions.
Ezekiels wheel for example is the perenial favourite as being a possible description of a UFO.
But the language , the vocabulary and terminological referents of the time dont really tell us much.
To describe a UFO as say a "heavenly chariot" doesnt really help us to understand the factual reality behind what we see, and perhaps current scientific vocabulary doesnt either, though i suspect its closer as a means of accurately describing the phenomena.
Ezekiel could describe a laptop or a mobile phone in the vocabulary of his day, but i promise the user manual will be a better source to work from in terms of understanding the function of the device.
The depiction of angels having wings is another example, is this depiction literal or symbolic
Did these alleged entitys, actually have wings on their backs like birds, or are the wings simply symbolic, meant to convey by means of the only example of flight in the day, of entities "from the sky"

Assume an eagle is 15-lbs 8.5ft
Osprey is 4.5 and 4.5

That is a difference of 3+1/3 in weight to 1+8/9 size

Assume you are 180-lbs
You are 40X than an Osprey
That is 3.0639 Orders of 3+1/3 (logb(3+1/3)(40))
That means you are 3.0639 powers of 1+8/9.
7.0189 Times larger than an Osprey

or

31.585ft

If you are 100lbs than you would have 23.15ft wingspan
250lbs... 37.57ft

Read more: If humans had wings, how big would they need to be in order to support our weight enough for us to fly? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/68817#ixzz1jIB60TmF

Failing some magic powers or antigrav tech an angel would need 30 foot wings to fly
Yet none of the classical depictions show them anywhere near this large.
In which case depictions of wings are perhaps symbolic not literal.
Which is why i contend such dated descriptions of possible paranormal/UFO events are useful only in an historical context, and not as any accurate description of the event itself

 

[trainedobserver]

I think holy texts do have a value, in that they are historical records, which chronicle events and societys long gone.

We've disagreed about this before I think. Holy Texts are not historical records, they are sacred writings using allegory and simile to communicate something to the people it was written to at the time. Holy texts are no more historical records than Marvel Comics are a historical record of events in the 20th century. While there may be historical information contained in the work, it is there to serve the purpose of the narrative and not to provide an accurate portrait of events.

 

[trainedobserver]

I'm not religious or anything, and I think your comment is funny Chris, but I think that referring the the Pope as "'ol Bennie" is what Tyder was referring to. Personally I don't care, but I can see how that can irk the people that do respect him.

I understand what you are saying, but the ridiculous facade of false-respect for someone who claims to be the supreme and universal authority concerning the creator's wishes on Earth is asking a bit too much of people I think. If my Uncle Ned wanted everyone to address him as The King of All Time and Dimension when he wears his ornate Santa Claus outfit down to the local Whataburger, I can't imagine a lot of "respect" being laid at his feet nor do I see much justification in him being disappointed in the outcome.

 

[mike]

We've disagreed about this before I think. Holy Texts are not historical records, they are sacred writings using allegory and simile to communicate something to the people it was written to at the time. Holy texts are no more historical records than Marvel Comics are a historical record of events in the 20th century. While there may be historical information contained in the work, it is there to serve the purpose of the narrative and not to provide an accurate portrait of events.

Yeah its not something we are going to agree on, from my pov the very time they were written makes them an historical referent. If nothing else an historical example of the sorts of myths and stories doing the rounds At that time.

These books were written at some point in our historical past, thus the books themselves if not the contents are an historical reference imo.

Here is an example

Money in Easton's Bible Dictionary Of uncoined money the first notice we have is in the history of Abraham (Gen. 13:2; 20:16; 24:35). Next, this word is used in connection with the purchase of the cave of Machpelah (23:16), and again in connection with Jacob's purchase of a field at Shalem (Gen. 33:18, 19) for "an hundred pieces of money"=an hundred Hebrew kesitahs (q.v.), i.e., probably pieces of money, as is supposed, bearing the figure of a lamb. The history of Joseph affords evidence of the constant use of money, silver of a fixed weight. This appears also in all the subsequent history of the Jewish people, in all their internal as well as foreign transactions. There were in common use in trade silver pieces of a definite weight, shekels, half-shekels, and quarter-shekels. But these were not properly coins, which are pieces of metal authoritatively issued, and bearing a stamp. Of the use of coined money we have no early notice among the Hebrews. The first mentioned is of Persian coinage, the daric (Ezra 2:69; Neh. 7:70) and the 'adarkon (Ezra 8:27). The daric (q.v.) was a gold piece current in Israel in the time of Cyrus. As long as the Jews, after the Exile, lived under Persian rule, they used Persian coins. These gave place to Greek coins when Israel came under the dominion of the Greeks (B.C. 331), the coins consisting of gold, silver, and copper pieces. The usual gold pieces were staters (q.v.), and the silver coins tetradrachms and drachms. In the year B.C. 140, Antiochus VII. gave permission to Simon the Maccabee to coin Jewish money. Shekels (q.v.) were then coined bearing the figure of the almond rod and the pot of manna.

So we know that silver was used as a measure to purhase items

Another example would be the epic of gilgamesh, from it we learn It was written in standard Babylonian, a dialect of Akkadian that was only used for literary purposes. This version was compiled by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC out of older legends.
or
Tablet two
Shamhash brings Enkidu to the shepherds' camp where he is introduced to a human diet .

From this written record we know humans were at this point in history practising the keeping of livestock.

Thus i am of the mind these old texts do contain data of a historic nature

Many of the books in the bible are not much more than geneologys, which are a formal record of lineage, in this case from a point in our history thousands of years ago.

Are the cave paintings at Lascaux, an historical record ? i think so, they "record" what the people of that time were seeing at that point in history.

Some anthropologists and art-historians also theorize that the paintings could be an account of past hunting success, or could represent a mystical ritual in order to improve future hunting endeavors. This latter theory is supported by the overlapping images of one group of animals in the same cave-location as another group of animals, suggesting that one area of the cave was more successful for predicting a plentiful hunting excursion. Daniel Quinn, in The Story of B, hypothesizes that the paintings were instructional in nature, created in order to communicate successful hunting strategies.

Are Egyptian hieroglyphs even those pertaining to sacred stories historical records ? i think so, again because from them we can glean historical facts about the people who wrote them at that time.

 

[trainedobserver]

Well, it's like I said. As in a Fantastic Four comic book, some ancient texts may tell a story containing real historical elements, such as the use of money, television, automobiles, and may even contain real historical characters, however the story of cosmic wars fought by fantastic creatures are purely fictional. Having read a lot of comic books and scared texts, it seems apparent that there is a real parallel there.

I received Jeffery Kripal's Mutants & Mystics, Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal for X-mas and look forward to reading it. I think he may explore this notion a bit there. Others like Robert Price have talked about this aspect of ancient writings as well.

The stories told have some purpose within the cultural context, removing them from their native surroundings obfuscates that a great deal. Yeah, something can be mined from them, but they have to viewed for what they are and caution applied to any conclusions you may come to from reading them.

 

[Ezechiel]

Back to the OP lol...

IMHO, the religious background of a guest is important as it helps the listener establish a reference as to the degree of paranormality of a subject from the perspective of the guest.

For example:

For a deeply religious guest, UFO's will usually trend towards a 10% scientific/nuts and bots and 90% spiritual/demonic explanation where a secular scientific should trend towards 99.99% science and .01%demonic (honest benefit of a doubt ) explanation.

Same applies for ghosts where parallel universe echos and quantum mechanic quirks kick in for scientists and held back souls for evangelists.

A listener with a religious background will obviously immediately connect with a religious guest as they both consciously or unconsciously are trying to re-inforce their belief system using current paranormality.

Strangely enough, you would expect many listeners with very religious backgrounds to be very interested in the paranormal and flood the forums. This is not the case here at the Paracast where forum members are highly rational and I suspect highly secular

 

[tyder001]

there have been some studies that show the more educated a person is the more seriously they debate and think about these things. Most really religious people already have their minds made up. The go no further than the local church and the explanation of their clergy (imo) The absolutely materialist person will at least look, if only to reinforce their own feeling that it's all either a psyhological abberation or something natural that has been mistaken (venus, pranksters, meteor showers for u.f.o.'s for instance.) But, the youth of today appear to me (and I'm no longer a youth) But, they appear to be more open to questions about reality. The old religions of us older folks are not wholly accepted as they look at the scientific advances and the way the world really works. However, I also feel that they are searching for something (as do all humans) that connects them and makes existence meaningful. I don't think religion will die (unlike some here I think it's an important part of the journey) But, it will change or die and I think it will change. I left my religion because my dogma got ran over. But, the brave new world of materilism doesn't work for me either. I suspect that might be the answer (at least in some part) as to why the well educated and the young are looking out with a mixture of awe and wonder and the grounding of scientific advancement.

 

[Angel of Ioren]

Here's an interesting take on religion from Michael Shermer. I have to say, I share a lot of the sentiments he presents here.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Here's an interesting take on religion from Michael Shermer. I have to say, I share a lot of the sentiments he presents here.

@Angelo - this is one of those times when you watch someone saying something and you think 'that is pretty much exactly the way I think'. I don't know if this Mr Shermer is known for other things, I don't believe he is known here in the UK but I shall go check him out. Looks like a thoughtful, intelligent guy.
Ah, the voice of reason, how seldom we hear you!
gordon.