Jack's got the year wrong- it's supposed to be 2012. Specifically, 11:10 PM, December 22, 2012, if you go by Terrence MacKenna, the main proponent of the theory. Why that particular time? Mainly because it's then that the famously uncanny Mayan calendar comes to a rather eerie dead stop. MacKenna claimed to have corroborated the whole thing with the I Ching as well. (No one will be surprised to learn that Grant Morrison worked it into The Invisibles.)

Probably utterly daft, but intriguing...

Tom, Were you aware the San Diego paper pre-empted the very strip that started this thread?
They've done it about three of four times and replace it with "Born Loser."
You're in Doonesbury territory now.....

Rick asked where I was hearing about this:
http://edj.net/mc2012/mproph.htm

Is a sample of some of the writings referring to what Chris is talking about. My personal experience about the Mayan Calendar idea is that it's the closest thing yet to some sort of accurate recording of what took place, and why.

An aside to Joe, jews are taught to believe that Jesus was "just a man", and there's a lot of rhetoric explaining his existence as such, and there's a lot of historical documentation (as best as can be recorded over 2000 years of telephone) for Jesus' very living existence so, he was a live real person and blew a bunch of people away. Whether he was the son of god or not, he certainly had some impact that has endured. Buddha was a real person too, just like the Dalai Lama is today.

About Ghandi, if you haven't figured out what he has evolved into in the "group conciousness" then you are missing an important step in "cultural evolution" if not spiritual evolution.

What I'm talking about with the 2016 thing is not a mayan cataclysmic ending, but it's a shift to another plane of existence. Many people on the planet alive today participated in the Harmonic Convergence a few years back and thanks to the internet, many have kept in touch, to one degree or another. There is a World Peace Movement that's afoot, and a lot of it involves group meditation (this is world group meditation). One of the tenets of the group is to be dedicated to creating world peace.

Something interesting in participating in these exercises is meditation and prayer. This is a silent, singular personal thing. It has to do with conceptualizing whatever the prayer is about. It isn't about "please god dont let them hurt my baby", it's more like "allow the energy that pulses to killing and death be allowed to dissipate and be replaced by an energy that radiates peace and harmony" or however one would envision world peace personally.

It occurs to me with "intent" being such an issue, you know, violent video games and guns and all that causing the moral decay in our society, it seems that a positive intent to world peace by a group of people in communication and prayer would create a positive intent.

The Native American rhetoric I've been exposed to lately has to do more with the ability of the "group" to communicate together to express intent at will, or something, than the mayan cataclysm. Well, I agree that there will be some sort of cataclysm, but I'm not sure its gonna be BOOM CRASH 4 horsemen of the apocalpypse, perhaps much more subtle than that.

All that aside, I believe very much in God, joe, because in my experience God has shown proof of his existence. I mean, when you touch the red truck, and its a red truck, whatcha gonna do?

Jim-- As a matter of fact, the one time somebody pointed a gun at me, I didn't feel any fear either; it was a particularly stupid campus security guard, so I didn't feel particularly threatened.

When I've been involved in car accidents, though, I have experienced an intense infusion of adrenaline. Call me a wus, but that natural visceral response probably had a lot to do with my surviving the accidents!

Anyway, the gun-pointed-at-you scenario is not the only example of what I'm talking about. The fear of death of terminal ill patients is much more to the point, and it has been very well documented. See for instance this link: http://www.preciouslegacy.com/chap7.html (Note: I spent about 1 minute looking this up on a search engine, and I can't stand behind it's accuracy.)

Jim, when you refer to the 'feats' ascribed to God, do you mean things like the parting of the Red Sea, or something else? The position of atheists is that 'miracles' ascribed to God either never occured, or were natural phenomena that were misunderstood.

Jack-- I wanted to point out this passage in the book review you linked to:

'In general, the arguments by Gilbert and Cotterell do not stand up to even moderate standards of sense making. Since they have striven to get an airing of their theories for critical evaluation, and dislike being ignored by scholars, I've taken the time to carefully go through the book and point out the mistakes.'

It sounds like the reviewer has a healthy skepticism (based on that passage only); unfortunately, knowledgeable researchers and scientists are usually employed investigating real things with real consequences, and don't have much time to spare unraveling nonsense.

'An aside to Joe, jews are taught to believe that Jesus was "just a man", and there's a lot of rhetoric explaining his existence as such, and there's a lot of historical documentation (as best as can be recorded over 2000 years of telephone) for Jesus' very living existence so, he was a live real person and blew a bunch of people away.'

I'm no historian, but I read an article in Free Inquiry magazine last year asserting that Jesus did not actually exist, so apparently there are different schools of thought on this. As far as blowing people away, I'm certain that there were no firearms available during that period.;)

'About Ghandi, if you haven't figured out what he has evolved into in the "group conciousness" then you are missing an important step in "cultural evolution" if not spiritual evolution.'

I once again have difficulty addressing your claim, because of its vague nature. If you are referring to his being an influential figure and an inspiration to young people of my generation, I'm sure there were enough books, television shows, and a motion picture to communicate this influence. No 'group consciousness' was necessary.

Regarding world peace-- I did not participate in the Harmonic Convergence and I think it was a waste of time. I did, however, participate in a peace march in Washington DC to protest the Gulf War. I believe very strongly that tangible efforts to create peace and freedom, such as the activities of Amnesty International, are of great value, and that attempts to divert those efforts towards psychic mumbo-jumbo are very counterproductive.

I'm sure right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh are absolutely in love with stuff like the Harmonic Convergence, because it gives them a golden opportunity to portray leftists as kooks!

I am also quite certain that Kim Thompson, all by himself, publicly arguing the reasoning and evidence supporting gun control over on the Ashcroft thread, does more to advance the cause of gun control than every single prayer for gun control that has ever been uttered.

'Well, I agree that there will be some sort of cataclysm, but I'm not sure its gonna be BOOM CRASH 4 horsemen of the apocalpypse, perhaps much more subtle than that.'

It is characteristic of apocalyptic predictions that they are often cast in vague terms so that they cannot be proven false. This is especially true AFTER the prediction has failed to come to pass, as has happened with all of the millenial apocalypse predictions.

'All that aside, I believe very much in God, joe, because in my experience God has shown proof of his existence. I mean, when you touch the red truck, and its a red truck, whatcha gonna do?'

Could you be more specific about the 'proof' you've experienced?

Perhaps some Jews. In many Jewish educations (such as my own), the question never comes up, just as it doesn't come up about any of the many other people who have been proclaimed (by themselves or others) the messiah. We also weren't taught specifically the true nature of Thor, Buddha, or other such figures.
Meanwhile, some Jews who believe in Caballah have "documented" that Jesus was using mystical powers in inappropriate ways.

All this is recalling a rather offensive statement that someone made to me online years back, something to the effect that the definitive concept of Judaism is that Jesus was not the messiah. I had to explain to him that Judaism does not exist solely in relationship to Christianity. Judaism was around for a long time before Jesus was even a question.

Ah, religion. Nothing riles people up faster, except for Pat O'Neill.

Anyway, a slight backtrack from me, wanted to address this:

"You can't deny the existence of the energy that pulses within you (I can't anyway) it is a separate, coherent thing, compared to the electric meat that this clumsy body is."

Actually, I'd like to point out that since science has clearly demonstrated that energy and matter are interchangeable, the "electric meat" you refer to is actually a rather substantial quantity of energy coalesced into matter. In fact, if you do a little Einsteinian math, E=mc^2, you'll find that the amount of energy represented by an average person's body is quite staggering. If all the matter in your body was converted to energy simultaneously, the resulting detonation would blast a hole the size of the moon in our little planet, pretty much shattering the world... like the famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita that Oppenheimer uttered after the first atomic blast in New Mexico.

Scientifically, that's very interesting, but in my view spiritually, I think this is highly significant. Judeo-Christian Western religions seem to vilify the material body, to cast it as base, gross, and corrupt. Some sects go so far as to make it taboo to even touch a woman when she's menstruating (in fact the overall tone of Judaism, Islam and Christianity is highly anti-feminine). Normal bodily functions, especially sex and reproduction, are seen as corrupt properties of the corrupt material body, and thus are made shameful and vile. Most such religions basically attempt to deny that we urinate, defecate, copulate, turning things that each one of us does on a daily basis (well, 2 out of 3 at any rate) into disgusting inconveniences that we should hide from everyone in our shame.

I can't hold with that line of thought. We are composed of an astonishing amount of "pure" energy, which has organized itself in remarkably subtle and complex ways. While I can't tell you whether our material selves and our consciousness are separate entities, I don't believe that they are. In a Unified Field Theory universe, it's possible that what we call consciousness is the extension of our "energy" along one or some of the other physical dimensions of our universe. (Say what, Jeff?!?) Physics has shown mathematically that the universe is not simply 3-dimensional or 4-dimensional (space-time) as we've thought; the way the math works out it appears that there are between 10 and 22 physical dimensions to our universe. I know, it's confusing... but numbers don't lie, as long as the mathematician doesn't make mistakes... however, large teams of mathematicians have been working on this for many years, minimizing that possibility.

I refuse to see our material bodies as being something we should hate. How is anyone supposed to have any good feelings for themselves if they are taught to revile the one thing they actually possess and inhabit in this world? If you're convinced that you are a disgusting chunk of worthless electric meat in the first place, how can you conjure up the self-confidence and discipline to attempt to rise up and live a good, meaningful life, whether "Godly" or without a "god"? For that matter, how can you respect all the other lumps of corrupt flesh around you and treat them as beings of importance and significance?

Even more insidious, treating the material body as a corrupting influence allows people to do all sorts of heinous things with it and to it and absolve themselves of responsibility. Look at the Seven Deadly Sins of Christianity: two out of seven are bodily sins: Gluttony and Lust. All manner of gluttonous and lustful behavior can be blamed on "carnal urges" or hormones or the "failings of the body" -- thus allowing the transgressor to deflect any blame away from their THOUGHTS, from their "conscious" responsibility for their actions. Sloth and Wrath can also be somewhat blamed on the body, as laziness can be blamed on "my body doesn't want to work" and wrath can be blamed on hormones and adrenaline.

Basically, I reject any line of thinking, religious or otherwise, that makes it possible for a person to easily evade responsibility for actions they take which are harmful to themselves or to others.

I generally think that religion came about for a pretty simple reason: people are afraid. Very afraid. And people are MOST afraid of things that they don't understand, and one specific fear that all religions address is the fear of death. Religion attempts to explain things we don't understand in terms which allay our fears. Long ago, people didn't understand the many phenomena of nature, like storms and lightning and earthquakes and even fire. Someone somewhere imagined that these were controlled by powerful, unseen beings or creatures -- a natural imagining, considering that we were surrounded by living things that we interacted with constantly. We are creative creatures, after all. Anyway, people came up with these imaginings to help them cope with incredible and sometimes destructive forces that they could otherwise do nothing about.

I think that some different personality types emerged as a result: the "scientist" or "explorer" personality, which attempts to investigate that which is not understood, and to improve itself and life in general for everyone with the knowledge gained; the "controller" or "manipulator" who attempts to manipulate others' behavior using knowledge and imaginative stories that play on people's emotions (usually fear); and what I can only call the "willful ignorant," which is someone who just doesn't want to know, and who really wants someone else to tell them what to do. Obviously this is highly simplistic and is not intended to be a rigorous psychological proposition. Just my train of thought... Anyway, each of us manifests all three of these in differing degrees, with different ones being dominant in different people. And each is most significantly different in how it deals with fear.

The Scientist/Explorer tries to destroy fear by gaining knowledge. A good example of the benefits to humanity of this is our lately-created ability to track hurricanes. 200 years ago, hurricanes would hit without warning. People knew the season that they would come, and that's it. When they showed up, they wreaked incredible devastation and killed vast numbers of people. Even 100 years ago this was true. Now, we can see them forming out in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles away and days in advance, and can at least get the people out before they hit and blast the houses away. Also, we can use our knowledge of structures to build hurricane-resistant buildings, to help protect people and keep the destruction to a minimum. This benefit is the result of many years of scientific exploration by thousands of scientists.

The Controller/Manipulator plays on other people's fears in order to control them, this control being designed to destroy the Controller's fears, whatever they may be. Politicians are the most obvious example of this behavior. They sway people's emotions with practiced facility in order to get people to do what they want. The Controller is generally against circulating knowledge among the people, because only by controlling the knowledge can they be sure that people will react emotionally to their control tactics. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows that controlling the information that the populace receives is the most important factor in maintaining control. This is why dictatorships always squash information sources that they don't control. Read about Goebbels and the Nazis for a most chilling an effective demonstration of this - and note that they Nazis constantly invoked the name of God in their propaganda. Judaism/Christianity/Islam, in my view, are basically information-controlling religions, which attract Controllers to their hierarchies.

Lastly, the Willful Ignorants are the people that the Controller takes control of. These are generally people who are dominated by their fears to the point that they want someone to tell them what to do and to make their lives less full of fear. They do not wish to take responsibility for their own actions, and prefer that their lives be directed by an outside source. Religions that offer "salvation" and "freedom from doubt" and "eternal life" and other perceived solutions to the problems of life as a human are powerfully attractive to such people. "You mean, if I accept Jesus as my Savior, then my life will change and be wonderful and full of love? Wow, I'm in!" These are people -- and there are an awful lot of them -- that are basically seeking an easy way out. They don't want to take responsibility for their actions -- "Well, Jesus said I'm a sinner, so I can't help myself if I sin, but as long as I pray, he'll forgive me" -- and they don't want to face their fears. Instead they will just go on as always and excuse all manner of poor behavior with the "escape tools" that their religion gives them (I'm only using Christianity as an example, as that's the one I'm most familiar with). Also, and in my mind even more dangerous, is the propensity to accept all sorts of the misfortunes of life and the attacks of other people as being "God's will" or even "the work of the Devil and demons." Blaming things on God and demons means that one doesn't have to do any work to improve life and find ways to avoid setting oneself up in bad situations. For example, I've heard people who repeatedly get into relationships with abusive partners (male and female) say things like "I wish God would stop sending these people to me, but that's God's will." I want to say to them "maybe God's trying to send you a message to pay more attention to whom you date, and also to examine in yourself why you're attracted to such people." In other words, they blame God for putting these destructive partners in their lives, when clearly they are selecting these partners in a repetitive pattern. Blaming alcoholism on "demons" is another easy out. It means you can NEVER exercise control over your drinking, because the "demons" are forcing you to do it. Now, not to downplay the power of addictions, but alcoholism IS controllable. But it's NOT EASY. An addict has to fight every day to not indulge their addiction.

Damn... I gotta roll, I have more I want to add, but I've got a meeting to go to. More on religion vs. personal responsibility later...

------------------
Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

from Joe Zabel:



Joe --

If someone tells you a lie, you have three basic options on how to deal with it:

1. You can choose to believe what they told you.
2. You can choose to disbelieve what they told you.
3. You can do some research to prove without a shade of doubt that it is a lie.

Most of the people we would call "believers" tend to believe in concepts like:
1. an afterlife,
2. reincarnation, and
3. a collective unconsciousness.

It tends to very hard to either prove or disprove the existence of these things. Most of us just form a working hypothesis on whether they exist and abide by it on a daily basis.

If you stop and think about it, you'll realize that most of us use a number of working hypotheses to make it through the day. Some people believe that drinking too much coffee is bad for you and have some scientific research to back them up. Others believe that coffee drinking has positive effects on a person's lifespan and have evidence to back that up as well. Meanwhile, other people are performing research and learning more about the way the human body works -- both the coffee lovers and haters may have an incomplete understanding of all the effects of coffee drinking.

We ALL have belief systems and atheism is just one of them.

Personally, largely on the basis of Carl Jung's often fantastic writing, I chose to believe in a collective unconsciousness. (I also do not rule out an afterlife or reincarnation.) Jung hardly has the reputation of a crackpot, and it seems to me he's respected as much for his methodology as for his beliefs.

I agree with you wholeheartedly we'd all be better off if more people had better critical thinking skills, but I hardly think that people who choose not to disbelieve in any of the various "god concepts" have anything to do with all the lousy reasoning skills of modern society.


[This message has been edited by Ben Adams (edited 04-08-2001).]

Jeff posted his response while I was writing mine, so I wasn't able to respond it in my last post. (A bunch of spoons on my kitchen counter are now all bent too. Very weird. [img]/resources/ubb/wink.gif[/img] )

Seriously, I think he did a great job of covering many of the more heinous aspects of Christianity. Patriarchical religions that justify bad behavior on the part of white males can be quite scary indeed.

(Does anyone else besides me think that religion is part of Dave Sim's problem? I seem to remember Charles Reece correctly comparing him to a patriarchical Southern Baptist. Perhaps Sim needs to convert to Paganism.....?)

Now if we could just get someone to talk about indigenous religions wiped out in the name of Christianity....

Could you be more specific about the 'proof' you've experienced?<<

Sure. While reading the Torah during my Bar Mitzvah all this light came pouring out of the Ark and God and I chatted using what I can only term psychic geometry. I mean we physically talked while I was singing the passage during the prayer service. I don't know how else to explain it. During the conversation, several things were explained to me which have since happened in the course of my life, (my marriage, my career, stuff I've learned and am learning and know) so as I get older it feels undeniable.

I DON'T want to believe in God necessarily, but seem to have no choice about it.

And don't put down the Convergence as mumbo jumbo. especially since you didn't participate. A whole bunch of people having a positive intent can only have a positive impact, even if we are all utterly deluded.

Jeff-- Your contribution to this discussion is very interesting so far, and I look forward to hearing more.

I think I disagree in the following ways--

I think the adherence to particular religions have more to do with culture than with the character of the individual. People's religious beliefs tend to conform with what they've been taught, and beliefs they've encountered. I think it goes too far to say that they are 'willfully ignorant' or that they are primarily motivated by fear. There are all kinds of reasons why people chose to believe a religion.

This may seem to contradict what I said earlier, but when I say that the belief in an afterlife arises from mankind's fear of death, I'm talking about the slow evolution of a religion over thousands of years. A religion that provides solace to a deceased's loved ones will be survive better than one that does not.

I don't think your other stereotypes bear scrutiny either. There are atheists who have no interest in acquiring knowledge, and devoutly religious people who are also dedicated medical researchers, for instance. And I certainly don't accept your apparent assertion that all politicians seek to control people by playing on their fears.

You single out 'Judaism/Christianity/Islam' as information-controlling religions. As large, dominant religions, these sects have a longer 'paper trail' of suppressing dissent, but I think all religions have a similar tendency to a greater or lesser degree. Indeed, atheistic systems like Communism have a pretty bad rep in that regard as well!

Ben said, 'If someone tells you a lie, you have three basic options on how to deal with it:

1. You can choose to believe what they told you.
2. You can choose to disbelieve what they told you.
3. You can do some research to prove without a shade of doubt that it is a lie.'

I disagree with this. For one thing, there are many more choices-- you can not understand the lie, you can partially believe the lie, you can believe the lie more literally than it was intended, you can believe the lie on Wednesday's and Fridays and disbelieve it the rest of the week, you can believe the lie and combine it with other beliefs, changing it utterly from the original lie.

Also, you don't have the option of proving the lie to be false beyond a shadow of a doubt, because you can't prove a negative.

The concepts of an afterlife or reincarnation do not have a privileged position in being un-disprovable. Any lie is un-disprovable, given sufficient credulity on the part of the person judging.

Say for instance that I were to claim that I wrote and drew all the issues of the Fantastic Four. A skeptic could produce various business records, and point out that I was only six years old when the first issues were produced. But I could argue that I'm fact much older, and secretly wealthy, and that I simply paid off Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to carry my work into Marvel's offices. By making enough preposterous claims, I could eventually produce a scenario that you could not disprove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Says Ben, 'We ALL have belief systems and atheism is just one of them.'

I couldn't disagree more.

Are you saying, Ben, that you have a 'belief system' that there is no Santa Claus? That you also have a 'belief system' that I didn't author the FF? That you have a 'belief system' accounting for each of the world religions that you don't adhere to? It would seem that you have more systems than your brain could possibly hold! And all of them are unnecessary to account for the simple fact that you don't believe everything you might have heard.

The religious often charge that atheism is a belief system, to try to make us over to be the same as you. Sometimes this is done by creationists attempting to ban the teaching of evolution in the schools.

But atheism is not a belief. It is UNbelief, the ABSENSE of belief. Secular humanism, existentialism, and other isms related to unbelief are systems of thinking, philosophies. But it is not necessary for an atheist to embrace any of these philosophies in order to reject religion.

Most atheists consider it a very grave insult to have their rejection of religion be called a belief system. But I think that it is morely evidence of the insecurity of the religious. They feel a little bit foolish believing in nonsense, and simply refuse to accept that someone else is capable of being more sensible.

Ben again, 'Personally, largely on the basis of Carl Jung's often fantastic writing, I chose to believe in a collective unconsciousness. (I also do not rule out an afterlife or reincarnation.) Jung hardly has the reputation of a crackpot, and it seems to me he's respected as much for his methodology as for his beliefs.'

Afraid I've never had the oportunity to check out Jung in any detail, although I know his work has been used to justify any number of outre beliefs, from crop circles to tarot cards. Can you describe in a nutshell what evidence Jung provides to support the claim of a collective unconscious, and what exactly this collective unconsciousness is supposed to be?

However much respected Jung is, his research has not persuaded most scientists to invest in crystal balls and the I Ching-- there is a much higher incidence of atheism among scientists than there is in the general population.

In any case, Ben, I hope that you'll be an atheist in your next life! [img]/resources/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

Ben sayeth, 'I agree with you wholeheartedly we'd all be better off if more people had better critical thinking skills, but I hardly think that people who choose not to disbelieve in any of the various "god concepts" have anything to do with all the lousy reasoning skills of modern society.'

I think believers have a lot to do with it. An ill-founded belief system makes a person vulnerable to 'psychic' con games and mind-control cults; creationist propaganda is actively undermining our young people's understanding of science; fundamentalist sects are successfully spearheading an extremist right-wing agenda, and as Jack described, new-age phonies are exploiting leftist political sentiments to draw more people into ineffectual meditation and spell-casting.

If I sound like an alarmist, I'm not. It is a slow process for mankind to progress from a superstition-based psychology to a reality-based one. But we atheists have an enormous, overwhelming advantage-- we've got the truth on our side!