Allan
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-- On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 12:13 AM, gabbydott <gabbydott@gmail.com> wrote:
Truth is, protestants have to pay as well. Even atheists pay for
churches here in Germany, less though and through general tax paying.
> --
On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Allan H <allanh1946@gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought Bill is long enough,, I was listening on the news that it is a
> good thing that you are protestant ,, the news was saying you have to pay
> to be roman Catholic in Germany.. kind of a church support thing.
> Allan
>
> On Oct 1, 2012 8:50 PM, "William L Houts" <lukaeon@gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Hello Gabby --it's great to meet you too. I don't know what happened with
>> the name thing --I'm sure one William L. Houts is enough for anyone.
>>
>>
>> --Bill
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/1/2012 10:02 AM, gabbydott wrote:
>>
>> Hello Bill, I noticed that your screen name on the group website is rather
>> long. It reads: William L. Houts William L. Houts Lukaeon William L. Houts.
>> I was wondering if this was your intention.
>>
>> Maybe yes. Just so much, I do differentiate between heaven and afterlife
>> and their individual usability for corruption. Both terms are somehow
>> related to the future, but the access is different. Sorry, I forgot to
>> introduce myself. My name is Gabby (short for Gabriele), I am a Protestant,
>> my first language is German, and I believe in God. I like to listen to other
>> people's stories which is why I have learned to keep my own very short. Nice
>> meeting you. :)
>>
>> On Friday, September 28, 2012 7:17:08 AM UTC+2, William L. Houts William
>> L. Houts Lukaeon William L. Houts wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I wonder if humans do dream of uncorrupted worlds, in general. You'd
>>> think that would be universal, and it does seem to be borne out by
>>> Western mythologies, with some exceptions. For instance, the Greeks had
>>> Olympus, but except for Heracles no one got to go there; everyone else
>>> went to Hades, which was gloomy and boring if you were lucky enough to
>>> land there in general population, and terrifying if the gods put you in
>>> Tartarus. And the Romans didn't seem to place faith in any sort of
>>> afterlife at all, which is one of the main reasons whyChristianity sold
>>> like hotcakes. Eastern religions such as Buddhism had various hells and
>>> heavens, but they were sort of besides the point: your karma is / was
>>> supposed to boil down to nothing and liberate you from the Wheel of
>>> Rebirth, which was supposed to put you in Nirvana, which was less a
>>> Heaven than it was a Nowhere. And Taoism doesn't have much to say about
>>> heavenly afterworlds; its whole point is to make this world more just
>>> and balanced and leaves heavens to the individual to figure out.
>>>
>>> But as to your question of whether humans long for uncorrupted worlds, I
>>> think that besides the Abrahamic religions noone takes them very
>>> seriously. And I think they've got a point: I mean, if you're taking
>>> your present existence at all seriously, then just what is an afterlife
>>> supposed to be about? Are we supposed to be eating bonbons all day and
>>> living in some version of American luxury? I'd like to believe in
>>> Heaven --which for me looks like a kind of liberal college town, with
>>> libraries and funky old cinema houses-- but all of that seems kind of
>>> empty if there's no gravitas, no seriousness. Without death, without a
>>> final marker which howls at us, Do what you must do NOW and die knowing
>>> that you've used your life well--without that, I think heaven would
>>> become kind of slouchy and boring, or worse. Unless, of course, what's
>>> waiting for us on the other side is something superrational but
>>> beautiful, like being absorbed into the godhead, if such there be.
>>>
>>> So in answer to your question, I think we do dream of uncorrupt worlds,
>>> but if we examine them too closely, they tend to be bustable soap
>>> bubbles. And maybe I lack imagination, but I wonder, how could it be any
>>> other way? Frankly, I'd like to be told how. I sound sensible about all
>>> of this if a little pessimistic, but in reality I'm a scared ex-Catholic
>>> who is terrified of death and wants to solve the Big Question before
>>> they're performing Last Rites on his sorry ass.
>>>
>>>
>>> --Bill
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/27/2012 7:20 PM, rigsy03 wrote:
>>> > I wonder where you put the mythological and religious other-worldlies-
>>> > from gods to guardian angels, etc.? Or the construct of Dante's
>>> > "Divine Comedy", for instance. Do humans long for uncorrupted worlds?
>>> >
>>> > On Sep 27, 6:23 pm, William L Houts <luka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> I'm with the pragmatists on the question of intelligent alien species.
>>> >> Many scientists who speculate on this sort of thing --though there
>>> >> really aren't that many of them-- say that such species wouldn't
>>> >> resemble anything so comforting as a humanoid physiology, but I think
>>> >> they're partly mistaken. Surely there would be surprises in the way
>>> >> nature cooks up life on other planets with radically different
>>> >> chemistries than our dear old Mama Earth. But I think there's reason
>>> >> to
>>> >> suppose that many alien species would resemble us. After all, any
>>> >> species we might imagine has to cope with gravity as it evolves. So
>>> >> they're much more likely to evolve some form of locomotion which
>>> >> involves two, four or six pedal extremities (as Fats Waller calls
>>> >> them)
>>> >> rather than three or five: even-numbered legs are less wobbly and
>>> >> more
>>> >> amenable to balanced movement which consumes fewer calories. . Also,
>>> >> sense organs like eyes and ears are likely to be located in or close
>>> >> to
>>> >> a head, as there is survival value in having sense organs located
>>> >> close
>>> >> to a brain, or whatever such species might use for brains. Finally,
>>> >> everyone in the cosmos requires energy to get going, so they're either
>>> >> going to evolve photosynthesis and take their energy directly from
>>> >> their
>>> >> sun or suns, or they're going to take their sunbeams indirectly by
>>> >> consuming something lower in the food chain. I'm sure there are lots
>>> >> of
>>> >> evolution pathways I'm leaving out, seeing as I'm a curious poet
>>> >> rather
>>> >> than a serious scientist type of guy, but I think these notions are,
>>> >> as
>>> >> Allan named other ideas of mine, sensible provisos.
>>> >>
>>> >> PS. I left out centipedes and millipedes with their scores of legs,
>>> >> but
>>> >> I think y'all's get what I'm saying here.
>>> >>
>>> >> --Bill
>>> >>
>>> >> On 9/27/2012 3:57 PM, archytas wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>> I haven't seen any UFOs and tend not to be much interested in people
>>> >>> who claim to have - at least without Bill's sensible provisos. The
>>> >>> speed of thought as a brain process is slower than light-speed - but
>>> >>> then I'm basically a tropical fish realist. I'd have a bet that no
>>> >>> one in this group would really have much of a definition of light-
>>> >>> speed and the Ricel curvature tensor, Euler Langrangian and the rest
>>> >>> of Einstein's field equations. I mean no offence and don't do much
>>> >>> of
>>> >>> this science myself.
>>> >>> If you point out to a physicist that the people from the future who
>>> >>> have invented the time machine are in extraordinarily short supply in
>>> >>> our present he may come up with some mathematical guff on the shape
>>> >>> of
>>> >>> the universe that explains this or makes time travel only possible to
>>> >>> the future. I have seen demons - plodding back to camp after a
>>> >>> week's
>>> >>> endurance exercise with no food for two days I was visually convinced
>>> >>> the sentries were vampires but still asked them where the Naffi was.
>>> >>> My guess is that we travel through space as primitive life-forms with
>>> >>> evolution built-in and waiting to unfold. We may thus have come from
>>> >>> a much more advanced civilisation than ours bound by the speed of
>>> >>> light, capable of the biological engineering but not space-flight
>>> >>> much
>>> >>> more advanced than our own. Calculations give 28 years as the time
>>> >>> to
>>> >>> reach the edge of the known universe - but this is the time inside
>>> >>> the
>>> >>> ship accelerating to near light speed fairly slowly. Space is not
>>> >>> friction free and it's doubtful we or our instruments could take the
>>> >>> radiation of light-speed flight.
>>> >>> I rather hope there are some nice, genuinely civilised aliens
>>> >>> thinking
>>> >>> of coming here. In my speculation, intelligent life tends to worry
>>> >>> about food chains led by apes as these have been notoriously
>>> >>> war-like.
>>> >>> I'm into bees and ants rather than UFOs at the moment. Bees use
>>> >>> 'pharma' to combat fungal infections. Ants take slaves - killing the
>>> >>> adults of another species and taking the larvae. These slaves then
>>> >>> raise the slaver brood. Interestingly, the ant slaves rebel and kill
>>> >>> the pupae of their masters - an act that does not favour the
>>> >>> individuals a they will die, but does seem to be altruistic in favour
>>> >>> of other colonies of the enslaved species. I mention this to suggest
>>> >>> science is not a human invention, just something in evolution we are
>>> >>> expanding.
>>> >>> UFOs remind me of religion generally - people seem to bond around
>>> >>> ludic claims about golden salamanders and what cannot be proved. I
>>> >>> guess we will find life or past life-sign on Mars. Salvation may
>>> >>> come
>>> >>> from a mother-ship, but my own feeling is that our inability to
>>> >>> develop science as we could is a more important thought experiment.
>>> >>> In respect of this problem I recommend 'Bad Pharma' by Ben
>>> >>> Goldacre, He finds a �600 billion industry in which more money
>>> >>> is
>>> >>> spent on marketing than on research and development, where the
>>> >>> results
>>> >>> of clinical trials of new drugs are massaged, and in which regulators
>>> >>> fail to regulate. Papers supposedly by respected academics are
>>> >>> ghostwritten by drug companies, and patients' pressure groups are
>>> >>> covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers.
>>> >>> I can't for the life of me work out why we aren't directing our
>>> >>> collective towards tapping into the asteroid belt and beyond instead
>>> >>> of ADMASS.
>>> >>> On 24 Sep, 20:15, William L Houts <luka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>> I'm placing my bet on thoughtspeed. It's a great concept and it's a
>>> >>>> great word. How could I do any better than that?
>>> >>>> --Bill
>>> >>>> On 9/24/2012 7:17 AM, Don Johnson wrote:
>>> >>>>> I agree with Allan the distance challenge is daunting. In an
>>> >>>>> endless
>>> >>>>> universe there's also no doubt in my mind there are other
>>> >>>>> inhabitable
>>> >>>>> planets out there but very unlikely any "aliens" will be visiting
>>> >>>>> us.
>>> >>>>> But there is hope....
>>> >>>>> http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw81.html
>>> >>>>> It's fun to speculate. The ball is in your court.
>>> >>>>> dj
>>> >>>>> On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 4:51 PM, William L Houts
>>> >>>>> <luka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>>>>> I've been around for a while now, so I thought I'd put in a topic
>>> >>>>>> for
>>> >>>>>> discussion. I'm very interested in the UFO phenomenon and wonder
>>> >>>>>> what the
>>> >>>>>> singing minds here have to say about it. As for me, I don't have
>>> >>>>>> a dog in
>>> >>>>>> this fight --I tend to think that there's something to them,
>>> >>>>>> something very
>>> >>>>>> unusual, but I'm not at all certain that they're even piloted.
>>> >>>>>> Jacques
>>> >>>>>> Valee, one of the more interesting theorists on the subject, says
>>> >>>>>> that
>>> >>>>>> they're something like external dreams. Well, he doesn't say that
>>> >>>>>> exactly,
>>> >>>>>> but that's how I interpret him. Carl Jung, who was also very
>>> >>>>>> interested in
>>> >>>>>> the topic, says something very similar.
>>> >>>>>> I have an experience to relate, too. About fifteen or sixteen
>>> >>>>>> years ago, I
>>> >>>>>> was flying down to Las Vegas on Southwest. Looking out of my
>>> >>>>>> window I saw,
>>> >>>>>> perhaps 20,000 feet below us, a disc-shaped object. It was
>>> >>>>>> featureless and,
>>> >>>>>> in the bright sun and from this angle, almost perfectly white. It
>>> >>>>>> wasn't
>>> >>>>>> particularly fast and other than the fact that it was round, it
>>> >>>>>> wasn't all
>>> >>>>>> that interesting. I told my three travel mates, and they all
>>> >>>>>> basically
>>> >>>>>> called me a liar. (I was very interested in occult topics in
>>> >>>>>> those days, so
>>> >>>>>> my judgment was highly suspect.) I'm not convinced that it wasn't
>>> >>>>>> something
>>> >>>>>> like a military test craft or something like that, but it was a
>>> >>>>>> UFO both in
>>> >>>>>> the high woo woo sense and in the sense that it was an unfamiliar
>>> >>>>>> flying
>>> >>>>>> object. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
>>> >>>>>> Tennis, anyone?
>>> >>>>>> --Bill
>>> >>>>>> -- "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead and boy are my arms
>>> >>>>>> tired."
>>> >>>>>> --
>>> >>>> --
>>> >>>> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead
>>> >>>> and boy are my arms tired."
>>> >> --
>>> >> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead
>>> >> and boy are my arms tired."- Hide quoted text -
>>> >>
>>> >> - Show quoted text -
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead
>>> and boy are my arms tired."
>>>
>> --
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> "I just flew in from the Land of the Dead
>> and boy are my arms tired."
>>
>> --
>>
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--
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|_D Allan
Life is for moral, ethical and truthful living.
I am a Natural Airgunner -
Full of Hot Air & Ready To Expel It Quickly.
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