Re: Mind's Eye UFO's: Fact or Fantasy?

Catholic schools are rebounding to avoid public schools and are
attended by several faiths. The tuition is adjusted if one is a
parishoner, i.e. less tuition since you are expected to tithe, so it
probably works out to the same amount.
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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 afterlifeand 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 poetrather
> >> >> 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-flightmuch
> >> >>> 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 insidethe
> >> >>> 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
>
> ...
>
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