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

Roughly the same thing going on here with confessional schools. The
avoidance motif is where I see the problem begins.

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 1:20 PM, rigsy03 <rigsy03@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> > 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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