King of the Americas
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I don't know.
UFO'S: A possible explanation
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I don't know.
King of the Americas
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru_(mythology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumeru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Asgard
http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Go-Hi/Heaven.html
http://www.egyptartsite.com/glossary.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/esp_sumer_annunaki12a.htm
[qimg]http://www.freewebs.com/theallmightycow/PWNED!.JPG[/qimg]
I missed out Mt Olympus, I figured you knew already that the greeks saw heaven as a mountain, you did know that right ?
If you are correct that "ALL" religions/people think that "heavens" literally translates to "mountain top", rather than "the skies", why aren't ALL of the images of "God"/god/them sitting atop big hills, or mountains as it were?
I knew that Mt. Olympus was referred to as "the home of the gods", but I never heard it referred to as "the heavens"...
It seems to me, that humans have attempted to place "gods" in places unreachable to humans. When we managed to scale these peaks, maybe the "gods" moved to the next unreachable place..."the heavens"?
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Marduk
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they used to be
the word heaven is actually derived from Old English word "heofon" which means "home of God,"
I could post hundreds of pictures if you like of gods sitting on mountains, but none of them postdate the advent of monotheism. It is monotheism that changed the way people view Heaven, it became neccesary to move God away from the people so that the only way to reach him was through the priesthood, it was this that made Monotheism a winner over the polytheistic world it came from. Up til this point people were free to worship their gods in any method they wanted, they didn't rely on priests so much for their salvation, and you know that orthodox religion and free thinking are not good bedfellows
Neither did I, I already told you that Heaven is the abode of the Gods and the heavens is the sky surrounding it,
[/QUOTE]
Its actually because mountains were always regarded as sacred, before agriculture the best place to hunt was always on the steppes of a mountain and when they did so they stayed in caves overnight. All that cave art was the start of a formal religion, even today in modern religions there are quite a few mentions of sacred holy mountains.
You probably don't know this but the word "Eden" started out as the Sumerian word for "Steppe"
http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e1199.html
then 2500 years after its first recorded use a Babylonian king called Nebuchadrezzar II made slaves of the people of Jerusalem, bringing them back to his capital city, while they were there they learned a lot about religion, most of the bible is redacted from that source, Angels didn't exist until after they were freed by Cyrus the persian, they were simply the new position for the rest of the gods. so you can cancel them from your probable UFO list as well, but hey, don't take my word for it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archangel#In_Judaism
you are obviously a product of the modern world, you need to stop attempting to understand things by comparing them to your life and start doing the research properly, things were different back then, there were no U.F.O.s
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Marduk
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King of the Americas
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I do, its because there were no U.F.O's. it is a modern phenomena.
Only in your head...
Marduk
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well youve had three pages now to post evidence to prove that, as you haven't managed it shall we all just assume that its your head that has the problem ?
King of the Americas
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What was "God"/"god", to the ancients?
What is "God" today?
I ask these 2 questions rhetorically, because I don't think there is an answer.
Artist depict him/them, as old bearded men, lighted being with wings, or merely as a bright white light. Which one do you point at as accurate?
Marduk,
You claimed earlier that these artists "knew" what they were painting, and you did two, and that 'I' was the only one in the dark...
Do you really think that these artists were working from a 'real' touchable, measurable, quantifiably entity, AND that they were accurate in their depictions?
What is "God" today?
I ask these 2 questions rhetorically, because I don't think there is an answer.
Artist depict him/them, as old bearded men, lighted being with wings, or merely as a bright white light. Which one do you point at as accurate?
Marduk,
You claimed earlier that these artists "knew" what they were painting, and you did two, and that 'I' was the only one in the dark...
Do you really think that these artists were working from a 'real' touchable, measurable, quantifiably entity, AND that they were accurate in their depictions?
King of the Americas
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well youve had three pages now to post evidence to prove that, as you haven't managed it shall we all just assume that its your head that has the problem ?
My problem is my inability to post pictures, and properly quote other posters, with my retort following each statement...
Marduk
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a way of explaining where things came from before science explained it properly, all ancient cultures created their own cosmology from their own beliefs, and as I said earlier, God always looked the same as men did. You couldn't tell them apart, this is why in Art gods were usually shown wearing horns, horns are a symbol of divinity. Even the bible got that part right
of course this isn't true, Edward Chiera (a famous wartime Assyriologist) said of that
Imho Anachronistic
honestly K I think this statement just means that you don't know the answer
All of them depending on the culture, obviously, although your examples are all rather recent. The one distinguishing thing about ancient world Gods is that they were able to impregnate human women in the usual human manner, this would hardly be possible if they weren't local.
Giambattista Vico (18th century italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist.) had a lot to say about the origins of Gods and I think his theories make a lot of sense and they are supported by evidence today that wasn't known in his time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Vico
He basically said that there are three ages, the divine, the heroic and the human,
the divine is of course the beginning of history, the human is the modern age and the heroic somewhere in the middle, his conclusions were that as time progresses these ages slide up a scale, so that the heroic become divine and the humans become heros because of the way they are depicted in stories. The Gods of course become forgotten at this point as the former heros become the new Gods,
take for example Imhotep, I'm sure youve heard of him, he was the one outstanding genius in ancient Egyptian history (though thesedays because of hollywood he's recognised as "the mummy")
there is no doubt that he was a real human person, his feats are well recorded, yet two thousand years after his death he was accorded divine status and worshipped as a God. This deification of humans was the norm in the ancient world, although usually divine status was bestowed on dead Kings. The Gods of heaven became a way of legitimising a kings right to rule, many claimed to be the offspring of a human woman (usually a priestess) and a God (usually the head of the relevant pantheon), in this way they claimed to be the reincarnation of that God on earth (sound familiar), and for a while of course this worked well, few people would raise a hand to a living God, of course this ended up in chaos, you just needed to defeat a God king in battle, call him a liar and usurper and then claim to be the real God yourself. This left the way open for monotheism where the God was both untouchable and unreachable, except through the priesthood, who then held the absolute power for themselves. This is one of the reasons why Judaism doesn't recognise Jesus as reincarnated YHWH, in their Dogma YHWH doesn't ever visit earth, that would be dangerous and it would of course undermine their own hold over their people
I already explained that in the one example you suggested the image was taken from religious texts, I even posted the text, the idea that God could appear as a cloud was originally written down in Exodus, it makes a few appearences in other booksof the bible, these are the most relevant
I really do hope you are learning something here K, you'll note that at no time have I stated that some U.F.O's are not from another planet or advanced species, this is because I don't know, neither does anyone else and without real evidence, no one will ever know. I always base what I know on all the evidence available, its good practice and it stops people making me look like a dick on internet forums like this
I learned that the hard way, like you just did
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King of the Americas
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Marduk,
I'd like to say first that I appreciate the tone you've taken with your last few responses. They seem more informative and civil. 'I' am here to discuss not demean...
Now, I asked who or what God was to the ancients, but I guess I should have asked where 'beliefs' come from... As you noted that God-specifics spawn from individual beliefs.
MY recollection of God creating man was "and God said, let us create man in our image", but admittedly that came from the KJV and not an original Hebrew version.
I'll readily admit that I know little to absolutely NOTHING about the reality of God...I don't know what form it takes, where it came from, or what it does on a day to day basis. You find that God is out of place, chronologically? Like an old steam engine paddleboat, among a fleet of nuclear subs? The issue I was trying to raise, is that steam engine paddleboats ARE real, and you can find pictures and 'accurate' paintings of them. People 'saw' AND chronicled them.
Where did the images of these 'floating' gods come from, the pillars of fire, angels riding clouds, light beaming down from seemingly solid objects...?
I get that we 'create' gods from some internal need. I wrote a paper in college entitled "Heros and Hero Worship", wherein I explored man's inner need to be cared for and looked after, a safety net of sorts. It starts with our parents, who can do no wrong and whom we look to for all that we need. Later, we look to movie stars, sports figures, and even politicians. Eventually, these things fail us, and so we look further outward, or sometimes backward into the annals of time. God, I wrote, is that timeless, formless, canvass that we can put upon whatever we need...but this isn't a definite quantifiable thing, that can be weighed and measured...
So, I guess until he/she/they DO show up, I think all that we have is an "Unidentifiable Object", be they flying, floating, or set atop a mountain, among "the heavens".
I do however hold that God isn't only our creation, but rather something many have experienced/witnessed and documented as best they could. These historians saw or experienced 'something' that they found to be superior to themselves, and that I believe is where divinity begins- seeing something better than yourself...
I'd like to say first that I appreciate the tone you've taken with your last few responses. They seem more informative and civil. 'I' am here to discuss not demean...
Now, I asked who or what God was to the ancients, but I guess I should have asked where 'beliefs' come from... As you noted that God-specifics spawn from individual beliefs.
MY recollection of God creating man was "and God said, let us create man in our image", but admittedly that came from the KJV and not an original Hebrew version.
I'll readily admit that I know little to absolutely NOTHING about the reality of God...I don't know what form it takes, where it came from, or what it does on a day to day basis. You find that God is out of place, chronologically? Like an old steam engine paddleboat, among a fleet of nuclear subs? The issue I was trying to raise, is that steam engine paddleboats ARE real, and you can find pictures and 'accurate' paintings of them. People 'saw' AND chronicled them.
Where did the images of these 'floating' gods come from, the pillars of fire, angels riding clouds, light beaming down from seemingly solid objects...?
I get that we 'create' gods from some internal need. I wrote a paper in college entitled "Heros and Hero Worship", wherein I explored man's inner need to be cared for and looked after, a safety net of sorts. It starts with our parents, who can do no wrong and whom we look to for all that we need. Later, we look to movie stars, sports figures, and even politicians. Eventually, these things fail us, and so we look further outward, or sometimes backward into the annals of time. God, I wrote, is that timeless, formless, canvass that we can put upon whatever we need...but this isn't a definite quantifiable thing, that can be weighed and measured...
So, I guess until he/she/they DO show up, I think all that we have is an "Unidentifiable Object", be they flying, floating, or set atop a mountain, among "the heavens".
I do however hold that God isn't only our creation, but rather something many have experienced/witnessed and documented as best they could. These historians saw or experienced 'something' that they found to be superior to themselves, and that I believe is where divinity begins- seeing something better than yourself...
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just like to point out that thousands of years ago dragons weren't creatures of the Air, they were aquatic.
they didn't get wings until the stories passed into the greek culture, the reason for this is most probably because the Greek word for wing "Ptera" is the same as the Greek word for flipper "Ptera", when you think about it wings and flippers perform the same function
When you consider that King of the Americas believes UFOs are air/spacecraft built by aliens who live under the sea on Earth, that point may be rather less helpful in the argument than you may have thought.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110976
King of the Americas
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First, let's stop with the term "alien". From everything I've see, they have ALWAYS been here, er, "above us"...
And I didn't say they WERE under the sea. I said, that was one of the places they could be, it is close, and relatively unexplored. Another possibility is the dark side of the Moon. And don't start with "there's no 'dark side' of the Moon." I mean merely, the side that doesn't face us...
My argument therein, is that there is no need for UFO's to be capable of interstellar travel, given that they have always been 'here', er "up there".
Marduk
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there is a very natural reason why clouds are associated with mountain tops
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/cld/cldtyp/oth/org.rxml
can you see why understanding the nature of Gods and their believed location is important now ?
why are Gods associated with light ?
the earliest Gods are always sun gods
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Zeus
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=deity
even the word "deity" is derived from
"to gleam, to shine;"
King of the Americas
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I Ratant
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Marduk
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I have already answered all the other questions and musings, you are repeating yourself, thats a step I'm not prepared to take
jakesteele
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[QUOTE said:
Boys and girls, can you say Astrophysics and Ph.D?
J. Allen Hynek - was a scientist who had no scientific training and wasn’t able to reason things out even though he had a P.hD in Astrophysics and the government asked to be a part of Project Blue Book and Project Grudge because of his respected credentials and he is also known for his studies/papers on The Fluctuations of Starlight and Skylight.
If you say that Fenyam > Hynek,
Then I say that Hynek is > Joe Nickell
(and certainly > magicians in general)
(wiki) Joe Nickell born December 1, 1944) is a former stage magician and is a prominent skeptical investigator of the paranormal. He also works as an historical document consultant [1] and has examined such famous forgeries as the purported Jack the Ripper Diary.
Nickell holds B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Kentucky. His Ph.D. is in English for graduate work focusing on literary investigation and folklore.
This is a great example of what I first posted. You will take the word of an amateur or one of the CSIOPS boys over that of an expert as long as it affirms your world view. If an expert does not toe your party line, then you try to invalidate him somehow, whether it is ridiculing, downplaying or minimizing. You pigeon-hole and stereotype them into a general catch-all category of Woo.
Again, I will emphasize one of the original points I made. If Hynek had remained a skeptical refuter of UFOs, he would be golden in your eyes because he would be telling you what you want to hear. You would be saying, “Well, after all, he has a Ph.D in Astrophysics and was Associate Director of Project Bluebook and Project Grudge. I mean, you can’t be more qualified than that.”
On the other hand, if Feynman thought that there were too many unexplainable reports and felt that further study should be done, you would be all over him like stink on **** by ridiculing his work as being out of his field. You would be saying something to the effect of, “While he is a brilliant man, he really doesn’t know nearly as much about UFOs as Hynek, who was intimately involved with Project Bluebook and Project Grudge.”
So I ask you again, do you believe/think that every sighting since the beginning of man up to and including present, and by extension, all future sightings are not UFO related and have mundane, plausible explanations short of an actual landing on the White House lawn?
I included a list of explanations by one of your guys so as to cover all the bases. They are still a very limited number.
Originally Posted by jakesteele
I’ll bet you twenty dollars to a cold horse turd that if Hynek was a non-believer in UFOs you would throw his name out there and say, “This guy was involved with running Blue Book and you can’t get more qualified than that.”
There you go again, no mention of his Ph.D in Astrophysics, no direct mention of Project Bluebook or Project Grudge or his studies of The Fluctuations of Starlight and Skylight. And remember, in the beginning he was a skeptic and laughed away the sightings a nothing more exotic than Venus, clouds, etc.
Down play, diminish and minimize
[/QUOTE]
I love it, a CSIOPtic saying there are an infinite number of possibilities. Now if a true believer said it still could be a UFO because there are infinite possibilities, you would be saying something like this: “Exactly How much evidence is there that aliens are visiting the earth, none, is there? Exactly how much evidence is there for witches, unicorns and fairies, none, is there?”
If you say there are an infinite number of possibilities, then UFOs, as in aliens, have to be one of them along with the above mentioned.
Let me clarify a bit for you even though most everybody else understood what I said about the cookie cutter. The “anything I might have missed” category was for you guys to add any of your plausibles that I might have inadvertently left out. This skeptics’ list of plausibles that I linked doesn’t include infinity, now does it?
jakesteele
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jakesteele
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The whole thread since I made my first post has been about debunking not just him, but subjective skeptics in general. He is just the tip of the iceberg. Joe Nickell is another example of this type of debunkery that is very misleading and facile.
I also pointed out how he embraces the anecdotal claims of two amateur astronomers about ‘allegedly’ seeing aircraft and then he starts pumping up the veracity of the claims by saying: “they spend an ‘inordinate’ amount of time looking at the skies and don’t get fooled by Venus, etc.” However, he will not accept anecdotal reports from amateur, commercial and military pilots who, between them, are in the air 24/7 with a horizontal 180 degree view or more if they turn their heads, and at the approximated heights of many sightings.
He stated that you never hear reports of sightings by astronomers and I just showed you recently about Hynek’s survey of his fellow astronomers who came in with about an 11% reports of sightings by polling 44 astronomers of which 11% reported sightings which is more that the general public reports.
The James Randi/CSIOPS style of skepticism that Phil practices already has its mind made up that any kind of woo is ******** and will always go into a situation, not an objective skeptic, i.e.,
Skeptic: one who is yet undecided as to what is true; one who is looking or inquiring for what is true; an inquirer after facts or reasons. the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism that is characteristic of skeptics.
But as what is now being called pseudo-skeptics:
Truzzi attributed the following characteristics to pseudoskeptics:[1]
* The tendency to deny, rather than doubt
* Double standards in the application of criticism
* The making of judgments without full inquiry
* Tendency to discredit, rather than investigate
* Use of ridicule or ad hominem attacks in lieu of arguments
* Pejorative labeling of proponents as 'promoters', 'pseudoscientists' or practitioners of 'pathological science.'
I know you won’t accept this and will try to argue the point but this is what many see in you, just as you see the same thing in others only with the polarity reversed.