A Skeptic Freemason - wtf?

[fitzgibbon]

Double post

 

[fitzgibbon]

This is all very weird. LiD and Aikenhead seem to agree, but they're arguing. Could someone explain why?

Mutual suspicion on one another's bona fides. There are many online who pretend to be Masons by virtue of being a Google warrior and the 'secrets' they've discovered in their travels (secrets that have been published and available to the non-mason since less than a decade after the UGLE formed in 1717). They demand acknowledgement and acquiescence and tend to get more vociferous the longer they go without it. There's also the matter of behaviour which I find tends to separate the wheat from the chaff much more often than not. IMHO, Aikenhead falls into the chaff/apprentice category by virtue of his behaviour. A PM or two with Lid would've been sufficient to settle this minor brouhaha but that that didn't happen only confirms IMHO my original judgment.

Aikenhead seems more emblematic of the Sorcerer's Apprentice than the Sorcerer.

But that's just my opinion FWIW.

 

[MoeFaux]

Well, I sure liked the Rush reference in the OP.

 

[Aikenhead]

This is all very weird. LiD and Aikenhead seem to agree, but they're arguing. Could someone explain why?

Actually, we don't agree. I had mentioned -- almost as an aside -- that there were groups that sort of "fly under the radar", that are made up of Masons, that are invitation-only, and that don't need to have the authority of a Grand Lodge to be able to exist, since they don't require a charter and because, well, Grand Lodges don't even hear about them. They're very discreet.

LiD (rather oddly to me) took that bone in his mouth and will not stop worrying it. He insists that such groups do not and cannot exist, partly because they don't have the authority to exist by Grand Lodges (see above). This proves that he either has serious reading comprehension issues, or he's not arguing that they can't exist, but that he's offended that he hasn't been asked to join any of them.

Beyond that, he keeps on suggesting that I'm not really a Mason. It is, perhaps, a fool's errand to try to prove such a thing on-line, but I believe I did so to any reasonable person's satisfaction (see my post above). And all the while, LiD has claimed that he's a Mason, but never offered any proof of it. Still, he persists in claiming I'm a "fakemason", and accusing me of being unworthy of being a Mason. It's pointless, rude and silly, but it seems to be his shtick.

 

[Aikenhead]

I'll vouch for LiD credentials by virtue of some year's association here and on other forums. But then it necessarily follows that you'll attack my credentials too. C'est la vie.

The only "attacking of credentials" going on here, chum, is by LiD. Despite my posting clear evidence that I'm bona fide, he persists in casting doubts and aspersions upon me (while conveniently not posting any of his own). And for all I know, you are his sockpuppet. Is that the most likely explanation? Perhaps not, but for someone like LiD who seems to be unwilling to be convinced by even the most convincing of evidence, it's not unreasonable for me to point out the lack of reliability in your (and his) claims of authority on the matter.

Matthew 7:16 "By their fruits you will know them". You strut a card as primary 'proof' but your attitude decries the 'proof'. You're quite insistent on acknowledgement and therein lies the chief shortcoming I have with your claim. The laddie doth protest too much.

This is just outright silly. First, your interpretation of Matthew 7:16 is novel, to say the least. Was Jesus speaking about "attitude"? Nope. He was talking about works, and neither you nor he know anything about my works. For all you or he know, I've been uncommonly generous. Of course, I won't go into detail about my works because then I'm sure you'd try to hold that up as more evidence of my "lack of humility". Nice catch-22 you've got going on there. Second, I didn't "strut out" anything; I went to pains to provide it, as proof. Third, you're pinning your claim of someone's membership or non-membership to their supposed attitude?! Has it never occurred to you that LiD, from the get-go, was flat-out obnoxious towards me, ad hominem, derogatory, defamitory and in other ways in violation of even the most basic level of collegiality that's required of Masons? Not to mention the fact that Masons are supposed to be improving their character, which means being (if nothing else) more polite and harmless even to non-Masons (and, one presumes, to "fakemasons")? If you're looking for a good example of ideal Masonic character, you're not going to find it in LiD's behavior on this thread. If you're honest, you'll have to admit that. Real Masons (in character) do not accuse strangers of being frauds, egomaniacs, liars and so on.

The issue I had (and continue to have) with you is that your complete lack of online humility is completely at odds with the RL Masons of my acquaintance (even the ones that I know to be quite successful in their day-to-day avocations). But then again, nobody ever claimed that there isn't the occasional dick in the fraternity.

Here's a project for you; it shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes: you claim that I "lack online humility". Please go back through my posts and copy and paste examples of my lack of "online humility" here. For extra credit, copy and past examples of LiD's lack of "online humility" as well. And no, my saying that I belong to invitational groups does not constitute "lack of humility". After all, LiD also said that he belonged to invitational groups (albeit publicly-known ones), as well as trotting out that he knows someone who belongs to invitational groups so awesome that I could never even dream of belonging to them, thus demonstrating his lack of humility by association!

 

[Childlike Empress]

Aikenhead, I think you missed that LightInDarkness started the "proving" stuff in #55, offering this link to what is without a reasonable doubt a scan of his 32nd degree scottish rite certificate.

I suggest that the Gentlemen just accept that the other really is a mason and carry on from there.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Aikenhead, I think you missed that LightInDarkness started the "proving" stuff in #55, offering this link to what is without a reasonable doubt a scan of his 32nd degree scottish rite certificate.

I suggest that the Gentlemen just accept that the other really is a mason and carry on from there.

I don't want to seem pedantic, but I saw no explicit claim that this was his freemasons certificate

He wrote:

2. You continue to fail to provide any information you are really a mason. Welcome to Google. http://home.comcast.net/~mark_krubsa...s/view_15.html. Now, you could provide some real information to verify, but you won't do that because you don't know how to. Because you are not a mason.

Now it would be a reasonable assumption that LinD is indeed such a person, but I do remember a gloating LinD boasting about getting a research. graduate student sacked because she said rude things about freemasons

Now it was my contention that LinD was just inventing a bizarre troll re this unfortunate graduate student in his evil masonic way. If LinD really is claiming the identity of this certificate - and I stress it is unclear that he is - then it would demonstrate I was absolutely right.

Again.

 

[Aikenhead]

Aikenhead, I think you missed that LightInDarkness started the "proving" stuff in #55, offering this link to what is without a reasonable doubt a scan of his 32nd degree scottish rite certificate.

I suggest that the Gentlemen just accept that the other really is a mason and carry on from there.

For my part, I don't doubt that LiD is a Mason. Why else would anyone bother being so almost comically dismissive about someone else's membership if they weren't one? Occam's Razor agrees.

Having said that, I'm quite certain that the 32nd Degree cert is not his; he was just citing it as an example of such documents being accessible on-line. Of course, there's a huge difference between a flat scan of a document (which is easily 'shopped) and the photos that I took and posted of mine, but LiD would be loathe to admit that.

 

[Aikenhead]

Sorry for not responding for two years (!), but more-or-less forgot about this thread. If you're still out there, I'll try to respond.

I belong to a few different research lodges, and each has its own culture, rather like different grad schools. Some are more scholarly and academic, others seem to encourage research that includes more experiential or speculative matters. Here are a few examples:

Freemasonry has centuries of accretions of different symbols, most of which are largely forgotten. I've heard/read many research papers that attempt to tease out the meanings and origins of one or more of these symbols ,such as the Blazing Star, the Broken Column, the Beehive, and so on.

I've heard/read papers on one specific historic event, such as the founding of an early Lodge or one of its illustrious members. Others presentations have been on speculative connections between Freemasonry and other mystery schools, Jungian archetypes in Freemasonry, on Masonic members of the British Royal Family, on Freemasonry and the Comacines, on the typologies of 19th century Masonic photographic portraits, on whether or not the First Temple (Solomon's) ever really existed, on Rosslyn Chapel and the Sinclair family, on the evolution of Stated Assemblies, on the varieties of Tyler's swords, on Masonic pocket watches, on Masonry and state chivalric orders, on military Lodges, on whether or not Anglo-American Masonry will ever reconcile with French Masonry, on whether Thomas Paine was a Mason -- even one paper on which figures in JFK conspiracy theories may have been Masons! And those are just off the top of my head. Pretty much anything goes, subject matter-wise. Hope this answers your question (two years late).

Interesting, Aikenhead. Could you give us an example of the kind of research you do?

 

[halleyscomet]

These days freemasonry is a social club and the symbols and ritual are for fun. Most the Freemasons I know are very skeptically minded.

 

[Robrob]

These days freemasonry is a social club and the symbols and ritual are for fun. Most the Freemasons I know are very skeptically minded.

I would assume so. Most of their legends are analogous to stories of Washington throwing a dollar across the Patomic. Obvious tales that no one is really taking seriously.

 

[Aquila]

Why do scientists and skeptics join the Freemasons? If the whole point of science and skepticism is to be objective and honest, why join a secret society to which one has to make vows of silence, under threat of physical violence?

And how can other scientists trust claims made by scientist Freemasons? Without repeating their experiments ourselves, how can we be sure that they have not fudged data, backed up by fellow Freemason-scientists to prove their beliefs?

It's hypocritical, in my opinion, for skeptics to continue to fudge the issue of Freemasonry, saying that it's only a sort of men's club to have fun and advance in business. Freemasonry is an occult-based secret order based on Biblical and Egyptian symbology, not science. Stop lying.

 

[Bishop]

Why do scientists and skeptics join the Freemasons? If the whole point of science and skepticism is to be objective and honest, why join a secret society to which one has to make vows of silence, under threat of physical violence?

And how can other scientists trust claims made by scientist Freemasons? Without repeating their experiments ourselves, how can we be sure that they have not fudged data, backed up by fellow Freemason-scientists to prove their beliefs?

It's hypocritical, in my opinion, for skeptics to continue to fudge the issue of Freemasonry, saying that it's only a sort of men's club to have fun and advance in business. Freemasonry is an occult-based secret order based on Biblical and Egyptian symbology, not science. Stop lying.

I don't see a conflict of interest unless their scientific work is somehow related to their membership in the Masons. Like if they're doing some sort of sociological study of Masons, or a critique of any paranormal or mystical claims that Masons make, or whatever. It's Freemasonry that they have to be quiet about, after all, not necessarily anything else.

 

[ShadowSot]

Why do scientists and skeptics join the Freemasons? If the whole point of science and skepticism is to be objective and honest, why join a secret society to which one has to make vows of silence, under threat of physical violence?

Because the vows of silence only refer to the rituals,, and there are no threats of violence.

And how can other scientists trust claims made by scientist Freemasons? Without repeating their experiments ourselves, how can we be sure that they have not fudged data, backed up by fellow Freemason-scientists to prove their beliefs?

Er... in science you have to repeat and test other people's experiments to verify the research and all research has to pass through peer review.

It's hypocritical, in my opinion, for skeptics to continue to fudge the issue of Freemasonry, saying that it's only a sort of men's club to have fun and advance in business. Freemasonry is an occult-based secret order based on Biblical and Egyptian symbology, not science. Stop lying.

Of course it's not science. Science is science.
Christians and other theists can be good scientists, so can atheists with woo beliefs.
You seem to have a beef with Freemasons while not knowing much about either science or Freemasonry.

And if LiD or Fitzgibbon return, hey guys long time eh?

 

[Aquila]

I don't see a conflict of interest unless their scientific work is somehow related to their membership in the Masons. Like if they're doing some sort of sociological study of Masons, or a critique of any paranormal or mystical claims that Masons make, or whatever. It's Freemasonry that they have to be quiet about, after all, not necessarily anything else.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've heard that Freemasons protect their own. A hypothetical example which is often given is that of a Freemason who has committed a crime. The example postulates that just as the judge is about to hand down a sentence for the crime, he learns that the criminal is a Freemason and gives him a lighter punsihsment, for even gets him off completely, making up a loophole in the laws.

Similarly, two Freemason scientists working together could, hypothetically fudge data and publish it. "Peer review" would not really do much unless the data had glaring errors, and suppose that the scientists reviewing the published paper were also Freemasons who trusted the researchers? As mentioned earlier, the only way to really test the data would be to repeat the experiment, and I doubt whether this goes on very often.

I know enough about science to have a BSc degree and biology, physics and chemistry A-levels, and have studied quite a lot about the symbols used in Freemasonry without being a member. Shadow Sot is right in that I do have a slight beef not only about Freemasonry, but groups which use secrecy to keep members interested.

On this note, I have a question for Freemasons; would you still have joined your lodge if there was no secrecy involved? If you did not have to agree to keep passwords and ritual details secret, would the organization still have held the same appeal for you?

 

[ShadowSot]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've heard that Freemasons protect their own. A hypothetical example which is often given is that of a Freemason who has committed a crime. The example postulates that just as the judge is about to hand down a sentence for the crime, he learns that the criminal is a Freemason and gives him a lighter punsihsment, for even gets him off completely, making up a loophole in the laws.

Yeah well, if you trust everything people tell you and rumors, Obama's a Kenyan born Reptilian Atheist Muslim, right?

I no longer have references, and if Fitzgibbon or Light in Darkness still post here three years later they might, but Masons are instructed to not shield fellow Masons from the law.
Doing so will get you black balled if you are caught.

You do know the rituals and such have been published and available to the public for over a century now right? Duncan's Monitor and Ritual Guide are available online, as are books like Morals and Dogma.
While Masons can't tell you what they are themselves, they can point you to where you can find out.
That is the only thing they have to not reveal themselves personally.

As to your second point, well what if they are reviewed by members of their own University or College? Or church? Or they happen to be friends? Or any number of other reasons.
Hell, I've gotten out of speeding tickets because me and the officer went to the same dojo.

Yes, Peer review isn't a perfect process. But falsified studies are almost always sussed out.
I was thinking about joining Freemasonry, and it wasn't the secrecy. I genuinely enjoy rituals and symbolism, and being part of something with a historical background.
The charity work is also a bonus.
Unfortunately most lodges require religious belief.
Out of curiosity, when you researched the symbols do you check actual freemasonry sites, or ATS and David Icke?

 

[Aquila]

Out of curiosity, when you researched the symbols do you check actual freemasonry sites, or ATS and David Icke?

The former, and the most obvious similarity is that some Freemason symbology is "borrowed" from the kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Not even the mystic side, just plain Judaism. I am Jewish, and have always found this intriguing, if not a little irritating. You know, we're still trying to recover from our parents surviving the Holocaust, only to see non-Jews using the symbols for their secret rituals.

I've also seen astrology symbols on the "Grand Arch" of Freemasonry. I thought skeptics designated astrology is woo??

http://www.grandchapterofwashington.org/images/20_ra_tracing_board6_s.jpg

http://www.grandchapterofwashington.org/images/20_ra_four_living_creatures_s.jpg

(above shows the 4 Fixed signs of the Zodiac)

Both images from:

http://www.grandchapterofwashington.org/20_grand_chapter_about.html

 

[ShadowSot]

The former, and the most obvious similarity is that some Freemason symbology is "borrowed" from the kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Not even the mystic side, just plain Judaism. I am Jewish, and have always found this intriguing, if not a little irritating. You know, we're still trying to recover from our parents surviving the Holocaust, only to see non-Jews using the symbols for their secret rituals.

Yes, that's been taken up since (at least) the 1700's, and religious groups don't have copyrwrites on their symbolism. Their useage far predates the Holocaust.
Freemasonry takes a lot from the Old Testament especially legends around the building of Solomon's temple.
It's strictly legendary, and isn''t intended to be taken literally.

I've also seen astrology symbols on the "Grand Arch" of Freemasonry. I thought skeptics designated astrology is woo??

Using the symbolism doesn't equal out to believing all things associated with the symbol. Especially when symbolism has changed meanings over time.
Maybe look into how Fremasonry uses the symbols, by asking a Mason about it?
Some of the symbolism was simply adopted for appearances, some was part of art, some because it just looked cool. Other were given new meanings as part of the rituals that Masons them into.
Freemasonry itself has some basic rituals and apart from requiring a belief in a Supreme Being (Grand Architect of the Universe) doesn't have any other supernatural baggage, a product of the time it was developed.
In my own experience Masons take the symbolism and internalize it themselves. It can be strictly symbolic and be simply a mnemonic device, or they may take a more mystical interpretation.

 

[ShadowSot]

And it should of course be noted that no one is skeptical in all things. Everyone has a holy cow or a blindspot from their own biases. Political, cultural, religious, ect.
One can be an excellent historian and dismiss claims of ancient alien visitation while taking seriously the claims of modern visitation.
Or a similar example, the fellow who did an excellent takedown of the Ancient Aliens program on the history channel believes in a global Flood.

 

[Checkmite]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've heard that Freemasons protect their own. A hypothetical example which is often given is that of a Freemason who has committed a crime. The example postulates that just as the judge is about to hand down a sentence for the crime, he learns that the criminal is a Freemason and gives him a lighter punsihsment, for even gets him off completely, making up a loophole in the laws.

Sort of an anti-masonic fairy tale that doesn't make much sense if you think about it. Trials are public things, and if there were a situation where a judge suddenly gave an unexpectedly lax punishment for a crime that a defendant had been convicted of, there would be significant response - instantly from the prosecutor, and then quickly in the press as the case made waves. It would be quite a big news item if a judge suddenly dismissed a case for absolutely no apparent reason. Judges are accountable for their decisions.

Similarly, two Freemason scientists working together could, hypothetically fudge data and publish it. "Peer review" would not really do much unless the data had glaring errors, and suppose that the scientists reviewing the published paper were also Freemasons who trusted the researchers? As mentioned earlier, the only way to really test the data would be to repeat the experiment, and I doubt whether this goes on very often.

In fact it goes on all the time; that's how science works. No single study or experiment is definitive until the results are shown to be independently repeatable - no matter who publishes it.

Peer review isn't confined to some specially-selected cadre. Such a specific group might permit a paper to be published in this or that periodical; but the paper still has to stand on its own merits and if the data is obviously wrong, this will come to light once the scientific public begins to review it. Published papers are discredited on occasion. And if hijinks are discovered, it can result in ill repute for the authors - in rare cases even a loss of credentials. It's happened.

I know enough about science to have a BSc degree and biology, physics and chemistry A-levels, and have studied quite a lot about the symbols used in Freemasonry without being a member. Shadow Sot is right in that I do have a slight beef not only about Freemasonry, but groups which use secrecy to keep members interested.

On this note, I have a question for Freemasons; would you still have joined your lodge if there was no secrecy involved? If you did not have to agree to keep passwords and ritual details secret, would the organization still have held the same appeal for you?

I think I probably would have. There's no debate that secrecy adds intrigue; but this is the 21st century after all. If the only thing about Freemasonry that interests you is what happens during the secret rituals, then all you need is Google.