Can there possibly be a Baha’i tie-in or point of view on crystal skulls? I think there is but you will have to read all the way down to the bottom to find it.

A one hour special , “Crystal Skull” on the Sci-Fi Channel last month mentioned 16 of the following list of names or phrases. Three or more mentions is a strikeout. However, it got me to thinking about what other weird things people believe in without question and why they might believe them. Here are a few that come to mind:

Abominable Snowman – there is no evidence in the fossil record that gigantic primates ever existed. If there really was a giant ape in the snow fields of the Himalayas what could it possibly eat? Snow?

Ancient Astronauts – just because ancients carved a circle around a person’s head does not mean that they wore a space helmet; examples of this abound in images of Prophets and Saints. The pyramids were not built by levitation. There are a number of rational explanations that come from actual Egyptian pictorial records. We would know much more about the Mayan and Aztec pyramids if the Jesuit priests hadn’t destroyed every native text that they found.

Area 51 - there are probably no alien space ships there but there may be legitimate military secrets. Aliens smart enough to travel intergalactic distances are more than smart enough not to get caught by humans and certainly not to crash here.

Atlantis – if either “lost continent” or “advanced civilization” are mentioned. Greece , ancient Persia, and China among others were advanced civilizations compared to northern Europe at the time.

Bigfoot – there is no verifiable evidence but countless hoaxes exist.

Cattle and sheep mutilations – scientifically speaking, it’s probably insect predation. If secretive aliens allegedly mutilated animal bodies for experiments why would they leave them lying around to be discovered?

Chupacabra – it’s probably insect predation. Such predation sometimes occurs in regular geometric patterns in nature.

Communicates with your dead relatives – so-called Mediums are really “cold readers.” We all make very subtle eye movements and tics as we speak and listen to others. Some domestic animals are particularly good at reading them including dogs and horses. A well-trained human observer can also spot tell-tale facial movements and use them to their advantage to look like a genuine psychic.

Crop Circles – clever hoaxes have been shown to be the cause over and over again. Many of the best hoaxers have come forward to show how they made their complex geometric patterns in fields.

Crystal Skulls – if 13 skulls are mentioned; read on for more…

Crystals – they are not from advanced alien civilizations; so called mystical or healing powers are unproven scientifically. Advanced aliens probably wouldn’t use crystals for data storage when quantum level data storage is already being worked on in many of our own research laboratories.

Curse of the Mummy – unless it’s microorganisms, pathogens or pure coincidence.

Edgar Cayce - he was not a Prophet.

Face on Mars – humans see faces in practically anything including rocks and sand dunes.

Garden of Eden – if “discovered” is mentioned because it’s just a purely symbolic metaphor. Human life did not begin in a garden and snakes don’t talk either.

Ghost Hunters – no real ghost has been or ever will or can be found.

Glastonbury, England – it’s just a hill.

Haunted hotels – rodents inside the walls and other natural phenomena including but not limited to drafts, or natural decomposition within the walls.

Holy Grail – if it’s allegedly Mary Magdalene. Why wouldn’t Jesus have wanted us to know about something so significant if it really happened?

Knights Templar – if buried treasures or just discovered hidden or esoteric secrets are mentioned.

Ley Lines – if anything remotely like lines of force exist they are probably weak natural electromagnetic phenomena. Some animals and fish can sense electromagnetic fields but humans cannot.

Life on Mars – maybe a billion or more years ago before Mars lost its magnetic poles and surface water there might have been life. If there is any microbial life left on on Mars now NASA’s Phoenix Lander plans to kill it. That’s right, they are going to bake a soil sample in an oven and then test it for life.

Loch Ness Monster – could anything that large really remain hidden and avoid discovery despite thousands of efforts to find it? It could hardly evade radar and state of the art scanners that have been used to find it. Let’s be realistic.

Lost Gospels – they were rejected for a reason; many are pseudepigrapha and many more are just bizarre remnants of small early sects like the Gnostics. You can’t rule out clever forgeries also.

Macchu Picchu – an impressive architectural feat only; there is nothing sacred within it but there might have been an altar or two many centuries ago. People get the “chills” there because they anticipate that they will, a well-known psychological phenomena. A civilization that practiced human sacrifice does not give me a warm feeling.

Mayan calendar – if the year 2012 is mentioned; it doesn’t predict anything but the orbits of some visible planets and the arrival of the seasons for planting and harvesting.

Mt. Ararat – unless it’s about local Turkish geography. No identifiable artificial piece of wood from an alleged Ark could have survived without rotting for so many thousand years. No ship could have possibly been large enough to accommodate hundreds of thousands of species nor was there any guarantee that they would reproduce. Many animals never reproduce in captivity. What did animals eat on the ark for 40 days if not each other? Furthermore ecosystems are so complex that you can’t just disembark some animals on dry land and expect them to survive. How would herbivores have survived on rotting vegetable matter?

Mu, Continent of – it never existed.

Mysterious energy – all energy is mysterious until science can measure and theorize about it.

Nazca Lines – if landing strips are mentioned. Why would aliens require landing strips or anything else in the shape of enormous birds and spiders? Were they billboards?

Never before seen by Western eyes – it was probably seen by somebody.

Nostradamus, prophecies of – so vague that they can mean anything you want them to mean in hindsight. However it’s good for book sales to the gullible.

Planetary alignment – a meaningless periodic astronomical event. The gravity or “secret forces” of planets millions and in most cases billions of miles away cannot possibly affect our planet.

Prophesied Armageddon – especially if it’s in the Mayan calendar and unless it’s a reference to specific Biblical verses.

Pyramids – except in references to archaeology.

Race of Giants – rearranged fossil bones found by ancient peoples who didn’t know what they were because they didn’t have instruments to analyze and date them.

Roswell – absolutely no reasonable or reliable proof has ever surfaced and probably never will. If the Air Force hadn’t been so secretive and disingenuous Roswell would have soon been forgotten. Look here for a more likely explanation. A ’spaceship’ doesn’t cross the vastness of space with all its dangers of cosmic debris and deadly radiation only to get hit by lightning and crash here. It’s enlightening to learn about the military background of Roswell and the political climate of the times. Witnesses? They all give different accounts. The Roswell story surfaced 30 years after the so-called incident. Authors who pretentiously call themselves “ufologists” keep the story going and it’s good for the local tourist trade too.

“I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.” — Richard Feynman. (Click the link for the complete context of his remarks.)

Sacred site known only to… – then let’s be respectful and keep it that way.

Sedona, Arizona - it’s just a city with a higher than average percentage of New Agers. There is no mystical power there.

Stonehenge – aliens didn’t build it any more than they built the pyramids. Humans may have taken many decades to build it but they were indeed the builders. And they probably built it long before the Druids existed.

UFOs were seen hovering over… – unexplained phenomena might have been seen but there’s nearly always a logical and rational explanation. More often than not they are just gas bubbles or tricks of light.

Vortexes – perceptual tricks and illusions. Water, for example, cannot run uphill unless it is pumped.

All of the crystal skulls that have been found so far are quite different from one another. Most are crudely made with obvious tool marks showing. There is no alleged alien technology there. Quartz crystals cannot be scientifically dated. That is important to note because the first one which was allegedly found in Belize has no tool marks that the Mayans could have possibly made. It does not follow logically that the skulls were made by aliens or any other allegedly advanced civilization except our own. Since the 19th century there have been tools and technologies to make finely polished very hard objects into any desired form. Most of the handful of crystal skulls that are now in collections around the world are actually somewhat crude in appearance and they are all different sizes and colors.

The Mayans were a Stone Age culture. There is not a single Mayan artifact in existence that was not obviously crafted with Stone Age tools. Therefore the skull is modern or at least significantly post-Mayan. Additionally there is no proof of any kind that the first crystal skull was actually found in Belize early in the 20th Century. The photographs of the expedition to Belize that allegedly found the “perfect” skull do not show it. There is no proof that 13 crystal skulls exist or that aligning them will “save the earth from catastrophe in 2012.” A handful of New Age authors with little or no academic credentials simply say so but that doesn’t make it so nor does it mean anything serious. Nobody knows if there are any more crystal skulls because there is no evidence of any more. The explorer who found the first skull allegedly found a second one also. A modern explorer claims that it was deliberately hidden in an inaccessible location. Why would anyone have made such a discovery inaccessible? It makes no sense because it never happened.

Therefore crystal skulls are exactly what George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison Ford say they are, namely adventurous and fictional entertainment.

From Wikipedia:
“The crystal skulls are a number of human skull models fashioned from blocks of clear or milky quartz crystal rock, claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders. However, none of the specimens made available for scientific study were authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin, and in the opinion of the contemporary mainstream scientific community they were manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, almost certainly in Europe. Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularising literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts.

“The skulls are often claimed to exhibit paranormal phenomena by some members of the New Age movement, and have often been portrayed as such in fiction. Perhaps the most widely known of such portrayals occurs in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth film of its series, and elsewhere within that franchise. Crystal skulls have been a popular subject appearing in numerous sci-fi television series, novels and video games.

“… Anna Hedges claimed that she found the skull buried under a collapsed altar inside a temple in Lubaantun, in British Honduras, now Belize. As far as can be ascertained, F.A. Mitchell-Hedges himself made no mention of the alleged discovery in any of his writings on Lubaantun. Also, others present at the time of the excavation have not been documented as noting either the skull’s discovery or Anna’s presence at the dig.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_skull

So why do many people believe the outrageous or the untenable? Why do they believe literal end of the world stories, aliens who are coming to save us, world dominating plots by secret cabals, or mysterious energy forces? More importantly why do people believe in a a literal rapture, or that dead people will physically rise out of their coffins and put on flesh over their decayed remnants?

I think the answer is clear. What makes us human is that we question, reason out, and analyze things. We can do that with a lot more than we perceive with our physical senses. We have long term hopes and desires. A typical animals’s desires rarely extend beyond their next meal or anticipated mating. There is no human desire more profound or primal than the one to survive beyond physical death and to achieve some concept of personal salvation.

In the modern age where material excesses, waste on a vast scale, devastating wars, and advancing environmental catastrophe due to human activity cause planetary climate change, hopelessness is almost universal. Where many people fall back on their superstitions or what their traditional religious leaders tell them to think, many more thinking people look beyond those limiting views.

We can compare this situation to a worldwide illness.

“We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They have conceived the straight to be
crooked, and have imagined their friend an enemy.”
Bahá’u’lláh, Tabernacle of Unity

We beseech the one true God, magnified be His glory, to enable us to recognize Him Whose unerring wisdom pervadeth all things and that we may acknowledge His truth. For once one hath recognized Him and borne witness to His Reality, one will no longer be troubled by the idle fancies and vain imaginings of men. The divine Physician hath the pulse of mankind
within His almighty grasp.
Bahá’u’lláh, Tabernacle of Unity

The different religious communities have failed to unite in the past, because the adherents of each have regarded the Founder of their own community as the one supreme authority, and His law as the divine law. Any Prophet Who proclaimed a different message was, therefore, regarded as an enemy of the truth. The different sects of each community have separated for similar reasons. The adherents of each have accepted some subordinate authority and regarded some particular version or interpretation of the Founder’s Message as the One True Faith, and all others as wrong. It is obvious that while this state of matters exists no true unity is possible. Bahá’u'lláh, on the other hand, teaches that all the Prophets were bearers of authentic messages from God; that each in His day gave the highest teachings of all are essentially in harmony, and are parts of a great plan for the education and the unification of humanity. He calls on the people of all denominations to show their reverence for their Prophets by devoting their lives to the accomplishment of that unity for which all the Prophets labored and suffered. In His letter to Queen Victoria He likens the world to a sick man whose malady is aggravated because he has fallen into the hands of unskilled physicians; and He
tells how the remedy may be effected:
Dr. J.E. Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era

The passage continues with this quote:

“That which God hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful, and inspired Physician. By My life! This is the truth, and all else naught but error. Each time that Most Mighty Instrument hath come, and that Light shone forth from the Ancient Dayspring, He was withheld by ignorant physicians who, even as clouds, interposed themselves between Him and the world. It failed therefore, to recover, and its sickness hath persisted until this day. They indeed were powerless to protect it, or to effect a cure, whilst He Who hath been the Manifestation of Power amongst men was withheld from achieving His purpose, by reason of what the hands of the ignorant physicians have wrought.
Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

So you don’t need to wait for 2012 and the end of a Mayan cycle and you don’t need to find and align make-believe artifacts to find a solution. All you need to do is exercise your God-given free will and your powers of rational and careful investigation into the solution. Aliens haven’t brought an answer but throughout the ages the Prophets of God have brought appropriate solutions for the times and circumstances in which they lived. Their powerful life and civilization changing influences were intended to last until the exigencies of a later age required new solutions or the powerful transforming influences of the old ones had waned. And that is why crystal skulls and the like are just hopeful fantasies.

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