Water, Chaos, Big and Little Bangs
In the writings of the Baha’i Faith, we read:
“When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of all things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of thy Lord’s mercy in every created thing, and see the spreading rays of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being, with evidences which none will deny …”
Have you ever wondered why collections of atoms have “properties”? Why do atoms organize themselves into molecules? Why do individual elements have properties (characteristics) that are different from other collections of atoms that we call elements? Are they not just basically a collection of similar fundamental atomic particles? Where does gravity come from and how is it transmitted? How can anything be transmitted without a medium for its transmission?
According to Relativity Theory –which has been proven experimentally– matter is really elemental energy which, obviously, because of its incredibly small size cannot and will not ever be seen by any creature or man-made device. If fundamental atomic particles are themselves comprised of infinitesimally tiny “strings” of vibrating energy, then why are certain collections of atoms different from one another? A neutron is a neutron, a proton is a proton, a quark is a quark, and an electron is an electron. So you have a collection of similar particles; so what?
Why, for example, is water larger as a solid than it is as a liquid which is unlike every other molecule? If water were more dense (heavier) as a solid than as a liquid then ice would sink to the bottom of the ocean. That would have made the development of life on earth much less likely or else very different.
After the so-called Big Bang, why weren’t there just chaotic random clouds of elemental particles, in other words, forever formless clouds of pure energy? What existed before the Big Bang and why did it happen? How far back in cosmic history can we really observe?
Read ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s explanation of the age of the universe and how elements came into being.
Read an essay written by a Baha’i about quantum theory.
Why and how do seemingly random particles of energy organize themselves into amino acids even in the depths of outer space? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite
Image from Wikipedia (String Theory)
(Image source.) Could there be more to water than just a fortuitous combination of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen? Definitely. Is there anything else that that is forever hidden from our physical forms? Definitely.
“Know thou that the Divine Essence, which is called the Invisible of the Invisibles, never to be described, beyond the reach of mind — is sanctified above any mention, any definition or hint or allusion, any acclamation or praise. In the sense that It is that It is, the intellect can never grasp It, and the soul seeking knowledge of It is but a wanderer in the desert, and far astray. ‘No vision taketh in Him, but He taketh in all vision: He is the Subtile, the All-Informed.’
“When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of all things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of thy Lord’s mercy in every created thing, and see the spreading rays of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being, with evidences which none will deny save the froward and the unaware. Then wilt thou observe that the universe is a scroll that discloseth His hidden secrets, which are preserved in the well-guarded Tablet. And not an atom of all the atoms in existence, not a creature from amongst the creatures but speaketh His praise and telleth of His attributes and names, revealeth the glory of His might and guideth to His oneness and His mercy: and none will gainsay this who hath ears to hear, eyes to see, and a mind that is sound.
“And whensoever thou dost gaze upon creation all entire, and dost observe the very atoms thereof, thou wilt note that the rays of the Sun of Truth are shed upon all things and shining within them, and telling of that Day-Star’s splendours, Its mysteries, and the spreading of Its lights. Look thou upon the trees, upon the blossoms and fruits, even upon the stones. Here too wilt thou behold the Sun’s rays shed upon them, clearly visible within them, and manifested by them.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha
See Haifa Souvenir for a brief explanation of the worlds of existence and my Ring Stone video for a visual explanation of the symbol.
Oh, and what preceded the Big Bang? How did something come from nothing or from a theorized singularity? It didn’t, of course …
“If we try to conceive of a time when creation was nonexistent, when there were no subjects or creatures under divine dominion and control, Divinity itself would disappear; there would be a cessation of the bounty of God, just as the kingship and favor of an earthly monarch would disappear if his kingdom did not exist. The sovereignty of God is eternal. There has been no beginning; there will be no end. This is as evident as the sun at midday, even to one endowed with limited reason.
“When we consider the phenomenal sun, we see that its heat and light are continuous. There is no cessation to the solar bounty. If the sun at any time were without light or heat, it would not be the sun. How do we recognize the sun? Through its heat and effulgence. If it be deprived of its rays and heat, it is no longer a sun; it is merely a dark globe or sphere in the heavens. The bounties of the sun must be perpetual in order that it may be qualified as a solar center of energy, illumination and attraction.
“Likewise, the divine bounties of the Sun of Reality are perpetual. Its light is forever shining. Its love is forever radiating. Its bounty never ceases. It could not be said that the power and effulgence of God was ever subject to cessation. It could not be claimed that the divinity of the Almighty One had come to an end. For the divinity of God is eternal. Therefore, the divine bounties — whether phenomenal and accidental or spiritual and ideal — are perpetual.”
‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 272
“The process of His creation hath had no beginning and can have no end, otherwise it would necessitate the cessation of His celestial grace. God hath raised up Prophets and revealed Books as numerous as the creatures of the world, and will continue to do so to everlasting.” — The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 125
“A drop of the billowing ocean of His endless mercy hath adorned all creation with the ornament of existence, and a breath wafted from His peerless Paradise hath invested all beings with the robe of His sanctity and glory. A sprinkling from the unfathomed deep of His sovereign and all-pervasive Will hath, out of utter nothingness, called into being a creation which is infinite in its range and deathless in its duration. The wonders of His bounty can never cease, and the stream of His merciful grace can never be arrested. The process of His creation hath had no beginning, and can have no end.”
– Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 61
Related posts
Why Is My Gas Mileage So Good?
In a statement written by an agency of the Baha’i faith we read:
Writing to the political and religious leaders of his own day, Bahá’u'lláh said that new capacities of incalculable power – beyond the conception of the generation then living – were awakening in the earth’s peoples, capacities which would soon transform the material life of the planet. It was essential, he said, to make of these coming material advances vehicles for moral and social development. If nationalistic and sectarian conflicts prevented this from happening, then material progress would produce not only benefits, but unimagined evils. Some of Bahá’u'lláh’s warnings awaken grim echoes in our own age: “Strange and astonishing things exist in the earth”, he cautioned. “These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal”
Baha’i International Community, 1999 Feb, Who is Writing the Future?
Why is my gas mileage so good considering that I drive an SUV? My mileage figures never dip below 22.8 mpg and go as high as 29 mpg on long trips. In other words, I always get better than the EPA estimates for the model I drive, a Toyota Highlander Hybrid. The average SUV gets between 12 mpg (city) and 17 mpg (highway). I am taking these estimates both from the Consumer reports annual automobile issue and the EPA. Most SUVs have less total horsepower than my car has. Point by point, here are a few things that I do.
Air conditioning
According to Consumer Reports and my own observations, running your air conditioner will cost you a loss of about one mile per gallon. Rolling the windows down will create enough aerodynamic drag on the vehicle to cost you more than two miles per gallon. An overheated driver can easily become impaired so that is another consideration. Many contemporary cars have automatic climate control. In my car, I use the climate controls to set it to 70 degrees. My home is a different story altogether. I set the temperature at home to 80 degrees, which is reasonably comfortable. One reason why the revised Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures are a little more accurate is that they run a car’s air conditioning during part of their tests. That’s still not quite real world but it is more realistic.
A gem from Discover Magazine, June 2008: “Keep your windows closed at high speeds — drag from open windows can reduce a car’s fuel efficiency by 10 percent.” Here is another reference as part of an article titled Debunking Gas-saving Myths. Full article.
Cruise Control
Cruise control even at boulevard speeds always delivers better mileage. You should engage cruise control whenever there isn’t too much congestion. My car has a real time gas consumption gauge right in the center of the dashboard. My son’s large SUV has one also but it only emphasizes the discouraging truth of such a large vehicle. It lost so much value recently that he couldn’t get rid of it. Even a gentle temporary tap on the gas pedal can drop the car’s steady consumption rate at 45 – 60 mph down from better than 40 mpg to less than 20 mpg. That’s exactly what the figures are for the car I drive. Drivers who don’t use cruise control are constantly stepping on the gas pedal. After having made four cross-country trips this past year, I am reasonably sure that practically nobody uses cruise control except possibly the police.
I get practically the same mileage at 55 mph that I do at 70 to 74 mph. That’s probably because my car’s engine is simply running at the most efficient part of its torque range. This is the first car I ever owned without a tachometer so I can’t be sure. I can’t shift gears anyway because it has a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Not only hybrids have that nowadays. The computer shifts more efficiently through an essentially infinite range than I ever could shift by myself. A smartly programmed computer is also why some cars now get better mileage with automatic transmissions than with manual ones.
If you read your Owner’s Manual (hardly anyone ever does) you’ll find your car’s torque peak RPM. That’s where it’s very efficient. Until you get over about 70 mph you might be getting the nearly the same mileage that you do at 55 to 60 mph. This doesn’t work on hybrids because they don’t have tachometers anymore and their automatic transmissions are continuously variable. The only setting is D for Drive.
Fast Starts
Avoiding fast starts is wasteful; that’s a given. Cars that take a long time to approach the speed level or whatever level most traffic wants to drive at are wasting gas. Not only do they lug and thus wear their engines, they frustrate other typically impatient drivers who will inevitably pass them, sometimes recklessly, and thus the total carbon emissions are greatly increased. The same idea holds true on the highway but more emphatically. The slower drivers are directly causing more carbon emissions. When they drive below the flow of traffic in the middle or fast lanes (a frequent occurrence) the effect is even worse. A slow driver in a fast lane is often an indicator of impairment and is usually dangerous aside from causing an increased overall carbon footprint.
I learned to drive in California. Thus, I learned that safe driving means entering a freeway at or near the speed of oncoming traffic. The state of Washington has a number of unintelligently designed freeway entrances where you have to come to a full stop at the end of the entrance lane. Then you must make a desperate attempt to speedup to avoid a collision with oncoming traffic. I never adjusted to that. In Georgia, the law requires you to move into another lane to enable traffic to enter the freeway at a safe speed.
I drove from Seattle to near Macon, Georgia in 1998, a distance of 2875 miles (4600 km) in just over 70 hours. I never exceeded the posted speed limits by more than two or three miles per hour. Experienced cross-country drivers know that prolonged speeding causes extreme tension which produces rapid exhaustion and impairment. Cruise control not only gave me better gas mileage; it kept me from becoming exhausted so I needed fewer rest breaks. If 70 hours for such a long trip seems short to you, it really is not short at all. It means that I only covered 41 miles per hour. On a shorter cross country trip, an average of 50 to 60 mph is a good estimate.
Tire Pressure
Regarding tire pressure, the owner’s manual or glove box recommendations are rarely optimal for best mileage. In American cars, the recommended pressures are intended to give a soft “boulevard ride” which is wasteful for a variety of obvious reasons including tire wear and handling issues. If you have Firestone tires, ask a Firestone dealer what the pressure really should be and so on, Michelin, etc. Better yet, ask the service writers at your car dealership. They usually know what is really best and for most vehicles it will be one to three units higher than what the auto manual says it ought to be.
If you don’t do this yourself and drive to a gas station to do it instead (where it costs money) it won’t help you. That’s because your tires build up pressure within a few blocks after you get started. If you rely on your oil change place or dealer to correctly inflate your tires that won’t help either. By the time you get there, your tires will already have more than the recommended pressure from the heat buildup of driving. They are just as likely to bleed air from the tires so you’ll be worse off than when you started. This is very common at “quick lube” places. A pressure reading is only meaningful when the tires are cold and you haven’t driven on them. You should get about two miles more out of every gallon if you pay close attention to tire pressure.
Reference: Saving Gas The Easy Way.
Idling the engine
My car only idles for 30 seconds after a complete stop. It automatically restarts the engine after you’re going about 20 mph. If your car has a well-maintained battery and electrical system you can also do that. Just turn off the engine if you have an unusually prolonged stop.
Fill up at the discount stations rather than the brand names. They sell exactly the same gas and quality as everyone else but for a little less money. Discover Magazine: claims that you should fill your tank in the evening. They observe that gas expands when it’s hot outside. Gas pumps measure gas by volume so if the temperature has cooled down you’ll get a little more gas for the same price. However, since the gas is stored underground where the temperature is nearly constant this tip probably doesn’t make any difference.
One more item that many people overlook: tighten your gas cap! You can lose more than 30 gallons a year through evaporative leakage otherwise. Discover Magazine, June 2008, has startling statistics on the extent of that loss in the state of California.
Finally, Consumer Reports is little better than a rough guess and nowadays it’s less accurate in some cases than the recently overhauled EPA estimates. Case in point:
Consumer Reports and Hybrid Cars. I drive a larger vehicle because I have to haul things including very large dogs.
Question
What if it were impossible for cars and trucks to go faster than 60 mph?
Passing other vehicles even when necessary for safety would be very difficult. In addition, the ability to make emergency avoidance maneuvers would be compromised. Hill climbing would be difficult. I remember a VW that I owned briefly in the 1960’s. It had difficulty reaching 45 mph uphill on the highway and several times was nearly engulfed by large tractor trailers. It was totaled by a head-on collision with an equally underpowered paper-strong car so I was rid of that death trap. That calamity was providential. I was unhurt when a drunken teenager crossed the median and hit me but the car was wiped out. I saw him coming but could not speedup to avoid a collision. Braking would have caused a pileup with ensuing destruction from behind. There was a lot of space in front of me but I could not reach it because the vehicle had so little power.
In other words, there are many factors to consider. I find it noteworthy that luxury cars continue to advertise ever more powerful engines.
The Top Ten Polluting Cars
Forbes Magazine published a list of the top ten most polluting cars. Click for a complete list of the top ten (there are several models on each level).
The top ten list includes nine Mercedes-Benz models, two BMW models, and the Volkswagen Touareg, the Number One most polluting car on the American road. Inclusions of these models are not surprising: GMC Suburban, GMC Tahoe, GMC Yukon, and some Jeep models. The list also includes six SUVs that are Flex Fuel (gas or ethanol). There are no Japanese car models in the top ten. With the exception of the Ford F-150 and Lincoln Navigator, there are no other Ford models on the list.
I can’t help but wonder what twisted logic motivated GM to introduce a pair of three-1/2 ton Hybrids. I read that they command close to a $20,000 price premium over their non-Hybrid equivalents. Not only would there never be any possible payback but also the environmental cost just to manufacture one is staggering. It was only recently that American manufacturers learned how to make their own hybrids and stopped licensing the technology from Toyota. Maybe they saw the inevitable crisis at last because it’s hard to see what else might motivate new engineering. Who buys such behemoths? Often it’s simply retired empty nesters that cannot possibly need Jabba-the-Hut land barges.
“Although American consumers are becoming more aware of environmental issues, they’re a long way from choosing vehicles for purely altruistic ecological reasons. ‘By and large most people believe that they have a right, a God-given American right, to drive whatever car they want and can afford,’ says Dr. Charles Kenny, a psychologist and president of The Right Brain People, a psychology research firm based in Cordova, Tenn. ‘Americans still have a love affair with their vehicles, which are associated in their minds with freedom and independence.’”
http://www.forbesautos.com/advice/toptens/worst-polluters-2008-story.html?partner=fadc_ss_most_polluting
The reason gas prices are so high are many including but not limited to the incredibly high cost of a useless war, government unwillingness to promote alternative energy, runaway profit taking by the oil companies, dwindling supply in areas where it still makes sense economically or is environmentally safe to drill, and a host of others.
Each time I’m in Atlanta I am amazed at how fast people drive. Driving 15 to 20 miles over the speed limit is typical. Atlanta has some freeways that are as broad as 14 lanes wide in places. People speed even in the “slow” lanes. Pickup drivers and tractor-trailer drivers are the worst offenders. You see Sheriff Bubba lying in wait in speed traps all over the state but not in Atlanta. That is one of the significant reasons the Atlanta area is so heavily polluted.
Interesting sidebar: Crude oil does not come from decaying dinosaurs. That’s a fable spread by Evangelicals who think dinosaurs all died because of a world-encompassing flood 4000 years ago. Oil is actually composed of zooplankton and algae. They believe that since we’re only going to be here for a short time until the rapture comes that it makes perfect sense to use up every resource. Evangelicals are one of the major voting blocks in the US.
Question
Eventually, fossil fuels will go the way of coal and steam fired engines. Won’t that make a large difference?
Yes, they have to do that. Not only are there sustainability issues but the pollution from fossil fuels now endangers the entire planet. Pollution threatens mass species extinction, loss of human habitats in coastal areas, and mass famines. The mad rush to “Americanize” in China will add tens of millions of new cars and thus accelerate the ongoing environmental catastrophe and hasten the tipping point. I believe the tipping point is inevitable.
Another interesting thing: the Northern hemisphere might not continue to get warmer. After the tipping point, it will get a lot colder due to the shutdown of the “ocean conveyor” and coming changes in the jet stream. Both of them control the weather of the Northern hemisphere. If the growing season shortens dramatically then crops will fail. Eventually that will lead to the same deprivations that are accelerating in Africa.
Question
Scientists are finding efficient ways of turning plant waste materials into biofuels instead of using food crops. Why isn’t that being done now in the US to any meaningful extent?
As long as agribusiness giants who dominate the American cornfields (Archer Daniels Midland is one) together with oil interests underwrite the US legislative and executive branches, that will not occur.
Question
Won’t higher fuel prices encourage conservation?
Obviously higher fuel costs impact the poor the most and the rural poor the most. Well-intentioned liberal thinkers who want to tax us into conservation and artificially boost the price of fuel even higher are totally disconnected from the poor and their needs. They drive their polluting diesel Mercedes and gas guzzling SUVs around big cities and remain as clueless as everyone else. If the US wasn’t spending a trillion dollars on a meaningless and destructive war, they could subsidize the price of fuel for the poor. Meanwhile the push for corn-based ethanol, a fuel whose production emits more pollution than it will save, drives up the price of food dramatically higher.
A Toyota Prius is manufactured at a high cost to the environment because its batteries (not to mention plastics and other materials) are highly toxic. The pollution lands in China, the manufacturer of the batteries and the source of its raw materials, where the rest of us don’t have to think about it. Prevailing winds from Asia drop the pollution they carry all over the American West the next day and every day after that. The Chinese government is as shortsighted about pollution as the US government and the giant oil companies. The enormous consequences of pollution and the staggering annual loss of lives it causes in China are well documented.
Recall the quote from Baha’u'llah that opened this essay: “These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal.” It can also refer to the consequences of environmental pollution rather than only as a reference to nuclear power and weapons. I have never read that implicated and additional meaning in any authoritative Baha’i text. It is purely an assumption on my part to extend the meaning because it makes practical sense.
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Crystal Skulls, a Baha'i Connection?
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.
Tags: alien technology, Aliens, Ancient Astronauts, Baha'i, Belize, China, Crystal Skull, Crystal Skulls, divine Physician, Dogs, Edgar Cayce, energy, faith, Garden of Eden, Glastonbury, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, infallible Physician, J.E. Esslemont, Mary Magdalene, Maya, Mysterious energy, mysterious energy forces, New Age, Religion, Roswell, Sci-Fi channel, Sedona, Tabernacle of Unity
A Tree Moves No Longer
In my last entry, The Movement of Trees, I briefly described a family drive down the Old Redwood Highway. I said “On the drive through Northern California we passed a logging operation where hundreds of old growth trees had been logged. My 8-year-old son turned to me and said, ‘Daddy, someone murdered those trees and I said ‘Yes, that’s exactly what they did.’”
The picture I included needs some explanation. The original image appears on a Library of Congress web page here.
The sword-like chainsaw is eloquent but something appears to be missing. The image looks curiously dark to me so I’m going to take a look at it in Photoshop. It is immediately apparent that the shadow detail was artificially darkened. One click reveals the missing shadow details. Note that I haven’t retouched anything. All I’m doing is the equivalent of shining a light into a shadowy area to see what’s really there. I’m adding nothing to the image. Now the deep heartrending almost bloody gouges made by the chainsaw are visible.
The loggers look pretty happy and satisfied with the destruction they are wreaking on a forest giant that may be as old as 2000 years. It might be as tall as the United Nations Building. Let’s zoom in on the loggers and take a better look.
Yes, these tree huggers are absolutely thrilled. Someone in Mill Valley or Atherton is going to have a beautiful headboard or new fence soon.
When a 200-foot-tall giant falls in Washington’s Olympic rain forest life immediately begins to grow out of it and derive energy and nourishment. Likewise, a Redwood tree gives birth to a family of Redwoods that grow from its giant roots and growths called burls. That is life. What you’ve seen here isn’t life. It’s a disregard for life and our natural heritage. It’s wanton destruction.
Tags: energy, Old Redwood Highway, Redwood Highway, WashingtonRelated posts