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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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No amount of intellectualizing can come close to the experience of approaching spirit realities
if I see one of those suckers creeping up on me I'll probably run the other way.
Just joking. The Art of Dreaming is a fantastic experience. It rivals emptiness.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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if I see one of those suckers creeping up on me I'll probably run the other way.
Lol! I never read that one by Castenada. I read his first five or six Don Juan books and even wrote a paper in college about some of the controversies that started to pop up around him. Interesting man. Some of the stuff he got up to in his later days are a bit strange but I found a lot of interesting material in his early stuff. Is it worth reading in your opinion, John?
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dave729
Trad climber
Western America
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The fun we used to have with our Bible thumping neighbors.
Challenging them on the chicken and egg circular creation argument
was always entertaining.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Is it worth reading in your opinion, John?
A friend got me interested thirty to forty years ago. I read all his early books and some of the later ones. I never accepted the notion that the characters were real, but enjoyed his works as fiction . . . until he described the Art of Dreaming. That resonated with me and I decided to put it to a test: I had complete success the very first attempt, and had many enjoyable experiences after that for several years. However, I was never able to sense my allies or "see" their egg shapes!
The books were a part of the tapestry of that era. I don't know if they could have noticeable impact today.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Thanks for your perspective, John. I have a bookshelf full of thoughts from an era not that far away but seemingly distant in grasp of potential. It is always curious to me to try and remember just what it was we were grasping at. Some kind of clue.
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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You were looking for wifi so that you would have google and not be clueless.
Go Science!
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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THEORY: The Philae lander, packed with 13 science instruments, including 7 cameras, will attempt to land on Comet 67P/C-G on Nov 12. The entire science package weighs 59 lbs - you could stuff it into a backpack.
THEORY: First space craft in history to carry a rack of (3) ice screws! And 'ice harpoons' (can I haz sum uv thoze?)
THEORY: That is going to be f*#king awesome. Go ESA!
THEORY: On the home front, I finally flew my new nano-drone for its entire 4 minutes of flight time without crashing it. It made two unsuccessful bids for my face during that time.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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It made two unsuccessful bids for my face during that time.
ROFL
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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This is a very exciting time in Cosmology. I remember taking undergrad Astronomy in 1980, and boy were we stupid! So much has changed. This is a golden age of cosmology. We are now furiously observing the Universe, and the closer we observe, the stranger things seem.
With a modest 8 inch Newtonian reflector on a dob mount, you can look through the eyepiece and experience photons hitting your retina that left the stars of their home galaxies over 50 million years ago, using the bright objects that Messier catalogued, mainly to ignore while comet hunting in 1771. Many of Messier's "clouds" were actually galaxies. With a cheapo telescope you can see these big and close galaxies. They look like faint smudges, but if you take a long photograph, you can see far more. Our eyes don't do this, so we have to take long photographs.
Here is a HST photograph of M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. It is relatively faint for small telescopes, but here is what it looks like through the HST:
Just think. 50 million year old star light is hitting your eyeballs. Not only that, but a little light, less than you notice without a really big light collector like the Hubble Telescope is also hitting your eyes when you look up. We don't notice it with our limited eyeballs, but that light is raining on you whether you know it or not. I was just outside, during the day, and I know that this light is still raining onto me, even if I couldn't see it with my limited eyeballs. And this is only visible light. We now observe the sky throughout the entire spectrum.
A telescope is merely a device to gather and amplify light. As they have gotten bigger through history, each time new observations are made, new things pop up.
We can also tune our AM radios to "static," and part of that static is actually the cosmic microwave background radiation. The echo of the Big Bang. We think.!!
I dunno. I enjoy thinking of this when looking up. The objects and fabric of the Universe are observable. We can indirectly observe dark matter by looking at gravitational lenses.
Gravitational Lens:
Doesn't this seem exciting to any of you spiritists?
MikeL. Are you going to now tell us that these things are not real? That we descend into nihilism? Or do you admit to the existence of entirely different galaxies from our own? Do you admit that the light from these observations is more than twice the accepted age of the Planet? (4.6 Billion Years) To me, it seems as if you have become more remote because you are troubled by existential questions. Is it that hard to believe that humans aren't all that special? That we are just a smart animal?
I wonder what the Bible would say if the writers had access to modern day science data? What do you think, Go-B?
Nature is very beautiful, and right now we are answering old problems while new problems such as dark matter pop up. The Hubble Space Telescope was built, in part, to solve the Hubble Constant, the rate of expansion of the Universe. What we got back answered that question, but observations raised many other questions.
Doesn't anyone find this exciting?
This picture was taken by a Chinese spacecraft last week:
When I look at that picture, it somehow makes our human squabbles silly. You look at that little blue marble and all of these nations and militaries and killing seem incomprehensible.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum a couple of months ago, and they have original mockups of a lot of spacecraft. They had one of the Hubble Space Telescope, and it is HUGE. It is bigger than an entire Minuteman 3 ICBM.
I am pretty sure that this one is a Minuteman III ICBM:
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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Doesn't anyone find this exciting?
I sure do.
I am fascinated with Cosmology.
And right now in about five days the little cruiser Rosetta, which has been boogying through space for the past 12 years, is hovering just a few miles over an asteroid and will cut loose a small craft that will descent to the asteroid and fire harpoons into the rock to hold it it place while it drills and conducts experiments for a while.
Rosetta was launched over a decade ago and had to sling shot around around solar system to pick up speed to make contact with this asteroid. I'll take science over totalitarianism, mythology, mysticism, and voodoo any time.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Science actually delivers something - mostly more questions slathered in wonder and beauty.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Yeah, the Science Channel is advertising the Rosetta Landing bit time. It is kind of like watching the moon landing on live TV, but not quite so exciting.
The complicated path that the spacecraft took made the mission possible without having to use a much larger rocket. It is interesting reading if you are curious how the "slingshot" method works.
That path was all possible with Newton's laws of motion and gravity. I don't think that the velocity was high enough for relativity to matter very much.
This is a very exciting time to be a human being. Ignoring it all seems a little silly.
I mean, guys like Go-B still believe that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. Take a little telescope and observe M51, 50 million light years away. That light has either been traveling for 50 million years or God made this amazingly complicated universe, with Earth a tiny speck in the big picture, just to toy with us.
Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, Physics, they all agree. Earth is old, and 4 billion year old zircons aren't even that rare if you know where to look.
U-Pb Zircon dating is the most precise dating method for old rocks. Zircons are incredibly tough chemically, and fluid inclusions in them harbor a small amount of Uranium. Uranium decays into Lead at a known rate.
Other dating methods are good, but Zircons are extremely good. You need a granitic igneous rock for a host, though. Zircons are super rare in basaltic oceanic crust.
I just don't see why people can't ever so slightly alter their faith to allow for what we see in nature. Objective evidence.
When I look at what religion is giving us, and by that I am referring to the super fundamentalists, you get ISIS.
The Hubble Space Telescope didn't kill anybody.
If the protestant reformation hadn't happened, and Christianity was still a single church with a pope, would that pope have executed the people who built and worked on Hubble?
I would argue that yes, right now in the Middle East, if you gave a natural history lesson to ISIS, they would probably cut off your head.
I read today that Hezbollah was fighting ISIS. ISIS is a bunch of fundamentalist Sunni's. Does anyone here know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia? They both believe every word of the Koran. They just differ on the importance of Mohammed's various descendants. That is all. And they cut off heads over this.
I for one am happy that Christians no longer follow the laws given in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You know. Get killed for not following the Sabbath. Somehow Islam is stuck in that part of the world. I suppose bombing them for the last twenty years didn't help.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Some people just stick with the comfort food they grew up with. They know what feels good; end of story.
You can serve them all the sushi you want - zircons, HST photos, fossils, but they'll just push it around the plate and tuck back into the casserole.
Not everyone is curious or comfortable with the unknown.
Well, no one is comfortable with the unknown, actually, but some accept it is part of the deal better than others.
In the end, it's probably more of a genetic wiring thing than anything else.
Make no mistake, though - science is closing in on the religiously mythology. The latter is forced to fit into a tighter than tighter space as the years pass and the newer generations grow up more comfortable with and fluent in science and technology. A century from now, creationism will seem like just another medieval curiosity. In fact, few will probably realize that such nonsense survived the Age of Enlightenment.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Good stuff! I particularly enjoy seeing pictures from the HST. Even though I've seen untold amozing shots in Sky & Telescope and Astronomy, I never tire of seeing more. Maybe it's because I have to work so hard to see the Wonders of the Universe in my little 95mm Meade refractor.
Thanks to all.
John
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WBraun
climber
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In the old days they could interplanetary travel just by mantra sound vibration.
Now a days these puffed up cavemen scientists have to tax their citizens trillions of dollars for some metal junk called rocket to go nowhere fast ......
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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In space, no one can hear you chant.
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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I posted this comment on a science and philosophy forum at a Christian University a few years back and got blasted for it by the regulars there. It's when I got started writing again after finally settling on science as belief system, after being an agnostic for thirty years and being pretty angry and confused about the merits of it. The comment here is a bit grandiose but I always liked it. I lost the text for awhile before finally finding it again to serve up at the appropriate time. Notice the alias Hans Bjelke? My wife thought some religious crazy might blow us up if they knew who posted it so she insisted I use the alias. I'm hoping the regulars here are more open minded. Still, do I need to lock and load, and check my locks after reposting it?
'The Truth Concerning the Untruth'
Every human who has looked out at the night sky and who understands what a star is has also admitted to themselves that the universe is immense, possibly without end, and that in all the cosmos there could never exist a magic mythical being that created everything. The idea in and of itself is preposterous. To believe in a theory or concept that could never be proven is beyond unethical, but is at its core, a diabolical contrivance and a perversion of the thought processes, medieval and primitive, and ignorantly dismissive of all modern, developed, and logic based thinking.
To deny the truth is in itself a lie. We who have ever claimed faith in god at all know in our deepest thoughts that we only do so primarily to please our families and piers, fearful and sometimes self righteous, we dare not admit our true feelings to those we trust and love or those we believe we need for sustenance and validation. We know to do so would expose us to ridicule, pious judgment, and condemnation.
As we observe the cosmos through a telescope and our sense of wonder and amazement awakens, we cannot deny the innermost instinct of knowing we humans are not alone in this the Stelliferous Age, armed with the secure knowledge that the existence of intelligent life is mathematically and axiomatically assured, we are sure to feel self consciously foolish for ever doubting science at all, and sheepish for not giving credit where credit is due.
To those we owe true reverence and gratitude; the scholars of science and engineering, the aviators, the global explorers, the adventurers, the social revolutionaries, and astronauts who paved our way to the knowledge, democracy, and technology of our world today. If you think you need a martyr to justify and make worthy a yoke to bear for yourself and all the world, choose instead to learn from these exceptionally aware folk, who have sacrificed with all their passion and energy, to bring light, prosperity, and scientific enlightenment to our planet. Acknowledge and invest in these intelligent and dedicated stewards, who have at times burned with inspiration as hot and as bright as the stars that illuminate our world.
-Hans Bjelke
(bushman)
01-30-2012
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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I just don't see why people can't ever so slightly alter their faith to allow for what we see in nature. Objective evidence.
they cannot ever so slightly alter their faith
because they know that like a cheap suit, it unravels quickly thread by thread if one is pulled out
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Bushman
Social climber
The island of Tristan da Cunha
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Full rant and diatribe mode engaged:
'The Truth Concerning Our Ignorance'
To whom it may concern,
It has taken a lifetime of amateur research and unanswered philosophical questions to finally cast off the chains of religious bondage that stifled the journey of scientific discovery I so longed to embark upon since early childhood. Albert Einstein said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Scientists today are now discovering that the universe might after all be limitless and of course Einstein’s assessment of our folly has already been accepted as known fact. The following statements are what I now believe to be a true and incontrovertible picture of our current predicament, and if these statements are not even close to the truth about religion, politics, science, and our civilization today, then I profess to know nothing and I am as clueless as one could ever be about our place within the cosmos.
Greetings Earthlings,
Because of the current holy war in which religious peoples have proven they will never evolve and have set numerous examples of their zealotry and willingness to die because they believe god is on their side, and because of their refusal to fully embrace science, I have come to the conclusion that the human species is now in the throes of an evolutionary downslide. Narrow minded political and religious dogma have replaced good common sense, and have been accepted as normal by many in this nation and by many in other nations around the world. Mankind might have succeeded in sending astronauts to Mars and would possibly have achieved much more by now, including a technological revolution that even our brightest minds have not yet conceived, were it not for the errors of our ethically inept political leaders, the miscalculations of our greedy and corrupted corporate entities, and the self imposed ignorance of our citizenry during the past forty years.
Why would we advance our achievements to the pinnacle of walking on the moon, only to allow ourselves to once again be bogged down with worldwide ethnic cleansing, ideological bickering, and financial enslavement? This planet might nurture a race of beings that could transcend war, eliminate pestilence and disease, and grow wise beyond the limits of our arrogant self absorbed intellects. Astronomy and Mathematics have revealed to us that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe or multiverse. How long will it take before we frightened homo-sapiens cast off hope based philosophies and embrace the fact that souls, spirits, deities, promises of eternal life, heavenly rewards, eternal damnation, and retribution do not exist. Is it so hard to accept the arrow of time, that we all fall victim to entropy, and that there is no physical or spiritual reincarnation of any life form? This is it; we have one life to live; to make a difference with, to determine our future with, to breach the limits we have so often set for ourselves, to experience and explore our colossal universe, and to fully expand our human potential.
Disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and asteroid strikes will continue to happen. The sun will die and take the earth with it. Galaxies will collide and time will end. These are not moral judgments against us by some unseen deity. These are just naturally occurring phenomenon and irrefutable facts. The questions are; what are we willing to do to further the advancement of intelligent life on this planet, what do we do to convince people that the planet is a lifeboat, how do we salvage our remaining resources, when will people recognize that all resources and life forms that are known and are discovered might be essential to our continued existence, how responsible and intelligent will we need to be to travel to other planets and stars, are we willing to fully embrace such a challenge? We must first be willing to try and understand reality as it is presented to us by the natural world before we can achieve these and other advancements.
Hans Bjelke
(Bushman)
October 4th, 2011
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