Guys, that should have been 'terrace'. We don't have roofs where I live! Someone just pointed it out to me.
Why do you and Buddha insist on removing a "t" from my name??? On a lighter note, yes, they seem to know how to dispense pills. Surely they do. Love em. It's ALWAYS the answer. Surely it is!
Did you see the flying monkey man at night? Or the golden spider duck? I hear they can be bothersome!
Sorry. I guess we'll just have to continue to disagree over the exact numbers, then. Though I can regurgitate, if need be.
i had to restrain myself from joining in here because sometimes i just cannot help myself and i get carried away with the jollies. i did not want to ruin the professors thread as he needs this for his ego. oops! couldnt help that one. sorry professor. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I don't have to tell you what you can do with that thought, do I Ellion? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! No ego involved at all - simply interested in what people think.
It's perfectly simple - what you define as "Strange Beliefs" could equally be described as desires, and we all, each and every living one of us, desire more than what remains tangible. Forget the UFO's and the psychic abilities for a moment and consider, for an instant, money. Moolah, cold-green-folding, readies... tiny rectangles of paper proffered in exchange of goods and/or services in the belief that the paper represents something actually tangible. Technically, an equivalence in gold. A scrap of A4 with "IOU £5.00" scrawled on in biro isn't going to cut it on the high street and yet you as an individual remain far more legally culpable than the actual institutions of Banks and Treasury which issue legal tender. Few, if any of you, have ever actually seen your nations actual gold reserves. Even if you've seen Goldfinger umpteen times, that was actually just a film set - money is a promise we accept and believe implicitly with scant little evidence as to its actual mechanism save that it appears to work therefore we don't generally question it. Instead, we accept. Belief, in a nut shell. And as mad as a box of badgers on a tuesday... Life as we live it requires belief of some kind - even atheists need something specific not to believe in - and all belief, no matter how obtuse, provides satisfaction, the very basic of all primal desires. No different from the infants we were born, we want things not necessarily tangible, but needed - explanation, a sense of purpose, a sense of place, a sense of understanding and the basic underlying problem with knowledge remains that, the more you know for a fact the more you realise there's yet still more that y'simply don't adequately understand - actual knowledge is kind of a void that simply increases in size the more you realise what it is your looking at. Belief, in the gaps between asking questions and perceiving answers, provide a kind of certainty that allow us to get through the not-actually-knowing-a-damn-thing phase which petty much defines most of every generations tenure of life. All beliefs are fundamentally strange. But we all believe something.... In this world there is precious little else but belief.
Anomalous: No, I do not think I know everything about existence. While I have gaps in my knowledge, I do recognize various fallacious arguments: Strawman, Ad Hominem, Begging the question, et cetera. When a person uses fallacious arguments to support their beliefs, it suggests that their beliefs are also fallacious. The fallacious argument that particularly annoys me has the following format. In the past somebody believed this stupid idea, which we now know to be invalid. Therefore my silly idea is likely to be valid and you are a jerk with a closed mind. The dumb concepts believed in the past only indicate that in the past people knew less than they do now. It intrigues me that one of the foolish beliefs often quoted is the belief that the world is flat. They always mention a time 500 or 600 years ago (about the time of Columbus). Oddly enough, the ancient Greeks not only knew the world was round prior to the time of Christ, they actually estimated its circumference within about 5% of our modern estimates. So the dumb belief quoted is often just the dumb belief of one person or a group of people, not necessarily the belief of more knowledgeable people. It is especially amusing and annoying when the scientific establishment is accused of believing that they know all there is to know. For at least 150 years, the scientific establishment has known of and acknowledged serious problems in their theories. It has been the known problems and inconsistencies in established theories that are most investigated by those on the frontiers of science. It is the technicians and engineers who are applying current theories to practical purposes that tend to be unaware of the problems and inconsistencies.
OMG! The man uses a completely different font from the rest of them! Well, I guess I should say that I found that refreshing. People are criticized for believing in things they can't see. It's good to put things into perspective.
Thats what they say about man landing on moon, and thats what was thought about before greatest inventions and discoveries were made.
Well then, in that case I guess I should say thankyou. I guess.... And yes, the font. Arial Narrow. Been using it consistantly since 2003 or there abouts. I'm all for continuity... Woops! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
If I've learned anything about human nature, it's that there is little use in telling a man not to do what he wants to do; he's gonna do it anyway. Many of us are familiar with the poster in Fox Mulder's office: I WANT TO BELIEVE So they do. Well, men do, anyway. As for women..I don't have a clue.
That makes me wonder: are men more attracted to science-fiction and studying the paranormal? Looking at how many ufologists are men, and how few women there are, it would seem at least THAT field is dominated by men. However, I am positive that most psychics (or those that claim to be) are women.
I think it's pretty much a given that men are more into the scifi thing overall, since it involves cool gadgets, and blowing stuff up. Women, on the other hand, are more into 'feelings', which might account for their strong presence in the parapych feild, where gadgets are rare, and the only thing blown up is an occasional cranium... Then there is that persistant myth about "women's intuition", which has no basis in science, but a strong history in anecdotal records. While on that thought, I am wondering if pehaps it has been a result of women's traditional role in society to foster communication in an non-verbal manner. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assert that women have developed better 'body language' skills, due to the manner in which they have been silenced from societal participation thruout history. It seems logical that one adept in interpreting non-verbal clues might build a reputation as being able to 'read minds', and from there it's a small step to telepathic communication, or at least a percieved (imagined?) tendency towards the ability. Hmm..for someone who claims not to have a clue about women, I sure have a lot of theories..Perhaps I should explore my feelings about that...
