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News Briefs 11-06-2015

By red pill junkieon

So where the hell is my volcanic glass marker?

Thanks to Charles, Red and Andy

Quote of the Day:

“I’ve never had dreams, never had nightmares.”

~Richard Dawkins

red pill junkie
Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the 'moron' part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or 'paranormal' --a term he personally detests... When he's not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City. absurdbydesign.com
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24 Comments

  1. Dawkins
    Not so much a meme but a internet troll. Some of his tweets are on par with the insensitivity of trolling 12 year olds that don’t understand what they are saying could ruin their life. The only difference is his celebrity makes him more vulnerable. But here is my question, why care? Why care what other people believe in or what I’m baptized under? If I learn from religion good morals and not to hate anyone different then me than I guess I’ve achieved life – post it to the leaderboards! Seriously, I have met a few atheists who really don’t care whether I do or do not believe in a higher power, so why should he? I don’t care that your an atheist, so why should you care what I do on Sunday morning?

    1. New Atheism
      Well, we have to keep in mind that Dawkins, Harris and all the other leaders of the ‘New Atheism’ movement decided to raise their voice in unison after 9/11. They are of the idea that religious thoughts is a blight threatening the very existence of our kind, and have but to point their finger at ISIL as ‘exhibit A’.

      I think they never considered the possibility that folks can choose many other alternatives to become dangerous a-holes –not just the religious route 😉

      1. And…
        [quote=red pill junkie]I think they never considered the possibility that folks can choose many other alternatives to become dangerous a-holes –not just the religious route ;)[/quote]

        …not all people who have strong faith, go to Church, believe in a god or gods whatever they may be, etc. seek to destroy archeological relics and kill off others. Belief in a god does not mean you are going to blow up the Statue of Liberty! If religion was a blight on par with the plague it would be killing off both sides, those who use religion to attack others as well as their targets. Humans would already be extinct. Religion doesn’t declare war, people do. People cause hatred toward one another, people can breed prejudice. I believe that if we suddenly erased all religion from humanity’s mind, that someone would still find a reason to throw a chair. I don’t think it is human nature to start wars, just some people are more prone to it. Some people are just a-holes.

        But most importantly, telling people that your religion is ridiculous and you shouldn’t believe in it, THAT’S NO BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO CONVERT OTHERS IN THE PAST!!! That’s the same as the European settlers who tried to convert Native Americans, or the Catholic church who started a witch hunt against Jewish tradition, or missionaries converting tribes in the Amazon by burning their sacred sites. Trying to convince people should be Atheist because religion is either ridiculous or the cause of wars? Really?! I agree there is a shit ton of “wrong” things in the Bible and other religious texts. I also agree that HUMANS wrote those works based on what they interpreted a higher power would want.

        I get really disturbed when I see anti-religion statements on social media. Even if it’s some kid being a troll or they seriously believe it, it’s fucked up. By saying a religion is a blight and then referencing ISIL, well then your saying that those who have the same religion as ISIL all want to kill us. I’m sorry but as someone who has Muslim friends I don’t believe that all Muslims nor Islam is out to get us. There are plenty of people who say ISIL does not represent the true message of their religion. By calling that religion a blight, it’s like calling all those who believe in that religion a blight too, and that breeds prejudice and hatred. So in conclusion, Dawkins is an a-hole. I don’t hate him, I pity him and not because I don’t think he will get into Heaven or whatever. I pity him because he doesn’t come off to me as a happy person. If he was a child and a friendly dog came up to him with a ball in his mouth begging to play, he wouldn’t throw the ball for the dog. He would look at it and throw the ball into the trash, leaving the dog disappointed. He is a man without dreams or nightmares. A man with no imagination. A man who can not be shaped by his own creation like an artist can. A man who can not escape this world and create others. He is a blank grey cube sitting in a field of nothing. What a pity.

        1. Pity Dawkins
          Hence why I chose that comment from him in that article as the Quote of the Day. I think it’s quite telling how the man claims to have NEVER had a single dream –that he recalls. It reminds me of how he once tried Michael Persinger’s so-called God Helmet and all it did was giving him a mild headache.

          Some are people are born tone-deaf; some are born color-blind; I think the same can be said about people who have never experienced the immanent, either by dreams, psychedelic experiences or other mystical avenues.

          1. Dawkins and dreams
            To be fair, Dawkins didn’t say that he never had dreams or nightmares; he said that he didn’t have dreams or nightmares about the sexual abuse he had as a child. He says plenty of silly things; there’s no need to quote him out of context.

            As an old-fashioned fortean agnostic, I prefer the old atheism to the new. Diderot and Bertrand Russell, for example, are far more interesting writers than Dawkins.

          2. Out of context
            I see your point, and I think you may be right –I indeed extrapolated the quote to hint at things he didn’t say. I’m sorry about that.

  2. WHY IS IT SO FUCKING HOT IN HERE???!!!
    Is exactly my reaction to a yoga gym. Poor Ghandi. I can’t help but laugh but it’s so true.

    On “light workers”: *sigh* Snake oil is alive and well in the new millennium 😛

  3. Weirder than aliens
    I actually don’t find it that weird at all. One, we don’t know if there is parallel dimensions to our own and therefore other creatures from it. Two, the possibility of it occurring from Nature such as a new species is always probable. Three, if you saw the size of the spider in my room last night you would believe in demons.

    Not everything should get the “I don’t know, therefore aliens” treatment.

    2. Not really very weird . . . .
      The explanations that actually seem far more plausible than aliens are earthlights, extremophiles or plasma-based life, and cryptoterrestrials.

  4. The Dark Side of “Light Workers”
    Sadly, the only way any group can define itself as a community is to make people either insiders or outsiders (you’re one of us or you’re not). Those who hold the power in the group (the Alpha dogs) always make the decisions about who can become a community member. Nobody can join a community simply because of the desire and will to do so or through the good graces of a less powerful community member. The right to enter any community as a full-fledged member always rests with the community’s power elite. Snobbery is intrinsic to all human social behavior.

    1. Entrance
      I suppose you’re right. Ideally every group would conduct with the same policies like here at The Grail, where admittance is open to anyone, but STAYING depends entirely up to yourself and your behavior.

      But I think the real crux of the article is the idea that people who profess to be in search of a higher spiritual state would nonetheless show their own biases by belittling people who “don’t belong.” It reminded me of something Amit Goswami mentioned during his interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, on how a true guru or teacher would never mind if one of his pupils is “just faking it”, because the guru would know that faking a behavior during a sufficient amount of time would eventually became indistinguishable from “the real thing” –i.e. “fake it ’til you make it.” 😉

      I can understand that, because on a personal level I experienced that during that night when I went with the Huichol shaman in search of a ‘higher state’, and for a while I was really annoyed by the all the noise coming from that rave playing not too far from where our little gathering was being celebrated. By the end of the night I managed to suppress my ‘holier than thou’ sanctimonious attitude when I realize we’re all trying to find answers by following different paths. My path is no better or worse than the one chosen by those party attendants, so what right would I have to judge them?

      1. One of my relatives was a
        One of my relatives was a good friend of Christopher Hitchens, and when I embarked on a career in making orgonite he sent me an article Hitchens wrote dissing Wilhelm Reich and orgonite in general. I had to point out to my relative that the article was entirely based on theories – not experience – and that devotees to orgone energy nearly all became so by having an experience – not an idea.

        So many professional skeptics are armchair types who oppose the “very idea.” Many of them strike me as being people who live almost entirely “inside their heads” as the phrase goes. They have been raised in the milieu of pure debate – a technic that certainly has its merits, but also great drawbacks if employed as a worldview singularly and exclusively. I often find myself wishing that “they would get out more.”

          1. 10 Easy Pieces
            None of the 10 more “out there” theories about UFO’s need be wrong or contradictory. The more I read about them the more obvious it is that there are are many different entities with different modes and agendas.
            My favorite recent UFO book – “Sky People.”

            http://www.amazon.com/Sky-People-Stories-Encounters-Mesoamerica/dp/1601633475/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434123692&sr=1-1&keywords=sky+people

            Ardy interviews a slew of mesoamericans about their encounters and finds all manner of things. My Amazon reviewer name is “E Long.”

          2. Either/Or
            In my decades of studying the phenomenon, the few things I learned is that Either/Or avenues tend to be ontological dead ends.

            When it comes to UFOs, I always choose “all of the above” 😉

          3. because UFOs
            I just realized they forgot one: The Government. Whether it’s the US government or any other secretive country, governments doing top secret experiments account for many of the UFO sightings. Maybe it’s not weird enough, but it’s most likely.

          4. Caveat
            Well, I kinda have a personal caveat about that one. I have a grudge against all the skeptics who love to pinpoint to that tweet released by the CIA, in which they attribute themselves to be the cause behind the increase of UFO sightings in the 1950s and so; the logic being that what the startled American citizens were confusing as interplanetary vehicles, were actually the U2 spy plane and its several successors.

            First of all, those planes were designed to fly at such high altitude, they were impossible to look at from the ground –unless you caught them right before take off or landing. Secondly, the CIA seems to forget that the UFO phenomenon is global in scope, meaning the idea their spy planes were also behind sightings occurring in Europe, South America and Asia is ludicrous to say the least.

            And finally, I’m yet to see any vintage film of a U2 plane hovering in midair 😉

            If one wants to entertain more ‘exotic’ ideas, like the notion of anti-gravity propulsion being secretly developed by the Air Force under black programs, then you inevitably have to return to the alien problem, since its is largely assumed those technologies were ‘reverse-engineered’ from ‘true’ UFOs. So you’re basically back to square one…

          5. reverse-engineered
            And I do believe that some of the technology we have today was from “other-worldly” RESEARCH. No, not every UFO sighting is government related. The UFO I saw was right over the military base a mile from my house from my perspective, however that couldn’t possibly be the case because it was also seen in New York. That doesn’t excuse the fact that the government does have its secrets, but of course I understand that’s to protect our country. Still there are times where I have to stick on my tinfoil hat and say I don’t trust the government on certain secrets they keep, though Russia and North Korea at this point seem more unstable.

            [quote=]I have a grudge against all the skeptics who love to pinpoint to that tweet released by the CIA, in which they attribute themselves to be the cause behind the increase of UFO sightings in the 1950s and so…[/quote]

            I never saw the tweet, but I find this funny considering there have been sightings since before the CIA existed. In reality I think the amount of sightings fluctuates.

            In conclusion, when we think of UFOs and “other-worldly beings” our minds automatically go to aliens from another planet. That is not the case and so I see why they chose what they did for the list. I agree that it may be an “all of the above” answer to the question of what we are seeing. We could be seeing aliens from another planet or beings from another dimension. Maybe it’s a giant bird that farts out bioluminescent shit, we don’t know.

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