Btw, just so we can be clear, I never considered myself a true Christian, albeit I believe He existed and did amazing things, as well as believing He is the Son of God, I can never amount to the greatness of even the smallest of disciples in His time. It's a hard discipline, I'm a man of the world, and unfortunately, I am proud.
The first 3 lines summaries my main opposition to any form of organised religion. How do you recognize such points and still remain a believer to whatever degree? Is it just faith beyond rationalism? Don't mean to sound attacking just very curious.
A conspiracy theorist is a person who tends to beg the question and base things on a lack of evidence. There aren't alternative ideas. There are ideas supported by evidence and those that aren't. As a point of comparison, there is a word for Chinese/Eastern medicine that is supported by Science. It's called medicine. Let's examine the situations that we are talking about and we'll see if we can find a difference. For instance, you think that we are controlled by the church because of the calendar that we use. You have no evidence that this is true, you use ambiguous arguments, and you don't believe that we are controlled by all religions that had an effect on the calendar. Just certain ones. Let's contrast that with my position as a skeptic. As a skeptic I embrace logic and reasoning. I am willing to embrace anything in the world as long as there is evidence to support the claim. Of course, you are even chalking the term "conspiracy theorist" up to the media and saying that it's their fault for the way people think regarding conspiracies. I guess it's a conspiracy of a conspiracy. Come on man. By the way, it's delusional and not dillusional. Then again, maybe I'm just a shill that works for Big Grammar. Haha.
So are you telling me that Pope Gregory did not implement the calendar we use today and that our consciousness isn't pegged onto this calendar like white on rice? Everything we plan to do revolves around the calendar. You cannot operate in society without recognizing the Gregorian Calendar. You're not seeing the forest through all of the trees. There's nothing to reach for here, as it is extremely self evident that our society runs on a CHURCH sponsored calendar that is orintated to the physical process of the Earth moving around the Sun. THAT is the rythym we all move to. Gee, do you think there might be any other rythyms in nature that might be more universal than our particular planet going around our particular star? When something spins around completely, it has moved in 360 degrees. And when we look back into antiquity we find a whole bunch of 360 day calendars. And when a human is conceived in the womb, it spends around 260 days there in "gestation". And when we look back into antiquity we find 260 day calendars. So I think it's fair to say that our ancestors were far more sensitive to time than we are today. ------
Sure. You see it respresentated as such all the time on mainstream news. Who else would reinforce that idea? Or better yet, who else BENEFITS from reinforcing that idea? ------
When you beg the question and base your conclusions on false logic and everything that you don't have an answer for, it's not the media's fault. You are setting up a paper tiger.
Maybe I shouldn't say mainstream news. Maybe I should call a duck and duck and call it the corporate news. NBC is owned by General Electric. So when you sit down to watch the news on NBC, you're watching the "world according to General Electric's interests". News you can TRUST. LMAO! The naïveté! ------
That's a false equivalence. Also, you are still making multiple arguments and jumping around. You are going from "we are controlled by the church because of the calendar" to "time isn't linear" to "our calendar sucks and there are better ways." Pick one my man. I wish you were right though. If the church was trying to control us, it seems to me like they'd do it by attempting to institute religious belief. If their efforts at control are merely attempting to make sure that the Gregorian calender is intact, I probably wouldn't hate on them so much.
I don't watch the news. I'm a behaviorist. Everything that I know about conspiracy theorists comes from studies of the brain. Remember when I said that I bet you believe in other conspiracy theories. That's how I knew. It's not a calendar problem. It's a way of thinking problem. To deflect, you would want to say that I'm a Science shill being paid to cover up something or another.
I think what vawave is getting at is essentially, what does the church gain by using this calendar over another? If that isnt his point then its my question. That is to say, what benefit would there be if we used calendars perhaps not based on lunar and solar cycles? Having said that, i wonder why we wouldnt have a month start on a new moon as opposed to these arbitrary times? I confeas ignorance in this area. Arent we all sons of God though?
That is a lot of what I'm getting at. How are they controlling us with this calendar? What control are they exerting? If another calendar was instituted for example, what would the church lose that they have now? Where is the evidence? I'm willing to believe anything if the evidence is present. Thank you for clarifying my point.
- I don't feel like I'm "jumping around". What does this even mean? - the Church dictates what time it is for everyone despite what you believe in - there are both linear (timeline) and non-linear (fractal) perspectives of time. We only use linear now but this isn't an either/or arguement. You need both perspectives and I've been consistent about that if you go back over what was said. - controlling populations with the intent of misleading the population when consciousness is tied to a calendar which is calibrated to a mundane act, thus bringing about our mundane society, I find a very offensive and powerful act on the CHURCH'S part. - I'd love to take a tour of the Vatican Library to see what they don't want the public to know about. Because if it was surpressable, you can bet your ass that they surpressed it. And they put down a whole bunch of other societies in their day on the way to the top. So I'm sure there are plenty of "surpressable artifacts" in there. ------
Again, it's not an either/or type of argument. What I would like to see for myself is to bring back the dual understanding of time like the Greeks had. The Mayans were known as excellent timekeepers and they were slaughtered almost as soon as they were discover by? You guessed it - The Catholic Church. But out of all societies of antiquity, they are the most RECENT ancient civilization we can study. That is to say they left the "freshest tracks" to quote Ian Lungold. They also had a "personal calendar" called the Tzolkin which mean "day count" in Mayan and they had a 360 day prophetic calendar called the Tun Calendar. They had their own "Gregorian Calendar" too and they called it the Haab calendar and it was a 365 day calendar. almost like the one we have and they kept the day to day business calibrated to this calendar. There has NEVER been found on ANY stele or stone carving that at such and such a date, the world is going to end. That is a complete fabrication that has arisen out of popular culture and it gets propped up by corporate media. What they were tracking was the GROWTH of HUMAN AWARENESS. ------
Whilst I believe the death of the Mayans was certainly an act committed very much on purpose by the Catholic Church. I find it hard to believe it was over their calender. I would find it more likely that they saw the Mayan way of life a threat to their whole structure in their religion. What I mean by this is that the Mayan way of life was much more.. how do I put this.. Free. Important to remember where there is Civilization there has always been the Hill people, the Hermits, the people running from it. The Mayans existed for hundreds of years without the need for such an ordered civilization and although they didn't really have a choice I'm pretty sure given the offer they wouldn't have accepted happily joining what I'm sure they saw as slavery. My point is the Catholic Church couldn't have people running around doing whatever they wanted... Wouldn't send a good message to some of their more open minded population.
So you are saying the fact that thus is the only (and incomplete) means to differentiate time, by default limits perception. Like if the were able to remove our experience of the 3rd spatial dimension?
Well, they (Mayans) are not "dead" as there are still millions of Mayans living in Central America. They've just been....Catholisized as it were. But when the Spanish attcked, they made it a point to kill the elders, those who had the ability to verbally pass on wisdom of their culture, and they destroyed all of their text that they could find. Because of this, for years and years historians struggled to piece together what their culture was all about and so in some ways we know very little about the Mayans. If you go back and read some of the atrocities committed by the Church, when I read it, it certainly does give me the impression that they felt that they could do whatever the wanted, being the "middlemen to God" as they positioned themselves to be. There was "information" in the Mayan society that the CHURCH didn't want to have "go public". Probably something that threatened their "middleman to God" position I would imagine. : ) ------
I think the Abrahamic religions were created by people who believed in the bullshit they were spewing. And people in power subconsciously use religion for personal gain. Unless if they're lying about their religious beliefs, in that case they're purposely manipulating people. However Islam was destined, by it's own philosophy, to become a governmental tool. I don't know if the same goes for Judaism and Christianity. This shouldn't be an issue for long. Education is spreading throughout the world. Educated people are less prone to support a party based on their piety. And don't forget how much the internet has liberalized people around the world. But most of all I believe that a government that relies on God to get any part of their job done, or create improvement in society, is damaging to the nation. edit : I love how you spell Judaism (Jewdaisum).
Yes, I feel is our perception is purposefully limited and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, on the grand scale of things. It's a good thing for me but I can't speak for anyone else. Well if consciousness is tied or attached to "time" using an arbitrary physical process, and no attachment of time can be made to the spiritual side of life, you end up with a civilization like ours that puts emphasis on things like physical appearance, how many things can you buy/purchase, I mentioned Y2K earlier being the point at which human consciousness began to populate "cyberspace", which was a HUGE leap in human evolution because it opened up all sorts of new communication and connectivity possibilities like we have never experienced before. But were we seeing it like that as it was happening? And what was the media telling us about Y2K? They were saying BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID! lol... ------