Note to the Reader: I almost chucked this post, having realized the extent to which it rambles all over the place. (Aside from endings being everything, so is structure, insofar as you can separate the two. Meaning this: you will never find a narrative with a good ending but which has poor over all structure. It’s almost logically impossible.)
This first one is from last night – still another Milky Way image – before the moon rose and blotted out the heavens.
Shit, see what I mean? I can’t even keep a ‘Note to the Reader’ (itself redundant, i.e., whom else would a note be to?) from rambling. On the other hand (I’m thinking), there are a few set ups needed, which, structurally speaking, will not fit in the upcoming project, the series of essays I’m contemplating (more to come). So maybe just stick ‘em in here?
Plus, as my old friend Lesley would say, I need to do some ‘throat clearing’ before jumping headlong into the Big Question (yep, more to come). Also please keep in mind that, like my surfing aplomb, my writing ain’t what it used to be. Some readerly patience would appreciated, as I continue my ramble:
As many of you will remember, a few months back I bought a houseboat with the goal of doing The Great Loop around the inland waterways of the eastern U.S. (a total of 6,000 miles of the East Coast and somehow winding up in the Great Lakes), and how things went sour and now Gus and I are back in the goddamn mountains somewhere.
Well, I’m stretching myself as thin as it gets, financially: I’m having the boat shipped to a marina in Virginia Beach, where it will be put in dry storage until next May, when, assuming all goes well, Gus and I will maaaaybe be back living afloat and maaaybe doing the Loop. I’ve talked to a dog expert who met Gus and who thinks I can get her used to living on a boat; as you may recall, she would jump overboard whenever I started the engine. It’s a matter of patient yet no-nonsense training, the dog-person assured me.
That first one took so long to upload that I’m afraid I’ll have to do some old ones. My Net connect is the problem.
We’ll see on that. (As I write, Gus is stink-eyeing me from under the picnic table.) But in order to pull this off financially (I’m as low on funds as ever in my sorry ass life), I’ll have to not spend money between now and May. I mean hardly any, aside from the various insurances and other monthly expenses, like this blog and the $150 a month it costs to stay online and mobile, plus about $300 monthly for boat storage. So I’ve bought a year pass to New Mexico state parks, meaning I can use their campgrounds (sans electric and water but no biggie) until next spring at no added expense. (If this all sounds like a back door, sneaky-ass plea for donations, I can only say it isn’t. I’m just rambling. However, if it works as such, what the fuck?)
I’ve got a year’s worth of freeze dried food (part of my ‘armageddon contingency’) that I’ll be digging into, in order to avoid supermarket check outs, and will be moving from park to park every couple weeks – two being the limit at any one park, although you can return after a week absence. So far I’ve sojourned at a half dozen of them and they’ve all been great, notwithstanding some Internet-connectivity issues. The way I’m doing it is to gradually descend from the high elevation parks to the lowers, so as to keep climatically comfortable. (Right now at 8,000 feet it’s ideal but in a month or so the white stuff will commence its fall.)
One expense I may go for is a cell phone booster antennae ($300, ouch), the better to stay in touch with you all and of course for research. (Nope, not a plea. Just rambling.)
Hell, why not remind you of some past points made? Remember this piece of mainstream hogwash?
Addendum: With all the money I made as a writer, how I’m in this pitiful financial state – relying on monthly pension/SS checks plus dribs from my still-in print books (plus an occasional check for like $3.52 from the Writer’s Guild because a Miami Vice I wrote played in Botswana) – is a sad (if you’re me) yet ridiculous tale. Perhaps some day I’ll write that aspect of being me, given some of the unbelievable turns the tale has taken, and the sheer number of dishonest/destructive humans I’ve managed to come across (a reliable source of drama, and occasional humor).
By the way, the bouts of depression I (often) go through have nothing to do with my distressing/ridiculous personal circumstances. For example, when I find myself fantasizing that I didn’t make Allan’s Big Mistake – selling my farm in Costa Rica – I know that I’d be just as depressed if I were still down there in paradise. And likewise I don’t think the depression is related to my continuing discoveries of how dishonest/destructive most of my fellow humans are, let alone the drift of ‘history.’ Truth is I have no idea what the problem is.
On the bright side, with a bit of luck I’ll wind up my final years as a traveler both on land and over the water, a guy with a marginally comfy if dilapidated motor home and a houseboat, and nothing stopping me from doing what I want. Plus, absent full-blown dementia (as opposed to my current degree of it) I’ll still be a person who knows things very few others know (some of which I’ve tried to share here).
That’d be great, no?
Back on track: So I have an upcoming seven months of limited travel (to save on gas money) and outback living in various wilderness parks. Question is, What to do with the time? Seven months. I have to produce something worthwhile, no? I could continue writing this blog, dealing with subjects inspired by world events or whatever might impinge upon my otherwise unsound reflections, but it might be better to set a more specific goal, thematically.
Speaking of the boat, why not? Monday it moves cross country by truck. Cross your fingers that all goes well…
Another note to the reader: This post originally started with the following, but it… well, it fizzled… so I moved it around until it ended up here. (Structure!):
I was lolling in my hammock yesterday, listening to the audio version of Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker, and having jotted down a half dozen examples of Dawkins’s failure to examine how things would really go if evolution was completely undirected, it occurred to me that I should continue to write about the lies we’re told regarding human origins. (As you’ll see, this thought would expand; it would flower.)
Addendum: I was still in the preface when I realized that Dawkins had misdirected his readers right from the get-go, from the title he’d chosen, The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins informs his reader right up front how metaphorically important the adjective blind is regarding the meaning of his book. (The idea of a watch and a watchmaker is historically relevant in the Darwinism/Intelligent Design imbroglio, as emblematic of an object that is planned, as opposed to randomly appearing for no purpose, like… well, us, for example.) It would be difficult to find the as-written passage in an audio book so I’ll paraphrase: Dawkins, as ‘Darwin’s new bulldog’ (T.H. Huxley was the original), assures us (over and over) that the most important aspect of evolution – and indeed the brilliance behind Darwin’s theory — is that the biological change it brings about is unplanned. Nature has no foresight. Again, and I say this having done my homework, the ‘brilliance’ behind what has been referred to as ‘The single greatest idea anyone has ever had’, i.e., Darwin’s doozy that the history of life on earth is based on some ultimate crap shoot falls apart with only a modicum of critical thought. But more, much more, on this to come (although maybe not today).
Remember that every time you see black & white tiled floors in a movie, it’s likely a ‘Hi there!’ from the PTB.
Well, I’m thinking, what does blind have to do with foresight? With planning something? In point of fact, a watchmaker who happens to be blind would have to employ extra planning. He’d have to know, i.e., plan, exactly where his tools would be laid out, for example; otherwise he’d be helpless, and unable to ply his trade. He’d no longer be a watchmaker, would he? Then where would Dawkins’s dumb-ass title be?
If you think I’m nit-picking, say this aloud and see if it rings true: ‘Nature has no foresight, just like a blind watchmaker.’ What?
It’s perhaps not coincidental that one of Dawkins’s favorite subjects is the eye, i.e., vision and how the ‘blind’ forces of random mutation/natural selection developed it. This reminded me of a blog post of mine from a year or so ago, and without even going back and reading it, I realized that I’d made a level of argument against Darwinism that no one had hitherto done. (No need to go back and read it; I’ll bring it up in a future post.)
By the way, Intelligent Design (I.D.) — if ‘Darwinism’ deserves capitalization, I figure so does its opposite number — has nothing to do with the sort of ‘Creationism’ inspired by various religious texts. Notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding how fucking very smart the I.D. people are, they have made some dumb mistakes over the years (yes, more on this…)
So I’m swaying in my hammock yesterday, thinking about Richard Dawkins, evolution (as Darwin defined it), and the problems I have with Intelligent Design as currently presented – problems that likewise I don’t believe have been elucidated elsewhere, thinking I maybe should write about it all, along with still more about how ‘science’ has so profoundly misdirected and deceived the rest of us.
Don’t you dare let this happen to your child, until you’ve looked deeply into it. (Then you won’t do it.)
But how to launch a discourse of this complexity, importance, and congruence with ‘the queen of the sciences,’ cosmology? (Need I explain how biological evolution conflates with the cosmological Big Picture, especially regarding the conflict between randomness and design? Surely not.) As it turns out, a few days ago (meaning prior to my hammock swaying), I’d started a post that… well, also fizzled, but which might, like the other one, bear resurrection here. Let’s give it a try and see if some sense can be made:
Back around 1982, in my early 30s (wow, am I old now!) I wrote a novel based on this question: What the fuck does it all mean? I’d just made a ridiculous segue in my real life – from high flying international criminal to ‘Hollywood screen writer’ and… well, there you have it; need I say more in terms of the provenance of the query?
Fittingly, perhaps, when I started writing the book, whose title ended up Cosmic Banditos; A Contrabandista’s Quest for the Mean of Life, I had no idea what the story would be or anything about it other than it would start with the main character on the run from the law, and that a dog would be his sidekick.
In those days I wrote long hand and I can still picture the loose leaf notebook in front of me (up in Topanga Canyon, near one of Manson’s old hideouts) and the first words: ‘I am very poor right now.’ (I recall that I’d just read somewhere that the best way to start writing something you’re not sure about is to pen a ‘simple declarative sentence’ and then ‘see where it goes.’ I thought, Okay, I’ll give that a shot.)
This is the face of a true scumbag.
Addendum: I’m thinking that in some larger sense – maybe in one of Superman’s Bizarro Worlds — this rambling essay might be considered a version of ‘a simple declarative sentence.’ That is, if one had the foolhardy courage of diving deep into my sorry ass psyche.
Those first words of Cosmic Banditos told me that I’d be writing in first person, present tense. As the writing progressed, I would end up all over the place in tenses and points of view, but the important upshot was that I had my first sentence and was off and running. I recall that that first writing session set up the whole story, although I had no idea at the time that this was so. I was truly winging it. I have never written anything before or since wherein I knew so little about where the story was going, and strongly advise against anyone else trying this technique. (In a sense, though, I’m doing it again, here.)
Well now, wait. Keep in mind that back in 1982 (it might have been ‘83) I did know what the story would be about, in the Bizarro World, lunatic larger sense (related to the above addendum?), i.e., What the fuck does it all mean? Cosmic Banditos ended up very successful and is still my favorite piece of writing. (The sumbitch is still in print and making me a buck – and I’m talking since 1986 – has been translated into a dozen languages, and is even in audio book.) I mean in terms of fun to write. See, writing it was very much like reading a book, for the first time, a book that hooks you from the get-go. I’d keep on writing, sometimes deep into the night, just to see what happens next.
‘Global Warming’? If it’s real, this is the cause. You know that, right?
Addendum: I would sometimes quit a session on a ‘cliff hanger’ so I’d have something to look forward to the next day. The best example of this was in that first session when I wrote a scene wherein the main character’s bandito buddy José (like everything else, the José character ‘came out of nowhere’) mugs a family of American tourists at the Santa Marta airport (in northern Colombia, and which I’d used for smuggling runs). As a detail I’d added that part of their spoils were physics texts, which ‘I’ (as the narrator) assumed belonged to the father. Mmmm, I was thinking — ‘I’ meaning the real me, the writer-me — why this detail? I really wanted to know. As it turned out, this ‘detail’ was the first domino in a chain of events that led to my answer to the What the fuck does it all mean? question.
This series of essays, if I go with it, will be different, though, very different. See, it will be nonfiction. (Whoa! Meaning I can’t make up stuff? Maybe not so much fun…) Also, unfortunately, this time I’m pretty serious, as opposed to back in ’82, when I took very little seriously.
Why so serious now? Because between 1982 and now I’ve come to see just how nasty this world really is. I’ve come to understand how innately and profoundly dishonest the vast majority of my fellow humans really are. (Believe it or not, I didn’t find this out while in the international crime business.) Even you (the personal you, you); odds are that you’re innately and profoundly dishonest, although you would (and probably are) vehemently deny(ing) it.
Yeah, the ‘Mandela Effect’. Hogwash? Then what happened to Dolly’s Braces? No, something weird here…
Having said that (and having managed to alienate most of my readers from the get-go) there are exceptions to the innately and profoundly dishonest rule. It’s for these rare folks, plus myself, that I would write these What the fuck does it all mean? (WTFDIAM) essays. (I’d add words to the effect of you know who you are except that odds are you don’t.)
[Strike-throughs are my compromise when I don’t like something but can’t bring myself to delete it. When you come across strikethroughs, read on at your own risk; I’ll listen to no complaints about it.]
Given the above distressing backstory, I’ve come to understand that if I want to know… anything, let alone how we humans came to be here, let alone the origin of the cosmos, let alone WTFDIAM?, I’m going to have to find out for myself, from the bottom up, in terms of data and cause and effect.
So, hokay. What the fuck does it all mean? Let’s get to it.
#
I’m back from the above ramble, parts of which, as I say, were written at different times and didn’t seem to be relevant to anything, i.e., they fizzled. I’m hoping that now, with the added stuff about evolution, Richard fucking Dawkins, cosmological conflations, seemingly irrelevant stuff about writing Cosmic Banditos, and so forth, this shit makes more sense, or at least some sense. (I also got the feeling that I’d written some of the Cosmic Banditos stuff before, in some dim past of this blog. So if you experienced an annoying sense of déjà vu… well, me too.)
Also consider it… all of the above… a foreshadowing, and a warning, of what’s to come.
Allan
If you’ve gotten this far in this post, my heartfelt thanks for your patience and curiosity. You have my word that future posts will be more coherent.
A Whoopie! of an Addendum: A couple hours after having finished this post, I was swaying in my hammock (again) and something occurred to me, popped into my head out of no where (theoretically). I asked myself, why, under the circumstances of this post – related as it is to the conflict in ideas between randomness and design in evolution – did I add all that stuff about my inner life in writing Cosmic Banditos? What does that stuff have to do with evolution/intelligent design?
Everything! is what I realized. Hang in here for a minute and imagine: ‘I am very poor right now.’ That is all I had in starting the book, right? And when I had José mug a family of American tourists and bring back to the exiled narrator a bunch of physics texts, I was looking forward to finding out Why this had happened, right? As I wrote a couple hours ago: “As it turned out, this ‘detail’ [the mugging] was the first domino in a chain of events that led to my answer to the What the fuck does it all mean? question.’
Do you see where I’m going?
Another quote from earlier: ‘I recall that that first writing session set up the whole story, although I had no idea at the time that this was so.’
The way I wrote that book (and this has never happened before or since), for me as a writer, was… random. Or seemingly so. The events apparently ‘came out of no where.’ But do we — you and I — really believe this? That everything just happened to fit together?
I wanted to add one more image from my archives. This is science Gatekeeper Sean Carroll showing us the ‘The Pale Blue Dot’. Where is the rest of the Universe, one might ask. No stars? Can’t use the usual crapola about brightness and contrast, since the earth from that distance would be so dim. So: it must be a fraud.
The story, somehow, from beginning to end, was already in my head when I started writing. It just had to… unfold. But it was… designed. Meaning that the foresight, the planning, was there from the get-go. As you will see if you hang in with these posts, the animal eye (or any body organ, plan or species) was there from the get-go in the same sense as the story was there from the get-go; my ignorance being irrelevant.
No, this anecdote does not prove that there is design in nature, but it is a spot on metaphor for that design, mysterious (non-‘material’) and unseen as it may be in any given ‘present.’
And, I would submit, the above is why the seemingly irrelevant anecdote about how I wrote Cosmic Banditos made it into this rambling discourse in the ‘first place.’ We’re talking double whammy design!
So there!
Hey jethrowup, git a life! And Allan, theres a blog, or sumthin, that we used, diy, onna homemade booster. It involves a wire, twisted so in a diamond shape, and so large/small as to fit in yer palm. Posted by a chinese guy…can’t remember the site but will send if I find it. Goog it if y can, keep ramblin good uncle…
Saw this and thought of you Allan:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/europe-cracks-are-beginning-show?commentId=fa0022ec-690d-429f-9d09-1352b921a2b4
Scroll to the bottom of the page to get comments to load, and then that link will take you to an interesting comment.
“Modern man average 3% Neanderthal DNA, which would be an F4 (4th filial generation from full purebred Neanderthal). That is about the same as most claiming Cherokee ancestors today.”
I’m not really catching your drift. Could you rephrase your comment, please?
These people always make great documentaries…..talking about early civilization at Antartica here > https://youtu.be/LNDEKOqd2PI
Yes, interesting, although I groaned aloud when Wilcock showed his face.
Liked this post and the randomness (or maybe not random? I mean, just because it seems random doesn’t mean it actually is, maybe just random can be a lack of ability to identify a link?)
Enjoy reading things like this and think sometimes a good stream of consciousness makes a good read, can tell a lot about the authors mindset etc
And now I’m going to need to go back and read Cosmic Banditos again.
Looking forward to what comes next!
Yeah, it’s truly not easy to write ‘stream of consciousness’ and also have it readable. In a sense, the crafting of this sort of thing makes it hypocritical. In other words, if it’s any good, it’s probably carefully crafted, which makes it not what it appears to be. See what I mean? (I don’t know where this one falls on this spectrum.)
Oh, man. Back to Mandela Effect. Your brain is fried man. You have lost your critical thinking faculties and living in such a bubble where the only people you interact with are your last 3 “fans” and you suspect everyone else of being a paid agent. It’s sad to watch. Allan W’s sad little echo chamber. I am genuinely worried that you are actively in ment
BTW, on that shit from a bunch of posts ago, if you think I ran away scared I regret to inform you that it was in fact gladly abandoning a self-important schmuck and his stupid, uninspired theories which he considers genius (God help you if you point out the glaring errors). I shot a Grand Canyon sized hole of faulty logic in your argument and you were so self important that you declared victory by repeating over and over that you were right and ignoring my points. It’s sad, man. Hard to watch and anybody would be much better served staying the hell away from this site. It’s Allan posting some random topic that has already been done to death and being 100% unwilling to bring himself to believing that his own words are not the Bible truth. This site just serves no purpose. No new ideas and a violent opposition to feedback. Not to mention the increasing paranoia that anyone who doesn’t declare him a pure genius must be a government agent.
Allan, all I ever did was tell you to reconsider your images of Neanderthal as this rapid ape. You never countered anything I said, but you declared yourself victor…somehow…and suggested I was an agent. It’s so sad and I hope you find something that works for you better than this site. It has just become worthless and sad.
Sentence that got cut off: Genuinely worried that you are actively in mental decline. Later Allan! I won’t be back! 😀
You better not come back!, you Sad, Misery Guts, Trolster Mole.
One more thing before your ASS is banished, I think you are bitter, because you can’t make an awesome blog like this one of Allans.
Bye!!!!
Back there, I politely encouraged you to reconsider your angry gorilla images as being just as silly as the mainstream images but in the other direction. You got immediately hostile, and I explained…with firm evidence…that that kind of imagery is completely unsupported. You mentioned me by name in the next two posts, which I am only finding now.
If you can’t handle your mistakes being shown to you, then you have your old 9/11 blindness, but in the other direction. You’re SO positive in any thought that pops into your head that you will violently argue for it even in the face of solid, no question counter points. And you were claiming that I was the one with blinders on! Worth a good laugh. This blog has just devolved into a sad thing, and I mean this genuinely that I am concerned about your mental faculties.
I kept repeating that I was pointing out the angry gorilla logical problems because I WANTED alternative ideas to not look ridiculous. Well, you apparently are the kind of stubborn person so self important that once your heels are dug, there is no going back. This should really make you question all the things you feel you know. Just like the 9/11 folks, you clearly stop caring about evidence once your mind is made up.
I have seen this play out with numerous commenters and I think eventually Allan you need to wake up to the fact that YOU are the problem. This blog is just your way of posting whatever nonsense ideas you have and roping in whatever fans you still have from Banditos. Close it down. It’s not serving a purpose anymore. Do something else, and for your own sake make sure your logical facilities are still intact.
Hey, you’re making some serious accusations here, but I see no specifics. If you want to call me insane in a long ramble, you have to get specific and quote me in my insanity. I’ll give you a couple days to frame your arguments, and if you do not do so, I will erase these attacks on my critical thinking abilities. I don’t mind someone disagreeing with me but most of the time they use your method: Bald, misleading assertions, nothing specific.
Your reference to the Mandela Effect is a good example of your technique of blackwashing. I said, simply, that something weird is going on with the ME, and you’re saying this is a symptom of insanity. You will have to do better or out you go.
RE my hypothesis that Neanderthal’s had thick hair (fur) like gorillas, I challenge you to show evidence why this is impossible, given that there is no evidence that they wore clothes and that they evolved mostly in ice age Europe, and survived there as apex predators for 10s of thousands of years. Why, since all other great ape primates had fur, do you think they lost theirs, given that of all the primates they needed the fur more than any of them. This is the kind of reasoning I use, and you call me insane.
I’ll give you two days to do better or you are out of here.
He is another horrible Troll Allan.
I would give him 5 minutes, then blast his ass GONE.
Good “God”, wordy lil self important prick, are’ntcha!!
You’re just flat lying here. I explained exactly why I suspect that Neanderthal’s had fur, etc. See my other comment below, but I’ll leave it at this: You’re a fucking liar.
I just glanced back and saw that I have AT LEAST three posts that clearly show your deceit, starting with this one: http://blog.banditobooks.com/human-origins-more-lies/
Yes, I mention your screen name in a later post, because you refused to deal with EVIDENCE I actually put in the post for your benefit. Sorry, and yes I am pissed off, but you are a lying scumbag, and the people here are smart enough to tell bald bullshit assertions from truth, so I suspect you did zero to further whatever your agenda really is. Truth of any kind ain’t it.
I don’t know what or who you are (I put MY name right out there for all to see) or what your agenda is, but ‘piece of human garbage’ probably fits somewhere. I’ll leave your crap for all to see.
Allan,
Having your thyroid tested is simply getting a blood test to determine whether you have hypothyroid (low thyroid) or hyperthyroid. Google symptoms of thyroid problems. I can tell you from my own experience going to 5 different doctors getting the right information isn’t easy. IMO the doctors I dealt with didn’t know what kind of symptoms were related to thyroid problems. So if you learn you have some symptoms with either high or low thyroid sometimes adding a few vitamins or minerals to your diet will help but check it out on Google first. Oh, BTW I hope you aren’t afraid of needles because you will have to have blood drawn from a vein in your arm.
Great to see you giving LADY OF THE BLUES another shot and some training for Gus. Dogs are smart and I know, with some good training, she will overcome her fear of the motor in thy boat. The water will do you both good.
As always, I look forward to reading your work, especially your current topic of human origins and waiting for the 23-and-me analysis of what your thoughts are on our missing chromosome. Maybe it got lost in my garage somewhere! We humans, the pack-rats-that-we-are, I’m surprised we don’t have an extra chromosome to make it 25. We can’t seem to get rid of the shit we collect. What’s that saying – one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure…
Enjoyed your post.
Allan, will you have a *physical* address for receiving items during the next seven months? I’d like to send you a book via Amazon, that you may find interesting.
Can’t do it right now. Remind me via email in a couple weeks, when i have an address. sounds good.
“No, this anecdote does not prove that there is design in nature, but it is a spot on metaphor for that design, mysterious (non-‘material’) and unseen as it may be in any given ‘present.’ ”
BANG! Great paragraph that I was glad I hung in there to enjoy. And I also happen to agree that the metaphor works perfectly!
I’ve read a number of Dawkins books and always found him enjoyable enough to read. I just never could buy anything he was selling. I’ve liked Behe, but found him a little too technical in places. Bones of Contention (Lewin) is a decent book which makes some startling points at the end for how man has “overly evolved” beyond what Darwin’s theory would expect and be able to explain. Looking forward to your chromosomal observations.
I’ve heard about Bones of Contention and now will have to get it. Thanks. But Behe: It was Darwin’s Black Box that turned me around completely. You have to read the rest of the books by those guys at the Discovery Institute, altho their ‘Christianity’ is annoying sometimes. If you just stick to the science, they are important. They have completely destroyed the random mutation/natural selection paradigm. If they had just shut the fuck up after that, and not brought up an Intelligent Designer… there could be no stopping them.
I think you will like the post I’m working on.
Hi Allan.
I love reading all the stuff you put out. The Neanderthal posts is well-done and I look forward to the origin stuff.
I do have a question: re: Behe, et al : You seem very open-minded to the science side of their work, but not to the idea of God in general (or maybe just the Christianity puts you off). Why is that?
I almost don’t understand the question: I’m open to good science but not religion. Where is the question?
I guess I’m asking do you just dismiss out of hand the notion of a God? The people whose work you like have come to the conclusion from that work that there is a God (and take it further to believe there is truth in one specific religion).
I’m not trying to convert you. It’s just I read your writings > they make me think > I’m driven to do a deep dive into the stuff you advocate and see for myself.
Why do you stop short of , I don’t know, examining the whole enchilada?
I’ll put it this way: Have you read the Old Testament? I find it distressing that brilliant people like Behe and Meyer (especially the latter, who seems to believe in Man’s special creation, altho Behe accepts common ancestry) could accept a God that demands genocide, the stoning to death on non-virgins, and so forth (the list is endless) and is an all around vicious bastard. Plus there’s good evidence that Christianity was a Roman invention for controlling the masses. Other monotheistic religions are probably similarly concocted, IMO.
I very much believe in ‘the spirit’, whatever that means, and, for example, find the work of Rupert Sheldrake inspiring. Having read some books, I’m on the verge of believing in some sort of after life, although it’s distressing to think of the specific people I might run into there, 😉
I heard just yesterday, – another detail out of the bible – that ‘God’ sent 2 bears, to kill 2 young boy’s who were laughing at a mans baldness.
The book is chocka full, of oppressive, suppressive, and controlling NONSENSE, dished out by a violent & angry “God”, who also happens to be *male*.
And he dwells among the clouds with his white beard.
I saw through the bullshit of the bibull, at the age of about 7.
It is the prime book of people control, used to suppress the fact, that consciousness exists outside the body, NOT inside the brain.
And I am with Aristotle, – the cosmos always was, and always will be….ie NOT made 6000 years ago.
It’s all about Spirituality & quantum mechanics….everything is electromagnetic energy, even thoughts.
Here is a good movie about the Churches barbaric and appalling control over history > https://youtu.be/UcZ44kQphlo
Yeah, a good flick. Thanks!
Really enjoyed the rambling Allan, you do it so well …….
My mind rambles as a matter of course … ADD or some kind of functioning depression, I know not, however, I do believe it has more to do with the aging process. Had a goiter removed many years ago, was put on thyroid meds and anti-depressants … turned me bat shit crazy … have been clean of all meds for some years now, still deal with low level depression which I recognize and handle, far better than the script induced psycho they made me.
Loved your analogy of writing your first book … I get it … about a year ago I started to write poems, out of the blue, wrote about 15 of them and they weren’t bad, and just as suddenly stopped, haven’t written one since. It was if a force outside of me had taken over.
I am an immensely curious person and your journey through the annals of time, place and people has my full attention …. can’t wait for the next installment.
Thanks! And thank ‘god’ you got off the meds. Good for you. Hang in there!
I agree with Mark. Your writing is more interesting when you write about your life instead of illogical guesswork on how science works. I really liked everything until you started on the Dawkins stuff.
You know what’s NOT interesting to read? Someone repeating the same dumb ass complaint over and over instead of going somewhere else to find something to read. If you have nothing to say about how my writing is ‘illogical’, I would ask you to stop making comments here.
In fact, one more repetition of this complaint and I’ll start erasing/banning your comments. They are a waste of everyone’s reading time. This is your last warning.
Wow.
Yeah, fuck you, ‘Mary Louise’.
Hey, I just found a travel blog wherein the guy bans any ‘negative’ stuff about the world and just concentrates on life on a motorcycle. He’s pretty good. Why not go there? Here’s his latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjqAV1Ofok
This is a crazy statement by you Mary. Allan is one of the most LOGICAL people in the world!, and he notice’s things!.
I am glad to hear that you are looking at a writing project. I need some good reading material for a later vacation (does that sound too self-serving?). That is what I did with Cosmic Banditos, In Search of Captain Zero, and Why Can’t you Get Along With Anyone. I carried each one on different backpacking trips to Central America. Don’t leave out the “dry sense of humor’, (like you could) even if you think that the writing needs to be “heavier”, would be my advice. It is more interesting to me (at least) when you talk about what is going on in your real life or past. There is as much to be learned from this as from a ‘lecture’ and it is ultimately more entertaining. I was glad to hear more about what happened to the boat and to Gus.
Likewise i like hearing anecdotes like your reading habits, but it would be nice to hear that – for example – you find human origins of some interest.
Hear is another anecdote for you:
A number of years ago, I flew into the capitol of Costa Rica with my backpack and grabbed a bus for the coast. The only seat available was in the very back of the bus. I sat with an interesting guy, who insisted on sharing booze and a chicken dinner with me. During the 4-5 hour bus ride, other people on the bus told me that this character was Captain Zero from your book. I was unfamiliar with you or your book, but ended up getting ahold of one and I couldn’t put it down. I then read your other books and even went to Pavones on another trip looking for you, but you were long gone.
Creation can be like surfing….no conscious thougt therefore I am content…it is the space of unconditional love…where all is possible…keep creating …that is what & why you or any of us are here for…to create our own story. Big Love & Concrete Respect!
I’ll buy that. And gracias.
“Truth is I have no idea what the problem is. ” , I would bet $100 :-D, it is caused by the diminishing (with age – that we all face) all important human male life elixer – Testosterone.
Hey Allan, I would like to see Dawkins explain these, and how they came about > https://youtu.be/2rX–Y5gCnE
As soon as I get paid (in about a week) I will buy , probably – Cosmic Bandito’s.
I’d like to apply Popper to Dawkin, and call him pseudo-scientist. Just as religion, his claims are not really falsifiable.
Absolutely correct. A religion it is! The ironies, as usual, pile up.
I actually tried t patches. Didn’t work. But thanks for the thought.
Only injections are really effective, and they have to be administered by a men’s clinic doctor, but they are costly. I am doing my best with all sorts of herbs & foods & vitamins & minerals (for now), and its not cheap either.
Just a shot in the dark, but have you had your thyroid tested? Hypothyroidism is increasingly more common, and its symptoms can mirror depression.
My step-father went through a stretch of depression and lethargy, but getting on thyroid medication has turned his life around.
Thanks. Next time I’m at a doc’s I will ask to be tested, if it isn’t too weird. I do appreciate everyone’s concern.
Btw, I think I have a good upcoming post, re Darwinism/I.D. Anyone not interested in these subjects shouldn’t be reading my stuff. Waste of time. (Hear me, Mary Louise?)
Allan,
Having your thyroid tested is simply getting a blood test to determine whether you have hypothyroid (low thyroid) or hyperthyroid. Google symptoms of thyroid problems. I can tell you from my own experience going to 5 different doctors getting the right information isn’t easy. IMO the doctors I dealt with didn’t know what kind of symptoms were related to thyroid problems. So if you learn you have some symptoms with either high or low thyroid sometimes adding a few vitamins or minerals to your diet will help but check it out on Google first. Oh, BTW I hope you aren’t afraid of needles because you will have to have blood drawn from a vein in your arm.