Best Fit Theology.

Best Fit Theology is the name i have given to a phenomenon i have began to notice in society.

I think its been around for a while now, but to be honest i am not sure, it would seem that rather than sitting down and having a good old think about the universe people would rather pick the religious system that best fits their life.

As you may have noticed i am breaking up the seriousness of this topic with random and amusing theological motivational posters. i think if anything this adds to the stoic nature of the message i am going to try and convey.

 

If you live in mainland England and come from one of those passively religious families you may consider yourself a member of the church of England or as is better known, a protestant.

if you come from a catholic family you will probably be less passive in your beliefs but still quite sure your soul is safe.

There maybe many Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists reading this but i have little experience in those faiths so i don't know for sure that you are all passively faithful and unquestioning. for the sake of argument I am going to assume if your honest that's probably how you are.

My quest here is to try and wake you up to something. and please excuse me here, as I am not a member of any religion (this will become clear later) and i think all of them are probably right. I think that belief in its most basic form is a wonderful thing. however i would like to ask a question.

Why do you think you are correct?

I know, its a bold question and whatever religion you are has thousands of years of history (maybe more, maybe less) and smarter people than I have been part of all of them.

I am not arguing that your system of faith is incorrect, or correct. i am simply asking you to have a go at seeing the other side.

if your a Christian (any one of the 30+ denominations that i am aware of) have you read the bible? have you read the work of the religious competition?

i think we owe it to our immortal soul to make sure its in safe hands. just because your family are sure that Jesus died for our sins why are you?

shouldn't you check, just make sure that your religion echoes love and salvation to YOUR soul?

 

I think that people, ALL people should read and learn and understand and question and never become blinkered by faith. its important in all religions to ‘love’ and what’s more loving than trying to understand, do you think any creator you may have will disapprove of a philosophical yearning that HE/SHE/IT put into you in the first place?

The native people of Australia talk of dreamtime, a concept that i am only familiar with in passing (at the moment, i will read more as soon as i have time) the basic idea as far as i understand is that the creator sends a part of himself to the earth to become a person and experience an epic story. then upon death that part of himself tells that story, then that shard may return to experience a new story or stay and be part of the creator again. its a wonderful idea, is it true? i don’t know but i would not tell some one they are wrong for believing this.

I heard a historian named John Anthony West say something the other day on a radio show i listen to that made me think. i can not remember the exact wording but he said this

If a life that lasts one minuet is born at night in a storm it will never know there is anything else, when he his told of a summers day he will this it is nothing but a legend.

yep, i think i nailed the basic point he was trying to make (my memory is rubbish when it comes to wordings, i remember the concept but not the wording)

The point he was trying to make was that even though you think you know everything about your reality its based on such as small moment in cosmic history that it may as well be that moment in a dark rainstorm.

 

There are many other more hip religions you should look into as well, granted some of them are bonkers. That faith of the Ceiling cat who is locked in an eternal battle with basement cat

Don't forget the secret cult of the Flying Spaghetti monster, and the crazy ‘Last Tuesdayism’

yes, there are many choices but why stop at one. but what ever your do, please have a think about it, and never tell anyone they are wrong, that's just rude.

So, I have prattled on for quite a few badly assembled paragraphs now, and bashed theological complacency for long enough.

you’re probably wondering what i believe by now. a while back (years in fact) i was thought i was a child of the pagan mysteries, then i thought that Buddha was a safe bet. Time passed and i followed the breadcrumbs of my ideas, threw some out, got some new ones and at this moment i think that the universe its self it a/the (G)god (not sure on capitalisation in my soul or in that sentence) i think that time is probably a lie and we are all part of it.

I also think that Bill Hicks had it pretty close when he said this back in 1989

“we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves”

I follow no religion so i have no bias. That being said i may have one one day, that's cool, after all in the end no matter what you think of your creator he still thinks your pretty cool, unless there isn't one, or he is you…. but you get my point.

Ill leave you with this random song lyric….

Did music save your immortal soul, my my, miss american pie… [some other lyrics i cant remember] and i knew i was out of luck the day the music died.

Book Report: The Atlantic Blueprint

I picked this book up after it was recommended via a guest on Red Ice Radio and I finished reading it a fortnight ago.

anyway I present to you my thoughts on the book more than a review.

The Atlantis Blueprint by Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson.

HERE is the Amazon website link.

The book is based on what appears to be hard research and all sources are given at the back. the basic topic is the idea that civilisation is far older than mainstream history leads us to believe with a global sea going culture. it then talks about locations of these lost civilisations and makes a very good case for the lost contentment of Atlantis being under the ice of Antarctica.

the book makes it cases very well but suffers a little but from having two authors who have differing writing styles, in placed they presented what seams to be irrelevant information and then later in the book switch from an anecdotal style of narrative to a more scientific one that throws the reader a little and detracts from the information being presented.

The information given in this book is excellent though and leaves little room for dispute. i was entertained how the authors where desperately trying not to confirm or deny concepts such as extra terrestrial interference in human history but it does appear that this is a very real possibility when you look at the facts but the writers really want to keep it to provable history and reputable theory.

I would say that all in all its an average read with an above average topic. i would recommend this to anyone with an interest in ancient history or Atlantis mythology.

Blog 2, ‘Changing direction - Vampires'

Rabbit Hole Express
Episode 2, ‘Changing direction’
Topic: Vampires, wonderful fantasy or real secret?

I once heard some one say that the reason that the reason they believe in the supernatural is because of the Catholic Church.

The church, they spent all that time all those years ago hunting for witchcraft. They burned countless witches and destroyed so many writings. They hunted every last wise woman and suspicious black cat. Once every trace of the old teachings was eradicated they stood tall and proud and announced that there’s no need to worry because there’s no such things as witchcraft so we cal all stop panicking.

This is the foundation of my interest in the supernatural. It is also the foundation of my ‘angle’ on this topic. You see, the way is see it is that the facts that are at hand are tainted, any evidence of supernatural ‘goings on’ is answered with a barrage of disbelief and much like people find reasons to doubt that man went to the moon because they find problems with the evidence, problems that for the most part are created with a point of view (see last Episode/Blog, I’m not taking sides here)

Much like with the moon landing, people who disbelieve the official story (the minority) have found evidence to prove it a lie (the majority) when it comes to the supernatural the same is true.

My perspective on this is different; let’s tackle this with an open mind. Let’s look at some ‘evidence’ and ignore the preconditioning that other people find, lets use our minds and try to think about something with a truly open mind.

Before we get into the main topic:
I think it is important that we look at some ideas and concepts before we get into the main topic, I am aware that a lot of my point here maybe initially random, but me in the end it will all come together.

Holographic Reality.

There is a wonderful book that I reference far more than I should; it’s called ‘The Holographic Universe’ written by Michael Talbot. Even though it goes a little strange at the end (still not sure that it’s in a bad way or not)

The book covers an idea put forwards by a minority of quantum physicists, it’s a rather complicated idea that I can’t really summarise in a single chapter but at its most basic level it puts forward the concept that everything we understand to be ‘reality’ is energy. Our brains then decode this energy in a way that allows us to understand it.

Yes, I understand that if you have never come across this idea then it will strike you as a bit strange. I wont try and go any deeper into the idea but I assure you the book has all its sources listed at the end and for the most part the ideas it pus forwards have a grounding in reputable (if fringe) science.

The information inside the book offers up some interesting concepts that become plausible once you take into account the main topic.

For instance, most people believe that the supernatural does not happen because they do not ‘see it’ but once you take into consideration that all things are made of energy that is decoded by your mind you must then accept that all things you ‘see’ are dependent on how good your decoder is.

There was a point there somewhere.

History is a liar.
Time after time history ill record an event in an incorrect way, some times due to genuine errors and a lot of the time because as I stated above those keeping the records had a set of beliefs to defend.

There is of course the old line first penned by the author Alex Haley, “History is written by the survivors.”
Remember, even though he is credited with this quote the chances are that he was not the one who said it first, he was the first well documented person to say it.

So as I delve deeper into the topic at hand I ask you as usual to keep an open mind and never trust any fact or record just because you’re supposed to.

Vampires:

Here we go, I have dodged the topic for far too long already. But where to start?

As usual, I think Wikipedia has a pretty good overview.

Vampires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires
Vampire folklore by region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region
Vampire Literature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_literature
Fictional vampires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_vampires

As you read the above links please remember that they are written by people who consider the whole thing to be a work of fiction.

If you decide to Google the words ‘real vampires’ your not going to get many results that are of a good quality. Its worth reading anything you can get hold of for research purpose but a lot of people writing things titled ‘real vampires’ are just satisfying a fantasy, a gothic rambling.

In many ways I can see the appeal of the vampire myths, the literature makes them appear sexy, powerful and most appealing of all, immortal.

I enjoy those fictional works but I was forced to wonder where these ideas came from, why certain things are more prominent than others in the literature and most importantly, where is the real world inspiration?

As I researched the history I could not help but become fascinated with the sheer volume of fiction that surrounds all vampire mythology, from Bram Stocker to Bela Lugosi with cartoons and Halloween plays filling in the gaps we are surrounded with vampire story's.

In order to get a better understanding of all this i thought it was best to get a firm grip of the fiction fist, with a little help from the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula film and a thumb through the cliff notes of Bram Stockers defining work. all the fiction shares a gothic styling, even the vampires in the well known Buffy TV show have this gothic sexy aura.

while reading through the 'factual' history of the 'real' Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler as he was more formally known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_impaler) it became apparent that the real man was nothing more than an inspiration for the more recent incarnation of the myth.

What we know for sure?
As I said earlier in this article, I am a very open minded individual, however I am not naive or stupid, so with my open mind in its most heavy effort to 'reach' for an answer I decided to break down the things we know about Vampires.

Sunlight causes pain: it seams that this portion of the myth comes from a rare disorder that seams to have quite a few names including photosensitivity. this results in rashes from being exposed to sunlight called photodermatosis. this can be a simple way to explain away how less educated people can mistake an unfortunate illness for a symptom of vampirism. Its also worth mentioning that there is a documented fear of sunlight called Heliophobia.

Vampires live for a long time and have super human abilities: I really tried on this one but there are no real links between the consumption of blood and enhanced life. if anything drinking the blood of people regularly would make you more prone to illness and all sorts of 'other' things. if its a more supernatural concept than I am able to understand and you add in the possibility that god created vampires to eternally walk the earth for their sins then i suppose it does fit with the myth.

Afraid of Garlic: it has been claimed over the years that Garlic is something that either causes pain to Vampires of the yare simply afraid of it, this seams to come from Rumanian folk lore about garlic keeping evil away, its also interesting that blood sucking parasites such as lice or ticks are less partial to hosts who ear allot of garlic, maybe that's the link.

Crosses and holly water are damaging: some myths claim that vampires where born from human sin, and that it is a curse given to men from god, so depending upon your point of view vampires are damaged by anything that is a tool of faith from any religion I assume. also, maybe its not even religion that's the issue, maybe its the power of faith in the person using the 'stuff'

Different types of Vampires: assuming you ignore the known fiction the topic of vampires is very diverse, different areas of the world have very different myths, everything from the Chupacabra in Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra) to the overly emotional Psychic vampires of modern culture.

Succubus.
once you think that there is a possibility that vampires and succubus are the same thing (both feed from human energy in one form or another) then the whole thing becomes even deeper. the succubus myth can be found in just as many cultures as the vampire myth and in many cultures (Islamic for example) its taken relatively seriously in comparison.

with a succubus being something that is not human and has never been human then those superhuman abilities that I discounted earlier are possible. if its not human then it maybe faster or stronger and may live longer naturally.

imagine an 'animal' you can not see that sucks your energy while you sleep, its scary and is the topic of a documentary called 'your worse nightmare' where they do a wonderful job of explaining everything from magical creatures to inter-dimensional beings.

Conclusion:
In my opinion it is unlikely that vampires are a fully recognised 'race' of people who live along side humans, assuming every vampire has to feed just once a week and there are a couple of hundred in every major city then there would be far too much evidence to conceal for any length of time.

That's not to say its impossible, it is in my opinion phenomenally unlikely but possible if they where all 'careful' and where assisted my government agencies then it is possible, but its a stretch even for me to believe it.

The other possibility I considered is that there are literally only one or two alive, and there has only ever been one ore two, why its this way I don't know, but its far easier for a smaller number to conceal themselves than a larger ever growing number.

I find it far more likely that the myth of Vampires comes from the Succubus legends, this explains why it appears in every culture, given how we as humans see reality then its completely possible that there are inter-dimensional beings in operation, after all a plant produces the Oxygen that we require to live, is it not likely that out existence sustains another creature? as for why we don't know about it, you have to wonder how aware of us those plants are.