Has mankind visited the moon?

[Zoom Rabbit]

Well, my opinion of brainwashing is--*Gurk!* This is a recording. This rabbit has been reprogrammed by the Department of Homeland Insecurity as an *unknown future viewpoint* risk to sing Danny Boy upon hearing the keyword brainwashing instead of spreading dangerous unmisinformation on this ludicrous social/political topic. OH DANNY BOY, THE PIPES, THE PIPES ARE CALLING YOU--so we don't have to worry about that at all.

 

Really. Just paranoia.

[edlib]

Originally posted by RoguePhotonic

mainly because allot of people are so far gone they cannot be reached...and these people you have to watch out for....

I believe the guy in your avatar said something similar to that once...

 

[RoguePhotonic]

Believe what you want....the subject is to massive for a forum....

 

It's not worth the time when even if people see it they reject it because it pretty much says that everything you believed about the u.s. your whole life is bull****....i've seen it happen....my dad finally after months reached my uncle...you could tell he saw the light and he said "I cannot....I will not believe this".....it really is to harsh....like my dad said...it's very depressing stuff...

[edlib]

Yes,.. but what is reality? Each of us lives in a different reality from everyone else.

 

For each of us our universe is very personal. Reality is nothing more that the connections our mind chooses to make based on the things we have personally experienced with our senses, and those things that have been taught to us that we haven't personally experienced, but have chosen to believe are true.

 

If you choose to believe that lizard men control the planet, (even if you haven't actually seen those lizard men with your own two eyes, and are relying solely on conjecture or 2nd or 3rd hand information,) then THAT will become your reality, part of your personal universe, and you will begin to see the "proof" and undeniable of your assumptions everywhere.

 

EXAMPLE: Christians choose to believe that every good thing that happens in thier lives is ABSOLUTE proof of God, and every bad thing that happens is also proof of Satan and his demons interfering in human affairs, and that everything that happens on the world political scene is Biblical Prophesy being fulfilled, paving the way for the return of Christ. A really devoted Christian will never be able to be convinced otherwise.

Yet, those very same events looked at by an athiest will have a radically different interpretation. Who is right. Well, unfortunately they both are. Each of those people live in seperate universes where the rules dictating thier existances are different, and incompatable.

Human interpertation colors every event in history. We will never know the abosulte, uncolored truth of the past because such a thing has never existed. I honestly have no proof that the universe even existed before 1974 (the time of my earliest memories) yet I choose to believe that it was here before I existed, and that it will continue on without me, although in a very important way for me the world was created when I was born, and will cease to exist when I die. I cannot prove that any of you really exist either, or that if you do, that you are living, breathing, intellegent, sentient life-forms and not just AI programs responding to me to humor me. That is an assumption that I have chosen to make to get me though the day.

 

I choose not to believe that everything we have ever been taught is false. I know that technically, from a certain point of view that some of it is,.. but really, what is the truth anyways? If I am the only witness to an event then my version of things is the truth, even though a camera placed at the same location might reveal to you a different interpretation.

If everybody chooses to believe a certain account of events, then that becomes the truth. Billions of people belive in a spirit world, and an intellegent, personal, all-powerful creator who formed the universe and has a day-to-day effect in these peoples lives. The relatively small number of true athiests out there will say it isn't, but that doesn't change the universe for those that believe, beacause doubters are part of that overall scheme of things, and they are there to test the faith of the true believers, and will be shown the truth someday and have thier eyes opened.

 

Can anyone prove that there is a God? No... You have to accept it on faith.

Can anyone prove that there ISN'T a God either? No... It's also impossible to disprove the existance of something that you can't show exists.

 

Can you show me proof that the world is one giant conspiracy enslaving the human race? No... You can show me the things you accept as proof, but since I don't feel enslaved I will always interpret those things in a different light, and will never see what you are seeing. Does this mean I'm brainwashed? Perhaps in your mind it will.

 

But if I feel free, and truly believe that I am able to exercize my own freewill,.. how can it be that I am not free? My perception of my own freedom is ultimately all that really matters.

[ShockV1.89]

Like I said above, the brainwashing can go both ways. I've begun to believe that there are people who have been brainwashed into seeing giant conspiracies everywhere.

[edlib]

That is also true,.. although these people are usually the ones doing the brainwashing to themselves.

[Ray Jones]

edlib.. what you say is right.. again .. TOTALLY RIGHT.

 

i divide these what is the truth or not thingsys: The truth and the FACTS.

 

Truth is interpretation. Fact is what actually EXISTS.

 

e.g. Whatever rain is in called/interpreted/whatever in which REALITY isnt important.

Fact is it RAINS. And rain is rain as it rain is. .. hm. hope you get it..

 

 

another thing.. see i dont believe in gods etc .. i dont believe this biblestuff and so on all that darkbadworldcrap and hellNstuff..

 

but if you watch at the sense it keeps deep deep in it ..

 

who and why could someone write down such early "laws", coz it is a law in the farest contex.. (these 10 "orders" [what is it called in english])

[Zoom Rabbit]

Ray: we call those the 'Ten Commandments.'

 

Edlib is extremely right. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. My own conceptualization tool box includes these three notions:

 

Belief is an idea that you think fits what you see around you, but cannot prove.

 

Truth is an idea like belief, except that it can be proven from the subjective point of view.

 

Fact is like truth, only it can be proven objectively.

 

To use those terms properly...I believe in basic human goodness, and it's true that love exists in the world, but it's a fact that we frequently botch things up with guns.

[RoguePhotonic]

We are not talking conspiracies here...we are talking like say something is happening...they tell you why they are doing it...when they are doing it for a whole different reason....it's brainwashing you into believing they are doing some good thing...

 

 

You all are saying truth is whatever you see it....1+1 is 2 is it not?...or is that just an opinion....guess if it is believe what ya want...but I kinda like to think it =2

 

 

There is a truth though...a harsh truth...and that is the only reason there isn't world peace today....is because of the U.S.

[Zoom Rabbit]

You are so lucky I'm the next post following yours.

 

RoguePhotonic here is exercizing a right that is basic to the American way of life: free speech. I will then with complete irony flag this thread as American and say in public that RoguePhotonic must be allowed to speak his opinion peacefully without everyone flaming him for what he has to say.

 

I've been watching this thread, and no one's flamed yet, even RoguePhotonic (who claims to have been banned in the past.) I'm so proud of everyone.

 

Let's agree to disagree, and keep the conversation civil. Carry on.

[RoguePhotonic]

lol freespeech has many limits...i'd say other country's are more free than this one when it comes to that.....

 

I try not to even get involved in threads like this anymore...that's why there has been no flaming....I keep what I say to a minimum...

[edlib]

No,.. no flames here. I just really like to get at the underlying philosophies that really drive each of us, and then compare notes. That's where things get interesting, and where the real story of the human condition is told.

 

Facts.

 

Hmmm... What are they? Personally, I prefer to think of them as beliefs that we have all collectively agreed to be on the same page about. Yet, there are certain things that I, and almost everybody else, may regard as fact that others might have a hard time with. Like the Earth is spherical. I think most of us here regard that as a cold hard fact. Yet a member of the Flat Earth Society just might debate you on that one. I also take the speed of light as the ultimate speed limit of the universe as a fact, yet I cannot prove it, either to myself or to anyone else. I can't even prove the figure we regard AS the speed of light is what it really is. It could be about 300 MPH for all I know. I have to accept it as the truth, and that it is a fact.

I happened to regard man walking on the moon and that a commercial jet liner smacked into the side of the Pentagon as universally accepted facts before reading through this thread, but we have seen how that isn't quite the case.

There's a lot of "facts" that I learned in grade school that I have had to unlearn as the years go on, and as new things are brought to light. Especially in the field of world history, but also in a few other fields. The entire realm of physics has changed several times in the last couple of centuries, and continues to change at a fairly rapid clip today. The theory of the birth and eventual death of the universe has undergone startiling transformations since the subject was covered in a class I attended in grade school. I accepted what was taught to me then as fact, and now that it has changed I review the new information and decide what are the facts we are working on now. Until they change again. Time and time again we ahve seen how people can stare at a sheet of uncolored, raw data and come to a startlingly wrong conclusion, have it published, universally hailed, accepted as a solid, unarguable FACT,.. only to be torn completely apart years later by some graduate student working on an otherwise throwaway dissertation.

"Well," you say, "there are facts that can never be dismissed. Like going out in sub-zero tempratures with no clothes on, you will freeze to death!" Well, there's a group of monks who live in Tibet who are just waiting to prove you wrong. They do it all the time. They don't give it a second thought, staying out all night on the side of a mountain in the feezing cold. Oh well.

 

Even facts can be malliable and liquid. It all depends where you are looking at them from.

[RoguePhotonic]

I also take the speed of light as the ultimate speed limit of the universe as a fact

 

We have found things going faster than the speed of light...I amnot sure what they are called though....

[edlib]

Tachyons. But I think they are still theoretical, although current physics doesn't totally rule them out.

You can use quantum tunneling to travel faster than light, but that's still in the earliest infant stages of experimentation, and may never have a practical use above the sub-atomic level.

 

Both are described here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

[RoguePhotonic]

Sadly being born in a time like this we wont see anything that matters happen...

[Tyrion]

Originally posted by RoguePhotonic

Sadly being born in a time like this we wont see anything that matters happen...

 

ok,let's say furturistic medicine so you can live up with 120 years. Now,let's provide that there's no WWIII's or anything catostrophic happening in that time. So, considering a BUNCH has happen in the last 80 years(almost everything about Atomic and Nuclear Physics), and the fact that we can do more than we used to be able to do with everything new(theories and things) it could,indeed,happen.

[RoguePhotonic]

Technology wise much can happen...people wise nothing.....

[Zoom Rabbit]

I'll take this one.

 

Au contraire, my friend! Let's leave the squalid and dangerous picture of the human condition that we're facing today and back way, way up in order to see the big picture.

 

We started as smart monkeys in the jungle who learned how to make fire, and spent millions of years doing pretty much just that until a smarter monkey figured out how to melt rocks with fire. We then took a few thousand years to refine our art of rock-melting, until only a couple of hundred years ago did we use the melted rock (metal) to begin making machines to do our work for us. In only a hundred years those machines took to the air, in fifty years they split the atom, in twenty-five they started rudimentary thought...and today, machines are on the brink of self awareness at the same time that they are shrinking to sub-atomic size. Technology is pretty much in the bag.

 

But what about us? Our standard of living improves as the technology does, but that isn't all there is the humanity's well-being. A future of pasty, bloated button-pushers who shrink from the sun is not one we want to see...but many of us looking in the mirror each morning are headed in exactly that direction.

 

Here is where I exercize free speech. Flag, see? Anyway, it's my humble opinion that our future is much brighter than that. A human...is a spiritual being, as much as an animal, and our spiritual awareness is on the brink of a major renaissance. Our global culture is beginning to see the obvious--all of these religions that we've created during our history seek to exclude one another because of traditional cultural competitiveness (with a few exceptions), but really the goal of each of them is essentially the same. The born-again christian compares his experiences with the hindu who has achieved 'moksha,' and they compare theirs with the native american shaman...and eventually it becomes clear to all of them that they have some things in common. This emergent philosophy of 'all religions' is what we here in the US call the 'New Age' movement; but make no mistake about it--the phenomenon is global.

 

More and more christians are being 'born again.' The same is true for hindus and buddhists becoming 'enlightened.' Casting religious distinctions aside, more and more people are becoming spiritually awakened. Mankind is going through the next step in their evolution (again, in my opinion) right now. In order for us to become the peaceful, wise people we can be--and frankly in order for us to grow up in time to deal with this technology thing without killing ourselves--we need to do this, and on a higher level we all realize this.

 

We can't change overnight, though. As an amorphous blob of thoughts and opinions, the human superconsciousness is more general than specific when it comes to matters of philosophy, and it needs to absorb these new ideas. In order for this to happen, unfortunately, we have a painful period of adjustment to go through first. Which is why stuff sucks so bad on the news these days.

 

So, buck up trooper! We'll all be just fine in the long run--better, even, in an exponential manner that will be able to keep up with our technology. In the near future, though, things might get worse before they get better.

 

Anyway. My two cents on the big picture of humanity, its technology and their continued existance in the future.

[RoguePhotonic]

Well I mean human wise it wont because no one cares about the real big picture (the universe)...people just want to rule the world...those who do care about more than power it's a worthless care because they can do nothing....like our planet...so ****ed up..trashed, bad air and all...it could all be cleaned up...why isn't it?...$$$ greed, power.......

 

After all why make the world a better place for future generations since we wont be alive to enjoy it

[Zoom Rabbit]

My point is...fewer and fewer people are thinking like that.

 

Just talk to people, see what they think! Don't go with what 'you see to be happening,' because that's just one point of view. And don't be afraid to talk about politics and religion--you've been doing just fine here. One should get a number of viewpoints, from different types of people, in order to get an objective 'big picture.' Everyone who thinks that the way we do things now is wrong is open to doing them better. There's the hope.

[Ray Jones]

wow.. whats going on here..

 

ZOOM and EDLIB .. you take the words dirctly from my tounge ..

 

(please put them back... )

 

With facts i meant the things we KNOW and even DONT know.. they are as they are even if we dont recognized them yet.

 

THEORIES change with the time.. e.g. GRAVITY ..

but gravity, call it what you want and explain it like you want..

 

GRAVITY does what GRAVITY is doing..

 

THAT is a fact.. is IS. If we can handle it or not.

 

a theorie is an attempt for the causal explaination of a fact.

[KBell]

My friend once bet me $50 that it wasn't called the Law of Gravity .......easiest $50 i made in a long time

[edlib]

Well, I agree with Zoomie that for mankind to reach the next stage of evolution we need to lose our competitive nature. I don't mean losing our desire to root for the home team in the big game, but in seeing the big picture globally.

At the moment we define ourselves in small groups. Willing to defend to the death the few natural resources and territory that we have claimed as our own. Very reptile mind driven.

Ultimately, if we ever want to make progress we will have to lose, or at least learn to control that tendency, and see ourselves as a single species, with a common goal of survival, and expansion into the solar system and eventually the galaxy and the rest of the universe. I think our technology will go a long way to accelerating that. On these boards alone you can converse with people from dozens, if not hundreds of different nations, and you begin to see that they are no different than you. I think the Net is still in it's very beginning stages, and eventually every person will become instantly connected to every other person, and then we will start to see national boundries start to soften, then eventually melt. Religious differences will become less devisive. And what we now define as racial difference will cease to exist. (Yes, I know this all sounds very "Star Trek," but if we ever want to get off this planet we will have to work together, and pool our collective resouces.)

This will all take a while,.. generations at the very least, and none of us here now may be around to see it come to it's conclusion, but I personally think we are on the gound floor of the revolution that will change human history and evolution forever; by learning to silence the little reptile in our minds that drives us all to hoard whatever we find valuable and lash out violently at whoever we believe is trying to take it from us.

[Ray Jones]

hey.. just what i thought. just what i think everyday.

 

 

 

!!!!!!

 

It's not you and me its us at earth. and we all "die" (evolutionairy) or we all SURVIVE .. it is FACT that we have to leave this planet in a couple of billion years (as human beings, life will leave the planet at any case or has already left) ..

 

Our evolutionairy path is to become a SPACERACE .. ( ) .. and the way is already preset.

[Zoom Rabbit]

Which is why we went to the moon. Just as soon as it was technologically possible to do so.