Four More Years?

Have you heard of 2012?

No, that's not the extension to my phone number at work but rather a number that suggests we only have four more years to live. Yes, yet another prediction that the end of times is here (once again).

Do you remember all the people who went crazy in 1999 when they thought that the end of the world was coming in the year 2000? I remember them too. In particular I had a friend who really thought that his appliances were going to "wake up" and start taking over his life. If you think I'm exaggerating, think again.

So what should we make of this latest prophecy? Should we really start packing up our things and get ready for the world to end? The answer is of course, no. End of the world predictions have been going on since we could read and write.

So why are so many people on the 2012 boat? My thinking tells me that we are all obsessed with an eventual end. When we watch movies, we can't wait for the end to come. When we take a train ride to work, we can't wait till our stop (the last stop) comes along. When we're at work, we can't wait for the end of the day to come along, etc..etc....

So, are we really obsessed with the finality of the human race or are we all just buying into something that seems plausible in any time of our existence? Just so you know, in the year 2012 we are supposedly going to get hit by either a comet or asteroid. The problem I have with that statement is that, that can happen at any time. It can happen tomorrow, or it can happen in 100 years. That in itself is not a prophecy. There are also a bunch of other things said about the year 2012 but they all lead to a supposed End.

What if I told you that next year there will be huge climate changes to the world? Would I be a prophet if there was a natural disaster like the ones we have been experiencing lately? Of course not, natural disasters have always happened and will continue to happen.

It would be very different if anyone that is "predicting" the 2012 prophecy to specify a day and time, but you will never see that happen. I guess we'll see in 2012. I for one will be relaxing and wondering who I'll be voting for president then.

You can find some info on 2012 at Wikipedia and just about any other blog out there.

Misdirection

I haven't really decided which candidate I'm endorsing this year but I have been given a direction in which to go in. Once again, people in this country are spreading lies and fear of a candidate based on incorrect information. The target this time is Barrack Obama.

You would think that we would know that we're not supposed to mix religion with politics, but that hasn't stopped some religious people from lying to get their agenda across.

Here is a current email going around:

Who is Barack Obama?

Very interesting and something that should be considered in your
choice.

If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it..

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself.

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced.. Hi s father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.? When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocate to Indonesia. Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that that he is not a radical.

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best.. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam.. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta.

Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CH RISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim
background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!

Please forward to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading
our country?...... NOT ME!!!

Let's analyze this email for one second. The first thing that comes to mind here is the fact that the writer of the email says to check out www.snopes.com to verify the authenticity of their claims. This is probably the MOST ridiculous of all things considering that no website out there has any authority to say what is real and what isn't. But in the interest of fact checking I went to snopes.com and checked out the info on Barrack Obama. Guess what? What they claim to be real actually isn't. Check out the link yourself: www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp.

The link contradicts what they claim in the email. So much for verification. Aside from ALL of this, the mere fact that there is a campaign out there to scare people into believing that somebody of a different faith or different thought is somehow evil is simply ridiculous in it's own right.

The fact that Barrack Obama may not put his hand over his heart when the Pledge of Allegiance is being said is supposed to be horrible? We have had baseball players, students, and many other people TURN AROUND or not stand up when the Pledge of Allegiance has been said, so now it's an issue? The other people who didn't raise their hand to their heart did it in protest of this nations policies, wars, and other things we disagree with. Somehow I fail to see how this is something that is supposed to change my vote? I see that as more patriotic in the sense that you are speaking your mind in a nation that allows the freedom of expression.

Lastly, I hope that any of you who receive such emails do your fact checking before making your choice based on wrong information. I still cannot believe that this nation has people who will go out of their way to spread lies in order to achieve their agenda. It's sickening!

---

P.S. I am neither endorsing or refusing Barrack Obama as a candidate. I would react this way about any of our candidates.

Did you know?

How many of you know how we got to have a half man half horse as the representative for the Sagittarius sign? Better yet, how in the world did we get Aquarius, Cancer, Libra, etc.....?

I bet you didn't know these things were started by the Egyptians to foretell astrological events such as Half Moons, Eclipses, etc. But how did all this start? There is a reason for everything, and everything has been finally explained.

If you have about 35 minutes, sit down, grab some popcorn, and watch the following movie. You'll be happy you did as you will finally have rational reasons for why things are the way they are now.

The Greatest Story Ever Told:

To be or not to be, THAT is the question....

If I came up to you, and said..... "I just saw the three headed dog in that building over there" I'm sure your first response would be to see the three headed dog yourself, right? I know most of us are not lunatics and have a tendency to be skeptical about most things, but there are some that we just seem to accept without any proof.

We will not get into the God thing because that seems to evoke emotional responses rather than rational responses, so instead we will focus today's topic on Ghosts. How many of you have seen ghosts? How many of you know someone who has seen ghosts?

You can imagine by now, I have never seen a ghost. I have quite a few amount of friends who swear up and down that they've seen a ghost and in many cases other people have seen the same ghost they have. I often wonder if what my friends claim to have seen is really a ghost, or rather a strange sound or even a figure of their own imagination?

In one case, one of my friends tells me that there was a complex where she used to live at and all the people in the complex had seen a particular ghost. The first thing that popped into my mind was "If everyone at the complex has seen the ghost, surely someone must have some sort of proof?" A photograph, a video of the ghost, anything to make me a believer, but of course no one has any kind of physical proof...they only have their stories.

At the same time I say to myself "Considering the amount of technology that exists out there, I'm shocked that there isn't one ounce of proof to verify the existence of ghosts" Think about it, so many people in this world who claim to know ghosts exist, yet in this day and age there isn't one credible bit of data to prove to all the nay sayer's wrong?

I've also heard that the reason why I don't see ghosts is because I don't believe in them. (scratches head)... Ummmmmm... I would believe that ghosts exist if I saw them, and normally people are that way with everything, no? I mean... In order to believe that Dinosaurs existed I needed some sort of physical proof and I got it via fossils. It wasn't the other way around where I said... "I believe in Dinosaurs even tho there isn't any proof of their existence, and IF there should be some proof later on, it will prove me right".

The other day I was watching a show on the Science channel called "Is It Real". They tackled the topic of Ghosts and took cameras to a place where people claim there are ghosts all the time. There was a group of a dozen people there and one person was trying to call out the ghost. Ironically enough no ghost showed up and the person had no explanation for this. Rather, they had one participant hold a pair of Dowsing Rod's and because the rod's moved in a certain direction that was their proof for Ghosts. Yep, I had the same reaction "That was the proof?"

The following are pictures of supposedly ghosts caught on camera:

Why is it that I don't see any ghosts here?


Apparently this is the Ghost of Jim Morrison.


A smudge is evidence of ghosts?

Why is it that I don't regard photographs as proof of ghosts? Well, when dealing with photography you have to understand how the lens works. If there is a slight shift in the amount of light the lens is set to take in, certain things happen in the camera. If a real ghost was photographed, then I'd like to see it in all it's glory, not in a small corner knowing that if it's halfway photographed someone will notice it.

So.... do you have proof that ghosts exist?
Or am I the crazy one here?

The Dragon In My Garage

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

The preceding is an excerpt from "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In the Dark" by Carl Sagan, a Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author. The "Dragon" is a metaphor for God.

Does this make you think of anything, if so, what? I mean.. does it have any sort of effect on you? Whenever I read this I start seeing tons of things that make sense to me, but I wonder if other people see it as well. Nonetheless I thought I'd share one of my most favorite passages in a book.