Conference hydra::dejavu

  
  > Where do we came from?
  
  Individually, we come from our parents.
  
  > If some people said that GOD created us,them who created God?
  
  Depends on which version of the God story the people are using ...
  from an atheist's point of view, the priests [Mankind] created God.
  
  > Are we the only ones in this solar system?
  
  Certainly not - there are millions of species on this planet alone.
  
  Frank

    the bowels of hell

    I never did believe the bit about the Stork.

    Jamie.

>    I never did believe the bit about the Stork.

	Why is that not a surprise  ;-) 
	
	:-)    :-)

Re .4 (Jay):

	>Why is that not a surprise  ;-) 

Prezygotic memories??? :-D

Steve Kallis, Jr.

> who created God?

I remember asking that question for the first time when I was about 6
years old and started learning about this stuff in Sunday school. I
didn't get a satisfactory answer then, and, in fact, didn't get *any*
answer until about six years ago, when I asked a Sufi. His answer was
(to the best of my recollection) that any model or description of
existence/universe/god/whatever, in order to be complete, must be
"closed". There can be no unanswered questions of this sort "if God
created everything, then who created God?". The answer to the question
is "we created God".

Understanding the meaning of this answer is my next project.

    re: .0
    
         I believe that the question becomes lost in understanding...
    in other words, that it is beyond human understanding.  Once
    beyond human understanding, the question doesn't make sense...
    and that the question will never be answered.
         To be a bit "technical" with the question, however, to make
    some sort of sense out of it, I have found that it is more helpful
    to substitute "All-That-Is" for the word *God.*  *God* is too charged
    with gender stereotypes to make it worthwhile...and becomes
    anthropomorphized (gets human characteristics attached, in this case,
    MALE human characteristics.)  Once this happens (actually, *has*
    happened) then the sub-conscious belief is that God is some sort
    of advanced man.  As you can tell from looking at the current world
    and by looking at the history of the world as we know it, thinking
    of God as an advanced male is not only faulty but destructive.
        Therefore, it is more helpful to replace All-That-Is with 
    the former nomenclature.  In looking at All-That-Is, however, it
    CAN be broken into some of it's components, namely the masculine
    energy component, called God, and the feminine energy component,
    called Goddess.  It is the union of Goddess and God that synergizes
    into the total of All-That-Is.
        God, the masculine component, is best seen, I believe, as the
    manifesting energy of All-That-Is.  Goddess, the feminine component,
    is best seen as the creative portion of All-That-Is.  "Nothing"
    has no way of manifesting...there must be "something" in order for
    manifestation to take place.  God, in other words, cannot manifest
    itself, for itself doesn't even exist unless there was "something"
    there in the first place.  It is Goddess (energy) that is that
    "something."  It must precede manifestation.  Therefore, a way to
    see this is to see that Goddess must precede God...that God cannot
    exist without Goddess.  Goddess, however, cannot manifest without
    God, but can exist.  
        So, when did Goddess start?  Refer to my first paragraph above...
    There is no place where anything starts or ends...and it is beyond
    our human understanding, as I see it, to grasp this.  Both Goddess
    and God exist simultaneously, perpetually, and neither therefore
    preceded the other.  But if one were to start first, it would be
    Goddess.  Where did Goddess come from?  Someplace pretty far away...
    (and not so far, all at once.)
    
    Frederick
     

    Re .0
    
    In monotheistic theology (Jewish, Christian, or Moslem), the
    traditional answer to "Who created God?" is that God is uncreated; He
    neither needs a creator nor admits of the possibility of a creator.
    He is a necessary being; that is, His essence (*what* He is) is so
    closely tied to His existence (the fact *that* He is), that He could
    not fail to exist.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .0
    
    The Advait (Indian Nondualistic school of thought) gives a very
    interesting answer to this question. The basic belief is that there is
    only one principle in this universe, this is called Brahma. This is not
    a person or an object, it is just the sum total of all potentialities.
    It is formless and timeless. All else is made possible due to this.     
    
    To know who we are we must first define " I " properly, i.e. are we the
    mind, the memory, the intellect etc...
    
    The Indian school believes that just as the eye cannot see itself
    (except as a reflection) similarly whatever we observe cannot be us.
    Conversely if we remove everything from our feild of consiousness 
     what will be left is us. This residual is called Atman or Self.
     
    Just as when we break a jar the space occupied by the jar is not affected
    at all, the space does not cause the Jar but it nesscary for its
    existance similarly when the Body/Mind complex dies Atma is not
    affected, Atman is not the cause of the body/mind complex but the body
    mind complex cannot exist without it.             
    
    The relation between Atman and Brahma is said to the same as the
    relation between a wave and the ocean. Thus effectively the Atman is
    the same as Brahma.
    
    Since we are Brahma we always were, and will always be. This is said to
    be so because the concept of time is limited to the manifest universe, 
    Brahma is beyond it. 
     
    
    Somendra
    Brahma cannot be described because it is sensed by any of the senses

          So can it be possible that we (human) had family way back to
    the stone age?
    If they ask me to choose as a family member a monkey or a dolphin?
    I go with the dolphin.How about you?.
    Ariel

    I'd like dolphins... then I'd be smarter.
    
    I think we might be descended from dragons though... we are so fierce
    and so magickial.

    Re last few:
    
    Biologically, it would appear we're descended from an ancestor common
    to primates (hardly "monkeys").  This can be demonstrated at the
    molecular level through chromosomal analyses.
    
    "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives."
    
    Re .11 (Mary):
    
    >I think we might be descended from dragons though... we are so fierce
    >and so magickial.
    
    If fierceness was the criterion for descent from dragons (outside of
    getting off their backs when they land), then the closest relative of a
    dragon is a wolverine.  Humankind is less fierce than relentless, which
    is another quality altogether.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr. 

Well, it looks pretty certain that we're descended
from ol' brer green algae. But so what! He's one smart
cookie and he's been around a long time. And he
probably teamed up with dragons and dolphins somewhere
and somewhen.

Have a happy one.

John D.

    Re .13 (John d):
    
>Well, it looks pretty certain that we're descended
>from ol' brer green algae. ...
    
    Well, if you want to go _that_ far back, how about going back all the
    way to the Primordial Soup?
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    I believe that the closest animals to us physiologically, that is their
    bodies function very like ours and we share nearly all the same
    diseases and parasites, are pigs.

    I wonder if we are descended from a common root?

    Jamie.

HELIX::KALLIS 
    
    Relentless is a nice quality... I like that.
    
    
NSDC::DONALDSON 
    
    You're right, John... that would be interesting.  I'm curious about 
    what we were before the primordial soup though.
    
    mary

    OK Steve, but which came first? The primordial or the chicken noodle?
    
    PJ

re .17 (PJ):

No, no, no.  "Primordial," not "primate."  :-D

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re: .19 (Wal)
    
        "IF you want to know who God is then ask who am I?"
    
        Not really, though that thought usually stops people long enough
    to make them quit looking further...
        It is easy for us to know who God is...at least in some workable
    concept...but who cares?  Why is it important?  After all, do we
    really want to dedicate our lives to knowing who or what God is?
    Be honest...the thing that REALLY, REALLY drives us up the frigging
    wall is that we don't know who *WE* ARE!  THAT'S what we really
    want to know!! Who the fork am I?  [Mack the knife...Fred the
    fork...;-)  {Fred humor}  ]  So, I'd take those words of yours
    and rework them...into something like "If you want to know (who)
    God is, don't worry about it, start figuring out who *you* are."
    
    Frederick
    

        
    
          No is'nt that I feel lonely.But I wonder if there is
    another solar system with people like us or smartest than us.
    Maybe with a better life system or worst than us.
    
    What you all think?
    
    Ariel

    Given the number of other suns that are visible from this planet it is
    hard to believe that we are the only populated planet in the universe.

    However the distances involved stagger the imagination. Moving between
    stars is impossible with present technology. Unless some method of
    exceeding the speed of light is discovered I doubt if traveling to the
    stars will ever be practical.

    I know that many fanciful books have been written about visitors from
    other planets and many wild claims have been made. But as we live
    fairly far down the spiral arm of our galaxy where the stars are a bit
    sparse it is difficult to believe all the claims. They tend to make
    this rather insignificant planet look like a major intersection of our
    galaxy.

    So when I drive at night I have no fear of attracting the attention of
    aliens.

    Jamie.
                                                                          

Re .26 (wal):

    > ... what was the imputuse (?) behind all the alien movies?

A desire upon the part of the producers to make money.

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re: .27 (Steve)
    
        You're kidding?!!  Damn!  I wish I'd realized that sooner.
    Here all this time I was functioning in the belief that this was
    insider information leaked from probabilities contrived from 
    the data recovered from crashed alien spaceships held in super
    secret military installations by the U.S. government or the CIA
    or U.S. Wildlife or Fotomat or something.  Wow!  All that wasted
    thought on my part!  However am I going to fill the void?  
    (I know, why waste a good thing...I can improve the void by 
    substituting a vacuum...I guess it's hard to think of these things
    when operating out of nothing from nowhere.)
    
    Frederick
    

    re: .28 (Frederick)
    
    Actually, I think we may safely eliminate Fotomat from
    the equation, since verified ET sightings would undoubtedly
    sell alot of film.   ;^)
    
    Joel
    

    One more observation: Woody Allen once postulated ET's advanced
    beyond earthlings by a total of fifteen minutes.  They have a
    tremendous advantage, as they are never late for meetings.
    
    Joel
    

    Re .26

    >every read the "alien conspiracy" by Commander X?
    
    No I haven't. However I doubt that reading it would cause me to worry
    when driving late at night as I have an exceedingly low gullibility
    rating.

    >supposedly we have had aliens under arrest. 
    
    Oh do try to be serious.

    >what was the imputuse (?) behind all the alien movies?
    
    Imputuse is not a word that I am familiar with, nor it appears are the
    compilers of dictionaries. However I assume from the context you mean
    reason. Well consider it in a slightly wider sense, what is the reason
    for any movie? Primarily it is to make money for the producers.

    You will notice a pattern in movies. We had a rash of disaster movies,
    when I was a child Bible epics was the order of the day. However I do
    not believe that the alien movies have any connection whatsoever with
    aliens visiting this planet.
    
    Jamie.

Re .alien_oriented_movies:

For those who don't want to consider the "To Serve Man" scenario, one of the
more interesting ET variants, available on videotape, is _They Live_, starring
pro wrestler Roddy Piper.

Re .30 (Joel):

Which is why any takeover, using the _They Live_ scenario, won't be hostile.
They'll merely get a quorum before any of us arrive. ;-)

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re .33
    
    As I have already remarked I have extremely limited access to English
    books. I feel that I should also point out that those that I do have
    access to are very expensive, two or three times their cost in the USA
    if they are a special order. If I went and ordered every book that was
    mentioned in here I would be very much out of pocket.

    However I can state that I would not be frightened of being abducted by
    aliens while driving home at night from reading any book that has ever
    been published. I am not a person given to pointless worrying.

    Publishing a theory and dressing it up as facts in no way makes it
    true. There are some people who if they read something in a book
    automatically assume that it must be a fact. 

    Jamie.
                                                         

    "Granny says it's something to do with men and women."
    
    	Alice T.

>    ............... I am not a person given to pointless worrying.

>    ..... There are some people who if they read something in a book
>    automatically assume that it must be a fact. 
 
 	You seem to spend a great deal of time worrying about what other
	people read and/or choose to believe.
	
	.35 Is that from _The Education of Little Tree_  ??
	
	Jay
 

    re .35,.36
    
    It's from Terry Pratchett's "Equal Rites".
    
    	Alice T.

    >You seem to spend a great deal of time worrying about what other
    >people read and/or choose to believe.

    I spend no time at all worrying what people believe. If you think that
    I lay awake at night pointlessly fretting about you lot then I fear
    that you are completely mistaken.

    I discovered that worrying was a useless exercise years ago and I never
    bother with it now.	

    However I must admit I am surprised at the number of people in here who
    will accept statements as facts and never stop to even think about it.

    Jamie.

>    I spend no time at all worrying what people believe. If you think ...

	Jamie, you spend ALL of your time (and energy) in here, concerned
	over "the number of people in here who will accept statements as
	facts and never stop to even think about it.".

>    ... then I fear that you are completely mistaken.

	There ya go, wurry'n a'gin.  ;-)   ;-)
	
	Jay

	p.s.  thanks you Alice T.  :-)

	Oh, Boy, I feel a " WHY ASK WHY " happening here...


	;')

	

    In defence of Jamie's comment regarding the blind faith people display
    in books, I must say that he has voiced an overall impression easily
    gained in this conference. People are continually calling upon books
    they have read and citing them as "evidence" or defence of their or
    other people's claims. Said books are often used in much the same way a
    scientist uses the results of experiments to "prove" a theory.
    
    I can easily understand why Jamie formed this opinion. It appears to me
    too, that on occasion, the mere fact that it has been written in a
    book, and presented as "fact" therein is sufficient for some people to
    wholly accept these "facts".
    
    Moreover, when presented with overwhelming evidence that these facts
    are simply make-believe, the books are still used as evidence for the
    defence.
    
    Laurie.

One tendency humans seem to have, is to put whatever
they consider to be human on top of a pedistal.  Whether it be that the
world is created 'for them', or that they are 'the centre of the universe',
or that what has been defined to be 'intelligence' to be something
way 'above' what the other animals have.  

Who is to say that the ability to communicate is the necessary result
of evolution of a life form?  And further more, the urge to want to
communicate or make contact with anything else out there in the universe.
Could it not be possible that the best result hoped for from evolution
of a species would be to join in harmony with the surrounding environment
and disrupt it as little as possible.

So even if life has already started 'out there', the chances of any life
forms of producing the same tendencies we have, in an entirely different
set of circumstances of evolution is very slight imo.

I realize this note is strewn with many possible tangent arguements, but
my main point is that if a certain end point arises due to evolution in
one system, the chances of that arising in another entirely different
situation is tiny.  The fact that it has occurred in our situation by
no means makes it a 'sought after' outcome, or even one that was 'aimed
for'.  It just happened.
    
    Dave

    
          SOOOOOOOO Are Adam & Eve our parents or What?.

    RE: -1
    
    What.
    
    Laurie.

    Well if Adam and Eve are our common ancestors we came from a
    surprisingly small gene pool. I doubt if we could have survived the
    amount of inbreeding this would have caused in the first few
    generations.

    Jamie.

Re .48 (Jamie):

    >Well if Adam and Eve are our common ancestors we came from a
    >surprisingly small gene pool. ...

Well, if we each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents,
16 great-great grandparents, over a reasonably short time, we can extrapolate 
backwards to where the number of our ancestors is equal to or greater than the
population of the world at that time.  And _genus Homo_ goes back further than
that.  Therefore, an Adam and an Eve could be our common ancestors; just not
our only ones, cousin.

Steve Kallis, Jr.

  
  So from one direction we have numbers of descendents increasing with 
  each generation whilst from the other we have numbers of ancestors
  increasing with each generation :
  
                         Adam + Eve
                             / \
                        /\          /\
                     /\   /\     /\    /\
                   /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
                    :     :      :      :  
                    :     :      :      :  
                   \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/    GGGGP
                    \ /   \ /   \ /   \ /     Great-great GP
                      \   /       \   /       Great-grandparents
                        \          /          Grandparents
                            \    /            Parents
                              FB 
  
  so where do the two pyramids meet ?
  
  Frank

    I dont know if this was discussed before in previous notes but I'll
    bring it up anyway.  I think the latest research says that all humans
    alive today are descended from one woman in East Africa based on
    mitochondrial DNA.  I remember reading about this recently.

    She must have had a busy life.

    Jamie.

    
    Re .51 
    
    I think you remember reading it in the Antiquity file, where this was
    discussed fairly recently. Although there was some discussion on
    whether the dates for when she lived were valid (I believe ~100,000
    years ago) the findings, when people from all over the world were
    tested and were found to have the same type of mitochondrial DNA
    were that we are all descended from the same "Eve".
    
    I believe a type of reverse engineering technique was used to come up
    with the latest date she could have lived to be everyone's ancestor.
    
    Frnakly, a confirmation of this would make it so pleasant to converse
    with racists!
    
    
    Marilyn

    RE: .51
    
    You read about it? 
    
    So it must be true then. ;^)
    
    Laurie.

    Someone, I believe it was Philip Jose' Farmer, from his Riverworld
    series, once said, "Casual Bastardy is far in access of that which is
    ever admitted to." Hope I got it right. That would explain the fact
    that if we each have 2 immediate ancestors and they have 2 ancestors
    and so on and so on (isn't this an old shampoo commercial?) that the
    population wasn't humongous to begin with and then reuced. Of course,
    wars help to get rid of a lot of ancestors, too. 
    
    Then there was the theory that I first heard from Stephen Gerber
    writing in The Defenders ( A Marvel Comic book),
    that is: A creation was created full blown in the year 1927, by a
    Cosmic Entity, known only as Fred. All rememberances of a past prior to
    then are Fred's Fabrications. (No, it ain't you Ward. I don't think
    you're the creator. :-)  )  Of course this is the old Creationist vs.
    Evolutionist theory, taken to silliness. 
    
    PJ

    
    Re .55 (Laurie)
    
    Please also read my note where I enter more on what the noter on .51
    referred to. I believe you will find, if log into the Antiquity file, 
    that it is based on entries of people who not only follow professional
    publications on the subjects, but some of which can be called experts
    in several fields. To wit, Joe Gobbini in linguistics, Denis Maillard
    in history (especially French), Mauritz (don't know if this is first 
    or last name) history (esp. legal), etc, etc...
    
    These people, among many others who regularly contribute to that file, 
    do not "blindly " believe what they read in books, they look at the
    data, then satisfy themselves on whether the facts as stated meet their 
    criteria for probability and possibility. 
    
    I belive you owe LAM an apology. All he mentioned was what he read, and
    offered to search his source and reply more.
    
    
    Marilyn

    I wonder where people got the rather odd idea that they need not
    appologize for stepping on someone's toes as long as they did not
    do so with malicious forethought.

					Topher

   Where do we come from?  The ocean, of course!  :^)

   Seriously, I was always curious about the passage in Genesis concerning
   Cain.  After he killed Abel, he asks the Lord to mark him so that the
   people(s) of the earth would not kill him for his murder.  I've always
   wondered, who are these other peoples?


   							Terza

    
    Laurie,
    
    To "piggyback" onto Topher's reply, I have seen many insulting remarks
    in this notesfile pass, simply because the originator thought to put a
    smiley face after his/her remark. I'm not saying this is what you did,
    but I believe the moderator has stated, on several occassions, that if
    a remark is found offensive *by anyone* they have the right to state
    so.
    
    If the gibe was not directed at LAM, it was surely directed to others
    in this notesfile, and *I* found it offensive, smiley face or not.
    
    
    Marilyn 

    Re .60
    
    "I've always wondered, who are these other peoples?"
    
    Presumably Cain's brothers, sisters, nephews, neices, and so forth.
    The Genesis story mentions casually that Adam and Eve had many sons and
    daughters, but only mentions Cain, Able, and Seth by name.
    
    ESW

RE: .60

    Is it in Beowulf that the descendents of Cain are associated with
    "boogeymen" like Grendle?  Long time since high school English Lit.

				    Topher

Re .63 (Topher), earlier:

Gen 4:13-15 -- And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I
               can bear.
	       Beghold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of
	       the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and it shall
	       come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me.
	       And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosever slayeth Cain,
	       vengance shall be taken on him sevenfold.  And the Lord set
	       a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

Now one could wonder about what that "mark" could have been.  But whatever,
since Cain took a wife, the cleart implication was that he remained human.

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    There are miscellaneous connections in folklore between the children of
    Adam and the fay folk.  I, too, remember that somewhere in Beowulf,
    Grnedel and his mother are referred to as "the kin of Cain."
    
    I also remember a myth about the origins of the fays that goes as
    follows:  Several years after the Fall, when Adam and Eve had had lots
    of children, God dropped in for a visit.  Some of the children were
    clean and some were not.  Eve was embarassed by the dirty ones and hid
    them away.  This annoyed God, who declared that they would remain "the
    Hidden Folk" forever more, and so the fays came into being.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Re .65 (Earl):

    >  ................ Eve was embarassed by the dirty ones [children] and hid
    >them away.  This annoyed God, who declared that they would remain "the
    >Hidden Folk" forever more, and so the fays came into being.

There are lots of stories about the origins of the wee folk.  Another goes like
so:

When Satan rebelled against God, the angels took up sides and warred.  That is,
most of them did.  But a small number stayed out of the fight and hid.  After
Satan's forces were defeated and cast out of Heaven, God expelled the angels
that hid, saying that unlike the fallen angels, this smallest percentage would
not be consigned to Hell, but would have to live on the earth, generally out
of sight until Judgement Day.  At that time, their final fate would be decided.

However, many traditions also suggested very strongly or said outright that
fays and humans were cross-fertile.

Steve Kallis, Jr.

    The pleasantest of the fay-origin myths, to my taste, was that they
    were a pre-human and unfallen species or set of species of people.
    Paracelsus distinguished four species, one for each element: sylphs in
    the air, undines in the water, gnomes in the earth, and salamanders in
    the fire.  Shakespeare's Ariel, from "The Tempest" is probably intended
    as a sylph, an air elemental.
    
    In Arabic folklore, the djinn are supposed to have been made of black
    fire before the creation of Adam.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I'd like to see the Fay come back and walk among us... assumming they
    don't already.;-)

    
             Hey,Jamie
    Everytime I ask a question,you always answer it but them you get in
    trouble,ja,ja,ja.I'm sorry.
    
    Re.1597.67 I wounder if my mother copied my name from Shakespeare's
    Ariel.
    
    Ariel Agosto

    I think I'll go and slash my wrists.
    
    Laurie.

RE: .70

Why?

    Re .69

    >Everytime I ask a question,you always answer it but them you get in
    >trouble,ja,ja,ja.I'm sorry.
    
    Every time I open my mouth in here someone jumps on me. But don't
    apologise Ariel, I'm used to it.

    Re Topher and the smiley faces, perhaps you now see a good reason for
    me not using them, they just get you into even more trouble.

    Jamie.

    RE: .71
    
    Why not?

    It's very messy.

  
  Err Laurie, this note is supposed to be about where we come from ...
  Methinks your practical experiment to determine where we might go to
  should be in a different note ...
  
  Frank

RE: .72 (Jamie)

>    Re Topher and the smiley faces, perhaps you now see a good reason for
>    me not using them, they just get you into even more trouble.

    I don't see where the smiley face got anyone into even more trouble. It
    simply did not wholly prevent trouble -- as it should not.  I can state
    quite categorically that it did lessen the trouble to some extent.  On
    the basis of the smiley face I judged the original posting as a
    harmless "crack".

					Topher

   Re: Note 1597.73 by PLAYER::BROWNL 

   I believe the question of why or why not is one that only you can answer.


   							Terza

    Re .77
    
    >I believe the question of why or why not is one that only you can answer.
   
    Knowing Laurie, as I do, I would not be so sure.
    
    Jamie.

 <<< Note 1597.38 by HOO78C::ANDERSON "Happily excited, bright, attractive" >>>

    [ ... ]
    
    I discovered that worrying was a useless exercise years ago and I never
    bother with it now.	

Easier said than done. What's your secret? 

    [ ... ]

    Jamie.

Dougie

    Well, for me, it's quite easy. It's an attitude of mind.
    
    If something's bothering you then:
    
    1) if you can fix it, do so, worrying about it will change nothing.
    2) if you can't fix it, then live with it, worrying won't change it
       either.
    
    Now, I admit it's difficult to do sometimes, but it makes dealing with
    life's little bombshells much easier if you can remind yourself of the
    above once in a while. It helps you to keep it in perspective.
    
    For Jamie, well, he had a little shock a while ago, and it makes each
    day another one snatched back. Whatever things there are that most of
    us worry about, for Jamie at least, it's not worth the effort, in the
    great pattern of things. I'm sure he'll explain. ask him about the
    Snake.
    
    Laurie.

    Oh no Laurie I gave up worrying long before that. But since someone
    asked, I'll tell you how I learned not to worry. 

    Are you all sitting comfortably?
    
    Good then I'll begin.

    When I was a young lad of some 20 summers, many many years ago, I
    applied for a job in the then very new computer industry. I lived with
    my family in Edinburgh and I was really rather surprised to receive an
    invitation to go down to London for an interview with all expenses paid.

    I worked for the railway so I took the night sleeper train to London
    and went to the company. There were about 40 applicants and some seemed
    very knowledgeable, I only seen one computer in my life before and felt
    very ignorant indeed, I was not alone in this, there was a group of us
    who seemed completely out of our depth. 

    First we were given an aptitude test which cut our numbers in half,
    strange to say all the knowledgeable ones flunked the test and the
    ignorant ones like myself passed. We were then individually
    interviewed. I was totally gobsmacked to be offered a job at a salary
    which seemed to be out of this world. (It would have been had the job
    been in Edinburgh where the cost of living was much lower than London.)

    I left the office in a state of shock. I had a good job offer in a new
    industry that had a bright future. But I was young and had never had to
    fend for myself. Would I be able to do the job? Where would I live?
    I wandered the streets of London worrying about what my decision should
    be, give up all my friends and go live in a huge city hundreds of miles
    away or stay at home and continue my rather dull job with the railways.

    Eventually I got back to the station and got into my sleeper car. In
    those days there were two bunks in each cabin. My room mate for the
    return trip was an Australian lawyer. He noticed that I seemed
    distracted and inquired what my problem was. I poured out the whole
    tale. He then told me how to solve it.

    The system is very simple. You have a problem and you have a choice of
    several solutions. You carefully examine each possible solution and
    assign a positive number to each positive aspect and a negative number
    for each negative aspect. The number you assign is relative to how
    positive or negative you think the aspect is. Then you total each
    solution and chose the one with the highest number of points.

    The actual object of this exercise is to make you closely examine all
    possible solutions and critically look at each aspect of it. Having
    made your decision you may then forget about the problem and get on
    with your life.

    Harry however is a born worrier. No amount of rationalization will
    stop him fretting. We were on a plane two years ago and it looked like
    we would miss our connection and be stuck in Boston for a day. My
    attitude was, "It is entirely out of my hands so I will sit and read my
    book." Harry went through hell on that flight dreaming up all sort of
    situations where we couldn't get hotel rooms at short notice and would
    have to sleep in the airport.

    Having observed Harry over the years I have reached the conclusion that
    worrying is a totally pointless exercise as it is completely
    unproductive. I have yet to see him come up with an answer by worrying.

    Yes Laurie I do live my life on a day to day basis, and as to the big
    Snake, well that belongs to another story entirely.

    Jamie.

    
    Oh c'mon...don't leave us in suspense here, Jamie...
    
    Tell us about the Snake.
    
    Cindy

    There are some people who get real enjoyment out of worrying (probably
    not on a conscious level), I think.  My mother is a chronic worrier. 
    If she has nothing to worry about, she gets seriously depressed.  The
    only way we can snap her out of it is for one of us to tell her about a
    "personal problem" so she can worry on our behalf.
    
    Ginny

    Well Cindy this topic is not really the place for that story as it is
    more about where we go to than where we come from, and it is very long.
    However I will give you a couple of pointers to where you may find it. 

    It still spins on the original conference in which it was written, 
    TRUCKS::EF89 as note 71.6, you may press Kp7 or SELECT.

    If you do not wish to clutter your notebook with a long dead conference
    then you may also get it by doing the following at the $ prompt.

    $ copy hoo78c::private6:[anderson.rubbish]71.6 71.6                    

    Jamie.

RE: .51 (LAM)

    Meant to comment on this before things got sort of side tracked.  This
    is one of the most misinterpretted pieces of research in the last
    decade.

    Everyone has a mother.  Everyone's mother had a mother (their maternal
    grandmother).  Everyone's maternal grandmother had a mother (their
    maternal maternal great-grandmother).  Etc.  This is refered to as
    a person's "strict maternal line."  What this research (recently
    confirmed with a larger sampling of contemporary humanity) indicates
    is that for everyone alive today, there is one woman, dubbed Eve, who
    seems to be in their strict maternal line.

    I forget how long ago she lived, but she probably lived in Africa. 
    This latter is based on their being greater genetic variation within
    the maternal line in Africa than in all of non-African humanity.
    Conclusion, some time after Eve, there were a relatively small group
    of women who left Africa and provided the strict maternal lines for
    everyone else.

    The important point here is that there may have been many, perhaps
    thousands, of women contemporary to Eve from whom we are descended.
    It's just that we are descended from Eve's daughter's daughter's
    daughter's etc.  While we are descended from Sally's (a contemporary
    of Eve) son's daughter's, daughter's...  Or Sally's daughter's son's
    daughter's ...  Or whatever.  It turns out that this narrowing down
    to one is an inevitable result of strict "genetic" lines, whether
    it is female in mitochondrial DNA or male in traditional European
    "family" names (the number of last names will, if new family names
    are not created, decrease over time).

    Eve has great significance for a lot of questions having to do with
    the origins of modern humanity.  But she was not a unique female
    progenitor in the sense of the bible story.

				    Topher

	I found this in my text book last night ....

The unexamined life is not worth living...

Socrates understood that if we never reflected upon ourselves, our actions, or
our beliefs, the life we lead is not really ours at all, but simply the 
mechanical expression of the prevailing ideas of our times.  Further, some of
these ideas may be true, but by refusing to challenge them we do them a great
disservice - we threat them as dogmas.

    
    
     The mystery/ies of who God is and where he exist from is as he is - A
    Mystery. Pre-Created is he - The All knowing, all powerful, all HOLY,
    The GREAT "I AM" exist just because he IS.
    
    
    Lorenzo
    

    Oh yes that explains it all. BTW Who pre-created him?

    Jamie.

  
  Re .89
  
  > -< Re .88:  See .8 >- 
  
  I love it !  Not only do we have a cyclical universe but a cyclical
  note ... it starts off in a big bang created out of nothing (.0),
  gradually increases it's size until it reaches a certain point then
  collapses in on itself again to restart the cycle :-)
  
  Frank

    
    Re.88
    
    Jamie,
    
    God's parents, of course.
          
    Cindy

    And where did they come from, Cindy?
    
    Jamie.

    
    Re.91
    
    Jamie,
    
    The Tao.  According to Lao Tse's writing, the Tao older than God.
    
    Cindy

> Child: "How did the father put the baby in the mother's stomache?"
> Adult: "Eat your peas."
    
    Is there a homunculus in the peas ?  That's not the story I heard ...

    Are you implying that the answer to the great cosmic question is legume
    induced flatulence?
    
    Jamie.

  <<< Note 1597.96 by HOO78C::ANDERSON "To err is human, but feels divine." >>>

>    Are you implying that the answer to the great cosmic question is legume
>    induced flatulence?

I guess that might explain what caused the big bang.

		Dave

    
         Now,if god created the man,why did he waited so late to send
    his (son)to try to fix things on earth.The reason I ask is bacause
    I read so many things like "they rule in Mexico 1000 year BC".
    Maybe if back then God could send some one,by now we may be in a
    better world.
    
    Agosto 
    
    

    Maybe we are all his sons and all his daughters.

    
    <-- What do you mean *maybe*?  (;^)
    

    Except for the hermaphrodites... 

    Re: .98
    
    Perhaps God did send a Redeemer before the Incarnation known as Jesus,
    but in each instance the Savior took the form of a woman and nobody paid
    any attention to her.
    
    Peace,
    Richard

    
         The way I see it,correct me if I'm wrong,God could see the
    future from now until eternity.He knows when I was born and when
    I'm going to die.He knows that we as human,we are not doing well.
    Too many peolpe preaching on his name just for money and lavish
    life.And if he said that the man shall live for a thousand of so of
    years,,,,,we're close.Now what is the mistery of his patience?.tTha's
    is what I can't explain to my self.
    Ariel.

    HI.
    
    DIGRESSION:
    
    I read these notes, and I have a clearer idea of why there are wars.  I
    found myself taking offense because someone else took offense over
    something someone else had written, which I thought was ridiculous. 
    And there it is; I'm willing to ridicule someone over stupid stuff.
    That will get someone else going, which will get me going, etc. etc.
    So, once again, I get the opportunity to see what a really big help
    it is for me to judge and criticize people--or me.0
    
    Where did God come from?  Where COULD God come from?  Is there
    someplace else, aside from everywhere?  (I have NO ability to conceive
    of beyond space and time--where's that? Spiritland,
    thoughtland--whatever.)
    
    We see a bunch of physical effects--energy interacting with matter and
    life forms.  Lives start and end--life as a waveform, where the deaths
    are troughs, and the lives are peaks; we don't know where the wave form
    started, or where it's going--well, I don't anyway.  Lots and lots of 
    causes and effects. But the more closely we look at "causes" and "effects",
    the more we see that we impose cause and effect as frameworks to interpret 
    reality with.  A was caused by b, which originated from c,d,e, and f,
    each of which stemmed from its own set of sources.  So we make a big
    leap of faith and decide God is the prime mover, the original source
    that causes everything.  That is taken as an axiom--a given--another
    mental construct.  So because we assume WE had to have an origin, and
    that everything needs to have an origin, a "place" to come from, it
    seems the logical (note mental construct again) thing to do is ask
    where God comes from.  We impose some ideas, as though we are observers
    from someplace outside of reality, onto reality, and then try to figure
    reality out.
    
    There's a paradox that most people have heard, that says we can never
    get to our destination, because first we have to get half way there,
    and then half of the remaining distance, and then half of THAT
    remaining distance, etc.  We KNOW we can get there, but if we seriously
    impose the paradox, it seems impossible.  I think we have just oodles
    of similar paradoxes floating around in our cultural consciousness, and
    that the notion of cause and effect is one of them.    So maybe there
    are no causes and effects.  If there were no causes and no effects,
    maybe what we would have is what now is.  Asking what caused God, and
    then what caused that, and then what caused THAT, feels like that
    paradox of never getting there, because of the self imposed idea that
    we have to get half-way there first, that all things must have causes,
    that the whole @#$%^&$% universe must have had some "beginning".  Says
    who?!  Since the answer to the question is so difficult to find (or
    create!), maybe the thing is to look more closely at the question to
    see what assumptions are made in the asking.
    
    
    We hear that matter and energy are really interchangeable.  Light gets
    bent by gravity, so I guess the "universe" curves back in on itself.
    Maybe that's God curving back in on God.  I liked that idea of us being
    the waves in the ocean of God.  Its all the little parts of the ocean
    that ARE (or "create") the whole ocean, just as the little parts exist
    (or are "caused") by the presence of the greater whole.  Or they don't
    cause each other--cause and effect are one.  If we assume it all had to
    start at some "time", we could just as easily assume that THIS, all
    that you see before you, is what it looks like 10 minutes before
    creation--or this is what it looks like some time after it all ended.
    We don't yet know what the real thing is going to look like, or we've
    forgotten what it used to look like--take your choice.  Or maybe it
    just doesn't have to have a beginning or an end--that's just another
    idea we impose on it.
    
    It is a bitch to try to get ideas around "objective reality" when our
    ideas are part of the reality we're trying to get them around.
    
    The fun thing about all this is that it just doesn't seem possible
    to know what one is talking about.  How do we get linear, limited
    thoughts (you know, the ones we do all our "knowing" with) around something
    that seems infinite.
    
    Mike

    Re: 107
    
    WOW!  A truly awesome observation.
    
    Thank you, Mike.
    
    Beth

    There hasn't been an entry put in here for a long time...SO....I guess
    I'll throw my 2 cents in here since I found this a VERY interesting
    topic....
    
    I believe that God ( Creator ) created mankind, animals, Earth, Sun....
    EVERYTHING in the universe.
    
    Who created God ???   Well, He has always BEEN..... It's difficult for
    our " finite "  and limited minds to grasp the concept of infinity
    ( since we are not immortal beings....yet )....but, He has always been
    around.
    
    I definitely do NOT believe in the Big Bang Theory.....( after all
    SOMETHING had to have created the Big Bang, right ? )...
    
    SOMETHING cannot come out of NOTHING..... :-)
    
    Enough said. ;-)

    
    Actually I believe that it can...only our idea of 'nothing' does not
    readily describe what the realm of Pure Consciousness is.
    
    Cindy
    
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    From: "Autobiography Of A Yogi", by Yogananda, p.277
    
    "These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the
    beginning of the creation of God." - Revelation 3:14
    
    "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the
    Word was God. ...All things were made by him [the Word or Aum]; and
    without him was not any thing made that was made." - John I:1-3
    
    Aum of the Vedas became the sacred word Hum of the Tibetans,
    Amin of the Muslims, and Amen of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans,
    Jews, and Christians.  Its meaning in Hebrew is sure, faithful.
                                                                     
    From: "The Hero With A Thousand Faces", by Joseph Campbell, p.267
    
    "The cosmogonic cycle pulses forth into manifestation and back
    into nonmanifestation amidst a silence of the unknown.  The
    Hindus represent this mystery in the holy syllable AUM.  Here
    the sound A represents waking consciousness, U dream consciousness,
    M deep sleep.  The silence surrounding the syllable is the unknown:
    it is called simply "The Fourth." [Mandukya Upanishad, 8-12]  The
    syllable itself is God as creator-preserver-destroyer, but the
    silence of God is eternal, absolutely uninvolved in all the
    openings-and-closings of the round.
    
        "It is unseen, unrelated, inconceivable,
           uninferable, unimaginable, indescribable.
         It is the essense of the one self-cognition
           common to all states of consciousness.
         All phenomena cease in it.
         It is peace, it is bliss, it is nonduality.
    
                           [Mandukya Upanishad, 7]

    Re .109
    
    Let me see if I have got this right.

    We must have a creator. It is totally impossible that something as
    sophisticated (in its original meaning) as man could ever have evolved
    naturally.

    God is immensely more complicated than man. God was not created, God
    just happened.

    There does appear to be a flaw in the above logic.

    Jamie.
          

    
    Jamie,
    
    	*Realism on High*
    
    	Don't we tend to use the entity "creator" or "God" to fill
    in the blanks of our minds, ie. anything that cannot be explained
    by the current set of human knowledge is attributed to this
    "creator" or "God" (or "spirits" in other cultures)?! (Most people
    are not comfortable with unknowns). We have been doing just that since 
    we could "think", for hundreds of thousands of years!! Why stop suddenly?! 
    We still don't have explanations for a lot of things nor are we in 
    control of most things; it is definitely much more comforting to imagine 
    that some nice, just, caring, please-able entity (who knows what the heck 
    he/she/it is doing) is in charge of the situation!! It is not a matter 
    of logic, but a matter of faith (which sometimes works like aspirin, 
    sometimes it works like prozac and sometimes morphine). I mean, if there 
    was a Big Bang then, there could be one soon and what would happen to 
    *us*?!! (Read panic, uncertainly, stress) I mean, there are all these 
    hungry children (even in this country), battered women (one sexual or 
    physcially abused every 5 minutes in this country), etc. (Read pain,
    desolution, hardship). Can't you see, the creation and belief of the 
    "entity in charge" is an internal coping mechanism, a survival tactic, 
    long time proven to work!!! (Read otherwise we would be extinct). Think 
    about it, some people choose to have faith in the "management" (entity) 
    and some people choose to have faith in the "engineering" (evolution).
    Of course, the management gets all the bonus and stock options and the
    peons gets to do the real work! Same difference.
    
    
    
    Eva

       
    Eva,
    
    Joseph Campbell once said, "I don't have to have faith.  I have
    experience!"  I always liked that one.  (;^)  Once you've directly
    experienced states of nondual consciousness, things like 'faith' and
    'belief' no longer apply, because it's no longer an unknown entity 
    that you have to 'believe' or 'have faith' in.
    
    Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell - also the founder of the Institute 
    of Noetic Sciences - defines God and soul in the following way:  
    
    	"I define God as the intelligent function.  The soul would 
    	 be that residual aspect of self that is eternal.  I believe
    	 that the purpose of the universe is to organize itself and to
    	 experience physical reality, of which we're a part of in 
    	 creating that."
    
    If the words 'God' and 'creator' don't work for you, you can also 
    think of it as something along the lines of the 'unified field'. 
    Deepak Chopra has an even better - and funnier - description which 
    I'll try to dig up.
    
    Cindy

    
    Cindy,
    
    	I see what is around me as results of trials and errors,
    millions of years of experimental/accidental existence. I
    don't know if there is or isn't a creator, at this point of
    my life, it doesn't matter much. I know that this planet/
    unvierse will carry on, as long as we don't destroy it, as
    it has carried on since the beginning of time. I know that 
    all living things have superbly refined internal programming
    for survival and will continue to thrive, as long as we don't
    muck with the web of life too much. I also know that pain,
    suffering, death are all part of the life, since it exists
    in other animals as well. I also know that there is really
    no real purpose in life other than keeping the our species 
    going strong (not just propagation, but also maintaining our
    environment and our food/air supplies and keeping our genes
    in good order). I also know that the more complicated we
    make our lives, the more worries we have and the less we
    enjoy it (like the other animals do). Wild animals are all
    driven by instincts (and nuture), they eat when they are 
    hungry and they don't work unless they have to, they live 
    moment to moment as best they can. Wild animals don't lose 
    sleep worrying about earthquakes, layoffs, stock market 
    crashes, etc. I know that animals have emotions and feelings, 
    but I don't think (maybe wrong here) they sit around thinking 
    about what if's, they just deal with the is's when they come. 
    But hten again, they don't seem to worry too much about dying
    either. Believing in a "creator" or a "boss" enables people 
    to free up their worries (especially ones that people have no 
    control over) and enjoy life more, IMO. It is stress management 
    of sorts or sort of letting go.  
    
    	There are obviously a whole lot that I don't know about.
    If there is really a creator, great. If there is no creator,
    it wouldn't a difference to me; for as far as I can tell 
    the answer to "Is there or Isn't there a creator?" does not
    affect my quality and enjoyment of life. One exception though,
    if there is a creator, I would ask the creator why he/she/it 
    have babies and children suffer (and to punish/teach the adults
    is the *wrong* answer for me). So, for my own sanity (being a
    Scorpio I'd have a real tough time with not fixing things,
    and fixing the creator wouldn't sound like a fun job), I choose 
    to believe in evolution, the fairer of the two. ;-)
    
    
    Eva

    
    Eva,
    
    Oh. OK.  (;^)
    
    Cindy

    
    Cindy,
    
    	I'm totally weird today, must be the stars ;-)
    
    
    Eva

    Eva, it's probably the comet that's floating around the area right
    now. :-)
    
    Bright Blessings,
    
    PJ(Who constantly rethinks his position on the existence of a creator
    or not, but is pretty sure there is at least one, but will she/he own
    up to it. Not sure if I'd admit to creating this mess. :-) )

    
    PJ,
    
    	Maybe my problem is that I cannot "accept" a less than
    perfect creator and by all counts this world at this point
    in time is really less than 1/4 perfect. Maybe, there are
    multiple parties in creatorland and they all point fingers
    at each other ;-)
    
    Eva

    >maybe there are multiple parties in creatorland and they al point
    >fingers at each other ;-)
    
    Eva, I think this is what has happened in most all mythologies I have
    read. Particularly Graeco-Roman and Norse. Always somebody else's fault
    (usually some poor shmuck of a mortal) when the God's screw up. :-)
    
    Bright Blessings,
    
    PJ