Magic and God sitting in a tree...

I was reading Eragon today and something that i noticed was that most of the time, magic and the supernatural are connected with religion. In Eragon, or actually the second book Eldest, Eragon meets the elves who say that they don't believe in god. They believe that laws govern the world and that there is no higher power. That difference between that idealology and the norm is that since magic cannot be explained, it must be attributted to something higher. With the indian burial grounds, and the cave drawings, the supernatural was still attributed to the gods. That what they had to do was connected with the gods. Jesus performed miracles because god gave him permission and the power to do it.

In many shows like supernatural and charmed, the magic only exists because there exists the higher power. all the demons in supernatural come out of hell. the charmed ones get their powers from the highest power and use it to battle the evilest power.

I really don't have an answer for this, but why can't magic exist without reason? does a magical world signify a high greatness? Just a little food for thought

Route to Religion

First off, I am going to strike down the the thought that change in religion is sudden. Blasphemy!!!

So, something that is always present for a change is a charismatic leader. This was mentioned in class and has been seen throughout history. What's interesting about an emerging religion is that conflict is always present. Something that i have noticed is that something becomes stronger when people are forced to choose between it and something else. Baha'u'llah's followers had to choose between him and Azal when the time came. If forced to choose something that big, the gut feelings come out and people become strongly tied to the path they pick.

Since i brought it up initially, i have to refer to happy feet. when Memphis told Mumble that he had to choose whether to renounce his ways or be banished, Mumble left and he even more strongly decided to follow his own ideas. also, Los Amigos came with him their faith in him grew.

Mumble's journey greatly parallels Baha'u'llah's exiles and journeys. People were forced to make a choice to stay with the norm or follow something new. They were exiled and then they had to journey to a place where they could believe what they wanted. I just keep thinking of Mumble's journey across the storm lands in the arctic when we read about the cold winters and how the travelers often found their feet frozen.

The Baha'is formed through the combination of all of the above. It was a lengthy process of conflicts and issues but Baha'u'llah was true to his morals and ideas. He fought his way to pursue an idea. Due to his leadership, instead of just inciting a religion, he made himself and icon which represents the religion. Thus, through him, a the new religion was born.

Out of Body Expreriences.

Many religions believe in an after life. Christians believe in heaven and hell, Klingons believe in the barge of the dead. This is a very significant part of religion because it gives a little more purpose in life. It gives us something to live for and something for us to strive to achieve.

Having an afterlife also implies something else. It means that there is part of us which exists regardless of the state of our body. We don't realize that that part can be separated until it actually happens which means we wouldn't realize it usually until we die, but rarely, we come extremely close to death which leads to the partial separation.

Out of body experiences happen in different cases. Yogis who have meditated intensly have claimed to find themselves in a different far away place while still being located in their original spot. Mainly, a good portion or out of body experiences happen during near death experiences. A quick article about a near death experience explains what one man saw and also that research is going to be done in a couple different hospitals to actually monitor patients who are very near death.

One video that i found addresses these experiences saying they are all in the mind by bombarding the temporal lobes with electromagnetic pulses. They have gotten definite responses to this treatment, but it cannot account for every instance. I believe this technique only shows one way to trigger an out of body experience and that they can happen. while the video claims that they only happen in the head, they must realize that what happens in our head can also be real. The collective unconsciousness is an example of that. While everything happens in our head, it is still quite real.



So now, how does this connect with religion? While this video tries to explain that all OBE are in our heads, i only believe they show it can happen, and that there is a certain part of us that can be detached which at the moment cannot be observed. This leads to the question of what that part of the mind might be, and if it detaches itself normally from the body at death. Whether this might mean an afterlife where our essences collect, or that we go drifting off into space, it shows that there are parts of us that we don't understand which could point in the direction of and afterlife.

After watching this video, I found that life of the Rastafari was much more structures than i previously thought. When I was first introduced to the Rastafari, it seemed liked they were more a group of hippies rather than a religious group. We can see this structure by the symbols that are represented in this video which bring the Rastafari together.

one of the main symbols that we see is the color scheme printed on everything. The colors green, red, gold, and black are painted on the houses, worn on hats, and are used to paint signs. Red, being one of the most favorable colors is used most commonly in the hats that they wear.

When i first learned about Rastafari traditions like smoking Ganja, i believed that there traditions were loose, but instead, i found them more to be like Muslims, with daily practices at certain times of the day.

Another thing that i found interesting was the location of the Bobo shanties. They appear so far up in the mountains to be closer physically to god. It also seems that through their prayer of 6 hour intervals, they also achieve a mental state closer to god.

The prayer at 6 hour intervals i found quite interesting. Because of that, they claim that they are up when everyone else is still asleep. This symbolizes their connection with god because it shows their devotion.

After putting all these symbols, and traditions together, it really shows me the structure of the Rastafari. From where they live, to their daily lives, while they can party as Bob Marley shows us, living in the Bobo Shantis, they have their fair share of rules to follow.

End of the World!!!

So, one thing that I know is out there, but i was wondering more about, is how so many ancient religions predicted the end of the world. The Mayan's, for instance, believe that "the next katun, which the Popul Vuh describes as the catastrophic end of the world, will end on December 21, 2012." This is something that i have always found interesting. This website gives a list of upcoming dates which could be the end of the world. People have predicted the end of the world since the beginning of the world.

The Mayans have their ending calendar. Christians have there second coming. Supernatural has the apocalypse. Everyone has something but why? Do religions need to have an ending? As we have seen, believing that the end of the world strongly affects many people. People sell all their belongings and release their hold on the earth only to find that it hasn't released its hold on them.

I believe that religions predict the end of the earth solely because people can't have infinite time to repent. Religion established a beginning to give people to beleive in, and it created an ending to give people something to fear. God's wrath is mightier then anything else as I have seen from reading the Psalms.

Now on to my main question. If the apocalypse is created to fear, wouldn't it only affect the generation in the timeline before it, but no one else? If the apocalypse is out of my lifetime, it means very little to me, and since everyone is predicting it, it's date is always known. Why then have it? If it only affects one generation, and if the prediction fails it alienates the future people of the religion, why would anyone want to say that the earth is going to end?

I don't have an answer at the moment for my question, but i do know something. The world will actually end in 2039. Computers score numbers using 32bits. This means there is a maximum number that they will store. Also, clocks are stored using a single integer by counting the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970. We are going to reach the maximum number in 2039 and all the integers will wrap around and become negative. This means that computers will crash. Calendars will think we are in the past. Computer events will get triggered that will result in a complete shutdown of most computers and databases which will lead to complete anarchy and the eventual extinction of the human race. Just thought you should know

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

The Kebra Negast contains this story about the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. After reading this story, I realize there is a much greater religious significance on Ethiopia than I thought thee was.

First off, Solomon is a tricky person. I was impressed with his art of getting women into bed with him when he only speaks with wisdom and does not use lying or deceit (in a manner of speaking), but back to the significance of Ethiopia as a nation. I know very little about the history of Ethiopia, but I now see connections through this story that place special significance on the nation.

Large significance is places on Ethiopia through the queen because she learns about God directly from Solomon. This already shows the connection between the two nations, through the sharing of power. One of the greatest leaders tells the Queen of Sheba about the highest power, which she takes back to her people. This connection creates a strong bond between the two nations and leaders, giving Ethiopia its first significant tie.

Second, the Queen of Sheba has a child with Solomon. That's the ultimate sharing of power. Also, the son of Solomon is going to have much more religious significance in Sheba then just the Queen learning of God through Solomon because Solomon's blood line now continues to rule Sheba and any relations with Solomon will always be significant. Thus, Ethiopia can be looked at like a parallel of Jerusalem. Both now follow the same God, and both are ruled by king Solomon's blood line.

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So, after just having finished reading Conceptual Blending by Billes Fauconnier, i find myself looking back at all the computer science that i have done. One of the currents projects we have been looking at is the AVL tree which is a self balancing Binary Search Tree. Just as the article describes, this concept is a blending space. AVL Trees are only used for efficient data storage and retrieval, but we give them the tree appearance to help visualize them. The code above represents a node used in the AVL Tree. Its just code, but through conceptual blending, we can cross this straight code with the idea of a tree, and a visualization of the structure appears. Order at last!

Now how can we look at religion in this same blending sense? The first thing that comes to mind is, because blending is taking two things and finding the middle ground to better understand a certain concept, that religion is made up of the scriptures certain beliefs mixed with our own life experience. Religion plays off of our own life experiences so that we can better understand the ideas it conveys. Take for example, the Bible. It was written many, many years ago. In order to understand its meaning, we blend it with our own lives today to make sense of the teachings.

Also, the second thing is the conceptual blending of god's word and a crazy situation. Elise mentions Noah's ark and i really liked her example. It may seem crazy for an individual to take a pair of each animal on earth and put it on an ark, but since it is god saying to do so, and he always has the best in mind, everything will turn out fine. Its the combination of the action and god's word which will lead to a better life.

Second free post. Little thing i wanted to comment on

Allison Scattergood mentioned in her blog about how the physical structure of pictures can be changed by sound frequencies, but also that things might be changed by unseen forces. Here is a great video that i mentioned in the comment i made on her blog which i thinks pretty directly relates.

Illuminati control the world

So recently, I played this card game Illuminati, and was an awesome card game which i recommend to most everyone. It was browsing YouTube and i came across this video which i found pretty cool:

After talking about symbols i class, i was wondering how much they infiltrate everyday life. I know that religion appears everywhere in life. Media, fashion, architecture all have traces of religion hidden in them. This video was really interesting to me because it tied many things together through symbolism that i did not expect. Religions borrow gods, beliefs, and so much more from other religions, but what's going on with symbols? They get borrowed too. My question now is: Symbolism exists everywhere, but at what point do we, as people trying to find order, connect unrelated objects together because of order our mind has created which does not actually exist?

At the moment, i am sitting on a couch in front of a TV thinking of symbolism. Well, what is also in front of me is a white concrete wall. That wall, first is white, which means this wall is good because white symbolizes purity. Second, because it is concrete, it symbolizes strength. Third, because it is a wall, and is separating me from something, i can think of it as a protector. So, i have established through symbolism, that this wall, is a strong, pure protector. Hmmm. Should i start to worship it? I don't think so. Through the interpretation of symbols, i lost sight of the fact this what i'm looking at is just a wall.

Humans naturally read into everything. Its a natural part of the mind to find order in chaos. We connect dots in the sky to create constellations. Stars technically are not random, but for the most part, we can assume they are, and yet, for hundreds of years, through astrology, people determined their futures and actions by them. We found order in the depths of the sky and tied it to life here on earth.

I believe that through symbolism, people have looked to deep for meaning. While a lot of symbolism is correct, people's search for truth has many times lead to the incorporation of completely meaningless data in the culture. As we look into the symbolism, just remember that randomness and coincidence are a normal part of reality.