On October 20th 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin shot what would become the world’s most famous Bigfoot film footage.
But, since the world will end tomorrow, I guess it doesn’t really matter all that much. Unless, of course, Bigfoot Jesus comes down from his heavenly throne to save the world again.
Every once in awhile the main stream press will spend some time correcting highly confused thinking. MSNBC has a piece on Nemesis/Planet X mess. Way to go Alan Boyle.
“Like many other 2012 myths, the Nemesis hypothesis had a smidgen of scientific research behind it. Back in 1984, paleontologists proposed that there seemed to be a 27 million-year cycle of extinctions that may have had an extraterrestrial cause. The prime suspect was a hypothetical brown dwarf or red dwarf that disrupted the orbits of comets on the solar system’s fringe and sent them screaming earthward.
Nemesis has gotten swept up with the Planet X hypothesis, which holds that an as-yet-undetected planet will wreak havoc on Earth ”“Last year, researchers reported that if the Nemesis companion existed, it wouldn’t orbit in a nice, precise 27 million-year cycle. That study, published in the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, was portrayed as the “final nail in the coffin” for the Nemesis hypothesis. “
Ah, but don’t you see. These “researchers” are only part of the conspiracy, and their little “debunking” of the story only proves that they are covering it up! In fact, it really drives home the truth of the claim.
Oh, wait a minute. Got caught up in the crazy. Ah, when else can you whip out so many exclamation marks?
The belief that the end of the world, or a massive meteor strike, or .. or something, will happen on Dec 12, 2012 (12/12/12 … get it?) is pretty popular. But, the widely accepted belief system may be more than just a bunch of crazy assholes with huge gaps in their education. It may shed light on the formation of religious movements. Archaeologist John Hoopes has an interesting interview about the subject over at Boing Boing.
MKB: We’re starting to see anthropologists publishing research on the 2012 movement. Why is the movement something important to study on its own, separate from the traditional archaeology that seeks to understand what ancient Mayans believed?
JH: Mainly because I think it gives us an opportunity to see how religious movements begin.
There’s a lot in that mythology that people are referring to as if it is real or as something they want to believe in. It’s been tied together with the Age of Aquarius, the legitimacy of prophecy, and visionary experiences. There’s a lot there that’s similar to the beginnings of other religious traditions. Christianity, for instance, began in the context of messianic prophecies. The LDS church began in the context of speculation about Native Americans and concerns about the end of the world. And the Millerite movement of the 1840s is another one. That gave rise to today’s Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. William Miller prophesied the second coming for October 1844. And even though it didn’t happen, it still had a lasting legacy because so many people believed. Publications started by Millerites are still the publications of the Jehovah’s Witnesses today. I really think there will be some religious or spiritual movements that come out of the 2012 mythology. If you go into Barnes and Noble and look in the metaphysics or spirituality sections, you’ll find tons of books about 2012. It’s not treated as historical or scientific, but as spiritual.
I love those little books of facts you can pick up for a couple of bucks at Barnes and Noble. Not because they’re informative. But, precisely because they’re not. Take one, open it up, close your eyes, and point to any random “fact”, and it will be wrong.
I came across an interesting little claim in one of those little fact books today. A claim that, in the 1829, the United States sent an expedition consisting of two ships to the South Pole to search for the entrance to … the Hollow Earth!
Now, I didn’t immediately think it was wrong because “America would never do such a thing”. No, I immediately thought it was wrong because it would be far too cool if that had actually happened. And, because I’ve been a bit interested in the the Hollow Earth Theory (oh, it’s hilarious to even type it out) as of late, and I have never ran across this claim. Sending a couple of ships out to the pole is no small feet. If it did happen, I think I would have heard of it.
But, like most crazy claims, there’s tasty filling of truth in there. An expedition was proposed. It just never got anywhere close to being approved.
John Cleves Symmes, Jr (there was no John Cleves Symmes Sr), was an American army officer. In 1818, he proposed a revision to the Hollow Earth Theory, one featuring a series of concentric sphere’s with openings to them at the North and South Poles. He traveled around the country giving lectures on his theory, and became quite a popular speaker, inspiring others to pick up the mantle and speak on the subject as well. Of course, not everyone fell for it. I that it could be reliably compared to the anti-vax movement today.
The US President at the time, John Quincy Adams, actually approved of the idea! It being the end of his term, however, he never would have even had the chance approve of any proposal, even if it had gotten through Congress. Which it did’t.
Mr. Revnolds is a man who has been lecturing about the country in support of Captain John Cleves Symmes’s theory, that the earth is a hollow sphere, open at the Poles. His lectures are said to have been well attended, and much approved as exhibitions of genius and of science. But the theory itself
has been so much ridiculed, and is in truth so visionary, that Reynolds has now varied his purpose to the proposition of fitting out a voyage of circumnavigation to the Southern Ocean. He has obtained numerous signatures in Baltimore to a memorial to Congress for this object, which, he says, will otherwise be very powerfully supported. It will, however, have no support in Congress. That day will come, but not yet, nor in my time. May it be my fortune and my praise to accelerate its approach!
–Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol VII, page 168
Once Andrew Jackson took office, any chance of Presidential support quickly disappeared.
Symmes himself never officially wrote about his version of the Hollow Earth theory, but a follower his, James McBride, did. The resulting book, Symme’s Theory of Concentric Spheres, is available at the Internet Archive. These days we expect our experts to boast some fancy letters behind their name, proof of their education to bolster the reliability of their methods. This title proudly boasts that it is ” By a Citizen of the United States”.
Wing Nut Daily founder Joseph Farah will soon release a book on the ‘Birther’ conspiracy theory. But, since Obama has just released his long form birth certificate, it’s a bit like publishing a book on crop circles the day after Doug and Dave went public.
The comments by Farah underscore Obama’s observation Wednesday that hard-core birthers are unlikely to be persuaded by any evidence, no matter how compelling. “I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest,” Obama said at a White House press event to release the birth certificate.
Well, yeah. That’s kind of the definition of a conspiracy theory, isn’t it? A stupid idea that holds on despite the evidence instead of because of it.
Take the ‘UFOs build the pyramids’ people. There are a bunch of bricks stacked up in the desert, albeit large ones. Stacking bricks is something humans have done both before and after. The bricks were quarried right around the corner from the building site. There were earlier attempts at stacking bricks in this manner that failed. The rulers at the time were supreme dictators with huge egos. In no way could anyone look at the evidence and come to the conclusion that they were build by extraterrestrials. Unless, of course, you also assume that the extraterrestrials in question were no more intelligent than the people here on earth.
I have a theory, though, than is supported by the evidence. I propose that there is no way in hell that this man’s mustache is real. It’s just just drawn on with a marker, isn’t it?
It seems that finding a portion of the “one true cross” just isn’t enough anymore. An archeologist (of dubious merit), Simcha Jacobovici, known as the Naked Archeologist, is claiming to have unearthed the actual nails used to hang the Christian figure head to the crucifix. Do they turn ordinary well water into Pinot Noir? No.
Besides the failure to turn water into something desirable to drink, there are other problems. Not only are ancient nails a dime a dozen, theses nails in particular were found in a priest’s tomb (not substantiated as to who), lost, re-found 20 years later, only then to be hailed as Jesus’s crucifixian nails. Simcha has made similar: he found the Family Tomb of Jesus in 2007. And right before Easter, too.
See Dr Robert Cargill’s blog for more details.
Mike Huckabee has recently made an ass of himself (again) by publicly stating that everyone should be forced at gun point to watch the mind numbing Christian pseudo history of David “I do not have a degree in history” Barton:
“It seems Mike Huckabee thinks highly of David Barton, so highly in fact that during his opening monologue he suggested that everyone should be made to sit in front of their TVs, at gunpoint no less, and be forced to watch every broadcast that David Barton should give.”
Pretty grand vision of a country based on freedom, huh?
David Barton’s website, Wallbuilders, a site that agues for America’s Christian founding, has a humdinger of an aricle on a proud bit of American history: slavery.
Why on earth would the good god fearing Christian founders own slaves?
From the article:
”The Bible teaches that slavery, in one form or another (including spiritual, mental, and physical), is always the fruit of disobedience to God and His law/word.”
That’s right, it’s not their fault. Nope, it’s our fault. Sweet. This sentiment is exactly what I like least about the hyper-religious: the failure to take responsibilities for their own problems. And, in this case, it’s not even one of their own problems. They’re passing the buck for someone else. But, they’re passing it for a group they are trying to claim as their own. They want to paint early Americans as model fundamentalist Christians in an effort to paint America’s founding as a Christian movement. But, the founding fathers had slaves, a behavior frowned upon today. What to do? Excuse the behavior? Nope, blame atheists and other religions.
“Slavery is a product of the fall of man and has existed in the world since that time. Slavery was not a part of God’s original created order, and as God’s created order has gradually been re-established since the time of Christ, slavery has gradually been eliminated.”
Talk about pulling something out of your ass. Being that they’re basing their entire world view around a fictitious age of the earth, I suppose they might as well make up a fictitious history for it. Just be careful you don’t fall off the edge of this 6,000 year old flat disc.
But wait, weren’t the Hebrews slaves in Egypt (they weren’t, but according to “Biblical history” they were)? Well, I did happen to notice that when it comes to the Hebrews, they refer to them as “indentured servants”, and reserve “slaves” for the pagans.
They sum up the love letter with a taste of Leviticus 25:44-46, a passage that excuses taking slaves from “the nations that are around you” (meaning anyone that wasn’t Hebrew, of course). It’s true, Leviticus does say that. They may have known how to write, but the authors of Leviticus were still a bronze age people with bronze age morals. Looking back on their writings, throwing your hands up in the air and exclaiming that we can’t do any better than that is just asinine. We have 3,000 years of history to learn from. Ignoring all that we’ve learned in that time turns us into cavemen.
I’ve always thought it funny that fundamentalist Christians don’t accept the Theory of Natural Selection, because they can sure act like animals.
Is there a link between holding religious beliefs and other unorthodox belief systems?
I’ve looked at a possible link between Mormonism and the Hollow Earth Theory in another post. It may be a small subset of Mormons that accept the Hollow Earth idea, but it seems that most of the Hollow Earth community are Mormons. This is driven by a statement in an early Mormon text, as well as a strong belief that their religion will someday be proven correct by some great archeological find.
So, is there a link between the search for elusive/mythical monsters such as Bigfoot or extant dinosaurs and young earth creationism?
Ken Ham and a creature he believes to have been a friendly vegetarian
Ideologically, its nothing more than a side step. After all, once the existence of a supernatural creator is accepted without adequate (or any) proof, adding on a side order of Bigfoot fries only costs an addition $0.99.
There is a motive for creationists to be on the lookout for “extinct” creatures. Young Earth Creationist ideology posits that dinosaurs and human beings co-existed in the very recent past. Finding a living pterosaur or the Loch Ness Monster would be seen as proof that dinosaurs did not die out at the end of the cretaceous 65 million years ago.
Creation Ministries International’s web site hosts a story about Theropod and Sauropod dinosaurs being spotted in Papua/New Guinea.
If ever a ‘living dinosaur’ is found and confirmed to the satisfaction of the scientific fraternity, many people would be astonished, given the prevailing evolutionary view that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Christians, however, should not be surprised, as the Bible teaches that God created the dinosaurs only around 6,000 years ago. So we needn’t be too taken aback if a theropod or sauropod dinosaur is ever confirmed to be living in the world today.
While this story does seem to point to a strong link, it simply would not follow to say that the field is composed entirely of creationists. The folks over at Crytomundo, the top rag for cryptozoology, state that they are not overly thrilled with creationists attempting to use cryptids as proof that the world is only 6,000 years old and they speak of conflict in some sectors because of it.
Their data regularly reinforces their theories, and gets translated immediately into their objective being reinforced ~ i.e. to prove that dinosaurs were only created 6,000 or so years ago.
This naturally causes a lot of conflict in some quarters …
I would like to know what percentage of cryptozoologists are YECs.
Are we living in the Age of Conspiracy Theories?
They certainly do seem popular lately, not just the trademark of loners and small fringe groups.
With the efficiency of the intertubes, conspiracy theories can get flushed one minute, and be worldwide the next. And, in an age when a TV network named “The History Channels” is okay with playing shows on monsters (not the history of the belief in monsters, but how there is a monster in your back yard right now) and the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone, I kind of get the feeling that no one is particularity interested in the truth anymore.
This Hollow RSS
This Hollow Earth 