The Truth is Beautiful

Beauty Catchup

2010-12-01T17:29:00.001Z

Having not posted anything in a while due to poor health, thought I'd just try and keep this going. Not much to report really this month, just a small collection of beautiful space related pics for you!

Ariane 5 launching last week

Incredible picture of Phobos over Mars atmospheric limb

One of the Suns Coronal mass ejections from last month

Really cool pic of a member of Expedition 25 on the ISS having some quiet reflection

Cats paw nebula (I think). A beauty!

Titan and Tethys

The X-37 space plane, set to land autonomously in the next week or so

Water plumes and cryo-volcanism on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons

Who Wrote The Bible

2010-11-07T16:37:00.000Z

While looking for some entertainment/enlightenment, found this documentary on origins of the bible, kind of got to what I've been trying to find out for a little while.

Now, if you can poke up with the presenter's constantly nodding head when asking questions, you're doing better than me. This guy is a Christian, but when he actually discovers the ridiculous truth behind the holy book, it doesn't seem to shake him.. and I just can't understand why! There's so many modifications, rewrites and omissions to the holy book you can't possible see any of it as true, surely!? Of course I do not share his blind faith. If the book was written by men.. and men who were at times far removed from what they were writing about, I cannot possibly believe it to be any sort of truth. Again, this seems to be a tale of misinformation, control and sensationalism, and actually, sometimes just plain fascism. Anyway.. interesting documentary.. watch it here

Next for a bit of light relief I watched Religulous, which was absolutely hilarious. I wouldn't call this a documentary, because to be honest it is very biased towards non-believers and has quite a few inconsistencies in it. It's more pure comedy than anything else. The answers that come from some of the questions asked of believers are downright stupid/disgraceful, but it had me absolutely pissing myself I must admit. Good for a laugh, not much fact, just common sense.

Anyway, I will try to dig up some more stuff soon, have been out of the loop for a while, just starting to get back to feeling ok again now.

Ciao!

Space Race 2.0

2010-10-14T20:53:00.001+01:00

I didn't necessarily desire for this to be all about religion, just about the truth. Truth is, there is a new space race going on this century, between private companies. In my opinion in twenty years time there will definitely be space hotels, and infrastructure for getting there. Not only that, people will then be looking beyond low Earth orbit and out into the solar system proper. The next century will be a very exciting time for humanity, and I intend to be around to watch most of it!

Video courtesy of Spacevidcast.com

Virgin Galactic have successfully dropped and glided Space Ship 2, aka VSS Enterprise, to a safe landing in the Mojave desert. While its a great milestone in their program, there's an awful lot else going on in the commercial space department this year.

Space Adventures have signed an agreement with Armadillo Aerospace for the supply of launch vehicles for space tourism, and are offering flights for around $100,000, roughly half the price of Virgin Galactic.

Recently, Russian company Orbital Technology has announced it is looking to put inflatable hotels into low earth orbit within the decade, providing some much needed competition for Bigelow Aerospace.

Boeing have announced they are manufacturing a human rated 'space taxi' that will sit atop currently available rockets, very similar to SpaceX's Dragon capsule. In their demonstration video however, the space station itself appears to be a mockup of Bigelow Aerospace's planned habitats, which has lead to speculation the two companies may have already come to some sort of arrangement.

The Google Lunar X Prize teams have been working hard and are starting to get to the point of booking their flights to the moon. Team ARCA successfully tested their pre-rocket balloon system, which lifts the rocket high into the atmosphere before launching it, saving considerable fuel and effort getting through the majority of the atmosphere

Scientology - The 'Supressive' Truth

2010-10-06T23:22:00.004+01:00

People REALLY need to watch this Panorama documentary on Scientology - if you have an hour to spare please do, more people need to understand the truth

Thinking that my assertion in my last post that Scientology is all about money might be slightly false, or just needed clarifying, I went in search of truth, but in this case it wasn't beautiful.

Yes, the entire religion is based around money. You have to pay to ascend the rungs of the religion. They have celebrities endorsing them that have been pampered and groomed into believing this scam. I will not be watching ANY more Tom Cruise movies, that's for sure. The abuse the 'church' puts any member who decides to take a stand against this fascist farce is unbelievable.

These people are scum

I will be removing Scientology from my list of religions, because its like Buddhism alright, but the currency is not enlightenment, it is money, the tools are not love, compassion and forgiveness, it is alienation, intimidation, fear, misinformation and blackmail. You will hear more about this gang of criminals in the near future when I find out more dirt

Religion

2010-10-04T22:50:00.010+01:00

I have been trying to familiarise myself with the different types of religion that have been or that are prevalent now. After a fair bit of reading, this is my further categorisation of those religions. The first job in understanding where these concepts arose from is to split the religions or belief systems into two different groups.

Monotheistic religions
These religions attribute all power and influence to one deity. This being is 'all-powerful' in the strongest meaning of the term. If you're wondering what Abrahamic means - see Abrahamic religions

Christianity - Abrahamic
Islam - Abrahamic
Judaism - Abrahamic
Zoroastrianism
Mandaeism - Part Abrahamic, recognises certain elements of other Abrahamic religions
Bahá'í Faith - everyone is right, majority if not all prophets from all religions are manifestations of God - massive amount of sitting on the fence here
Hinduism - both monotheistic and polytheistic, some believe that all deities (devas & devis) or avatars are one specific all-mighty being (the name differs from one denomination). Others believe the deities are indeed separate.

Polytheistic/Other
The following belief systems are a little more complex, and to lump them together like this is not pretty, but practical. It basically shows us the modern alternatives to monotheistic faiths, which after all, are the more common (or fashionable!). Polytheistic faiths, of course, were much more prevalent in classical times; the Greek and Roman belief systems were certainly polytheistic in a sense, but they were more like Hinduism in their acceptance of a 'more' supreme deity (i.e Zeus), or group of deities (the Roman archaic triad, for example).

Buddhism - has four deities called Brahmas, the concepts of reincarnation and betterment of the soul (and consequently a better 'physical form') through enlightenment and meditation. Despite this the soul does not appear to be able to attain deity-like status.
Hinduism - see above
Taoism - spiritual belief free of deities, belief in understanding the universe by understanding yourself and your own mind.

Scientology has been removed, because its not a religion, its a scam, and a pretty big one at that - more info on the post above

Now I realise this is not a complete set of religious beliefs, but I feel it is more important, now I have a broad feeling for belief systems, to begin to analyse their origins and the similarities that may lie within. That's for the next post, when I'll probably start by looking at similarities in the Abrahamic religions and try and delve into their actual origins.

Well, it has to start somewhere

2010-10-03T18:31:00.000+01:00

So, where to begin?

I've started a blog. Not very original I know, but there's some things that constantly play on my mind, and I need to get them out. I would like to change things in this world, this won't do that, but it will help me figure out what needs changing.

The ideas and thoughts I will add here will be mainly to do with religion no doubt. First post will be tonight when I stop being so hungover. You don't have to be a saint to want to alter the way people think, but you do have to be persistent.