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September 19th, 2018

9/19/2018

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what the world might look like if jesus had yet to come
​


So, what would the world look like if Jesus had yet to be born? Okay, let’s play it out and let our minds expand. First, I’ll set some guidelines. I’m going to assume that it is likely our world is older than we think, perhaps millions of years old.  Since this isn’t an academic paper I don’t feel compelled to provide references but if you inquire I’ll do my best.

Some traditions maintain that our planet has seen at least two prior civilizations on a large scale, one about a million years ago, called Atlantis, and the other as much as 15+ million years ago, called Lemuria.  How Lemuria came to be is like watching STAR TREK on steroids, but again, according to some, over the next 850,000 years the Lemurians spread across the face of the planet. They founded daughter colonies such as Atlantis, Yu which is now Central China and Tibet and the Libyan/Egyptian colonies. Understand that again according to some these people were highly advanced, using force fields, etc, and equally spiritually advanced. For instance, Atlanteans, during some portions of their evolution were clairvoyant and guided by Great Teachers. Unfortunately, the people allowed darker groups to gain control and bad things began to happen. The Divine Teachers were banished and several global catastrophes occurred, the worst being that Atlantis sank into the ocean. This occurred 800,000 and 200,000 years ago, and the tail end of that great civilization saw FLOODS in about 75,000 BC and then finally, in 9564BC. World religions almost universally speak of the flood, even though but a fraction of the reality has been preserved or recorded.
 
The story of Atlantis was told by Plato (more on him later) and goes like this: Once upon a time, there was a mighty power based on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. This empire was called Atlantis and it ruled over several other islands and parts of the continents of Africa and Europe.  Atlantis was arranged in concentric rings of alternating water and land. The soil was rich, the engineers technically accomplished, the architecture extravagant with baths, harbor installations, and barracks. The central plain outside the city had canals and a magnificent irrigation system. Atlantis had kings and a civil administration, as well as an organized military. But when it waged a war on the remainder of Asia and Europe, Athens showed its excellence as the leader of the Greeks, and triumphed over the invading forces. After the battle, there were violent earthquakes and floods, and Atlantis sank into the sea, and all the warriors were swallowed up by the earth.
Before you say, “this is insane,” there is mounting evidence that the Sphinx and Great Pyramid are hundreds of thousands of years old, predating the widely accepted start of humanity. If true, does this mean that Atlantis might have existed?
 
My conclusion is that no matter how far fetched I might consider history, all things are possible (well, at least many).


No matter the names, we have always had Guides to follow—or not. In Greece during the third and fourth centuries before Christ, the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were concerned with how people could live a virtuous life that was in harmony with their city, their culture, and the natural world. Disciples of these great teachers would later form a number of schools of philosophy. By the time of the early Christian church, the teachings of these schools had spread throughout the Mediterranean world.
Socrates lived from about 469 to 399 B.C. and believed that philosophy could tell people how to live a good life. Because of his interest in virtue, he is often considered the founder of ethics.
Plato, a student of Socrates, lived from about 428 to 348 B.C. and started a school called the “Academy,” which continued for more than nine hundred years. Plato's teachings, written in his Dialogues, have been among the most influential in the history of Western Civilization. Plato believed that Reason (in Greek, called logos) was the nature of the universe, controlling things from within. When he thought about how the world was constantly changing, Plato looked for things that do not change, which are represented in the things that do change. He called these “Forms” or “Ideas.” Plato thought that when we call things by a general name, such as Beauty or Courage, we do so because there is a permanent Idea or Form of Beauty or Courage underlying each individual example of it. He believed that these Ideas or Forms, which are the meanings behind physical laws and material things, are what is truly real. Plato also believed that the human soul was immortal, and that the soul is superior to the body. According to Plato, it is the soul that makes us what we are, and that the highest responsibility of people is to “tend the soul,” so that it is acceptable to the gods.
Aristotle lived from about 384 to 322 B.C. and was a student of Plato at the Academy. When Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and became a teacher of Alexander the Great. When Aristotle returned to Athens, he began a school called the Lyceum, where he taught that the knowledge of a thing requires an understanding of what caused it. Unlike Plato, he believed that form caused matter to move, and that the only pure form was God, who was the cause and goal of all motion. Aristotle's teachings, recorded by his students, cover many fields, including ethics and logic, the natural sciences, politics, physics, and poetry.
It is interesting to see the relationship between these philosophers, especially Aristotle, and the leaders of Judaism, which had been around nearly a thousand years. A lot of present day Judaism thinking is based on the philosophy of Aristotle.  The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides went so far as to write that with regard to mundane topics Aristotle’s views are superior to the opinions on such topics of the prophet Ezekiel, in other words it is not the task of a prophet, but of a philosopher and scientist, to explore and explain the natural world; the prophet’s task is to bring God to the world. He states that Aristotle reached the highest level of understanding a human being can reach short of prophecy, and calls him the greatest of philosophers, though he refuted many of Aristotle's basic tenets of philosophical speculation, especially his postulations regarding man's duty in the world.
 
 
Well, this is surely enough for one article and should either pique your interest or send you running away. Anyway, I just wanted to show that there is a lot of history to visit when playing the “what if” game. The next article will talk about the prevalent religions just prior to the change from BC to AD. (What would the calendar look like without Christ? I don’t know.)
 
 
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what the world might look like if jesus had yet to come--part 1 So, what would the world look like if Jesus had yet to be born? Okay, let’s play it out and let our minds expand. First, I’ll set some guidelines. I’m going to assume that it is likely

9/19/2018

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EVIL---WHAT IS IT

6/21/2018

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​ 
When Joe Biden visited the Kremlin in 2011, he reportedly said to Putin: “Mr Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” According to Biden, Putin smiled and replied, “We understand each other.”
 
Many of those who choose to overlook the well-documented egregious acts of Trump seem to think of evil as a generic term to define societal ills, that evil itself has no singular identity. The Evangelicals inexplicable support of Trump supports the notion that one is to believe that the goodness of God now embraces man’s evil. It is ok to commit adultery, lie, cheat, etc. Modern Evangelicals have re-created God. In the past, there existed a dualistic world-view within religious groups; good and evil were separate forces. Not now. I grew up in that environment, taught that good would prevail over evil because of a holy God. So, you can understand my confusion when I see people who say they embrace that God, yet shout that in this modern age it’s okay to be evil.
It is not new.  David Cesarani wrote in his book Eichmann: His Life and Crimes that Eichmann took part in the Holocaust because he wanted to do so. In this he was no different from many others, though his crimes were larger in scale. Until it was clear that the war was lost, Nazism was extremely popular. William Shirer reported in his eyewitness account of the rise of Hitler, The Nightmare Years:
“Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation … On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm.”
 
Freud suggested that human beings are ruled by impulses or instincts, impelling them towards life and creation or destruction and death. He cautioned against thinking that these forces embodied good and evil in any simple way. Whether they worked together or in opposition, both were necessary. The fragility of civilization reflected the divided nature of the human animal itself. This seems to be the path Evangelicals and many others who embrace God travel. Good and evil are two sides of the same coin, both are choices. And therein lies the problem that must be resolved. Is there truly evil or is it simply a bad choice. If simply a choice, then what is God’s role? If as Freud suggests, we are slaves to our impulses, where is God? Those Evangelicals with their new God would have us believe that God not withstanding, when we feel threatened it is just fine to have feelings of anti-Semitism, ethnic nationalism, hatred of gay people, immigrants, etc. God is with us.
 
One of my fears is that Trump’s acts aren’t rejected because many of his supporters endorse them. They admire one who acts tyrannically, much as did the Germans with Hitler. And this becomes much easier with their re-created God.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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What The Heck Is Happening

6/16/2018

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​We have become Hitler’s America, with a ruler who does and says whatever he pleases and a Congress that is too insipid to react. Read history and see the parallels. I am now officially concerned. When our government disses our long time friends for butchers, we have----well, you figure it out. Oh, a few members of Congress will whine but have you seen a single one stand up and yell, THIS ISN’T RIGHT! What will we do next to the immigrants and their children? Load them into trains and take them to camps?? The German citizens bought into Hitler’s insanity about the Jews that their removal was necessary to protect the race, just as we are buying into the theme that all must speak English and worship Jesus. Please, I’m not speaking as a Liberal, which I am, but as a concerned American. We are losing control of our government. This nation needs a voter revolution, beginning by a few million marching to Washington and taking over Congress. If you agree with my concern, please share this.
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What the Hell is Happening We have become Hitler’s America, with a ruler who does and says whatever he pleases and a Congress that is too insipid to react. Read history and see the parallels. I am now officially concerned. When our government disses ou

6/16/2018

1 Comment

 

What the Hell is Happening

​We have become Hitler’s America, with a ruler who does and says whatever he pleases and a Congress that is too insipid to react. Read history and see the parallels. I am now officially concerned. When our government disses our long time friends for butchers, we have----well, you figure it out. Oh, a few members of Congress will whine but have you seen a single one stand up and yell, THIS ISN’T RIGHT! What will we do next to the immigrants and their children? Load them into trains and take them to camps?? The German citizens bought into Hitler’s insanity about the Jews that their removal was necessary to protect the race, just as we are buying into the theme that all must speak English and worship Jesus. Please, I’m not speaking as a Liberal, which I am, but as a concerned American. We are losing control of our government. This nation needs a voter revolution, beginning by a few million marching to Washington and taking over Congress. If you agree with my concern, please share this.
1 Comment

MANY WORLD'S INTERPRETATION

4/28/2018

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This is a continuation of a Facebook post.

​Assuming that we accept that in the eyes of the quantum physicist that with every choice you make, an alternate YOU is created to experience the other choice, then what happens? Well before going there let’s examine the statement Bob Albiston made about thought.
 
“In Frontiers Of Psychology, 2017, recent developments in the neurology of thought and consciousness were summarized. We tend to think that we consciously direct our thoughts and make choices. Actually, thinking goes on in the background in an efficient manner while consciousness passively rides alongside unaware of how information is being processed. We quickly become aware of what we have already thought. It is the old horse and rider analogy of the deep meditator...we are not really the directors of the play. We are, in fact, being thought by large processes outside of our consciousness. Your MWI is equally humbling, disconcerting, and oddly liberating.”
 
This is pretty much in agreement with quantum physics theory that thoughts interact. Divide the mind into two components, the conscious part that gives us our self worth, that tells us who we are when we look into the mirror, and the second part that doesn’t care about our self worth because it’s too busy working on what and who we want to be. Some scientists call this the Undermind. It is the Undermind that helps us play golf, breathe, etc. And it is the Undermind that makes it possible for us to get what we seek. So while the conscious part of our mind is being ‘oh hum’, it is actually the other portion controlling our thoughts. And because the Undermind is interacting with other forces—and we are not even aware of it, the sly devil—it is, as Bob said, directing the play we are seeing. So the question becomes, how do we choose the play? I’ll get into that later but for now there is this: BELIEF IS EXPECTATION AND EXPECTATION IS BELIEF.
 
So, a brief synopsis of MWI is that choices create a new YOU, and that new YOU shares the same space as the old you, but its world is different. The new YOU brought along its friends, house car, etc into the world. This man is insane, you say---but hold on because if a hundred years ago I said that we’d be traveling in space and able to talk on a wristwatch, well---
Why accept this theory? There is a story about a drunk looking for his lost keys under a street light because he could see better there. Well, this theory answers a lot of my questions so until I find something better, I’ll stay where I can see.
 
So, assuming there are an infinite number of YOU’s and your brains are using the same space, do YOU interact? Of course, why wouldn’t YOU? And there is nothing to suggest that in our MWI, time is not accelerated or events compressed. When Jesus told the thief on the cross that today he would be with him in paradise, was that event compression or accelerated time? One or the other. Dreams about the future that come true are called psychic events, but perhaps they are simply another YOU travelling faster than you and seeing the future. What is intuition? De je vu moments?
 
For now, I’ll let this be digested, or thrown up—whatever, and go back to EXPECTATIONS AND BELIEF. We have the power to control our life to a much greater extent than we imagine. Jesus tried to tell us that when he said that with faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains. So what happened? Well, we chose to take this as a metaphor, to accept limitations rather than possibilities. All this while our Undermind was screaming, NO, NO, NO! Please listen to him. See, the Undermind knows but won’t force its will on us. We have to choose. Again Jesus said, that where people were gathered together, he would be there. To me this means that when thoughts are forming a consensus, there is great power. EXPECTION IS BELIEF. Your expectations tell the Undermind to get busy, so it does that through—well, networking. Remember, that thoughts interact. And here I’m talking about the world YOU now live in. So, get rid of those negative thoughts and grab onto the Undermind---have true faith, not hope, expect things to improve, and see what happens. Search under the streetlight.
 
MUCH MORE LATER---if you have issues or questions you can address them through my blog. They will be private.
 
 
Dick

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Many Worlds Interpretation

4/28/2018

0 Comments

 
This is a continuation of a facebook post. 

​Assuming that we accept that in the eyes of the quantum physicist that with every choice you make, an alternate YOU is created to experience the other choice, then what happens? Well before going there let’s examine the statement Bob Albiston made about thought.
 
“In Frontiers Of Psychology, 2017, recent developments in the neurology of thought and consciousness were summarized. We tend to think that we consciously direct our thoughts and make choices. Actually, thinking goes on in the background in an efficient manner while consciousness passively rides alongside unaware of how information is being processed. We quickly become aware of what we have already thought. It is the old horse and rider analogy of the deep meditator...we are not really the directors of the play. We are, in fact, being thought by large processes outside of our consciousness. Your MWI is equally humbling, disconcerting, and oddly liberating.”
 
This is pretty much in agreement with quantum physics theory that thoughts interact. Divide the mind into two components, the conscious part that gives us our self worth, that tells us who we are when we look into the mirror, and the second part that doesn’t care about our self worth because it’s too busy working on what and who we want to be. Some scientists call this the Undermind. It is the Undermind that helps us play golf, breathe, etc. And it is the Undermind that makes it possible for us to get what we seek. So while the conscious part of our mind is being ‘oh hum’, it is actually the other portion controlling our thoughts. And because the Undermind is interacting with other forces—and we are not even aware of it, the sly devil—it is, as Bob said, directing the play we are seeing. So the question becomes, how do we choose the play? I’ll get into that later but for now there is this: BELIEF IS EXPECTATION AND EXPECTATION IS BELIEF.
 
So, a brief synopsis of MWI is that choices create a new YOU, and that new YOU shares the same space as the old you, but its world is different. The new YOU brought along its friends, house car, etc into the world. This man is insane, you say---but hold on because if a hundred years ago I said that we’d be traveling in space and able to talk on a wristwatch, well---
Why accept this theory? There is a story about a drunk looking for his lost keys under a street light because he could see better there. Well, this theory answers a lot of my questions so until I find something better, I’ll stay where I can see.
 
So, assuming there are an infinite number of YOU’s and your brains are using the same space, do YOU interact? Of course, why wouldn’t YOU? And there is nothing to suggest that in our MWI, time is not accelerated or events compressed. When Jesus told the thief on the cross that today he would be with him in paradise, was that event compression or accelerated time? One or the other. Dreams about the future that come true are called psychic events, but perhaps they are simply another YOU travelling faster than you and seeing the future. What is intuition? De je vu moments?
 
For now, I’ll let this be digested, or thrown up—whatever, and go back to EXPECTATIONS AND BELIEF. We have the power to control our life to a much greater extent than we imagine. Jesus tried to tell us that when he said that with faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains. So what happened? Well, we chose to take this as a metaphor, to accept limitations rather than possibilities. All this while our Undermind was screaming, NO, NO, NO! Please listen to him. See, the Undermind knows but won’t force its will on us. We have to choose. Again Jesus said, that where people were gathered together, he would be there. To me this means that when thoughts are forming a consensus, there is great power. EXPECTION IS BELIEF. Your expectations tell the Undermind to get busy, so it does that through—well, networking. Remember, that thoughts interact. And here I’m talking about the world YOU now live in. So, get rid of those negative thoughts and grab onto the Undermind---have true faith, not hope, expect things to improve, and see what happens. Search under the streetlight.
 
MUCH MORE LATER---if you have issues or questions you can address them through my blog. They will be private.
 
 
Dick
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The Many Worlds Interpretation Assuming that we accept that in the eyes of the quantum physicist that with every choice you make, an alternate YOU is created to experience the other choice, then what happens? Well before going there let’s examine the s

4/28/2018

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T
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Is there an answer to the drug problem?

3/12/2018

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​I sometimes hear from people who knew Jerry in Prison and their thoughts are always interesting. My time in talking with him were interesting….and my thoughts on the criminal justice system have not changed. It is rigged against the poor.
 
There has to be a better way. If you have any doubts about our drug laws, check out the prison stats. See how many are thee because of some relatively minor drug offense. Again, there has to be a better way.
 
I’m including an article about one  nation where the drug problem was so bad, they tried something radical: decriminalize drugs.
 
Ten Years Ago Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs. What Happened Next?
By Tony O'Neill 07/13/11
When the drug-drenched nation legalized all drugs within its borders, most critics predicted disaster. Instead drug use has plunged dramatically.

Drug related deaths fell by 50%
Photo via thinkstockphotos
 
The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between. This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country’s spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country’s already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story. Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: “Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country."
Back in 2001, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV among injecting drug users in the European Union—an incredible 2,000 new cases a year, in a country with a population of just 10 million. Despite the predictable controversy the move stirred up at home and abroad, the Portuguese government felt there was no other way they could effectively quell this ballooning problem. While here in the U.S. calls for full drug decriminalization are still dismissed as something of a fringe concern, the Portuguese decided to do it, and have been quietly getting on with it now for a decade. Surprisingly, most credible reports appear to show that decriminalization has been a staggering success. 

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NATIONALISM---PART 2

1/25/2018

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So if we are to embrace nationalism, exactly what are we looking at? Robert Reich says there are two faces of nationalism. “The negative face ignores its global responsibilities while the positive face embraces domestic ones.” There is a shared value here, however, in that both embrace the America first belief. Many Americans who consider nationalism the same as patriotism consider the “America First” idea as the one we should embrace as patriots. Unfortunately, many of those don’t understand the economics of the world (I’m not implying that I do which is why I lean on experts.) Also unfortunate, it’s obvious that Trump doesn’t understand either. If you want to turn away from the world unless it meets our demands, good luck with that. President Trump is expected to deliver an “America First” message in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday. But the question for many nations is increasingly not so much whether America should be front and center of trade negotiations, but how much they should bother with it at all, suggest Ana Swanson and Jim Tankersley in The New York Times.
 
“As the world’s largest economy and architect of many international organizations and treaties, the United States remains an indispensable partner. But as the global economy gains strength, Europe and countries including Japan and China are forging ahead with deals that do not include the United States,” they write.
 
“Thirty-five new bilateral and regional trade pacts are under consideration around the world, according to the World Trade Organization. The United States is party to just one of them, with the European Union, and that negotiation has gone dormant. The United States is also threatening to withdraw from one of its existing multilateral agreements — the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada — if it cannot be renegotiated in the United States’ favor.
 
“‘Maybe there was some sort of presumption on the part of the president and his team that if the US said stop, this process would come to a halt,’ said Phil Levy, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and an economist in the George W. Bush administration. ‘What this shows is that’s not true. The world just moves on without us.’”
 
Okay, with the world ignored, what about turning our attention what Americans want---jobs, affordable education, health insurance, affordable housing, etc. Is this new nationalism going to focus on that? My answer is not under this Administration; in fact what I see is a “convenient nationalism” that’s like a bowl of jello—push it around to where it’s politically convenient. Otherwise there would already be an infrastructure bill on the floor and everything else would have to wait. That bill would actually help Americans by providing thousands of jobs on projects badly needed. Its estimated cost: in the neighborhood of 3.5 trillion! Compared to the 70 billion cost of building ‘the wall’----wow, these numbers are mind boggling to most of us. Of course the BIG difference is that the infrastructure project actually helps Americans. True nationalism void of political agendas would immediately recognize that. Every move Trump makes is tied to something that helps him politically, without much regard for whether or not it helps Americans.
 
He sees himself like a dictator who can’t understand why people don’t jump at his command. The rule of law is simply an inconvenience. Perhaps he will change over time but history indicates otherwise. Since running for the presidency and after obtaining it, he has encouraged an attitude of turning against minorities and immigrants. Is this because dictators are most successful when people become ethno-nationalists with the belief that this makes them superior?
 
This is already happening in many parts of the world as people look for scapegoats for economic problems, and immigrants are an easy target, followed closely by foreigners and minorities.  Bart Bonikowski, a Harvard associate professor of sociology who studies populist and nationalist movements, in discussing Aamerica, recently said, “There’s a good portion of the population that does … define the nation in ethno-cultural terms. They’re not all members of neo-Nazi groups, by any stretch of the imagination. They just have a particular understanding of what America is: a white, Christian America.”
 
I’ll delve more into this in the next epistle but for now I end with this statement by Robert Reich:  “….those who believe that membership in a society obligates the successful to help those who are falling behind should not recoil from appeals to nationalism. The moral force of social benevolence rests, after all, on the preexistence of strong bonds among a people who share common values and aspirations. Nationalism is not the danger. The real danger comes in allowing the negative nationalists to claim the mantle of patriotism
for their own ends. “
 
 
 

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    My name is Richard Biggs and I'm a writer. My latest book is about Jerry Allen LeQuire, a convicted drug kingpin, who rejected two offers from the CIA to work for them, and has been in a federal prison for over 30 years.

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