Armageddon, Anyone?

It is increasingly obvious that people are trying to annihilate themselves. Since the earliest times, populations have been threatened or even destroyed by natural catastrophes. Plagues, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves and earthquakes have been recorded or found to have occurred in areas where they have eliminated huge numbers of people. It is the modern age that has brought about the ingenious inventions that can cause comparable destruction. Of course, the human fascination with death is at the root of this. There is an ongoing demonstration that people can kill anything that lives, be it environmental or civilian. Incessant warring around the world has provided a convenient outlet for people's homicidal urges, which is a well-known source of study in social analysis. The populace must justify the existence of nuclear weapons, gas attacks or engineering of incurable killer viruses.

However, it is similar technology that often backfires and destroys the makers. In a similar fashion, industry is a threat to those that are developing and using it, as may be readily observed in the production and transportation of oil. The cancer rate climbs steadily due to the constant use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. Some say that these disasters are accidental, but what does one say about the tendency for it to happen repeatedly, in the same way? It seems that there is an overwhelming desire in human beings to bring about cataclysm, even if it causes their own demise. A suicidal nature in people has driven society for the past few centuries, either as a result of anti-personnel technology, or the uncontrolled quest for wealth. National leaders and corporate heads are willing to risk the welfare of an entire population for the sake of nominal success, and even when operations fail, there is always a pile of corpses to take responsibility. In fact it is beginning to look like the propagation of death and destruction is one of the main goals in human advancement.

One day dinosaurs will rule the Earth

...And Died Happily Ever After

Although there have been many mentions of resurrection in human culture and religion, the scientist is quick to dismiss the possibility that the dead can return to life. As medicine develops, it becomes more evident that the cessation of vital functions in a human body leads to an irreversible state of decay. Nevertheless, some patients have been revived after a short period of clinical death, and relate near-death experiences. Many religions advocate eternal life in some portion of their edict, along with the rare occurrence of a deity returning someone to Earth to accomplish some Godly purpose.

It's worth mentioning that various magicians have found it beneficial to demonstrate the power to invoke immortality. There are voodoo rituals that involve the use of elaborate drugs to invoke a death-like trance, and witnesses claim it's very convincing.

There have been documented cases of people being taken to be dead when they are, in fact still alive. It's easy to see how primitive cultures may have made this mistake, only to find a relative that was thought to be deceased walking about, scaring people half to death. Epidemics have led to mass burials, in which, inevitably, a person in comatose might have been buried along with the rest of the bodies, only to wake, finding themselves in a pit surrounded by corpses, underneath six feet of dirt.

Some people sleep like the dead.

He Followed me Home...

Of all the claims of strange phenomena perhaps the most actively researched are the reports of elusive monsters. Aside from the general fascination people have for folklore, the prospect of encountering a cryptid or some other mysterious creature in the remote areas of the world generates particular interest. For the most part, the existence of these unknown beasts has been discredited as hoax or otherwise biologically explainable, like the cases of re-discovering animals that were thought to be extinct. Experts are sometimes sent to the region where the story originates to report their findings but this has rarely resulted in the discovery of previously-unclassified species. There are at least twenty legends of lake monsters worldwide, and many of them describe similar characteristics: usually long-necked, aquatic creatures, sometimes scaly or serpent-like. The local people will soon report their monsters to whatever travelers or tourists are within earshot, and the story is thereafter associated with the area.

Tales like this are also prevalent in ancient mythology, as heroes and adventurers would be waylaid by a vicious storm on their voyages, only to find themselves in the sights of a hungry or generally ill-tempered leviathan of unknown origin. With great difficulty and cleverness they would slay this beast and eventually return home and attempt to explain where they had been for several decades. The experience would not only serve as an excuse for extreme tardiness and bad sense of direction, but it also reveals the necessity of discovery as humans develop zoology. Since an organism is not said to exist until one of them is documented by authorities, the location of such animals is awaited before they can be widely accepted as fact and no longer fiction. Until then, the account is deemed questionable, as was the case with some species of whales.

A whale is a fish, right?

Temporarily Immortalized

It's not hard to conclude that the makers of mummies were preoccupied with the morbid aspects of existence. Usually mummification was an honor reserved for the most important people in society like political leaders or members of the religious process. It was believed that the subject was important to the survival of the community, and they would endure spiritually, the dead together with the living. In fact, it was so vital that many times the subjects were sacrificed in order to generate this form. There was also a significant effort made to chemically preserve the body through a well-developed embalming process, as if the priests possessed the means to scientifically achieve immortality. When the person's physical life was over, they would embark on a well-defined journey that was set out for their eternal spirit beyond death.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that these kings occupied their bodies in the afterlife. Great pains were taken to prepare the king and his tomb before his death, so it's clear that the makers whole-heartedly held the view that they would be providing the proper pathway through eternity, but such beliefs are easily refuted by the modern archeologist, and the mummies get their travel passes revoked before being removed and dissected.

One curious aspect of mummification is that it is common to separate cultures in human history. Determining the need people have to believe that the dead are continuing to live on, watching over us in a new form, is considered an ongoing puzzle. There is a large portion of medical study dedicated to psychology, but no one is prepared to deal with the problem of the soul's location. Often it is just taken as a given that people expect death can't be the end, and these beliefs remain unquestioned. So if the soul of the dead subject doesn't remain in the body, where does it go?

Always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere.

The Never-Ending Quest for Infinity

It is clear that science seeks to explain the universe by taking into account the scale of what they're studying, be it macrocosmic, microcosmic, or somewhere in between. Eventually, the accepted authority must address the concept of infinity; they are confronted with the task of determining age, size and other characteristics immeasurable in certain phenomena. In a significant way, the resolution of these riddles are a source of much conjecture, and it seems that there is a constant progression of new and improved hypotheses to replace the last. For example, there are some cosmologists who suggest that the universe is contained in an expansive process, growing from a point of origin and continuing to some end, or seek to prove that time and space have finite dimensions with an innovative geometric solution. In the same regard, the infinitesimal study of subatomic composition is a source of modern theories about gluons or even quantum strings as the basis of all force-carrying particles. Both cases show a general lack of acceptance for infinite levels of structure in nature.

It is not unheard of that things go on forever, larger or smaller. In fact, such a statement negates a huge portion of the ongoing research. A good representation of infinity appears in the human intellect, when people wonder what they are. The number of possible answers to that question is infinite in and of itself, taking into account all of the potential factors, let alone the complexity of any explanation for life. On the other hand, the answer might be simple, involving purely the ego; maybe existence is just a figment of imagination and a person's essence is only constrained by the limitations of their self-awareness. The fact that people must find themselves and other things within some physical manifestation of universal laws is an indication of organizational skills. Of course, there is no way to regulate the course of nature, but people keep trying.

Imagine that!

Can You Hear the Voices in my Head?

Contemporary psychiatry concerns itself with finding medical solutions to the wide range of complex problems in mentally ill patients. As far as treatment of the patient's problem goes, the health professionals choose to diagnose disorders under general categories. For example, auditory hallucinations are usually considered to be a symptom of schizophrenia. The severity of the disorder is determined by the impact the hallucination is having on the subject, however, and in cases where they are led to confused thoughts and acts based on it, they are considered to be suffering from psychosis. Such diagnoses are in the interests of convenience, as the doctors want to find a quick and acceptable cure for all involved.

In reality the prescribed pharmaceuticals may or may not help the patient. They are simply the latest medication in a long series of products tested by drug manufacturers for their psychoactive effects on humans. In fact, the experimentation varies for each product and is continuing long after the chemical is in circulation and being administered. There's not as much study done of the cause of the auditory hallucinations as there is in the development of new psychiatric medication, but it is sufficient if their effects are kept controlled.

There are many examples in history of people communing with unseen entities, and having no medical explanation for it they were led to think they were listening to the voices made available to them by a greater power. This caused them to act accordingly, forming lives and beliefs around it. Some people are convinced you can actively pursue psychic communication as a form of telepathy, divining information from what you imagine you hear.

Can you just turn it down a bit?

Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Body

Most religions have theories on astral projection, concerning the transition of the human spirit between different planes of existence. There has to be somewhere for the essence of a person to go as it awaits the next phase of its development. Christianity supports a state of Limbo, while the Hindu religion is based on the caste system, where the person is re-incarnated based on their position in society. In Buddhism, transcendental meditation is the solution to a person's restless soul. The commonality between beliefs is that the spirit is expected to exit its present vessel and soar outside of the body.

It has been recorded that people have had out-of-body experiences when near death or in states of deep meditation. For these people, the experience is life-changing and has a great affect on their outlook. That can be easily understood because such observations can drastically alter what a person has been taught in their life. They are suddenly in a position to question the authoritarian views that are presented to them throughout their education, and must admit that their contemporaries don't have all the answers. In fact, there is always the nagging suspicion that they are continually being lied to, as different groups attempt to gain a following.

That puts people in the position of having to take sides. Do they want to discount any observation that is not reasonable to them, because they did not personally see it, or have no scientific proof? Or do they want to choose what unproven belief system to adopt based on faith? Or do they just choose to ignore the unexplained?

So many options!

The Ordered Mathematics of Chaos

There is a very involved study of chaotic geometry, the patterns traced out by objects under complex force systems. Using attractor theory, modern scientists seek to describe the path followed by these objects and find particle position as a function of the attractors. The mathematical solution to this problem shows that the term "chaos" is actually a misnomer. The intricate bands and striped patterns observed by physicists are really a product of cause and effect, as the given object subscribes to the given force system, and accurate streamlines of flow can be calculated. The problem remains, of course, because the complexity of the motion is often beyond contemporary equation solving, and the employment of numeric computing systems is necessary. Numeric integration uses a very basic technique of approximation which provides a solution after many iterations of the algorithm. This solution converges to the required curve in the limit of hypothetically infinite iterations, providing greater and greater precision, or more decimal places in the coefficients of the function.

However, it is well-known that the ancient Greeks had calculated universal constants in their studies of math and geometry. They were able to use beads of similar lengths to approximate a curve. They then reduced the length of the beads to get a more and more accurate answer. It is widely believed that this was the method used to make the first calculations of the number pi, by dividing the number of beads in a circle's circumference by the number in its diameter. This shows that the most basic trial-and-error methods can give rise to general solutions for the most complex mathematical problems. The struggle is to engage oneself into a tedious and potentially endless procedure, but people have done this with great success. In general, the solutions to life's unanswered questions are often found in the most obvious place.

This is convenient...

The Universe is Everything to Me

Humans have a lot of data on the subjects of physics and astronomy, ranging from planetary geology to quasar ages, and the proof is always mathematical. As time goes on, increasing numbers of mathematicians present their theories, advancing the study and increasing the overall data accumulation of the scientific community. This is to the benefit of scholars worldwide, and they show their appreciation by getting more and more followers in the general populace. These are usually people who are studying the observation for the sake of their education. In other words, they'd never heard of the phenomenon before their teacher exposed them to it. This leaves a gaping blank in the mind of anyone who wonders about existence and doesn't get an answer, but it was not always so.

In ancient history inference was welcomed as fact, which is evident in the first religious records. The word of the elders was the final word on any given subject, and their delusional views of the night sky were the latest astronomy. People need answers to all of their questions to avoid the unknown, and these inferences were better than nothing. Somehow, though, people have the miraculous ability to guess right sometimes, which explains the fact the ancients had knowledge of a lot of things in absence of modern tools. It is believed that the ancient Egyptians were able to use crude methods to determine star distances and proper motion. The people observing these things were commonly seen to have been sorcerers, possessing supernatural powers.

So the end justifies the means.

Life and/or Death

There is presently no official study of the big topic in everyone's life: death. Nevertheless it continues to be an important subject in many circles. Unfortunately, none of those circles have any notable government grants or research group investors, because death has no tangible bearing on the physical world that people involve themselves in full-time. Existence seems to be about working every day at a job in the hope of obtaining money, so that one may use this money to get food, thereby subsisting and continuing the cycle of reality. This is separate from imagination, of course, which is exclusively that which is not real. In fact, some of the most imaginative artists of the world are only successful because they have manifested their ideas in concrete form to market in the real world.

So society has created a huge rift between reality and the mind. Modern religion and science both assure this by encouraging belief in life experience as being completely separate from the senses, and mental conclusions beyond real life are termed fantasy. People are led to believe that perception is simply a biochemical reaction that provides them with information for their cognitive thought process, which no longer occurs when life ends.

The result of this belief system is that it completely eliminates the importance of existence beyond the physical body, so all of the questions about death persist in society. People try their best to be healthy and happy, but it is not known what the consequences of one's demise may be. Death itself is a given, but there is a noticeable lack of accounts of the death experience itself. There are always the obsolete views of the ancient peoples, which possess colorful specifics of the journey of the spirit as it progresses beyond the physical plane over a river, through a tunnel, up a set of stairs, etc. The interaction with the deities is a must, then the long-awaited and well-deserved R&R in some paradise or other.

No more worries...Did you remember to sign out?

Non-Scientifically Speaking...

The observance that people throughout history have believed in unproven ideas is the main evidence for the preponderance of anti-science. To the historian it would seem that the ancients were either religious fanatics or simpletons, because their practices were constantly based on the most popular hocus-pocus of the time. Interestingly enough, their actions and beliefs served to form a notable part of the world that we live in today, complete with inter-deity relationships that trace back to the first recorded historical accounts. This serves to spread given beliefs and make religion sustainable.

In general there is a lot of activity surrounding concepts that have no bearing on rational thinking, and people have needed and continue to need belief systems. Those systems may be approved or disapproved by local scholars, priests or politicians. In the end, most people subscribe to the developing thought system of the day.

This could mean one of two things is occurring. The first is that people are gradually becoming more reasonable as time goes on, allowing their studies to evolve and become more factually-based; and that ancient religions are simply a relic in the overall progress of intelligent beings. The second possibility is what makes the scientist shudder, and is simply the opposite of the first. It would be proposed that science and technology are systematically eliminating well-established knowledge of the universe, resulting in eventual ignorance.

Now we're getting anti-results!

Userkaf and his Pals Welcome Immortality!

There is a lot of theory describing life after death, especially given masses of people who live in a world filled with non-scientific ideas. Since astronomers really have no concrete idea of what or where humans are with respect to the universe, one must resign oneself to exist as a limited thinker. After all, the human mind is limited in its knowledge of math and physics as many answers are not available to people. Even though there are some things that people do not understand as individuals, the unknown science may be explored in the future, meaning that there is much information and improvement in knowledge that is to come. Another possibility is that this information may have been already known and believed at some time in ancient history, and lost in a recorded or non-recorded historical event.

Either case indicates the lack of information pertinent to having accurate knowledge today. In fact, the sheer amount of things that the world does not understand on any given subject is immense. The human race is a very confused people, and it is a miracle that they know anything at all with any reliable certainty. Nevertheless, people are always thinking about something absurd or pondering the impossible, busily trying to make their minds useful.

Logical reasoning is a useful tool but it does not help to support many of the plausible, yet unproven ideas that people have. It will provide definitive answers on many topics in a technological society, which is what the world is presently. The inadequacy of the modern methods is evident, though, as will be seen only in an environment governed by anti-science, which is what many of the ancients practiced. It is speculated that the knowledge possessed by them surpassed the factual database the way it is today, and led them to hold such beliefs that are unheard of or described as superstition. For example, it is well known that they were wholehearted believers in deities and made enthusiastic preparations for the afterlife.

Conclusion? Not necessarily.