When some people think about the injustices in the world, atrocities of war and the bad luck in good people’s lives they feel that God is uncaring. We could look at life as a series of challenges for us all. Good and bad experiences can help us grow and to realize our place in the universe. Or can they? Our demand for goodness and justice could be a result of our mistaken idea that we hold an important place in the scheme of things.

This video featuring astronomer Carl Sagan is a reality check for those who think we are the center of things and maybe a source of hope for people who feel that simply living life as we find it could be the way to go.

This video is about a strange figure appearing in a photo taken at the scene of a woman’s miraculous survival of a car crash.

Does a soul enter my body at birth or during gestation or is it something that grows? Is it made by my undergoing certain kinds of experiences as is stated in Monty Python’s Meaning Of Life? And am I so desperate that I turn to some movie for answers?

Some people feel that to know what happens after death I must observe the way nature works. If I can understand the recurring patterns in life, then maybe I can understand what death is and how it affects me.

Here, in a nutshell is what science can tell us about the survival of consciousness after death:

“If consciousness is energy, then I suppose you don’t need proof that it survives death, because proof already exists: the First Law of Thermodynamics – energy is neither created or destroyed. Though it’s hard to take much comfort from this. Who wants to spend eternity as a blip, a gnat’s fart, of disordered energy, with no brain at your disposal to help you remember or imagine or solve the Sunday crossword? What would it be like? Would there even be a be? Nahum uses the analogy of the computer: perhaps you’d be the operating system, stripped of its programs and interfaces. Heaven as the back of the closet where the broken-down Dells and Compaqs go.

If we are to eventually have our answer, our proof, it will no doubt come to us courtesy of quantum theory, or whatever takes its place. Few of us will understand it well enough to take much comfort, however, if indeed comfort is what it offers. I recommend that you enjoy life without worrying about the “after” bit, and keep in mind that one day altogether too soon, bad luck or genetics will hand you the answer.”
newscientist.com

One of the areas of life experience that is supposed to help us understand what death is about is the Near Death Experience. Here is a video that will give you some insight into that subject.

There are some people who don’t wish to accept Darwin’s ideas or any ideas that contradict the account of creation that is given in the Bible. The bible’s version of the creation of life may or may not be an attempt by people a very long time ago to explain our world. As the Bible’s account of creation does not match with the evidence found by science it would seem natural to regard the Bible as a redundant form of science. Instead many people are upset that another account of creation has arisen and are actively engaged in telling whoever will listen that scientists are either deluded or lying. Or else people who say the Bible is not scientific are misrepresenting science.

The most interesting aspect of this debate is that there are people actively engaged in lying about what scientists are saying while at the same time saying that they are following the teachings of Jesus Christ who was greatly in favor of telling the truth. One of the main departures from the truth is that so-called creation science is a legitimate alternative to Darwin’s ideas that is for some reason being suppressed by advocates of mainstream science.

From a website called Media Angels comes a creation science coloring book. According to the website, “Media Angels is a company formed at the Lord’s leading. It is about letting children learn there are two sides to the story of God’s creation, and here at Media Angels we agree that God tells the TRUTH, and we believe H.I.S. Story as stated in Genesis.” Here is the Free Coloring Book

So if you believe that an ancient fable is the “other side” to science based on evidence, then you probably should revive a few other “sciences” like the idea that disease is caused by miasma and radio waves are carried by the ether.

Just to give you an idea of what creationists call science, here is an article called When The God Of Empiricism Fails – Science Blocks Its Ears

Trying to stop aging invoves something in the here and now that we don’t like. Discipline. We are in a world where we subject ourselves to voluntary hardship or suffer the consequences.

Aubrey de Grey has some ideas about prevention of aging, so if you have twenty minutes or so, take a look at this video.

In some pictures family members posed with the dead person and some even featured double exposures taken of an actor to give the impression of the loved one’s spirit watching over the family.

Before you go thinking how sick all this is, remember that the death rate among children was extreme and that childbirth and disease claimed many more lives than they do now. So it’s understandable that people were anxious to make use of the new art of photography to keep the memory of loved ones alive.

In some of the photos you will notice that the dead person was made to look as though they were alive. Indeed, in some pictures you can’t tell the difference between the dead people and the live ones.

We plan our work time. We know if we don’t plan we won’t get enough done. So why don’t we plan to fit important leisure activities into our day? If we plan to take a walk along a mountain trail we feel that we have achieved something. If we watch re-runs of Seinfeld for the tenth time because it involves not moving much, we have just succumbed to inertia.

When you look back on your life, what kind of moments would you rather look back on? The inertia moments or the planned mountain trail moments?

If you are overwhelmed by the things that you have to do like taking the kids to soccer practice, maybe you need to cut down on some of these things. This is a very important time in finding out the truth in your life because sometimes the things we consider to be drudgery turn out to be things that we feel are really important. So the best thing we can do when we are trying to plan our lives is to ask ourselves if we are getting our direction from our own desires and aspirations or are we just reacting to cues from our environment.

Our culture is telling us the things that are cool and if we don’t really want those things then we are making ourselves sick trying to conform.

This video shows how we all succumb to the forces exerted by our surroundings. What we see is a contrived experiment illustrating peer pressure but we are given the opportunity all the time to choose a course of action and we usually let inertia do our thinking for us.

Of course, basically we do not understand what life and the universe is all about so we are willing to at least take a look at any ideas that some authorities come up with. The trouble is, once applying thought power to the occurrence of coincidences in our lives gets too hard, it’s easy to forget ti and think about something more immediately rewarding.

We see patterns in nature. The shells on the beach, the snowflakes, the stars. The patterns do not resemble each other but they are patterns all the same. So what’s the difference? The material the patterns occur in? Scale? Our vantage point as an observer? Are coincidences just patterns that occur in events and thoughts instead of sand and ice?

I guess it’s a matter of choosing which way we are going to look at synchronicity. It’s a matter of preference – we want there to be meaning in life or we want ti all to be meaningless, or an alternative is meaningful but unfathomable. The choice is a product of our conditioning. But do we need to lie to ourselves to justify our point of view?

Some say that the only meaning in the coincidences we notice is the meaning we impose on it. We notice it when an old school friend calls just after we’ve been thinking of them but we don’t pause to think about the times we thought of someone and they didn’t call.

If it is true that synchronicity happens all the time and we do not notice it, then we should be paying more attention to the happenings in the world and the thoughts and feelings in our own selves. So maybe instead of “explaining” synchronicity we should be just looking to see if we recognize it. Like looking for a face in a crowd.

If we were able to notice the flow of thoughts, reactions and feelings in ourselves as we respond to the world, we might have some understanding if synchronicity is something spooky or just another pattern.

Now that we have a real flu outbreak that may or may not turn nasty, it’s a good time to look at a couple of imaginary illnesses that gripped small communities in the not too distant past. We should take note that the internet has made the whole world a small community, ripe for the effects of the next outbreak of threats to our wellbeing.

In 1983 some people who lived in the area of the Jordan West Bank started getting pains in the head and stomach regions and suffering fainting spells. Around this time rumors of poison gas attacks aimed at Palestinians were circulating in the area. One batch of sixty-four people sought medical help after a passing car with a wonky exhaust, fuelled stories of a gas attack. No real evidence of gas attacks was ever found.

In 1988 at Atlanta, Georgia a bunch of chatting parents started and perpetuated talk of the school building being responsible for a general failing f health amongst students. A couple of minor gas leaks at the school over a period of about a month didn’t help matters. Eventually things settled down without any students reporting symptoms their parents were expecting.

What we learn from these stories is that imaginary symptoms of illness can destroy relationships and self esteem just as surely as real illness can destroy lives. Another aspect to mass hysteria is “mean world syndrome” that affects people if their perception of the world is overly influenced by what they take in as they sit in front of the television.

There is a common myth that terrorists are fighting for some principle or for some kind of rights that they have been deprived of. The kind of people who are attracted to terrorism do not seem to be interested in property or money. Yes, they will take it if we offer it, but it is never enough.

In the fight between Israeli forces and the PLO, the Palestinian forces are allowed to go back to Gaza and the West Bank to inaugurate the Palestinian Authority. Instead of devoting their energies to forming a community, the Palestinians started a wave of suicide bombings in public gathering places.

Palestine has had Gaza returned and all Jews relocated leaving infrastructure that could have been useful in starting a new life. Instead the terrorists razed the buildings they had been left and began firing rockets on the Gaza border towns of Ashkelon and Sderot.

There is an argument that Israel provoked Palestine by stealing lands but that does not explain why Al Quaeda has a quarrel with the USA. Some people say that the terrorists want America to remove itself from the Middle East, but all indications are that Osama Bin Laden wants to show America that he is the boss.

Bin Laden was affronted when the Saudi’s rejected his offer of help in protecting their oil fields from Saddam Hussein’s forces in favor of America’s protection. As a result, the world is being made to sit up and acknowledge Bin Laden as Islam’s champion.