Useful Beliefs
do you believe in Father Christmas, do you believe in a brave New Year?
do you believe in the ten commandments, is your life filled with fear?
To believe is to accept that something exists, or that something is true, when there is no evidence or proof to back up that belief. Millions of children around the world believe in Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas….. He will remain in the hearts of children forever, and the children have proof, he brings them toys and other gifts every Christmas. This belief is useful too, for doesn’t he have a list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, checking it twice before he leaves toys and presents for the nice children, and a lump of coal for the naughty boys and girls. A perfect cautionary tale for parents to blackmail their kids into being nice near Christmas.
Some beliefs are neither useful nor true ~ like a Flat Earth. Those who believe the Earth is flat are either deranged, or willfully stupid, or as thick as two short planks. There is plenty of evidence to prove the planet Earth is more or less a sphere, as are all the other planets visible through a telescope. Also believing in a flat Earth is not useful, since long-distance navigation is based on the great circle theory, which is navigating a ship or an aircraft using spherical trigonometry. Ergo believers in a flat Earth should never ever get on an aircraft or go on a cruise.
One does not have to believe everything one hears. ~ Cicero
Another belief that is neither useful or true is Alien Visitation. There are plenty of spurious reasons given to prove that alien visitation happens all the time, and I don’t believe any of them. There is also one crushing piece of evidence to disprove the very idea that creatures / people from the stars regularly visit the Earth ~ nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The nearest known exoplanet is 4.25 light years away, so allowing for basic physics that means a round-trip of about 12 years, even if our starship can get near the speed of light. Just never going to happen.
One false belief that is useful is in Pythagoras’ theorem; the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Or more practically just remember 3,4,5. This is mostly true, but some believe it is always true. Try navigating from England to New York using Pythagoras and the Gods only know where you will land. Sometimes even the dearest held, and most provable belief is only mostly true.
Believing in God, any God, is maybe the most commonly held belief of them all, along with whichever prophet fits the religion of your choice. This belief is useful to many, especially the clergy of every religion, but there is no proof whatsoever, and that’s the whole point. Religion is all about Faith not Belief ~ and if you start to look into Faith you get into a circular argument. Anyway I think religion isn’t based on faith, it’s about the fear of eternal damnation
Some say that real belief needs no proof. And that faith is trust without reservation. All I know is I trust scientific and engineering methodologies more than I trust priests and demagogues. And I believed in Love.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
the Earth is positively not flat
Music ~ Flat Earth
I have come to believe that the shape of the Earth cannot be proven. ~ Albert Einstein
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Following on from my post earlier in the week about self-deluded people who believe in a flat Earth, here’s a song about a woman who seems to believe that the Earth isn’t round.
When it comes to believing in very strange theories, it’s almost always a woman.
Please listen responsibly.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
well, there you go
the Earth is round, after all
The Flat Earth Conspiracy
Those who are able to see beyond shadows will never be understood.
April Fools Day
The Earth from Space. (that’s Atlanta GA in the centre)
A bunch of conspiracy theorists who persist in believing that the Earth is flat are planning a trip to Antarctica to see ‘the end of the world’. I think they really mean the “edge of the world”, but you wouldn’t expect anyone who believes in a flat Earth to have a good grasp of semantics.
Good luck on that trip. If the Earth really was as flat as a pancake they would never get there because all navigation by sea and air relies entirely on the fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid ~ that is not at all flat.
Mind you, as the next meeting of the Flat Earth International Conference will be held in Dallas, Texas, the spiritual home of conspiracy theories. I’m guessing that their meetings are filled with febrile debates about nothing that is within shouting distance of reality. You know what? I would have expected the Flat Earth Bunch to be headquartered in California, where they really do know how to party with psychoactive substances.
There is no evidence whatsoever for a flat Earth, other than the evidence of our own eyes when our feet are planted firmly on the ground. In that case, when we look around us, the Earth does seem flat ~ other than hills and mountains, and valleys, and gorges….. The Pythagorean theorem, one of the oldest mathematical proofs in Euclidian Geometry, is predicated on the Earth being flat. However, Pythagoras falls apart when great distances across the Earth are involved, in which case we need to use spherical trigonometry. (Which only works for big balls.)
As far back as Columbus in 1492 AD, navigators knew the Earth was a spheroid, although Columbus got the circumference badly wrong. The Norse Vikings knew the Earth was a sphere when they travelled to America in about 1,000 AD. The Ancient Greeks were thinking about a spherical Earth in the 6th Century BC, and before that the Phoenicians navigated great distances based on the idea that the Earth was a sphere.
The Moon is a sphere too
Only in the Bible is the idea of a flat Earth much popularised, and as we all know, everything in the bible can be treated as the Gospel Truth. However, if you are interested in exploring the flat Earth conundrum, the Flat Earth Society has a cool website https://www.tfes.org/
Some say that NASA’s sole reason for existence is to propagandize the public and promote this false ball-Earth heliocentric worldview. And that there was never a moon landing, it was all shot in a studio in Culver City. All I know is that some gullible fools are eager to believe the stupidest pseudo-scientific dross. And the moon really is made of green cheese.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
some say that real women have absolutely no sense of direction, and that no woman will ever admit that they’re wrong, some of that is mostly true
Social Media Vampires
Social media is a double-edged sword ~ you can cut yourself.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spent 45 hours or so listening to and watching a whole bunch of lessons given through the Hay House World Summit. Some of the speakers were excellent, and as you’d expect, a few talked utter crap.
One of the most useful things I heard was from a guy called Brendan Birchard, who said that for the first hour of every day, don’t even look at your social media. All you are doing by looking at something like Twitter first thing in the morning is checking on everyone else’s agenda, and letting them take control of your life.
Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self. ~ Hozier
A lady called Carrie Green also said that if you’re going to use social media, then use it well, have a purpose behind your use of Facebook, Twitter, whatever, and stay focused. Don’t just throw away the hours by blindly following some jerk you’ve come across on the internet.
It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time. ~ Alexis Ohanian
Do not blindly believe everything you are told on social media. One only has to read what the current President of the United States writes on Twitter to know that false truths abound on social media. Most of the supposed ‘facts’ I’ve read on Facebook are utter dross ~ for example ‘Flat Earthers‘ expound their idiotic views on Facebook sites, as do the deluded proponents of ‘Alien Visitation and Abduction‘. Social media is the easiest place to go to find something utterly untrue.
The dark side of social media is that, within seconds, anything can be blown out of proportion and taken out of context. And it’s very difficult not to get swept up in it all. ~ Nicola Formichetti
Very negative views proliferate on social media, and personal attacks abound. One only has to write something a little ‘controversial’ to find yourself subject to vitriolic personal attacks. And, whatever you write, you are certain to find some wazzock who disagrees with you ~ vehemently. Do not put your own self-worth in the hands of another by reading their crap. The only stuff I read are posts on this WordPress blog site, and I have a rule that I immediately ‘unfollow’ anyone who attacks me or uses inappropriate bad language. If you have to use a word like ‘cunt’ in your posts then you obviously have the IQ of a retarded gnat.
Anyhow, if you swear or post anything inappropriate on social media it could cost you your job and land you in trouble with the law.
One in five employers says they have rejected a candidate after looking at what they’ve been getting up to online. ~ Joe Myers, Huffington Post
And, as we all now know, the social media sites will steal and misuse your personal information in a myriad of utterly heinous ways. Nothing you have ever posted on social media is private.
Some say that too much of what you see on social media will create negative attitudes, negative feelings, and negative thoughts within you. And, that negative thoughts are like vampires because they can take over your mind. All I know is that you will find nothing of real value by looking for it on Facebook.
Your ‘friends’ on social media are not real friends.
Social media is not real life.
But then, sitting at the end of the bar sucking down beers isn’t real life either.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
every form of addiction is bad, whether it be alcohol, cocaine, dope, idealism, or the internet
JackCollier7 
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