Religion Place

Aladura

2008-05-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

Aladura ("Prayer People") is a Yoruba term for various prophet-healing churches that have developed in west Africa since about 1918.

Date founded: c.1922-1930
Place founded: West Nigeria
Founder: various founders
Adherents: approx. 1 million

Anglican communities had flourished among the Yoruba between 1895 and 1920, after the arrival of missionaries. The Aladura movement began about 1918 among the younger elite in the well-established Christian community based on dissatisfaction with Western religious forms, European control of the churches, and lack of spiritual power. The were also influenced by literature from the small U.S. divine-healing Faith Tabernacle Church of Philadelphia.

The 1918 world influenza epidemic precipitated the formation of a prayer group of Anglican laymen at Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria; the group emphasized divine healing, prayer protection, and a puritanical moral code. By 1922 divergences from Anglican practice forced the separation of a group that became known as the Faith Tabernacle, with several small congregations.

The main expansion occurred when a prophet-healer, Joseph Babalola (1906–59), became the center of a mass divine-healing movement in 1930. Yoruba religion was rejected, and Pentecostal features that had been suppressed under U.S. influence were restored. Opposition from traditional rulers, government, and mission churches led the movement to request help from the pentecostal Apostolic Church in Britain. Missionaries arrived in 1932, and the Aladura movement spread and consolidated as the Apostolic Church.

But problems arose over the missionaries' use of Western medicines—clearly contrary to doctrines of divine healing—their exclusion of polygamists, and their assertion of full control over the movement. So in 1938–41 the Babalola and (later Sir) Isaac Akinyele formed the Christ Apostolic Church, which by the 1960s had 100,000 members and its own schools and had spread to Ghana. The Apostolic Church continued its connection with its British counterpart; other secessions produced further "apostolic" churches.

The Cherubim and Seraphim society was founded by Moses Orimolade Tunolase, a Yoruba prophet, and Christiana Abiodun Akinsowon, an Anglican woman who had experienced visions and trances. In 1925–26 they formed the society with doctrines of revelation and divine healing replacing traditional charms and medicine. They separated from the Anglican and other churches in 1928. In the same year the founders parted, and further divisions produced more than 10 major and many minor sections, which spread widely in Nigeria and to Benin (formerly Dahomey), Togo, and Ghana.

A smaller movement, the self-help Aiyetoro ("happy city"), was built on piles on a lagoon mudbank east of Lago by a group of persecuted Cherubim and Seraphim in 1947. Men and women lived separately, strict morals were enforced, a radical economic communism and diverse sophisticated business activities resulted in great prosperity for more than 2,000 members, and death was believed to have been conquered. But by the 1970s internal dissension had appeared and the original utopian impetus had faded.

The Church of the Lord (Aladura) is the largest Aladura movement. It was founded by Josiah Olunowo Oshitelu, an Anglican catechist and schoolteacher, whose unusual visions, fastings, and devotions led to his dismissal in 1926. By 1929 he was preaching judgment on idolatry and native charms and medicines, uttering prophecies, and healing through prayer, fasting, and holy water. The Church of the Lord (Aladura), which he founded at Ogere in 1930, spread to north and east Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond Africa—New York City and London—where several other Aladura congregations also meet.

Developments since the 1970s have been replacing the Aladura form with Pentecostal Revivalist movements influenced by American models, such as the Church of God Mission in Benin City, and with "spiritual science" movements. The latter meet similar needs as the Aladura by offering semi-secret knowledge of how to acquire spiritual power, and are modeled on examples outside of Christianity such as Subud and the Rosicrucians, which have been long present in Nigeria.

The Aladura movement continues to grow and includes many small secessions, ephemeral groups, prophets with one or two congregations, and healing practitioners in west Africa, Britain, and the United States.

Aladura practices are a mix of Anglican and African rituals. In the Church of the Lord (Aladura), for example, ministers are given an iron rod about two and a half feet long, looped in a handle at one end, as part of their insignia of office. It symbolizes the powers of the prophet. A prophet touches the objects he consecrates brought by people who come for prayers and healing sessions. Rosaries are used to consecrate water or to pray the psalms. Vestments and gowns are widely used.

Some creative Name boards of US churches!!

2008-05-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

The wrong religion

2008-04-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

By: Steve
When atheists criticise the more risible aspects of religion or the actions of believers, the faithful often respond with something along the lines of “your point is worthless because that’s not real religion”. Do they have a point? Or are they indulging in a peculiar form of bigotry?

This raises an important question. Who gets to decide what is real religion? More importantly, perhaps, how do we discern which is the real Christianity, which the real Islam?

Islam, of course, has only a handful of variants. The miscellaneous flavours of Christianity, on the other hand, are many and various. Each one of them believes it has exclusive access to the truth.

At this point, one is reminded of the response to Christians usually attributed to Richard Dawkins but espoused by many atheists: that we are all atheists. Christians do not believe in many thousands of gods. Atheists just go one god further. This is rather well presented in this table of Christian and atheist beliefs.

It’s all about definitions. Every faith sets its own terms. Religions are self-defining. They are not constrained by evidence, by the historical record, not even by the physical laws of the universe or common sense. Every sect gets to define what it regards as ‘Christian’ behaviour.

The Digger mentioned above - who evidently defines himself as a Christian - had a very simple rule for determining what constitutes acceptable Christian behaviour. Give people a Bible and let them point to the section that validates their actions.

Alas, this is simple to the point of being simple-minded. First, which Bible? Various translations have been used at different times to support widely varying behaviour. Second, the Bible, as we all know, is infuriatingly vague and frequently self-contradicting. It is not an homogeneous work but a rather slipshod cobbling together of texts with inconsistent and incompatible philosophies, ethics and narratives. Even the three synoptic gospels can’t get their story straight. So each Christian sect tends to pick carefully those sections most amenable to it.

Third, many Christian faiths insist that the Bible is not to be read literally. Only those fundamentalist sects whose appeal is mainly to the more knuckle-dragging sections of society ask us to take every word as literal truth. The majority of Christians accept some, if not all, sections of the Bible as allegorical or metaphorical. Everything, then, depends on interpretation. And if you want to behave in a certain way, if you want to invoke divine approval for your actions, you are likely to be able to find something in the Bible that you can interpret as supporting your actions. This is why the frequently made assertion that the Bible (and only the Bible) is the bedrock of ethics and morality is so laughable. The Bible can be made to endorse anything (including slavery and genocide).

So let’s look again at where we came in. Some self-defined Christians commit a particular act, in conformance - as they see it - with their beliefs. But it’s an act that those of us in the real world consider heinous or ludicrous, and we say so. Then some other Christian comes along and says, “hey, those guys aren’t real Christians. You’re just using their behaviour as a way of having a cheap shot at all Christians.”

What this person is doing is using their own, necessarily narrow definition of Christianity to condemn the others as “not really Christians”. They are saying, “only my definition is valid” and “these people are not entitled to call themselves Christian”. That’s bigotry.

It is also a cheap trick. Christians can simply keep moving the goalposts, claiming that any action or belief criticised as secularists isn’t ‘Christian’ anyway, so the criticism is obviously an egregious attack on ‘true’ Christians.

I’m not tarring every Christian with this particular brush. There are many who state their beliefs plainly and have the courage to stick to them and take responsibility for them. When someone’s faith leads them into actions that cause harm to others, we have a perfect right to criticise not just the people themselves but the faith that coerced them into irresponsible behaviour. For other Christians simply to wash their hands of this issue by brushing off the miscreants as ‘not really Christian’ is cowardly and dishonest.

Math + religion = Trouble

2008-04-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Actually, since Pythagoras the relationship between men of numbers and the Deity has been more along the lines of love-hate, but it's a rich vein

Ron Csillag
Special to the Star

Which math-phobic among us has not beseeched God for help with another colon-clenching algebra or calculus exam? Had we heeded the words of the German mathematician Leopold Kronecker, perhaps we would have realized we've been talking to the wrong person: "God made the integers; all else is the work of man."

Pythagoras, who gave us his eponymous theorem on right-angled triangles, headed a cult of number worshippers who believed God was a mathematician. "All is number," they would intone.

The 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza echoed the Platonic idea that mathematical law and the harmony of nature are aspects of the divine. Spinoza, too, posited that God's activities in the universe were simply a description of mathematical and physical laws. For that and other heretical views, he was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community.

German mathematician Georg Cantor's work on infinity and numbers beyond infinity (the mystical "transfinite") was denounced by theologians who saw it as a challenge to God's infiniteness. Cantor's obsession with mathematical infinity and God's transcendence eventually landed him in an insane asylum.

For the Hindu math genius Ramanujan, an uneducated clerk from Madras who wowed early 20th-century Cambridge, an equation "had no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God." Though an agnostic, the prolific Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos imagined a heavenly book in which God has inscribed the most elegant and yet unknown mathematical proofs.

And famously, Albert Einstein said God "does not play dice" with the universe.

What is it with God and mathematics? Even as science and religion have quarrelled for centuries and are only recently exploring ways to kiss and make up, mathematicians have been saying for millennia that no truer expression of the divine can be found than in an ethereally beautiful equation, formula or proof.

Witness, for example, such transcendent numbers as phi (not to be confused with pi), often called the Divine Proportion or the Golden Ratio. At 1.618, it describes the spirals of seashells, pine cones and symmetries found throughout nature. Other mysterious constants like alpha (one-137th) and gamma (0.5772...) pop up in enough odd places to suggest to some that they are an expression of the underlying beauty of mathematics, and to others that someone or something planned it that way.

But does that translate into actual belief?

The New York Times reported recently that mathematicians believe in God at a rate 2 1/2 times that of biologists, quoting a survey of the National Academy of Sciences. Admittedly, that's not saying much: Only 14.6 per cent of mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis, versus 5.5 per cent of biologists (versus some 80 per cent of Canadians who believe in a supreme being).

Count John Allen Paulos among the non-believers. A mathematician who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia and who has popularized his subject in bestselling books such as Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Paulos's latest offering is a slim but explosive volume whose title is self-explanatory: Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (Hill & Wang).

This newest addition to the neo-atheist field crowded by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others emboldened by the recent transformation of non-belief from a 97-pound weakling into a he-man, Paulos thankfully employs little math, preferring to see things, as he tells us, in the stark light of "logic and probability."

Deploying "a lightly heretical touch," he dissects a playlist of "golden oldies" that includes the first-cause argument (sometimes tweaked as the cosmological argument, which hinges on the Big Bang), the argument for intelligent design, the ontological argument (crudely, that if we can conceive of God, then God exists), the argument from the anthropic principle (that the universe is "fine-tuned" to allow us to exist), the moral universality argument, and others.

The famous Pascal's wager – that it's in our self-interest to believe in God because we lose nothing in case He does exist – is upended as logically flawed, based on what statisticians call Type I and Type II errors.

Lord knows Paulos isn't the first mathematician to proclaim his lack of religious faith. Cambridge's famous wunderkind G.H. Hardy loudly and proudly adjudged God to be his enemy. To Erdos, God, if He existed, was "the supreme fascist."

Even as Paulos works to refute the classical arguments for God's existence, he does something too few of his mindset do: Chide non-believers for unsportsmanlike conduct.

"It's repellent for atheists or agnostics," he admonishes, "to personally and aggressively question others' faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing."

That doesn't prevent him from doffing the gloves. The ontological argument is "logical abracadabra.'' The design, or teleological argument, is a "creationist Ponzi scheme'' that "quickly leads to metaphysical bankruptcy.''

Much of theology is "a kind of verbal magic show.'' A claim that a holy book is inerrant because the book itself says so is another logical black hole.

However, math, specifically something called Ramsey theory, which studies the conditions under which order must appear, can account for the illusion of divine order arising from chaos.

Paulos provides a nice counterpoint to theoretical physicist Stephen Unwin's 2003 book The Probability of God, which calculated the likelihood of God's existence at 67 per cent, and to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's use of a probability formula known as Bayes' theorem to put the odds of Christ's resurrection at 97 per cent.

Those and other efforts remind one of the story, perhaps apocryphal, of Catherine the Great's request of the German mathematical giant Leonhard Euler to confront atheist French philosopher Denis Diderot with evidence of God. The visiting Euler agreed, and at the meeting, strode forward to proclaim to the innumerate Frenchman: "Sir, (a+bn)/n = x, hence God exists. Reply!"

Diderot was said to be so dumbfounded, he immediately returned to Paris.

To Paulos, the tale is a great example of "how easily nonsense proffered in an earnest and profound manner can browbeat someone into acquiescence."

His arguments notwithstanding, Paulos concedes that there's "no way to conclusively disprove the existence of God."

The reason, he notes, is a consequence of basic logic, but not one "from which theists can take much heart."

As for the problem of good and evil, he defers to fellow atheist, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: "With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion."

Or as Paulos might say, no mathematician has ever deliberately flown planes into buildings.

Religious Tattoos

2008-04-06T08:40:00.001-07:00

Religious Tattoos

Vampire Slayer Kit

2008-04-03T05:25:00.001-07:00

SYMPTOMS OF RELIGIOUS ADDICTION

2008-03-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

Inability to think, doubt, or question religious information and/or authority

Black-and-white, good/bad, either/or simplistic thinking: one way or the other

Shame-based belief that you aren't good enough or you aren't doing it right

Magical thinking that God will fix you/ do it all, without serious work on your part

Scrupulosity: rigid obsessive adherence to rules, codes of ethics, or guidelines

Uncompromising judgmental attitudes: readiness to find fault or evil out there

Compulsive or obsessive praying, going to church or crusades, quoting scripture

Unrealistic financial contributions

Believing that sex is dirty; believing our bodies or physical pleasures are evil

Compulsive overeating and/or excessive fasting

Conflict and argumentation with science, medicine, and education

Progressive detachment from the real work, isolation and breakdown of relationships

Psychosomatic illness: back pains, sleeplessness, headaches, hypertension

Manipulating scripture or texts, feeling specially chosen, claiming to receive special messages from God

Maintaining a religious "high", trance-like state, keeping a happy face (or the belief that one should...)

Attitude of righteousness or superiority: "we versus the world," including the denial of one's human-ness.

Confusion, great doubts, mental, physical or emotional breakdown, cries for help

The ultimate temptation of the believer is to assume that his or her way to God is the best or only way for others. The particular Way to God becomes what is adored, not the ineffable and incomprehensible Mystery to which we give the name of God.

In essence we have become addicted to the certainty, sureness or sense of security that our faith provides. It is no longer a living by faith, with hope and growing in unconditional love.

Top 10 reasons to belive logic over religion.

2008-03-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

The argument that because complex life exists, it must have been “created” is ridiculous, and it’s time someone said it. Yay, we have lots of chromosomes, we can see in color and keep erections for 4+ hours (commercials say see a doctor, I’d rather see a sorority house), but explaining away the unexplainable with magical explanations is as real as the emails I get from the prime minister of Nigeria who wants to send me $4 million dollars via a cashiers check.

1. “Earth is the perfect environment, it had to have been made for us”

Nai-eve. Get real. I point you to Arachaea, aka Archaebacteria and Extremophiles. These miraculous organisms live in ridiculously extreme climates. Climates much like that of, I don’t know, other planets perhaps? The point is, different kinds of life require different things. Ours needs water, oxygen and beer. Anyway, as far as we know, in the 9 planets (fuck you, Pluto still counts) we have in our Solar System, we’re the only ones with real sentient life, so I guess that means we’re the only ones right? Oh wait, I forgot about the BILLIONS+ of other planets and solar systems in other galaxies and what not that we haven’t been to or seen up close. So we’re here, great, that’s awesome, but if it were so damn perfect, Canada would be part of the United States, it wouldn’t be so damn cold here in the winter, and Yellow Stone would shoot up Budweiser. Hey, a guy can dream right?

2. Free Will - Contradicting a Contradiction

God “gives” us “Free Will” so that we can choose which path to follow. He knows what we’re going to do, but he’s “giving” us the choice to, uhm, choose what he already knows we’re going to do? To put it simply, if God can know 100% without a doubt you’re going to do it, it’s set in stone, you can’t change it, you’re just fulfilling destiny or a “plan” laid out by someone else. Either he gives us free will to do what we want (in which case there are many different paths and there is no way to KNOW which one we’ll do), or it’s all an illusion and you’ve got a puppet string coming out of your ass.

3. Hillary Clinton is leading the polls

If there is a God, and he does love us, then this would never have happened. Every time I realize my calendar doesn’t say April, I wonder if there is a God and he has a sick sense of humor, but then it would have to be a really, really sick sense of humor.

4. Evolution

I don’t actually think that evolution disproves creationism, actually if there was an “intelligent designer” this would have been an “intelligent design” to build in. It’s nature’s undo button once you figure out that giving tigers the ability to fly just wasn’t the best idea out on the market. But since the church feels that evolution cannot co-exist with creationism, point me.

5. Intelligent Designs lack of a designer

Aren’t we smart, we are truly awesome. Don’t misunderstand me, I love walking on two legs and peeing standing up, but telling me that we have to be created by a magical being just because we exist, begs questioning.

Logic dictates that if (a) we are here so we must have come from somewhere, i.e. a “designer” who is more complex and intelligent than us, then (b) a complex and intelligent designer, would also have to have come from somewhere i.e. a “designer” who is even more complex and intelligent.

If the reasoning for a God is we’re here, then where did he come from? My favorite famous lines are “he always was” and “no one knows”. Shave the wool off your back and follow the herd if you believe that. If someone HAD to have created us, they would have HAD to have been created. If our creator could have ALWAYS been or just magically appeared, then so could we have.

We can’t just assert that God is mightier and he just magically came to be, if that’s the logic, I say someone still had to find him in the bottom of a cereal box, it’s a paradox.

6. Ron Paul is behind in the polls

“Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital.” He’s advocating for FREEDOM, come on, how can you not love freedom. He wants to legalize pot and I’ve seen him kiss at least 6 babies in the past week. He wants to get rid of the IRS, imagine a world without angry letters from those bastards! If God existed, Ron Paul wouldn’t be just President, he would have been made Co-God back in the 60s.

7. Pot is illegal but Alcohol is A-Okay

Alcohol, the leading cause of drunk driving, and as such the leading cause of alcohol-related deaths, is totally cool for me to drive down to the liquor store to pick up and binge drink on. On the flip side, lighting up a joint and scarfing down a large pizza or two will get you boned hard. If God was around, he’d rather I eat a bag of Doritos and pass out than get drunk, beat my wife and piss on the couch. The worst that can happen with pot is smoking yourself stupid and passing out, but alcohol makes people angry. Hulk mad. If only there were a God… and then Ron Paul would set the record straight.

8. Bad things happen to good people, great things happen to bad people

For a society that constantly gets the short end of the stick when it comes to miracles, I’ve never fully understood how people can whipe away such an obvious shortcoming with one or two hail marys. If we’re God’s children, how come Bin Laden hasn’t been bent over his knee and beat with a wooden spoon yet? Why the hell are people stopping to help stalled motorists and getting raped murdered, and why is it that every time a girl scout makes it to my door she’s out of thin mints? I’m sick of it. Shortbread cookies suck, they do. There, I said it. Aside from such atrocities, every single day bad people get rewarded, while good people are getting creamed on the side of the road by drunk drivers. Give credit where credit is due, if you’re an asshole, you should have karma spitting in your face, and if you’re a good-looking, stand-up guy who wants some damn thin mints, you should get some damn thin mints.

9. Blind Faith

If we’re supposed to believe in a God, and he wants us to believe in him, and the only way for eternal salvation is to believe, then why can’t he take 30 seconds to hop off his throne made of golden baby carcasses and pop in and have coffee with me tomorrow? Starbucks, 10:30, I’ll buy. If it’s such a big deal to believe, why is it not such a big deal to give a reason to believe in?

10. The proof is in dying

Ever notice how religions promise us stuff that cannot be instantly proven? One of the biggest promises is heaven after we die or in Islam they promise 72 virgins. That has got to be the lowest thing.. promising pussy in the after life for accepting their religion.

The biggest logical fallacy is that a religion can offer us millions and millions of years of heaven for accepting their beliefs for just 100 years max? What is the ratio there there, how can accepting something for 100 years or so get you something for millions of years (or eternity) to come. When something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

St. Bartholomew’s Church by Maxim Velcovsky

2008-03-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Working with designer Jakub Berdych under the Qubus Studio banner, the interior of St. Bartholomew's Church features Verner Panton chairs customised with a punched crucifix, Persian rugs and chandeliers of rough-cut crystal.

I am completely mesmerized by these pictures and really want to visit this church and see it with my own eyes. An absolutely stunning combination of old and new: St. Bartholomew's Church by Maxim Velcovsky

Graves Heroes Films

2008-03-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Graves Heroes Films

Historical Church in Czech Republic (Church on The Bones)

2008-03-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

Historical Church in Czech Republic (Church on The Bones)

Church on the bones and bones.
This is an unusual church in the Czech Republic, on the outskirts of a small town
Kutna Hora, and the Church is called to the bones (ossuary). And it is history ...

As in 1278 Jindrich abbot returned from a diplomatic mission from Jerusalem, falling to a monastery cemetery for the Holy Land with a pinch of Golgotha. The cemetery quickly became popular because, like all the rest in the holy land, and not in what looked, and as a result much grown.

In central Europe in 1318 laid plague, began after the Hussite wars. The people wraith in terrible numbers. A European cemeteries are not rubber, so there was the practice of secondary, tertiary and subsequent burials. Dead, or rather what he left them, dig, bones dumped in the chapel with a deep cellar, the so-called "kostnitsy", and whom nemeryano existed in Europe. Earth cemetery at the monastery Sedletskogo pereprodavalis 6 times, as a result of this monastery kostnitse accumulated remains of about 40000 people.

And in a monk in 1511, the name of which has not survived, it is known only that he was poluslep and had a natural immunity against the plague, and therefore worked at the funeral team began regular cleaning of the cemetery. Only he has not dropped a bone in kostnitsu, as has been done before, but zateyal something sublime and dissident. On otbelil bone in the chlor-alkali solutions and resigned in pyramids 6 - 4 in the corners kostnitsy and 2 in the center.

Above the angular pyramid of stone carved huge crown. So he died in the chapel. Monks, supposedly, in a few days found him podvaleazapisku number, in which he wrote that, despite its smallness and towns, was a creator of the soul (the magnificent carved crown confirm this fully!), And wants the memory of him and the deceased was still alive long year. Monks did not destroy his creation, but also continue to use this chapel is not steel, locked her eyes from outsiders. Due to this, this kostnitsa and survived to the present day.

Over the centuries the Church attitude to death has changed valyayuschiesya as hit, bones become regarded as blasphemies, and kostnitsy simply been burned. Even now UNESCO is struggling with the Vatican for this place, the truth is no longer required to burn, but close - yes! After the death of the monk kostnitsa prostoyala closed more than 350 years when, in 1870, bought the place Sedlets Prince Schwarzenberg.

The new owners do not like the layout or kostnitsy or piles of bones, valyavshihsya everywhere, and they asked Frantz Rinta, a local master of woodcarving, muddy anything beautiful. Reent with the same bleach cleared stockpiled bones from the flesh and balances has been made that you can see in photos ...

Terracotta Army - The Infinite Power of Emperor

2008-03-05T12:26:00.000-08:00

The Terracotta Warriors and Horses are the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Located approximately 30 km outside of the present-day capital, X'ian (called Chang'an in ancient times), of the Shensi province of modern China, the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi remains a symbol of the infinite power and ego of China's first Emperor.

The Terracotta Army was buried with the Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi) in 210-209 BC (his reign over Qin was from 247 BC to 221 BC and unified China from 221 BC to the end of his life in 210 BC). Their purpose was to help rule another empire with Shi Huangdi in the afterlife. Consequently, they are also sometimes referred to as "Qin's Armies".

Qin Shi Huangdi (259 BC - 210 BC), the first emperor of China, ascended the throne at the age of 13, and immediately began construction of his extraordinary mausoleum. On completion of his many conquests, he ordered 720,000 laborers to hurry up on building his royal tomb. It was finished just-in-time in 210 BC for his use, 36 years after the work commenced. His son, second Qin Emperor, saw to his entombment.

The Terracotta Army was discovered in March 1974 by local farmers drilling a water well to the east of Mount Lishan. Mount Lishan is also where the material to make the terracotta warriors originated. In addition to the warriors, an entire man-made necropolis for the emperor has been excavated.

Archaeologists were uncertain when the excavations began of the great magnitude of this site. The although the tomb itself is, according to legend, very elaborate and beautiful, the center piece of Shi Huangdi's mausoleum is the terra-cotta army of approximately 8,000 life-sized men and horses.

Individually sculpted of 3 inch thick terracotta clay, each soldier and horse is unique, each with its own style of dress (the mineral paints used to cover the figures in bright, gay colors have since dissolved), weaponry, and facial expressions. Grouped into a specific military formation with crouching crossbowmen and bowmen at the point, archers at the flanks, large groups of infantry, chariots and cavalry, and a final guard of heavily armored infantry pulling up the rear, all are arranged according to the proper military procedures of the day.

All 8,000 troops are housed in three separate chambers for each section of the army: active duty troops in the largest chamber, reserves in another smaller chamber, and a small group of 68 commanders and elite officers in the third.
The three chambers are themselves part of a much larger burial complex.

According to the Grand Historian Sima Qian (145 BC-90 BC), the First Emperor was buried alongside great amounts of treasure and objects of craftsmanship, as well as a scale replica of the universe complete with gemmed ceilings representing the cosmos, and flowing mercury representing the great earthly bodies of water. Pearls were also placed on the ceilings in the tomb to represent the stars, planets, etc. Recent scientific work at the site has shown high levels of mercury in the soil of Mount Lishan, tentatively indicating an accurate description of the site’s contents by historian Sima Qian.The tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi is near an earthen pyramid 76 meters tall and nearly 350 square meters. The tomb presently remains unopened.

Qin Shi Huangdi’s necropolis complex was constructed to serve as an imperial compound or palace. It comprises several offices, halls and other structures and is surrounded by a wall with gateway entrances. The remains of the craftsmen working in the tomb may also be found within its confines, as it is believed they were sealed inside alive to keep them from divulging any secrets about its riches or entrance. It was only fitting, therefore, to have this compound protected by the massive terracotta army interred nearby. In July 2007 it was determined, using remote sensing technology, that the mausoleum contains a 90-foot tall building built above the tomb, with four stepped walls, each having nine steps. Researchers theorized it was built "for the soul of the emperor to depart."

Great Pyramid - the Only Remaining Ancient Wonder

2008-03-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

The Great Pyramids at Giza, which date from the Old Kingdom (2700-2300 B. C. ), are the oldest and most famous of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Pyramids of Egypt are three pyramids at Giza, outside modern Cairo.The 3 main pyramids were built as tombs for 3 Egyptian Pharaohs who were considered to be gods on earth. The first and largest pyramid, known as the Great Pyramid was a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who ruled the 4th dynasty around 2575 BC,had an original estimated height of 482 ft (now approximately 450 ft). The base has sides 755 ft long. It contains 2,300,000 blocks; the average weight of each is 2.5 tons. Estimated date of completion is 2680 BC.

The question of who built the pyramids, and how, has long been debated by Egyptologists and historians and there is really no completely satisfactory answer. According to the earliest known historian of the Egyptian Pyramid Age, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th cent. BC), the Great Pyramid took 20 years to construct and demanded the labor of 100,000 men, yet it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. Even the ancient Herodotus was still 2200 years after the actual building of the pyramids.

Few texts concerning Egyptian engineering methods have survived the centuries, and in recent years experimental archaeology has been the main means for discovering the methods used for building the structure. Despite this, there are still many questions concerning the quarrying, dressing and transportation of the stone building blocks, let alone the methods by which they were placed meticulously in position.How these stones were cut is great mystery. Even with today's technology the cutting of these stones is an awesome task.Now there are all types of theories about the construction of the Great pyramid but there are further questions still about how the gigantic edifice was erected on a totally horizontal base, and aligned precisely with the stars.

It is clear that the Egyptians were using their knowledge of the stars to assist them in their architectural projects They were very particular about the direction the pyramid would be facing. The Egyptian astonomers had incredible skill lining up the sides of the pyramids on a particular star which causes the sides to face almost exactly North, South, East, and West.They usually achieved this with an error of less than half a degree.
The Great Pyramid is built on a perfectlu level ground. Its level is so exact that it varies less that 1/2 inches over the 13 acres. This is an amazing feat for the ancient surveyors and would have been difficult, if not almost impossible to match, even today with our advanced technology.

The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, Egypt, demonstrates the remarkable character of its placement on the face of the Earth.
The Pyramid lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth's land mass into approximately equal quarters.
The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. There is obviously only one place that these longest land-lines of the terrestrial earth can cross, and it is at the Great Pyramid!

One very unusual feature of the Great Pyramid is a concavity of the core that makes the monument an eight-sided figure, rather than four-sided like every other Egyptian pyramid. That is to say, that its four sides are hollowed in or indented along their central lines, from base to peak. This concavity divides each of the apparent four sides in half, creating a very special and unusual eight-sided pyramid; and it is executed to such an extraordinary degree of precision as to enter the realm of the uncanny. For, viewed from any ground position or distance, this concavity is quite invisible to the naked eye. The hollowing-in can be noticed only from the air, and only at certain times of the day. This explains why virtually every available photograph of the Great Pyramid does not show the hollowing-in phenomenon, and why the concavity was never discovered until the age of aviation.
It was discovered quite by accident in 1940, when a British Air Force pilot, P. Groves, was flying over the pyramid. He happened to notice the concavity and captured it in the now-famous photograph.

Aerial photo by Groves, 1940

Ikonos satelliteAerial photo by Groves

Although Classical Egyptologist's maintain that there is no significance to the way the pyramids are laid out, be it the terrain of the plateau or just an accident, recent studies has raised another possibility, were the pyramids built in a specific manner or more importantly, were they built in a specific position?
Below are two pictures one an aerial view of The Great Pyramids and the other a picture of The Belts Of Orion:

From the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, one can clearly see that the knowledge displayed there is more advanced than the Egyptians or any human civilization had at that time.
This pyramid is an architectural feat that cannot be duplicated with our modern technology and advanced knowledge.
So, there's still a lot of questions regarding WHO, HOW and WHY was the Great Pyramid built.

The Pyramids are shared world culture and heritage site and as the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders are designated as the Honorary New7Wonders Candidate.

When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, his pride was expressed through his famous quote:"Soldiers! From the top of these Pyramids, 40 centuries are looking at us".
There are two centuries more, loking at us now and there will be much more looking at our future.

Aurora Borealis - Gift From The Sun

2008-03-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Long ago,some Asians thought the lights were dragons battling in the sky. Russians thought that it meant the spirits were lighting the way for a new birth of a child. To some Scandinavians, the auroras indicated a change of luck, good to bad, bad to good. American Indians thought that the red auroras were fires of enemies ready to battle and white auroras the torches of spirits fishing at night. New Zealand Natives considered auroras as campfires of lost souls. Other stories said that auroral displays were for reminding them of their creator or to announce the end of the world. Fifty years ago people believed that auroras were nothing but reflecting light from the sun or moon on the ice or from crystals in the atmosphere. In 1619, Galileo named the glow in the sky "Aurora" after the Roman goddess of the dawn. He mistakenly believed the glow was a reflection of the dawn. He was wrong, but the name stuck.

So, what are Auroras?

Aurora Borealis is celestial phenomenon of bands, curtains or streamers of coloured light that appear in the sky predominantly in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the earth.
The lights by the North Pole are now called the Aurora Borealis - Northern lights. The South Pole lights are called the Aurora Austrealis - Southern lights. Not many people can see the Southern lights. It wasn't until 1773 when James Cook reported he saw them on a voyage in the South Seas, and it became known that the South Pole had auroras. Usually the North and South Poles auroras happen at the same time, and when they do, they have the same exact patterns, only reversed, like a mirror. Now that, you have to admit, is pretty cool!

Auroras are gift from the sun.
The sun gives off high-energy charged particles (also called ions) that travel out into space at speeds of 300 to 1200 kilometres per second. A cloud of such particles is called a plasma. The stream of plasma coming from the sun is known as the solar wind. As the solar wind interacts with the edge of the earth's magnetic field, some of the particles are trapped by it and they follow the lines of magnetic force down into the ionosphere, the section of the earth's atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 600 kilometres above the earth's surface. When the particles collide with the gases in the ionosphere they start to glow, producing the spectacle that we know as the auroras. The array of colours consists of red, green, blue and violet.

The Northern Lights are constantly in motion because of the changing interaction between the solar wind and the earth's magnetic field. The solar wind commonly generates up to 1000,000 megawatts of electricity in an auroral display and this can cause interference with power lines, radio and television broadcasts and satellite communications

Big Bang - The Beginning?

2008-03-01T04:29:00.001-08:00

The big bang theory of cosmology says that the universe came into existence in a single event some ten or twenty billion years ago from a single, infinitely dense and hot pointlike ball of light, smaller than the smallest atom. In a fraction of a second, it expanded trillions of times creating all of the space, matter and energy that now makes up the galaxies and stars. The universe has been expanding and cooling since that initial event.

The Big Bang is often thought as the start of everything, including time, making any questions about what happened during it or beforehand nonsensical. Recently scientists have instead suggested the Big Bang might have just been the explosive beginning of the current era of the universe, hinting at a mysterious past.

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology could be explained by a controversial theory in which the universe explodes into existence not just once, but repeatedly in endless cycles of death and rebirth.

Called the cyclic universe theory, it could potentially explain why a mysterious repulsive form of energy known as the "cosmological constant" and which is accelerating the expansion of the universe is several orders of magnitude smaller than predicted by the standard Big Bang model.
The constant was once much larger, but that its value decayed with each incarnation of the universe.
Because there can be endless cycles, the universe would be far older than the 14.7 billion years that scientists currently estimate.

A new theory for the origin of the Universe is intriguing astronomers with the idea that a "Big Splat" preceded the Big Bang.
It proposes that there may be an unseen parallel universe to ours.
The idea, which is still at the development stage, may provide hints about what happened before our Universe exploded into existence some 15 billion years ago.
M-theory looks at events before the Big Bang, proposing that the Universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments that can, for all intents, be ignored.
M-theory brings the idea of more than one universe embedded in higher-dimensional space.
The action of the Universe takes place in five-dimensional space. Before the Big Bang occurred the Universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces.

One of these sheets is our Universe; the other, a "hidden" parallel universe.

The question is : Will we ever find out the truth?