Mattheus wrote:Look at this crystal clear Immanuel Velikovsky
Do you know that Velikovsky's claims are pretty much completely rejected by the established scientific community and are not only not supported by available evidence but contradicted by it?
Have you read works critical of Velikovsky and the "
the Velikovsky Affair" (link to a balanced discussion)?
Some BKs found some interest in Velikovsky's work because it ...
sort of ... supported BK theories, or what has been described as the tradition of "catastrophism" (belief in big catastrophies largely based on Biblical stories). However, I am afraid it is just a kind of fallacious logic, an 'appeal to authority' because Velikovsky was a "scientist" ... not realising that his work was not accepted by science as a whole.
Paradoxically, this rejection then becomes a sort of proof or validation that "it must be true" and a part of a greater conspiracy to supress the truth ... again appealing to the BK mind as BK beliefs are also rejected. Velikovsky has becomes a sort of prophet/martyr figure fitting into the mould of other religious beliefs.
For me, it's all unknowable stuff without practical value ... except for a few that make profits from such prophets, by selling books or using their story to sell themselves on the New Age/conspiracy theory talk circuits. Which is again, a big business.
A big 'enertainment' business based largely on unprovable fantasy without practical value.
Again, I think it is a dangerous avenue for ex-BKs to go down because it is one that, at best, encourages them to give away their time and energy on unrewarding efforts; or, at worst, encourages a false ego ... a sense of self importance ... based on an illegitimate knowing "a truth" that is not a truth at all.
What do I mean by an "illegitimate knowing"?
Largely BKism is based on not 'knowing' but 'acceptance'. Acceptance by repetition. BKs do not know The Cycle of Time if 5,000 years or prove it. They cannot know it. All they can do is accept it and the acceptance of it is encouraged through brainwashing, constant repetition and the use of language like "proofs". As are equally crazy ideas like the cult is a "university" ... the "unlimited university" ... that their beliefs are not just "knowledge" but "The Knowledge" and so on.
I am sorry, but no. That's not the way it works.
Do you want to know if Velikovsky's work is true? Become qualified to judge first. Work your way up through a BSc and Ma and a PhD or two first. Learn how science works, learn what the current state of art in the various fields he takes huge unscientific leaps across. Become an equal, a peer, to others in related fields and speak to them. Even start by learning their language and methodology.
Prove your own ability in being able to follow methodological approach. Then judge.
I am sorry but I feel that I would do you the greatest favour by rejecting this avenue of thought, or fantasy, as just that. At best just entertainment, at worst an unhealthy obsession.
A friend once define such lines of thought well as "bubblegum for the mind". By bubblegum for the mind, he meant that like food, it made the 'jaws of the mind' go up and down but, unlike food, bubblegum gives you no nutrition back for the effort and rots your (mental) teeth.
Please stick to healthy wholefoods. Let's stick to your real life issues.
fantasy
the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things: a fantasy world.