Pseudoscience

Stardestroyer.net ^ | 2000.11.18 | Michael Wong

[Doctor Stochastic]

A.E. van Vogt's "The Weapon Shops of Isher" (and sequels) is interesting for the idea that an armed populace is a good counter to intrusive government. (Probably too libertarian for the Conservatives, however.) Van Vogt's prose is among the best. His two Null-A books make a good detective story (would have been better absent the General Semantics though.)

I also like P.J. Farmer for weirdness (as I do some of P.K. Dick.) Kornbluth's "The Syndic" is interesting too, shows a rather Clintonesque world.

Otherwise, I gave up on science fiction since the New Wave hit.

[f.Christian]

Lord Of The Rings is fantasy.

Lord Of The Rings is an allegory of the statist liberal atheist left using darwin(evolution) and marx(social evolution) to establish the global NWO tyranny.

[Ready2go]

Howdy Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain says: So did these patients actually die when they experienced hell?

Yes they were all clinically dead when they went to Hell.

Stone Mountain says:If so, were they brought back to life by the doctors?

Yes Dr. Rawlins is a cardiologist and he and his colleagues are constantly treating emergency patients, they start resuscitation procedures and many have had near-death experiences.

Here is a video you can watch to hear more.

http://afterdeath.gq.nu/

Stone Mountain says:Is clinical death the same thing as death everlasting?

No it's not the same...Clinical death (cessation of breathing or heart function or brain function)

With death everlasting you don't get a second chance.

I believe God is allowing quite a few folks to come back & tell others that Heaven & Hell are very real places where each one of us is going to live forever.

You can read more testimonies here:
http://www.pconline.com/~jsenear/indexNF.html

And what the Bible says:

Luke 16:19 "There was a certain rich man," Jesus said, "who was splendidly clothed and lived each day in mirth and luxury.

Luke 16:20 One day Lazarus, a diseased beggar, was laid at his door.

Luke 16:21 As he lay there longing for scraps from the rich man's table, the dogs would come and lick his open sores.

Luke 16:22 Finally the beggar died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham in the place of the righteous dead. The rich man also died and was buried,

Luke 16:23 and his soul went into hell. There, in torment, he saw Lazarus in the far distance with Abraham.

Luke 16:24 "'Father Abraham,' he shouted, 'have some pity! Send Lazarus over here if only to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in these flames.'

Luke 16:25 "But Abraham said to him, 'Son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here being comforted and you are in anguish.

Luke 16:26 And besides, there is a great chasm separating us, and anyone wanting to come to you from here is stopped at its edge; and no one over there can cross to us.'

Luke 16:27 "Then the rich man said, 'O Father Abraham, then please send him to my father's home--

Luke 16:28 for I have five brothers--to warn them about this place of torment lest they come here when they die.'

Luke 16:29 "But Abraham said, 'The Scriptures have warned them again and again. Your brothers can read them any time they want to.'

Luke 16:30 "The rich man replied, 'No, Father Abraham, they won't bother to read them. But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will turn from their sins.'

Luke 16:31 "But Abraham said, 'If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't listen even though someone rises from the dead.'"

[Junior]

I'm a big "hard science fiction" buff. Heinlein, Asimov and Clark were big "hard SF" writers. Nowadays its folks like Greg Bear (who's stories are a bit too dark for my tastes) and Roger McBride Allen. Of course, I'm also big into military SF, with Drake and Pournelle leading that pack, alternative history by Turtledove, and finally I love Laumer's (and all his successor's) Bolos.

[Junior]

Good fantasy, like good science fiction, needs to be self consistent (which Star Trek most definitely is not). LoTR has already been mentioned; one should also consider the trilogy (so far) by Gregory Keyes that starts with Newton's Cannon. It also sort of doubles as alternative history.

[Junior]

Science Fiction has always been the perfect vehicle for social commentary.

[PatrickHenry]

... alternative history by Turtledove, and finally I love Laumer's (and all his successor's) Bolos.

Yeah. Turtledove's "Guns of the South" is very good. (At last, the good guys win that war.) Laumer is definitely one of my favorites. His Bolo stories are amazing (for the SF lurkers, military SF is a sub-genre), but beyond that, I regard him as a master of time travel stories. He did one (Dinosaur Beach, I think) where seven different eras were simultaneously slugging it out. It must be incredibly difficult to write a story like that and keep your readers from going nuts.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Dating back to Gilgamesh, The Republic, Utopia, and Eehwon.

[Junior]

Believe it or not, Gulliver's Travels and Cyrano de Bergerac actually qualify, in some respects, as science fiction; both are definitely social commentaries...

[Doctor Stochastic]

As do Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, althougn these are more akin to fantasy.

[Condorman]

And don't forget Around the World in 80 Days, and Shelly's Frankenstein as early examples of SF. (Although Saberhagen's The Frankenstein Papers is a pretty amazing retelling of Shelly's original work.)

BTW, have either of you read Verne's "lost" novel Paris in the Twentieth Century? Apparently it is a distopia story, and pretty dark, as well. From what I've read (and from a "History of SF" class I took in college), Verne's editor lightened his original stories considerably, and the recently discovered manuscript bears this out.

[PatrickHenry]

Among early SF writers (ignoring some really ancient stuff -- like the Odyssey) are Washington Irving (the guy who woke up 20 years later, a kind of time travel story); Mark Twain (Conn. Yankee, definitely time travel); and Charles Dickens (Christmas Carol, also time travel, but without the "machine" which HG Wells supplied later). I think Hans Christian Anderson did one about seven-league boots and some kind of consciousness swapping, but that may have been Dickens. Oddly, I can't think of any SF written by Poe. Anyone?

[Doctor Stochastic]

"The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" comes close.

(He wasn't the "Man from Nantucket" though.)

[balrog666]

All this wonderful sci-fi and fantasy talk and nobody's mentioned Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, Terry Pratchett, David Brin, or Vernor Vinge?

I loved A.E. van Vogt, Phillip Jose Farmer, Robert Heinlein, Keith Laumer, et al. as much as the next guy, but ... some of them hold up better than others.

[Saturnalia]

Give it up. f.Christian is clearly nuts.
So incredibly indelibly incomprehensible he's become more of a running joke than anything else. His posts are only coherent when he is quoting someone else.

[Eternal_Bear]

As far as I know, every Nobel Laureate in science has subscribed to the scientific method and evolution. Not a single one has espoused creationism. Something to think about.

[stuartcr]

You must not get to stay around very long here on freerepublic.

[steve-b]

They're hoping that the reader will interpret any perceived weakness in mainstream science as conclusive proof of their alternative explanation. This is a false dilemma fallacy, in which the pseudoscientist assumes that you will then have no choice but to leap all the way to their preposterous alternative theory (it's a bit like saying you have doubts about the accuracy of a thermometer that reads 25°C, so the temperature must be -80°C).

The Clintonistas were masters of this art, raising tangential nitpicks in the case against the SinkEmperor and asserting that a few undotted "i"s and uncrossed "t" proved that he was an innocent victim of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™.

[Junior]

Tell that to Freeper gore3000. He seems to think that every scientific discovery "disproves" evolution. His evidence for such a claim typically boils down to "it is so because I say it is so."

[f.Christian]

Do you think spontaneous life/matter and animal morphing is science/technology?

Is that your problem---incoherence?