Reptiles & Holy Blood?

We all know the type: “9/11 was instigated by the US Government!”; “Have you not read Holy Blood, Holy Grail? It’s the truth! The Catholic Church is hiding something!”; “Do you really think slaves built the pyramids! Come on, it was the aliens!”. All these are what Damian Thompson has called Counterknowledge, in his new book by the same name.

The danger does not lie in the one or two oddballs who adorn parties, as if to let off sour gas. These people are usually the one who get upset or angry when you appear unfazed by the attack on 9/11. Yes, it was terrible – lots of people died. But, where is the proof that it was the government? Not a single construction company in the world believes any of the hodge-podge theories of YouTube filmers, such as the creators of the horrid Loose Change, or conspiracy “buffs” like David Icke. The danger lies in how many “rational” people are accepting this nonsense with no recourse evidence what so ever. We should all be questioning these sorts of claims and I urge you to seriously consider the evidence for your beliefs. Or else, we could find ourselves trusting someone like David Icke.

If we were to trust Mr Icke, we would be seeing lizard-people everywhere. In an interview for RINF.com, he was asked about his new book. He said: “It is about the illusory nature of reality and how it is manipulated to hold us in a mind-prison. It explains how we live in a holographic version of the Internet in which we are fed a collective reality in waveform which our DNA, a biological computer, decodes into holographic pictures, much as a television does in theme. It also talks about how we disconnect from the program and take control of our own reality, and, therefore, experience.”

This is the reality we are meant to believe?

His logic will no doubt be cicular. Such that, we can not prove that the world is otherwise. Philosophers from Plato to Gilbert Ryle have been attempting to show this for years. This is nothing new, save to say philosophers use it as a thought experiment, whereas for Icke it no doubt is the truth, it is reality. Which is bizarre because he claims that the reality is an illusion. How is it possible to say that it is an illusion if it truly is one? Surely, you would not be able to distinguish between the real and false if you only know the false?

But, let us see further.

Rinf.com:
Have you ever been contacted by Illuminati agents, received threats, warnings etc?

David Icke:
Not in the sense that they have done it openly.

In other words: no one cares. It is comparable to someone who tells you “Acupuncture works.” You then ask: “How do you know?” The reply: “Well, it worked for me.” That is not evidence at all. Similarly, we could all claim to be contacted by the Illuminati, et al. For example, on my screen I see a number of a letters – if I so wished, I could arrange every third letter of every word spell something: SIT DRS GSN

Now, here’s how to investigate as a conspiracy “buff” like David Icke. The DRS “is a leading IT Security Solutions and Services Provider in Africa”. That is just a front for the CIA in Africa, to exploit people. SIT is “is the pioneer in field-based, experiential programs for undergraduate students”. Now they are recruiting and brainwashing people, no doubt to send them to Africa to help control the Africans. Delving further into Africa, we have “The Geological Survey of Namibia (GSN), as custodian of Namibia’s rich endowment of geological resources”. In Namibia? That seems too much like a coincidence that it is also in Africa, along with the DRS.

All this leads me to believe I am being monitored.

All this is also… nonsense! I simply typed all those words independently into Google and cherry-picked the ones that appeared most tantalising.

Icke elsewhere in the same interview, says “Genetically engineered food is designed to genetically engineer us.” My main gripe with David Icke is not his goals – in that I have a modicum of respect – but his instigation of it. Lappe, et al, in the book World Hunger: Twelve Myths, as well as Boucher in The Paradox of Plenty: Hunger in a Bountiful World have discovered that it is not production but distribution of food. We have heard and seen mutually supporting evidence that their is enough food in the world to feed the world many times over. The problem is who acquires the food and the imbalance created. There is waste, whereas it could be given to the poorer nations. This is reason parents tell children “think of the starving children” when children do not eat.

My point here is that Icke raises awareness, but not to the point of conclusion. He solves nothing by creating further, pseudo-intellectual problems about the “Matrix” and reptile men. Yes, he has evidence and supporting claims but his goal is to instill fear that the world is dangerous, run by men in high places, who are out to control us.

This, to me, is the epitome of self-aggrandisment and self-absorption. The fact is, we are petty beings who the governments probably do not care about. Everything that we have said or thought against them and their policies has been raised by someone of higher qualifications than you! However, my reason for focussing on David Icke is to expose him spreading counterknowledge: using manipulated evidence to reach a preconceived conclusion. I will explain why it spreads later.

Or how about the mass onslaught of books, like Dan Burnstein’s analysis of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Is it not enough that these two “scholars” have the same name, that they also promote the same mindset?

But in order to understand the Da Vinci Code, we have to follow the source. It leads back to the previously mentioned book: Holy Blood, Holy Grailby Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. The points raised are now infamous: Jesus married Mary Magdelene, had a couple of kids. These kids landed up in France, mixed their blood with the natives to become the Merovingian line. Those who wish to see the bloodline restored are part of a group called the Priori of Sion. The main argument in Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s book rested in the validity of a book called L’Or de Rennes (later re-published as Le Trésor Maudit), a 1967 book by Gerard de Sede, with the collaboration of self-appointed aristocrat Pierre Plantard.

However, most people now refer to Plantard as the engineer of the Priori of Sion hoax. Note that last word. Yes, hoax. Arnaud de Sède, son of Gerard de Sede, stated categorically that his father and Plantard had made up the existence of the Priory of Sion, and described the story as “piffle.” (The Real Da Vinci Code, Channel Four Television, presented by Tony Robinson) In a 60 Minutes article, Plantard carefully describes how he formulated this plan and created the hoax. Damian Thompson says in an article about the Da Vinci Code:

“In the 1990s, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln learned that they had been the victims of an elaborate hoax. The Priory of Sion, it turned out, was founded as recently as the late 1940s by Pierre Plantard, a fake French aristocrat; the “medieval” Priory documents were knocked up by Plantard’s con-artist friends. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/12/nrfact212.xml)

Imminent historian Richard Barber says that Holy Blood… “is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate… Essentially, the whole argument is an ingeniously constructed series of suppositions combined with forced readings of such tangible facts as are offered.”

When claims can not be verified or justified, there is good reason for it to be dismissed. As Christopher Hitchens says: that which can be raised without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Using Ockham’s Razor this should be done to shift through the bullshit of the modern world. It is a breath of fresh air to take pleasure in the humanity of the race and the fragility of the present moment. Living with unfounded burdens, such as seeing little green men who are after you, or that the Church is hiding information on Jesus Christ, helps some to find meaning.

This is my reasoning for the upsurge and rapid devouring of such bullshit in the minds of mankind. People need reasons to live: by thinking they are part of a global conspiracy they can put themselves at the centre of battling a great, unseen enemy – we know the governments of the world have power, we know the church has power. This is unquestionable. But, the power they hold is their to manipulate. There also I do not dispute – but to a degree. Any man, given power, will most likely use it for personal gain rather than as a promotion of humanist values. Most of humanity recognises this logic – but they apply it everywhere and anywhere. They then turn the circle on themselves and put themselves at the heart of darkness.

But truly truly! It is time to wake up – it is time to not relish in this nonsense. We live in an age of pseudoscience and pseudohistory, each one being labelled as truth! But no, this is not truth. Nothing is true, only really really well-founded assumptions. Everything is questionable, but it need to not be questioned. If our questioning leads us into cross-patterns and into blank walls, we should stop and realise the futility in it.

Perhaps instead of focussing on how the Church is out to manipulate you, you should take comfort that you are not suffering from hunger, from income, from war. Many of us do not – and if we are not, we should be helping our fellow men. There is a lot we can do, but wasting our time on nonsense like Jesus’ bloodline, aliens, UFO’s, alternative medicine, pseudohistory and so on, gets us nowhere and helps no one.

It is time to stop playing with bullshit and throw it to the ground. Let seeds of knowledge take root and follow it. But if it is a weed, pull it out. Flowers and weeds look the same in the beginning stages, but we eventually realise what is beneficial and what is not. It must be removed, or it will stifle the growth of the beneficial variety. There is only so much space in your head: save it for proper history, proper science and use it for pseudohistory and science only to disprove those bullshitters.

Next time, I will tackle creationists…