Looking For Life on Other Worlds

Hameed:

1. `Casting doubt` does not mean disprove. The onus is on u since u said `there is no evidence.`

2. Are u familiar with any UFO or Mars` cases? If not it would be pointless and quite unscientific for us to build. Both Arther Clarke and Sagan were very interested in the mars case (im assuming ur aware of all this)...

3. absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Lady: Did i hurt ur feelings?

temporal -- my post #20 and its biting comments were directed at drumz NOT you. Sorry if you thought so!

I don`t know why based on my earlier post drumz thought i was referring to this abdul hazred person when i explicitly said in my earlier posts [#5 or 6] that the mystical visions i referred to of other civilisations were by Shaykh al Akbar Ibn Arabi (rahmatullah alayhi) and the book was the Futuhat al Makkiyah NOT the Necromonicon!! Ibn Arabi was from Mursiyah in Andalusia in the period when Muslims ruled Spain c. 12th century was his time. He was never called the `mad Arab` and was in fact a great Muslim Sufi saint!

Heaven knows why drumz started talking of this hazred character!! i think he is confused...

#26 drumz - pls refrain from telling me what I can and cannot read.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

Regarding SETI (tahmed32, ajeet and others...):
I totally agree that its too early to give up on the SETI program. I`m a big fan of the SETI program and I certainly hope that we find a signal within our lifetime. However, so far there has been to ``verifiable`` signal to date. The most famous one is the ``Vow!`` signal from 1977, but it has never repeated...and since this is such a big claim that astronomers have to be absolutely sure that they have detected a signal from an another civilization.

Incidently, this is exactly the kind of scrutiny thats missing from UFO claims and ``artificial monuments`` on Mars. In order to make such large claims you have to rule out all other possibilities and then should have a very strong evidence regarding that particular interpretation. Keep Carl Sagan`s words in mind: ``Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence``.

Re: #14 (Urstruly)
You are right that life may have some form that we don`t know or can`t imagine. However, we can`t look for something that we have no idea about. So, we have to be conservative in our search criterion, but of course if we find, simply by chance, something totally exotic, that will be cool. But, as I tried to point out in the article, there are good reasons to believe (thought they can be wrong) that life most likely will need a replicating molecule, DNA or some other combination using carbon atoms.

Re: #15 (Drumz):
Yes, in 1996 there was a suggestion that a meteorite from early Mars (a few billion year old piece of Mars) may have signatures of microbial life forms. However, research since then have cast doubt on the early claims. There are chemical processes that can also produce similar features. There is no evidence for Martian cities and there is no evidence for alien spaceships. These are a mixture of conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs. Belief in ``incubi`` and witches from the middle ages has been replaced with spacecrafts and alien abductions. But a detailed discussion of this will require a different article.

Correction: post 22 is mine, all mine. Temp wouldnt have that much soul if he owned shares in Nike.

Alhazred was a mystic in yemen. Some say he was invened by HP Lovecraft (a european mystic whose stories on the necronomicon were featured in the movie ``Evil Dead)`` However, the necronomicon describes the (jinn filled) city of pillars (Irem/Iram) which was until a few decades back believed to not exist. He was in a 8 year trance in which he wrote the necronomicon which described his travels to other dimensions. He described `other worlds/beings` and that is his relevence to this topic. He was said to have been devoured by an invisible monster, thus his story is told to emphasize the dangers of entering other (mental) states. He was called the ``mad Arab`` for mad refers to him speaking with jinns. The necronomicon was originally called ``al azif`` refering to an insect-like sound which came form demons. His book contained several spells used to invoke demons this is why is strongly ties into the mystical arts/wicca/sufism etc.

``This gift i leave the humanty:
Here is the keys.
It tries the lock; be satisfied.
But listen to what Abdul Alhazred says:
For first I have tried to them: and I am mad.``
-Al Azif.


Lady: I will warn u to not look to Europeans for a breakdown of OUR history.

Their scholarcism for the past 500 years has been predominately left brain centered. Alhazred is not something one can `logically` understand.

#23 by UmerMurtaza:

sorry to disappoint you but #22 is not mine...chalk this to some cyber glitch...

..t

I had heard of the necromancer (in lord of the rings), and also read about necrophilia. But necromicron is a new one. I thought we started discussing life on other planets, and here we are fascinated like necromaniacs. Is this this necrosis to be the fate of discussion on this article? hmmmmmmmm....

And further to my previous post, I see the word is not even necromicron as I spelt it, but necronomicon (Book of Dead Names). Perhaps it is like the Domesday Book (Book of the Dead). More hmmmmmmm.....

t, #22

You know how you once said that Hydra wasn`t the only person with multi heads...;) Plink!

Umer M.

Asif: ``Just because it goes against the views which have been conditioned into your servile mind by the magicians of modern science and your mind`s own limited, logic. And you always clamour on about being a free thinker!!!``

I didnt say he was mad. Learn to read and not read INTO what is written.

below cut/paste for yr understanding pleasure of ensuing debate twix dervaish and nihilist ...

[b]What is the Necronomicon?[/b]

The Necronomicon of Alhazred, (literally: ``Book of Dead Names``) is not, as is popularly believed, a grimoire, or sorcerer`s spell-book. It was conceived as a history, and hence ``a book of things now dead and gone``. An alternative derivation of the word Necronomicon gives as its meaning ``the book of the customs of the dead``, but again this is consistent with the book`s original conception as a history, not as a work of necromancy.

The author of the book shared with Madame Blavatsky a magpie-like tendency to garner and stitch together fact, rumour, speculation, and complete balderdash, and the result is a vast and almost unreadable compendium of near-nonsense which bears more than a superficial resemblance to Blavatsky`s The Secret Doctrine.

In times past the book has been referred to guardedly as Al Azif , and also The Book of the Arab. Azif is a word the Arabs use to refer to nocturnal insects, but it is also a reference to the howling of demons (Djinn). The Necronomicon was written in seven volumes, and runs to over 900 pages in the Latin edition.

[b]Where and when was the Necronomicon written? [/b]
The Necronomicon was written in Damascus in 730 A.D. by Abdul Alhazred.

[b]Who was Abdul Alhazred?[/b]
Little is known. What we do know about him is largely derived from the small amount of biographical information in the Necronomicon itself. He was born in Sanaa in the Yemen. We know that he travelled widely, from Alexandria to the Punjab, and was well read. He spent many years alone in the uninhabited wilderness to the south of Arabia. He had a flair for languages, and boasts on many occasions of his ability to read and translate manuscripts which defied lesser scholars. His research methodology however smacked more of Nostradamus than Herodotus.

Just as Nostradamus used ceremonial magic to probe the future, so Alhazred used similar techniques (and an incense composed of olibanum, storax, dictamnus, opium and hashish) to clarify the past, and it is this, combined with a lack of references, which has resulted in the Necronomicon being dismissed as largely worthless by historians.

He is often referred to as ``the mad Arab`` or ``the mad Poet``, and while he was certainly eccentric by modern standards, there is no evidence to substantiate a claim of madness (other than his chronic inability to sustain a train of thought for more than a few paragraphs before leaping off at a tangent). It is interesting that the word for madness (``majnun``) has an older meaning of ``djinn possessed``. Alhazred is better compared with figures such as the Greek neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (410 - 485 A.D.). Proclus was completely at home in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and metaphysics, but was sufficiently well-versed in the magical techniques of theurgy to evoke Hekate to visible appearance. Proclus was also an initiate of Egyptian and Chaldean mystery religions. It is no accident that Alhazred was intimately familar with the works of Proclus.

more at: http://www.digital-brilliance.com/necron/necron.htm#What

drumz--you are such a hypocrite! You always go on about Sufism and stuff and yet you dismiss the spiritual visions of Shaykh Ibn Arabi, known amongst Sufis throughout the Muslim world, as ``al-Shaykh al Akbar`` (The Greatest (Sufi) Master) as a ``mad Arab`` and his magnus opus--the Futuhat e Makkiyyah Sharif --an absolute massive masterpiece--15,000 pages in its latest edition covering all aspects of Islam and Sufism and much more as his `necromonicon`.

Just because it goes against the views which have been conditioned into your servile mind by the magicians of modern science and your mind`s own limited, logic. And you always clamour on about being a free thinker!!!

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Salman Hameed,
Thanks for providing a breath of fresh air in this otherwise ad nauseum discussion of politics and religion.
Maharana

Saxena,

he he.

Drumz,

Repeat that again, mate. You`ve lost me. Was your post aimed at Asif? Mad Arab? Necronomicon? What, what, what?

Umer M.

``Despite the outlandish claims of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), humans have yet to detect even a single microscopic organism of extra-terrestrial origin.``

Actually such organisms were announced a few years ago coming from meteors which hit the arctic. And because some UFO claims are outlandish doesnt mean they ALL are. The ``Disclosure Project`` currently is aiming for a congressional hearing on UFO as it has evidence from Presidents to military leaders, radars, video, photos etc.

``Our neighbor Mars provides one of the best places to look for life. Over 3.5 billion years ago Mars had a thick atmosphere and there is ample evidence that water flowed freely on the surface.``

There is significant evidence that Mars was once populated. theorists point to artificial structures on its surface in cydonia.

Umer: The ``mad arab`` who wrote the mystical ``necronomicon`` described alien looking beings from other worlds centuries ago.