Notable and Quotable: 

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  1)  "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the      unknown." -- H.P. Lovecraft
  2)  "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" -- Frank Morgan in, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
  3)  "This just can't be!" -- Moses Horowitz a.k.a. Moe Howard
  4)  "Nothing is exactly as it seems, nor is it otherwise." -- Tom Watts
  5)  "But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion." -- The Moody Blues
  6)  "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it!" -- Clint Eastwood in, Unforgiven (1992)
  7)  "Physics law dictates that absolutely nothing can travel faster than the speed of light...until it does!" -- CLJ
  8)  "The term 'Reality Television' is an oxymoron." -- CLJ
  9)  "Truth is stranger than, yet not nearly so palatable as, fiction." -- CLJ
 10) "The chief delineation between mythology and theology resides in one's degree of acceptance, how thoroughly one embraces either." -- CLJ

 11) "Truth is stranger than (but not nearly so palatable as is) fiction."  Carl L. Johnson

 12) "Heresy!!"  Michael Shannon as General Zod in the motion picture, Man of Steel (2013)

 13) "Lie only becomes true if person choose to believe it!"  Noriyuki "Pat" Morita as Mister Kesuke Miyagi in the motion picture, The Karate Kid 2 (1986)

 14) "In a time of deception, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act."  Upton Sinclair

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Dueling Dichotomies: 

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Each of  the following statements seems contradicted by the next or the previous one as listed here. Which do you feel are true?

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Now, for those of us who consider ourselves to be open-minded, spiritual persons who are interested in the paranormal, it seems a no-brainer that we should whole-heartedly agree with the observations evinced by the a. category; correct? The fact is, neither the statements I've listed as a. or b. present a logical and objective line of reasoning. Really, dealing with what basically amounts to the unknown (and perhaps unknowable), how can they? For our purpose here, which might be more desirable to an individual is irrelevant. However, we could say, the a.s hint at wishful (some would say, wistful) thinking, allowing for vastly more possibilities and they tend to have a comforting quality. Conversely, the b.s display "cocoon" thinking" which is, in a rather limiting sense, safer and does not invite the confusion and uncertainties of speculation.

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a.  "Ghosts are indisputably real and they are all around us, all the time!"

b.  "There's no such thing as a ghost; that's just a combination of hallucination and wishful thinking!"

a.  "Something so complex and marvelous as the human mind cannot be extinguished by cessation of biological life. Death is merely a door we pass through!"

b.  "All life is temporal; death blots it out, and those are the cosmic cards we are dealt!"

a.  "God made the earth for mankind, and our planet is set at the very center of the observable Universe."

b.  "Earth is an accretion of space debris, a random process that formed our planet approximately 4.5 billion years ago. There's nothing 'divine' about it!"
 
a.  "Considering the incomprehensibly vast number of stars with planets in our Milky Way galaxy, and there must be billions of galaxies--perhaps they are infinite--it is ridiculous to assume no other forms of intelligent life exists outside of Earth!"

b.  "Conditions on Planet earth are uniquely compatible for the emergence of intelligent life. If there are alien (other-worldly) beings out there, why then haven't we heard from them?"