Fair enough, we thankfully live in a free world, and you can believe whatever you want and pursue your passions how you see best.
I certainly do not believe for a moment we live in a free world.
The issue though is, what does a free world actually mean for each individual?
We are free if you compare us to a caged animal/bird, but only by the size of the cage we are allowed to move about in.
Anyway I could go on and on with this piece and it would need its own thread.
Basically we are not free.
Good luck with it all. I'm not sure why anyone though would change their mind based on the things you have said so far - you paint a strange, fanciful world that you have not demonstrated at all, posit alternative fundamental forces that seeming offer no differential predictive power over existing theories, and massively complicate entire fields of knowledge that presently work and provide everyday function and power to our world.
Nobody has to change their minds. That's the beauty of it all.
It's about a willingness to understand a different concept without attempting to hinder themselves by using another concept as a barrier to that understanding.
Maybe we are just blindly stumbling on, controlled by higher powers who know what is going on and feed us lies to hide the truth.
All we can do is stumble on. We are not in charge, we are merely given the idea that we are the owners of our own movement and ideas. We simply aren't when you stand back and view the bigger picture.
But if so, the fact is that the lies they feed us fit into an amazingly well spun tapestry that simply works at an incredible number of levels, and we use these lies daily to build the world around us.
Of course it's well spun.
You cannot control the masses unless you reward and punish in percentage measures, as well as create physical truth's and lies that are hidden behind a shroud that has the words, hidden truths on a need to know basis.
FFS, do you even know the amount of theory derived from basic physics that is required to build all the technology that is presently allowing us to communicate instantly around across entire earth?
Yep. You know all about the sun and stars and planets and cosmic dust, plus black holes and galaxies, plus a whole host of theoretical? Hypothetical? Fictional?....stuff.
They are so complex as to be knowable but equally unknowable with equations to match.
All you need now is a quiz master to test out how much you can commit to memory to gain you a higher standing that the other average bear.
Your knowledge is the markings of your quiz sheet. Your memory filing cabinet and the ability of you to be able to neatly store your info in order to relay back what was handed to you to put away.
But what do you know?
What's your truth?
What direct physical proof do you or any amount of people that's committed that same stuff to memory, have?
Transfer all of that to every other tutored/schooled theory or hypothesis and ask yourself if the tutor is merely following a protocol/curriculum and able to do so based on that tutors ability to commit to memory whatever was placed into it.
Parroting without a knowing reality.
If you are right, you are up against something nearly godlike in its ability to spin a working web of consistent lies. Its actually quite the opposite of what you think, and if you open your eyes to our modern understanding of the world, you find it is very, very, very deep, and very, very, very powerful.
Your early part of life can be defined by a few gods. Your parents.
You may end up following a path they took of which you adhere to as your belief out of nothing other than conditional love and inability to go against that indoctrination.
They are your official authority.
Go out into the wider world and you can choose your next gods, whether it's a church or a school, to college or university...or even some perceived smart person who takes you under their wing and teaches you their theories.
What are you actually learning if you don't actually discover a truth but instead rely on a theory you are told is the truth?
It's all about pushing your own boundaries that you have set for you and creating enough space within to actually think outside of the box you were happily (at first) trapped inside of.
If it is all a lie, we should be very scared about the controlling force behind it.
We are conditioned to be scared. That's how we are controlled.
What is there to be scared of that we don't already deal with?
The unknown...right?
Think about that, because in life your theories are about that, because they are not truth's, no matter what.
If they were truth's we would not be arguing like we all do in debates, etc.
To keep us in control in life we must be accountable for our actions should we stop out of line and be rewarded for being good and sticking to whatever rules were laid out.
The fear or the afterlife, or the embracement of what is in that afterlife, depending.
A truth?
A theory?
A hypothesis?
A musing?
A religion?
What is the truth?
Start with the basics and don't over complicate something that you have the ability to physically test and go from those points.
If you are right, this is what you are up against, and if your goal is truly to change minds, you might want to rethink your approach to this all.
My goal is to live my life until I die. In between doing that I will try to do something that interests me and enables me to find solutions to problems, among many other things.
As for changing minds.... I leave that up to each individual.
All I ask for is for every person to use their own brains outside of what was handed to them on a platter. To think outside of the box.
To actually sit back and think " hang on a minute, what makes theoretical scientists any more smart than I?"
Is it the ability to tell/sell a story from their own minds?
Is it the ability to tell/sell a story handed to them?
You see, physical scientists who theorise and find solutions to problems, are the smart one's. These are the people who help create what we have.
There's a massive difference between a physical scientific genius and a theoretical muser who merely postulates and turns that postulation into a long drawn out story that is impossible to ever be verified yet can be told in such detail as to even have its own equations and such.
It can look amazing and be incalculable in its intricacies and yet can be idolised by many who feel just to commit some of it to memory, stands them out as smarter than the average bear.
The smartest people are those that have the ability to take the intricate theories and break them down into the basic...or potential basic...or to simply break them down into the nothing that they represent.
Getting there is the hard part.
It's like trying to find the ingredient for a fictional recipe for a made up name that nobody will physically show.
This is what we are dealing with with a lot of so called science.
From what I can see here, most people on this thread see what you are proposing as just a belief system wrapped in a thin veneer of scientism. Something like that is a hard thing to sell, Sceptimatic, really hard, especially compared to what you are up against.
That's it ever will be unless people start to think and do the simple experiments that wake them up to the potentials.
I'm serious.
That is just my opinion, but many years and tens of thousands of posts without being able to reach anyone should also be telling you that.
No, not at all.
It tells me that people will stick to something which is all set out for them and who feel comfortable arguing from the side of mass peer pressuring, rather than being against that pressuring and cast off as some lunatic for having the audacity to have their own theories.
Like I said before, go to church and pray to god...any god of whatever church and you are a pillar of society. A revered person among peers of that same religion.
Go to bed and carry that on, praying to your god for a safe day the following day and to look after whoever for you.
Then to sit at the table and thank the god for the meal you're having, that the god provided.
Many people will say Amen.
If I decide to talk to a god. My god. A god that I took on as my companion...although invisible to people. If I talk to my god before bed and thank my god for my meals and such, but I do not provide anyone in authority the identity of my god...I'm cast off as a lunatic...unstable and possibly incarcerated...and yet that can happen to me for no other reason than people cannot see my god and my god is not their god.
If I decide to call those people lunatics for talking to their invisible god, I'd be set upon, en-masse or banished from the community. Cast out as a troublemaker....etc.
If not, if this is just a path of personal discovery and you are enjoying the interactions you are having with the people here, then great, simply carry on.
If I didn't enjoy interaction then I certainly would not be here.
Im sure many others are here simply for personal reasons (myself included), and in my opinion people would be disappointed if you stopped.
Whatever reasons they are, they are your reasons, like you say.
The major issue on forums is in the inability for most of us to TRUST in one another.
It's either take a side in dodgeball but the side you take against the enemy, make sure that you avoid the ball and also ensure you are the last one standing on your own team.
It takes away the purpose of "team" and becomes a personal crusade, yet still cast off as being part of a group of people all with a similar badge.