Agnostic Journyman

Firstly, I love this board and all the good discussions that go on here. I have posted under the name "squeegee sharpener" (couldn't think of a screeen name when I was joining when that popped into my head as part of a joke we used to play on each other in the Navy), but have changed my screen name to "Agnostic Journeyman" since I also go by that over at the Walkaway from Fundamentalism board, another excellent site, and it summarizes my stance on god and all that.

I may have posted this in the wrong section, but since it involves junk science and a tremendous amount of skepticism, perhaps not.

On Friday I received a packet in the mail from my uncle in California. My mother had given me a heads up that it was coming but said little of its contents, but that he was planning to reveal the same material my packet contained to my parents on the 4th of July.

The packet contained pages of printed web sites, and a cassette tape. I browsed through the printouts and then listened to the tape as I drove around town doing errands. It didn't take me long at all to realize my uncle had just sent me a steaming pile of lawn cigars.

What puzzles me, though, is that my uncle was an aerospace engineer for many years, and claimed to be atheist for about the same amount of time. Now he's into "Seth Speaks" books and digesting material from a website known as "ZetaTalk", where some chick named Nancy Leider purports to "channel" the observations and wisdom of beings known as "Zetas", I guess a bunch of UFO alien space cadets or something.

Yesterday my dad told me my uncle has always dabbled in conspiracy theories, which another proponent of this "Planet X", Mark Hazlewood, abides by as to why the majority of the human race has no idea a humongous planet from beyond Pluto is screaming toward Earth at warp speed and is due to fly by next May, causing a polar shift and tremendous disasters on earth.

So I guess it really shouldn't puzzle me, but it does. How can an atheist engineer, who must use reasoning and logic and would be more disposed to dismiss unfounded speculation, gravitate toward this sheer nuttiness? Perhaps now that he's retired, the side of him that always toyed with conspiracy theories and the like has become dominant.

Now I learn he wants to sell his semi-rural spread in California and head off to Montana to escape the coming doom (California is supposed to subduct, according to all the proponents of Planet X pole shifters). He's wanting his immediate family and my parents to join him. We're still skeptical, thinking that if he actually tries to go, he'll get cold feet once he talks to a real estate agent. But who knows?

Anyway, anyone else had any experience with this Planet X nonsense? My mother is now really worried about her brother, which bothers me deeply since he's swallowing such stupid nonsense. She really cares for him and it tears her up to see him chasing all these crazy notions.
I have prepared a response packet for my uncle, but I don't have a lot of faith it will penetrate. I restrained myself from filling page after page with the word "bullshit" and "poppycock". Rather, I calmly explained why I couldn't accept any of it.
I realize only he can come around to his senses, but its frustrating for the rest of the family in the meantime. ARGH!!
It's also sad. After I stopped laughing at the packet's contents, I got depressed thinking anybody would fall for this tripe. It hurts worse that it's a family member.

Anyone else had any experience like this?

AJ

One of the last sane

Oddly enough, something similar happened to my uncle. He joined a cult and disappeared over a decade ago. We assume he is in some lonely unmarked grave somewhere. So it could be worse.

[ July 08, 2002: Message edited by: One of last of the sane ]</p>

Anunnaki

Is <a href="http://www.rael.org/" target="_blank">this</a> what your uncle joined?

If this is what he joined I don`t think you have anything to worry about except for consoling a very dissapointed uncle.
It has nothing to do with the big 3 religions so I doubt anyone is planning suicide.

Agnostic Journyman

Thanks for your responses. I'm not sure he's joined a cult of any kind. He hasn't mentioned it. But now that y'all do mention it, it makes me wonder about his Montana prospects. Is he just going to go there with who he can get to go with him, buy some land, and start a dome home (he sent me info about dome homes)? Or is there some kind of group up there he expects to join to ride out this predicted disaster with?

Anyway, time's running short, at least from his perspective, since this Planet X catastrophe is supposed to occur next May. So it makes me wonder about Montana. Anyone know of any doomsday Planet X crazed cults there?

Best case scenario in all of this is that he gets hit with a good case of reluctance, sticks around his present home through next May, and realizes he's been had. Our family is pretty cool about not hounding each other with "I told you so". After all, they put up with me in my fundie Christian phase and were there to welcome me back when I woke up and got the hell out of that mess.

butswana

Holy shit! In 1987, my uncle told me that the Bugmen from PlanetX were dropping spores on him.
He said a bunch of other really crazy shit too.
He locked himself in a car, and threatened to slash his throat with a dull machete. He ended up hanging himself with a bed sheet in jail.

Mageth

Don't feel so bad; it could be worse. Most of my family believes some guy is coming down from the sky to grab 'em all up and haul 'em off to paradise or somewhere "in the twinkling of an eye". While planet X may not actually exist, at least we know there are such things as planets, and thus a scenario like planet X is at least plausible.

Godless Dave

Can you afford to buy it?

Anunnaki

I actually know quite a bit more about the planet x nonsense than I should. I`m ashamed to admit it,but I believed it all myself about 4 years ago.

I didn`t believe in all the Zeta crap though. The Zeta stuff is a recent addition to a 30 year old half-baked theory about Sumerian mythology being the actual recorded history of the creation of man and birth of civilization at the hands of advanced aliens from Nibiru (planet x).
These stories later became known as the biblical Genesis.

The theory comes from a self taught Sumerian "scholar" named Zacharia Sitchin who wrote his first book about it "the 12th planet" back in 1970.

This guy <a href="http://xfacts.com/x.htm" target="_blank">here</a> has a website that explains the original theory pretty well.
All this Zeta business is a recent new age addition to Sitchins theory about the Anunnaki (Sumerian gods) who live on a rogue planet called Nibiru. Nibiru,according to Sitchin and a few others is on an huge eliptical orbit that takes it through our solar system every 3600 years. It`s next arrival is slated for either 2003 or 2013 depending on who you ask.
Sitchin claims that these Anunnaki are the gods the bible is talking about when it says "let us create man in our image" and that they are responsible for creating mankind via genetic engineering and cloning.

There is a lot of weird shit in Sumerian mythology,but nothing quite like the massive goldmines,robots,spaceships and nuclear wars that Sitchin proposes. Every real Sumerian scholar thinks he`s nut`s and doesn`t know how to translate the cunieform texts properly,but he`s an excellent writer and it`s understandable how so many people looking for an alternative easy answer to religion could get sucked into believing it all. It also does a much better job at explaining the biblical Genesis than the bible itself ever could.

I myself took Sitchin`s theory seriously at first when I discovered it about 4 years ago and I even thought that we were doomed come May 2003. I told everyone I knew all about it and talked about it whenever somebody would listen.
Don`t anybody start laughing at me just yet. This theory makes A LOT more sense than the creationism that so many of you believed in at one time or another.

The one good thing to come out of it all was that it sparked my interest in Mesopotamian mythology which eventually led up to me taking an intertest in the rest of biblical mythology including the origins of the Jesus myth.

This recent Zeta nonsense seems to be a new angle for those who still want to believe in Sitchins well debunked theory. If you ccan no longer back it up through history,biology or proper translation of Sumerian texts,what else can you use to keep it afloat? Alien communications!
Who can prove that they are NOT actually talking to the Zeta`s who can back up the planet X theory by eyewitness accounts from out in space somewhere? You can call them crazy,but you can`t actually prove it true or false.
I`d be interested to know what Sitchin has to say about all this recent Zeta stuff. Sitchin still believes Nibiru (planet X) is on it`s way but he`s sly enough not to mention any actual doomsday date and distance himself from those who think aliens are communicating with us.

All in all,it`s easy to see how your uncle could fall prey to this since we are all searching for reasons and meaning to our lives and the world around us. Many get their quick and easy answer "fix" from religion,while many others have conluded that religion is bunk,but still are not satisfied with the limited answers science can offer.
The ancient alien theory offers the best of both worlds to these people.


&lt;&lt;edited to fix multiple errors and I`m sure there are still many more that have gone uncorrected. I`m soooo damn tired right now&gt;&gt;

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]</p>

Marduk

I have a lot in common with Mr. Annunaki, I've read all of the ZS books and Planet X stuff as well, there is also a site Innana Awakes, or something like that, by some woman who claims to channel the Sumerian goddess of the same name (one of the Annunaki) In fact a whole religion has sprung up around this stuff "The Raelians"
However there are (or were) a few legitimate astronomers talking about a possible 10th planet or brown dwarf out in the ort cloud perturbing the orbits of Neptune & Uranus. However this was a few years ago, things may have changed.
The last time I checked Sitchin's website (he was on Art Bell a few weeks ago) He claimed the idea that Nibiru was comming soon was nonsense and he will look further into the matter of when it will return. I'm on the edge of my seat!
Though Sitchin has claimed that the Annunaki bases on Mars and the Moon have come online!!!!
Curious triva bit: one of the Sumerian stories claims that Alalu, an Annunaki King, was banished to Mars with his pal Anzu. Alalu died and was buried on Mars, Anzu carved his face on a mountain next to his grave. So if anyone asks what is the name of that guy who is the "Face on Mars" you can tell them "That's Alalu!!"

Agnostic Journyman

Man. My condolences. My unk hasn't said anything about bug spores yet, and he likes to restore old cars, and I've never known him to harbor any weapons.

Yep. I once believed that "rapture" stuff too, so I really can't be too hard on my uncle about Planet X. In a side by side comparison, Planet X, minus the ancient astronaut and Zeta talk channeling bullshit, isn't as farfetched as a dead Jewish guy hung on a cross coming back to Earth over two thousand years later to sweep all his faithful up into the sky.

To Godless Dave:

Can I afford unk's spread? At California real estate prices? Only in my dreams.

To Annunaki:

Great post. The names of Sitchin and Nibiru and Sumarian mythology all came up in my own online research. You helped put it all in perspective succintly.
And you know, I can see the appeal of all this, despite the looniness. I've always heard it said that myths must have some basis in fact. That must gnaw at curious minds; they hear these fantastic stories and wonder what, if any, truth they may be based upon. Ancient Astronauts depositing the first humans on Earth seems to make sense in some crazy way, more so than biblical creationism.
But evolution makes so much more sense. We are what we are because of what we've evolved through for eons. Our advanced intelligence distinguishes us from most other life forms on Earth, but I'm not sure we're any smarter or wiser!