Is there any real mystery?

[TrumanB]

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

Edited October 15, 2020 by TrumanB

[XenoFish]

13 minutes ago, TrumanB said:

Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more?

No. Nothing really grabs my curiosity now.

Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science?

Reality is boring because I can not live in a fantasy world. And science does destroy the mystery of things. 

Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they )

No.

or you just like to squabble with believers?

I honestly find that to be boring and mostly a waste of time. In fact I often question why I still participate. Nothing ever leads anywhere. It's always the same handful of people repeating the same worn out discussions. Same arguments, same threads. Same, same, same.

 

[TrumanB]

Thanks. When I was much younger I had that strong interest in the mysteries of the world. I read all sort of stuff...most of that was garbage from my today's perspective. I miss those days when I believed that impossible things are possible. It's like a nostalgy.

and now I'm watching the old episode of X Files and it's still cool. lol

[XenoFish]

2 minutes ago, TrumanB said:

Thanks. When I was much younger I had that strong interest in the mysteries of the world. I read all sort of stuff...most of that was garbage from my today's perspective. I miss those days when I believed that impossible things are possible. It's like a nostalgy.

and now I'm watching the old episode of X Files and it's still cool. lol

I wasn't much different. I was really into the stuff this forum is about. Ghost, demons, magick, psychic abilities. A lot of metaphysical stuff. But like all things the illusion gets broken. It loses the mystery and charm it once held. Especially when you learn that what you once believed and found joy in was utter nonsense. I can honestly say that science taught me a lot, but it also destroyed the mystery of life for me. Now all I have to look forward to is a cold grave. Everything is just chemicals and electrical impulses, it's depressing to say the least. 

[TrumanB]

3 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I wasn't much different. I was really into the stuff this forum is about. Ghost, demons, magick, psychic abilities. A lot of metaphysical stuff. But like all things the illusion gets broken. It loses the mystery and charm it once held. Especially when you learn that what you once believed and found joy in was utter nonsense. I can honestly say that science taught me a lot, but it also destroyed the mystery of life for me. Now all I have to look forward to is a cold grave. Everything is just chemicals and electrical impulses, it's depressing to say the least. 

I still feel mystery when it comes to dreams and precognition.

[XenoFish]

Just now, TrumanB said:

I still feel mystery when it comes to dreams and precognition.

I don't. I feel nothing. Everything has been reduced to its basic components. To me nothing is a mystery. Which is rather sad now that I think about it.

[cladking]

I find it intriguing that as a rule those who have all the answers and believe most fervently in science and it's hypotheses once believed in ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night,.  

Most of the rest of us don't believe in ghosts but neither do we really disbelieve either.  At one time "skeptic" meant someone who didn't have the answers.  

13 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I don't. I feel nothing. Everything has been reduced to its basic components. To me nothing is a mystery. Which is rather sad now that I think about it.

Tell me what you know about consciousness.  Tell me how gravity works.  Tell me how you know there is (was) no creator.  

[kmt_sesh]

1 hour ago, TrumanB said:

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

I'd rank myself a skeptic in most things. I don't believe in aliens from outer space, I don't believe in critters like Bigfoot or Nessie, I don't believe in Atlantis, and on it goes.

I am a self-admitted  thsthistory nerd, especially Egypt and the ancient Near East. This is a subject that I've researched and explored for over three decades. Ancient Egypt presents long-standing mysteries that probably bore most um posters but endlessly draw me in. these include the precise origin of hieroglyphs. the exact order of royal succession between Akhenaten and Tut, to name a. couple of examples. Like I said, boring to most posters buy highly relevant to us Egyptophiles.

There are plenty of mysteries out there. We just have to be realistic.

[jaylemurph]

1 hour ago, cladking said:

 At one time "skeptic" meant someone who didn't have the answers.  

Was this in your magic, never-recorded, unreconstructible Ancient Tongue or in some real language?

—Jaylemurph 

[cladking]

10 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

Was this in your magic, never-recorded, unreconstructible Ancient Tongue or in some real language?

Neither!

It was when I was a boy and attended school. Now days children are indoctrinated into science and the belief everyone is correct.  "Skeptics" are those who believe.  At one time skeptics doubted woo and doctrine both.  

 

99% of climatologists believe in global warming.  This isn't even a science yet they are nearly unanimous in their conviction.  

 

The problem is that language changes even faster than opinion and belief.  Even a 1952 unabridged Funk and Wagnalls will be littler help in understanding that language because it is gone.  

[ShadowSot]

I've always kinda hated the stereotype presented as skeptics having all the answers. 

 Mainly because the skeptic position often presented on this board at least is, here's the answers we have, and here's the parts we are pretty sure of, and here's the parts we don't know. 

The other side, and the reason forums like this exist, claims to have answers for everything. 

 Every mystery, unknown, or uncertainty, real or imagined, is explained by some bit of woo. 

 Personally Gobekli Tepe is one of my favorite mysteries. It was such an outlier when it was found. Though we have more context to place it in now, it's still extremely unique and challenge traditional theories when it was first excavated. 

 And frankly, due to just how old it is and lack of writing, it's a mystery that may never be completely and satisfyingly solved. I'm comfortable with that, it's how this field works.

 By comparison the fringe is always finding ways to explain it. 

 Atlantean outpost, remnants of a lost civilization, aliens, lost technology, the landing site of Noah's ark, and so on. 

 They aren't just presented as possibilities, but presented as obviously true. 

 Where the know it appearance comes from is when this butys up against what we actually do know to be true and can verify. For example the pyramids of giza are reliably dated. Worker gangs and their graffiti turn up around the structures, even in places you can't reach without an rov. 

 But other pieces of the puzzle? We have tool marks and other remnants that show the tools they used for construction. But we don't know exactly how they utilized them to build the structures. 

 Part of that simply comes down to no one wanting to fund a program to build a new one, unlike the program in France to build a new castle. 

 There are plenty of mysteries, it's why I enjoy reading history, and especially pre history. 

 The fringe stuff tends to diminish them, in my view. 

 It really reduces the achievements of a people, to accredit them to a lost civilization or fantastic lost technology. 

I'd also add that I'm regularly struck by how uninformed people tend to be. Drilling is one of the most ancient technologies we've developed. But a number of people who look at ancient sites and spin off from incredulity. 

 However they don't seem to have put much thought into how similar or greater achievements were made by other civilizations. You get claims like, granite or diorite acan only be worked by diamond tools. But don't really have explanations for how the Romans worked granite and diorite. 

[Thanos5150]

1 hour ago, kmt_sesh said:

I am a self-admitted  thsthistory nerd, especially Egypt and the ancient Near East. This is a subject that I've researched and explored for over three decades. Ancient Egypt presents long-standing mysteries that probably bore most um posters but endlessly draw me in. these include the precise origin of hieroglyphs. the exact order of royal succession between Akhenaten and Tut, to name a. couple of examples. 

Like were they adapted from proto-cuneiform?

The exact order of royal succession between Akhenaten and Tut interests you, but not the succession of elongated skulls of various types found throughout Dynastic history, the least of which the line of Tut?

Tut, 18th Dynasty:

 Tomb KV55, 18th Dynasty, argued by some to be Akhenaten:

Skull attributed to Thutmose III, 18th Dynasty:

Daughters of Akhenaten, 18th Dynasty

Akhenaten and Nefertiti with children, 18th Dynasty:

Tomb KV35, mother of Tut, sister of Akhenaten, daughter of Amenhotep III, 18th Dynasty:

Skull attributed to Sanakht, 3rd Dynasty:

Found in her palace facade sarcophagus, 4th Dynasty, the skull of the remains believed to be Queen Meresankh III, wife of Khafre:

Late Period:

Much more. 

Part of a long story which my main interest in elongated skulls begins with the period of their first as yet found appearance in the Ancient Near East in the 8th millennium and their proliferation and diffusion throughout the region, even Malta, through the 3rd millennium which is much more significant than people realize. While we may not find aliens, what we have left is still a bonafide "mystery", and not just the existence of the skulls themselves, but their potential significance to the development of civilization if not the history of humans themselves.  When I have the time I will start a thread on the subject.  

[ShadowSot]

36 minutes ago, Thanos5150 said:

When I have the time I will start a thread on the subject.  

Pretty sure there's already a few threads on the subject. 

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, TrumanB said:

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

A mystery is something we don't understand yet. What science does is explain how things work. I guess it's up to an individual's outlook as to if that removes the excitement or not. Science opens doors, and offers detail which is more exciting than the original mystery IMHO. 

 

[Hanslune]

There are still hundreds if not thousands of mysteries. However, those are passed over for 'popular' mysteries that are flogged incessantly for money. Atlantis, pyramids, Lemuria, etc.

Mysteries I have been investigating or been interested in for 50+ years

Why didn't human civilization begin during the warming period in the Eemian period as it did after the last ice age?

Why did the Indus civilization dissolve?

Why did people move into more difficult terrain from good easy to live in terrain?

How did HSS interface with HSD, HSN and HS??

How did language develop?

Why did the Maya city states collapse?

Why did the Polynesians take to the sea?

Why did folks with farming skills start working their way up into Europe that thenbrought them into land that had hard winters?

Etc, etc.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Hanslune

[Free99]

For me now even at my age I have a few that still have my interest from Ancient stone cutting techniques and transporting them to other places. Dreams and precognition if you want to call it that. Life after death. Ghost and crazy stuff from beyond. Rather you believe in any of it or not it’s fun to read. 

[Tatetopa]

5 hours ago, TrumanB said:

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

We are surrounded by mystery on the fringes of everything we know.  Indeed I am a skeptic, but I am still excited by mystery.  My own skepticism plays out like this; I want some things to be really true so I try to do everything possible to disprove them.   Like the old Sherlock Holmes dictum, when you remove the impossible, what is left however improbable must be the truth.

Physical mysteries of the universe still abound. We will be able to work on some of those for the next few hundred years. .  

History still has a number of mysteries left to uncover and understand.  You have likely some Roman remains there in Serbia don't you? In America we find incredible Native American sites.  The history and migrations of those peoples are still very unknown.  Just in the last couple of months while looking at pipeline footings under a section of the Great Lakes,  a couple of stone arrangements, one a linear and one possibly a ring  have been found with a remote vehicle on the lake bottom.  If they are man made as they appear to be, the last time this area was above water was during the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago.  More to be seen here this year I hope, maybe it will prove to be nothing.  We'll see.

More to be found in biology, both in species and the complexity of organisms. The human brain and its workings are still a mystery.  Are we programmed more than we like to think?  Do we really have free will?  We might find out in the next century..

The prehistoric world is opening itself up to us slowly, we have such an incomplete picture as yet. Plenty yet to be discovered there.

Now we come to what you might be referring to with your question: monsters, ghosts, aliens, and lost advanced civilizations.  Some may disagree with me, but as we keep pushing the boundaries of our knowledge outward, we leave little room for that sort of thing.  No bigfoot likely, no Loch Ness monster as we conceive it, like a plesiosaur.  Maybe a very large eel or fish that engendered medieval sightings, maybe not.   Aliens out there somewhere, very likely.  Aliens visiting earth, maybe not so much.  Imagine how exciting it would be though to find complex alien life, not necessarily intelligent on another planet.

Undiscovered people and civilizations, very likely.  Advanced ones, not so likely.  That hope kind of goes along with our concepts of "The Fall" of humanity from grace or Eden or whatever.  More likely is that we climbed up out of the dirt and are as advanced today as humanity has ever been..  And we did it on our own.

The world is full of exciting and wonderful stuff with plenty of mysteries in every direction.  Keep looking, don't settle for less than truth.

[jethrofloyd]

I don't believe in the monsters, ghosts or aliens, But, I would like to know if it is a (simple)life in a subsurface ocean on the Jupiter's moon Europa?

[Rlyeh]

8 hours ago, TrumanB said:

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

What do you mean by mystery?  The spooky type or the type that is grounded in reality? 

[TrumanB]

3 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

History still has a number of mysteries left to uncover and understand.  You have likely some Roman remains there in Serbia don't you? In America we find incredible Native American sites.  The history and migrations of those peoples are still very unknown.  Just in the last couple of months while looking at pipeline footings under a section of the Great Lakes,  a couple of stone arrangements, one a linear and one possibly a ring  have been found with a remote vehicle on the lake bottom.  If they are man made as they appear to be, the last time this area was above water was during the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago.  More to be seen here this year I hope, maybe it will prove to be nothing.  We'll see.

 

Yes, and before Romans there were Lepenski vir and Vinča.  That causes conflict between two types of historians, those who claim that we were on Balkans from ancient time and those who say that we are Slavs who arrived in 7th century.

[Wepwawet]

8 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Ithe exact order of royal succession between Akhenaten and Tut, to name a. couple of examples. Like I said, boring to most posters buy highly relevant to us Egyptophiles.

 

Have you seen the hot off the press results of Dodson's examination of Tut's second coffin and the canopic coffinettes? He has shown that allthough without 100% certainty, the order goes Smenkhare - Neferneferuaten - Tutankhamun. Not really a surprise, but he does make it much more a reality. It's down to the face of the second coffin not being that of either Tutankhamun or Nefertiti, but more tellingly, it's a case of instances of the prenomen Ankhkheperure without epithets being discerned under the same name with epithets, or evidence of cartouches being cut out and replaced. Previously, while there was debate about the face of the second coffin, it was assumed otherwise to belong to Tutankhamun originally. I think Huber should get credit for making a firm stand on this coffin not being original to Tutankhamun, and indeed Dodson does reference Huber, unusual for a well known Egyptologist to recognize an "independant researcher".  In one case where we have a palimpsest of a misspelling of Nebkheperure (Nebkhepere) on top of Ankhkheperure without epithets, we are, I think, looking at an oversight, and another rushed job. The mysteries are where, when, how and why all four kings died, and, apart from Tutankhamun, what became of their remains. How do we interpret KV21, KV35, KV55, KV62 and KV63, and other places and things to numerous to mention, without an at least 1000 page thread...

 

Edited October 15, 2020 by Wepwawet
typos

[cladking]

9 hours ago, ShadowSot said:

I've always kinda hated the stereotype presented as skeptics having all the answers. 

Everybody is different.  

Just because the word "skeptic" has a new definition doesn't mean any given individual believes he knows everything.  

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

Have you seen the hot off the press results of Dodson's examination of Tut's second coffin and the canopic coffinettes? He has shown that allthough without 100% certainty, the order goes Smenkhare - Neferneferuaten - Tutankhamun. Not really a surprise, but he does make it much more a reality. It's down to the face of the second coffin not being that of either Tutankhamun or Nefertiti, but more tellingly, it's a case of instances of the prenomen Ankhkheperure without epithets being discerned under the same name with epithets, or evidence of cartouches being cut out and replaced. Previously, while there was debate about the face of the second coffin, it was assumed otherwise to belong to Tutankhamun originally. I think Huber should get credit for making a firm stand on this coffin not being original to Tutankhamun, and indeed Dodson does reference Huber, unusual for a well known Egyptologist to recognize an "independant researcher".  In one case where we have a palimpsest of a misspelling of Nebkheperure (Nebkhepere) on top of Ankhkheperure without epithets, we are, I think, looking at an oversight, and another rushed job. The mysteries are where, when, how and why all four kings died, and, apart from Tutankhamun, what became of their remains. How do we interpret KV21, KV35, KV55, KV62 and KV63, and other places and things to numerous to mention, without an at least 1000 page thread...

 

Ah, but what about Tut's finned feet, Smen's advanced robotic left arm and Neffie's bones reinforced with titanium....er, what, huh, oh for a second I was channeling and old style Sitchin era believer....sorry

[Mr Guitar]

I've found, personally, that, as I age, (75 as we speak), there are fewer and fewer 'aha' moments and that day to day existence is pretty boring. Science is coming closer to explaining just about everything down to a level that is so far removed from everyday life that most just don't bother to even try to be interested. If something doesn't affect me more or less directly, I have a difficult time caring about whether quantum entanglement will result in better computers, or stuff we're seeing in the sky actually happened 'x' number of billion years ago, or why some ancient civilization did 'such and such' (had to be for food, sex or religion) 5,000 years ago. To me, it just doesn't matter much. I would like to see discovery of a real, live intelligent civilization (not microbes, etc.) out in the cosmos somewhere and I'd really like for those Oak Island guys to finally find out if there's something really there (been following that since I was in middle school). Other than that, like someone said, "just another cold grave" to look forward to. My shrink asks me why I don't care about doing music or art anymore and I tell him that I see no point in it and he counters with "well there's really no point in ANYTHING. Something is only important if you make it important" and as I age, I find fewer and fewer things to attach importance to.

[rashore]

13 hours ago, TrumanB said:

I don't know where to put this thread, if this is a wrong place you may move it.

So, is there any real mystery that remains unsolved? Or we can just retire from this forum because every topic is debunked? My question is specifically directed to the sceptics of this forum. Is there any question that still excites you, makes your heart beat and feel that there is something more? Or reality is that boring and everything can be explained by plain science? Do you keep a list of unexplained mysteries ( and what are they ) or you just like to squabble with believers?

I don't think every mystery is solved, every topic debunked. I don't think we have a lot of skeptics here, though we do have a lot of believers in their points on the spectrum. We modern humans are pretty smart, and have figured out a lot... we have also lost or forgotten a lot, and are ignorant in a lot of the mysteries of the universe. 

There's all kinds of stuff that still excites me, or makes me curious to know more. There's been plenty of topics that might not be so mysterious to others, but new to me and I like learning about new mysteries. I like old debunked mysteries too, to go back over them and sometimes question them afresh, take a skeptical look at them to see if the old answers still seem to be the correct ones. A style of story that has been heard a thousand times and gets dismissed out of hand or heckled right off might have new answers or insights. And there's still plenty of new stuff going on that I just don't know about yet.

Everything can be explained by science, we just don't know that much science yet. We have also lost science too, almost to the point of it being considered fable or lore. 

I dabble in folklore tracking, and find a lot of mysteries and sometimes some interesting correlations there.Spooky threads can be interesting if folks don't fall into their usual belief spectrum squabbles. I take interest in true crime, and there is for sure lots of mysteries there. Some threads there have been running on for years, sometimes kicking back up again when new information turns up and leads to a whole nother round of discussing and asking questions and proposing answers again.

Sometimes for me it isn't the topic itself, but rather how topics can evolve in our society. Like alchemy was once considered a big nope- and eventually it evolved to chemistry- when in itself evolves so fast. Now we rely on it, and at the same time in ways decry it just as fiercely as we once did alchemy. Things like Big Pharma and GMO's don't get incantations to angels anymore, but are treated with just as much superstition by some folks. Media coverage of true crimes, particularly deaths, has evolved from newspaper prints to modern filming and internet. I grew up with campfire stories and local UL's, and have seen the evolution of UL folklore into full digital with slenderman and then real life crimes because of that- that's an interesting mystery to me.