MPJ

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when the religiosity we are all familiar with today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities, and numerous superpowered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10,000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into the next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition, and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls, but only the Neolithic revolution and the invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels. Acc...

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land, portion of the sea, or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with the freshwater nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians, as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures, inherited the island and named it after Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owes its appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him; both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands, and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his af...

There is a period of time we are familiar with the acronym "BC". It stands, of course, for "Before Christ", the period before the famous tale about the origin of the Christian religion. But this time goes far behind Jesus. Far beyond the origin of all monotheistic religions. It goes even before the eons when our ancestors knew gods in the plural and to the ages when modern humans started their everlasting and ongoing endeavors. The time in prehistory was occupied with the endless wonders of surrounding nature without firm beliefs but surely filled with many invisible divine spirits and mysterious stars. Due to the illiteracy of the period, there's almost nothing tangible we could use to gain full knowledge of what early society really looked like, and even though we know a great deal about those times only by analyzing cave walls, fossil records, and DNA samples, in order to describe one early settlement, we still must use lots of imagination and scientific gu...

My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845, and he spent his entire life in the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life; after all, life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well, and literacy among the majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned out to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Besides being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only a few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guarantee him at least a radio host job if he were born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches, and communiques while standing in the center of the village square, surrounded by neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough, he earned valuable prominence in his family, and his children decided to devote our famil...

Let me start this story with the remarkable opening of Michael D. Gordin's book named "The Pseudoscience Wars". The full quote is this: "No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist. There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself - I’ll just head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts". And this is the ultimate truth—there is no pseudoscience. It's not the real thing. You can, with more or less enthusiasm, add the adjective "pseudo" to anything you like and get yourself the bad or opposite meaning of the original word. But in the world we are currently living in and with, for example, TV shows like "Ancient Aliens" being vastly more popular than attending lectures or reading published scientific papers by professional archaeologists and historians, pseudo combined with science are now recognized words in al...

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Have you ever been in a situation to answer somebody's question with 'Yes and No'? Well, it is definitely one of those answers they are teaching politicians to answer every time they need to use some evasive maneuvers in order to avoid discussions they don't want to get into. But in this case, the answer to the question from the title, or expanded a little with, "Are you really behind the wheel of your body?" is really 'Yes and No'. And nothing could be closer to the truth. The keyword is, of course, parasitology, a very complex scientific research that is trying to understand properly all the macro and microorganisms who can't live without other living beings and usually do that without their consent and rather use them to live their entire or partial life, which in most cases leads to the host's malfunction, to use a raw mechanical word. They only leave hosts in case of their death or if the host's environment is exploited to the level of...

Couple of weeks ago, we went out for usual supermarket shopping. The routine that everybody loves and what we people from big cities, from the time when first mall was invented, consider as a sort of entertainment. Thankfully we have one big supermarket just close by so that rainy day we stopped by again for the umpteenth time. I left my son in the toys department and checked my wife at the other part of the store, and found her pretty happy and busy with browsing for, well something, probably important we ran out from our home supplies. I didn't know what else to do so I decided to check couple of book shelves they like to call 'Bookshop and Entertainment'. Genesis, the first book of Moses Well, I surly don't have to describe in details what I have seen in there. The majority of book covers were designed with pastel colors, pretty girls and tender flowers of all sorts. Just for fun, I randomly opened one of the novels and read something like this " Her lip...

Couple of centuries after Christ, Constantine was very popular name. Especially among soldiers in Roman and Bysantine empires along with Greeks during their Macedonian age. Within latin Cōnstantīnus and greek Κωνσταντῖνος (Kōnstantînos) name literally means the one who's constant and steadfast especially within military properties related to strength and stamina. In those times the land of my current location was called "Moesia Superior" with the city of Naissus in the role of its main trade center and biggest military outpost for Roman army. Today's name of the city is "Niš", the largest city of southern Serbia and also the city where I was born and where I live ever since. Serbian usage of the name is "Konstantin" and even though it is not related to military anymore, the name is fairly popular nowadays among young Serbians. It was third on my list when my son was born simply because I really like names with strong inner "adjectivity" ...

There is no doubt that this comparison or question if you will is as old as humanity itself. Perhaps the basic idea of invisible forces driving human beings and everything around started to occupy human mind ever since it evolved beyond simple survival or in those prehistorical times when our ancestors started thinking about things not always related to eating, sleeping and populating the planet. It definitely originated way back in the time when people started to paint the cave walls. In the time when human mind started to use the most powerful feature other species still waiting to emerge. The power of imagination. The birth of superstition and religion didn't wait much longer after humans started daydreaming. What did I do?* I am always getting back and reading lots of articles out there trying to find the best explanation of what is the main difference between superstition and religion. There are lots of philosopher's, religious or even scientific thoughts trying to...