History Channel/Holy Grail in America

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If you missed it on the History Channel this was a fascinating program. Forget about the Holy Grail possibly being in America but listen to the evidence that indicates that the Knights Templar may have been here long before Columbus. Very interesting and very well done. Whether you agree with them or not this two hour program is worth the watch.

Holy Grail in America

To be aired again:
Saturday, September 26 08:00 PM
Sunday, September 27 12:00 AM

Gator

 

loco_engr

Have it on my DVR and I love this kind of material.

Kensington, MN wasn't it?

Hoss

Are you a Mason?

Gator Bait

 
Hi Loco_engr

Yes Kensington is a part of it. They weave a fascinating story and present some surprising ideas. Fact or fiction? who knows, it's a very interesting program.

Gator

 

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Where did that question come from Hoss? Have you seen similar programs or know about the topic? I think they did mention a possible tie between the Knights Templar and the Masons. I don't know about loco_engr but I never made it as far as a Boy Scout. :laugh:

Gator

 

loco_engr

No, but I really like that stone mason program Rock Solid

loco_engr

I haven't watched the entire program yet . . .

jagweed

if the Knights Templar landed in Kensington Minnesota, they must had planes, too. or a UFO

hahaha

i didn't watch it, and am not talking about this show in particular... but i have noticed an odd thing about a few of the "science and education" channels.

heck, discovery channel, history channel, even PBS on occasion, will put on these half-*ssed shows about ghost hunting and all sorts of pseudo-science stuff. there was a frikkin show about big-foot on the other day, and after watching about ten minutes, i had to laugh.

they hired a forensic analyst (who just so happens to be a big-foot fan) to measure some stuff in the bigfoot film and determine how big the creature was (the film from the 70s). immediately, he determined that something was wrong because the "bigfoot" in the image seemed to be smaller than they thought was being reported originally. so instead of relying on the data, they assumed the data was wrong and went back out to try and measure the scene in order to steer the result back to showing something more in line with what the were expecting to find.

good god.

i dunno. i think if you want to claim there are ghosts and fairies and bigfoots (bigfeet?), and UFOs, you really need to put together some actual proof.... extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. don't think so? well, then let me tell you i can move objects with my mind and levitate. i just can't do it with cameras around because the electrical field from the equipment screws up my "aura". and i can't do it in front of witnesses because if they are even the tiniest bit a"non-believer", it saps my psychic energy....

not saying that other western explorers couldn't have been here before columbus (there were a pantload of people who were here before him), just saying the channels that were once proud of their intelligence level have been stooping to garner a few more ratings points. thank god we don't elect scientists...

fieroguy

I'll venture an 'amen' to that.

Panhandle Smoker

I was very disappointed in the History channel on Memorial Day. They used to have some really good war history documentaries and movies on Memorial Day and Memorial Day weekend but this year they had a Monster Quest marathon instead. Not one program about our veterans. I complained in an e-mail to the History Channel but I never got a response. Maybe I am the one with issues.

Fidel

I prefer the term sasquatch. It's easier to pluralize.

jagweed

by "pluralize" you mean reproduce with?

i would pay to see you trying that.

Bacchus

There most certainly IS a link between the Nights Templar and the Masonic Lodge. I have extensive knowledge of the subject.

Hoss

I know a little about it.Also the writer Dan Brown just released a new book titled "The Lost Symbol"that is very similar to the program you're talking about.

Hoss

"Yeti"! :laugh:

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LOL, Well put jagweed.

jagweed wrote:

if the Knights Templar landed in Kensington Minnesota, they must had planes, too. or a UFO

They probably used the same UFO that Columbus and Leif Erikson were supposed to use. That's an Unidentified Floating Object, right? After all a UFO is either a flying or floating object that has yet to be identified. A UFO has nothing to do with little green men from Mars but with our inability to identify an object. LOL, I was living in Exeter, N.H. in the 1960's when the whole town and most of the police force were seeing them. Trust me, they didn't have a clue as to what they were seeing, nothing was ever identified. Years later in South Freeport, Maine I saw a UFO or at least that is what they said it was in the paper the next day and yup it was unidentified.

jagweed wrote:

i dunno. i think if you want to claim there are ghosts and fairies and bigfoots (bigfeet?), and UFOs, you really need to put together some actual proof.... extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

I wonder jagweed, why would extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof??? Wouldn't they require the same proofs as any other claim??? After all isn't a proof a proof regardless of the claim???

jagweed wrote:

just saying the channels that were once proud of their intelligence level have been stooping to garner a few more ratings points.

Ahhh, competition on the open market! Capitalism, ain't it grand? We reserve the right to waste our money any way we want. I agree with you. I go a step further and include the sensationalistic programing of commercial fishing, logging, driving a truck over ice and all the other "risky job" whooy. I have had my share of risky jobs and they ain't what TV would like you to think they are. Common sense goes a long ways to negating the risk.

jagweed wrote:

thank god we don't elect scientists...

Amen to that, our science would be as screwed up as our politics. :laugh:

Gator

 

Little Steven

And what is your quest? Ye seek the graaailll. Whoosh.

jagweed

the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is a commonly quoted one... basically comes down to the notion that the less likely a claim is to be true, the more proof there is required to convince a reasonable person that the claim is true.

imagine this:

a guy buys a ticket for the lottery with odds of 65 million to one. brandishes it drunk during monday night football, and says to his buddy "i'm going to win this". and he does.

proof of his claim is that he won, right? well. no.

here's the best explanation i have found. carl sagan popularized the saying. that guy was one sane, intelligent, even keeled dude

http://quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/extraproof.html

Gator Bait

 
Interesting article, I don't think I necessarily agree but interesting. Maybe I don't make a very good skeptic. I fail to find a tangible definition for "extraordinary proof" or "extraordinary evidence" or a definition of "extraordinary claims". What we may perceive as "extraordinary" today or yesterday may be common or "ordinary" tomorrow or the next day. "Extraordinary evidence" in my poorly educated mind would be in contradiction to a prima facie case. I don't claim to know.
Carl Sagan was a brilliant man and one of the great speakers of our time but would he require "extraordinary evidence" to back up the "extraordinary claims" that we had put a man on the moon? To the skeptics that whole thing was/is extraordinary. To most of us it is common knowledge.
To go back to Ed J. Gracely's article briefly, his use of "a priori probability" is interesting but not familiar to me. Like I say, my education is very limited.
To get back to the Knights Templar and whether or not they were on this continent before Columbus and left evidence to that claim would be seen as extraordinary to the skeptic but may be not to others. The "extraordinary", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. LOL. I thought the program had some interesting ideas that were presented in an entertaining way.

Gator

 

jagweed

forgive me, because i'm rambling. i'm in between jobs, delaying starting on another, having coffee, and contemplating driving out to a pig farm for raw ham and pork belly... hahaha

but i don't think carl would say that the claim we went to the moon was extraordinary, frankly. and he'd say there's plenty of proof. i rather think the claim that we didn't go would be extraordinary... to scientists. who are the gatekeepers when it comes to science.

the believer rarely believes that what he believes is extraordinary. but then again, the believer often rarely arrives at that belief after study and assessment.

for example, one's religion generally has much more to do with what house one was randomly born into rather than after some extended investigation and willful choice. if a person is already inclined to believe in something, he or she is less likely to require actually "proof" (extraordinary or otherwise).

the word "extraordinary" is being used in relation to the probability of something. and a "believer" will always seek to lower the requirement of proof. a truly neutral person would be able to see that one claim is far more likely than another, and would ask for an equal amount of proof.

that's the danger of pseudo science. when you enter into "science", you need to play by science's rules. science is a construct, and you can stay outside it if you want, but you can't adopt only parts of it, or step in briefly to assert something then jump out when the getting gets tough.

you can assert something scientifically and then not prove it scientifically. but that means that science needn't take you seriously.

hard to explain.

it's like math. most folks don't question math. but math is no more "correct" than science is. math and science are both very much about saying "well, this is what we have so far, and so far it holds up". and all the scientists (or mathematicians as the case may be) are sort of working on their own parts, or testing things, or trying to discover things. or even attacking each other's work. and whatever holds up will be what "science" or "math" is tomorrow. but most important, it's only math or science as agreed on by mathematicians, and scientists.

so if a guy wants to claim the knights templar landed in this country at such and such a time, he'd need proof. otherwise those who are living day to day in the world of science aren't going to give much credence to it. and it won't be "science" by generally accepted terms. it'll just be a claim.

people argue about this theory or that theory... but they are layman (as I am) playing at science, and not working in it daily, as a scientist.

and so it's a poor bit of logic to say that some folks only need x amount of proof to believe something. that's true. but not if they are talking about science. a science is about demonstrable patterns, being able to replicate results, etc.

very rarely is anything actually "proven" in science. so "proof" is a slippery slope. "electricity" is just theory, after all, which has yet to be proven and understood.

but my computer sure as hell is working, and the lamp next to me is lit. a layman, that's proof enough for me. but it ain't proof of the theory of electricity. it's just proof that what we think about the phenomenon is so far pretty accurate and demonstrable.

icemncmth

There you have it plain and simple!!!

loco_engr

So, who is it really?