Six Other Degrees of Separation

August 20, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Six blind men live in Metropolis, Illinois. They were born in the eighties and have been blind from birth.  

These six men consider the earth to be round. They came to this understanding during their grade school education which included handling of the classroom globe. Their day-to-day experience told them that the world was flat and with many sharp corners.

From Mrs. Foley, their high school physical science teacher, these six men learned about Ptolemy and Copernicus. They learned that the sun and not the earth is at the center of our universe. Their day-to-day experience taught them that their universe was a big as the darkness in which they lived.

One day in August, as they listened to the news on the radio, these six men heard about a total solar eclipse. To their delight the path of totality, the announcer said, would be through Carbondale, Illinois.

When the morning of the total eclipse came, the six men took a bus to Carbondale. When they arrived the men soon became separated by the rush and noise of the crowds. While sitting on the bus the men had agreed to return on the 6:30pm bus to Metropolis.

One blind man found his way to a corner where there was talk of a shuttle bus to the viewing site. He got on.

The second blind man asked for the directions to where everyone would be for the event. A young couple said, “Follow us”. The blind man held onto the woman’s arm.

The third blind man heard a man with a loud speaker say that people should park “over there and walk to the university.” So, he found his way to the university.

The fourth blind man was hungry. So, he asked anyone who could hear if there was food nearby. An old man stopped and said, “there’s a hot dog stand around the next corner”. The blind said, “Thank you” and found his way to the hot dog stand.

The fifth blind man was tired. The noise and confusion made him tired. He found a bench and sat down. Soon he fell asleep.

The sixth blind man heard some street vendors hawking tee shirts and eclipse glasses. He followed the footsteps.

 

By late afternoon the six men had arrived at the bus station. At 6:10 pm they boarded the bus. The bus headed back to Metropolis at 6:30 pm.

As they rode along the six blind men began to talk about the day’s event.

The first blind man spoke. “The eclipse is of great spiritual value. I heard street people everywhere as I walked. They were offering remembrances and spiritual items like incense candles, crystals, and, and, special glasses to see it with. One kind man told me that no one should look at the great phenomenon without special glasses. But since I am blind, I bought a tee shirt instead. They told me it says, “I survived the 2017 Total Eclipse”.

The second blind man spoke. “No. how can it have any spiritual meaning? It is just a novelty, something unique. It only happens once every so many years. People should go to the carnival, have some food and entertainment, enjoy themselves. The eclipse is good times.”

The third blind spoke. “The eclipse is inclusive. It brings people together. I heard a woman say that she heard that all her friends were coming to view the eclipse. So, she had to come to. ‘Everyone was doing it,’ she said.”

“What?” The fourth blind man jumped in. “Not everyone is doing it. Someone told me that the older Navajos will not look at it when it is happening. They fear bad things can happen if you look during the eclipse, like health issues. The eclipse is taboo.”

The fifth blind man spoke. “All I know is that the eclipse is eerie. When I heard the people around me say “It’s happening,” it was like the earth stood still. I suddenly felt a chill like the sun had been unplugged. And the birds even stopped tweeting. The eclipse is scary.”

The last blind man spoke. “It’s worse than you can imagine. Someone next to me said “This is super cool. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.” I looked up for a long time but of course I saw nothing. But now, my eyes burn so much I want to tear them out. The eclipse is a deep burning darkness.”

 

 

 

© J. Ann Johnson, 2017, All Rights Reserved

 

~~~

 

August 21, 2017 – 1:21p.m. CDT

Filed under Philosophy, Science, Short Story Tagged with , , ,

All Things Hold Together

August 13, 2017 Leave a comment

 

“For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up, the Universe will end in ice.” Saul Perlmutter, astrophysicist

~~~

I find it interesting that light tells us where we have been. Astrophysicist and Nobel winner Saul Perlmutter and his team of astronomers at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory focused the most advanced telescopes on 80 super luminous Type 1a supernova. Using red shift (a Doppler-like effect, the wave lengths of light rays increase towards the red end of the spectrum when the source recedes from the viewer) to determine the speed of recession of distant galaxies, Perlmutter concluded from the data that the universe was accelerating its expansion-the universe was expanding faster and faster. 

And since the known universe has only about 20% of the mass density needed to affect a slowdown and then a stop and a re-Bang, Perlmutter concluded that the universe must be infinite.

Guess who stands at each end of infinite?

Guess what Light has no red shift or shadow of turning?

Guess which Cosmological Constant is greater than the one once proposed and later rescinded by Einstein and is now back on the table after scientists learned about Perlmutter’s findings?

Sound trumpets. Now tympani. Start your crescendo all instruments of praise…

“I am the Alpha and the Omega…” Revelation 1:8

“I am the first and the last…” Revelation 1:17

“Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 21:6

“I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 22:13

Guess Who will meet you at every level of your existence and at any time during your existence and at every question you have during your existence?

Guess Who you will meet when you study biology, chemistry, anthropology, origins, genetics, physics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine and engineering?

Guess Who you will meet when you think science and faith are acting incompatible and seem to be accelerating in opposite directions based on cultural shift readings?

See the above. The audacious claims that Jesus makes in Revelation mean that…at the beginning of any sequence and at the end of any sequence is the Person Jesus. In the middle of the sequence is the Person Jesus.

At every level of study, in every field of science, in every atom, quark, super-quark and boson, if you go to infinity and beyond…you will encounter Jesus. The Hound of Heaven is looking for you there.

Let’s get personal for a moment, as did the Psalm writer.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you. Psalm 139: 7-12

Perfect love casts out fear, so start here:

“Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts” 139: 23

 

~~~

You wonder if God is silent. You watch a movie about God’s supposed Silence based on a novel written in 1966 by the same name. Like the main characters, you may even stand on the face of Jesus and commit apostasy because you think that God doesn’t hear and doesn’t see what is going on in your space and time. You behave as you think God should behave in that situation. Your perception of God, as observed through the prevalent Epicurean/Deist worldview, is reaffirmed: God must be off somewhere in the cosmos and not involved in man’s day to day life; God won’t save his own; we are our own salvation and other’s salvation; God is silent, therefore we must act.

You watch a sci-fi movie about the Arrival of aliens. The main character must learn the language of the aliens to gain the alien’s purpose for coming and to learn whether or not a threat to earth is imminent. Near the end of the movie the main character has a salvific vision. In the vision, time is shuffled as a language and an understanding barrier are overcome, vertically and horizontally. A world saving decision is made. Then, at the end of the movie, a personal choice is made, the ends of which are reconnected to the beginning of the movie.

 

Two movies. The one reveals a lack of personal knowledge about the Alpha and Omega. This accounts for a lack of faith and for actions done out of fear. The second movie attempts to show that a personal encounter with another that is completely other. The main character seeks to understand the other’s language. Full understanding comes from a personal encounter with the alien. The acquired personal knowledge brings about saving transformation for everyone involved.

Now imagine the personal knowledge that you would gain from this lesson: you are the bride at your wedding. Your head server tells you that you are out of wine just when the party is ready to get on the floor and dance. At that moment the Beginning and the End does a work of transubstantiation: Jesus turns the physical properties of water into wine.

For your personal knowledge, here is a poem about the centrality and supremacy of Jesus, from Paul’s letter to the Colossian church:

 

He is the image of God, the invisible one,

The first born of all creation

For in him all things were created,

In the heavens and here on earth.

Things which we can see and things we cannot-

Thrones and lordships and rulers and powers-

All things were created both through him and for him.

 

And he is ahead, prior to all else,

And in him all things hold together;

And he himself is supreme, the head

Over the body, the church.

 

He is the start of it all,

First born from the realms of the dead;

So in in all things he might be the chief.

For in him all the Fullness was glad to dwell

And through him to reconcile all to himself,

Making peace though the blood of his cross,

Through him-yes, things on earth,

And also the things in heaven.

Colossians 1: 15-20

Now, one may read this and say, “this passage is all about Jesus and not about me and my worries”. I say to them, “Read the passage again, but this time see that “all things” includes you and your worries.”  ”And in him all things hold together…”. Wherever you are broken, confused or lost Jesus is there to heal and make whole.

 

Fear often paralyzes us. Then, as we sit in the dark unknown biting our nails and thinking that God is uncommunicative, we act. In so doing, we deny the Alpha and the Omega an encounter with the beginning and the end of our fears. We also deny ourselves a personal knowledge that will sustain going forward. Consider Peter walking on the water until fear kicks his legs out from under him.

Perhaps your universe is expanding faster than you can keep up with it. When there is change and accelerating change, remember that God was there when it began and God is there when it ends.  If God can hold all things together in the cosmos, why not hold onto God-The Ultimate Theory of Everything– for the ride of your life?

 

Meditate on this:

Jesus said, “ἐγὼ τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω”

Filed under Astronomy, Christianity, Cosmology, Science Tagged with , , ,

What Faraday Knows Won’t Hurt You

March 15, 2017 Leave a comment

 

 The sun shall not smite thee by day… *

“I am busy just now again on Electro-Magnetism and think I have got hold of a good thing but can’t say; it may be a weed instead of a fish that after all my labor I may at last pull up.”  — Michael Faraday, Letter to Richard Phillips, 23 Sep 1831.

~~~

What’s an EMP?  Briefly, it is a burst of electromagnetic radiation that results from an explosion, either natural or manmade. It may result from a severe solar storm, a nuclear bomb or an E-bomb.

What are EMP’s effects:  The effects are similar to lighting strikes and switching surges. The bursts look like an Aurora and generate lots of static electricity, putting electronic digital systems at risk. To wit (a short list):

Table 11.32

DEGREES OF SUSCEPTIBILITY TO THE EMP

Most Susceptible

Low-power, high-speed digital computer, either transistorized or vacuum tube (operational upset)

Systems employing transistors or semiconductor rectifiers (either silicon or selenium):

–Computers and power supplies

–Semiconductor components terminating long cable runs, especially between sites

–Alarm systems

–Intercom systems

–Life-support system controls

–Some telephone equipment which is partially transistorized

 

–Transistorized receivers and transmitters

–Transistorized 60 to 400 cps converters

–Transistorized process control systems

–Power system controls and communication links

 

How do you protect a device from an electromagnetic pulse?

“For a Faraday cage to be effective against an electromagnetic pulse, it must block out the entire wavelength of the EMP, explains The Survival Mom.” (You don’t have to be a whiz kid to make a Faraday cage. This post’s links and others spell out the EMP’s effects and what protection is required. Simply understand the principle and create your own cage for your electronic devices.)

Homemade Faraday shield in the works

What is a Faraday cage or Faraday shield? It is an enclosure formed by conductive material or by a mesh of such material, used to block electric fields. Faraday cages are named after the English scientist Michael Faraday, who invented them in 1836.

How do you make a Faraday cage?

Making Faraday Cages

 

 

In case you missed this class…

But soft, what EMP through yonder window breaks?

Get Prepared for an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack or Severe Solar Storm

 

~~~~

About Michael Faraday (22 Sep 1791 – 25 Aug 1867), lest you think the Kingdom of God is only a work of spiritual magnitude:

Faraday was the first scientist to realize the enormous importance of the electromagnetic field. He saw in it a reality of a new category differing from matter. It was capable of transmitting effects from place to place,…

Faraday found no conflict between his religious beliefs and his activities as a scientist and philosopher. He viewed his discoveries of nature’s laws as part of the continual process of “reading the book of nature”, no different in principle from the process of reading the Bible to discover God’s laws. A strong sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded Faraday’s life and work.

 

 

 

*Psalm 121:6, (Yes, I am quoting this verse out of context.)

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A Gravity Situation

February 18, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all stars of light!

Psalm 148:3

earth-rotation-time-lapse

Did you wake up today wondering why the planets and moons are round? For some reason, I wondered this while working out on the elliptical machine at the health club this AM.

OK. So, you didn’t wake up and wonder why all the planets and moons in billions of galaxies are round.  But I’m going to tell you anyway.

planetsmvmt

Better, I will let Tega Jessa explain. From Jessa’s web article, “Why Are Planets Round”:

You may have wondered why are planets round. I mean why aren’t the cubes or pyramids? The answers can be found in how gravity works and the formation of our solar system. Our solar system was formed like many other star systems from a nebula. A nebula is a concentrated area of gases and cosmic dust in what is the called the ISM or Interstellar Medium. These gases and dust are spread through space and when enough of it gathers it gains suitable gravity to establish a gravitational field. This clumping creates nebulas and started the process for star formation.

The next step in a star’s birth would be the rotation of the nebula. As matter is drawn in and organized by the nebulas increasing gravitational field it start to gain angular momentum and start to rotate. This is just like how an ice skater spins faster when they pull in their arms. As the matter is pulled into the nebula’s center of mass, it spins faster making it easier for more matter to be pulled in. This process will happen until under the increasing gravity until the gases go under nuclear fusion and a star is born.

After the birth of a star there are now two sources of gravity whose tides fight over the remaining gases and dust. The first gravitational field is that of the nebula and the other is the gravity of the new star. The tidal forces of these two fields bunch the remaining gases and dust together. Heavier element will clump together faster to make the beginnings of rocky planets. It is important to note that gas giants are planets that were close to becoming stars but did not reach critical mass for fusion. In the end, even as these planets are forming they still carry over the angular momentum and spin as well drawing more matter.

This process works like a carpenter’s lath. The new gravitational field pulls matter towards the center of the planet’s mass. The rotation helps to round out the rough edges. As time passes and the planet cools the planet settles into its final shape depending on its own rotation and the gravitic influence of its star. This is what makes a planet round.

 gravity-earth-and-moomgravity-newton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK. Now we both know why planets and moons are round. Next question:

“What is shaping your world?” nebula-forming

Filed under Astronomy, Science Tagged with , , , ,

Gravity Is Waving. Wave Back.

February 14, 2016 Leave a comment

“It is an easy thing to argue from precedent because it makes everything simple, but it is a risky thing to do. Give God “elbow room”; let Him come into His universe as He pleases. If we confine God in His working to religious people or to certain ways, we place ourselves on an equality with God.” Oswald Chambers, Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L

News Release • February 11, 2016:

Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein’s Prediction

“For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.”  Gravitationla waves a-Mideast-Israel-Einste_Mett

 

 

Fellow spacetime travelers, as mentioned last time, the game is afoot!

This week, another substantial mind boggling cosmological clue!

Be reminded:  Truth-seeking the not-so-obvious five-sigma answers to your questions takes…spacetime, “elbow room” and the right lab equipment (spectrograph, interferometer, Sola Scriptura, to name a few) 9-excigravitational-waves-discovery-image-1.gif

Gravitational waves, Einstein’s ripples in spacetime, spotted for first time (quotes follow)

“…for the first time, physicists detected the waves, fulfilling a 4-decade quest and opening new eyes on the heavens….”

“It is the prospect of the science that might be done with gravitational waves that really excites physicists. For example, says Kamionkowski, the theorist at Johns Hopkins, the first LIGO result shows the power of such radiation to reveal unseen astrophysical objects like the two ill-fated black holes. “This opens a new window on this vast population of stellar remnants that we know are out there but of which we have seen only a tiny fraction,” he says…

gravitational-waves.gif

With the black hole merger, general relativity has passed the first such test, says Rainer Weiss, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, who came up with the original idea for LIGO. “The things you calculate from Einstein’s theory look exactly like the signal,” he says. “To me, that’s a miracle.”” (emphasis added)

LIGO

LIGO my Eggo:  the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) measures waffling gravitational fields created by black holes merging into a dancing embrace.  gravitational waves pass through LIGO

 

 

 

“LIGO watches for a minuscule stretching of space with what amounts to ultraprecise rulers: two L-shaped contraptions called interferometers with arms 4 kilometers long. Mirrors at the ends of each arm form a long “resonant cavity,” in which laser light of a precise wavelength bounces back and forth, resonating just as sound of a specific pitch rings in an organ pipe.”

gravitaional waves black stars.gif

 

The alpha omega a priori LIGO, the dancing embrace of the Trinity, is aware of every ripple in your spacetime, your prayers, your knocking on His door in the middle of the night, your pinging. Become a “resonant cavity” and you will hear the Trinity moving the universe to answer you.  Like Paul…

“I am persuaded, you see, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in King Jesus our Lord.” The apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Rome.

Filed under Christianity, Cosmology, Science Tagged with ,

Make a Spectrograph of Yourself

February 7, 2016 Leave a comment

Another in the Quantum Theology and the Dispensation of Synchronicity Series
_____________________________________________________________________________________
As your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveler in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
From the English Lullaby Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 1, scene 5
~~~

So you want to know if God is game? It’s elementary dear reader. It’s in the stars and a spectrograph is required. “But I’m into relationships, not science!” Snap out of it, kid! Put on your thinking cap.  prisma-lightSpectrum-goethe

Prism break. In 1814 Joseph von Fraunhofer, a Bavarian lens maker, invented the spectrograph, a device which separates white light into a rainbow of colors. With a lab spectrometer the fingerprints of atoms and their Creator are uncovered.

“The white-hot surface of the sun emits light of all wavelengths, but this light then passes through the relatively cooler gases of the earth’s atmosphere (the “corona”). Here the atoms might absorb just those same wavelengths they like to emit. This absorption accounts for the curious dark lines observed by Faunhofer. Bit by bit, spectroscopy in the post-Fraunhofer era revealed that each element, when heated, produced a characteristic set of “spectral lines,” some prominent (like the brilliant lines of neon gas that are so familiar in neon signs), and some faint (like the dimmer blue of mercury vapor lamps). These lines were the fingerprints of the chemical elements, the first clues to the tiny “tuning forks” within atoms, or whatever the mysterious structures vibrating inside the atom must be.” (emphasis added) from Quantum Physics for Poets by Leon Lederman and Christopher Hill

“The game is afoot!”. What game? This game is kind of like Hide and Seek, the kid’s game. But in this game someone hides and the rest must seek out the hider. Like the kid’s game, no one seeking believes that the person hiding is unreal and not there, unless a person enters the game after the person hid. This person then has to believe the other seekers. But this person may think that the others may be tricking him and walk away. That’s his or her choice.
The seekers all must have a well-motivated belief that the hider is there and can be found to win the game. See. I am starting to build relationships.

“Spectroscopy’s second major achievement was a more philosophical. In the sun’s signature of dark lines scientists could read its chemical composition, and lo and behold, they found hydrogen, helium, lithium and the other elements of matter that compose our planet Earth. Since then, we have analyzed the light from the stars in extremely distant galaxies, always finding our own familiar elements: hydrogen, helium and so on. The universe everywhere has the same composition and the same laws of nature, all of which hints at a common origin in some incomprehensible act of physical creation.” from Quantum Physics for Poets by Leon Lederman and Christopher Hill

37spectra

“How I wonder what you are.” Information sourced from a twinkling star spectrum includes:  Bright-animated-star-shining-at-night-gif
Our distance from a star.
The temperature of the star
The size of a star.
The mass of a star.
The elements of a star
The motion of a star.
Using a star’s spectral lines we can measure its gas pressure and the strength of a star’s magnetism at the surface.

And you thought those little white dots in the night sky were there just for romantic reasons? They certainly are! The Creator is engaging his creation. So, “Make a Spectrograph of Yourself”.
[spek-truh-graf, -grahf], noun
1. a spectroscope for photographing or producing a representation of a spectrum.

spectrum

Like it or not you are taking in the Light of Christ. His Cosmic photons are constantly bombarding us. With it we can see familiar elements and, more closely, the fingerprints of God. And though the Light source seems off hiding somewhere in a distant galaxy there is considerable information for us to take in. We can analyze the Light from Christ and find the familiar incredibly romantic, like the red Valentines rose.
Under light a rose absorbs most colored light of the rainbow and emits red light.Rosa_gallica_purpuro-violacea_magna
What are you absorbing and what are you emitting? We tend to hunker down with some OTC Christian book that tries to explain God to us in proxy fashion. We ask God about something specific and we expect God to answer us in specific Voodoo-like fashion. “There will be a wet fleece on your doorstep tomorrow. That’s how you will know.” Look around. Adjust your spectrograph and see the full spectrum of answers God has already provided. And, if you ask for wisdom (light), have you used the wisdom God has already given you to find your way?
“The game is on!” Personally and very briefly, I joined the game of Hide and Seek when I started to read and think outside the “Christian” cave. I rid myself of the myopia of single point of light thinking – Sola Scriptura – and I stepped outside. To accomplish the move into the sunlight with a well-motivated belief of greater illumination, over the last several years I began studying science books. This path for me has made all the difference. And this path has shed enormous light back onto Sola Scriptura. God has been found ever since. Yes, he likes to keep hiding and being found. But, is God uncooperative when it comes to me? No!
The Hider is there and His Light is supernal. He wants to be found. Such Light gives itself away!
~~~
When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.” Psalm 27:8
May the light of Christ remain with you always…

Filed under Christianity, Science Tagged with , ,

“Imagine” Juxtaposed

February 21, 2015 Leave a comment

Previous posts attempted to expose the Epicurean influence on modernity: the exclusion of God from the garden of good and evil and replaced with Darwinian materialism under the influence of man-made reasoning: “cogito ergo sum”.

The posts also revealed the inclusion of ‘reasoned’ or ‘rational’ people into the high-horse club of scientism. This exclusive club is governed by those who have the power, perhaps the raison d’état, to control the inputs and outputs of desired ‘truth’. “What is truth?” Pilate asked (when he thought he had the force of the whole Roman empire to define it.)

As I wryly mentioned in my previous posts the above either/or, God/science dichotomy came, at first, philosophically, from what I call Epicurus’ “High-Horse” Mal-ware. This mal-ware has since been downloaded over the centuries into each century’s modern man’s psyche. The devastating effect of the Mal-ware was to disable the AND gate of your truth tables. It was not to be used in queries.

Now, like the historically recorded scene of two thieves each hanging on cross with Jesus hanging between them, I offer a similar juxtaposition of two end results, two disparate “Imagines”.

One “Imagine” is Epicurean, God dismissed, materialistic, nihilistic and personified in the likes of former atheist Christopher Hitchens, materialist Barack Obama and fatalist Beatle John Lennon:

 The other “Imagine” is God-inclusive. Here, God is the nucleus, the epicenter of being and meaning. Here, God and science coexist as Lion and lamb, creation being the sublime work of His hands, His signature found in the molded clay.

God’s Kingdom, now begun on earth, has become a dwelling place for all who see His light and follow it. True reality is made known to His followers by the Holy Spirit. The earthly spectrum of sodium street lights, of tungsten lights, of neon lights, of mercury lights, of halogen lights, of xenon lights, lights all of which enable us to see our way on earth are sourced from the Prism of Eternal Light.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis

At His appearance we will then know Him as He knows us. That Eternal Light you see is Love, not short-lived Epicurean fireworks and party favors. 

 

Footnote: The above song by MercyMe was played during my son’s funeral service, about fourteen years ago. Justin was eighteen when the Lord took him home in a freak car accident. The police reported that it was a clear, sunny and dry day in Texas as Justin drove down a frontage road and lost control of the car. No other cars were involved. No drugs or alcohol were involved according to the Police report.

 Justin had recently graduated from high school. The afternoon of his death he was driving back from his girlfriend’s house. We don’t know why this happened. We just know that we will see him again and this is not final. The Joy that only God’s True Love can give replaced the deepest loss I have ever experienced.  Physics caused the physical death. But, Justin lives on.

 Sure there is pain, loss and evil in the world. But God is greater than any of these, if you let Him be God in your life.

Filed under Atheism, Christianity, Culture, Death, Evil, Science Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

One Nation Under Epicurus?

February 14, 2015 Leave a comment

Previous posts have exposed the false either/or thinking of Epicurean philosophy and its now universally subverting High-Horse Mal-ware, a mal-ware that bifurcates mankind’s worldview.

At ‘ground level’ there is science, scientism, facts and secularism. In the attic are God, religion, values and meaning. Richard Dawkins and other angry atheists such as the former Christopher Hitchens, both keenly Epicurean, would opine “There’s probably is no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy life. Here is your ground game:  avoid pain, seek pleasure and BTW there is evil in the world therefore God must be AWOL.”

The "Great Divorce" bus? vide C.S. Lewis

The “Great Divorce” bus? vide C.S. Lewis

The Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware landed on the shores of the New World ready to create a new saeculum- a new age. Thomas Jefferson declared himself to be Epicurean. Look at your dollar bill: ANNUIT CŒPTIS NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM=“Initiate the new world order”. The new world order of America was to become the Enlightenment’s gift to the world-Governor John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” (1630).

Mankind in this New-Age-New-World, already exposed to “High-Horse” mal-ware, was thought by many to be made of random atoms which materially evolved without any help from above. Ergo, mankind would just as ‘freely’ determine its fate via scientism using a co-opted and modified European/Westphalian system of order (17th century) while keeping God at attic’s length. The pilgrims did inject a belief in an Epicurus defined fear-mongering God but their distant “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Deist God would later only be mentioned at funerals and never mentioned on resumes. (I realize that I am summing up at lot in a short post.)

Now that you have heard about the Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware you will begin to see its effects in every day life. For instance…

Recently Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a potential 2016 POTUS candidate, was asked if he believed in evolution.

 “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a potential U.S. presidential candidate, on Wednesday declined to say whether he believed that humans evolved from other life forms, a theory widely supported by scientists but rejected by many American voters.

 “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other,” Walker said during a question-and-answer session at Chatham House, a London think tank…

 …When asked by the moderator whether he accepted the theory of evolution, Walker also declined to answer.

 “I’m here to talk about trade, not to pontificate,” he said. “I love the evolution of trade in Wisconsin.”

 Scientists widely agree that humans have evolved from other life forms over the course of millions of years, as English naturalist Charles Darwin first proposed in 1859.

 But the theory of evolution is rejected by many evangelical Christians, who view it as conflicting with the Bible’s story that the universe was created in seven days.

 More than four in 10 Americans reject evolutionary theory and believe that God created humans in their present form, according to a Gallup opinion poll conducted last June. Creationism runs strongest among older, more religious and less educated voters, the survey found”

Wow! “less educated voters”!! Talk about pompous “High-Horse” Mal-ware social manipulating scripting!

The intent of this line of questioning reported here and by other high-horse trolls was to expose Walker as intellectually weak: “Are you a “down-to-earth rational being who believes in science and evolution or are you another one of those silly Christians who believes in Creationism created by an AWOL god?”

The interviewer was hoping Walker would click on the “High-Horse” mal-ware message, make a fool of himself with a reply and then get spammed by the media. The question (Obviously I can’t read the interviewer’s mind but the question itself in this context was meant, I believe, to divide ‘rational’ believers in Darwinian evolution and materialism from the silly ‘superficial’ believers in a Creationist God.) The intent also, as I see it, was meant to contrast those who consider themselves really really smart, proud of their belief in scientism, Epicurean in their default cynicism against those who (in the interviewer’s mind) hold ‘silly’ religious “God is not dead” views. And, this question was posed to divide Walker’s base constituency of Christians. There are those who still hold to a young earth literalist Creation and there are those who have moved on with science and accept theistic evolution. These latter Christians accept that the first two chapters of Genesis are poetic in nature and are not to be interpreted as literal. These latter Christians also accept that these two chapters most definitely give us God’s perspective on mankind’s origin and purpose–Humanities 101.

Here’s another similar post ‘taken over’ by “High-Horse” mal-ware:

 

“Scott Walker Humiliates Himself On The World Stage By Dodging A Question About Evolution”

Walker was asked if he was comfortable with, and believed in evolution. It was a simple question that made the Wisconsin governor look like a fool, “For me, I’m going to punt on that one as well. That’s question a politician shouldn’t be involved in.”

Moderator Justin Webb of BBC Radio4 took Walker to task, “That is a question any British politician right or left wing would laugh and say, “Of course, evolution’s true.”

Gov. Walker replied by digging himself in deeper, “To me, I’m here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about other issues. I love the evolution of trade in Wisconsin. It’s going really well, and I’d like to see it even bigger.”

The implication being here, if I may, that “you are way too stupid to govern you silly little man, Scott Walker, if you don’t agree that science is the court of last resort and far superior to any irrational belief in a god.” “High-Horse” mal-ware defaces truth once again.

The interviewer’s question not only echoes Epicurus but also a Garden of Eden questioner. Remember the Genesis account of a ‘serpent’ speaking to Eve in the Garden? “Did God really say that you could not eat the fruit of that tree?” This could be taken as, “Does God really get involved or care or even know about your daily life? He shows up now and then. And what about that rule “don’t eat the fruit of that tree”? Would a ‘good’ God deprive you of the pleasure of ‘that’ fruit?

Epicurus would later answer (supposedly), “No, don’t deprive yourself. In my opinion even if there was a god he wouldn’t mind if you took your pleasure in the fruit of that tree. And is there a god? Men do evil and no good god would allow it. Let go of your fears. Go on Eve “Let It Go”, eat it. Any more questions?”

Now, if I were Scott Walker in that situation, my response would be, “Yes, I accept theistic evolution-a finely tuned theistic universe, a personal cause of the universe and a theistic objective morality. Science is only one of several tools for understanding the material world we live in and it won’t supply meaning. Science does not prove or disprove whether there is a god but it most assuredly hints at there being an Omnipotent Outsider. And.…(deep breath) I also accept the historical facts of the birth of God Incarnate–Jesus Christ, His “Sermon on the Mount” life among us for thirty years, Christ’s death on a cross, and his bodily resurrection. I accept the historicity of each of these facts. And, (another deep breath) I accept that all of this was done so that God could set up his Kingdom here on earth among men in order that He could make the earth righteous as he is righteous by redeeming and reconciling His eagerly awaiting creation to Himself. There will be no more bifurcation of heaven and earth. Any more questions?”

 

As I write this the U.S. is one nation under Epicurus, but not for long. The kingdoms and rulers of this world will soon be under submission to the One True God-The Lord Jesus Christ.  This King of Kings and Lord of Lords shall reign for ever and ever.

“Worthy is the Lamb…”

 

Adoration of the lamb Jan van Eyck (circa 1390-1441) Ghent altarpiece

Adoration of the lamb
Jan van Eyck (circa 1390-1441)
Ghent altarpiece

For further theistic evolution information see the Biologos website.

Filed under Christianity, Creationism, Culture, evolution, Political Commentary, Science, theistic evolution Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Climate Apocalyptic-ism & The WannaBe Oppressed

December 7, 2013 Leave a comment

earth

Having made it through the sixties I understand youth’s hot-blooded fervor over and desire for revolution.  My own adrenalin was pushing me in all directions looking for answers and for my own special scene on the reel of history.

  The Beatles gave us their theme song for those times:  “Revolution”  “well you know we all want to change the world.” Today’s youth are no different.  The adrenalin is still pumping wildly; the hot-button issues are different.

The sixties, basically a large party staged around the Vietnam War and the Cold War with its escalating nuclear armament, gave us the apocalyptic warning that the “Eve of Destruction” was upon us. The sixties also gave us zeitgeist as the narcissistic moral, intellectual and spiritual center of our universe.

 As political philosopher Allan Bloom writes in “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987) when discussing certain professors at Cornell University (circa 1969) who gave up their intellectual credibility,

“The American university in the sixties was experiencing the same dismantling of the structure of rational inquiry as had the German university in the thirties.  No longer believing in their higher vocation, both gave way to a highly ideologized student populace.  And the content of the ideology was the same ~ value commitment. The university had abandoned all claim to study or inform about value ~ undermining the sense of value of what it taught, while turning over the decision about values to the folk, the Zeigist, the relevant.  Whether it be Nuremberg or Woodstock, the principle is the same.” (emphasis mine)

Today’s Millennials are no less radical in spirit but are clearly misguided due to the denouement of rational thought and critical inquiry. The sixties zeitgeist has fast-forwarded on history’s reel to the present. You’ll see it particularly in the theaters of politics and religion.

Here is just one example of what I am talking about.  This article may or may not shock you:

From the opening of StanleyKurtz’s article, The WannaBe Oppressed, The National Review Online, October 16th, 2013:

 What do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims ~ to themselves, as well as to others ~ without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll save you.” Yet deep down they’re thinking, “Oppress me.”

In his important new book, The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings, French intellectual gadfly Pascal Bruckner does the most thorough job yet of explaining the climate movement as a secular religion, an odd combination of deformed Christianity and reconstructed Marxism. (You can find Bruckner’s excellent article based on the book here.) Bruckner describes a historical process wherein “the long list of emblematic victims ~ Jews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized peoples ~ was replaced, little by little, with the Planet.” The planet, says Bruckner, “has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation.”

But why? Bruckner finds it odd that a “mood of catastrophe” should prevail in the West, the most well-off part of the world. The reason, I think, is that the only way to turn the prosperous into victims is to threaten the very existence of a world they otherwise command.

And why should the privileged wish to become victims? To alleviate guilt and to appropriate the victim’s superior prestige. In the neo-Marxist dispensation now regnant on our college campuses, after all, the advantaged are ignorant and guilty while the oppressed are innocent and wise. The initial solution to this problem was for the privileged to identify with “struggling groups” by wearing, say, a Palestinian keffiyeh. Yet better than merely empathizing with the oppressed is to be oppressed. This is the climate movement’s signal innovation.

Read the whole doggone article.  You’ll read things like white male Bill McKibben “almost single-handedly turned global warming into a public issue in 1989, his problem was solved.  Now everyone could be a victim.” And, “Climate activism answers their existential challenges and gives them a sense of crusading purpose in a lonely secular world. The planet, as Bruckner would have it, is the new proletariat.” (emphasis mine)

   The cult or religion of global warming has it devotees circling the UN in hopes of coercing the world to pay up for carbon credits and, more importantly, to make themselves pseudo-martyrs for this now victims-everywhere cause.

 I’ll close this post with these thoughts from David Mamet’s book, The Secret Knowledge: On Dismantling of American Culture (2011). In discussing religion’s focus on the unknowable as applied to political and social issues, Mamet writes, 

Observe that to propitiate an unknowable power, the Left, ignorant or dismissive of any society or history but is own, insists upon the primacy of Trees and Soil, Oceans and Animals ~ theirs is a return to the worship of the Savage.  To see that this nature worship is not quite the good simple-heartedness they believe it is, but rather a religion, observe its imperviousness to information:  polar bears are not, in fact, decreasing but increasing in population; the earth is not, in fact, warming.

Added:

It is interesting to note the points made above cinematically, in the two films The Day the Earth Stood Still. More specifically, the 2008 version underscores the thrust of Kurtz’s article:  “The planet, says Bruckner, “has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation.””

You have undoubtedly seen one or both versions of the following movies.  You know the characters so I will go forward.

 1951-Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still_1951

In the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still Klaatu’s message centers on a very real and immediate concern ~ The Cold War and nuclear armament:  “…government agents escort Klaatu to see Barnhardt. Klaatu introduces himself and warns the professor that the people of the other planets have become concerned for their own safety after human beings developed atomic power. Klaatu declares that, if his message goes unheeded, “planet Earth will be eliminated“. (From Wikipedia)

2008-The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_StillThe 2008 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still centers around the desire for earth to remain sustainable:  “Klaatu meets with Mr. Wu (James Hong), another alien who has lived on earth for 70 years. Mr. Wu tells Klaatu that he has found the human race to be destructive and unwilling to change.  This confirms Klaatu’s experience so far, and so he determines that the planet must be cleansed of humans to ensure that the planet—with its rare ability to sustain complex life—can survive.” (From Wikipedia)

  “Global Warming is in fact a brain-child to counter the Environmental Movement against pollution, more particularly agriculture pollution, initiated in late 60s and early 70s.” Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

~Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California: “Hal Lewis:  My Resignation from the American Physical Society”

Added 7-21-2014:

Influencing Climate Policy on the Back of a Lame Horse

Added 1-25-2015. Epicurean science dismissing fact becomes a fanatical ‘faith’ to avoid fantasy-future owies:

MIT Climate Scientist: Global Warming Believers a ‘Cult’

Filed under Global-warming Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Faith Based-Materialist Myth & Baron Muchausen

October 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Baron M pulling hair

At this point in time I do not know enough about what George Gilder believes about Intelligent Design (ID).  I don’t know his works well enough.

Who is George Gilder?  He is a Senior Fellow and Program Advisor of Technology and Democracy at the Discovery Institute.

I recently finished reading his Knowledge & Power:  The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World.  I am currently reading his best-selling book Wealth And Poverty (21st century edition).  I highly recommend both of these books just for the wealth of Gilder’s insights into Information Theory and its application (or not) to economics. Both books are very accessible to the reader.

Does Gilder believe that an Intelligent Designer shows up with ID blueprints in hand to tweak as ‘needed’ the evolutionary process?  Or, does he believe that ID sprang from the God’s spoken Big Bang without further manipulation required, as I do.  When I find out I will let you know.  In the mean time…

In the article below Gilder dismisses the faith-based materialist myth that all we are is material (and mind) …”that…bubbled up from a prebiotic brew.”  Intelligent design was involved from start to finish. Here, I know he and I agree.

The Materialist Superstition
George Gilder

Math and science teaching in US high schools, the richest in the world and worst performing per dollar, is a scandal, and part of the problem is biology. In all too many high schools biology classes rule the roost and dispense anti-industrial propaganda about global warming and the impact of DDT on the egg shells of eagles and tell materialist just-so stories about the eventual random emergence, after an agonizing wait of four billion years, of Britney Spears from primordial soup. But they fail to report the central testimony of twentieth century science: the paramount role of rigorous mathematical information in the universe.

About to upend the materialist evolutionary scheme in textbook biology is the same catastrophe that befell Newtonian physics at the beginning of the Twentieth Century when physicists discovered that the atom is not an “opaque massy particle” as Isaac Newton believed but a baffling domain of quantum effects. Overthrowing the Darwinian materialist paradigm is the similar discovery that the biological cell is not a “simple lump of protoplasm” as Charles Darwin believed but a complex information processing machine comprising some 50 thousand proteins in fabulously intricate algorithms of communication and synthesis. Each one of the some 60 trillion constantly changing cells in every human body stores information in DNA codes, processes and replicates it in three forms of RNA and thousands of supporting enzymes, exquisitely supplies the system with energy and seals it in conditionally permeable phospholipid membranes. As Hubert Yockey has shown in his Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Stephen Meyer recounts in a recent article in the Smithsonian’s peer-reviewed Proceedings, material evolution alone cannot come close to explaining this panoply of effects. Even mutations occurring in cells at the gigahertz pace of a Pentium 4 and selected at the rate of a Google search could not accumulate the intricate interwoven fabric of information, structure and function of a human being in the allotted time. Schools should continue to teach Darwinian evolution as a powerful force in intra-species adaptation. However, a successful theory of the origins of new species—new biological forms and information—still eludes biologists.

This failure is no scandal. Science still falls far short of developing satisfactory explanations of many crucial phenomena, such as human consciousness, the big bang, the superluminal quantum entanglement of photons across huge distances, even the bioenergetics of the brain of a fly in eluding the swatter. The more we learn about the universe the more widely open the horizons of mystery. The pretence that Darwinian evolution is a complete theory of life is a huge distraction from the limits and language, the rigor and grandeur, of real scientific discovery.

Everywhere we encounter it, information comes from mind. Whether in biology or in technology, it moves from the general to the specific, from the concept to the concrete, from architecture to circuitry to device physics, in top-down, hierarchical patterns. Recognizing this phenomenon, some scholars uphold a view called Intelligent Design, which attempts to pry open agnostically the issue of whether ideas and information precede or follow their material embodiment. On this central point in the philosophy of science, however, I am not an agnostic. I believethatthe notion that the intricate biological structures of the world bubbled up from a prebiotic brew and that ideas are an after-effect of a meaningless random material flux is the most sterile and stultifying notion in the history of human thought.It inspired all the reductionist futilities of the twentieth century, from the obtuse materialism of Marx to the pagan worship of a static material environment, from the Freudian view of the brain as a thermodynamic machine to the zero-sum Malthusian panic over population, treating people more as mouths than as minds.

Intellectuals should know better. In the insight of Nobel Laureate biophysicist Max Delbruck, the spectacle of scientists attempting to reduce the mind to material brain suggests nothing so much as Baron Muchausen’s effort to extract himself from a swamp by pulling on his own hair. Claude Shannon’s information theory gives biologists a powerful new mathematical tool to use in analyzing biological structures and information systems. They should use it and teach it. To focus on random chemical mutations rather than on the majestic underlying and overarching logic of the universe reduces the presentation of biology to a confectionary zoo story, replete with cute pandas and Disney dinosaurs and free of the rigors of mathematics. This approach is less 21st century science than a retrograde retreat to 19th century materialist superstitions, which delude our students that they are learning the facts of science when instead they are imbibing the consolations of a faith-driven materialist myth. In their schools and lives, they deserve some intelligent design.

(emphasis mine)

 

 

Filed under evolution, theistic evolution Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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