I am often in contact with " spiritual " people, or persons trying to become so. I've noticed that in many cases people have a tendency to link spirituality with religion, church, and a concept of God as some sort of Old Man in the Sky. And they take themselves so seriously. It is as though spirituality were a burden that these folks have to carry through life, instead of the basis of our existence. Everyone is spiritual in some form or another. Evil sprits abound in our world; do they not? What follows is a concept of spirituality that I find most satisfying, enjoyable, and productive.
That state which we refer to a spiritual is basically intangible. The Spiritual Realm, underlies all material Reality. A thought is a spiritual entity; it occupies the mind but is unrevealed without some action to bring it into material form. It's the relationship between thought and action, and these thoughts and actions are governed by feeling. And the feeling that most, if not all, humans experience is hurt. All else stems from that and from nothing else! But by and large, most people opt for what they believe to be the opposite of hurt: pleasure.
Don't get me wrong,pleasure is nice, feels good, but too often it's the source of that pleasure that determines the spiritual fitness of an individual. How many times have you heard something like this; "I trusted Helen and she let me down; I'll never trust anyone again for the rest of my life!"
The rest of your life can be a pretty long time, too long to be affected by a single reverse. But if the hurt is severe enough it can end up affecting the rest of your life. A man I met while incarcerated many years ago had just murdered his wife's boyfriend. I don't know how long this man had been planning his desperate act, but in commission it took only a few seconds to pull the trigger. A few seconds that were to determine his fate; twenty years in prison, or a lethal injection.
Was this a bad man? No. There are no bad people, just people who are not spiritually fit to deal with the life's situations. A woman told me a while back that, "Life occasionally throws you a curve ball." I replied with the observation that that is a good opportunity to learn how to hit curve balls. But where does it begin?
Try childhood.
Infants of our species come into the world prematurely, and are completely helpless. Their bodies, the beasts their spirits ride through life, are totally foreign to them and they get by mostly on instinct, a decidedly spiritual faculty. Gradually, through experimentation, these little people learn to use their faculties, to move their arms and legs in deliberate actions, and then to face the first major challenge of life: learning to walk. Most people can't remember that first step on shaky legs, a couple of flops before getting it quite right. Then walking, like the many other mechanical operations we master, becomes automatic. Don't have to think about it any more; they are assimilated into our beings and we just...well...walk! Or tie shoelaces, or perform the countless simple ( and some not so simple ) actions we take without giving the slightest thought. This is spiritual growth in the sense that the mind is freed at each juncture to think about other things; and the world has plenty of things to think about; sex, money, power, fame, war, and a hundred other distractions that the Evil ( Real ) world offers to hinder spiritual progress. In the end, when the curtain of deceit is finally parted, those who suffer the toils and trials of life to the gates of insanity or death finally turn to God. Or seem to.
There is an Evangelical pastor with whom I have many debates over the Bible; we agree that it is the Word of God but, as is said, " The devil is in the details." One point on which we disagree is the Presence of God. I hold that God is All Things Everywhere, my pastor friend believes that God is not everywhere, but only where [He] chooses to be. He can't explain why God chooses to be in one place and not another, and this is typical of the belief system he follows: state a belief, then be unable to justify it beyond the mere statement. " It's just God's Will," he tells me, and that ( as far as he is concerned ) is that! Faith of this kind is but a veneer that hides an ugly, crumbling wall: looks good, but the wall is still there. I advocate tearing down the wall!
But what do most people do? Why they assume an identity that they feel will get them where they want to be, like a spiritual wallpaper, a pretty design, rich vibrant colors, but the wall it covers is cracked and crumbling. Eventually ecven the stoutest wallpaper will crack and peel, like the Cristian woman. A onetime relative by marriage she was the model of faith - until her husband died suddenly, at which time this woman, in tears cried, " There is no God! "
But there is. God is just not the Lord of the Spiritual Feudalism that fundamentalists ( like my friend the pastor ) believe. This reworked Zeus figure is the one who is only where he chooses to be, does whatever strikes his fancy in the moment, favors some and denies others, causes war, famine, and a host of other unpleasant evens to occur so " people will turn to [Him]. " Then, there's Jesus.
As the story goes, [God] sent Jesus ( a Roman knickname: his true name was Yashueh ) to die for our sins in a most unpleasant way. What kind of God is this? [He] has a remarkably human odor about him; priests of all religions that called for human sarcifices invariably didn't sacrifice themselves, it was always someone else. But the man himself asked, " What father, if his son asked him for bread would give him a stone or it asked for a fish, would give him a serpent. " The idea here is that if no human father would treat his son that way, how can anyone believe that the Father, who is so much better, would do any less.
The Evil ( Reality ) of the world lies in the distractions it presents to the striving soul. Religion stands in the forefront of this muddle and its failures are legion. Jesus said, " By their works ye shall know them,"; the works of religions have been to divide into countless denominations, sects, cults, and covens; to ostracize any who do not agree with them or, as " Mother Church " was wont to do, torturing those whose thinking was " in error " and killing those who would not recant their heretical ideas. What kind of God would approve of such atrocities?
The idea here is very simple, so basic in fact that many cannot see it: there are only two ways to go, the Way of God or the way of the world, and this choice is ours every instant. Let's look at the way of God. How can we know what that is? Paul tells us in Romans[1:18-21] that the wonder of God is all about, clearly seen by the eye of reason ( New English Bible ). This is more easily understood if we have a true understanding of what God is: the Spirit of the Universe, not some whimsical tyrant who rules from on high and who " chooses " to be here or there, to reward or punish according to some esoteric formula. Such a God cannot be counted upon as [He] may either " choose " to answer prayers, or not. The Spirit of the Universe answers every prayer.
Perfectly. Never fails!
The Spirit of the Universe is a passive power the mind of which is Natural Law. According to natural law everything operates on a Cause-and-Effect basis; press a button and a bell rings, an elevator appears, or a city of millions is swept up in a nuclear holocaust. The effect is always perfectly concistent with the cause; if the outcome is bad then the action that brought it about was wrong.It doesn't matter how much time you spend on your knees begging for the laws of nature to be temporarily suspended; go out in the rain, you get wet; stay in the sun too long, you get burned; stick a fork in a light socket, you get shocked; spend money carelessly, you go broke. Pray yourself hoarse, till your hands are fused together, and you knees lock into a permanent bend, and nothing will change. Change you attitude, your thoughts, and your actions, and things will change!
It's that simple!
There is a saying: " What goes around, comes around. " Perhaps it would be better undertsood if rephrased: " What you send around comes back to you. "; express love and love is yours, perhaps not immediately perceived but ultimately a treasured additon to your life. And loving people isn't hard; it's just about seeing the good in them. Jesus told us not to be concerned with the mote in our brother's eye but the beam in our own. Is it not true that what you despise in others is nothing more than what you hate in yourself? It is, and no amount of thinking differently can ever change that fact. But acting differently can, and will produce miraculous results. Try it: you might like it. You can change your life, but this change can only originate within you, in your Heart of Hearts, your Secret Place of the Most High, where all your fondest hopes and dreams lie dormant. Let the Father in you " which doesth the works " help you bring these bright imaginings into full and splendid reality.
What have you got to lose?
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Modern Myths - Time Travel and Time Dilation
Among the " scientific " pursuits that qualify as hare-brained, Time Travel belongs at the head of the list. It's impossible, yet presumably intelligent people view it as a possibility and are working to make it happen. The simple fact is this:
TIME TRAVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE!
That might be putting it a bit strongly but it's true; the reason time travel is impossible is simple. Time is not a naturally occurring pheomenon. That's right; it's an invention devised by man, initially to regulate agricullture: when to plant, when to harvest - that sort of thing. After all, when was the last time you saw a clock hanging from a tree in the woods naturally? Ever seen a racoon wearing a wristwatch? Ever had a pigeon stop you on a downtown street and ask you for the correct tiime? Didn't think so.
Time is an immutable scalar that is used to measure change, therefore time travel would necessarily involve un-changing all the changes that have taken place between the present and the target period. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Beside that you could only go back so far; what happens after you have changed all the way back to a fertilized egg? Which path would you follow? As you can see, it gets pretty complicated.
While an interesting subject for science-fiction buffs, time travel has no place in serious scientific endeavor. But time travel is not the only illusion that those who should know better still take seriously. Another is Time Dilation.
The idea here is: An atronaut travelling on a spaceship speeding away from the Earth will experience a slowing in time such that the faster he goes the more slowly time passes for him. He's gone for twenty years and when he returns five-hundred years have passed on the Earth. Think of it! Amazing, isn't it?
Well, no, not exactly. This is another bit of nonsense that belongs squarely in the realm of science-fiction. It's another version of A Note on Danger B.
In the 1930's the goal of aeronautics was to break the Sound Barrier. Scientists and writers both wondered what would happen when this challenge was mastered. One writer cooked up A Note on Danger B, a short story hat appeared in Reader's Digest at the time. The story was about a pilot who broke the Sound Barrier and - started getting younger! The faster he went, the younger he got, and the problem he faced was to slow the plane down before he regressed to infancy, where he could no longer reach the controls. In 1969 Chuck Yeager finally broke the Sound Barrier without getting a nanosecond younger.
The " theory " of Time Dilation is founded in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, published in 1905. The theory is based on the understanding that the speed of light, C, is finite: that is, it takes time even for a beam of light ( or a radio wave ) to travel a given distance. It takes a full eight minutes for the light from the Sun to reach Earth, about 93,000,000 miles. For this explanation we'll borrow Kepler's Astronomical Unit, AU, one Earth-distance from the Sun as our base.
The cosmonauts are happily speeding away from the Earth and have reached the first AU of distance. The Earth station has been sending time signals every hour, and this time it takes eight minutes to arrive at the vehicle. Assuming the Earth time to be the standard, the guys on the spaceship would have to turn their clocks back eight minutes to comply. At the second AU they would be sixteen minutes ahead, at 3AU, 24 minutes, and so on. But time would only be appearing to slow down; in actual fact time would pass normally in both environments. If the cosmonauts turned back and approached the Earth, the exact reverse would happen and they would be turning their clocks ahead to match the time signal from Earth: when safely back home both clocks would read exactly the same!
TIME TRAVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE!
That might be putting it a bit strongly but it's true; the reason time travel is impossible is simple. Time is not a naturally occurring pheomenon. That's right; it's an invention devised by man, initially to regulate agricullture: when to plant, when to harvest - that sort of thing. After all, when was the last time you saw a clock hanging from a tree in the woods naturally? Ever seen a racoon wearing a wristwatch? Ever had a pigeon stop you on a downtown street and ask you for the correct tiime? Didn't think so.
Time is an immutable scalar that is used to measure change, therefore time travel would necessarily involve un-changing all the changes that have taken place between the present and the target period. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Beside that you could only go back so far; what happens after you have changed all the way back to a fertilized egg? Which path would you follow? As you can see, it gets pretty complicated.
While an interesting subject for science-fiction buffs, time travel has no place in serious scientific endeavor. But time travel is not the only illusion that those who should know better still take seriously. Another is Time Dilation.
The idea here is: An atronaut travelling on a spaceship speeding away from the Earth will experience a slowing in time such that the faster he goes the more slowly time passes for him. He's gone for twenty years and when he returns five-hundred years have passed on the Earth. Think of it! Amazing, isn't it?
Well, no, not exactly. This is another bit of nonsense that belongs squarely in the realm of science-fiction. It's another version of A Note on Danger B.
In the 1930's the goal of aeronautics was to break the Sound Barrier. Scientists and writers both wondered what would happen when this challenge was mastered. One writer cooked up A Note on Danger B, a short story hat appeared in Reader's Digest at the time. The story was about a pilot who broke the Sound Barrier and - started getting younger! The faster he went, the younger he got, and the problem he faced was to slow the plane down before he regressed to infancy, where he could no longer reach the controls. In 1969 Chuck Yeager finally broke the Sound Barrier without getting a nanosecond younger.
The " theory " of Time Dilation is founded in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, published in 1905. The theory is based on the understanding that the speed of light, C, is finite: that is, it takes time even for a beam of light ( or a radio wave ) to travel a given distance. It takes a full eight minutes for the light from the Sun to reach Earth, about 93,000,000 miles. For this explanation we'll borrow Kepler's Astronomical Unit, AU, one Earth-distance from the Sun as our base.
The cosmonauts are happily speeding away from the Earth and have reached the first AU of distance. The Earth station has been sending time signals every hour, and this time it takes eight minutes to arrive at the vehicle. Assuming the Earth time to be the standard, the guys on the spaceship would have to turn their clocks back eight minutes to comply. At the second AU they would be sixteen minutes ahead, at 3AU, 24 minutes, and so on. But time would only be appearing to slow down; in actual fact time would pass normally in both environments. If the cosmonauts turned back and approached the Earth, the exact reverse would happen and they would be turning their clocks ahead to match the time signal from Earth: when safely back home both clocks would read exactly the same!
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Modern Myths - The Big Bang Theory
Science has become the new religion in America having, as does the more familiar brand, an ideaology that members of acadême are required to endorse or be labelled " heretics " and miss out on all the generous funding. The new religion borrows heavily from the old one and tries to justify its faulty belief systems. The Big Bang Theory is probably the best known of these attempts a looking like science. The BBT is pseudo-science, completely false, and is based on Creationism's " literal " interpretation of the Bible. In this case it's the first verse of Genesis, Chapter One.
" When God created the heaven and the earth, the world was without form and void, and the spirit of God moved across the abyss. " This verse, probably the most troublesome collection of words ever assembled, has been taken to mean that nothing existed before this great event: the Creation. The Ignorant power-seekers expanded this idea into a preposterous fantasy worthy of the borthers Grimm and fed it to the Easily-Convinced, who gobbled it up whole and still profess to believe in the " something from nothing " ideaology.
A strong structure needs no supports. Creationism identifies itself as a weak structure in that it needs further support to " justify " itself. Truth is its own justification, a strong structure that can always standon its own. But Creationism needed the appearance of science to counter critics who expressed serious doubt on several counts; that God would act impetuously, that what was before wasn't perfect ( else why change it? ); that God couldn't have existed prior to this Creation thing as there would have been nowhere to be, and nothing to work with; that God made Adam and Eve in " His own image and likeness " but they sinned anyway, thanks to the interference of a talking snake. The attempt to justify Creation through scientific means has produced results as preposterous as the initial thesis. It certainly isn't science.
Scientific investigation may be thought of in two ways; investigations by scientists wearing white coats and working in laboratories, or by anyone using the Scientific Method. Deductive logic is the process of examining evidence and formin conclusions based on that evidence. The Big Bang starts with the conclusion and then tries to gather evidence in support of that conclusion. It's science worked backwards. Not only that but it lacks the one starting point of all scientfic investigation: The Compelling Cause.
The Compelling Cause is the motivation behind every investigation of any kind: it is when;
Something is seen from a subjective viewpoint and attracts attention,
Something appears that wasn't there before,
Something was there is no longer there and has been replaced by something else, or is missing altogether,and
Something that was present in one state or condition has changed.
Some examples:
Imagine when man first encountered fire. More than likely it was a tree ignited by a lightning strike and a small band of hunter-gatherers happened upon the scene. They would certainly would have been mesmerized by the sight, and upon closer investigation, finding it to be a source of light and warmth they obviously decided it was something they wanted. How to transport it from one place to another would have been the first item on their list; what burns and what doesn't would be second, and how to make it happen when desired and make it go away when no longer needed would also be an item to consider. Fire science is still a major discipline.
Consider the Iron Age blacksmith who twists a few strands of iron together and hammers out a shiny new sword. But then, in a short while this magnifience work begins to show signs of a red, powdery substance, and little black holes ( pits ).The compelling cause here is to discover why this is happening and devising a way to avoid it. From this grew the science of metalurgy.
Imagine now that a scientist of perhaps the 17th Century is studying caterpillars, and has five in a big glass enclosure. The furry little multi-legged creatures have lots of leaves to munch on as they crawl around on the twigs that bear the leaves.
Our scientist is taking careful notes of everything he sees and feels that he is getting to know quite a bit about caterpillars. Then he is called away on another and is absent from his lab for two weeks. When he returns the caterpillars are gone!
Some dirty prankster has stolen his caterpillars and replaced them with - of all things - MOTHS! Well, that's what he might think at first, but in time he would find that caterpillars eventually turn either into moths or butterflies.
Now let us examine the Big Bang in terms of Compelling Cause. It fails the first requirement in that it is not subjective: Whether the universe came in to being suddenly or was already there doesn't affect my state of being in the least. The second requirement also, since no one has ever experienced a condition of no universe. It's always been there to us.
The Big Bang is also logically false in that it begs the question: assuming the conclusion to be true in the absence of any hard evidence. It is only after this a priori conclusion that the evidence has been gathered. True evidence points in the opposite direction: that the Big Bank is totally false, and two items should make the point.
A few years ago a team of astronomers headed by Wendy Freeman observed that the 12-million year-old universe contained stars that were 17-million years old. More recently there was an item on Yahoo! about a galaxy 13-billion lightyears away. The article stressed the point that that is were the galaxy was thirteen-billion years ago; if the Big Bang is true, then how did this galaxy get way out there a billion years before the big event? Then there is the matter of the Instanton.
Stephen Hawking was analysing the Big Bang, focusing on the events that " must " have occurred a millionth of a second after the explosion. He concluded that there was a key element missing, one without which the Big Bang could not happen. So he invented one: the Instanton, an element that was there when needed, then disappeared never to be seen again. It's very much like the retrograde motion of Mars. The Ptolemaic astronomers, anxious to preserve the Earth-centered universe, attributed this motion to epicycles, circular paths that the planet described along is pricipal orbit. But when the retrograde movement wasn't in evidence, neither were the epicycles! Shouldn't the planet have been wobbling along the whole time? Gravity was another topic upon which the scholars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century got it wrong.
In Watchers of the Skies the German physicist Willi Ley tells the story. It seems that when isaac Newton concluded that the force of gravity is the product of the mass of an object and an acceleration, the equation: F = ma, the scholars of the time began to teach that gravity is a Constant Force. But expressing gravity so, making the force of gravity a constant, craeted a problem that wasn't discovered in time to keep it out of some text books. The problem is that the equation describes a mathematical area. If the force is held constant the either the mass or the acceleration would have to be the independent variable, the other therefore being the dependent variable. A change in one necessitates a proportional change in the other: as one get bigger, the other must get smaller. It's the same as an area of, say, 48 feet; is it six feet by eight feet, twelve by four, ninety-six feet by six inches? Who knows? Now, if the force of gravity is constant, then a small mass would plummet to the ground at the higher acceleration, while a 100-ton boulder would float to the ground like a feather. Gravity is an acceleration. More than that, gravity is not a primary force but a reactive one as we perceive it.
To understand this let us consider the all subsuming Law of the Universe, that elusive concept that ties all the laws of the universe together in a single, seamless whole. It's simple. The Law;
Energy is all there is. Because it is present in infinte supply, energy cannot combine with itself fully, but only in local situations. Accumulations of particles form centers of mass which in turn develop gravitational forces. These forces grow in intesity until the total concentration of matter is sufficient to ignite at the center. Then a star begins its dazzling life. In smaller concentrations, all formations being spherical, planets form from the superhot gases ejected from the parent star. AS these planets move farther away from the star they cool, form crusts, and then gravity as we experience it comes into play. Were the crust of the Earth not solid, everything on its surface would continue to approach the center of mass: the center of the Earth. So much for anti-gravity machines, another modern myth.
" When God created the heaven and the earth, the world was without form and void, and the spirit of God moved across the abyss. " This verse, probably the most troublesome collection of words ever assembled, has been taken to mean that nothing existed before this great event: the Creation. The Ignorant power-seekers expanded this idea into a preposterous fantasy worthy of the borthers Grimm and fed it to the Easily-Convinced, who gobbled it up whole and still profess to believe in the " something from nothing " ideaology.
A strong structure needs no supports. Creationism identifies itself as a weak structure in that it needs further support to " justify " itself. Truth is its own justification, a strong structure that can always standon its own. But Creationism needed the appearance of science to counter critics who expressed serious doubt on several counts; that God would act impetuously, that what was before wasn't perfect ( else why change it? ); that God couldn't have existed prior to this Creation thing as there would have been nowhere to be, and nothing to work with; that God made Adam and Eve in " His own image and likeness " but they sinned anyway, thanks to the interference of a talking snake. The attempt to justify Creation through scientific means has produced results as preposterous as the initial thesis. It certainly isn't science.
Scientific investigation may be thought of in two ways; investigations by scientists wearing white coats and working in laboratories, or by anyone using the Scientific Method. Deductive logic is the process of examining evidence and formin conclusions based on that evidence. The Big Bang starts with the conclusion and then tries to gather evidence in support of that conclusion. It's science worked backwards. Not only that but it lacks the one starting point of all scientfic investigation: The Compelling Cause.
The Compelling Cause is the motivation behind every investigation of any kind: it is when;
Something is seen from a subjective viewpoint and attracts attention,
Something appears that wasn't there before,
Something was there is no longer there and has been replaced by something else, or is missing altogether,and
Something that was present in one state or condition has changed.
Some examples:
Imagine when man first encountered fire. More than likely it was a tree ignited by a lightning strike and a small band of hunter-gatherers happened upon the scene. They would certainly would have been mesmerized by the sight, and upon closer investigation, finding it to be a source of light and warmth they obviously decided it was something they wanted. How to transport it from one place to another would have been the first item on their list; what burns and what doesn't would be second, and how to make it happen when desired and make it go away when no longer needed would also be an item to consider. Fire science is still a major discipline.
Consider the Iron Age blacksmith who twists a few strands of iron together and hammers out a shiny new sword. But then, in a short while this magnifience work begins to show signs of a red, powdery substance, and little black holes ( pits ).The compelling cause here is to discover why this is happening and devising a way to avoid it. From this grew the science of metalurgy.
Imagine now that a scientist of perhaps the 17th Century is studying caterpillars, and has five in a big glass enclosure. The furry little multi-legged creatures have lots of leaves to munch on as they crawl around on the twigs that bear the leaves.
Our scientist is taking careful notes of everything he sees and feels that he is getting to know quite a bit about caterpillars. Then he is called away on another and is absent from his lab for two weeks. When he returns the caterpillars are gone!
Some dirty prankster has stolen his caterpillars and replaced them with - of all things - MOTHS! Well, that's what he might think at first, but in time he would find that caterpillars eventually turn either into moths or butterflies.
Now let us examine the Big Bang in terms of Compelling Cause. It fails the first requirement in that it is not subjective: Whether the universe came in to being suddenly or was already there doesn't affect my state of being in the least. The second requirement also, since no one has ever experienced a condition of no universe. It's always been there to us.
The Big Bang is also logically false in that it begs the question: assuming the conclusion to be true in the absence of any hard evidence. It is only after this a priori conclusion that the evidence has been gathered. True evidence points in the opposite direction: that the Big Bank is totally false, and two items should make the point.
A few years ago a team of astronomers headed by Wendy Freeman observed that the 12-million year-old universe contained stars that were 17-million years old. More recently there was an item on Yahoo! about a galaxy 13-billion lightyears away. The article stressed the point that that is were the galaxy was thirteen-billion years ago; if the Big Bang is true, then how did this galaxy get way out there a billion years before the big event? Then there is the matter of the Instanton.
Stephen Hawking was analysing the Big Bang, focusing on the events that " must " have occurred a millionth of a second after the explosion. He concluded that there was a key element missing, one without which the Big Bang could not happen. So he invented one: the Instanton, an element that was there when needed, then disappeared never to be seen again. It's very much like the retrograde motion of Mars. The Ptolemaic astronomers, anxious to preserve the Earth-centered universe, attributed this motion to epicycles, circular paths that the planet described along is pricipal orbit. But when the retrograde movement wasn't in evidence, neither were the epicycles! Shouldn't the planet have been wobbling along the whole time? Gravity was another topic upon which the scholars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century got it wrong.
In Watchers of the Skies the German physicist Willi Ley tells the story. It seems that when isaac Newton concluded that the force of gravity is the product of the mass of an object and an acceleration, the equation: F = ma, the scholars of the time began to teach that gravity is a Constant Force. But expressing gravity so, making the force of gravity a constant, craeted a problem that wasn't discovered in time to keep it out of some text books. The problem is that the equation describes a mathematical area. If the force is held constant the either the mass or the acceleration would have to be the independent variable, the other therefore being the dependent variable. A change in one necessitates a proportional change in the other: as one get bigger, the other must get smaller. It's the same as an area of, say, 48 feet; is it six feet by eight feet, twelve by four, ninety-six feet by six inches? Who knows? Now, if the force of gravity is constant, then a small mass would plummet to the ground at the higher acceleration, while a 100-ton boulder would float to the ground like a feather. Gravity is an acceleration. More than that, gravity is not a primary force but a reactive one as we perceive it.
To understand this let us consider the all subsuming Law of the Universe, that elusive concept that ties all the laws of the universe together in a single, seamless whole. It's simple. The Law;
Energy is all there is. Because it is present in infinte supply, energy cannot combine with itself fully, but only in local situations. Accumulations of particles form centers of mass which in turn develop gravitational forces. These forces grow in intesity until the total concentration of matter is sufficient to ignite at the center. Then a star begins its dazzling life. In smaller concentrations, all formations being spherical, planets form from the superhot gases ejected from the parent star. AS these planets move farther away from the star they cool, form crusts, and then gravity as we experience it comes into play. Were the crust of the Earth not solid, everything on its surface would continue to approach the center of mass: the center of the Earth. So much for anti-gravity machines, another modern myth.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
An Interesting Idea
My endless search for Truth has led me along many paths and raised many questions. In the book, Creation, and my analysis of the Great Pyramid, I have raised the point that we humans are a very untypical life form on this Earth. Considering that all creatures of the wild basically look alike and act pretty much alike, human beings are in a class by themesleves What does the typical human look like?
In the article about the true meaning of the Great Pyramid is the idea that it symbolizes the Life Presence of the Earth at the time of the Lords' coming: that is, the complete array, from the tiniest microscopic form the the most complex and sophisticated organism. The shape of the Pyramid seems to replicate in a very general sense the number of species and the relative population of each. In other words, the smaller the creature, the more species there are, and each has a number of denizens proportional to the level of existence: microbes have the greatest number and variety of species, and the population of each is astronomical; higher organisms have fewer species and consequently lower populations. This leads to a fascinating idea of the true nature of life itself.
Beginning with the fundamental concept that energy is all there is, let us consider the infinite number of forms that energy assumes. In its basic form energy is boundless, unharnessed, and undirected: it's just there! The most dramatic way in which energy expresses itself is an explosion. One of the most familiar ways is what we call a detonation: a controlled explosion such as in an internal combustion engine. We might consider this latter expression as organized energy.
If we can agree on this point, we are ready to continue.
Life expresses itself through organisms, or bodies, and the infinite variety of bodies that creatures display also have certain sets of capabilities. Birds fly, fish breath under water, snakes have no arms and legs; dogs can articulate their limbs independently while horses cannot ( they must move both legs on either side together ); the variety is endless. And it can be asserted with conviction that organisms experience life. Thus, can we not conclude that organisms organize energy through their experiences and to the peak of their abilities?
There are four characteristics of life;
The ability to consume food and produce energy,
The ability to reproduce its own kind,
The ability to learn and grow, and
The ability to adapt to its surroundings.
And all of the above are experiences.
Carrying the point a step further, there is a behavioral characteristic that is evident in species according to their positions on the pyramid configuration: those at the low end tend to be more reactive that those higher up. More sophisticated animals demonstrate a greater capacity for volition, the moreso the higher up they are. An Amoeba ( one-celled animal ) will shrink from an electrical charge, or light;a startled animal will flee or strike out without bothering to determine whether the agent of surprise is a threat or just an interested passer-by. On the website, http://timeoftheend-faithanreason.net, is the true story of a cat I had about twenty years ago: Jose. This little animal, who never weighed more than three pounds, demonstrated such a sweet personality, and an intelligent curiosity far above what anyone would expect of a so-called dumb animal. Jose solved problems, played pranks, experimented, imitated me, and had such a lovable personality ( yes, a cat with a personality ) that everyone who knew him loved him completely. One has to ask; why does a cat bother to learn these higher ( volitional ) behaviors? Was he preparing to enter a higher state? Become human someday?
We might ask the reverse question; why do so many humans bear such striking caricature resemblances to lower animals? And why do these people also demonstrate the behaviors of these animals? People resemble apes, bears, cats, bloodhounds, tortoises - not actual resemblances but suggestive appearances. I am content to let the reader sort these matters out for him- or herself: but something is going on here.
There is nothing wrong with the idea that we evolved from lower animals; those who oppse the idea suffer from an obvious case of spiritual pride which says, "We are too good, too special for that to be true." Yet the history of mankind is a nearly unbroken record of organized violence covering some six-thousand years. Archaeologists probe for the origins of mankind and one of the things they look for is the first indications that man ( or proto-man ) used tools. And were these tools not weapons mostly? Certainly one of the first inventions was the adlala, a notched stick used to launch spears farther by extending the thrower's arm. From then to the present we have spared no resources in developing more horrific and efficient ways to kill each other, and that can lead only to one conclusion.
We are animals! The Lords wish( ed ) us to be better than that.
We weren't listening.
In the article about the true meaning of the Great Pyramid is the idea that it symbolizes the Life Presence of the Earth at the time of the Lords' coming: that is, the complete array, from the tiniest microscopic form the the most complex and sophisticated organism. The shape of the Pyramid seems to replicate in a very general sense the number of species and the relative population of each. In other words, the smaller the creature, the more species there are, and each has a number of denizens proportional to the level of existence: microbes have the greatest number and variety of species, and the population of each is astronomical; higher organisms have fewer species and consequently lower populations. This leads to a fascinating idea of the true nature of life itself.
Beginning with the fundamental concept that energy is all there is, let us consider the infinite number of forms that energy assumes. In its basic form energy is boundless, unharnessed, and undirected: it's just there! The most dramatic way in which energy expresses itself is an explosion. One of the most familiar ways is what we call a detonation: a controlled explosion such as in an internal combustion engine. We might consider this latter expression as organized energy.
If we can agree on this point, we are ready to continue.
Life expresses itself through organisms, or bodies, and the infinite variety of bodies that creatures display also have certain sets of capabilities. Birds fly, fish breath under water, snakes have no arms and legs; dogs can articulate their limbs independently while horses cannot ( they must move both legs on either side together ); the variety is endless. And it can be asserted with conviction that organisms experience life. Thus, can we not conclude that organisms organize energy through their experiences and to the peak of their abilities?
There are four characteristics of life;
The ability to consume food and produce energy,
The ability to reproduce its own kind,
The ability to learn and grow, and
The ability to adapt to its surroundings.
And all of the above are experiences.
Carrying the point a step further, there is a behavioral characteristic that is evident in species according to their positions on the pyramid configuration: those at the low end tend to be more reactive that those higher up. More sophisticated animals demonstrate a greater capacity for volition, the moreso the higher up they are. An Amoeba ( one-celled animal ) will shrink from an electrical charge, or light;a startled animal will flee or strike out without bothering to determine whether the agent of surprise is a threat or just an interested passer-by. On the website, http://timeoftheend-faithanreason.net, is the true story of a cat I had about twenty years ago: Jose. This little animal, who never weighed more than three pounds, demonstrated such a sweet personality, and an intelligent curiosity far above what anyone would expect of a so-called dumb animal. Jose solved problems, played pranks, experimented, imitated me, and had such a lovable personality ( yes, a cat with a personality ) that everyone who knew him loved him completely. One has to ask; why does a cat bother to learn these higher ( volitional ) behaviors? Was he preparing to enter a higher state? Become human someday?
We might ask the reverse question; why do so many humans bear such striking caricature resemblances to lower animals? And why do these people also demonstrate the behaviors of these animals? People resemble apes, bears, cats, bloodhounds, tortoises - not actual resemblances but suggestive appearances. I am content to let the reader sort these matters out for him- or herself: but something is going on here.
There is nothing wrong with the idea that we evolved from lower animals; those who oppse the idea suffer from an obvious case of spiritual pride which says, "We are too good, too special for that to be true." Yet the history of mankind is a nearly unbroken record of organized violence covering some six-thousand years. Archaeologists probe for the origins of mankind and one of the things they look for is the first indications that man ( or proto-man ) used tools. And were these tools not weapons mostly? Certainly one of the first inventions was the adlala, a notched stick used to launch spears farther by extending the thrower's arm. From then to the present we have spared no resources in developing more horrific and efficient ways to kill each other, and that can lead only to one conclusion.
We are animals! The Lords wish( ed ) us to be better than that.
We weren't listening.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Beginning - Part Six
Who were the Lords of the World? Because their arrival predated recorded history by eons, we cannot cite any hard evidence. But we have a body of circumstantial evidence as to their character and nature: they had to be exceptionally spiritual folk. This the Bible tells us in Revelation [21:8]; "But the fearful, and ubelieving,and the abominal, and muderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Sure looks like these people aren't going to be welcome in the City of Heaven. Small wonder, as such as these would be disrupters, and on a journey to the stars we couldn't afford to have these types around. And this lake of fire; could it be the Sun?
There is no other candidate for identification as this fiery lake. According to the celestial mechanics of the Solar System as outlined earlier in this series, all matter will one day return to the Sun. Might be a good idea to head out before that happens. And it will happen! In fact, given the infinite reaches of this Universe - there are others - we may with some degree of certitude posit that this is a regular occurrence in the cosmos.
Much of what has been covered thus far is validated by the information found in Genesis, chapter six. Here we find that " sons of god saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took unto themselves such as they chose as wives." This passage tells us two things; that the Lords were Christs ( sons of god ) and that their interest in the daughters of men were to produce children. As to the designation, Christ: this is the spiritual state of absolute humility and dependence upon the Spirit of the Universe. Fundamentalists tell us that Jesus was the only begotten son of God; the Nicene Creed tells us that he was not begotten, and the man himself made no allusion to the subject. But he did tell his disciples, " Think not what you will eat or wear ... your Father knows ye have need of these things." Stock 'christian' thinking is a morass of confusion, contradiction, half-formed thoughts, and outright lies. The Bible clearly states that it was the ' sons of god ' that mated with native women - when they were fair. One must wonder what they were like before they were fair, and whom the Lords were taking to wife then.
The Lords of the World are a model for what forward thinking seers envision for certain members of our race: those with the right stuff to borrow from the title of a motion picture of years ago. Such people would have to demonstrate a nearly perfect dedication to the mission, a matchless capacity for co-operation, a loving spirit free of judgement, condemnation, greed, and deviousness of any kind; they would be free of envy, jealousy, covetousness, and self-seeking. This would be the ultimate one-way trip and no consideration would be left to chance.
The Lords of the World were Christs, and if we survive to realize this sunlime dream, we must find such character, dignity, humility, and grace, from among our own.
That is truly why we are encouraged to adopt virtues akin to sainthood; not that we must be somber, morbidly serious, or wear hair shirts - that is just an act put on by those who believe that such demonstrations are valid. No, God loves a cheerful spirit, one who spreads love and joy in his path, who makes others smile and feel good about themselves, and who turns his back on no one who truly wishes to follow the True Path to redemption.
Make no mistake; we are talking about the very survival of our species into perpetuity. The smugly complacent, self righteous who claim to be 'saved' are whistling in the wind. They speak of brotherly love but practice intolerance, they claim to be seekers of truth but their minds are set on an outlandish fable that has been relentlessly hammered into their minds. They fail in the basic spiritual ideal of Live and Let Live. The self same people who bridle at being on 'hold' for five minutes yet have been waiting over two-thousand years for Jesus to return. Why would the man wish to retuirn? After all he gave us a pattern of living to assimilate but which we have all but totally ignored. Who bombs abortion clinics? The descendants of those who set fire to those who didn't agree with their preposterous ideas, and who to this day make war on any person or group they deem unworthy.
To be contimnued.
There is no other candidate for identification as this fiery lake. According to the celestial mechanics of the Solar System as outlined earlier in this series, all matter will one day return to the Sun. Might be a good idea to head out before that happens. And it will happen! In fact, given the infinite reaches of this Universe - there are others - we may with some degree of certitude posit that this is a regular occurrence in the cosmos.
Much of what has been covered thus far is validated by the information found in Genesis, chapter six. Here we find that " sons of god saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took unto themselves such as they chose as wives." This passage tells us two things; that the Lords were Christs ( sons of god ) and that their interest in the daughters of men were to produce children. As to the designation, Christ: this is the spiritual state of absolute humility and dependence upon the Spirit of the Universe. Fundamentalists tell us that Jesus was the only begotten son of God; the Nicene Creed tells us that he was not begotten, and the man himself made no allusion to the subject. But he did tell his disciples, " Think not what you will eat or wear ... your Father knows ye have need of these things." Stock 'christian' thinking is a morass of confusion, contradiction, half-formed thoughts, and outright lies. The Bible clearly states that it was the ' sons of god ' that mated with native women - when they were fair. One must wonder what they were like before they were fair, and whom the Lords were taking to wife then.
The Lords of the World are a model for what forward thinking seers envision for certain members of our race: those with the right stuff to borrow from the title of a motion picture of years ago. Such people would have to demonstrate a nearly perfect dedication to the mission, a matchless capacity for co-operation, a loving spirit free of judgement, condemnation, greed, and deviousness of any kind; they would be free of envy, jealousy, covetousness, and self-seeking. This would be the ultimate one-way trip and no consideration would be left to chance.
The Lords of the World were Christs, and if we survive to realize this sunlime dream, we must find such character, dignity, humility, and grace, from among our own.
That is truly why we are encouraged to adopt virtues akin to sainthood; not that we must be somber, morbidly serious, or wear hair shirts - that is just an act put on by those who believe that such demonstrations are valid. No, God loves a cheerful spirit, one who spreads love and joy in his path, who makes others smile and feel good about themselves, and who turns his back on no one who truly wishes to follow the True Path to redemption.
Make no mistake; we are talking about the very survival of our species into perpetuity. The smugly complacent, self righteous who claim to be 'saved' are whistling in the wind. They speak of brotherly love but practice intolerance, they claim to be seekers of truth but their minds are set on an outlandish fable that has been relentlessly hammered into their minds. They fail in the basic spiritual ideal of Live and Let Live. The self same people who bridle at being on 'hold' for five minutes yet have been waiting over two-thousand years for Jesus to return. Why would the man wish to retuirn? After all he gave us a pattern of living to assimilate but which we have all but totally ignored. Who bombs abortion clinics? The descendants of those who set fire to those who didn't agree with their preposterous ideas, and who to this day make war on any person or group they deem unworthy.
To be contimnued.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
The Beginning - Part Five
Given all that has gone before in this series ( and I only ask that you consider the possibility that it could be true ), we would now be at the time when the Lords of the World had come down to the newly found Earth. Also, given what we know about the field of biometrics, they would not have been free to wander as they pleased. They would not have wished to trigger epidemics of diseases among the denizens of this place, and wouldn't have wanted to suffer any local maladies for which they might not have any immune responses. And they would be quite different from us, their descendants.
For one thing, they would be bigger and would live much longer. This is because they would have been living in an environment of lower gravity for nearly a thousand years. Being subjected to the heavier gravitation of the new world they would have settled in mountains where gravity would have been somewhat lighter, thus the reference to ' being on high '. They would have lived longer as their bodies would endure longer in the lower gravity of the City of Heaven, but this would evolve to lower lifespans over time. After all, the effects of gravity are with us from the very first; all our lives the force of gravity presses us to the surface of the Earth unrelentingly. With advancing years the body tends to wear out under this strain and this degenration may be abated by exercise and proper nutrition - and a fit spiritual condition.
The Lords would have been a genetically isolated race, and would therefore face the possibility of eventual inbreeding, thus would need a fresh source of genes. At this time, Evolution would have progressed to the mammalian stage and there would be several species of proto-man: largely ape-like but already having the earmarks of intelligence; binocular vision, stereo audition, opposed thumbs, and the ability to stand upright. Any race capable of crossing space would certainly have great knowledge of Genetic Engineering, and would have set about trying to elevate one of these species to their own physical profile. This would be one factor in the longevity of early mankind, as with the Generation of Adam.
The Lords, having a gentic propensity toward longer lives would have imbued their offspring with this same property. This alone would not account for the whole, but would be only one factor. Another would be the gravitational forces in play during those early times as the Earth spun more rapidly on its axis. It is presently slowing at about one second per century. Going back four-million years, we may safely conclude that the force of gravity was considerably less. Some contemporary textbooks have shown depictions of Brontosauri standing in lakes, that the buoyancy of the water would help in supporting their massive weight; in fact today, those 70 ton beasts would hardly be able to stand, but in a gravity of lower intensity would stand and get about handily.Finally, the earth possibly being as close to the Sun as Venus, the year would have been a little more than two-thirds its present length. The evidence of tropical vegetation and hotter climates revealed through paleontology is quite consistent with this conclusion.
The Fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis is that God made man in [His] own image and likeness. I have no quarrel with that except that it is overly simplistic. My view, which I hold in common with many others, is that God creates everything, and that this process is eternal, without beginning and without end. The Time of the End only seeks to describe the way in which mankind came to be on the Earth, and to suggest a higher purpose for our kind than we are presently demonstrating.
Authors and playwrites have based their work in large part on the tragi-comic nature of man: the higher aspiring sense, and the lower, baser, and meaner side of human nature. If God is as we see the Spirit of the Universe; Good, True, Beautiful, Peaceful, Orderly, and Harmonious; wouldn't [He] have created man in the same image? And since God ( the Spirit of the Universe ) is All Things Everywhere, just what form would this image take?
Creationism is a crippled fantasy replete with loose ends, unsubstantiated ' facts ', contradictions, and a narrow outlook that fails to consider any other alternative. Ask a question they can't answer and their reply accounts some ' divine ' censorship, according to which we are not supposed to know these things. To such as these ' faith ' is blind, like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand in the belief that he can't be seen. None think about the things that we do know, like how to build hydrogen bombs, ICBMs, chemical and bacterial weapons. Why do we know how to make these things yet are not supposed to question the divisive, prejudicial, and destructive ideaology that enables these things to flourish? In fact, we might ask why it is that man has a lower nature at all?
Homo Robustus, the earliest proto-man known, was a creature of the wilderness, a very dangerous place. This was the environment of the ' quick and the dead ' and without the penchant for hunting, stalking, and killing, our race would have died out eons ago. It was killing for survival and it took skills that we, today, call anti-social, but which were quite appropriate for the time. From the first time two clans fought over a carcass to the present day when we engage in Resource Wars, mankind has been killing its own kind in ever more sophisticated and dreadful ways.
The violence depicted in the Bible chronicles the Lords' efforts to curb these fatal instincts and to imbue their offspring with a new sense of spiritual awareness. Yashueh of Capernaum ( Jesus ) was a Lord of the World; his teachings bear witness to this truth: Worhip God above all things and love thy neighbor. In the Beatitudes he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
Where are the peacemakers?
In his new book, "The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire." The author, Cecil Bothwell, documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in that Rev. Graham couldn't bless. In fact, he reveals that during the horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President, Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam! In a 13-page letter, that Rev. Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated: "There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the South?...Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night destroy the economy of North Vietnam." Mr. Bothwell underscored that such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks, would probably "kill a million people and wipe out an already poor nation's agricultural system" He added that the advice in Graham's transmittal "fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the air war north and west."
There is more. After the deadly Kent State U. affair, (May 4, 1970), where four
students, who were protesting the Nixon-Henry Kissinger-inspired bombing of Cambodia, were killed by Ohio's National Guard troops, Rev. Graham invited the mostly unbalanced Nixon to address his crusade. It was held in Knoxville, TN. While parents of the students were still grieving and burying their dead, Rev. Graham shamelessly shilled: "All Americans may not agree with the decision a president makes--but he is our president..."
Also, every chance Rev. Graham got he ripped into antiwar protesters in this country, while the Vietnam inferno was raging. After a large pro peace demonstration in late 1969, he railed in a letter to then President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the protesters were "radicals and those seeking to overthrow the American way of life." When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, in 1967 against the war in a sermon at the Riverside Church in NYC, Rev. Graham, jumped right in and tagged his criticism as "an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who are in Vietnam." When Dr. King marched for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Graham was no where to be found. And, after Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis, TN, he couldn't be bothered to attend his funeral either.
Rev. Graham made a career out of sucking up to U.S. presidents. Mr. Bothwell wrote how he loved those "endless photo-ops" at the White House, and how he was lways, "so eager to shake the hands of...despots, movie stars and industrial kingpins, and to offer grandiose approval of their greatness. Obsequy, more than money, seemed to drive the man--though his pockets were never empty." Fortunately, not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham's bogus act. One of my favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks. He had a built in b... s... detector. This is what President Truman had to say about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: "Graham has gone off the beam. He's...well, I hadn't ought to say this, but he's one of those 'counterfeits' I was telling you about. He claims he's a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president. I just don't go for people like that. All he's interested in is getting his name in the paper."
Wait a minute! Wholly Christian Empire? Isn't that what's going on today? The cretin who currently ocupies the White House referred to the war in Iraq as a 'Crusade', a label that must have set the Arab world's teeth on edge. And the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio is stumping for a broader military adventure in the Middle East; one that is supposed to lead to the Battle of Armageddon, which ( according to him and his ilk ) must happen before Jesus returns to Earth. Oh, and the Jews will all covert to ' Christianity ' too!
Where are the peacemakers????
To be continued.
For one thing, they would be bigger and would live much longer. This is because they would have been living in an environment of lower gravity for nearly a thousand years. Being subjected to the heavier gravitation of the new world they would have settled in mountains where gravity would have been somewhat lighter, thus the reference to ' being on high '. They would have lived longer as their bodies would endure longer in the lower gravity of the City of Heaven, but this would evolve to lower lifespans over time. After all, the effects of gravity are with us from the very first; all our lives the force of gravity presses us to the surface of the Earth unrelentingly. With advancing years the body tends to wear out under this strain and this degenration may be abated by exercise and proper nutrition - and a fit spiritual condition.
The Lords would have been a genetically isolated race, and would therefore face the possibility of eventual inbreeding, thus would need a fresh source of genes. At this time, Evolution would have progressed to the mammalian stage and there would be several species of proto-man: largely ape-like but already having the earmarks of intelligence; binocular vision, stereo audition, opposed thumbs, and the ability to stand upright. Any race capable of crossing space would certainly have great knowledge of Genetic Engineering, and would have set about trying to elevate one of these species to their own physical profile. This would be one factor in the longevity of early mankind, as with the Generation of Adam.
The Lords, having a gentic propensity toward longer lives would have imbued their offspring with this same property. This alone would not account for the whole, but would be only one factor. Another would be the gravitational forces in play during those early times as the Earth spun more rapidly on its axis. It is presently slowing at about one second per century. Going back four-million years, we may safely conclude that the force of gravity was considerably less. Some contemporary textbooks have shown depictions of Brontosauri standing in lakes, that the buoyancy of the water would help in supporting their massive weight; in fact today, those 70 ton beasts would hardly be able to stand, but in a gravity of lower intensity would stand and get about handily.Finally, the earth possibly being as close to the Sun as Venus, the year would have been a little more than two-thirds its present length. The evidence of tropical vegetation and hotter climates revealed through paleontology is quite consistent with this conclusion.
The Fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis is that God made man in [His] own image and likeness. I have no quarrel with that except that it is overly simplistic. My view, which I hold in common with many others, is that God creates everything, and that this process is eternal, without beginning and without end. The Time of the End only seeks to describe the way in which mankind came to be on the Earth, and to suggest a higher purpose for our kind than we are presently demonstrating.
Authors and playwrites have based their work in large part on the tragi-comic nature of man: the higher aspiring sense, and the lower, baser, and meaner side of human nature. If God is as we see the Spirit of the Universe; Good, True, Beautiful, Peaceful, Orderly, and Harmonious; wouldn't [He] have created man in the same image? And since God ( the Spirit of the Universe ) is All Things Everywhere, just what form would this image take?
Creationism is a crippled fantasy replete with loose ends, unsubstantiated ' facts ', contradictions, and a narrow outlook that fails to consider any other alternative. Ask a question they can't answer and their reply accounts some ' divine ' censorship, according to which we are not supposed to know these things. To such as these ' faith ' is blind, like the ostrich who buries his head in the sand in the belief that he can't be seen. None think about the things that we do know, like how to build hydrogen bombs, ICBMs, chemical and bacterial weapons. Why do we know how to make these things yet are not supposed to question the divisive, prejudicial, and destructive ideaology that enables these things to flourish? In fact, we might ask why it is that man has a lower nature at all?
Homo Robustus, the earliest proto-man known, was a creature of the wilderness, a very dangerous place. This was the environment of the ' quick and the dead ' and without the penchant for hunting, stalking, and killing, our race would have died out eons ago. It was killing for survival and it took skills that we, today, call anti-social, but which were quite appropriate for the time. From the first time two clans fought over a carcass to the present day when we engage in Resource Wars, mankind has been killing its own kind in ever more sophisticated and dreadful ways.
The violence depicted in the Bible chronicles the Lords' efforts to curb these fatal instincts and to imbue their offspring with a new sense of spiritual awareness. Yashueh of Capernaum ( Jesus ) was a Lord of the World; his teachings bear witness to this truth: Worhip God above all things and love thy neighbor. In the Beatitudes he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
Where are the peacemakers?
In his new book, "The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire." The author, Cecil Bothwell, documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in that Rev. Graham couldn't bless. In fact, he reveals that during the horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President, Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam! In a 13-page letter, that Rev. Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated: "There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the South?...Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night destroy the economy of North Vietnam." Mr. Bothwell underscored that such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks, would probably "kill a million people and wipe out an already poor nation's agricultural system" He added that the advice in Graham's transmittal "fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the air war north and west."
There is more. After the deadly Kent State U. affair, (May 4, 1970), where four
students, who were protesting the Nixon-Henry Kissinger-inspired bombing of Cambodia, were killed by Ohio's National Guard troops, Rev. Graham invited the mostly unbalanced Nixon to address his crusade. It was held in Knoxville, TN. While parents of the students were still grieving and burying their dead, Rev. Graham shamelessly shilled: "All Americans may not agree with the decision a president makes--but he is our president..."
Also, every chance Rev. Graham got he ripped into antiwar protesters in this country, while the Vietnam inferno was raging. After a large pro peace demonstration in late 1969, he railed in a letter to then President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the protesters were "radicals and those seeking to overthrow the American way of life." When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, in 1967 against the war in a sermon at the Riverside Church in NYC, Rev. Graham, jumped right in and tagged his criticism as "an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who are in Vietnam." When Dr. King marched for Civil Rights in Selma, Alabama, Rev. Graham was no where to be found. And, after Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis, TN, he couldn't be bothered to attend his funeral either.
Rev. Graham made a career out of sucking up to U.S. presidents. Mr. Bothwell wrote how he loved those "endless photo-ops" at the White House, and how he was lways, "so eager to shake the hands of...despots, movie stars and industrial kingpins, and to offer grandiose approval of their greatness. Obsequy, more than money, seemed to drive the man--though his pockets were never empty." Fortunately, not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham's bogus act. One of my favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks. He had a built in b... s... detector. This is what President Truman had to say about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: "Graham has gone off the beam. He's...well, I hadn't ought to say this, but he's one of those 'counterfeits' I was telling you about. He claims he's a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president. I just don't go for people like that. All he's interested in is getting his name in the paper."
Wait a minute! Wholly Christian Empire? Isn't that what's going on today? The cretin who currently ocupies the White House referred to the war in Iraq as a 'Crusade', a label that must have set the Arab world's teeth on edge. And the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio is stumping for a broader military adventure in the Middle East; one that is supposed to lead to the Battle of Armageddon, which ( according to him and his ilk ) must happen before Jesus returns to Earth. Oh, and the Jews will all covert to ' Christianity ' too!
Where are the peacemakers????
To be continued.
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