TO DESCRIBE LOVE OR DEFINE LOVE are not similar statements. The latter can define or possess you; but the former cannot, as it is only a description of what is at work in you. Once you absolutize this "love" that is at work in you, you can either die for it or hurt or kill others for it. That's why there are people who are willing to die because of it, and these same people can also hurt or kill others for it. So never define or absolutize this "love" that is at work in you, so it cannot possess or define you, for once you absolutize or define it, it becomes your "God" who can possess you absolutely. Once this happens in you, you turn this God or "love" into a monster at work in you. Unlike the love that you describe that is at work in you and, therefore, it cannot define or possess you, as you cannot fully possess it. Only by defining it, not describing it, can it possess people or by people possessed by it. So love as described, is preferably better than love defined. Or, another way of saying it, God (or love) described, is preferably better than God (or love) defined. Both, however, are continually at work in each person's being. It is also at work in the life of each community, or nation, Christian or non-christian.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Biblical Literalism
WHY BIBLICAL LITERALISM MUST BE REJECTED (outline)
I.While certain portions of the Bible can be understood and done literally, I believe most of it must be
rejected. We can offer some alternative ways of understanding the Bible. Some of the words, syings, or
commandments we can read and follow literally are: "Thou shall not kill," "Love your enemies," "Love God
and neighbor, " "Thou shall not steal," "Thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife," etc.
II.Some reasons why biblical literalism must be rejected:*
1. The scientific world demands it. The language and worldview of the people in the Bible are male-domi-
nated.
2.The Genesis creation fall story is wrong.
3.The miracle stories in the Bible are all made up.
4.The God in the Bible is a vicious and violent one.
III. How to affirm the Bible: an alternative to biblical literalism
1. Read the Bible contextually. (fundamentalist christians still understand and/or interpret the Bible literally)
2. Use other names for God, that are non-sexist, like "Wisdom," "Rock," "Light," "Spirit," "Creator,"
"Friend," etc. All these names for God and many more are found in the Bible, but people don't use
them more often than male language, then and now.
3.God loves all - men, women, even the LGBT, and the whole creation. In Genesis God calls them "very
good."
4.Use miracle stories in the Bible metaphorically. After all, I believe, that's the intent of all those miracle
stories.
5.Use non-theistic language (as opposed to theistic**) in our understanding of God, in our theological
(re)formulations, and also in our church liturgies (prayers and hymns).
________________________________________________________
*See file, "A New Way of Affirming And Appreciating the Bible"
**God "up there" beyond the clouds, who comes down or sends God's angel, or Christ, when
people pray or call for help to bless, save and rescue us.
Prepared by JNR/Aug 2012
I.While certain portions of the Bible can be understood and done literally, I believe most of it must be
rejected. We can offer some alternative ways of understanding the Bible. Some of the words, syings, or
commandments we can read and follow literally are: "Thou shall not kill," "Love your enemies," "Love God
and neighbor, " "Thou shall not steal," "Thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife," etc.
II.Some reasons why biblical literalism must be rejected:*
1. The scientific world demands it. The language and worldview of the people in the Bible are male-domi-
nated.
2.The Genesis creation fall story is wrong.
3.The miracle stories in the Bible are all made up.
4.The God in the Bible is a vicious and violent one.
III. How to affirm the Bible: an alternative to biblical literalism
1. Read the Bible contextually. (fundamentalist christians still understand and/or interpret the Bible literally)
2. Use other names for God, that are non-sexist, like "Wisdom," "Rock," "Light," "Spirit," "Creator,"
"Friend," etc. All these names for God and many more are found in the Bible, but people don't use
them more often than male language, then and now.
3.God loves all - men, women, even the LGBT, and the whole creation. In Genesis God calls them "very
good."
4.Use miracle stories in the Bible metaphorically. After all, I believe, that's the intent of all those miracle
stories.
5.Use non-theistic language (as opposed to theistic**) in our understanding of God, in our theological
(re)formulations, and also in our church liturgies (prayers and hymns).
________________________________________________________
*See file, "A New Way of Affirming And Appreciating the Bible"
**God "up there" beyond the clouds, who comes down or sends God's angel, or Christ, when
people pray or call for help to bless, save and rescue us.
Prepared by JNR/Aug 2012
Postmodern Thought and Creativity
Postmodern Thought and Creativity Vs. St. Augustine's Doctrine of Original Sin
St. Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin has been challenged by post-modern thought and creativity. According to Augustine, humanity has fallen from his original condition because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. To recover humankind's original condition, Augustine claims, our faith in Jesus Christ can rescue us and help us recover the "image of God."
Post-modern thought and creativity, however, claims that "creativity is about making mistakes. In fact, there is no such things as 'mistakes' in the creative process; there are only different ways of doing things.
"We should not be afraid of our mistakes. The moment we are afraid, we limit our chances of exploring new creative avenues. If our mistake (or sin) does not lead us to anything creative this time, at least we can learn from it. Next time we'll know which steps to avoid to be closer to our goal."
.....................................
"Do you mean Augustine was wrong?", his student asked.
"He didn't know he was wrong. . .thought he was right based on primitive science," his teacher answered. "That's always been the problem of Christians ever since," he concluded.
_____________________________________________________________________
Source: creativXpert.com/travel/accidental-discovery-port. With additional comment by J.N.Riingen
St. Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin has been challenged by post-modern thought and creativity. According to Augustine, humanity has fallen from his original condition because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. To recover humankind's original condition, Augustine claims, our faith in Jesus Christ can rescue us and help us recover the "image of God."
Post-modern thought and creativity, however, claims that "creativity is about making mistakes. In fact, there is no such things as 'mistakes' in the creative process; there are only different ways of doing things.
"We should not be afraid of our mistakes. The moment we are afraid, we limit our chances of exploring new creative avenues. If our mistake (or sin) does not lead us to anything creative this time, at least we can learn from it. Next time we'll know which steps to avoid to be closer to our goal."
.....................................
"Do you mean Augustine was wrong?", his student asked.
"He didn't know he was wrong. . .thought he was right based on primitive science," his teacher answered. "That's always been the problem of Christians ever since," he concluded.
_____________________________________________________________________
Source: creativXpert.com/travel/accidental-discovery-port. With additional comment by J.N.Riingen
"Federal Theology"
Did you know that there is a term, "Federal Theology"?
"Federal" came from a Latin term foecus, a covenant. There was a movement in the 17th century Reformed theology to present a comprehensive history of salvation, working from the Old Testament (see Westminster Confession chapter vii). Federal theology specifically refers to the theory of Johannis Cocceius (1603-1669), who taught mainly in the Netherlands and whose teaching threw the Church into turmoil. Cocceius held that the original natural covenant of works was 'abrogated' in five steps in accordance with the super-natural covenant. The steps were: the Fall; the inner-trinitarian pact between God and the Mediator; the proclamation of the covenant of grace in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New Testament; the death of the body and sanctification; and the resurrection of the body. Federal theology deeply influenced pietism (we call it today as fundamentalist christians), and all later philosophies of history.(from Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, article by J.C.O'Neill, p. 210)
"Federal" came from a Latin term foecus, a covenant. There was a movement in the 17th century Reformed theology to present a comprehensive history of salvation, working from the Old Testament (see Westminster Confession chapter vii). Federal theology specifically refers to the theory of Johannis Cocceius (1603-1669), who taught mainly in the Netherlands and whose teaching threw the Church into turmoil. Cocceius held that the original natural covenant of works was 'abrogated' in five steps in accordance with the super-natural covenant. The steps were: the Fall; the inner-trinitarian pact between God and the Mediator; the proclamation of the covenant of grace in the Old Testament, fulfilled in the New Testament; the death of the body and sanctification; and the resurrection of the body. Federal theology deeply influenced pietism (we call it today as fundamentalist christians), and all later philosophies of history.(from Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, article by J.C.O'Neill, p. 210)
Biblical Literalism
Literal Bible Interpretations: A literal Bible presents me with far more problems(liabilities-jnr) than assets. It offers me a God I cannot respect, much less worship; a deity whose needs and prejudices are at least large as my own. I meet in the literal understanding of scriptures a God who is simply not viable, and what the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.
-Bishop John Shelby Spong, "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism" (1991).
-Bishop John Shelby Spong, "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism" (1991).
Saturday, August 25, 2012
MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, THEN AND NOW
MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, THEN AND NOW
Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The first came is response to a controversial court ruling that found that states had no jurisdiction over interstate trade, made ubiquitous by the growth of the increasingly unpopular railroads. The second, sponsored by Ohio senator John Sherman, was also intended, in part, to quell public unrest over big business. Congress needed to pacify the angry masses, Sherman argued, lest the country be vulnerable to "the socialist, the communist, the nihilist."
John Sherman - the younger brother of William Tecumseh and former Secretary of the Treasury - was not antibusiness. He favored an open market in which businesses competed fairly for consumers. But the new industry giants, he argued, "are not satisfied with . .competing with each other, and have invented a new form of combination. . .that seeks to avoid competition. . . ."
The Serman Antitrust Act of 1890 passed nearly unanimously through Congress. It declared "every contract, combination in the form of a trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations" to be illegal. Likewise, any "attempt to monopolize" a part of that trade or commerce. But Sherman Act or no Sherman Act, in the coming decade, the railroads and other big businesses advanced pretty much unchecked - at least those that survived a devastating depression in 1893.
Hill's railroad - redubbed the Great Northern Railway - was the only transcontinental to survive the depression. Not only did his road reach Seattle that year, but by drastically cutting costs - laying off more than a thousand workers and slashing the pay of those who remained - Hill's company continued to provide its investors with solid dividends.
For the workers who had relocated to the West, and had no other means of employment in the region, however, the depression in 1893 was disastrous. Of the hate mail Hill received from bitter railroad men, at least one letter quite literally hit home: "It would be a fitting climax if you should be taken by your employees and hung by the neck till dead, from one of the triumphal arches so recently erected at the expense of the very people you are now defrauding of their hard earnings." The letter was sent in care of Hill's wife.
Today, similar monopolistic capitalism is being espoused by the new Republican Congress people (neoconservatives) and many big businesses, where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan both support monopoly capitalism, and candidates for the U.S. presidency and vice, respectively. If they, and our people, will forget the negative economic consequences of the 1890s, our country will once again repeat it. And, given our current advanced means of transportation and communication, together with the increasing power of the new Republicans, its consequences would be much worse.
_____________________________________
Source: Smithsonian, October 1999, "The First Empire Builder of the Northwest," by Minna Morse, pp138-139.
Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The first came is response to a controversial court ruling that found that states had no jurisdiction over interstate trade, made ubiquitous by the growth of the increasingly unpopular railroads. The second, sponsored by Ohio senator John Sherman, was also intended, in part, to quell public unrest over big business. Congress needed to pacify the angry masses, Sherman argued, lest the country be vulnerable to "the socialist, the communist, the nihilist."
John Sherman - the younger brother of William Tecumseh and former Secretary of the Treasury - was not antibusiness. He favored an open market in which businesses competed fairly for consumers. But the new industry giants, he argued, "are not satisfied with . .competing with each other, and have invented a new form of combination. . .that seeks to avoid competition. . . ."
The Serman Antitrust Act of 1890 passed nearly unanimously through Congress. It declared "every contract, combination in the form of a trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations" to be illegal. Likewise, any "attempt to monopolize" a part of that trade or commerce. But Sherman Act or no Sherman Act, in the coming decade, the railroads and other big businesses advanced pretty much unchecked - at least those that survived a devastating depression in 1893.
Hill's railroad - redubbed the Great Northern Railway - was the only transcontinental to survive the depression. Not only did his road reach Seattle that year, but by drastically cutting costs - laying off more than a thousand workers and slashing the pay of those who remained - Hill's company continued to provide its investors with solid dividends.
For the workers who had relocated to the West, and had no other means of employment in the region, however, the depression in 1893 was disastrous. Of the hate mail Hill received from bitter railroad men, at least one letter quite literally hit home: "It would be a fitting climax if you should be taken by your employees and hung by the neck till dead, from one of the triumphal arches so recently erected at the expense of the very people you are now defrauding of their hard earnings." The letter was sent in care of Hill's wife.
Today, similar monopolistic capitalism is being espoused by the new Republican Congress people (neoconservatives) and many big businesses, where Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan both support monopoly capitalism, and candidates for the U.S. presidency and vice, respectively. If they, and our people, will forget the negative economic consequences of the 1890s, our country will once again repeat it. And, given our current advanced means of transportation and communication, together with the increasing power of the new Republicans, its consequences would be much worse.
_____________________________________
Source: Smithsonian, October 1999, "The First Empire Builder of the Northwest," by Minna Morse, pp138-139.
Speed Limit: 55 MPH
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 55 MPH FEDERAL SPEED LIMIT?
Ans: There never was a national speed limit of 55 MPH. The States determine the limits. The impression of the "national speed limit" stems from the Emergency Highway Conservation Act, which President Richard M Nixon signed on January 2, 1974. In the midst of an energy crisis touched off by conflict in the Middle East and a subsequent oil embargo imposed by the OPEC that forced Americans into long lines at gas stations, the Act was part of the national effort to reduce the consumption. The Law prohibited the Federal Highway Administration from approving highway projects in any state having a maximum speed limit over 55 MPH. The states could retain higher speed limits if they wished but at the cost of losing Federal-aid highway funding. As a result, all states complied with the legislation. The Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987 allowed the states to increase speeds to 65 MPH on rural Interstate routes without penalty. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 extended the authority to all roads. The states now have full control of speed limits.
_________________________
Source: www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/Eisenhower Interstate Highway System
Ans: There never was a national speed limit of 55 MPH. The States determine the limits. The impression of the "national speed limit" stems from the Emergency Highway Conservation Act, which President Richard M Nixon signed on January 2, 1974. In the midst of an energy crisis touched off by conflict in the Middle East and a subsequent oil embargo imposed by the OPEC that forced Americans into long lines at gas stations, the Act was part of the national effort to reduce the consumption. The Law prohibited the Federal Highway Administration from approving highway projects in any state having a maximum speed limit over 55 MPH. The states could retain higher speed limits if they wished but at the cost of losing Federal-aid highway funding. As a result, all states complied with the legislation. The Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987 allowed the states to increase speeds to 65 MPH on rural Interstate routes without penalty. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 extended the authority to all roads. The states now have full control of speed limits.
_________________________
Source: www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/Eisenhower Interstate Highway System
"Parking"
"PARKING" - WHAT IT MEANS IN BUSINESS
How is this practiced? According to the SEC(Aug. 30-Sept.5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, p.76), a certain company ships hundreds of thousands of merchandise to distributors and repurchase them after they had booked the sales, disguising the repurchase as "assorted products." Effect: huge tax deductions business' as capital investment. The truth: They repurchased their own products.
This is what Bloomberg calls as "Grand Theft." That's why in 2005, Hillary ClintoN, then a New York senator, called for federal investigation. A $7.5 million in penalties was "awarded" to one sneaky toy company in that same year. The said company paid the penalty without admitting wrongdoing. Plus, in 2007, this company's CEO was also "awarded" another $7.26 million fine for falsifying records in a stock option. Thank God this CEO has been fired by the company's governing board.
Another meaning of the term "parking," is when a business company sends its profits to offshore banks, such as in the Cayman Islands and other offshore banks to "park" or hide their money from Uncle Sam.
Moral of the story: "No Parking Anytime."
JNR/ revised 8/25/2012
How is this practiced? According to the SEC(Aug. 30-Sept.5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, p.76), a certain company ships hundreds of thousands of merchandise to distributors and repurchase them after they had booked the sales, disguising the repurchase as "assorted products." Effect: huge tax deductions business' as capital investment. The truth: They repurchased their own products.
This is what Bloomberg calls as "Grand Theft." That's why in 2005, Hillary ClintoN, then a New York senator, called for federal investigation. A $7.5 million in penalties was "awarded" to one sneaky toy company in that same year. The said company paid the penalty without admitting wrongdoing. Plus, in 2007, this company's CEO was also "awarded" another $7.26 million fine for falsifying records in a stock option. Thank God this CEO has been fired by the company's governing board.
Another meaning of the term "parking," is when a business company sends its profits to offshore banks, such as in the Cayman Islands and other offshore banks to "park" or hide their money from Uncle Sam.
Moral of the story: "No Parking Anytime."
JNR/ revised 8/25/2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
NEW KIND OF CAPITALISM
NEW KIND OF CAPITALISM: A MITT ROMNEY-PAUL RYAN NEOCONSERVATIVE MODEL
A greedy capitalist's efficiency works best in a neoconservative free market economy, where small and big business have equal access to market, and eventually the latter establishes monopoly and the former files for bancruptcy. As monopolistic capitalism gets established, they can now be free to "underpay and overwork labor, since workers often had few options."* Without Such business strategy Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are in agreement. They can use offshore banks as their tax havens to hide their profits and pay no tax. People don't know that if they get elected, financial analysts say, "unemployment will rise higher than now." They will also repeal Obama's healthcare program, end Social Security and Medicare. People will be forced to use private health insurance companies that work closely with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
______________________________
*Smithsonian, Oct. 1999, "The First Empire Builder of the Northwest," by Minna Morse, p.138.
A greedy capitalist's efficiency works best in a neoconservative free market economy, where small and big business have equal access to market, and eventually the latter establishes monopoly and the former files for bancruptcy. As monopolistic capitalism gets established, they can now be free to "underpay and overwork labor, since workers often had few options."* Without Such business strategy Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are in agreement. They can use offshore banks as their tax havens to hide their profits and pay no tax. People don't know that if they get elected, financial analysts say, "unemployment will rise higher than now." They will also repeal Obama's healthcare program, end Social Security and Medicare. People will be forced to use private health insurance companies that work closely with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
______________________________
*Smithsonian, Oct. 1999, "The First Empire Builder of the Northwest," by Minna Morse, p.138.
ELAINE PAGELS DISCOVERS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS*
Jesus reveals to Thomas that "whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I myself will become that person, and the mysteries shall be revealed to him." This, I believe is the symbolic meaning of attributing this gospel to Thomas, whose name means "twin." By encountering the "living Jesus," as Thomas suggests, one may come to recognize oneself and Jesus as, so to speak, identical twins. In the book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi, "the living Jesus" addresses Thomas (and by implication, the reader) as follows: "Since you are my twin and my true companion, examine yourself, and learn who you are. . . .Since you will be called my (twin),. . .although you do not understand it yet. . .you will be called "the one who knows himself." For whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things."
I am amazed when I went back to the Gospel of John after reading Thomas, for Thomas and John clearly draw upon similar language and images, and both, apparently, begin with similar "secret teaching." But John takes his teaching to mean something so different from Thomas that I wondered whether John could have - written his gospel to refute what Thomas teaches. For months I investigated this possibility, and explored the works of other scholars who also have compared these sources, and I was finally convinced that this is what happened. As the scholar Gregory Riley points out, John - and only John - presents a challenging and critical portrait of the disciple he calls "Thomas, the one called Didymus, and, as Riley suggests, it is John who invented the character we call "Doubting Thomas," perhaps as a way of caricaturing those who revered a teacher - and a version of Jesus' teaching - that he regarded as faithless and false. The writer called John may have met Thomas Christians among people he knew in his own city - and may have worried that their teaching would spread to Christian groups elsewhere. John probably knew that certain Jewish groups - as well as many pagans who read and admired Genesis 1 - also taught that the "image of God" was within humankind; in any case, John decided to write his own gospel insisting that it is Jesus - and only Jesus - embodies God's word, and therefore speaks with divine authority. (No wonder John's Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me."(John 14:6); that Thomas Christians, or the way of the Jewish religious leaders is false and John says it is Jesus' way, as the way to the Father. Many christians today use John 14:6 as their way of excluding other faith traditions and they, instead, offer Jesus as the only way. - JNR)
____________________________
*Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels, pp57-58.
Jesus reveals to Thomas that "whoever drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I myself will become that person, and the mysteries shall be revealed to him." This, I believe is the symbolic meaning of attributing this gospel to Thomas, whose name means "twin." By encountering the "living Jesus," as Thomas suggests, one may come to recognize oneself and Jesus as, so to speak, identical twins. In the book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi, "the living Jesus" addresses Thomas (and by implication, the reader) as follows: "Since you are my twin and my true companion, examine yourself, and learn who you are. . . .Since you will be called my (twin),. . .although you do not understand it yet. . .you will be called "the one who knows himself." For whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things."
I am amazed when I went back to the Gospel of John after reading Thomas, for Thomas and John clearly draw upon similar language and images, and both, apparently, begin with similar "secret teaching." But John takes his teaching to mean something so different from Thomas that I wondered whether John could have - written his gospel to refute what Thomas teaches. For months I investigated this possibility, and explored the works of other scholars who also have compared these sources, and I was finally convinced that this is what happened. As the scholar Gregory Riley points out, John - and only John - presents a challenging and critical portrait of the disciple he calls "Thomas, the one called Didymus, and, as Riley suggests, it is John who invented the character we call "Doubting Thomas," perhaps as a way of caricaturing those who revered a teacher - and a version of Jesus' teaching - that he regarded as faithless and false. The writer called John may have met Thomas Christians among people he knew in his own city - and may have worried that their teaching would spread to Christian groups elsewhere. John probably knew that certain Jewish groups - as well as many pagans who read and admired Genesis 1 - also taught that the "image of God" was within humankind; in any case, John decided to write his own gospel insisting that it is Jesus - and only Jesus - embodies God's word, and therefore speaks with divine authority. (No wonder John's Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me."(John 14:6); that Thomas Christians, or the way of the Jewish religious leaders is false and John says it is Jesus' way, as the way to the Father. Many christians today use John 14:6 as their way of excluding other faith traditions and they, instead, offer Jesus as the only way. - JNR)
____________________________
*Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels, pp57-58.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
FIRST PERSON BURIED ON THE MOON
FIRST SCIENTIST WHO DIED ON EARTH BUT WAS BURIED ON THE MOON
Article written by John P. Riley, Jr., Smithsonian, October 1999, pp26-28
The late Krafft A. Ehricke, a rocket designer, proposed that the most important events in the history of Earth occurred when plants started to metabolize sunlight and when human beings began to metabolize information. The third, he wrote in 1985, would happen when human beings evaded the restrictions of living in a finite world by colonizing other worlds. This "extraterrestrial imperative" was crucial, he believed, and would happen in three steps: Space industrialization, space urbanization and, finally, "extraterrestrialization," a mouthful meaning the inevitable divergence of people living on the Moon, Mars and other planets and Moons. In a symbolic way, in the form of one man's ashes, the migration has begun.
EUGENE SHOEMAKER was an American geologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey most of his life. He single-handedly founded the field of Astrogeology in 1961 starting when scientists could not agree on whether most of the moon's craters resulted from impacts or volcanism. By showing conclusively that the 4,000-foot-wide crater near Winslow, Arizona, was formed by the impact of a meteorite, he catapulted forward the study of lunar craters (most are now believed to be the result of impacts). The hole in the ground in Arizona is today known as Meteor Crater. Shoemaker was interested in anything that could hit a planet or a moon. He surveyed the near-earth objects. In the process, he and his wife, Carolyn, discovered a number of comets, including the fragmented one named for them and David Levy that crashed into Jupiter in 1994 (Smithsonian, June 1994 and January 1995). He died in 1997 in an automobile accident while he was in Australia, where he was - what else? - studying impact craters. More than anything else, he wanted to go to the moon but medical problem kept him out of the Astronaut corps. NOW HE'S THERE (together with the 354-pound Lunar Prospector NASA decided to deliberately crash into one of the moon's polar crater to find water or ice) . For all those people all over the world who have ever wanted to trudge those gray sands and look back at the earth, but will never be astronauts, it's nice to know that one of us made it.
Article written by John P. Riley, Jr., Smithsonian, October 1999, pp26-28
The late Krafft A. Ehricke, a rocket designer, proposed that the most important events in the history of Earth occurred when plants started to metabolize sunlight and when human beings began to metabolize information. The third, he wrote in 1985, would happen when human beings evaded the restrictions of living in a finite world by colonizing other worlds. This "extraterrestrial imperative" was crucial, he believed, and would happen in three steps: Space industrialization, space urbanization and, finally, "extraterrestrialization," a mouthful meaning the inevitable divergence of people living on the Moon, Mars and other planets and Moons. In a symbolic way, in the form of one man's ashes, the migration has begun.
EUGENE SHOEMAKER was an American geologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey most of his life. He single-handedly founded the field of Astrogeology in 1961 starting when scientists could not agree on whether most of the moon's craters resulted from impacts or volcanism. By showing conclusively that the 4,000-foot-wide crater near Winslow, Arizona, was formed by the impact of a meteorite, he catapulted forward the study of lunar craters (most are now believed to be the result of impacts). The hole in the ground in Arizona is today known as Meteor Crater. Shoemaker was interested in anything that could hit a planet or a moon. He surveyed the near-earth objects. In the process, he and his wife, Carolyn, discovered a number of comets, including the fragmented one named for them and David Levy that crashed into Jupiter in 1994 (Smithsonian, June 1994 and January 1995). He died in 1997 in an automobile accident while he was in Australia, where he was - what else? - studying impact craters. More than anything else, he wanted to go to the moon but medical problem kept him out of the Astronaut corps. NOW HE'S THERE (together with the 354-pound Lunar Prospector NASA decided to deliberately crash into one of the moon's polar crater to find water or ice) . For all those people all over the world who have ever wanted to trudge those gray sands and look back at the earth, but will never be astronauts, it's nice to know that one of us made it.
"WHO THE DEVIL IS THE DEVIL?" By Robert Wernick, Smithsonian, October 1999, pp113-123(Excerpts,with brief comment by JNR):
With the rapid approach of the third millenium, many people can't help wondering what role the Devil will be playing in it. . . . Saint Augustine said, "The human race is the Devil's fruit tree, his own property, from which he may pick his fruit." Try to put yourself somewhere in Western Europe in the year 999, as the second millenium was about to bow in. In the tenth and for at least half a millenium thereafter, the Devil was everywhere. He leered out of every church door, and his plots and pranks and temptings of humans were spelled out in sermons, on the stage, in paintings, in pious books, and in stories told in taverns or in homes at bedtime. Stirred up conspiracies and treasons. . . . He caused boils, plagues, tempests, shipwrecks, heresies, barbarian invasions. Whatever he did, his name was on everyone's tongue, and he went by many names: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial, Mastema, the prince of Darkness, the Lord of Lies. In the Bible the Accuser, the Evil One, the Prince of the world. Today, few hundred years later, 48 percent of Americans believe in the existence of the Devil, and another 20 percent find his existence probable. . . . Though they use him often enough in common lighthearted expressions (give the devil his due, the devil is in the details) and in the privacy of their hearts may put the blame on him when they covet their neighbor's wife, or cheat on their income tax, (or "park" their taxable business profits in some offshore banks in the Cayman Islands-jnr) they do very little talking about him out loud. . . .In practical terms, people have banished him from the public life. Yet most everyone who discuss moral standards in pulpits or on television talk shows or in the New York Times is agreed that morals are lower than ever before. . . . Where has he gone? It all depends on precisely what you mean by "the Devil." Today, the average person with no theological axe to grind is apt to envision the Devil as a sleek, dark-complexioned male figure, with black chin-whiskers, little horns and clover hooves, perhaps with a foxy glint in his eye and a trace of foreign accent, but on the whole handsome, worldlywise, a persuasive talker, a friendly sort of customer. He may tell you anything, try to talk to you into something too good to be true. Only later, when you've taken that risky bet or signed a shady contract, and he comes to collect his due, do you realize you have signed away your immortal soul. He is unquestionably the Lord of Lies.
The God of ancient Greece are typical: Zeus was a wise ruler up on Mount Alympus, but he became a serial rapist when he came down to the lowlands; Persephone was goddess of life in spring and goddess of death in autumn. None of these ancient religions ever developed a single Devil concentrating all the essence of evil, any more than they ever concentrated on the essence of good in a single God. The Old Testament. . . .has little trace of the Devil with a capital D, and in its earliest books, none at all. God speaking through Isaiah says,"I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil, I the Lord\\ do all these things." The serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was later identified by Jewish rabbis and Christian church fathers with the Devil, the principle of Evil; but in the third chapter of Genesis as written, he is only a snake. It took another few hundred years before both snake and Devil were identified with Lucifer ("light-bearer," the Latin translation of the Hebrew and Greek words for the morning star, the planet Venus).
The first Devil, the first concentration of all evil in a single personal form, appears in history some time the sixth century B.C., in Persia. His name is Ahriman, described by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) as the principle of Darkness (evil) engaged in ceaseless conflict for control of the world with Ormazd or Mazda, the principle of Light (good).
......................................................................................................................................................
The next few centuries of the so-called Intertestamentary Period between the compilation of the Old and New Testaments, when a major subject of theological speculation and literature was the apocalypse - the final struggle between good and evil at the imminent end of the world - this Satan grew in stature as the leader and embodiment of the forces of evil.
............................................................................................................................................................
One of the most popular stories throughout the Middle Ages, retold hundred times in many European languages was that of Theophilus of Cilicia, a sixth-century ecclesiastic who signed a pact with the Devil, exchanging hisnsoul for a powerful profitable position in the church. he was then able to lead a life of unbridled pride and corruption.... Theophilus, eventually repented and threw himself on the mercy of the Virgin Mary, who took pity on him, descended into hell, grabbed the pact from Satan, then interceded for the sinner at the throne of God. He was pardoned, and the Devil was cheated of his due. This tale played a major role in establishing the cult of the Virgin in Catholic Europe.
...............................................................................................................................................................
To this day we can ask is the Devil dead, or he is just hiding somewhere? Professor Delbanco and Prof. Jeffrey Burton Russell, of the University of California in Santa Barbara both claim America has "lost its sense of evil, and without a sense of evil a civilization must go straight to Hell." Perhaps, he is not dead after all; he may only be in hiding, and he could appear and be active anytime and anywhere where the opportunity comes.Those devils may not neccessarily be what people think, but they could be any person in flesh and blood, like you and me, as we noted in the history of our civilization.
Madame Carmelita, a psychic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has assured me that the world will end on or about my 100th birthday, February 18, 2018. Or a scientist has assured me that the world (meaning life on earth) will come to an end when our sun becomes a red giant in the year 4,000,000,999. If in the meanwhile a sleek gentleman dressed as a prosperous options-and-derivatives salesman offers you fantastic odds on a bet that he will not be around right up to the last second on any or all of those occasions, and you take him up on it, you will probably be making a bad bet.
With the rapid approach of the third millenium, many people can't help wondering what role the Devil will be playing in it. . . . Saint Augustine said, "The human race is the Devil's fruit tree, his own property, from which he may pick his fruit." Try to put yourself somewhere in Western Europe in the year 999, as the second millenium was about to bow in. In the tenth and for at least half a millenium thereafter, the Devil was everywhere. He leered out of every church door, and his plots and pranks and temptings of humans were spelled out in sermons, on the stage, in paintings, in pious books, and in stories told in taverns or in homes at bedtime. Stirred up conspiracies and treasons. . . . He caused boils, plagues, tempests, shipwrecks, heresies, barbarian invasions. Whatever he did, his name was on everyone's tongue, and he went by many names: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial, Mastema, the prince of Darkness, the Lord of Lies. In the Bible the Accuser, the Evil One, the Prince of the world. Today, few hundred years later, 48 percent of Americans believe in the existence of the Devil, and another 20 percent find his existence probable. . . . Though they use him often enough in common lighthearted expressions (give the devil his due, the devil is in the details) and in the privacy of their hearts may put the blame on him when they covet their neighbor's wife, or cheat on their income tax, (or "park" their taxable business profits in some offshore banks in the Cayman Islands-jnr) they do very little talking about him out loud. . . .In practical terms, people have banished him from the public life. Yet most everyone who discuss moral standards in pulpits or on television talk shows or in the New York Times is agreed that morals are lower than ever before. . . . Where has he gone? It all depends on precisely what you mean by "the Devil." Today, the average person with no theological axe to grind is apt to envision the Devil as a sleek, dark-complexioned male figure, with black chin-whiskers, little horns and clover hooves, perhaps with a foxy glint in his eye and a trace of foreign accent, but on the whole handsome, worldlywise, a persuasive talker, a friendly sort of customer. He may tell you anything, try to talk to you into something too good to be true. Only later, when you've taken that risky bet or signed a shady contract, and he comes to collect his due, do you realize you have signed away your immortal soul. He is unquestionably the Lord of Lies.
The God of ancient Greece are typical: Zeus was a wise ruler up on Mount Alympus, but he became a serial rapist when he came down to the lowlands; Persephone was goddess of life in spring and goddess of death in autumn. None of these ancient religions ever developed a single Devil concentrating all the essence of evil, any more than they ever concentrated on the essence of good in a single God. The Old Testament. . . .has little trace of the Devil with a capital D, and in its earliest books, none at all. God speaking through Isaiah says,"I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil, I the Lord\\ do all these things." The serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was later identified by Jewish rabbis and Christian church fathers with the Devil, the principle of Evil; but in the third chapter of Genesis as written, he is only a snake. It took another few hundred years before both snake and Devil were identified with Lucifer ("light-bearer," the Latin translation of the Hebrew and Greek words for the morning star, the planet Venus).
The first Devil, the first concentration of all evil in a single personal form, appears in history some time the sixth century B.C., in Persia. His name is Ahriman, described by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) as the principle of Darkness (evil) engaged in ceaseless conflict for control of the world with Ormazd or Mazda, the principle of Light (good).
......................................................................................................................................................
The next few centuries of the so-called Intertestamentary Period between the compilation of the Old and New Testaments, when a major subject of theological speculation and literature was the apocalypse - the final struggle between good and evil at the imminent end of the world - this Satan grew in stature as the leader and embodiment of the forces of evil.
............................................................................................................................................................
One of the most popular stories throughout the Middle Ages, retold hundred times in many European languages was that of Theophilus of Cilicia, a sixth-century ecclesiastic who signed a pact with the Devil, exchanging hisnsoul for a powerful profitable position in the church. he was then able to lead a life of unbridled pride and corruption.... Theophilus, eventually repented and threw himself on the mercy of the Virgin Mary, who took pity on him, descended into hell, grabbed the pact from Satan, then interceded for the sinner at the throne of God. He was pardoned, and the Devil was cheated of his due. This tale played a major role in establishing the cult of the Virgin in Catholic Europe.
...............................................................................................................................................................
To this day we can ask is the Devil dead, or he is just hiding somewhere? Professor Delbanco and Prof. Jeffrey Burton Russell, of the University of California in Santa Barbara both claim America has "lost its sense of evil, and without a sense of evil a civilization must go straight to Hell." Perhaps, he is not dead after all; he may only be in hiding, and he could appear and be active anytime and anywhere where the opportunity comes.Those devils may not neccessarily be what people think, but they could be any person in flesh and blood, like you and me, as we noted in the history of our civilization.
Madame Carmelita, a psychic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has assured me that the world will end on or about my 100th birthday, February 18, 2018. Or a scientist has assured me that the world (meaning life on earth) will come to an end when our sun becomes a red giant in the year 4,000,000,999. If in the meanwhile a sleek gentleman dressed as a prosperous options-and-derivatives salesman offers you fantastic odds on a bet that he will not be around right up to the last second on any or all of those occasions, and you take him up on it, you will probably be making a bad bet.
SAVING BIRDS WITH A RING BAND AND A PRAYER
SAVING BIRDS WITH A RING BAND AND A PRAYER
"In the years since scientific banding began in North America, more than 60 million birds, representing virtually all the hundereds of species found on the continent, have been banded. Every year, another 1.2 million birds are banded. In turn, more than 3.3 million birds are found and reported over the years: the hunters who shoot ducks, geese, and find that a hundred songbirds has flown into their picture window. This year, at least 75 percent of band recovery reports are coming in by phone. On the phone we ask specific questions about how, when, and where the banded birds were found - an information most important to the banders. Increasingly, banders are being called on to provide had data that conservationists and wildlife managers need to make informed decisions about how to protect migratory birds. Besides leg bands, they are employing other technique: colored bands and markers for visual tracking, sophisticated transmitters that beam the bird's precise location from anywhere in the world via satellite; and laboratory breakthrough such as DNA sampling and the study of stable chemical isotopes in a bird's feathers, which may help identify regional population.
"One of the last knots I pull from the net that day is already banded, and when I show the bird to Minton, he is stunned. "My God!, that's a Brazilian bird from 15 years ago!" he says, recognizing the serial number that was used in that country by pioneering shorebird researchers. But at that time I have no thoughts for research or science. The red knot, no bigger than a robin, sits quietly in my hand, staring at me with dark eyes. I try to grasp the fact that each year, for perhaps 15 years, this tiny creature has flown nearly 18,000 miles from the most northerly land in Canada to the most southerly point - South America and back again - as much as 270,000 miles since it was last held by a human, a distance from here to the moon and partway home. All I can do is shake my head with mingled awe and respect for the travelers that stitch together this wide world - and say a silent prayer that they will still grace the skies long after we're gone."
__________________________________________________________
Scott Wiedensaul's latest book is "Living On the Wind: Across the Hemisphere and Migrating Birds." Smithsonia, September 1999, pp44-54.
"In the years since scientific banding began in North America, more than 60 million birds, representing virtually all the hundereds of species found on the continent, have been banded. Every year, another 1.2 million birds are banded. In turn, more than 3.3 million birds are found and reported over the years: the hunters who shoot ducks, geese, and find that a hundred songbirds has flown into their picture window. This year, at least 75 percent of band recovery reports are coming in by phone. On the phone we ask specific questions about how, when, and where the banded birds were found - an information most important to the banders. Increasingly, banders are being called on to provide had data that conservationists and wildlife managers need to make informed decisions about how to protect migratory birds. Besides leg bands, they are employing other technique: colored bands and markers for visual tracking, sophisticated transmitters that beam the bird's precise location from anywhere in the world via satellite; and laboratory breakthrough such as DNA sampling and the study of stable chemical isotopes in a bird's feathers, which may help identify regional population.
"One of the last knots I pull from the net that day is already banded, and when I show the bird to Minton, he is stunned. "My God!, that's a Brazilian bird from 15 years ago!" he says, recognizing the serial number that was used in that country by pioneering shorebird researchers. But at that time I have no thoughts for research or science. The red knot, no bigger than a robin, sits quietly in my hand, staring at me with dark eyes. I try to grasp the fact that each year, for perhaps 15 years, this tiny creature has flown nearly 18,000 miles from the most northerly land in Canada to the most southerly point - South America and back again - as much as 270,000 miles since it was last held by a human, a distance from here to the moon and partway home. All I can do is shake my head with mingled awe and respect for the travelers that stitch together this wide world - and say a silent prayer that they will still grace the skies long after we're gone."
__________________________________________________________
Scott Wiedensaul's latest book is "Living On the Wind: Across the Hemisphere and Migrating Birds." Smithsonia, September 1999, pp44-54.
BISHOP JOHN SHELBY SPONG'S THOUGHT ON A DYING CHURCH AND THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY (excerpt):
"The reason I believe Christianity is in a steep decline is that it cannot bring itsel to face self-consciously the fact that the pre-suppositions on which our faith story was erected in the past are today no longer self-evidently true or even believable.
To say today there is no God who lives above the sky and is ready to come to our aid, as most of the language and prayer assumes to be a reality.That God could be imagined only when we believed that the earth was the center of a three-tiered universe and that God not only watched over and judged the world from a heavenly throne above the sky, but also intervened regularly to answer our prayers or to assert the divine will. To please this heavenly parent and ultimate judge was what we thought would assure our eternal destiny. This concept of God began to die with the revolution in thought started by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it has grown as we have become citizens of a space age and we are now beginning to embrace the enormity of the size of the universe. Our planet earth is only not the center of the universe, it is not even the center of our galaxy that includes some 200 billion other stars, most of which are bigger than our star that we call the sun.
"This God, traditionally defined as supernatural in power, we assumed was capable of miracles in a wide variety of circumstances. When Isaac Newton began to publish his work in the latter years of the 17th century, introducing us to natural law and to cause and effect, both miracles and magic were squeezed out from our consciousness. Elie Wiesel's book NIGHT on his experience in the Holocaust was the most powerful articulation of how this idea of God died. The God of the Bible, who had intervened in human history in the cause of freedom by sending plagues upon the Egyptians and by splitting the Red Sea to enable "the chosen people" to escape from slavery at the time of the Exodus, was nowhere to be found when this God was so desperately needed to free "the chosen people" from death in the prison camps of Nazi Germany in the 20th century. Belief in such an intervening God became simply no longer credible.
"Next, the entire way we tell the Jesus story was challenged and, though many Christians cannot admit it, actually set aside as no longer believable by the work of Charles Darwin. The primary Christian myth assumes the original perfect creation from which human life has somehow fallen. That idea makes no sense when we embrace the fact that we have actually evolved over billions of years from single cell organisms to complex self-conscious creatures. There was no fall from an original perfection since there was no original perfection. The concept of "original sin" is largely regarded as nonsense today. Yet the fall from which Jesus has rescued us is the way we continue to tell the Jesus story. Our churches and clergy still parrot that incredibly negative Christian idea that we have been "saved by the blood of Christ." Protestants still shout their guilt-producing mantra "Jesus died for my sins," and Catholics still refer to "the sacrifice of the Mass" as reenacting the moment when salvation was procured. These concepts fill our hymns, our liturgies and our sermons despite the fact that they make no sense outside the parameters of the pre-suppositions that are culturally no longer believed. How can one be saved if one has not fallen? How can one be restored to a status that one has never possessed? How can God be worshiped if this God requires death to the divine son in order to have our sins forgiven? If there is no payoff, no benefit to be gained from faithful worship and righteous living, then many ask today "why bother?" These are the things the Christian is up against today in this post-Christian age. None of them will be solved by inviting people to listen once again to the "old, old story" or by joining in the singing of "The Old Rugged Cross."
"The problems facing institutional Christianity today in the Western world cannot be addressed by tinkering around the edges of our theological formularies or structures. As important as they have been making good parish profiles will not do it nor will even making wise choices in the selection of our clergy. We are not today in a temporary status of watching the tide go out with confidence that in time the tide will come back in. We are rather living through a cataclysmic transition from the presuppositions by which we once lived and having no idea how to tell our faith story in terms of the emerging worldview for which our religion yesterday has no relevance. So churches are dying, vast anger, rising out of our cultural depression at the loss of yesterday's meaning and unstoppable changes, are now our daily bread.
"The consensus of the past is breaking up. The consensus of the future has not yet been formed. We live in interesting times and dangerous times also. Political shell games and pious rhetoric will no longer suffice.
"Before we can move to address these issues we must understand them. I see little present indication that either church leaders or political leaders understand the depth of the problem we face. Time alone will tell."
"The reason I believe Christianity is in a steep decline is that it cannot bring itsel to face self-consciously the fact that the pre-suppositions on which our faith story was erected in the past are today no longer self-evidently true or even believable.
To say today there is no God who lives above the sky and is ready to come to our aid, as most of the language and prayer assumes to be a reality.That God could be imagined only when we believed that the earth was the center of a three-tiered universe and that God not only watched over and judged the world from a heavenly throne above the sky, but also intervened regularly to answer our prayers or to assert the divine will. To please this heavenly parent and ultimate judge was what we thought would assure our eternal destiny. This concept of God began to die with the revolution in thought started by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it has grown as we have become citizens of a space age and we are now beginning to embrace the enormity of the size of the universe. Our planet earth is only not the center of the universe, it is not even the center of our galaxy that includes some 200 billion other stars, most of which are bigger than our star that we call the sun.
"This God, traditionally defined as supernatural in power, we assumed was capable of miracles in a wide variety of circumstances. When Isaac Newton began to publish his work in the latter years of the 17th century, introducing us to natural law and to cause and effect, both miracles and magic were squeezed out from our consciousness. Elie Wiesel's book NIGHT on his experience in the Holocaust was the most powerful articulation of how this idea of God died. The God of the Bible, who had intervened in human history in the cause of freedom by sending plagues upon the Egyptians and by splitting the Red Sea to enable "the chosen people" to escape from slavery at the time of the Exodus, was nowhere to be found when this God was so desperately needed to free "the chosen people" from death in the prison camps of Nazi Germany in the 20th century. Belief in such an intervening God became simply no longer credible.
"Next, the entire way we tell the Jesus story was challenged and, though many Christians cannot admit it, actually set aside as no longer believable by the work of Charles Darwin. The primary Christian myth assumes the original perfect creation from which human life has somehow fallen. That idea makes no sense when we embrace the fact that we have actually evolved over billions of years from single cell organisms to complex self-conscious creatures. There was no fall from an original perfection since there was no original perfection. The concept of "original sin" is largely regarded as nonsense today. Yet the fall from which Jesus has rescued us is the way we continue to tell the Jesus story. Our churches and clergy still parrot that incredibly negative Christian idea that we have been "saved by the blood of Christ." Protestants still shout their guilt-producing mantra "Jesus died for my sins," and Catholics still refer to "the sacrifice of the Mass" as reenacting the moment when salvation was procured. These concepts fill our hymns, our liturgies and our sermons despite the fact that they make no sense outside the parameters of the pre-suppositions that are culturally no longer believed. How can one be saved if one has not fallen? How can one be restored to a status that one has never possessed? How can God be worshiped if this God requires death to the divine son in order to have our sins forgiven? If there is no payoff, no benefit to be gained from faithful worship and righteous living, then many ask today "why bother?" These are the things the Christian is up against today in this post-Christian age. None of them will be solved by inviting people to listen once again to the "old, old story" or by joining in the singing of "The Old Rugged Cross."
"The problems facing institutional Christianity today in the Western world cannot be addressed by tinkering around the edges of our theological formularies or structures. As important as they have been making good parish profiles will not do it nor will even making wise choices in the selection of our clergy. We are not today in a temporary status of watching the tide go out with confidence that in time the tide will come back in. We are rather living through a cataclysmic transition from the presuppositions by which we once lived and having no idea how to tell our faith story in terms of the emerging worldview for which our religion yesterday has no relevance. So churches are dying, vast anger, rising out of our cultural depression at the loss of yesterday's meaning and unstoppable changes, are now our daily bread.
"The consensus of the past is breaking up. The consensus of the future has not yet been formed. We live in interesting times and dangerous times also. Political shell games and pious rhetoric will no longer suffice.
"Before we can move to address these issues we must understand them. I see little present indication that either church leaders or political leaders understand the depth of the problem we face. Time alone will tell."
Saturday, August 18, 2012
IS CURIOSITY OR NECESSITY THE MOTHER OF INVENTION? ?
IS CURIOSITY OR NECESSITY THE MOTHER OF INVENTION?
It's the popular view that "necessity is the mother invention." It supposedly arise when a society has an unfulfilled need. Would-be inventors, motivated by the prospect of money or fame, perceive the need and try to meet it. Some inventions come up with a solution superior to the existing, unsatisfactory technology. Society adopts the solution if it is compatible with the society's values and other technologies. In 1942, in the middle of World War II, the U.S. government set up the Manhattan Project with the explicit goal of inventing the technology required to build the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could do so. That project succeeded in three years at the cost to over $2 billion (over $20 billion today). Eli Whitney in 1794 invented his cotton gin to replace laborious hand cleaning of cotton grown in the U.S South, and James Watt's 1769 invention of his steam engine to solve the problem of pumping water out of British coal mines.
These familiar examples deceive us into assuming that other major inventions were also responses to perceived needs. In fact, many or most inventions were developed by people driven by curiority or by a love of tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in mind. Once the device had been invented, the inventor then had to find an application for it. Only after it had been in use for a considerable time did consumers come to feel that they needed it. Still other devices, invented to serve one purpose, eventually found most of their use for other, unanticipated purpose. Take Thomas Edison's phonograph, the most original invention of the greatest inventor of modern times. When Edison built his first phonograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time, and teaching spelling. Reproduction of music was not high on Edison's priorities. A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention has no commercial value. Within another few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonograph. When other entrepreneurs created the jukeboxes, Edison objected vehemently to this debasement of his invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music. When Nikolaus Otto built his first gas engine in 1866, horses had been supplying people's land transportation needs for nearly 6000 years, supplemented increasingly by steam-powered railroads for several decades. There was no crisis in the availability of horses, no dissatisfaction with railroads. Because Otto's engine was weak, and seven feet tall, it did not recommend itself over horses. Not until 1885 did engines improve to the point that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to create the first motorcycle; he waited until 1896 to build the first truck. In 1905, motor vehicles were still expensive, unreliable toys for the rich. Public contentment with horses and railroads remained high until World War I, when the military concluded that it did really need trucks. Intensive postwar lobbying by truck manufacturers and armies finally convinced the public of its need and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-drawn wagons in industrialized countries. Even in the largest America cities, the changeover took 50 years. The first cameras, typewriters, and television sets were as aweful as Otto's seven-foot-tall gas engine. That makes it difficult for an inventor to foresee whether his or her aweful prototype might eventually find a use and thus warrant more time and expense to develop it. Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which untimately reach a stage of commercial production. For each great invention only a few meet the need for which they were initially designed and may later prove more valuable at meeting unforeseen needs. While James Watt designed his steam engine to pump water from mines, it soon was supplying power to cotton mills, then, with much greater profit, propelling locomotives and boats.
_________________________________
Source:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, pp242-244
Note: Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, writes that Europeans occupying new territories
killed less people with their guns, but more died with European germs and deadly diseases which
they brought with them.
It's the popular view that "necessity is the mother invention." It supposedly arise when a society has an unfulfilled need. Would-be inventors, motivated by the prospect of money or fame, perceive the need and try to meet it. Some inventions come up with a solution superior to the existing, unsatisfactory technology. Society adopts the solution if it is compatible with the society's values and other technologies. In 1942, in the middle of World War II, the U.S. government set up the Manhattan Project with the explicit goal of inventing the technology required to build the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could do so. That project succeeded in three years at the cost to over $2 billion (over $20 billion today). Eli Whitney in 1794 invented his cotton gin to replace laborious hand cleaning of cotton grown in the U.S South, and James Watt's 1769 invention of his steam engine to solve the problem of pumping water out of British coal mines.
These familiar examples deceive us into assuming that other major inventions were also responses to perceived needs. In fact, many or most inventions were developed by people driven by curiority or by a love of tinkering, in the absence of any initial demand for the product they had in mind. Once the device had been invented, the inventor then had to find an application for it. Only after it had been in use for a considerable time did consumers come to feel that they needed it. Still other devices, invented to serve one purpose, eventually found most of their use for other, unanticipated purpose. Take Thomas Edison's phonograph, the most original invention of the greatest inventor of modern times. When Edison built his first phonograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time, and teaching spelling. Reproduction of music was not high on Edison's priorities. A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention has no commercial value. Within another few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonograph. When other entrepreneurs created the jukeboxes, Edison objected vehemently to this debasement of his invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music. When Nikolaus Otto built his first gas engine in 1866, horses had been supplying people's land transportation needs for nearly 6000 years, supplemented increasingly by steam-powered railroads for several decades. There was no crisis in the availability of horses, no dissatisfaction with railroads. Because Otto's engine was weak, and seven feet tall, it did not recommend itself over horses. Not until 1885 did engines improve to the point that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to create the first motorcycle; he waited until 1896 to build the first truck. In 1905, motor vehicles were still expensive, unreliable toys for the rich. Public contentment with horses and railroads remained high until World War I, when the military concluded that it did really need trucks. Intensive postwar lobbying by truck manufacturers and armies finally convinced the public of its need and enabled trucks to begin to supplant horse-drawn wagons in industrialized countries. Even in the largest America cities, the changeover took 50 years. The first cameras, typewriters, and television sets were as aweful as Otto's seven-foot-tall gas engine. That makes it difficult for an inventor to foresee whether his or her aweful prototype might eventually find a use and thus warrant more time and expense to develop it. Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which untimately reach a stage of commercial production. For each great invention only a few meet the need for which they were initially designed and may later prove more valuable at meeting unforeseen needs. While James Watt designed his steam engine to pump water from mines, it soon was supplying power to cotton mills, then, with much greater profit, propelling locomotives and boats.
_________________________________
Source:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, pp242-244
Note: Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, writes that Europeans occupying new territories
killed less people with their guns, but more died with European germs and deadly diseases which
they brought with them.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
The Irenaeus-Valentinus Controversy (Part II)
THE IRENAEUS - VALENTINUS CONTROVERSY (Part II)
Brief review: Valentinus, leader of the gnostic Christian movement. Irenaeus, who represents the orthodox Christian Church, had opposed Valentinus and his followers on the issue of Christian maturity. Valentinus had characterized Irenaeus' group as "ecclesiastic" or "psychic" Christian, those who function on the level of psyche, which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of the orthodox Christian churches, are not deep enough, or mature enough.(p.168)
_____________________________________________
Within a generation of Valentinus's teaching in Rome, the movement had won a considerable following throughout the Christian world, especially among the more educated members of the church. Tertullian, complains that more often it is "the most faithful, the most prudent, and the most experienced" church members "who have gone over the other side.(69) Irenaeus, to his dismay, found Valentinian teachers active among members of his own congregation in Lyons, inviting believers to attend secret meetings, to raise questions about the faith and discuss its "deeper meaning."(70) In such meetings, unauthorized by the bishop, these Valentinians taught what Irenaeus regarded as blasphemy. They taught, for example, that the creator God described in Genesis is not the only God, as most Christians believe - nor is he the malevolent, degraded chief of the fallen angels, as the radicals imagine. According to Valentinus, he is an anthropomorphic image of the true divine Source underlying all being, the ineffable, indescribable source Valentinus calls "the depth," or "the abyss." When Valentinus does evoke images for that Source, he describes it as essentially dynamic and dyadic, the divine "Father of all" and "Mother of all."(71) Those who attended such meetings might also hear the bishop - Irenaeus himself- although a good man, was a person of limited understanding who had not progressed beyond faith to gnosis.
"Valentinus think of themselves as people who are reforming the church and raising its level of spiritual understanding, but, he says, nothing good they accomplish could possibly compensate for the harm they inflict by "dividing in pieces the great and glorious body of Christ,"(72) the Church. . . ." "Their presence as an insidious inner group threatened the fragile structures of organizational and moral consensus through which leaders like Irenaeus were attempting to unify Christian groups throughout the world." (This is one of the major concerns of church hierarchies today, especially among mainline churches. For the last few years, there have been attempts to introduce post-modern theological reformulation of church doctrines. Church hierarchies are aware of them but, according to Bishop John Spong, they choose to avoid it, for the "unity of the church" or the denomination. The fear of church leaders to open the debate on church doctrines "will gut the church" or the denomination).
While Valentinian Christians agreed that the bishops' moral instructions was necessary, for psychic Christians, they tended to regard themselves as exempt, free to make their own decisions about acts that the bishops prohibited. Some Valentinian Christians, Irenaeus says, attend pagan festivals along with their families and friends, convinced that doing so cannot pollute them; others, he charges, go to gladiator shows, and are guilty of what he describes as flagrant sexual transgressions.(73) As an example, Irenaeus cites Marcus, a Valentinian teacher active "in our own district in the Rhone Valley." Irenaeus calls him a seducer who concocts special aphrodisiacs to entice the many women who have been "defiled by him, and were filled with passion for him" including "the wife of one of our deacons. . . a woman of remarkable beauty,"(74) who actually left home to travel with Marcus's group.
But when Irenaeus gets down to describing Marcus's actual techniques, we can see that he is speaking metaphorically. What concerns the bishop, among other things, is the enormous appeal that Valentinian teaching had for women believers, who were increasingly excluded during the second century from active participation in Irenaeus's church. Marcus, Irenaeus says, "seduces women" by inviting them to participate in celebrating the Eucharist, and by casting the eucharistic prayers on such "seductive words" as prayers to Grace, the divine Mother, along with the divine Father.(75) Worse, Marcus "lays hands" upon women to invoke the holy spirit to come down upon them, and then encourages them to speak in prophecy(76). When Irenaeus accuses Marcus's followers of adultery, he is invoking a traditional biblical image for participating in "illicit" religious practices. The prophets Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, for example, often used the metaphors of adultery and prostitution to indict those they accused of being "unfaithful" to God's covenant.(77)
Several Valentinian works discovered at Nag Hammadi, including the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip(both gospels were excluded by the bishops as part of the NT Canon), offer correctives to charges that the Valentinians were immoral. In one of the few remaining fragments of his teachings, Valentinus himself, commenting on Jesus' saying that "God alone is good," says that apart from God's grace, the human heart is a "dwelling place for many demons. But when the Father, who alone is good, looks upon it, he purifies and illuminates it with his light; thus the one who has such a heart is blessed, because he sees God.(78). The Gospel of Truth, which may also have been written by Valentinus offers the following ethical instruction to gnostic Christians:
Speak of the truth with those who seek for it, and of gnosis to those who have committed sins in
their error. Secure the feet of those who have stumbled, and stretch out your hands to those who
are ill. Feed those who are hungry, and give rest to those who are weary. . . .For you are the
understanding which is drawn forth. If strength acts thus, it becomes even stronger. . . .Do not
become a dwelling place for the devil, for you have already destroyed them.(79)
............................................................................................................................................................
Intending to transpose Christian moral discipline into a new key, the author of Philip takes the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as a parable that shows the futility of the traditional approach to morality. According to Philip, "the law was the tree"; the law, like the tree of knowledge, claims to give "knowledge of good and evil," but it cannot accomplish any moral transformation. Instead, it "created death for those who ate of it. For when it said, 'Eat this, do not eat that,' it became the beginning of death."(82)
.................................................................................................................................................................
While rejecting the ordinary dichotomy between good and evil, this author does not neglect ethical questions, much less imply that they are not important. For him the question is not whether a certain act is "good" or "evil" but how to reconcile the freedom gnosis conveys with the Christian's responsibility to love others. Here the author has in mind a saying from the gospel of John("You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free") and the Apostle Paul's discussion of love and gnosis in 1 Corinthians, chapters 8 and 9. There Paul says that he considers himself, because of his own gnosis, free to eat and drink whatever he likes, free to travel with a Christian sister as a wife, and free to live as an evangelist at community expense. Yet, Paul says, "since not everyone has this gnosis" (1 Cor. 8:7-13), he willingly relinguishes his freedom for the sake of love, inorder not to offend potential converts or immature Christians.
................................................................................................................................................................
The central theme of the Gospel of Philip is the transforming power of love: that what one becomes depends upon what one loves.(85) Whoever matures in love takes care not to cause distress to others: Blessed is the one who has not caused grief to anyone.(86) Jesus Christ is the paradigm of the one who does not offend or grieve anyone, but refreshes and blesses everyone he encounters, whether "great or small, believer or unbeliever."(87) The gnostic Christian, then, must always temper the freedom gnosis conveys with love for others. They author says, too, that he looks forward to the time when freedom and love will harmonize spontaneously, so that the spiritually mature person will be free to follow his or her own true desires without grieving anyone else. Instead of commanding one to "eat this, or do not eat that," as did the former "tree" of the law, the true tree of gnosis will convey perfect freedom:
In the place where I eat all things is the tree of knowledge. . . .That garden is the place where they
will say to me, "Eat this, or do not eat that, just as you wish."(88)
..........................................................................................................................................................
The majority of Christians, by contrast, characterized spiritual formation as the Essenes had, as an internal contest between the forces of good and evil. The great Christian ascetic Anthony, who lived in Egypt in c.250-355 C.E. and became a pioneer among the desert fathers, taught his spiritual heirs in monastic tradition to picture Satan as the most intimate enemy of all - the enemy we call our own self. The Life of Anthony, written in the fourth century by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, describes how Satan tempts Anthony by speaking through his inner thoughts and impulses, through imagination and desire. Philip, on the other hand, interprets the human inclination to sin without recourse to Satan. But this does not mean, as some orthodox Christians suspected, that Valentinian Christians naively believed that they had no need to engage in moral struggle because they were "beyond good and evil," essentially incapable of sin. On the contrary, Philip teaches that within each person lies hidden the "root of evil." This is Philip's interpretation of the traditional Jewish teaching of the yetzer 'hara, which the rabbis called the "evil impulse." So long as we remain unaware of the "root of evil" within us, Philip says, "it is powerful, but when it is recognized (or, as Walter Wink says, "named"), it is destroyed."
Some other major ideas we find in Elaine Pagels' treatment of the early gnostic Christian movement, she also mentioned one of the early church's controversial issues, which had continued to this day, is the Virgin birth.
Philip ridicules such belief:
Some said, "Mary conceived by the holy spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they
are saying; for when did a female ever conceive through a female?(92)
As Philip sees it, Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph as his human parents, was reborn of the holy spirit, the feminine element of the divine being (since the Hebrew term for spirit, Ruah, is feminine) and of the "Father in heaven," when Jesus urged his disciples to address in prayer (Our Father who art in heaven. . ."). Yet, the author adds, the very mention of a feminine spiritual power "is a great anathema to the Hebrews, who are the apostles, and apostolic people.(93)
Such people do see baptism as rebirth through the holy spirit, but they do not understand that they must be reborn from the heavenly Father as well. Thus, says Philip, "when we were Hebrews, we. . .had only our mother; but when we became Christians, we had both father and mother.(94)
Baptism, then, differs for different people. Some, the author says, "go down in the water (of baptism) and come up without receiving anything,(95) but nonetheless such a person says, "I am Christian." For such people, according to Philip, the name "Christian" is only a promise of what they may yet receive in the future. For others, however, baptism becomes a moment of transformation," thus it is when one experiences a mystery.(96) Whoever is reborn of the heavenly Father and heavenly Mother becomes a whole person again, receiving back a part of the human self that had been lost in the beginning of time - "the spirit, the partner of one's soul." Such a person becomes whole again and "holy, down to the very body."(97) One can hardly refer to such a person as a Christian, "for this person is no longer a Christian, but a Christ."(98)
Another important issue Elaine Pagels writes is Irenaeus's view of Valentinian theology. She says,
"Finally, Irenaeus denounces Valentinian theology as the devious result of Satan's own inspiration. Irenaeus concludes his five-volume work Against Heresies by speaking, in God's place, the words of divine judgment:
Let those persons, therefore, who blaspheme the creator, either by openly expressed disagreement.
. .or by distorting the meaning (of the Scriptures), like the Valentinians and all the falsely called
gnostics, be recognized as agents of Satan by all who worship God. Through their agency Satan
even now, and not earlier, has been seen to speak against God. . .the same God who has prepared
eternal fire for every kind of apostasy.(102)
Just as in the beginning of time Satan led humans beings astray by means of the serpent, "so now," Irenaeus declares, "do these people, filled with a Satanic spirit, seduce the people of God." Against "all heretics," Irenaeus helps construct for the Christian churches the structure that has sustained orthodox Christianity ever since, by claiming sole access to the "doctrines of the apostles, and the system of the church throughout the whole world, and the distinct manifestation of the body of Christ (that is, the church) according to the succession of bishops," together with "a very complete system of doctrine."(103)
________________________________________________________________
For a more thorough reading of some of the major controversies between Irenaeus and the gnostic Christian movement, read Elaine Pagels's book, "The Origin of Satan." Buy it online via Amazon.com.
Wish to join the conversation? Drop me some line: jnriingen@aol.com.
Prepared by "The Backyard Thinker"
Brief review: Valentinus, leader of the gnostic Christian movement. Irenaeus, who represents the orthodox Christian Church, had opposed Valentinus and his followers on the issue of Christian maturity. Valentinus had characterized Irenaeus' group as "ecclesiastic" or "psychic" Christian, those who function on the level of psyche, which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of the orthodox Christian churches, are not deep enough, or mature enough.(p.168)
_____________________________________________
Within a generation of Valentinus's teaching in Rome, the movement had won a considerable following throughout the Christian world, especially among the more educated members of the church. Tertullian, complains that more often it is "the most faithful, the most prudent, and the most experienced" church members "who have gone over the other side.(69) Irenaeus, to his dismay, found Valentinian teachers active among members of his own congregation in Lyons, inviting believers to attend secret meetings, to raise questions about the faith and discuss its "deeper meaning."(70) In such meetings, unauthorized by the bishop, these Valentinians taught what Irenaeus regarded as blasphemy. They taught, for example, that the creator God described in Genesis is not the only God, as most Christians believe - nor is he the malevolent, degraded chief of the fallen angels, as the radicals imagine. According to Valentinus, he is an anthropomorphic image of the true divine Source underlying all being, the ineffable, indescribable source Valentinus calls "the depth," or "the abyss." When Valentinus does evoke images for that Source, he describes it as essentially dynamic and dyadic, the divine "Father of all" and "Mother of all."(71) Those who attended such meetings might also hear the bishop - Irenaeus himself- although a good man, was a person of limited understanding who had not progressed beyond faith to gnosis.
"Valentinus think of themselves as people who are reforming the church and raising its level of spiritual understanding, but, he says, nothing good they accomplish could possibly compensate for the harm they inflict by "dividing in pieces the great and glorious body of Christ,"(72) the Church. . . ." "Their presence as an insidious inner group threatened the fragile structures of organizational and moral consensus through which leaders like Irenaeus were attempting to unify Christian groups throughout the world." (This is one of the major concerns of church hierarchies today, especially among mainline churches. For the last few years, there have been attempts to introduce post-modern theological reformulation of church doctrines. Church hierarchies are aware of them but, according to Bishop John Spong, they choose to avoid it, for the "unity of the church" or the denomination. The fear of church leaders to open the debate on church doctrines "will gut the church" or the denomination).
While Valentinian Christians agreed that the bishops' moral instructions was necessary, for psychic Christians, they tended to regard themselves as exempt, free to make their own decisions about acts that the bishops prohibited. Some Valentinian Christians, Irenaeus says, attend pagan festivals along with their families and friends, convinced that doing so cannot pollute them; others, he charges, go to gladiator shows, and are guilty of what he describes as flagrant sexual transgressions.(73) As an example, Irenaeus cites Marcus, a Valentinian teacher active "in our own district in the Rhone Valley." Irenaeus calls him a seducer who concocts special aphrodisiacs to entice the many women who have been "defiled by him, and were filled with passion for him" including "the wife of one of our deacons. . . a woman of remarkable beauty,"(74) who actually left home to travel with Marcus's group.
But when Irenaeus gets down to describing Marcus's actual techniques, we can see that he is speaking metaphorically. What concerns the bishop, among other things, is the enormous appeal that Valentinian teaching had for women believers, who were increasingly excluded during the second century from active participation in Irenaeus's church. Marcus, Irenaeus says, "seduces women" by inviting them to participate in celebrating the Eucharist, and by casting the eucharistic prayers on such "seductive words" as prayers to Grace, the divine Mother, along with the divine Father.(75) Worse, Marcus "lays hands" upon women to invoke the holy spirit to come down upon them, and then encourages them to speak in prophecy(76). When Irenaeus accuses Marcus's followers of adultery, he is invoking a traditional biblical image for participating in "illicit" religious practices. The prophets Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, for example, often used the metaphors of adultery and prostitution to indict those they accused of being "unfaithful" to God's covenant.(77)
Several Valentinian works discovered at Nag Hammadi, including the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Philip(both gospels were excluded by the bishops as part of the NT Canon), offer correctives to charges that the Valentinians were immoral. In one of the few remaining fragments of his teachings, Valentinus himself, commenting on Jesus' saying that "God alone is good," says that apart from God's grace, the human heart is a "dwelling place for many demons. But when the Father, who alone is good, looks upon it, he purifies and illuminates it with his light; thus the one who has such a heart is blessed, because he sees God.(78). The Gospel of Truth, which may also have been written by Valentinus offers the following ethical instruction to gnostic Christians:
Speak of the truth with those who seek for it, and of gnosis to those who have committed sins in
their error. Secure the feet of those who have stumbled, and stretch out your hands to those who
are ill. Feed those who are hungry, and give rest to those who are weary. . . .For you are the
understanding which is drawn forth. If strength acts thus, it becomes even stronger. . . .Do not
become a dwelling place for the devil, for you have already destroyed them.(79)
............................................................................................................................................................
Intending to transpose Christian moral discipline into a new key, the author of Philip takes the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as a parable that shows the futility of the traditional approach to morality. According to Philip, "the law was the tree"; the law, like the tree of knowledge, claims to give "knowledge of good and evil," but it cannot accomplish any moral transformation. Instead, it "created death for those who ate of it. For when it said, 'Eat this, do not eat that,' it became the beginning of death."(82)
.................................................................................................................................................................
While rejecting the ordinary dichotomy between good and evil, this author does not neglect ethical questions, much less imply that they are not important. For him the question is not whether a certain act is "good" or "evil" but how to reconcile the freedom gnosis conveys with the Christian's responsibility to love others. Here the author has in mind a saying from the gospel of John("You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free") and the Apostle Paul's discussion of love and gnosis in 1 Corinthians, chapters 8 and 9. There Paul says that he considers himself, because of his own gnosis, free to eat and drink whatever he likes, free to travel with a Christian sister as a wife, and free to live as an evangelist at community expense. Yet, Paul says, "since not everyone has this gnosis" (1 Cor. 8:7-13), he willingly relinguishes his freedom for the sake of love, inorder not to offend potential converts or immature Christians.
................................................................................................................................................................
The central theme of the Gospel of Philip is the transforming power of love: that what one becomes depends upon what one loves.(85) Whoever matures in love takes care not to cause distress to others: Blessed is the one who has not caused grief to anyone.(86) Jesus Christ is the paradigm of the one who does not offend or grieve anyone, but refreshes and blesses everyone he encounters, whether "great or small, believer or unbeliever."(87) The gnostic Christian, then, must always temper the freedom gnosis conveys with love for others. They author says, too, that he looks forward to the time when freedom and love will harmonize spontaneously, so that the spiritually mature person will be free to follow his or her own true desires without grieving anyone else. Instead of commanding one to "eat this, or do not eat that," as did the former "tree" of the law, the true tree of gnosis will convey perfect freedom:
In the place where I eat all things is the tree of knowledge. . . .That garden is the place where they
will say to me, "Eat this, or do not eat that, just as you wish."(88)
..........................................................................................................................................................
The majority of Christians, by contrast, characterized spiritual formation as the Essenes had, as an internal contest between the forces of good and evil. The great Christian ascetic Anthony, who lived in Egypt in c.250-355 C.E. and became a pioneer among the desert fathers, taught his spiritual heirs in monastic tradition to picture Satan as the most intimate enemy of all - the enemy we call our own self. The Life of Anthony, written in the fourth century by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, describes how Satan tempts Anthony by speaking through his inner thoughts and impulses, through imagination and desire. Philip, on the other hand, interprets the human inclination to sin without recourse to Satan. But this does not mean, as some orthodox Christians suspected, that Valentinian Christians naively believed that they had no need to engage in moral struggle because they were "beyond good and evil," essentially incapable of sin. On the contrary, Philip teaches that within each person lies hidden the "root of evil." This is Philip's interpretation of the traditional Jewish teaching of the yetzer 'hara, which the rabbis called the "evil impulse." So long as we remain unaware of the "root of evil" within us, Philip says, "it is powerful, but when it is recognized (or, as Walter Wink says, "named"), it is destroyed."
Some other major ideas we find in Elaine Pagels' treatment of the early gnostic Christian movement, she also mentioned one of the early church's controversial issues, which had continued to this day, is the Virgin birth.
Philip ridicules such belief:
Some said, "Mary conceived by the holy spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they
are saying; for when did a female ever conceive through a female?(92)
As Philip sees it, Jesus, born of Mary and Joseph as his human parents, was reborn of the holy spirit, the feminine element of the divine being (since the Hebrew term for spirit, Ruah, is feminine) and of the "Father in heaven," when Jesus urged his disciples to address in prayer (Our Father who art in heaven. . ."). Yet, the author adds, the very mention of a feminine spiritual power "is a great anathema to the Hebrews, who are the apostles, and apostolic people.(93)
Such people do see baptism as rebirth through the holy spirit, but they do not understand that they must be reborn from the heavenly Father as well. Thus, says Philip, "when we were Hebrews, we. . .had only our mother; but when we became Christians, we had both father and mother.(94)
Baptism, then, differs for different people. Some, the author says, "go down in the water (of baptism) and come up without receiving anything,(95) but nonetheless such a person says, "I am Christian." For such people, according to Philip, the name "Christian" is only a promise of what they may yet receive in the future. For others, however, baptism becomes a moment of transformation," thus it is when one experiences a mystery.(96) Whoever is reborn of the heavenly Father and heavenly Mother becomes a whole person again, receiving back a part of the human self that had been lost in the beginning of time - "the spirit, the partner of one's soul." Such a person becomes whole again and "holy, down to the very body."(97) One can hardly refer to such a person as a Christian, "for this person is no longer a Christian, but a Christ."(98)
Another important issue Elaine Pagels writes is Irenaeus's view of Valentinian theology. She says,
"Finally, Irenaeus denounces Valentinian theology as the devious result of Satan's own inspiration. Irenaeus concludes his five-volume work Against Heresies by speaking, in God's place, the words of divine judgment:
Let those persons, therefore, who blaspheme the creator, either by openly expressed disagreement.
. .or by distorting the meaning (of the Scriptures), like the Valentinians and all the falsely called
gnostics, be recognized as agents of Satan by all who worship God. Through their agency Satan
even now, and not earlier, has been seen to speak against God. . .the same God who has prepared
eternal fire for every kind of apostasy.(102)
Just as in the beginning of time Satan led humans beings astray by means of the serpent, "so now," Irenaeus declares, "do these people, filled with a Satanic spirit, seduce the people of God." Against "all heretics," Irenaeus helps construct for the Christian churches the structure that has sustained orthodox Christianity ever since, by claiming sole access to the "doctrines of the apostles, and the system of the church throughout the whole world, and the distinct manifestation of the body of Christ (that is, the church) according to the succession of bishops," together with "a very complete system of doctrine."(103)
________________________________________________________________
For a more thorough reading of some of the major controversies between Irenaeus and the gnostic Christian movement, read Elaine Pagels's book, "The Origin of Satan." Buy it online via Amazon.com.
Wish to join the conversation? Drop me some line: jnriingen@aol.com.
Prepared by "The Backyard Thinker"
Backyard Thinker: "gnosis"
A word can be understood in different meanings, depending upon the context it is used. Each meaning of a particular word tells a person's state of being - physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Elaine Pagels, in her book, "The Origin of Satan," uses the word, "gnosis" which means literally, and most commonly translated, "knowledge." But, she says, "the translation is somewhat misleading, since gnosis differs from intellectual knowledge (as in phrases like "they know mathematics," which is characterized in Greek by the word "eidein," from which we derive the English word "idea." The English language, she says, is "unusual within its language group in having only one verb, "to know," to express, to mean different kinds of knowing. The Greek word "gignosko" from which "gnosis" derives, refers to the knowledge of personal relationship, as in the phrase, "We know Christ," or in the words, "Know thyself." She offers a better term - and meaning - of , "gnosis" as "insight or "wisdom." A gnostic teacher, she says, "encourages the students to seek gnosis within themselves." To understand "gnosis" as wisdom or insight within oneself could then mean something much deeper and more personal. It reveals "who we are, and who we have become; where we are going; whence have we come; what is birth, what is rebirth." Shes goes on to say that to know "is that the gospel of Christ can be perceived on a level deeper than the one shared by all Christians." That the gospel, she says, is "more than a message about repentance and forgiveness of sins; it becomes a path of spiritual awakening, through which one discovers the divine within."(p167) When one knows oneself "at deepest level, one comes to know God as the source of one's being."
Elaine Pagels cites the author of the Gospel of Philip (one of the Christian literatures suppressed by the bishops who were authorized to determine the New Testament Canon. The writer of the Gospel of Philip, is one of the followers of Valentinus, a gnostic teacher. In the Gospel of Philip, Elaine Pagels says, the author uses "gnosis" to mean "a natural progression from faith."
Unlike the radical Christians of the "Reality of the Rulers," or the "Secret Book of John"(all these gospels were also excluded in the NT Canon), Valentinus and his followers did not reject the moral injunctions taught by the priests and bishops; they did not despise or invert the Hebrew Bible, nor did they deny openly the authority of the priests and bishops. Instead, they accepted all these, but with a crucial qualificatiion: they accepted the moral, ecclesiastical, and scriptural consensus as binding upon the majority of Christians, but not upon those who had gone beyond mere faith to gnosis - those who had become spiritually 'mature'"(p167).
Valentinus is a gnostic teacher who, together with his followers, said that in the churches during their time, "there were two different kinds of Chrsitian. One kind is what they call "ecclesiastic," or "psychic" Christian(p168), that is, those who "function on the level of psyche" - which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of what the orthodox Christian churches, know and believe, are "not deep enough," or "mature enough."
Valentinus and his followers offers another meaning of "gnosis" as "insight" or "wisdom," which, Elaine Pagels says, "a secret initiation called 'redemption' henceforth regard themselves as 'mature' Christians," they who have "advanced from their faith toward spiritual understanding of 'gnosis.'"(p168)
Elaine Pagels mentions that Irenaeus and Tertullian, both representing the orthodox Christian churches' beliefs, are of the true and "mature" faith of Christians, not Valentinus and his followers. This also explains why the bishops who were recognized by the majority group as their officially designated "experts"(mine) to determine the final NT Canon, which excluded many, if not all, the works of Valentinus and his followers.
So, thank you, Elaine Pagels, for letting us know how the New Testament Canon was determined. They were chosen, not because the books represented the Truth, and the only Truth, but the NT Canon, as we have it today, were finally decided because of a majority vote. As I have learned before, "voz populi" is not necessarily "voz dei" (the voice of the people(majority) is not necessarily the voice of God).
more later on the "Irenaeus-Valentinus" Controversy.
_________________________________________
Source: The Origin of Satan," by Elaine Pagels
Join the conversation: jnriingen@aol.com
Elaine Pagels cites the author of the Gospel of Philip (one of the Christian literatures suppressed by the bishops who were authorized to determine the New Testament Canon. The writer of the Gospel of Philip, is one of the followers of Valentinus, a gnostic teacher. In the Gospel of Philip, Elaine Pagels says, the author uses "gnosis" to mean "a natural progression from faith."
Unlike the radical Christians of the "Reality of the Rulers," or the "Secret Book of John"(all these gospels were also excluded in the NT Canon), Valentinus and his followers did not reject the moral injunctions taught by the priests and bishops; they did not despise or invert the Hebrew Bible, nor did they deny openly the authority of the priests and bishops. Instead, they accepted all these, but with a crucial qualificatiion: they accepted the moral, ecclesiastical, and scriptural consensus as binding upon the majority of Christians, but not upon those who had gone beyond mere faith to gnosis - those who had become spiritually 'mature'"(p167).
Valentinus is a gnostic teacher who, together with his followers, said that in the churches during their time, "there were two different kinds of Chrsitian. One kind is what they call "ecclesiastic," or "psychic" Christian(p168), that is, those who "function on the level of psyche" - which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of what the orthodox Christian churches, know and believe, are "not deep enough," or "mature enough."
Valentinus and his followers offers another meaning of "gnosis" as "insight" or "wisdom," which, Elaine Pagels says, "a secret initiation called 'redemption' henceforth regard themselves as 'mature' Christians," they who have "advanced from their faith toward spiritual understanding of 'gnosis.'"(p168)
Elaine Pagels mentions that Irenaeus and Tertullian, both representing the orthodox Christian churches' beliefs, are of the true and "mature" faith of Christians, not Valentinus and his followers. This also explains why the bishops who were recognized by the majority group as their officially designated "experts"(mine) to determine the final NT Canon, which excluded many, if not all, the works of Valentinus and his followers.
So, thank you, Elaine Pagels, for letting us know how the New Testament Canon was determined. They were chosen, not because the books represented the Truth, and the only Truth, but the NT Canon, as we have it today, were finally decided because of a majority vote. As I have learned before, "voz populi" is not necessarily "voz dei" (the voice of the people(majority) is not necessarily the voice of God).
more later on the "Irenaeus-Valentinus" Controversy.
_________________________________________
Source: The Origin of Satan," by Elaine Pagels
Join the conversation: jnriingen@aol.com
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The Backyard Thinker: A Paul Ryan Acrostic
A PAUL RYAN ACROSTIC
P - People everywhere in
A - America are
U - Unaware about the
L - Leadership style of this extremely conservative
R - Republican. Although he looks
Y - Young and always seen with sweet-smiling face, but I tell you this:
A - Always be watchful for his hidden "toxic" surprises that
N - Neither Mr. benevolent Democrat and Mr. Older, but moderate, Republican
expected.
That's Mr. Paul Ryan, Rah! Rah! Rah!
Paul Ryan
Eat Bulaga!
Eat Bulaga!
Paul Ryan, Eat Bulaga!*
_______________________
*Eat Bulaga is a famous daily Filipino TV variety/comedy show, considered the longest running TV Program
and watched in many countries around the world wherever Filipinos are found.
P - People everywhere in
A - America are
U - Unaware about the
L - Leadership style of this extremely conservative
R - Republican. Although he looks
Y - Young and always seen with sweet-smiling face, but I tell you this:
A - Always be watchful for his hidden "toxic" surprises that
N - Neither Mr. benevolent Democrat and Mr. Older, but moderate, Republican
expected.
That's Mr. Paul Ryan, Rah! Rah! Rah!
Paul Ryan
Eat Bulaga!
Eat Bulaga!
Paul Ryan, Eat Bulaga!*
_______________________
*Eat Bulaga is a famous daily Filipino TV variety/comedy show, considered the longest running TV Program
and watched in many countries around the world wherever Filipinos are found.
PAUL RYAN, MITT ROMNEY'S RUNNINGMATE
Ordinary Americans might think Paul Ryan is "The Man of the Hour," chosen to be part of the leadership that could lead our country from its political and economic uncertainty. But if you study intently his principles upon which he stands, we could see at any moment his demonic origins and intents. I have no better choice but to pick the so-much-maligned-demonized Man. His skin might be dark, but as far as the records show, I strongly believe his heart and soul could be as "white as snow."
Ordinary Americans might think Paul Ryan is "The Man of the Hour," chosen to be part of the leadership that could lead our country from its political and economic uncertainty. But if you study intently his principles upon which he stands, we could see at any moment his demonic origins and intents. I have no better choice but to pick the so-much-maligned-demonized Man. His skin might be dark, but as far as the records show, I strongly believe his heart and soul could be as "white as snow."
Monday, August 13, 2012
SOME MAJOR CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRATS, ESPECIALLY BY BILL CLINTON, ABOUT REPUBLICAN POLITICAL PLATFORMS:
1. Unfair tax cuts and big deficits
2. Their opposition to the Family and Medical Leave and the Brady bill
3. Their failure to adequately fund education or push proven reforms, instead of vouchers
4. Their divisive tactics on racial and gay (& LGBT -jnr) issues
5. Their unwillingness to protect the environment
6. Their anti-choice stance.
for more...see book, "My Life," by Bill Clinton, p. 381,ff.
1. Unfair tax cuts and big deficits
2. Their opposition to the Family and Medical Leave and the Brady bill
3. Their failure to adequately fund education or push proven reforms, instead of vouchers
4. Their divisive tactics on racial and gay (& LGBT -jnr) issues
5. Their unwillingness to protect the environment
6. Their anti-choice stance.
for more...see book, "My Life," by Bill Clinton, p. 381,ff.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
A NEW WAY OF AFFIRMING AND APPRECIATING THE BIBLE
1. We can think of those people (of the Bible) as people who faithfully lived their lives, based on their
awareness as a prescientific people and, consequently, saw themselves they were not wrong in believing
what they believed in.
2. But today, the Bible can be seen as a mirror or, more appropriately, as an x-ray machine, which depict not
only their faces, but also their inner beings. They did not only tell the good things about themselves, they
also told everything, including their attitudes, hopes, dreams, and their "secret feelings and secret lives."
3. How do we handle this matter?
A) We need to acknowledge that when they told their stories, they did it based on the level of their
awareness as prescientific people.
B) We can now say their ideas about themselves and their world, were not wrong but limited in some way;
but we can say we know and understand reality better than they did, thanks for the gift of science and
our awareness of evolutionary process, a reality that has always been at work then and now.
C) Our task now is to write or tell our own stories as our ancestors did. We make sure that when we write
or tell our stories, they truly mirror everything about ourselves, inside and out, like what an x-ray
machine does. Our stories will be read by future generations and they be the ones who can fully
determine how fully aware we were during our time, and compared and contrasted to their own.
My hope is that they, too, will find how faithfully we have lived our lives, based on the level
of our awareness. They, too, must eventually write their own stories, hoping they'll tell them as honestly
as their ancestors did (both the Bible stories and ours)..
D) This means, we don't have to discard or forget everything about the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible will
then become more precious to us and to future generations. For in this book we can see the
evolutionary process at work, just as in our time and space.
Juan N. Riingen
August 12, 2012
1. We can think of those people (of the Bible) as people who faithfully lived their lives, based on their
awareness as a prescientific people and, consequently, saw themselves they were not wrong in believing
what they believed in.
2. But today, the Bible can be seen as a mirror or, more appropriately, as an x-ray machine, which depict not
only their faces, but also their inner beings. They did not only tell the good things about themselves, they
also told everything, including their attitudes, hopes, dreams, and their "secret feelings and secret lives."
3. How do we handle this matter?
A) We need to acknowledge that when they told their stories, they did it based on the level of their
awareness as prescientific people.
B) We can now say their ideas about themselves and their world, were not wrong but limited in some way;
but we can say we know and understand reality better than they did, thanks for the gift of science and
our awareness of evolutionary process, a reality that has always been at work then and now.
C) Our task now is to write or tell our own stories as our ancestors did. We make sure that when we write
or tell our stories, they truly mirror everything about ourselves, inside and out, like what an x-ray
machine does. Our stories will be read by future generations and they be the ones who can fully
determine how fully aware we were during our time, and compared and contrasted to their own.
My hope is that they, too, will find how faithfully we have lived our lives, based on the level
of our awareness. They, too, must eventually write their own stories, hoping they'll tell them as honestly
as their ancestors did (both the Bible stories and ours)..
D) This means, we don't have to discard or forget everything about the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible will
then become more precious to us and to future generations. For in this book we can see the
evolutionary process at work, just as in our time and space.
Juan N. Riingen
August 12, 2012
THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF SATAN*
In the Hebrew Bible, Satan never appears as the leader of an "evil empire." Satan was not an enemy of God. In the books of Numbers and Job, Satan is "one of God's obedient servants, a messenger, or angel." The Hebrew word "malak" or in Greek "angelos" both mean "messenger." These were sometimes called angels of God, often called "sons of God"(bene elohim), or staff member of a royal court, or heavenly council. Although as early as 6th century B.C.E. some Hebrew storytellers introduced a supernatural character they call Satan, but they meant was anyone of the angels, or messengers God sent for a specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity. The root "stn" means "one who opposes, obstructs, or acts as adversary." The Greek term diabolos (devil) actually means "one who throws something across one's path." To some Hebrew storytellers, Satan is God's helper. God allows Satan to oppose or block "human desires." Satan works not necessarily malevolent, or acts with malicious intent. God sends Satan like an angel of death to "perform a specific task, although one that humans don't appreciate." As Neil Forsyth says of Satan, "If the path is bad (or dangerous) an obstruction is good." The book of Number, for example, tells of a man who decided to go where God ordered him not to go. Balaam saddled his Ass and set off, "but God's anger was kindled because he went' and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his Satan, that is, as his adversary, his blocker or obstructor"(Numbers 22:23-25). The third time the Ass saw the obstructing Angel, she stopped and lay down under Balaam, and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he struck the Ass with his staff. Then the story continues, "The Lord opened the mouth of the Ass, and she said to Balaam,'What have I done to you that you have struck me three times?' And Balaam said to the Ass, 'Because you have made a fool of me.' And the Ass said to Balaam, 'Am I not your Ass that you have ridden all your life to this very day? Did I ever do such things to you?' And he said, 'No.'" (Numbers 22:28-30). "Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw an angel of the Lord standing in the way with drawn sword in his hand, and he bowed his head, and fell on his face" then Satan rebukes Balaam and speaks for his master, the Lord: "Have you struck your Ass three times? Behold, I came here to oppose you, because your way is evil in my eyes; and the Ass saw me....If she had not turned away from me, I would have killed you right there, and let her live." (Num. 22:31-33).
The book of Job, also describes Satan as a supernatural messenger, a member of God's Royal court, or God's heavenly council. But while Balaam's Satan protects him from harm, Job's Satan takes a more adversarial role. Here Satan asked God's permission to act against Job (Job 2:3). The story begins when Satan appears as an angel, or "one of the divine beings." Here Satan comes with the rest of the heavenly hosts on the day appointed for them to "present themselves before the Lord." When the Lord asks, "Where have you been?" Satan answered, "From roaming on the earth, and walking up and down on it." We see here Satan suggests a special role in the heavenly court as some kind of a "roving intelligence agent, or a secret police and intelligence officer." These agents roamed the empire looking for signs of disloyalty among the people.
When the Greeks came into the picture, they introduced their dualistic worldview, where matter and spirit are opposites and separate, just as light and darkness, right from wrong, heaven and hell, life and death. All these ideas the early Church absorbed and embraced and incorporated it into their own understanding of themselves and their world where now they see one realm for their God (right and light)and another realm for Satan(wrong and darkness), an "outsider" who has the power to enter a man's heart and mind, they are aware or not. But as Elaine Pagels observes in her book, Satan, the "mythical symbol" of what is bad and wrong, and I believe can be part of who we are, where both possibilities - right and right, light and darkness, love and hate, inclusiveness and exclusiveness,etc. - are all found in everyone like you and me. But as Joshua said, "Choose you this day...!" We are free to choose either way. But Robert Frost is right, he took the unbeaten path, or the road not taken by most and, for him, made the difference.
________________________________________
*Some excerpts taken from the book, "The Origin of Satan," by Elaine Pagels, pp.39-42.
In the Hebrew Bible, Satan never appears as the leader of an "evil empire." Satan was not an enemy of God. In the books of Numbers and Job, Satan is "one of God's obedient servants, a messenger, or angel." The Hebrew word "malak" or in Greek "angelos" both mean "messenger." These were sometimes called angels of God, often called "sons of God"(bene elohim), or staff member of a royal court, or heavenly council. Although as early as 6th century B.C.E. some Hebrew storytellers introduced a supernatural character they call Satan, but they meant was anyone of the angels, or messengers God sent for a specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity. The root "stn" means "one who opposes, obstructs, or acts as adversary." The Greek term diabolos (devil) actually means "one who throws something across one's path." To some Hebrew storytellers, Satan is God's helper. God allows Satan to oppose or block "human desires." Satan works not necessarily malevolent, or acts with malicious intent. God sends Satan like an angel of death to "perform a specific task, although one that humans don't appreciate." As Neil Forsyth says of Satan, "If the path is bad (or dangerous) an obstruction is good." The book of Number, for example, tells of a man who decided to go where God ordered him not to go. Balaam saddled his Ass and set off, "but God's anger was kindled because he went' and the angel of the Lord took his stand in the road as his Satan, that is, as his adversary, his blocker or obstructor"(Numbers 22:23-25). The third time the Ass saw the obstructing Angel, she stopped and lay down under Balaam, and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he struck the Ass with his staff. Then the story continues, "The Lord opened the mouth of the Ass, and she said to Balaam,'What have I done to you that you have struck me three times?' And Balaam said to the Ass, 'Because you have made a fool of me.' And the Ass said to Balaam, 'Am I not your Ass that you have ridden all your life to this very day? Did I ever do such things to you?' And he said, 'No.'" (Numbers 22:28-30). "Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw an angel of the Lord standing in the way with drawn sword in his hand, and he bowed his head, and fell on his face" then Satan rebukes Balaam and speaks for his master, the Lord: "Have you struck your Ass three times? Behold, I came here to oppose you, because your way is evil in my eyes; and the Ass saw me....If she had not turned away from me, I would have killed you right there, and let her live." (Num. 22:31-33).
The book of Job, also describes Satan as a supernatural messenger, a member of God's Royal court, or God's heavenly council. But while Balaam's Satan protects him from harm, Job's Satan takes a more adversarial role. Here Satan asked God's permission to act against Job (Job 2:3). The story begins when Satan appears as an angel, or "one of the divine beings." Here Satan comes with the rest of the heavenly hosts on the day appointed for them to "present themselves before the Lord." When the Lord asks, "Where have you been?" Satan answered, "From roaming on the earth, and walking up and down on it." We see here Satan suggests a special role in the heavenly court as some kind of a "roving intelligence agent, or a secret police and intelligence officer." These agents roamed the empire looking for signs of disloyalty among the people.
When the Greeks came into the picture, they introduced their dualistic worldview, where matter and spirit are opposites and separate, just as light and darkness, right from wrong, heaven and hell, life and death. All these ideas the early Church absorbed and embraced and incorporated it into their own understanding of themselves and their world where now they see one realm for their God (right and light)and another realm for Satan(wrong and darkness), an "outsider" who has the power to enter a man's heart and mind, they are aware or not. But as Elaine Pagels observes in her book, Satan, the "mythical symbol" of what is bad and wrong, and I believe can be part of who we are, where both possibilities - right and right, light and darkness, love and hate, inclusiveness and exclusiveness,etc. - are all found in everyone like you and me. But as Joshua said, "Choose you this day...!" We are free to choose either way. But Robert Frost is right, he took the unbeaten path, or the road not taken by most and, for him, made the difference.
________________________________________
*Some excerpts taken from the book, "The Origin of Satan," by Elaine Pagels, pp.39-42.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
THE "NEW DEMOCRAT PHILOSOPHY"*
1. Change may be the only constant in today's American economy.
2. Human capital is probably more important than physical capital now. . . .
3. A more constructive partnership between business and government is far more important than the
dominance of either.
4. As we try to solve problems which arise out of the internationalization of American life and the changes in
our own population, cooperation in every area is far more important than conflict. . . .We have to share
responsibilities and opportunities - we're going up or down together.
5. Waste is going to be punished. . .it appears to me that we are spending billions of dollars of investment
capital increasing the debt of corporations without increasing their productivity. More debt should mean
increased productivity, growth, and profitability. Now, it means, too often, less employment, less
investment for research and development, and forced restructuring to service nonproductive debt. . . .
6. A strong America requires a resurgent sense of community, a strong sense of mutual obligations, and a
conviction that we cannot pursue our individual interests independent of the needs of our fellow citizens. . . .
If we want to keep the American dream alive for our own people and preserve America's role in the world, we must accept the new rules of successful economic, political, and social life. And we must act on them.
________________________________
*Part of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign speech. Taken from his book, My Life, pp. 326-327. (To
win, Obama needs Bill Clinton's help). The "New Democrat Philosophy" is the antithesis of the
Romney-Ryan neoconservative philosophy (pro-business/employer; anti-employee, anti-union. Distortion of
John Rawls' "Justice as fairness" politics and economics).
1. Change may be the only constant in today's American economy.
2. Human capital is probably more important than physical capital now. . . .
3. A more constructive partnership between business and government is far more important than the
dominance of either.
4. As we try to solve problems which arise out of the internationalization of American life and the changes in
our own population, cooperation in every area is far more important than conflict. . . .We have to share
responsibilities and opportunities - we're going up or down together.
5. Waste is going to be punished. . .it appears to me that we are spending billions of dollars of investment
capital increasing the debt of corporations without increasing their productivity. More debt should mean
increased productivity, growth, and profitability. Now, it means, too often, less employment, less
investment for research and development, and forced restructuring to service nonproductive debt. . . .
6. A strong America requires a resurgent sense of community, a strong sense of mutual obligations, and a
conviction that we cannot pursue our individual interests independent of the needs of our fellow citizens. . . .
If we want to keep the American dream alive for our own people and preserve America's role in the world, we must accept the new rules of successful economic, political, and social life. And we must act on them.
________________________________
*Part of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign speech. Taken from his book, My Life, pp. 326-327. (To
win, Obama needs Bill Clinton's help). The "New Democrat Philosophy" is the antithesis of the
Romney-Ryan neoconservative philosophy (pro-business/employer; anti-employee, anti-union. Distortion of
John Rawls' "Justice as fairness" politics and economics).
The Man We Call "Bill Clinton"
"Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, in his own completely recognizable voice. A unique book by a unique American."
My comment: I would say the man is "unique" but also typical human being, with his forte and "flaws" all found in everyone - in you, in me, in us. The description above was written in a book flap about a book, My Life, also written as a confession (see pp. 773 ff), by a "unique" but also typical human being, whose life is "far from perfect." We call him William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton.
"Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, in his own completely recognizable voice. A unique book by a unique American."
My comment: I would say the man is "unique" but also typical human being, with his forte and "flaws" all found in everyone - in you, in me, in us. The description above was written in a book flap about a book, My Life, also written as a confession (see pp. 773 ff), by a "unique" but also typical human being, whose life is "far from perfect." We call him William "Bill" Jefferson Clinton.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Frazee Community Center
1140 W. Mill Street
San Bernardino, CA 92410
Phone: 909-889-4424
According to a study released by San Bernardino County in 2007, 17,551 people countywide experienced homelessness during 2006. According to a 2011 report released jointly by the VA and HUD, between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009 an estimated 136,334 military veterans nationwide spent at least one night in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. Some studies have estimated that as much as 23% of the entire homeless population are veterans. With the recent economic downturn, the number of people needing help is on the increase.
Thanks to the generous donations that we receive, thousands of people are assisted annually by the Frazee Community Center. Any donations, however small, will go directly to those in need. So, how can you help us at this crucial moment? Think of Frazee....
*When you consider making monetary donations in your favorite charities.
*When you visit a grocery store, think about adding a few extra canned goods to your cart.
*When your business or organization is looking for a worthy cause to support.
*Before you discard old clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, televisions, stereos, computers,, etc.Any donations of houehold goods are welcome.
*As you clean out your basement or garage and see items that you feel others could use.
*Before you tow away a vehicle that is no longer needed by your family.
*When you realize how much you have been blessed in your life. Consider volunteering your time and talents for a few hours each month.
*With a remembrance in your will, living trust or memorial. Gifts of property, stocks, bonds, and proceeds/item from estate sales are welcome.
Remember - all donations are tax-deductible! We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Comment:
The Frazee Community Center in San Bernardina, California, is a microcosm of the poor and homeless in the whole United States of America. At a time when the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, the latter becomes a stark and naked indictment of our American culture and society as a whole. Considered one of the most beautiful cities and leading tourist attractions of America, San Diego City and County shares the plight of the poor and homeless people with those in San Bernardino Country. Most, if not all, these poor and homeless, are not poor and homeless by choice, but are victims of the avoidable circumstances if only those with more in life loosen up and open their eyes and hearts beyond their marble-laden and gated homes. This spirit of generosity and selflessness has been slowly but surely eroding during the past few decades all over the country.
1140 W. Mill Street
San Bernardino, CA 92410
Phone: 909-889-4424
According to a study released by San Bernardino County in 2007, 17,551 people countywide experienced homelessness during 2006. According to a 2011 report released jointly by the VA and HUD, between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009 an estimated 136,334 military veterans nationwide spent at least one night in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program. Some studies have estimated that as much as 23% of the entire homeless population are veterans. With the recent economic downturn, the number of people needing help is on the increase.
Thanks to the generous donations that we receive, thousands of people are assisted annually by the Frazee Community Center. Any donations, however small, will go directly to those in need. So, how can you help us at this crucial moment? Think of Frazee....
*When you consider making monetary donations in your favorite charities.
*When you visit a grocery store, think about adding a few extra canned goods to your cart.
*When your business or organization is looking for a worthy cause to support.
*Before you discard old clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, televisions, stereos, computers,, etc.Any donations of houehold goods are welcome.
*As you clean out your basement or garage and see items that you feel others could use.
*Before you tow away a vehicle that is no longer needed by your family.
*When you realize how much you have been blessed in your life. Consider volunteering your time and talents for a few hours each month.
*With a remembrance in your will, living trust or memorial. Gifts of property, stocks, bonds, and proceeds/item from estate sales are welcome.
Remember - all donations are tax-deductible! We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Comment:
The Frazee Community Center in San Bernardina, California, is a microcosm of the poor and homeless in the whole United States of America. At a time when the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, the latter becomes a stark and naked indictment of our American culture and society as a whole. Considered one of the most beautiful cities and leading tourist attractions of America, San Diego City and County shares the plight of the poor and homeless people with those in San Bernardino Country. Most, if not all, these poor and homeless, are not poor and homeless by choice, but are victims of the avoidable circumstances if only those with more in life loosen up and open their eyes and hearts beyond their marble-laden and gated homes. This spirit of generosity and selflessness has been slowly but surely eroding during the past few decades all over the country.
My Plenty, My Harvest / Psalm 53*
The madman said in his heart
God is dead.
Earth shook! a trumpet blast, a bell's
fiery throat
And God walks his world
A guru in rags
lamp in hand, everywhere seeking
one face of trust
Here, there, on this side and that,
trembling, anticipant -
Where his light falls, eyes avert, shadows fret
a congress in hell
a herd at the abbatoir, stupefied, sweating
Not just one, not one!
The feast is set. A beggar at door
lamp snuffed, pinchbeck face -
Clamor within; bones break, blood spills
a cannibal feast
Faces malign, insolvent, grotesque. The beggar
takes wing like a swallow
High on the wall a judgment appears
"mene, teqel, parsan"
-found wanting!
- rejected!
-replaced!
Blood-gorged, they sink in a welter of blood.
The bones of the just
arise, a wheat field serene
God walks in their midst
"My myriad just ones
my plenty, my harvest!
The Psalm speaks of a cannibal feast presided over by the great ones of this world. The menu: the body and blood of their victims.
If the imagery seems atrocious, let us meditate on verse 5 of the original psalm.
Will all these evildoers never learn,
they who eat up my people like bread,
who refuse to call upon God?
As well as this scene from the book of Revelation, chapter 19:
And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, come, gather together for the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of officials, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and of those who sit upon them; the flesh of all, free and slave, small and great.
Where else does consumerism end, especially that consuming act par excellence, war, but the cannibalism?
And what sort of god do the warmakers cherish after all and desire with all their fleshly hearts, but a flesh-eating god? A god, that is to say, created in their own image, tongue to gullet to anus.
For this reason the nightmares of Revelation are exactly that: an unclouded mirror of our own voracious souls, a nightmare of appetites on the hoof, a will to make of the world and its people a hellish banquet, an ultimate anti-eucharist at which the honored guest will be the anti-Christ - violent, self-honored, self-damned, ourselves.
The nightmares of scripture are our most secret, guarded, cherished dreams turned inside out, taken up by God, and tossed back at us: fast food for the damned.
Do we quail, do we ask in hurt wonderment, what kind of God would speak like that, act like that? Let us consult our own heart for answer, the dark demons infesting us, the urges that assume the force of commands, the gods enthroned there, sinister, in control.
With this for prelude, the imagery of the psalm seems, if anything, rather subdued. God walks the earth, a Greek patriarch, a wandering Jew, a Russian holy man, in search of justice. He comes to a princely home where an unholy banquet is in progress. The imagery of the handwriting on the wall is derived from the book of Daniel, chapter 5. The crime mentioned in Daniel is a double one: idolatry and theft of the holy vessels. In the psalm, in line with Revelation, the crime is cannibalism. I see no great difference. In any case, the punishment is too close for comfort: the end of our era, our lives weighed and found wanting, our kingdom divided.
_______________________________
*Psalm 53 as penned by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, followed by a reflection. This piece is taken from his book, "Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms," ps. 38-40.
My comment: I think Father Daniel Berrigan hits the nail on its head through his uncommon Psalm and uncommon Meditation, which applies quite appropriately to what is happening to American society today (in the early part of the 21st century), as the new Republicanism (neoconservative) is slowly taking over the reigns of our democratic system, with its accompanying view of a distorted Keynesian politico-economic theory, buttressed by the religious right, and refashioning it to the point this government is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's a government governed not by our elected representatives, but by those new kingmakers called neoconservatives, I call them the face of greed (thanks to the U.S. Supreme for deciding in favor of Citizens United, which is a powerful lobbying coalition of monied individuals and multinational corporations). They sound democrat when they need bailout money, but once they recover, they turn Republicans, new Republicans that is, neoconservatives. It's true, they are they, and they are us, some of us, I believe. And Daniel Berrigan could be turning in his grave today. Is he worried? But I guess he's grinning. "I told you so!" he must be saying.
The madman said in his heart
God is dead.
Earth shook! a trumpet blast, a bell's
fiery throat
And God walks his world
A guru in rags
lamp in hand, everywhere seeking
one face of trust
Here, there, on this side and that,
trembling, anticipant -
Where his light falls, eyes avert, shadows fret
a congress in hell
a herd at the abbatoir, stupefied, sweating
Not just one, not one!
The feast is set. A beggar at door
lamp snuffed, pinchbeck face -
Clamor within; bones break, blood spills
a cannibal feast
Faces malign, insolvent, grotesque. The beggar
takes wing like a swallow
High on the wall a judgment appears
"mene, teqel, parsan"
-found wanting!
- rejected!
-replaced!
Blood-gorged, they sink in a welter of blood.
The bones of the just
arise, a wheat field serene
God walks in their midst
"My myriad just ones
my plenty, my harvest!
The Psalm speaks of a cannibal feast presided over by the great ones of this world. The menu: the body and blood of their victims.
If the imagery seems atrocious, let us meditate on verse 5 of the original psalm.
Will all these evildoers never learn,
they who eat up my people like bread,
who refuse to call upon God?
As well as this scene from the book of Revelation, chapter 19:
And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, come, gather together for the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of officials, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and of those who sit upon them; the flesh of all, free and slave, small and great.
Where else does consumerism end, especially that consuming act par excellence, war, but the cannibalism?
And what sort of god do the warmakers cherish after all and desire with all their fleshly hearts, but a flesh-eating god? A god, that is to say, created in their own image, tongue to gullet to anus.
For this reason the nightmares of Revelation are exactly that: an unclouded mirror of our own voracious souls, a nightmare of appetites on the hoof, a will to make of the world and its people a hellish banquet, an ultimate anti-eucharist at which the honored guest will be the anti-Christ - violent, self-honored, self-damned, ourselves.
The nightmares of scripture are our most secret, guarded, cherished dreams turned inside out, taken up by God, and tossed back at us: fast food for the damned.
Do we quail, do we ask in hurt wonderment, what kind of God would speak like that, act like that? Let us consult our own heart for answer, the dark demons infesting us, the urges that assume the force of commands, the gods enthroned there, sinister, in control.
With this for prelude, the imagery of the psalm seems, if anything, rather subdued. God walks the earth, a Greek patriarch, a wandering Jew, a Russian holy man, in search of justice. He comes to a princely home where an unholy banquet is in progress. The imagery of the handwriting on the wall is derived from the book of Daniel, chapter 5. The crime mentioned in Daniel is a double one: idolatry and theft of the holy vessels. In the psalm, in line with Revelation, the crime is cannibalism. I see no great difference. In any case, the punishment is too close for comfort: the end of our era, our lives weighed and found wanting, our kingdom divided.
_______________________________
*Psalm 53 as penned by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, followed by a reflection. This piece is taken from his book, "Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms," ps. 38-40.
My comment: I think Father Daniel Berrigan hits the nail on its head through his uncommon Psalm and uncommon Meditation, which applies quite appropriately to what is happening to American society today (in the early part of the 21st century), as the new Republicanism (neoconservative) is slowly taking over the reigns of our democratic system, with its accompanying view of a distorted Keynesian politico-economic theory, buttressed by the religious right, and refashioning it to the point this government is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's a government governed not by our elected representatives, but by those new kingmakers called neoconservatives, I call them the face of greed (thanks to the U.S. Supreme for deciding in favor of Citizens United, which is a powerful lobbying coalition of monied individuals and multinational corporations). They sound democrat when they need bailout money, but once they recover, they turn Republicans, new Republicans that is, neoconservatives. It's true, they are they, and they are us, some of us, I believe. And Daniel Berrigan could be turning in his grave today. Is he worried? But I guess he's grinning. "I told you so!" he must be saying.
The United States of America, then and Now: A Personal Reflection
America was born with one thing clear in the minds of its Founders - as bringers of light, true light, that goodness endowed in the human heart. That goodness comes from a power beyond themselves. Although some of the pilgrims were Christians, like Jonathan Edwards, and the Quakers that settled in Pennsylvania. But the framers of the U.S. Constitution, according to Dr. James Saunders of Claremont School of Theology, were deists. The U.S. Constitution was never written on stones. It contained seven articles and subsequently the U.S. Congress introduced several amendments and in the 20th century several amendments were further introduced and ratified by the citizenry, for a total of twenty seven amendments. The original framers of the U.S. Constitution chose a representative government where the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is established. But sadly, the present government has evolved where the government is actually governed by a few wealthy among the citizenry, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, as lobbied by the Citizens United, a national coalition of monied people. Today, it's up to the citizenry to allow the new Republicans (neoconservatives who basically represent the face of greed) to win in the November 2012 elections.
America was born with one thing clear in the minds of its Founders - as bringers of light, true light, that goodness endowed in the human heart. That goodness comes from a power beyond themselves. Although some of the pilgrims were Christians, like Jonathan Edwards, and the Quakers that settled in Pennsylvania. But the framers of the U.S. Constitution, according to Dr. James Saunders of Claremont School of Theology, were deists. The U.S. Constitution was never written on stones. It contained seven articles and subsequently the U.S. Congress introduced several amendments and in the 20th century several amendments were further introduced and ratified by the citizenry, for a total of twenty seven amendments. The original framers of the U.S. Constitution chose a representative government where the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is established. But sadly, the present government has evolved where the government is actually governed by a few wealthy among the citizenry, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, as lobbied by the Citizens United, a national coalition of monied people. Today, it's up to the citizenry to allow the new Republicans (neoconservatives who basically represent the face of greed) to win in the November 2012 elections.
The Maum Meditation:
When I was in Las Vegas this past weekend, we went to a Korean Supermart with Omar and Angela's family. I picked up a literature that was being given free to shoppers. When I got home I read the literature and this is what I found:
This group is the latest Korean group of mystics that's beginning to be accepted even by western religious groups. This group was founded by Woo Myung, Author, Teacher, and acknowledged World Peace Ambassador. Woo Myung was born in the Kyeongbuk province of South Korea. In January of 1996, while meditating in the mountains of South Korea, Woo Myung became enlightened. He then founded Maum Meditation and has dedicated his life ever since to help others become enlightened through his method of subtraction and teachings. Woo Myung says, "People look for happiness outside of themselves, not knowing how to find it from within. They attempt to find happiness in their lives by changing their environment; they seek new relationships, change careers, try new hobbies, move to another city, or read self-help books. However, happiness has never been permanent because human mind changes as conditions are continuously changing,
True happiness can be found when the human mind changes to the infinite universe mind. Maum Meditation has a unique method of subtraction to discard the false self and the false world that oneself lives in. You will find unconditional happiness and live as the eternal never-changing mind of the true world."
Woo Myung continues: "The Maum Meditation comes out of the mind world of pictures through 7 levels of subtraction: Level 1: Subtracting the remembered thoughts. Level 2: Subtracting the images of myself, images of my human relationships, and myself. Level 3: Subtracting my body. Level 4: Subtracting my body and the universe. Level 5: Subtracting my body and the universe. Level 6: Self disappears by subtracting and become the universe. Level 7: Subtracting the illusionary world of pictures and myself living inside that world."
Woo Myung's equation looks like this: "The universe minus human, minus stars,sun,moon, and earth, equals original universe equals heaven."
Woo Myung has written several wisdom books and two of his latest books are "World Beyond World." The book answers the following questions: What is Truth? How can one reach the Truth? Why must we become Truth? In this book, Woo Myung's simple and straight-forward discourse of Eastern and Western philosophies and religion make it easy to understand why Truth is ultimately One and why inner and outer peace is inextricably linked.
His latest book is "The Way To Become a Person In Heaven While Living." Woo Myung's book of Truth restores hope for mankind with its message of cleansing the body and mind of the false self."
Woo Myung says they now have over 300 Meditation groups around the world, and still growing.
My comment: Woo Myung's spirituality sounds like Confucianism, or something close to Buddhism. What I like about this group is it is operating nontheistically, as opposed to theistic. Theistic believes in a deity outside themselves and is only found "up there," who comes down everytime believers pray for help. On the other hand, nontheistic worldview is finding that power, that good, that wisdom, that perfect "happiness," within each believer, just like what Woo Myung says about his group. No wonder many Christian professionals, businessmen, fundamentalists and liberals alike, are joining this group. As the saying goes, we'll see. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I hope Woo Myung's group will not turn out to be another big money-making enterprise, like Joel Osteen's Ministry, or Pat Robertson's 500 Club Ministry, or the late Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell groups, or Oral Roberts group. All of these founders have become multi-millionaires. And the irony is many people believed them.
When I was in Las Vegas this past weekend, we went to a Korean Supermart with Omar and Angela's family. I picked up a literature that was being given free to shoppers. When I got home I read the literature and this is what I found:
This group is the latest Korean group of mystics that's beginning to be accepted even by western religious groups. This group was founded by Woo Myung, Author, Teacher, and acknowledged World Peace Ambassador. Woo Myung was born in the Kyeongbuk province of South Korea. In January of 1996, while meditating in the mountains of South Korea, Woo Myung became enlightened. He then founded Maum Meditation and has dedicated his life ever since to help others become enlightened through his method of subtraction and teachings. Woo Myung says, "People look for happiness outside of themselves, not knowing how to find it from within. They attempt to find happiness in their lives by changing their environment; they seek new relationships, change careers, try new hobbies, move to another city, or read self-help books. However, happiness has never been permanent because human mind changes as conditions are continuously changing,
True happiness can be found when the human mind changes to the infinite universe mind. Maum Meditation has a unique method of subtraction to discard the false self and the false world that oneself lives in. You will find unconditional happiness and live as the eternal never-changing mind of the true world."
Woo Myung continues: "The Maum Meditation comes out of the mind world of pictures through 7 levels of subtraction: Level 1: Subtracting the remembered thoughts. Level 2: Subtracting the images of myself, images of my human relationships, and myself. Level 3: Subtracting my body. Level 4: Subtracting my body and the universe. Level 5: Subtracting my body and the universe. Level 6: Self disappears by subtracting and become the universe. Level 7: Subtracting the illusionary world of pictures and myself living inside that world."
Woo Myung's equation looks like this: "The universe minus human, minus stars,sun,moon, and earth, equals original universe equals heaven."
Woo Myung has written several wisdom books and two of his latest books are "World Beyond World." The book answers the following questions: What is Truth? How can one reach the Truth? Why must we become Truth? In this book, Woo Myung's simple and straight-forward discourse of Eastern and Western philosophies and religion make it easy to understand why Truth is ultimately One and why inner and outer peace is inextricably linked.
His latest book is "The Way To Become a Person In Heaven While Living." Woo Myung's book of Truth restores hope for mankind with its message of cleansing the body and mind of the false self."
Woo Myung says they now have over 300 Meditation groups around the world, and still growing.
My comment: Woo Myung's spirituality sounds like Confucianism, or something close to Buddhism. What I like about this group is it is operating nontheistically, as opposed to theistic. Theistic believes in a deity outside themselves and is only found "up there," who comes down everytime believers pray for help. On the other hand, nontheistic worldview is finding that power, that good, that wisdom, that perfect "happiness," within each believer, just like what Woo Myung says about his group. No wonder many Christian professionals, businessmen, fundamentalists and liberals alike, are joining this group. As the saying goes, we'll see. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I hope Woo Myung's group will not turn out to be another big money-making enterprise, like Joel Osteen's Ministry, or Pat Robertson's 500 Club Ministry, or the late Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell groups, or Oral Roberts group. All of these founders have become multi-millionaires. And the irony is many people believed them.
Reflection on "Church Unity":
When the Roman Catholic hierarchy says, "We want to promote Christian unity," what they really mean is every one should agree to all the established doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. It also means that progressive Roman Catholic theologians and thinkers like Hans Kung, Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Rosemary Reuther, Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell, and other catholic thinkers like them, are not welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. However, when progressive catholic theologians and thinkers, together with the Roman Catholic laypeople say, "We need to promote Christian unity," what they really mean is to fight, oppose, and challenge the authority of the Vatican, especially the Pope, and all Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops who are identified with the establishment within the Roman Catholic Church. No wonder Pope Benedict has always been saying he wants to work for the "unity of the Catholic Church." The main reason why I say this, is because the voice of the Roman Catholic Church is officially represented by the voice coming from the Vatican. No wonder so many progressive Roman Catholic theologians and all the other catholic church leaders are leaving the Roman Catholic Church. They don't care if they are excommunicated. To my mind, these progressive Roman Catholics are the true voices of protestantism in America and around the world today. Most Protestant denominations are now identified as pro-establishment. They have consciously or unconsciously decided to lose their being protestant. Nabaliktad ti lugongdan, cacabsat!
There is one lesson I can learn here: People(outside or inside the churches) who refuse to change for the better, are consigning themselves to oblivion or, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jr. says, "extinction."
When the Roman Catholic hierarchy says, "We want to promote Christian unity," what they really mean is every one should agree to all the established doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. It also means that progressive Roman Catholic theologians and thinkers like Hans Kung, Daniel Berrigan, Thomas Merton, Rosemary Reuther, Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell, and other catholic thinkers like them, are not welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. However, when progressive catholic theologians and thinkers, together with the Roman Catholic laypeople say, "We need to promote Christian unity," what they really mean is to fight, oppose, and challenge the authority of the Vatican, especially the Pope, and all Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops who are identified with the establishment within the Roman Catholic Church. No wonder Pope Benedict has always been saying he wants to work for the "unity of the Catholic Church." The main reason why I say this, is because the voice of the Roman Catholic Church is officially represented by the voice coming from the Vatican. No wonder so many progressive Roman Catholic theologians and all the other catholic church leaders are leaving the Roman Catholic Church. They don't care if they are excommunicated. To my mind, these progressive Roman Catholics are the true voices of protestantism in America and around the world today. Most Protestant denominations are now identified as pro-establishment. They have consciously or unconsciously decided to lose their being protestant. Nabaliktad ti lugongdan, cacabsat!
There is one lesson I can learn here: People(outside or inside the churches) who refuse to change for the better, are consigning themselves to oblivion or, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jr. says, "extinction."
Saturday, August 4, 2012
WELCOME EVERYONE TO MY BLOGPOST!
This is my initial blogpost. I will post here some of my personal readings and reflections for friends to read and also listen to their feedbacks which I believe enhances a healthy interaction and exchange via the internet. From time to time, I will also include some significant excerpts from books written by some of my outstanding authors(Modern and Post-Modern) whose books include the following subjects: Religion and Ethics, General Science(Evolutionary Science), Politics, Economics, History, Sociology, Genetics, etc. I will also include posting the life and work of some of the leading Post-Christian religious thinkers like, Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jr., Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Elaine Pagels, and all the other members of the internet group called, Center for Progressive Christianity, just to mention a few. Occasionally, I will also post some ideas of a few progressive religious thinkers from Christian fundamentalist/conservative groups and may also refer my readers to read some of their views and works.
In this blogpost, I will follow one simple dictum: Ideas, then and now, no matter how great they are, are never written on stones. With this, I mean I believe in Tradition, but more importantly, in the Traditioning process. I believe, finally, life is always in process of becoming. My hope is that some day all Christians, including other faith traditions, will finally see what Sam Mackintosh calls in his blogpost, "the convergence of science and religion."
John Nalundasan Riingen
San Diego
August 5, 2012
This is my initial blogpost. I will post here some of my personal readings and reflections for friends to read and also listen to their feedbacks which I believe enhances a healthy interaction and exchange via the internet. From time to time, I will also include some significant excerpts from books written by some of my outstanding authors(Modern and Post-Modern) whose books include the following subjects: Religion and Ethics, General Science(Evolutionary Science), Politics, Economics, History, Sociology, Genetics, etc. I will also include posting the life and work of some of the leading Post-Christian religious thinkers like, Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jr., Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Elaine Pagels, and all the other members of the internet group called, Center for Progressive Christianity, just to mention a few. Occasionally, I will also post some ideas of a few progressive religious thinkers from Christian fundamentalist/conservative groups and may also refer my readers to read some of their views and works.
In this blogpost, I will follow one simple dictum: Ideas, then and now, no matter how great they are, are never written on stones. With this, I mean I believe in Tradition, but more importantly, in the Traditioning process. I believe, finally, life is always in process of becoming. My hope is that some day all Christians, including other faith traditions, will finally see what Sam Mackintosh calls in his blogpost, "the convergence of science and religion."
John Nalundasan Riingen
San Diego
August 5, 2012
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