We Came From Outer Space!

A post from November 2007 while I am on sabbatical.

"We are star-stuff." I loved to hear Carl Sagan say those words each week as our family watched his series, Cosmos. One can float back to those wonderful episodes [complete with music] at the Carl Sagan Portal.

Well, in fact, he was right some 30 years ago. In a new article entitled, New evidence for extragalactic life-forming matter, it states:

"Astrophysicists believe that organic molecules were present in the cloud of dust and gas from which our solar system formed, providing the raw materials for life on Earth. Astronomers can see these molecules throughout our galaxy, which is one reason why many believe conditions may also be ripe for life in other parts of the Milky Way, and perhaps further afield."

The article goes on to say that scientists are looking to find carbon-based molecules in other galaxies similar to the ones that once floated in interstellar space are thought to have been later incorporated into Earth, providing the raw materials for life.

Through spectral analysis the chemical signature of a class of organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAC] can be seen in the way they absorb light from distant stars. The second word, aromatic, conjures up the smell of life-stuff, whatever that is.

Star stuff. Hug a friend; touch a star!

The Theistic God is All But Unemployed; Outsourced

A post from September 2007 while on sabbatical.

So many of the things that we once attributed to the theistic deity, the God in the Sky, we now explain with no mention of supernatural power at all. English theologian, Michael D.Goulder, a New Testament professor at the University of Birmingham, explaining his withdrawal from the Christian church, said that the theistic God of traditional Christianity no longer had any real work to do. He was unwilling to worship what he called an "unemployed deity."

What an interesting phrase: unemployed Deity. Ought we to feel sorry for this state of affairs or breathe a sigh of relief? For millennia, that deity, whatever the name, was 'busy' keeping order here on earth: the winds, the rain, hurricanes, floods and all sorts of weather-related duties. Old texts call upon this deity to calm winds, bring rain, stop floods and all sorts of meteorological deeds. Today, of course, we know better: meteorological science explains it all.

Let's see what else? Oh, yes, cures. The Great Deity was called upon to cure illnesses that fell upon the people. Naturally [rather supernaturally], illness was often seen as punishment for sin, but people still prayed for a cure. Today microbiology and medicines take care of that task.

Weather and illness take a rest. Gosh, I almost forgot about holding up the heavens so that they do not come crashing down to earth. The Great Deity held the sun, moon, and stars in place so that there was a regular day and night cycle along with the seasons. The Deity also stopped the sun from slipping further and further down into the depths of winter. Luckily our prayers and bonfires appeased this Deity and the sun began to rise once again in the sky. Galileo and Newton rescued the Deity from that duty.

Smiting the enemy was big stuff for the Deity, especially for his chosen people. This Deity even held the sun from setting during one battle so that his chosen people could completely destroy their enemies. The Deity was also asked to whip up several plagues of locusts as well as drought to smite the enemy. Today military science has produced smart bombs and Agent Orange to take care of that smiting thing.

Smiting, weather, juggling the universe, medical cures all now 'outsourced' from the Deity. What about magic? Aha! There you go: magic- levitation, ghosts, bi-location- things like that. Now we are in the realm of the Great Deity. So, unless some smarty can come up with how this magic happens, there will still be plenty of work to do.

Amen.

update:

I was thinking about how deflating the concept must be to those who have been snugly wrapped up in this theistic deity all of their lives. What if it is true? Is that a devastating psychological blow? If one has, for all of their lives, 'depended' upon this deity to guide them, to help them, to reward them at the end time, and there is no such entity, then is everything for naught?

It could lead to massive depression among the believers. In fact, I suppose that many folks will cling to their 'belief' despite the logic of reality. After all, what else is there to live for, if not for some eternal reward at the end? And what about the punishment for all of those 'bad' people who have not 'obeyed' the laws of righteousness? After all, they deserve eternal damnation, don't they?

So many thoughts about this issue will, I'm afraid, make the believers cling to their sinking ship rather than seeking real life in their own humanity. After all, Jesus, speaking through John said: "I have come that you have life and have it more abundantly."

Abundant life here on earth, fully alive, fully human- being all that you can be as a fellow traveler here on earth. Lifting up others along the way, helping them be all that they can be so that they, too, can have life and have it more abundantly.

update 12/22/2008

There were 29 comments on this original post, more than half from the resident 'authority' on all things biblical [and her alter-ego son].  In one of the comments Mrs. Righteous was castigating the group of people on a French blog for not accepting her beliefs.  It is to be noted that, after hijacking that French blog, she was forced to leave it, but, naturally, returned , hijacked it again, and was forced to leave it permanently.

Since then she hijacked this blog and twice was asked to not post here, but, of course, in her most-righteous style, refused to do so.  The sad thing about these righteous fundamentalists is that their 'belief system' is so entangled and depends on an interconnected  string of beliefs, that when one 'belief' is tugged, the entire 'system' comes unraveled.  Thus the need to post volumes of quotations in a defensive strategy, much akin to using a machine gun to kill a squirrel.

Were this group to merely proclaim their set of beliefs and go about their own business, that would be perfectly tolerable. The Amish are a great example of a knot of people who hold a particular set of beliefs and customs and go about their lives in rather a parallel culture to ours.  The Christian fundamentalists, on the other hand, are not happy at all merely interacting with each other.  Sadly, they feel a missionary spirit is demanded of them and therefore take an active role in culture and society, hoping to change or modify society with their belief-system.  They are determined to 'fix' our society and bring their Bible-based rules and regulations into this American culture.

Naturally they are now in mourning because of the Obama victory.  You can be sure, thought, that they will spend the next 4 years attempting to disrupt, criticize and end his presidency much like the right-wing Republicans sought to impeach President Clinton on specious charges.  The righteousness of the Christian fundamentalists knows no boundaries.  They alone have the knowledge.  They alone know what is best for our American society.  Be careful.  They are a dangerous lot.

The 3 Most Scary Sentences George Bush Uttered

An older post [September 2007] while I am on sabbatical.

Two days ago I read the headline on BBC about a conversation between President Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar during which Bush has said something revealing. I did not read the details. This morning Slate.com has the story with the headline, Learning From Bush's Mistakes: How a prewar conversation can help us pick the next president.

I was curious, so I dove in. Apparently Mr. Bush had asked Aznar to join him as a charter member of 'The Coalition of the Willing" in Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq. No doubt, Aznar asked Bush about the details, the facts which led him to the conclusion that the preemptive invasion was the right thing to do.

The question in the back of Aznar's mind after he heard the plan was this: "The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism."

Seems a good question and a great observation. Perhaps Aznar knew that Mr. Bush's life was excessively parochial: he had not travelled the world; he had not been interested in geopolitical studies; he had a limited knowledge of world history. No doubt, Mr. Aznar was aghast at this first-ever preemptive military plan that Mr. Bush had just laid out before him.

"The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism," might be a tangential question to the real question that was not said [according to the transcript] in the meeting. Were I the president of Spain, a member of the EU, a nation dependent on EU commerce and EU cooperation, I might have asked Mr. Bush: "Why won't France and Germany join your confederation?" Why not Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Ireland? Perhaps that would be too embarrassing to ask; after all, Europeans have learned politeness.

Rather, the question was, "The only thing that worries me about you is your optimism."

Not unexpectedly, the Bush response was philosophical rather than militarily. It was, well, a hunch. We have come to expect that from Mr. Bush: why use your brain, your advisers, the lessons of history to guide decisions? One's hunch is a perfect guide. Often my own adolescent years were based on hunches. Nearly all were wrong, then I grew up.

BUSH: I'm an optimist because I believe that I'm right. I'm a person at peace with myself. It was our turn to face a serious threat to peace.

Yes, that's what he said.

That's what he believed.

That explains the mess we're in.

Helen Thomas: Last Woman Sitting

An older post [September 2007] while I am on sabbatical.

She gets the last laugh. Good folks always do. The scoundrels scamper off after pooping on the carpet. They always do.

The veteran White House correspondent who has sat in that press room ever since John Kennedy was elected, mused on the departure of Tony Snow in her latest article, Like others before him, Tony Snow drifts out of the White House.

She must feel vindicated realizing that she still sits there but three Bush press secretaries have bit the dust. Vindicated also by the fact that she was relegated to the back row of the room because she was asking questions of Mr. Bush deemed 'too tough.'

It must feel good knowing that for all of her 57 year career, she has been true to her vocation. Regardless of the party of the president, she would ask the tough questions. Only this administration could not handle them. Thus her back-row seat.

Brings to mind Rosa Parks. Another sage woman who grew tired of Jim Crow in the back seat of the bus. Women who sat in the back but shouted their truths to the very front.

The last lines of her Tony Snow article especially caught my eye. She said:

"As a showman, he was able to deflect tough questions with the lift of an eyebrow, or by expressing mock astonishment that anyone would dare to question the president's motivations.
It was a great game and he played it well. Someday he may ponder whether he was true to his chosen profession of journalism, which upholds the people's right to know what is being done in their name."

Indeed it does, Ms. Thomas. Hats off to you!

"The Single, Most Important Image Ever Taken By Humanity."

A post from September 2007 while I am on sabbatical

The Hubble Deep Field Video on YouTube is a fascinating 5 minutes of viewing that attempts to show just how enormous the universe is. Great narration and background music add to the wonder of it all. Here is the video on large screen.

"I can operate as an intelligent free agent."

An older post [August 07] while i'm on a self-imposed sabbatical until the Inauguration.

That title line is on page 38 of the book, The Spiral Staircase, by Karen Armstrong. The rest of the book's title is, 'My climb out of darkness.' Armstrong became a Catholic nun but, after 7 years in the convent, she left the order. Her leaving was not smooth and she had physical problems emanating from the stressful stifling of her life as a nun.



That line, "I can operate as an intelligent free agent," The metaphor she uses to describe her life is of a Chinese woman whose feet are tightly bound, as was an ancient custom. She refers to her brain as being similarly bound tightly during her years in the convent. Then she says of the woman, "If the restraints had been removed too late and she would never walk normally again."


I think of children who are raised with their brains likewise bound by the overpowering belief system of their parents. Children who are not permitted to think beyond the imposed boundaries of their authoritarian parents. Often these 'beliefs' have been handed down from their parents and grandparents.


Easily coming to mind is racism, 'carefully taught' to one generation after the other. Ethnic hatred is another damnable, taught belief, which can be seen throughout the world. African and the Middle Eastern cultures are skilled agents of ethnic hatred.


I think also of those children who are indoctrinated in religious beliefs at a tender age. Author Karen Anderson entered the nunnery as a teen, taking with her all of the Catholic beliefs that were indoctrinated in her 12 years of Catholic school. Authoritarianism, we read in her story, was extreme, even for a church traditionally steeped in top-down mandates.


And so she utters the words of freedom as she exits the convent. Freedom to think, at long last. Freedom to make up her own mind about that 'faith' that engulfed her and nearly drowned her. My own faith story is much like hers, having grown up in a house where religiosity ruled the roost. I nearly drowned too.


My mind could never get around those bible stories I was fed; something seemed odd about it all. Naturally, I could never articulate my confusion because, after all, 'God wrote it.' Then there was the Jesus story with all of the magic, especially at the beginning and end of the story. Was Jesus human or divine? Whose chromosomes made up the other 23, I wondered in high school when I learned the biology of the fertilization of the egg. How could a 'super-man' be an example to we humans? So many questions and no room for answers.


I think about one family I know who are evangelical Christians with 4 children. The Bible rules in that family and weekly Wednesday bible class was mandatory. Now some are off to college where they will meet others of different faith traditions, or no faith at all. How will they cope with it all? Will their brains remain bound tightly like the feet of the Chinese woman? Or will the bandage be ripped off by new insights, new ways of thinking?


Those events may not be pleasant and the child may begin to think that, for all of those years, they were fed a load of nonsense, passed on from generation to generation. Hopefully, there will be no resultant emotional damage through the process. Yet, I wouldn't doubt that there will be many permanent emotional scars.

Solar Ethics: it Beats the Bible

I offer an older post [August 2007] for review while on a self-imposed sabbatical until the Inauguration.

Don Cuppit's interesting theory of ethical behavior can be found in his 1995 book, Solar Ethics. In the book he describes the 'moral life' as living as one wants to. Using an analogy with the sun, he says that people should live their life fully in the midst of others (and for others), unashamedly declaring who they are (and want to be). This is in stark contrast to the view which says that the best life for us is the one lived for God, and as God decrees it should be lived.

His website says this: "He rejects all ideas of gaining salvation by escaping from this world of ours. "All this is all there is", he says and he now sees true religion in terms of joy in life and an active attempt to add value to the human lifeworld."

Why the sun? Cupitt says, "We should live as the sun does. Its existence, the process by which it lives, and the process by which it dies, all exactly coincide. It believes nothing, it hasn't a care, it just pours itself out. Its heedless lifegiving generosity is its glory."

His newest  book is titled, Above Us, Only Sky. Surely this title will wrinkle the panties of our fundamentalist folks even more than Solar Ethics.

They need a good wringing out anyway. How the modern American can cling to the 3-tired Heaven-Earth-Hell structure of life is beyond my ability to fathom.

My life-long friend and frequent poster on this blog, Upthe Flag, is now living in the Evangelical South and keeps me up-to-date with the latest happenings there in the Bible Belt. Both of us shared grade and high school together and each of us went off to a Jesuit University. This Jesuit education expanded our thinking and enriched our philosophical brains. We both have trouble with organized religion, although he has not yet declared the God of Abraham a myth. Perhaps he will comment about that here.

I am drawn to Cupitt's theological/philosophical statement, he sees true religion in terms of joy in life and an active attempt to add value to the human lifeworld. That is a wonderful thought and surely more attractive than that hell and brimstone fanatical pulp spewing out of the mouths of those self-righteous fundamentalists.

How simple it is: joy of life while adding value to life. Jesus would approve, I'm quite sure.

"We should live as the sun does. Its existence, the process by which it lives, and the process by which it dies, all exactly coincide. It believes nothing, it hasn't a care, it just pours itself out. Its heedless lifegiving generosity is its glory."

Jesus Camp:The Dangerous Evangelical Christian

I present this post from August 2007 while I am on self-imposed sabbatical until the Inauguration.

My wife queued up Jesus Camp for our Saturday night movie last evening. That was a shocker! Childhood indoctrination and hate fairly well sum up that film. Here's a link to the subject matter: Wikipedia

The camp itself was scary enough, but that was only one week in the lives of the children. The other 51 weeks were merely a less intense version of the camp experience. Young minds of 8,9, 10-year olds brainwashed with religious intolerance and hate makes the viewer want to vomit. What do these young people need to know about aborted babies? Why do they have to act out a play with swords and army camouflage paint? Why must they be driven to sobbing tears over their 'sins?'

If there ever was a documented case of child abuse this was it.

A cardboard George Bush was 'venerated' one evening.

The parents were happy to have their children learn the lessons which were reinforced at home during home-schooling. One 'science' lesson debunked evolution. The student was fed the theological data and was not able to have a differing opinion. Public schools were openly criticized as was liberal thought.

The scariest aspect of this movement is that they vote. It is their goal, as stated in the film, to change America into a Christian nation through the ballot box. And there are an estimated 80,000,000 evangelical Christians world-wide and here in America 25% of adults consider themselves evangelical; and they vote in high percentages.

Dangerous religious zealots whose goal is the overthrow of the government of the United States. And there is a whole generation of brainwashed children ready to enter the voting booth in a few years.

Bin Laden wanted US to invade Iraq, Bush Granted His Wish

While I am on a self-imposed hiatus until the Inauguration, I offer another old past, this from August 2007.

Bin Laden wanted US to invade Iraq, author says, is the headline from ABC News. The article begins:

" As coalition troops continue to die on Iraqi soil and the US Government's military spending on the war bleeds into billions of dollars, a new book says that not only could this have been avoided, but it was all predictable, as long as you had read the Al Qaeda manual.

Abdul Bari Atwan is one of the only Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, spending three days with him in the mountains of Afghanistan in 1996.

He is the editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabia, and the author of The secret history of Al Qaeda."

Well, our neardowell president granted bin Laden's request with real gusto! Seems the Bush family has been enamored with the House of Saud for many years. They must have some 'spell' that they cast on the Bushes and lead them around with a ring through their noses. How many 9-11 bombers were from Saudi Arabia? Or, doesn't that count?

The American people have been buffaloed by the House of Saud and apparently the bush Family is like Jell0 in their hot little hands. We suspected that Dick Cheney was Bush's Puppetmaster, but we didn't realize that the House of Saud was the producer/director.

A question arises which is extremely important: Has the American electorate learned any lessons from the Bush fiasco? Asleep on 9-11, a war perpetrated on lies, 3600 American military deaths, and nearly a trillion dollars drained from the Treasury.

What is the lesson, my fellow Americans? What lesson did you miss 7 years ago and 3 years ago? Go ahead, give me the answer: what lesson did you sleep through in high school civics class?

Kenneth Parker: Artist Photographer

Another old post [July 07]

Kenneth Parker is a large-format landscape colorist working principally in remote pristine wilderness areas throughout the world where he has trekked and kayaked extensively. He is inexorably drawn to the elemental earth/ocean forces and their compelling magic, translating into arresting imagery the depths of these feelings, rich in power, radiant. His early experience as fine art color pioneer Eliot Porter’s field assistant helped to nurture a loving eye devoted to isolating and capturing the mysteries in nature that he struggled for decades to unravel as a research scientist in oceanography and global climate change. Paul Caponigro has also been a principal influence on his development as a consistent mentor to Parker since the mid-70s.