The Village Green

Gianna

2008-09-17T13:25:00.000+09:00

Towards A Better Understanding of the Prominence of the Epiclesis in Reformed Worship

2008-08-31T17:20:00.003+09:00

It has been said that a seemingly insignificant butterfly, flapping its wings in Brazil, can cause a hurricane to happen in Miami. Nadab and Abihu’s seemingly insignificant misdemeanor causes them to be consumed from a strange fire they had started. In either instance, with the hurricane season upon us this time of year, it is interesting to reflect upon the actions of God. One can look to the past from the present to re-examine the manifold actions of the Spirit in history. The proper meaning to be taken from natural disasters, significant or seemingly insignificant, is that they are currently understood to be beyond human control, but are not really out of control in the fullest sense of the meaning behind control.

Some time ago it seems, a particular prayer offered to the Spirit in the Eucharist, the epiclesis, was a major worship theme. It was considered an important action because the epiclesis acted as a safeguard from a community or its representative claiming responsibility for an action of God. The epiclesis is also an important subject to describe the presence of Christ in and with the community.

To call upon the Spirit to act, through a prayer, so that the Supper is what Christ intended it to be, is what gives the prayer of epiclesis its fearful place of prominence. What is important about the epiclesis is that it underscores the utter dependence we have upon God for our participation in the history of redemption. The epiclesis also demonstrates that the action of God is not at man’s disposal.

The Cactus Cuties Sing The National Anthem

2008-08-01T10:33:00.003+09:00

NT Wright "Space, Time, and Sacraments"

2008-06-23T13:07:00.001+09:00

Faust "The Light"

2008-06-08T08:20:00.004+09:00

Mephisto has a bet with an angel that he can corrupt Faust's soul. The Devil delivers the plague to the village where elderly alchemist Faust lives and though he prays to stop the death and starvation, nothing happens so Faust makes a bargain with the Devil. He has till the sands run out in an hourglass and Satan will do as he wishes. Faust uses this to help the people of the village but they shun him when they find he now cannot face a cross. Satan gives Faust back his youth and offers him earthly pleasures and a kingdom. Faust however falls in love with a girl but he is later framed for the murder of her brother by Satan and flees to hell. The girl has a child (by Faust) but is cast out into a blizzard where the child dies and she is sent to the stake as a murderess. Faust sees what is happening and demands Satan take him there. He arrives as the fire is started, to burn her. Satan robs Faust of his youth and with nothing left to live for, Faust plunges onto the fires too to be with the woman he loves. Though an old man, she recognizes Faust and sees him as a young man again as the fires consume them together. The angel reveals to Satan that he has lost the bet because love has triumphed over all. End.

The Galilean and Jerusalemite Moment

2008-06-02T16:22:00.007+09:00

It seems to be of some manner of importance at this point in time to semantically qualify the Eucharist as being not just the sacrament, but the sacrament of the Word. There are valid reasons for doing this. For one thing, when possible, it is important to rectify an atrophied condition whenever it is encountered, and perhaps this qualification of terms would assist towards that end.

There is a mystery involved in the real presence that is unfathomable, however, it is certain that having an imbalance going on between the sermon and Eucharist is like contemplating an un-hypostatic nature within Christ.

What happens when preaching is atrophied or even eliminated? What about the inverse -- when the Eucharist becomes atrophied or eliminated? Given one or the other, the Reformed have typically atrophied or dispensed with the Eucharist first. In comparison, the RCC is more apt to atrophy or dispense with preaching first, with preaching being differentiated from keeping a homily life. Both patterns of conduct are puzzling.

When the sermon and sacrament are disproportionate to one another, or even divorced from one another, something incomplete is going on. In order to clearly demonstrate the necessity of the sermon/sacrament coherence, appealing to confessional tradition is of little help at this point with its ambivalence on the issue. Perhaps the confessional tradition is ambivalent because the Word is inseparably intertwined in preaching and sacrament. Whatever the case, it would be going down the wrong path to ask which aspect of the Word carries precedence in grace.

Heinrich Vogel described the Word as being the truth of the sacrament, and the sacrament as being the reality of the Word. Preaching would be mere theorizing about God or simply ideas were it not for the sacrament of the Word. The Eucharist signifies what has been preached, and it proves confidence in the Word that has been heard to advantage.

It is understood from the life of Christ that a combination of sermon and sacrament of the Word are a reflection of the ministry of Christ. The primarily prophetic activity of the Galilean ministry and the primarily priestly activity of the ministry in Jerusalem should likewise find their expression in worship. The Galilean aspect of Christ’s ministry corresponds to the preaching of the Word, and the priestly Jerusalem aspect of Christ’s ministry corresponds to the sacrament of the Word.

Taxonomy Of Education Psychology

2008-03-01T13:37:00.002+09:00

Compulsory education presents a paradox to a community in that while it increases the goals of education, it also facilitates unsettling practices like social engineering experimentation.
There is something profoundly disturbing about our education system that is difficult to pin down, and there are some final thoughts that I have about why that is. Without a doubt, education, in its virtuous manifestation, is a good thing.
Innovation within a compulsory education system context has produced unprecedented technological sophistication and specialization, but this achievement has had questionable value in attaining an acceptable level of cultural excellence.
There are some interesting historical events that most likely contributed to the trade-off. It is precisely at this point that I, and probably a few other folks, have failed to be able to articulate an explanation for things like the resource/competitiveness mismatch. A good example of this resource/competitiveness mismatch is that for the amount spent on compulsory education, why is it that there is a 23rd international ranking result and an expensive set of social pathologies resulting from our technologically superior system?
For one thing, I would suppose that in order to achieve technological dominance of communist states, the concept of higher order thinking skills became a major compulsory education agenda item in the United States with the introduction of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives in 1956 by Dr. David R. Krathwohl and Dr. Benjamin S. Bloom.1 Part of this competition with communism required mimicking its behavior. On June 17, 1963, prayer was forbidden to be a part of the formal compulsory education system by a decision of the US Supreme Court.
However, innovation in these areas follows a strict legalist paradigm because of its compulsory aspect, and this introduces as many problems to education as it tries to resolve. The suppression of virtue is the destruction of a community because virtue is the building block of a community. It can probably be well demonstrated that compulsory education’s focus has shifted away from community building because it has repeatedly repudiated virtue in order to be able to emphasize the machinery that propels academics.
If virtue is not the focus, what is the focus? Dr. Bloom focused on cognitive learning and Dr. Krathwohl focused on the affective domain. Implicit in Dr. Bloom’s hierarchy is the assumption that students must pass through each level of learning as they move to more complex cognitive behavior. In the affective domain, Dr. Krathwohl also assumes that the learner will move from the lower levels to the higher. Both the cognitive and affective domains had completely matriculated into the compulsory education system curriculum by the 1990s.
What is impressive with the Bloom taxonomy approach is its attempt to quantify and therefore measure progress in learning, and only feasible and actionable verbs are used as a tool to characterize the process of learning. However, in the very middle of the Bloom taxonomy graphic is a mysterious spiral.
The first best thing about any educational system is that sound virtue is extolled so that a community is without question realized by it, and that is what the spiral in the center of the Bloom taxonomy could or should represent. This would be a return to community building. It is not so much the machinery used, the tools used, or the subject studied that attains the desirable quality of how to learn, but the virtue to learn something that can and should be engendered.

1. Bloom, B., Englehart, M. Furst, E., Hill, W., & Krathwohl, D. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York, Toronto: Longmans, Green.

Starry Epiphany

2008-01-12T11:59:00.000+09:00

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage’. When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. -- Matthew 2:17-10.

If the wise men that sought out the Christ by a Star were actually from the orient, Marco Polo was about a thousand years behind these wise men in discovering something in the other direction. Marco Polo examined a Persian site in his travels toward the orient that were purportedly the well-preserved remains of the wise men described in the biblical accounts. Marco Polo was specifically shown Persians thought to be the wise men, and they were three in number.

What if Marco Polo saw the actual remains of the wise men recorded in the biblical accounts? Then there were three total wise men that brought three gifts from afar, perhaps one each, and these wise men had made at least a 1,200 mile Star trek in their journey from Persia to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem. This evidence shown to Polo is inconclusive at this point because it is being made part of a pattern of known biblical artifact fakes that filled the cathedrals of Europe in medieval times.

What manner of phenomena was it that illumined the way for the wise men, at least first to Jerusalem? Was this ordinary cosmic activity that was then differentiated from extraordinary cosmic happenings going on in tandem or sequential order? Did something impossible in nature occur that had the Star alter its behavior, perhaps visible only to the wise men, in order to show the way to the exact house in Bethlehem? Many pieces of relational information can be examined pertaining to this very question. For example, could it be that the wise men signified the three star requirement of the Havdala? At this point in time, it is not certain what the precise number of wise men being described solely from the gospel accounts is, however, myrrh was in fact mixed with bitter wine at Sabbath time, and then refused by the Day Star Christ on the cross.

Revelation is progressive content, that is to say, the gospel accounts should only confirm what is already revealed as well as provide new information in space and time.

Despite prophecy indicating Bethlehem as the birthplace of the King, the wise men were being informed by the revelation of nature, yet it seems very possible that the special revelation given in the Star after visiting Herod was necessary to illuminate the specific house. Again, this is inferred, but the fact of the matter is that natural and special revelation are not in conflict in the events surrounding the birth of Christ; night star, morning star, or day star.

The exact chronology between the presentation of the infant Christ in the temple on day 41, the flight into Egypt, and the visit of the Magi are often disputed. This can be resolved to a happy place with a gospel harmonization of the parallel accounts addressing the period in question. What is certain is that the wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and then had a dream concerning Herod that caused them to depart the area swiftly. Right away, it is indicated in Luke 2:38 that the flight into Egypt did not occur in Luke’s stand-alone chronology because it says that right after the temple presentation, the family returned to Nazareth. However, couple Luke’s course of events with Matthew 2:12-13, and the chronology becomes quite clear that the Magi visit definitely occurred prior to the flight into Egypt in the sequence of events. This resolves some of the problems concerning the order of events, yet stopping with it there in such a rendering definitely makes Christ an infant, and the Magi are found to be worshipping an infant that had not grown at least into a catechized toddler.

So, the question remains whether the Magi and temple presentation events -- taken as a pair -- were before or after the flight into Egypt. It is impossible to rationally eliminate a brief trip to Egypt; therefore, it cannot be ruled out. The “massacre of the innocents” was about to commence, not unlike Pharaoh’s similar decree in the time of Moses, and it was a swift stroke. This time, the target was the King of the Jews; hence, Epiphany is about the Kingship of Christ.

The Purity Of Analog

2007-12-25T23:31:00.000+09:00

One of the paradoxes of the modern university system is the composite complexion of its many specialized disciplines. Yet, with something not unlike the hospital system of today springing up from religious orders or communities, the pre-university education establishment produced nothing greater than philosophy graduates from formal education church monasteries. In medieval times, one could make the case that philosophy was meant to be some sort of analog to theology, philo=man; theo=God, and all specific educational disciplines were then grouped under the general heading of philosophy. Everything to be intellectually learned other than prayer and liturgy, was grouped under “philosophy”. Of course, atheism philosophically rejects the existence of the real presence.

As history unfolded itself, philosophy definitely unanchored and marginalized itself into something quite different in its meaning for the modern age. In a world of already but not yet types and shadows, theology was to eventually become the “queen” of the sciences, proceeding as a thing given in the revelation. Philosophy was to become the “king” of the sciences, an activity proceeding from observation. Both king and queen were somehow wedded.

At the center of everything was the church.

If such a medieval social economy as this could demonstrate where philosophy really originated, it would appropriately defer to the church for the answer in those days, however, one could not really go past the academic activity right away to explain how that was. Philosophy is not really the purpose behind preaching, however, the origin of philosophy could be linked beyond the medieval monastery's academic focus to the acknowledgement found in the sacramental economy of the church itself.

Is it just a theological thing to say that preaching provides nothing different than the eucharist? Is there any philosophical aspect? With liquid gospel and eaten Word, what takes place in the activity of the eucharist is that those who accept the invitation show that they accept, by divine rite.

Faith Without Works Is...

2007-11-18T01:36:00.000+09:00

…Like the ministry of Christ without Good Friday. To communicate, or not to communicate? That appears to be the question here.

More to the point, is the Eucharist really a necessary part of worship? That is a good question to ask one’s self if emptiness is being experienced from an absence of communion. There is a lot written about how the Eucharist cannot be a necessary component to worship, but none of it really gels with the biblical account. For one thing, the force of the Eucharistic necessity question is answered in the command of Christ to do it. In case there was some misunderstanding pertaining to the establishment of the Eucharist as a practice, Christ revealed His Church with the New Covenant in the Upper Room at Jerusalem through a Passover meal divinely transformed into a Eucharist. Anamnesis is transformed from the OT remembrance feasts pertaining to divine interventions for Israel, to “Do this in remembrance of Me”. Even though He had not been crucified yet, His blood was shed for us. There was a catechumenal aspect to the Eucharist rite, but this education occurred as it was being demonstrated.

In 1922, British mathematician and educator Alfred Whitehead, probably most noted for his book “Symbolism: Its Meaning And Effect”, ISBN: 082321138X, wrote an interesting essay titled "The Rhythm of Education”. Whitehead discussed the learning processes of students through three distinct stages he identified as romance, precision and generalization. This description of a phase-based learning process for formal education had the first-order effect of a rhythmic progression. If education itself can be said to be categorized in these ways, romance was the initial discovery and investigation with the subject being learned. It then becomes an axiom that insisting on precision too soon could stifle the initiative to go beyond, although precision and exactness are a desirable quality to aspire to. Whitehead sought the metrics of rhythm applied to education. Whitehead’s argument is a completely conceptual approach to about how things are learned. However, it cannot be argued against that much learning occurs by doing. What and how are we teaching children?

Besides the command of Christ, it is irrelevant to attempt to pit the preaching of the Word against celebrating the Eucharist at this point because the Eucharist does not give anything different than preaching. However, what does take place is that those who accept the invitation show that they accept it.

Historical Entry Point Of The Dead Sea Scrolls

2007-11-12T19:38:00.000+09:00

It seems people do look after signs for various reasons. What of the signs of the times? If one were to look for the effect of divine providence through the perspective lens of recorded history, one would find evidence of an impression of the Spirit upon that history. The problem is, history by itself explains nothing and is chaotic and meaningless in its raw state. Without its Messiah, it could be said that a secularized version of history poisons everything by making it unreliable.

Much of the canon of scripture that is recognized by the modern church relied over the centuries on a Septuagint verification process. The Septuagint is a faithful translation of the predominantly OT Hebrew into Koine Greek, perfomed shortly before the incarnation of Christ. Although a great deal is lost in translations like the Septuagint because of language differences, verification of much of the canon of today involved the Septuagint reference technique as a tool of reliability sustainment, that is, until recently.

One simply uncanny occurrence happened just prior to the re-establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948. The sequence of events that unfolded near the Dead Sea in 1947 quickly garnered worldwide attention. The find was beyond strange, and immediately had a dramatic impact on the contemporaneous archeology, scholarship, and technology disciplines. In a series of caves, a providential discovery of a cultural treasure trove took place that not only cross-verified the historicity of the canonical books of the bible, but brought to life new information about the distant past.

In 1947, shortly after World War II, a Bedouin son of a shepherd went chasing after one of the mountain goats he was in charge of overseeing. Mountain goats are good hill climbers, and this one had decided to make a get-away up one of the cliffs of Qumran, a regional series of wadis overlooking the Dead Sea. The Bedouin boy went up the side of the cliff to retrieve the mountain goat.

Unable to lasso the fleeing animal, the boy threw stones in order to knock down the goat from a perch. One of the stones missed and landed in a cave. The stone shattered something inside this cave and at first caused a panic because the immediate concern was that someone’s property had been accidentally destroyed. After some time, curiosity overtook the boy and he reported the incident. What was then found were a series of clay pottery jars in the caves, and interestingly enough, some ancient scrolls within the jars. A detailed search of surrounding caves commenced, and in all, 11 caves were found to have similar clay jars with similar ancient scrolls and artifacts. Archeologists furthermore excavated the nearby ancient Qumran community and began to tie together various evidences of the Essene sect that were believed to have inhabited the area.

Later designated the Dead Sea scrolls by convention, a team of scientists examined the discovered collection of artifacts. The process of examining the Dead Sea scrolls was not without international intrigue, and controversy soon surrounded the project when legal action was taken by the Israeli government for cultural preservation reasons, somewhat prohibiting full scholarship to take place.

Several compositional oddities comprise the Dead Sea scrolls find. The approximate dating of the entire set was determined by resection to be around 100BC, making the undisturbed period of time the scrolls remained in the caves to be nearly 2,000 years in duration. Parchment, leather, and even copper was used to manufacture the scrolls with, which required an arsenal of modern experts and translators to accurately extrapolate what was written on each scroll through a painstaking archeological technique. Due to the extreme age and fragility caused by the deterioration of the scrolls over a long period of time, every effort to prevent destruction of a given scroll was to be made, in some cases taking scholars years to effectively accomplish a complete content rendering.

Another oddity about the Dead Sea scrolls inventory is the attempt to match recovered literary works whose titles were referenced in the bible but presumed unrecoverable today. The title matching effort from referenced books found within the bible itself yielded little with a Dead Sea scrolls comparison. The book referred to in the Pentateuch, the “Wars of the Lord” does not conclusively correlate to the Essene military instruction manual the “War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness” scroll that was the very first Dead Sea scroll found in cave 1. Some unknown works to modern minds were recovered, like the Temple Scroll, Testament of Levi, Peshers, Enoch Giants, Calendrical Document, The Allegory of the Vine, the Suffering Servant at Qumran, the Damascus Document, several hymns, and thousands of fragments that presented a formidable challenge for scholars to work with. Either the Essenes regarded what are considered to be extant works today as part of its canon when the scrolls were stored in the caves, or else the sect had an extremely rich literary culture that held high the extant works on par with the inspired, co-locating them together in the clay jars as revered writings. The Temple Scroll apparently included an additional Torah book when scholars were able to recover the scroll in its entirety in 1967, augmenting the already mysterious quality of the Dead Sea scrolls discovery.

In fact, all of the pre-incarnation Old Testament books of the bible had been definitively uncovered at Qumran except one, and along with these many other odd written works, one particular codex is believed by some to be the earliest existing fragments of the book of Mark. Aside from some unsuccessful work done to recover the book of Nehemiah, the most odd thing of the entire Dead Sea scrolls record is the fact that book of Esther did not turn up at all. Why is that? There is wild speculation about the omission of the book of Esther from such a rich and comprehensive find as the Dead Sea scrolls. For instance, it has been postulated that the book of Esther’s omission is its possible conflict with the esoteric systematic theology of the Essene sect. Many more theories exist about an Israeli government conspiracy, or a mere happenstance that Esther was not found. Interpretive speculation about the book of Esther’s missing in action status in the Dead Sea scrolls inventory has led to such presumptuous claims as Christ authoring these scrolls Himself. The necessary inference that Christ must have then been an early Essene follows the Christological authorship logic further.

Recent scholarly work on some of the odd extant Dead Sea scroll manuscripts have made a convincing case that some of the mysterious fragments contain “Proto-Esther” writings. The Dead Sea scrolls today continue to raise important questions across many different fields of specialized disciplines that directly bear upon the artifacts. The Dead Sea scrolls are still somewhat inconclusive about the questions they raise, not because of a lack of available data to scholars, but because the exhaustive scope of the work needed to be performed on these scrolls remains to be done. To this day, unresolved facets about the Dead Sea scroll contents remain highly speculative and controversial requiring amplification and closer illumination.

Reformed of Both Kinds

2007-10-10T01:03:00.000+09:00

For many, the irruption of the Kingdom in life is recognized in the event of Reformed worship, which is ostensibly a well-informed one. Many people do take delight in the theology or rational processes involved, however, not everyone can participate in that way. The Spirit blesses, so the church growth aspect has somewhat different measures of effectiveness than a secular organization.

Rediscovery of the glory in the practice of a genuinely Reformed eucharist is more than likely one measure of church growth effectiveness. The re-emergence of a shared appreciation for the eucharist truly is a source of happiness for me, and probably a lot of parishioners also. I have to pause every now and then to just take wonder, and that may be part of the meaning in the term eucharist.

One such rediscovery is to be found in the difficult question of sacrifice. This is something like referring to the eucharist as a feast when we understand a feast to be about the measure of consumption. However, that is more about the view of the physical presence in the elements. The eucharist is in fact a feast, but not in the secular sense of the meaning. Although there is a wealth of reliable and varied commentary on what goes on with the eucharist, the sacrifical aspect of the eucharist seems conspicuously absent.

If we carefully respect the sacrifice that is to be found in the eucharist, it is by no means a sacrifice of propitiation. It is still a sacrifice, but excluded by the sufficiency and uniqueness of the cross. So, the distinction would be between a sacrifice of propitiation, and a eucharistic sacrifice. The sacrament is the means with which the Spirit gives us to Christ and incorporates us into His salvation.

The Night Is As Bright As The Daylight

2007-09-23T23:57:00.000+09:00

One might consider that it is impossible to sanctify time outside of the liturgical calendar. The world offers its time to the Church and time is then sanctified. Space is sanctified in bread, water, and wine as these species are set aside from their secular purpose. Upon sanctification, time itself rediscovers its intelligibility, orientation, and meaning.

It is little wonder then that the creation remains synchronized with heaven in this prescribed manner. The theme is not so much social as it is liturgical. It is regulative; that is to say, it retains the quality of a high degree of orderliness. One might marvel at the design inherent in this theme, or just take comfort with it.

On a related matter, I have always wondered about Psalm 139, where the “Night is as bright as the day”. That particular passage always seems to capture my imagination for a number of reasons. How on earth is that possible? By itself, it is impossible. The new Jerusalem described in Revelation has no night. This makes sense. For now, it is already but not yet, and the eternal day is a prolepsis to us. Covenant renewal is anticipatory of the new Jerusalem.

When I was very young, I ran across several “woodprints”. Woodprints were the most fantastic artform to me then, and I still like them today, but do not see many of them. The art of woodprint is actually an ancient art technique, first mastered in China around 960 before becoming popular in Europe in the 1400s. It is an extremely rare technique. Woodprints are made from a flat piece of wood by the artist carving into the wood to make a representation, and then putting ink on it so that many copies could be made when paper was pressed against it. One of the more striking woodprints I encountered as a boy was a black ink Psalm 139.
Thankful for this encounter with woodprints early in life, Psalm 139 will always speak to me:

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all.
You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,"
Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day
Darkness and light are alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You wickedly, and Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; they have become my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Connection Speed Tester

2007-07-14T04:05:00.000+09:00

Blog Rating

2007-07-09T05:44:00.000+09:00

Mingle² - <

Sharing Dominion

2007-06-17T14:00:00.000+09:00

This writing is inspired by the Cosmology Curiosity team. Cosmology Curiosity is beneficial to understanding the cosmos as a picture of redemption, which is the ultimate purpose of the cosmos, and an encouragement to all scientists. We are all likewise cosmological prodigal sons.

When an electron falls into a sub-orbit around a nucleus, energy is given off in the form of light. Light is the fastest known speed of any substance in nature.

Einstein’s entire physics premise depends upon a constant light-speed in a vacuum, also denoted in physics as “c”, as being a universal constant, at precisely 186,282.397 miles per second(299,792,458 meters per second). Prior to the conclusion of this vacuum light-speed constant, Einstein was indecisive on arriving at a constant light-speed, and even proposed super-luminal light particles he termed tachyons, as exceeding the natural speed of light. Einstein was certain at the time that light could not be slowed down. All references to light-speed are implied to be vacuum based unless specified.

At the Canadian Université de Moncton, physicist Alain Haché made history in 2002 by sending pulses at three times light speed over a long distance for the first time, transmitted through a 120 meter cable made from a coaxial photonic crystal using a “group velocity” technique.

Beginning in 1999 and culminating in February 2007, a triumphant march toward the slowing down of light in a vacuum occurred in the United States. Dr. Lene Hau, originally from Denmark, leads the Harvard team in this discovery. In order to achieve a slowing down and stopping of light, Dr. Hau employed a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein Condensate.
The Bose-Einstein Condensate(BEC) is artificially replicated by cooling down select sodium-23 or rubidium isotope atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero in a container. When this occurs, the subatomic bosons collapse the atoms into their lowest quantum state producing the new form of matter. This form of matter is a super-fluid with the super-cold thickness of molasses, yet energy is not lost with a viscosity factor of zero. The BEC is a quantum state of matter, and was first predicted by Einstein in 1925, however his condensate manuscript was lost and then recently discovered at Leiden University(Netherlands) in 2005.

The BEC is a vortex of several thousand atoms. A Bose-Einstein Condensate is useful to Dr. Lene Hau’s team in that the BEC atoms behave in a lock-step fashion, and light can then be tinkered with as a result. As a light beam is fired into the BEC atom cloud, it slows down for a fraction of a second, which is a long time considering the speed at which the light travels. Slow light is made productive using a capturing BEC a distance away which receives a meta-copy of the light information and forms another light beam. A new, perfect communications encryption capability is envisioned.

In 2000, using rubidium isotope atoms that naturally repel one another, a Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics team raised the BEC magnetic field strength using a BEC manipulator. The condensate atoms instantly flipped to repulsion, imploded, and then shrank to undetectable levels. Suddenly, the BEC exploded, blowing off about two-thirds of its 10,000 or so atoms. About half of the atoms in the condensate disappeared. The energy state of an atom near absolute zero should not be enough to cause an implosion. Due to the fact that supernova explosions are in reality implosions, the explosion of a collapsing BEC is nick-named "bosenova”.

Cathedral Pictures

2007-06-03T08:06:00.001+09:00

Animusic

2007-06-03T07:14:00.000+09:00

Crazy Surfing

2007-05-19T21:41:00.000+09:00

YouTube Crazy Surfer Video

More on the Benefits of Wal-Mart

2006-08-29T12:31:00.000+09:00

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=082206D

Also, check out this worthwhile project: http://www.flowproject.org/

A Short Book Review

2006-07-24T19:04:00.000+09:00

For John Calvin, the rite of baptism, among other things, signified entrance into the church – baptism being a rite that is ordinarily performed by the parents and child, and administered by the church. What does one do when a participant in the baptism rite, the child, is then dismissed as being an insignificant, non-active (passive) participant, for reasons of not possessing and/or communicating to the satisfaction of the elite, the resultant intellectual machinery? How is it that faith ever got blended with intellect in such a manner? These are all very interesting, high-impact questions to ponder.

One of the more significant commentaries on the correlation of faith to baptism is Paedofaith, (Lusk, 2005), ISBN: 0975391429 which recently appeared in print. Paedofaith is an astute analysis of the essence and operation of faith in life. Since many stages of human development characterize various denominational theological distinctives about faith, Paedofaith highlights all stages of life in one composite, so that faith is portrayed rightly as the unfolding of a flower in the providence of life from the instant of conception onward. Paedofaith accounts for faith in the womb, and delivers a comprehensive statement about faith in the classical manner. Lusk reasons on system with the force of logic, ostensibly to speak to the learned – and one might think to those who claim to have examined themselves.

Consider the following short excerpt:

“The promises are already applicable to the covenant child before baptism”1.

Some Reformed commentators have speculated as to the estate of the covenantal pre-baptism group of persons, and this from several mysterious vectors, at times embellishing the grace involved in the question of an untimely pre-baptism death of anyone belonging to the area in question. For example, Spurgeon held the position that some special form of redeeming grace is maintained for all pre-baptism persons, which Spurgeon certified to be of an elect status, if they were to die before their baptisms. A few problems with the Spurgeon view would necessarily be on the one hand that we now know with certainty the composition of the elect, when on the other hand, that is not possible for us to know perfectly at this time, so there is a contradiction at work. In addition, it does not account for conversions to the faith found later in life that would allow for the introduction of a primrose age of accountability scheme to be qualitatively inferenced. Furthermore, since apostasy is possible, then apostasy would then only be coming into force at baptism, or some point post-baptism in the Spurgeon system. If this special grace that Spurgeon mentions is somehow imputed to all pre-baptism persons, then the Spurgeon view appears to be a diminishing effect on the efficacy of a baptism, in that, something negative happens when a baptism takes place, as if now the possibility of apostasy is then infused to the recipient, and recipient cooperation with post-baptism grace is the determinant of the apostasy threat outcome. These are initial thoughts many have pondered about grace, but never really had a resource such as Paedofaith to resolve the inevitable questions that normally arise.

At the risk of overstating the case, it appears that at the time of this writing, the Paedofaith book remains in a state of flux in its contemporary Christian cultural setting, however, it is too early to tell if the message that Paedofaith delivers to the broader community will be appreciated as a genuinely Reforming work, particularly for referencing from the bible on the subject. Upon an initial reading, the reader is impressed in epiphany-like fashion about the community we all share together in the same essence of faith.

1. Lusk, Paedofaith, p.45

Sacramental Condescension

2006-07-20T10:48:00.000+09:00

Angels play an interesting role in the course of events in human history. Although angels are superficially defined as being messengers, there is much more to the necessary place of angelic beings in reality. Angelology is frequently misunderstood because of the introduction of folklore and traditions that are unfaithful, however, the Reformed have a sound basis of procession in mapping out the field of revelation on the subject of the angels. Most Reformed studies on the angels expound on the elect and fallen condition of the angels as an important facet of their estate. This emphasis is merely a statement about their relation to the Deity.

There are a lot of moving pieces to the study of angels that should be settled beforehand. An angel is a created being, therefore, an angel emanates from a created point on into eternity, as opposed to the quality of everlasting to everlasting. Angelology does not support the conjecture of a purgatory. Gender problems are resolved by angelology as all in the church become the sons of God [Galatians 3:26]. The law is put into effect by angels as mediators of the law [Galatians 3:19b] representing two parties as a matter of mediatory fact. St Augustine posits the most formidable logical deductions about the creation point of the angels in his third century book, the City of God. The distinction of the Deity, the angels, and mankind are well-established in Reformed angelology, that is, until the introduction of the problem of the theophany. A theophany is a visible manifestation -- the form along with the content being delivered together in one -- a change in the mode of revelation from a previously vocal centered expressive mode.

Furthermore, Geerhardus Vos makes a strong case for the sacrament in a most splendid analysis of the Angel of Jehovah -- a cosmic curiosity of the Genesis 16:7; 22:11; 24:7, 31:11, and 48:16 passages, and it is evident from this analysis that the impact of angelology on the Christian religion is formidable. The peculiarity about the Angel of Jehovah who at first distinguishes, and then identifies Himself as Jehovah -- in the same utterance -- is at first perplexing.

Vos maintains that the sacramental intent of the Angel of Jehovah is to be understood as the desire of God to approach closely to His people to assure them in the most manifest way of His interest and presence with them. Not only is the frequency of the special revelation to be noted by the relation of these theophany type events to the reader, but the now more manifold mode of the special revelation should not be overlooked.

The most important concept involved in Vos’s analysis of the sacramental nature of the Angel of Jehovah is that there is no necessary connection with God’s nature in the sacrament. That is, even the incarnation itself is not the result of any inherent necessity in God. We need God incarnate for redemptive reasons, but the visible, physical form of meeting this need is not attributed to anything inherent in the nature of God.

Vos describes the Angel of Jehovah situation as a sacramental condescension to meet the frailties and limitations of man. Vos’s conclusion is that the Angel is truly divine, for otherwise He could not have discharged the sacramental function of assuring man that God was with him. Not only in nature, but also by function, the Angel of Jehovah is distinguished from the ordinary angels. The divine Person in Christ is uncreated, because Deity and creation are mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, as to His human nature, Jesus was created. The only difference in this respect between Him and the Angel is that under the Old Testament, the created form was ephemeral, whereas through the incarnation, it has become eternal.

2006-07-08T18:46:00.000+09:00

Monty Python - Argument Clinic

Wal-Mart - one of the great shining examples of what a market economy can achieve

2006-07-02T05:41:00.000+09:00

Wal-Mart is one of the great shining examples of what a market economy can achieve. If I were to give a tour of the United States to visitors from a socialist country, who are used to experiencing chronic shortages of almost everything, Wal-Mart would be one of the first places I would take them. It is a perfect symbol of one of the most remarkable things that we have — an enormous variety of high quality, low cost products that are available to virtually everyone throughout the United States.

Wal-Mart stores are indeed impressive sights, housed in gigantic structures, capable of serving many thousands of customers every day. Wal-Mart's most common type of store — the Supercenter — offers customers an indoor, air-conditioned shopping area larger than three football fields. These shopping behemoths provide so much — such a staggeringly huge range of well-made products — that a person could practically live his whole life without having to shop anywhere else.

Walk into a Wal-Mart Supercenter and look around; the place is amazing! It boggles the mind to think of the enormous complexity that must be involved in running a store that accomplishes all this, which is truly responsible for an improvement in our standard of living. For Wal-Mart to provide so much, for so many, as efficiently, reliably, and inexpensively as it does is an economic miracle. Never in human history have so many people had such affordable and convenient access to all the products that Wal-Mart offers, and the number of people with this access is growing all the time. As Wal-Mart's late founder Sam Walton said:

"…we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished; we've just begun."

This is a company that deserves to be praised and admired the world over.

read the rest here: http://www.mises.org/story/2219

Conclusions About the Critics

Many of Wal-Mart's critics are socialists who probably resent the fact that Wal-Mart provides an increasingly clear example of how capitalism can shower abundance on its entire population, as their socialist utopias never could. Many of the critics seem to be motivated by fear of change and fear of economic progress. They have a deep distrust of economic freedom and see doom and gloom around every corner as an economy is advancing. In the past, people like this denounced innovations like the assembly line and mass production for many of the same reasons that they denounce Wal-Mart today. They said that these new methods of production would reduce us all to miserable cogs in a machine enslaved to our employers. It is ironic that their intellectual descendants now panic at the thought of losing assembly-line manufacturing jobs overseas because of Wal-Mart. The next generation of ignorant critics will probably complain about the loss of Wal-Mart jobs to more efficient producers.

The truth about Wal-Mart's critics is that they aren't really interested in economics at all, but they know that in order to be taken seriously they have to pretend to be addressing the issue from a rational point of view. Economic science is complicated and poorly understood by most people, so propagandists often use it as a tool to lend credibility to their arguments. By misusing economic concepts, terminology, and statistics, Wal-Mart's critics have been able to give many people the impression that they are on the side of science. I hope this essay has demonstrated the utter fallaciousness of that impression.

The Wal-Mart critics' understanding of economics isn't much better than could be expected of a small child. They are incapable of seeing anything except the most direct effects of an action or policy in the short-term. If a child sees something he wants, he takes it, and so do Wal-Mart's critics. Never mind if this causes destruction and decline in the long-term for the economic system as a whole and unemployment and impoverishment for those they are allegedly trying to help.

Everything that the critics claim to be against is caused by the policies that they seek to enact. They claim to be against unemployment, but then seek to avoid unemployment by enacting the very thing that causes unemployment. They claim to be against wage earner impoverishment, but then seek to enact policies that would cause such impoverishment. Wal-Mart's critics are the economic equivalent of hysterical quack doctors running around trying to cure an imaginary health epidemic by injecting people with real diseases.

The Communion Of Saints

2006-05-31T02:37:00.000+09:00

A Dialogue Between The Minister And The Child
1560AD Geneva Catechism
John Calvin

97. What is meant by the word Catholic or Universal?

A. It is meant to signify, that there is only one Head of the faithful, so they must all be united in one body, so that there are not several churches but one only, which is extended throughout the whole world (Eph. 4:15; 1 Cor. 12:12 and 27).

98. And what is the meaning of what follows concerning the communion of saints?

A. That is added to express more clearly the unity which exists among the members of the Church. Moreover by this we are given to understand, that all the benefits that the Lord gives to the Church, are for the good and salvation of every Church, because they all have communion together.

The Real Presence

2006-05-27T23:18:00.000+09:00

CATECHISM
OF
THE CHURCH OF GENEVA
BEING A FORM OF INSTRUCTION FOR CHILDREN
THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST.
DEDICATION.
JOHN CALVIN TO THE FAITHFUL MINISTERS OF CHRIST THROUGHOUT EAST FRIESLAND, WHO PREACH THE PURE DOCTRINE OF THE GOSPEL

Q. Do we therefore eat the body and blood of the Lord?

A. I understand so. For as our whole reliance for salvation depends on him, in order that the obedience which he yielded to the Father may be imputed to us just as if it were ours, it is necessary that he be possessed by us; for the only way in which he communicates his blessings to us is by making himself ours.

Q. The Supper then was not instituted in order to offer up to God the body of his Son?

A. By no means. He, himself alone, as priest for ever, has this privilege; and so his words express when he says, "Take, eat." He there commands us not to offer his body, but only to eat it. (Hebrews 5:10; Matthew 26:26.)

The Sacred Harps

2006-05-25T00:41:00.000+09:00

Often, a pleonasm is understood to mean a word or phrase which is unnecessary, clichéd, or even wrong. However, a pleonasm can also be simply an unremarkable use of idiom. There is also syntactic pleonasm, where function words become optional as part of inflection, or even redundancy. Psalm 3:1 is pleonastic – “O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me”. Pleonasm is one of the building blocks of the chiastic literary structure that is predominant in many places of the bible.

An idiom is a term or phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through conventional use. In linguistics, idioms are figures of speech that contradict the principle of compositionality.

Christ sang hymns with the disciples (Matt 26:29-30) "But I tell you that I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's Kingdom." When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Aside from hymns taken from the Bible itself, the earliest hymn still in use today is probably O Gladsome Light. In the fourth century, Basil the Great referred to it as already being a rather old hymn.

The human voice is many things, and it is a musical instrument. A tone is a musical sound, as well as tone being a prolific temperament, or parlance of writings. A parlance is idiomatic to an utterance that is consistent within itself, or an entire language system.
A musical tone has duration, pitch, power, and quality, which is much different than the literary idea of tone. Music theory is definitely a quantified, mathematical enterprise, even in fractal types of music construction.

Examining musical tone characteristics closer, there is pitch, which is the relative highness or lowness of a musical tone, and the power of a musical tone is its loudness or softness. Rythmics treat musical tone durations, Melodics treat the pitch of musical tones, and Dynamics treats the power and quality of musical tones. Building the meter and measure of musical notation into a mature working system has been a distinguishing hallmark of western civilization.

As with any communicative device, there is a sender, receiver, and their accompanying mitigating effects involved.

One of the rather unrecognized cultural contributions originating from the United States is the use of a cappella shape-note musical notation singing, which has developed the folklore name of The Sacred Harps. Shape notes were rudimentally used by gregorian chant in the twilight of western musical notation, but not at all as used in groups like The Sacred Harps. There are several variants of this unique musical form. Not only is the cultural output of The Sacred Harps exceedingly high, it is a community dependent form of human activity as well. The work of The Sacred Harps has the added effect of being a community-builder as a built-in feature.
Typically, The Sacred Harps groups have a single director, and at least a singer for each possible shaped note. The director will set the pitch as singers set themselves to it, so there is a brief prelude to each piece sung. Then, a very powerful vocal sound is created with entire sections focused on its part in the singing activity, and the hearer can isolate one section highlighting a harmony with ease, which is not so easily distinguishable in traditional forms of singing. As the unique shape-note music is read by the singer or section, the singer(s) follow(s) that particular shaped note throughout the entire musical score. Well-written shaped-note music has a charming effect when performed in at least mid-sized groups.

Most musical score selections of The Sacred Harps are written with a strong Christian influence to them. For example, “Amazing Grace”, an arguably pleonastic title for a piece of sacred music, is well done by the unique sound of The Sacred Harps.

Priesthood Intimation

2006-05-02T05:59:00.000+09:00

Although many people see the beginnings of Romans chapter 13 to be referring only to the new covenant arrangement for civil governments and its revealed originating power in the trinity, John Calvin frequently examines a two-fold view in a co-existent governing authority power structure of a civil and ecclesiastic design in his writings. When we honor those placed in authority, we are acknowledging the sovereignty of God in honoring both those in our civil and ecclesiastical governments with a trust in the powers that be, and in doing so, in the One ordaining them. Prayer acknowledges the sovereignty of God and the meek inherit the earth -- meek as in one who has marshaled his strengths into the service of God.

This all might be taken speculatively as beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, but the beauty of order is everywhere and well-displayed in a survey of the law, and to see its relation to the priesthood is a great thing. The moral law reveals the character of who God is as a person. When we see that the moral, civil, and ceremonial law distinctives in the bible are so intertwined that it is clearly a form of violence to pull apart and isolate them from any relation to one another, it becomes more clear as a matter of revelational progressivism that it is a similar form of violence being done to create some phantom widget and insert it between the new covenant civil and ecclesiastical governments -- particularly when it lays claim to a shred of neutrality in doing so.

“Priest” As Right English For The Ancient Latin Antecedent “Presbyter”
The paternal hereditary Aaronic priest-type Kohen is one of the priest-presbyter pointers to the eternal Christ-Melchizedek priesthood. Levite priest-types point similarly to the most Excellent, just as the priesthood of all believers points to Christ as the High Priest. The priesthood of all believers feeds on Christ, the High Priest, in the Eucharist of the real presence.

It has been pointed out and is a just all too common altruism that when a baby is brought home from the hospital for the first time, we ordinarily speak English. Even though babies do not understand our babbling at first, it is hoped that they learn English proper by it. 1 Peter 2:9 references a royal priesthood of all believers for the same reason. This new covenant priesthood of all believers is a comprehensive statement, and it underscores merely one aspect of the Reformed understanding of Christ’s High Priestly office.

It is a very interesting thing to consider protestant repulsion of the term priesthood here simply on the grounds that the term priest is being used. Priest is an English word, (originally spelled prester) whereas the antecedent term Presbyter is from the now defunct language of Latin. Priest is actually more appropriate and fitting in transliterating 1 Peter 2:9 from Greek to English than inserting, for example, the expression “the presbyterhood of all believers”.

Although this gives pause to think, one cannot but then wonder that Christ as High Priest is more befitting than “Christ the High Presbyter” since He is a priest. Even worse would be “the priestesshood of all believers”. What has happened over time is that language connotation forces have shifted the English word priest all the way back to the ancient word presbyter, and then somehow the gender-neutral term elder evolved out of it all opening up a semantic assault, and now out of the blue, the term priestess is further fractionating the connotation away from an objective and perspicuous denotation. This is driving in the phantom widget again using gender confusion as the vehicle.

This juvenile shade of meaning condition we find ourselves in with terms, recently introduced for reasons unclear, presents post-modern challenges to the community, and wreaks havoc on clarification on account of gender being used as a device of division. A nine day old infant is elder to an eight day old infant, and regardless of the gender of a younger or elder infant, as it is still a priesthood of all believers. Whatever the case, there has been little ability thus far to bifurcate a feminine-only slant into the ancient Latin term presbyter.

St. Paul indicates an apostolic concern about gender confusion, however, in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free man, male or female, for you are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). In verse 27 preceding: “If you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise”.
Melchizedek was a priest and king of Salem who blessed Abraham, bringing out bread and wine, and Levi, yet unborn, paid tithes in the person of Abraham. Since Levi’s personhood began in the mind of God, it is clear that new covenant royal priesthood communion with the real presence eating and drinking of the High Priest Christ is a devastating act of war on antichrist, and since that promise of His is true, the meek just go about inheriting the earth.

What Order of Magnitude is a Numerical Name

2006-04-16T03:17:00.000+09:00

The DaVinci Code novel plays upon a theme of mathematical giftedness or inquisitiveness, and a kind of mental insanity.  The “mesmerizing quality” of the writing is superficial pop culture fluff, but the book is unique in that the writer is probably a multi-millionaire from it, and really, no one has explored the areas covered in this way before, at least many honestly think it is unique.

Numbers utilized in the bible signify things.  Significance can be correlated to magnitude some of the time.  A careful study of the significance assigned to biblical numbers eviscerates the impression of the Spirit upon the Word.  For instance, the Lord’s Prayer has a gematria that defies duplication in factors of the number seven found in it.  The trinity in theophany is signified by the numbers three and four.  E. Bullinger attempted to capture the significance of numbers appearing in the bible in his lengthy Number in Scripture.  The usual objections to such studies makes little sense because an entire book of the bible is entitled Numbers, and the sovereignty of God is revealed magnificently in number.

The numerical significance found in the bible provides yet another assurance to the superlative Word, a sure “lamp to the feet”.

The mathematical paradox of bi-infinite sets presents an interesting angle on church polity when one contemplates church governance arrangements.  After all, the only difference between the genuine Christian denominations in the USA, (or the Christian religion elsewhere in the world) is the formal arrangement of the various governments.  The impact of these disparate polities is enormous on legalities like soteriology, and in the various mappings of worship format.

The Reformed position concerning church polity seems dedicated to embodying the epistle-based derivative of church government within the “boundary” of the canon alone.  This curiosity seems to give apostolic authority to the Reformed heritage without the continuity underpinnings provided in an apostolic succession.  Although there is a kind of linear boundary to the canon in the concept of a closed canon, there is very much a depth to the canon that is infinite in quality.  That would necessarily make the canon eschatological, being fulfilled in the last Adam as a yet future revelation in His return.

Church growth does tell us that very little is really understood today about the bible, and that the 3rd Person of the trinity communicates in and with the Word a living narrative throughout the course of time in pneumatological procession.  The estate of a closed canon at this point in time does not really equate to having a closed mind about the canon though.  This raises the question as to the catholicity of the Reformed polity, as well as the question of polity ornamentation itself.

John Calvin, a scholastic, wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion dedicating it to the French royalty of his day at the time of publication.  At the time, there was great tension within France, as two different church polities developed alongside one another.  The two church bodies were not identical in governance, but both were dedicated to the triune God.  Book iv, chapters iv-viii of the Institutes somewhat examined church polity at that time, ostensibly because church polity was a core distinguishing feature of the legalities and polities in conflict.  Specifically, Calvin commented on polity from the Reformed perspective in the classic constraint of revealed canon alone, arguably a move toward an apostolic authority driven explanation.  Calvin remarked particularly on the Roman polity in this manner:  “In regard to those whom they call Cardinals, I know not how it happened that they rose so suddenly to such a height”.  Although questioning the validity of the papacy is the thrust of the discussion found in this part of the Institutes, a study of the office of the Cardinal is much more telling in the Reformed heritage on the force of the polity question.  Oddly, it is to be noted that Calvin rarely referred to Aquinas in his Institutes or elsewhere.

A mathematical expression involving set theory can be constructed to represent a duality of infiniteness, and a connection from it can probably be established with competing Roman and Reformed church polities.  Infinity seems to take on a division of some kind in the statement “a duality of infiniteness”.  To clarify this validly reasoned paradox of reality, it was considered carefully at one time in the past that the natural numbers, considered as sets, like the set {} of “all even whole numbers”, was established as a premise, like in a syllogism, which, when considered by itself, had to be an infinite set.  This raised the now esoteric question about the set {} of “all odd whole numbers”.  Taken together, these sets had no intersections, were correlated to one another like mirrorings, yet with separate, distinct infinite virtues inherent to them.  With a starting point at zero, it was established that the set of negative numbers also has no limit when considered in this fashion.

Set theory has a relevance to the somewhat incomprehensible idea of the infinite, establishing a valence of sorts about it.  Calculus can enter the picture from valences with dependent and independent function mappings as a development of sorts.  Furthermore, irrational numbers can fit into complex set theories, like pi and e, found to be useful in unique syllogism arrangements.  Additionally, prime numbers are theoretically infinite in this way.  These considerations treat the number types consideration for the most part.  The mathematical paradox of dualing infinite sets is typically concerned though with equa-distant set meterings.

The set theory dual-infinite paradox was resolved in the 19th century by assigning a magnitude to the number set under consideration.  A coefficient representing a given infinite set had a magnitude ordering assigned to it in the coefficient notation.  The set numbers are distinct from one another in the peculiar arrangement under consideration, and are referred to as cardinal numbers.

As regards to the Christian religion, it is peculiar that Cardinals were formerly mere presbyters of the Roman church, and were far inferior to bishops prior to their unprecedented and contemporary ascendancy.  As for the idea of having Cardinals, there really is no reference to this office, nor are such powers to be explicitly found in the bible, but there are probably implicit foundations that the Reformed are quick to ignore.  John Calvin elaborates on the question in this manner:  “Let us remember what was said of the duty of presbyters and bishops.  If we bring the office of Cardinals to that test, we will acknowledge that they are nothing less than presbyters”.  Even a parallel, co-existent polity concept presents a serious challenge to the origins of the office and powers of a Cardinal.  It is rather unorthodox to insist that transcendent supra-church offices do not exist, or are not enumerated in the epistles, however, a presbyter is just that.  The Roman church might wonder what the difference between a Cardinal and a Presbyterian Synod moderator is though.  Whatever the case, if a kind of magnitude is assigned the presbyter, like magnitude is assigned in the cardinal numbers, there is definitely a transcendence aspect being described in doing so.

Anti-Credocommunion

2006-04-11T20:55:00.000+09:00

In a way, there is no such thing as “Credocommunion”, not in reality.
Nor is there even “Paedocommunion”.  There is Communion.  Either it is a Communion eucharist, involving the real presence, or it is not.  It would be beyond obtuse to classify the sacrament on an age-based variable.  The sacrament is one.

This is just food for thought.

The revival of a much unappreciated and vital worship practice, specifically, the practice of Communion with Christ, has greatly advanced the kingdom of Christ in recent years; a practice that a faithful remnant has preserved by ensuring that all baptized people in covenant with God are actually worship participants.  “Once in the covenant, always in the covenant” has taken on the contemporaneous mantra of a cliché that is philosophically challenged today because of various man-made Communion participant distinctions.  You have heard it said “You must examine yourself”, however, Christ said “Unless you have the faith of a child, you will in no way inherit the kingdom of God”.  Much of the time, one must wonder then that a worship service is possibly a rejection statement of the free operation of the Spirit, because Christ actually emphasized his point with a child that He showed the audience as an example of the kingdom, perhaps a child only 9 days old, maybe a little older, but unmistakably pre-adolescent.

The question now becomes “At what precise age should someone’s elders prevent them from receiving Communion anymore?”  In the interest of a unified body, I am concerned that once old enough, Communion will be shut off from various persons in question, much like some detached Communion machine that churches perform by throwing the switch into the off position at some contrived point in time.  Age should have no bearing on the question.  Furthermore, there is no disputation that age is correlated to health, which has a lot to do with some questionable Communion practices.

The reason for an anti-credo Communion concern emanates from recent high-visibility media events concerning old and infirm people.  In fact, this slippery slope of withholding Communion reached now lows in the recent Terri Shiavo defacto death penalty case.  In a depraved act, while still alive, Shiavo, who had been afflicted throughout her 30s, was finally withheld from receiving Communion at the age of 41.  This action is depraved in that her social crime was never disclosed, and her separation from Christ is not evident.  Then the feeding tube altogether was removed from her excommunicated self by some hand of doom.  One young boy was even arrested trying to bring her a glass of water as her struggle for life became convulsive from forced deprivation.
It would not have mattered if she was 3 years old, 90 years old, 20 years old, or 939 years old when this happened, death was not by natural means.

One is led to presume from this event that it is only a matter of time before this dangerous precedent begins to affect those showing a very minute, common, and natural form of dementia brought on by the normal aging process, where the short-term memory is slowly and progressively degraded.

Theoretically, elders could assess a person as having a decline of short-term memory with a “proof text” supported discernment of some sort, and the Shiavo precedent could then be applied to come up with an age of accountability formula that effectively shuts off Communion at the age of 40.  Once that happens, various reasons could be derived to take this down to select persons at the age of 21, then 19 years of age, then so on and so forth.  Since the chance of Communion might bring an unworthy participant to the table in these age ranges, then the next conclusion could be that all should be banished in the median age ranges to prevent a misapplication of Communion from occurring.  In this not too far out scenario, only toddlers would then be allowed Communion with any degree of certainty.

In the most extreme example imaginable, anyone caught receiving Communion that is beyond the age of accountability will have their baptism certificates officially revoked.

This all leads to being made in the image of God, and how long the image of God is true in them.  If Shiavo were, on the other hand, withheld baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, vis-a-vis Communion, it would probably cause just as much as stir as the excommunication did for the same reason that the sacrament really is one.

In conclusion, Communion is ordinarily consummated at baptism, and this mystery of the fellowship has a great deal more to do with what goes on in Communion itself than the age of any individual or social position.  To divide and withhold Communion on social distinction is the Corinthian church melodrama; a melodrama brought on by the fact that there is no ordinary means of salvation outside the church, and the Corinthian problem is unacceptable at the Communion table.

Why are comedians overwhelmingly male?

2006-04-11T11:59:00.000+09:00

On a lighter note, why are comedians overwhelmingly male?

Killing Babies Compassionately?

2006-03-29T14:30:00.000+09:00

Killing Babies, Compassionately
The Netherlands follows in Germany's footsteps.
by Wesley J. Smith
in The Weekly Standard

Wesley Smith looks at the comparisons being made between current Dutch infant euthanasia and infant euthanasi performed by the Germans from 1938 to 1945.

Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?

2006-02-26T06:20:00.000+09:00

See this article on the ethics of embryonic stem cell research written by Reason magazines science correspondent Ron Bailey. What is the best answer to his question - if we could detect healthy unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb, do we have a duty to rescue them? Why is it ok for embryos to be lost naturally, but it isn't ok to allow embryos not needed for IVF procedures and such to die? I would like to know your thoughts on how to respond to this question.

What are we to think about the fact that Nature (and for believers, Nature's God) profligately creates and destroys human embryos? John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, testified before the President's Council on Bioethics that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in women's normal menstrual flows unnoticed. This is not miscarriage we're talking about. The women and their husbands or partners never even know that conception has taken place; the embryos disappear from their wombs in their menstrual flows. In fact, according to Opitz, embryologists estimate that the rate of natural loss for embryos that have developed for seven days or more is 60 percent. The total rate of natural loss of human embryos increases to at least 80 percent if one counts from the moment of conception. About half of the embryos lost are abnormal, but half are not, and had they implanted they would probably have developed into healthy babies.

So millions of viable human embryos each year produced via normal conception fail to implant and never develop further. Does this mean America is suffering a veritable holocaust of innocent human life annihilated? Consider the claim made by right-to-life apologists like Robert George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, that every embryo is "already a human being." Does that mean that if we could detect such unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb, we would have a duty to rescue them and try to implant them anyway?

"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined," declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

....

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb122204.shtml

The Shekinah Glory

2006-02-23T22:57:00.000+09:00

I have been carefully reading commentary on the curious Shekinah Glory, and this seems to be interesting because it is not heard that often, and the name has turned up some enlightening facts pertaining to these cosmological reflections.  A few lead-ins are necessary to tie the subject together on the cosmology point.  This is further necessary in order to present the gospel in the stars to someone.
If the universe is causal -- which it is, from a complementary worldview of science and theology -- then how does that correlate that to the “standard” cosmology?  By what standard?  …one might ask, but that is omni-directional.  God reveals Himself through the special revelation and the general revelation.  Given this information, one might ask though then how the two points of cause and effect relate here between special and general revelation.
The Shekinah Glory is the divine illumination, the effulgence as it were, and in Hebrew He is given a female gender in the Shekinah ascription.  This goes back to Adam as image, from whom was taken Eve, together both in the image, and of one made He them.  Ontologic trinitarian studies specialize in the relations within the godhead, and the activities of the trinity are grouped into the economic trinity field of studies.

Christ is a hypostatic union, one hundred percent God, and one hundred percent man, at the same time.  This seems to be a paradox to us, but since God is immutable, the hypostasis being omnipresent both outside of time, and within time; the Logos entering time and space in the incarnation, then there can be no blending of the 2 natures, or the striking of an imbalance between the two.
Static is descriptive in some manner to the immutability aspect of the trinity, and it is no wonder the church is statically referred to as “she”throughout.  It would do violence to the bible to insist the Christ is a “she” based on mere biological chromosome pair reasoning without the conception of the He of the 3rd Person.  The trinity is outside of the constraint of time, that is, God is not enslaved by time; time being understood to be simply the measure of change.

This is the divine presence; to be everlasting to everlasting, to be omnipresent to include the entire creation, and the cause of all things, and to remain immutable even in a mutable cosmos.  The cosmos appears to be infinite because the heavens declare the glory of God, an infinite being.  The geocentricity of the earth takes its form as an archetype of heaven, because the first three days of the creative act were divinely illuminated and the second set of three days were illuminated by the sun, the sun being the archetype of the glory.  The second set of three days cannot be in contradiction to the substance of the first three days as a composite hexaemeron.  There is no incongruity to the timeline between the divine light and the sun in the duration of these six days.
The question here is the divine illumination of the first three days and how this impacts cosmology.

The starting point from our scientific observations would properly begin with the fourth day then.
Considering historical church figures, most theologians have postured themselves on the creation account, most notably St Augustine’s instant creative act position.  Calvin does not directly address the issue of the exact nature of the days of creation in the Institutes but refers readers to Genesis, Basil’s Hexaemeron, and Ambrose’s Hexaemeron. John Calvin’s commentary on the fourth day in Genesis 1:14 says God had before created the light, but he now institutes a new order in nature, that the sun should be dispenser of diurnal light, and the moon and stars should shine by night. And he assigns them this office, to teach us that all creatures are subject to his will, and execute what he enjoins upon them.
In Genesis 1:3, Calvin remarks in his commentary on Genesis 1:3 that “It did not, however, happen from inconsideration or by accident, that the light preceded the sun and the moon. To nothing are we more prone than to tie down the power of God to those instruments, the agency of which he employs. The sun and moon supply us with light: and, according to our notions, we so include this power to give light in them, that if they were taken away from the world, it would seem impossible for any light to remain. Therefore the Lord, by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and the moon."

Further, it is certain, from the context that the light was so created as to be interchanged with darkness. But it may be asked, whether light and darkness succeeded each other in turn through the whole circuit of the world; or whether the darkness occupied one half of the circle, while light shone in the other. There is, however, no doubt that the order of their succession was alternate, but whether it was everywhere day at the same time, and everywhere night also, I would rather leave undecided; nor is it very necessary to be known.”
Calvin, along with the other Reformers, rejected the Augustinian approach to the Genesis days. For Calvin, God did not merely accommodate himself to his people in the way he explained his creative work, God actually accommodated himself in the way he performed his creative work: it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days, for the mere purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days, for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men. Bede holds to six each 24 hour days, but emphasizes that an explanation is needed for the alternation of light and darkness in the first three days before the creation of the sun. He says that the light was divided so as to shine in the upper and not the lower parts of the earth, and that it passed under the earth, making a day of twenty-four hours with morning and evening, precisely as the sun does.

In the western or Latin church some commentators, such as Erigena, followed Augustine’s views, but most followed Bede’s approach, sometimes combining various elements from both views as in the case of Grossteste, who also emphasized the literary structure of Genesis 1 with three days of ordering and three days of parallel adornment.
Reformed Christians rightly agree that the doctrine of creation lies at the basis of the Christian worldview. Criticisms or questions about the calendar-day exegesis may be perceived as questioning the doctrine of creation itself. Calendar-day proponents are used to this coming from outside the church, but not from within and therefore have labeled the non-Calendar Day proponents as accommodating the secular culture. The mutual trading of accusations has certainly raised the temperature of the debate.

"When the sun comes up, the darkness goes away..."

2006-02-22T02:57:00.000+09:00

Looks like someone else has been exploring Unified Field theory: the Maharishi! That's right, the Beatles' Maharishi, whom they followed for a while until quarreling with (Lennon wrote "Sexy Sadie" about the Yogi, although George apparently never abandoned him). His website lists the discovery of the "unified field" as providing concrete proof of the scientific value of his meditation techniques and of higher states of consciousness; his center also advertises an upcoming lecture by an (apparently legit) quantum physicist.

Strangely enough, this time around the guru's pop spokesman is none other than the director David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, etc). If you know his reputation/have seen any of his films, you'll get just how bizarre this is; I myself am a big fan of "blue velvet," and inadvertantly stumbled on all this searching for directorial interviews.

Lynch is an odd convert , but apparently a real and true convert he is. I found the following very strange statements from him on the subject.

A statement from Lynch himself

An interview with Lynch on the subject

A picture Lynch painted "to show what consciousness looks like"

1st and 2nd Adam Order Effects

2006-02-21T20:45:00.000+09:00

“Come now, let us reason together” says the Lord. Isaiah 1:18

In Nigeria, 15 people were murdered yesterday for their Christian faith. It is certain that based on previous reporting patterns, the marginalizing or interpretation of the event will posit the only possible explanation -- the “martyrdom complex” of the individuals who were murdered.

Tempering the recent Islamic iconoclasm over an erudite cartoon has been the interest of the international community of late. Some have surmised long afterwards that the timing would have been better to emplace such a strategic cartoon immediately following the WTC mass-murders, particularly so in response to public celebrations of this event in various middle-eastern countries. One is led to believe that it is high time a fatwah is declared against Bugs Bunny (if Bugs had been one of the caricatures depicted with “muhammed” scrawled underneath). The point is, symbols have power, as a form of imagery. Normally, it would not matter if the cartoonists were Danish, but it does in this case, because at its core, it is the foul work of Arab caliphate racism.

Hopefully, everyone might benefit from the episode; perhaps the various lawsuits aimed at municipalities in the USA to remove manger scenes from public view will diminish out of some respect from the cartoon incident for religious things in general, maybe people will hesitate more to make second class citizens out of Christian people at the drop of a hat, etc, however doubtful. Common grace is the ordinary restraint on these ill-intentioned behaviors; the news media being an integral part of common grace.

There are a lot of religions in the world, many of them claiming to have insight into the divine being. People are fallible -- they make mistakes. To err is human, to forgive is divine, as the play writer instinctively observes. Comparative religion is a discipline then that examines this very issue.

The bible is a peculiar form of communication from outside the space-time continuum specially intended for the creation, hence, supernatural, and is directed toward the image-bearer, in an act of special grace. The Spirit works with those whom are given by the Father and the Son. The balance of recipients to what is revealed are probably part of an operation of common grace. The varied writers of the bible were all inspired of the 3rd person of the trinity for the explicit purpose of transmitting this special revelation. There is much more to the study of it, but nothing really compares to the organic unity of the bible.

Geerhardus Vos points out that because of the effects of original sin, the entire world – the all-inclusive cosmos – is not trustworthy as it is being perceived of our own devices. Vos alludes to the first purpose of special revelation in rectifying the distortion. St Paul refers to seeing through a glass darkly as part of the estate of mankind even with the divine illumination, as we continue in the struggle with sin in life. Without the information available in special revelation, it stands to reason that there is no real seeing going on without an informed interpretation of the data. 10,000 clerics recently signed on to the Darwin Sunday celebration pact and embraced evolution despite the supernatural and natural order. This begs the question as to why.

There are several writers of the bible, but there is only one Author. The characteristics of special revelation include the impression of its Author, and the plenary conveyance of the attributes of infallibility, inerrancy, and sufficiency along with it. The noetic effect of sin is that when one thinks the bible errs, or that it is fallible, or it is insufficient, it is in fact the delusion of the individual in a fallen condition that is in error. Raising questions is not out of order, but judgmentalism imposed upon the bible is.

The basis of ordination has been under assault for a couple of decades as best one can tell from news sources, particularly in the USA. Reading the very recent history of ordinations in the press, it began as if some great breakthrough had been made on the subject. The gender rebellion that just happened to coincide with anti-homophobic grenade lobbing seemed to be the stratagem to force people to accept a 6,000 year gone epiphany that we got it wrong all along about ordination. These methods and motives are at least questionable.

Part of the problem is a noetic misunderstanding. Another part is a myopic reductionist or nominalist viewpoint about the bible having a special place and purpose in life. To impose a gender-free condition upon references to God in the bible in any official capacity is generally considered dishonest and morally reprehensible. All three persons of the godhead are referred to and revealed to be in the masculine gender in the bible, and it is not a language use issue. The reaction of the church community to these in your face ordinations was one of internecine strife, division, then bitterness or grief. It did not materialize though into tribal warfare, attacking embassies, rioting, threatening, murdering, so on and so forth.

There are skillful interpreters that raise interesting argumentations to sustain the imposition of these ordinations, but if the bible says that “God weeps for Israel as a woman who has lost her child” we should not impose upon this, but remember the first Adam was made in the image of God before He made Eve. If all the foodstuffs of the garden were made good, then this indicates some probationary period on the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In Christ, the second Adam, the revealing of the new covenant at the last supper unifies the covenant as really being one covenant with the starting point in the ontological trinity. Starting somewhere else than this shatters the unity of the covenant.

As God is the source of all reality, a wrong understanding of the nature of God will mean a totally deficient cosmology or understanding of reality. The trinity is the archetype of all created reality, but without an understanding of the nature of the trinity, one will never be able to apprehend the truth of the infinite goodness of God.

Anti-Reformed: New "Theory" Shreds Up Universe

2006-02-19T01:13:00.000+09:00

Psalm 37:1-2 - Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

One might think that unless people stop getting so overly confident about the current state of scientific hypotheses masquerading as theories, the truth of a unified worldview will continue to remain suppressed in cultures. Trust in mankind will be exaggerated by the latest science fad of the day, and this, in many cases, against the very God who rules these things, and ought to be glorified for it. Not to fret, as it is curious that nothing as preposterous has materialized since the dis-unified and evolutionary colored cosmology of today. People believe in the stuff like a religion.

Never has there been a hypothesis so blindly accepted, no, not even since the scientific concensus that the earth was flat being entertained -- even by the church. Never mind what scripture says about the sphere of the earth, arrest Copernicus and Galileo for unifying the two disciplines of theology and science coherently on the point. The reformation was an appeal to reasoning from scripture, the anti-reformation of today is just the opposite. The gap theory, framework, theistic evolution – all these things are real damage because they grieve the Spirit.

Improved space observation capability since the 1990s has led to the conclusion that the rate of acceleration going on in the expanse of the universe is increasing out of control and it is further speculated that it will suddenly and violently shatter the totality of the cosmos under the strain, even to the sub-atomic level. NASA's WMAP space probe has pinned down the physics of the universe with “surprising accuracy”. This purported expansion is due to the overextension of the fabric of space itself based on current understandings of physical property constants. Every atom and their nuclei in existence within 30 minutes of initiation will be totally destroyed in the massive demise under the latest “theory”. The inherent order belonging to the universe will then collapse into utter chaos, and all the laws and properties that govern things will suddenly end. The initiation sequence for this countdown to oblivion is being calculated under the new pretext.

This new theory under publication by Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth University depicts the very fabric of matter being totally annihilated from the effect of energy being stretched, resulting in its organizational decay, ripping apart entire helio-centricities from huge bodies like galaxies and so on down to the super-microscopic string theory level of matter’s very existence. This is known as the Big Rip theory. Something unknown is vacuuming everything outward. Everything that exists will then cease to be effective in these conditions. Time itself would end as no change would be able to occur.

The standard cosmology is driving the known acceleration of the universe's expansion via dark energy, a never before examined by-product of the evolutionary big-bang hypothesis, speculated by big-bang scientists as some form of anti-gravity. Conventional wisdom holds that the acceleration will proceed at a constant rate. Caldwell concludes from the standard cosmology that with nothing to cap the acceleration, all matter will eventually just explode.

The Big Rip theory takes dark energy to its logical conclusion, until it's an out-of-control phantom energy. An analogy is offered to think of our car accelerating an additional 10 mph every half mile, then every hundred yards, then every foot. Before long, the bumpers are bound to fly off. Sooner or later, our hypothetical engine will come apart, regardless of how much we spend on motor oil.
Caldwell and his colleagues, Weinberg and Kamionkowski at Caltech, were considering how a sphere of matter collapses under its own weight to form a galaxy. In laboratory computer models, they tweaked the dark energy factor and found that too much of it would actually prevent the sphere from collapsing. In extreme cases, the sphere exploded. Calwell’s team then knew something unusual was going on with the experiment, something that the Big Rip theory would explain. It was not too long ago before the accelerated expansion was discovered, that many cosmologists believed the universe might actually reverse course, that normal gravity would win, and that everything would fall back in a big crunch. The Caldwell group decided there is a better explanation, leading to a new paper being submitted to the Physical Review.

The repulsion going could be a response to dark matter just as much as the big-bang’s crunch, an unseen something that is known to comprise 23 percent of the universe, based on firm “observation”. Dark matter “definitely exists” but has unknown properties, and it only may be related to dark energy. Noting that Einstein considered that gravity might work repulsively, in a manner consistent with his theory of general relativity, the Big Rip hypothesis cloaks itself in the wasted effort of the current standard cosmology. Dark energy, being quantified only recently, tends to be discussed as some strange new force, in addition to the four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces that govern atoms. But the repulsion is possibly just the way gravity behaves in the presence of dark energy.

To turn dark energy into destructive energy, Caldwell and his colleagues had to experiment with the cosmological constant, a mathematical tapestry that Einstein had to apply to general relativity. Einstein later called it his greatest mistake, when Edwin Hubble found in the 1920s that the universe was expanding, and 70 years later, that expansion would be seen accelerating. The cosmological constant has been recently revived. Attempts to describe dark energy differ in how the density of dark energy varies with time. In some models, the density decreases slowly. For the cosmological constant, the density is a constant. For the Big Rip energy to materialize, it must grow with time. This kind of thinking is just the outgrowth of the entire dark energy and dark matter colossus, a big glob that is arguably unscientific, and a misguided direction of the discovery of background cosmic radiation forced to fit the facts.

TULIP

2006-02-16T22:14:00.000+09:00

Starbucks: Friend or Foe?

2006-02-16T05:24:00.000+09:00

Many folks these days are upset by the rise of multinational corporations, like Wal-Mart or Starbucks b/c they believe that such conglomerates push out local, independent operators, thereby destroying the uniqueness of a particular community. A friend of mine, Jacob Grier, recently took up that question in a post on whether Starbucks has had a negative or positive effect on cafe culture in the U.S.

Read his post here.

The Organic Unity of Revelation and Modern Ecumenicalism

2006-02-13T00:44:00.000+09:00

Within the godhead, there are relations; procession, spiration, generation, filiation, hypostasis, perichoresis, and prosopon consubstantiation.  John Calvin remarks that the godhead is “a simple essence comprehending three prosopon”, best known as the study of the divine simplicity.  These aforementioned facets of who God is describe the immutable relations of the prosopon in eternity.  The procession of the Father and the Son always was, the spiration of the Spirit always was, being of one substance with the Father always was, so on and so forth.

When we read in John 17 of the unity of the Father and the Son, it is remarkable to note that Christ states that we have the same unity that the Father and the Son have.  This points us toward people being in the mind of God from the Jeremiah 1:5 foreshadowing of John chapter 15.  The decree of God and the covenant of God is an organic unity that makes the canon of scripture a unified and inseparable whole, not to be divided against itself.  It would be out of place to refer to the bible as the “Words” of God then, the bible is the Word of God.

The organic unity described by our Lord demonstrates an inseparability in John 15:1-21 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.”

There is no mistaking here that it is one vine.

To demonstrate the inseparable organic unity of the bible, compare John 15:1-21 with Numbers 13:23-24, the cluster of grape, “grape” being singular in Hebrew Eschol Echad, a composite unity.  Christ reveals the new covenant in space and time at the last supper fruit of the vine drink within the organic unity of the disciples.

Modern ecumenicalism seems to depart from unity as it is found to be within the godhead because trinitarianism forces the ecumenically-minded hand to restrain itself from introducing disunity.  The trinity teaches rightly about unity in diversity.  How pluralism can accommodate non-trinitarian worship forms causes one to reflect on the possibility of the introduction of the impurities of idolism.  The advancement of the kingdom, and the peace and purity of the church are found in the mystery of this fellowship.

Composite and Organic Unity

2006-02-12T15:46:00.000+09:00

The Hebrew word echad, means a composite unity as opposed to the organic unity. For examples of this consider Genesis 1:5, Genesis 2:24, Ezra 2:64, Ezekiel 37:17 where the same Hebrew word echad is used and means one in unity, not in number. This flows with the archetype of Ephesians 4:5. The Bible teaches there is one church but many members and there are no problems with understanding this, yet when it comes to God some seem to have problems, as there are no "parts" to God. The misunderstandings of this are natural when not having the light of the bible.

Ephesians chapter 4 is an apostolic admonition to maintain unity in the body of Christ and to sustain those indicators of being the children of light that we already have. Since it is impossible of our own accord to be the children of light, we are indebted as slaves to Christ for this gift.

As a poor analogy to this, a denomination is a valid representation of a currency. The denomination of the economy in the US is the dollar, and likewise, elsewhere. In another way, christian denominationalism, a phenomenon that is primarily found in the united states, argues that christian denominations are representations of the same currency vs. counterfeit currency. Pluralism has incorporated counterfeit with genuine by lopping all currency together, referring to all as denominations. Denominations of what?

For ecumenicalism, the interfaith dialog is the primary feature, however, the ecumenical movement has split along a major fault line of pluralism and interfaith dialogue. Pluralism is ideal for studies in toleration, but interfaith dialog is interested in establishing genuine currency. As history unfolds since the upper room, we see a more developed and coherent picture of the teaching of Christ. How the goal of unity is to be achieved is of great interest.

The question is how the kingdom is to advance. Even when it appears to us that God is in full retreat, He is advancing. The worship service is the substantial work contribution, as worship advances the kingdom, because glorifying God is participating in the work of that advance. Consider Elijah in a nation that has federally embraced Baal, or the judges of israel deposed by tyrants. St Paul writes to the Ephesians about Christ descending and ascending that the children of light inherit the kingdom. Christ assassinates the tyranny of death at the crucifixion, for the children of light, recapitulating the history of the first Adam.

The world council of churches endorses pluralism and interfaith dialogue together as legitimate means to unity.

Organic unity is a sign of the work of interfaith dialogue, not pluralism. The ecumenical councils brought some unity to the church body, but it is estimated that the councils served more as clarifying and bringing about into sharper focus the distinguishing marks of the genuine and counterfeit article. There are exceptions made by participants to the ecumenical councils, and this goes back to worship as being the chief end of man and the central activity of the church. The ecumenical councils are measures of the efficaciousness of the worship of the church in time.

Ephesians 4:5 "one Lord, one faith, and one baptism" is the reality.

Europe English

2006-02-10T20:25:00.000+09:00

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

2006-02-10T06:35:00.000+09:00

The famous "beetle in the box" puzzle, by which Wittgenstein tried to attack the old interior/exterior division. his critique is brilliant, but he doesn't really leave us with anything to replace the old, very clear liberal ideas. (which is kind of where I think our society is at the moment; we have, wisely or not, wandered away from classical liberalism, but we still use the same words and the same concepts to say what we mean, because we can't come up with better ones... which is why politics right now is so mushy and confused.)

anyway, though, for what its worth, Wittgenstein's basic point (as I understand it) is that language, meaning, knowledge, etc. does not begin with the individual. Truth, knowledge, progress, depends on language, and language is about communication--there is something "public" about it that is impossible to get away from. individual/community is not the fundamental division: truth is collective after all. : )

2006-02-10T06:03:00.000+09:00

first of all, I appreciate Kosmic's response... Certainly I never meant to frame him as a Locutus, or even a "clockwork orange." :)

I think it would be good to ask a very simple question: What do we want out of politics? What is "the political"?

(discussions of politics and community (how we think about them, what are their ideal form(s) or limits and so on) don't have to coincide--they're not necessarily governed by the same things. however, mabye this would be a good time to explore how they influence each other (if at all), where they converge and how they can be divided from each other).

What should be the object or the "end" or politics? "Freedom"? (whatever that means...) Individual freedom? some other kind? Is this freedom a freedom "from," or a freedom "to"?

is politics a means of control, or is it simply expressive?

is politics cultural? the "end" or goal of a particular culture or civilization?
what about politics and religion?

How do we think about political structure and the individual?

anyway, I don't know good those questions are, but I'd be interested to hear what people think or have to say.

Dynamic Gemeinshaft

2006-02-09T23:49:00.000+09:00

A nano-mechanical implant aggressively takes over the body in order to become assimilated.  The need to be a unique person is destroyed in favor of total submission.  Earth, nine billion; all borg.
You are now a puppet on a predestinated string.
Resistance is futile….
Is this the kind of world that The Village Green is activating?  Is this Justin’s interrogatory, hurled at Kosmiceggburst in defiance?
If a balanced sense of community exists, both freedom and security are generated as well. The community then takes on a life of its own, as people become free enough to share and secure enough to get along. This is the spirit of community.
Balance is the essence of the relation of the individual and the community, and this drive to collaborate is one of moderation.  A community is an amalgamation.  This is different than a collection of isolated individuals sharing an environment, and all individual subjects in the community have something in common that eventually leads to the emergence of a free and secure collective consciousness.  In the Star Trek Next Generation episode involving the borg collective, it was quickly determined from observations that there was no balance achieved between the individual and the community inherent in the borg.  It is no wonder that this lack of individuality in the borg collective was led by a sole individual seeking to relate.
The gift one brings to the community is the giving of one's self to others, and is a balance between self-interest and shared-interests within and among members of a group and is a crucial factor in community formation.  When enough participants in a group develop an attitude of caring for the well-being of the whole, or the common good, the prospect of community is present.
Whatever drives people to cooperate and collaborate in the first place is not perfectly understood, yet is is not quite as important in the context of community as what makes them continue to associate. Resilient connections between and among people are what is important in the formation of viable communities.  Villages grow to become towns and cities.  Cities turn into city-states and nation-states.  The fact that communities become ever larger and more complex suggests that humans, particularly those who are conversant with the rules that drive these complexes are themselves driven toward community formation.
Group-think, the tendency to go along with group convention for various reasons like peer pressure, is probably a psychosis because conscience is primarily an individual matter, as Justin alludes to in his Kubric analysis of the final indivisible existence of being.  However, consider that the sovereignty of God does not do violence to the free-will of the community any more than the individual.  Group-think results in things like confirmation-bias, hysterical reactions to erudite cartoons, the naturalistic identity meme of gorilla ancestry, or Hilter’s banishment of high-pitched musical notes in classical masterpiece performances.
The logical fallacy Argumentum Ad Populum, is a condition that is linked to group-think, an assumption that is, for example, a conviction that since most teenagers are promiscuous, then someone must have something wrong with them to be otherwise.  A counter-culture can sometimes be a good thing bringing resonant, new dynamics to the gesellshaft; a formidable force against group-think, the unquestioned primacy of majoritarianism, and the bandwagon effect.

A multifaceted sense of community is a concept mentioned with less frequency in social psychology, which increasingly focuses on the experience of community rather than its structuring features.  Sociologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have theorized about and carried out empirical research on community, but the psychological approach asks questions about the individual's perception and feelings about community, as well as the individual’s relationship to it.  Community can furthermore be perceived solely in terms of the participation of other members, the antithesis of the self-concept of community participation.  A multifaceted type community analysis and understanding is the most revealing because it considers the factors of community in the aggregate.
Psychologists specialize in the psychological sense of community is being the primary focus, asserting that it is one of the major platforms of self-definition, the perception of similarity to others, and an acknowledged interdependence with others.
Organizational theory defines the sense of community as a human resource issue to the organization, examining the strength of feeling that members have of belonging in quantifiable measurement of costs.  One of the products of a shared interest is the idea of a stock divendend component to employee compensation.  If the organization is successful, the benefit will be realized in its increased stock dividends, therefore, the success of the organization is a team effort.
The spirit of community derives from the spark of friendship.  One is inclined to the believe that influence in a community is bidirectional, and a transaction of some kind, that it comes from the person as well as from the group.   This seems to occur all at the same time because order, authority, and justice create the atmosphere for the exchange of power.  Members of a community must feel empowered in some way to have some kind of influence in a community, otherwise they would not be motivated to participate, and community cohesiveness depends upon the community having some influence over its members.  The search for similarities is dynamic of community development, creating an economy of social trade.

Fusion Power

2006-02-09T06:56:00.000+09:00

Something has been wrong with the blogger over the past few days.
Supposedly, a working fusion reactor has been developed. One of the problems with fusion reaction in the past has been containment of the reaction forces for power harnessing. Fission reaction was simple to control because fission reaction is not as powerful as fusion reaction, and the energy output could be carefully controlled at the rate of reaction by reactor rod proximity control. Fusion reaction presents much more energy output control problems though. A fusion reaction is an implosion and resulting explosion of a forced fusing of sub-atomic particles, and naturally, this fusion process and resultant massive energy release requires containerization of some sort.

In 1993 scientists at the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, at Princeton University’s plasma physics laboratory in New Jersey, produced a controlled fusion reaction, during which the temperature in the reactor surpassed three times that of the core of the sun. In a tokamak reactor, massive magnets confine hydrogen plasma under extremely high temperatures and pressures, forcing the hydrogen nuclei to fuse. When atomic nuclei are forced together in nuclear fusion, the reaction releases an extraordinary amount of energy.

Considering fossil fuel energy, depletion rates, and resource complications, the exploration into alternative power is becoming more and more important to resource management. The basic idea driving fusion reactor study is to make much more energy at far less cost. The environmental impact of the fusion process should be part of any cost/benefit ratio consideration.
The fossil fuel period has been a strange era. The low cost of fossil fuels until recently led to a fast growth rate and emphasis on cheap mechanical things. There was once a day that fascination with mechanical things materialized at an extremely inexpensive rate. A low investment yielded a high return. I began to tinker with engine hot-rodding based on a pittance, usually mowing grass on weekends to experiment with performance engine hot-rodding as a side interest. In those days, you got good in a short period of time building things. It is interesting to note that young fellows do not do this anymore; it is like a lost art. I attribute this situation to the use of computers to replace mechanical engineering efforts in automobile design. Computers have made mechanical things extremely complex as a result. Cost is prohibitive to explore engine hot-rodding using current materials easily available, and the once cheap power has had its reactionary economic effects on culture.

Looking forward, it is not too far out to see how propulsion mechanics might take shape in the individual transportation paradigm. If a fusion reactor is built that works, it makes sense that this technology could be miniaturized to make energy cheap again, and a technological cycling takes place that impacts cultures in a new way. A tiny fusion reactor could power individual automobiles. In fact, this energy could be so cheap as to make autos that come with a fuel chip from the manufacturer that lasts the normal life cycle of the automobile. Vehicle ownership and operation would be a function of economics, much as it is now. Of course there are second and third order effects in realizing the fusion propulsion possibility, but there were second and third order effects for fossil fuel usage when it was introduced, and these problems were tamed.
For any one thing, it can be used for good or evil. It depends on what kind of person using it is. Fusion power raises a lot of questions, but resolves some serious problems as well. The fusion process itself is neutral, and its application can and should be considered as an aspect of dominion.

The Impossible Beatles Melody

2006-02-03T18:48:00.000+09:00

In the 1960s, the modern musical community produced an extraordinary musical group, The Beatles. There was nothing like it before in history, and nothing has materialized like it since; nothing even close.

The shuttle crew late last year awoke to the Beatles tune “Good Day Sunshine”. This event triggered thinking again on the Beatles phenomenon.

There are still many fans today of the music and history of The Beatles. The literal history of The Beatles pales in comparison to the musical legacy of the group though. It is a curious history. Hundreds of years from now, it is estimated that new music will be yet unable to match the quality of The Beatles for a number of reasons. Few can even mimic The Beatles, or dare to make a serious attempt at it mostly because of the unrepeatable quality of voice, which is central to the construction of Beatles music. Then again, one is led to believe recently that some Korean organ cloning laboratory might just see the research endowment welfare possibilities in trying to bio-genetically manufacture a pilfered Beatles vocal cord DNA implant for such a nefarious project as reconstructing a particular sounding voice. Providence would definitely get in the way of the desired cloning result, because another inseparable factor to The Beatles was the chemistry of the group -- the once only poetic gifts and talents that made up that chemistry, the devotion to the mastery of musical instruments from the unique environmental forces involved, and many other such inhibiting factors where part of the whole that exceeded the sum of the parts.

Another unrepeatable aspect of music is the mystery of melody. Once a melody is published, it is unmistakably indelible, even in another key.

Melody is not completely understood, but is generally meant to be characterized as the unfolding in musical time of a principle single line, and is most common in western forms of music. An interesting characteristic of melody is the order and resolution it brings to the sensory world ex nihilo. Typically the melody line of a music score is picked out and quickly memorized in human beings by some communicative design. It is my own understanding that melody causes unity in diversity to occur in the mind. Perfect unity and diversity at the same time occurs in the supernatural only within the trinity, and perhaps there is a connection to be studied as this is acted out in the function of the economic trinity. Additionally, a good melody is learned upon the first hearing, as if it were forever before time.

A good melody sounds familiar, but it is a new creation. There is no scientific explanation why one melody line is universally popular and another is not. In music theory, the particular facet of melody brings joy to the hearer. For this reason, it is a desirable thing to examine as well as being a facet of curiosity and great speculation. Creativity is a human quality that is one evidence of the image of God in man.

The question is, when we hear melody, are we hearing the individual notes more or the whole melody line that generates the positive reaction in us?

Gestalt theory attempts to perform intrinsic determination in its examination of melody, primarily in its psychological analysis, however it shies away from a simple dichotomy of science and life. Instead, Gestalt theory is resolved to penetrate the “problem” of melody itself by examining the fundamental assumptions of science which means breaking up complexes into their component elements. The elements are then isolated, their laws are discovered, then it is all reassembled, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piece-wise relations between pieces. This approach makes no presupposition other than the scientific method as it bears down on the question of melody.

Discovery channel carried the Lord Winston series of episodes a couple of years ago that attempted to unravel some of the undiscovered quirks of human nature. Viewing human beings as primarily chemical-mechanical or thermo-chemical systems, the Lord Winston shows did arrive at some findings about human nature that were not seen before because the light had not been cast from such an angle before, but when it came to the subject of love itself, all the potential human subjects of the study refused and departed. Even if it were possible to reveal something from the thermo-chemical detached tone of Lord Winston’s studies on love, the control groups and subjects of his study indicated across the board that they did not want to know even if it were possible to mechanistically explain away the subject of love, and that it was tampering with something that would anger nearly everyone if he proceeded. That is a very interesting response, and should be considered as part of the findings. In essence, I sensed that the test group respondents universally (virtually universal, to be more precise, as certainly someone would come forward, but overwhelmingly hostile would be more of an accurate description of the responses) would find no value in Lord Winston’s findings if he drew any conclusions about the subject of love in his unique approach.

The chemistry of The Beatles was exciting to all sorts of people because the group created original unheard of before musical compositions at a high rate of output; they sounded happy which was infectious, and the early themes of their music were on the difficult subject of love -- a subject only the church has been able to address in any meaningful way that transcends culture, and since the first meeting of the Beatles song writing members occurred providentially at a church fete, it was somewhat picturesque of the cosmic reality. The music of The Beatles was and remains universally appealing. Furthermore, the demand for Beatles music has not diminished long after the group has been disbanded. Lord Winston’s thermo-chemical approach to a study of love was universally rejected, but The Beatles’ approach to the subject of love was found to be acceptable. The “impossible” existence of melody is a big part of the ability to address such a guarded topic.

2006-02-03T14:30:00.000+09:00

I'd like to follow up on Kosmiceggburst's reply to the Kubrick quote below:
(I hope he isn't irritated if I post it on the main page, just for the sake of convenience).

"Suppression of the truth is made more powerful in the individualistically based society, which somehow has a nihilistic or corrosive effect on power. It is like not everyone in the individualistic society is being malicious in suppression, but that suppression is not a good thing for the environment, or any great assistance to building community. "

From what I understand of what this is saying, it seems to be a bit upside down. As I understand it, the fundamental thing is the individual. That might not sound right to some of us, but its there as a fact which we have to confront. You can subdivide and pinch and prod humanity into many different shapes, but that's got to be the only indivisible one, the only really fundamental one.

Following from this: community is something which needs to be *constructed*. communities have to be formed out of individuals, in whatever fashion. You can do this in a more benevolent way, through more artificial, coercive means, in all sorts of ways. but the point is that, since community is a positive development (positive in that it builds up some kind of structure on individuals), I don't see how you can say that individuals "supress" community. (if that is, indeed, what was being said.) Community "supresses" (in that it molds and uses and shapes) individuals. You don't have to view the "supression" involved in constructing community as a bad thing (we'd like to supress some of the desires of psychopaths like Alex, for instance), but it *is there.

From F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom:

"A further point should be made here: Collectivism means the end of truth. .....

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.

The worst sufferer in this respect is the word "liberty." It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a "collective freedom," which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. "Collective freedom" is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme."

or perhaps we might lend an ear to Burgess' original Alex, in one of the few passages in which he steps out of his leering, "Starchild of the Id" role in order to reflect:

"...the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the Self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do."

Part of what is speaking there is, from a Christian perspective (which was probably also Burgess'), sinful man. the part of all of us which we would like to supress, the part that would like to scourge and crucify Christ (as Burgess has Alex day dream of doing), or to rape and murder and betray. But at least it is the sinful nature speaking as an individual voice, not (as Burgess ends the book), the thug empowered, united with the (in the novel, right-leaning) State.

The Grand Unified Cosmology - Reformed

2006-02-01T21:52:00.000+09:00

It is impossible to properly interpret what the natural order is telling us without special revelation to properly inform it. This is a good bit different than just endlessly chasing recognized scientific inconsistencies in prevailing theories for the sole purpose of moving a scrimmage line, or just deflecting the scientific community’s gangster hit squads that are out to kill or discredit anything that threatens the research endowment welfare bureaucracy, albeit this is a somewhat colorful description of recent competing interest open hostilities. Given this consideration, the supernatural informs sufficiently enough of what cannot be attained on our own, and one would think that given a free conscience, the rational mind would welcome and take refuge in the most informed and gracious of opinions.
These two spheres, 1)Nature, and 2)Super-nature, are neutral parties to the cosmological conflict that has resulted in a suppressed truth, so one gathers rightly that the cosmological angst problem originates within humankind. The problem goes back historically to a forced partition of philosophy that shattered a coherence that philosophy never was capable of sustaining. Therefore, the grand unified cosmology was proposed in 1978 by a Harvard physicist, perhaps an unconscious act in reconciling a shattered philosophical basis of the universe. The reform of this grand unified cosmology objective is quite different than a mere theistic interpretation of data sets, but rather, this new unified and reformed cosmology is a dynamic operational environment that permits the mitosis of the new theory to materialize and begin generating more impressive leads. The question is not if the parts go together, but how the parts go together coherently. The initiative that Justin theorizes to address the cosmological conflict provides a path to peace and social justice. The past is to be easily forgiven as a condition to the entreaty, yet the past is found to be a necessary part of the maturing process and arriving at the present state of rest. The positive impact in introducing an actionable strategy for a unified cosmological model would be great, impacting all people in a very optimistic way. For that reason alone, the unified cosmological proposition should be undertaken for the intangible dividend of a healthy optimism that it engenders by its sheer genius of arrangement.
With yet to be defined boundary lines, and with yet formulated and tested coefficients of the unified theory platform, the appeal for a universal and operable re-integration of conflicting disciplines can be easily envisioned, a symbiosis, as it were, utilizing a reunited philosophic basis as the catalyst. If science is restricted to natural observation and processes, the scientific method has no concern for the supernatural, therefore, it operates blindly, fed a bottomless pit of national resources. Set on automatic, the current arrangement taken as a whole statement, is simply the vain pursuit of a virtually infinite set of unknown variables, and is necessarily a giant cosmological distortion of reality because of it. The misguided idealism of eternal evolution is out of control and has cost trillions of dollars in wasted lives and resources in a bankrupt and hopeless system of seething greed and hostility. Scientists exaggerate or lie about findings because such a machine makes it profitable for them to do so.
At low energies, such as in our universe where the usual laws apply, symmetry is scattered by the effects of entropy. Physicist optimism is then limited to a very unusual period at which everything may have been unified, but it has little application for the world as we live in it, even for chemistry or biology.
Aquinas challenged Aristotle's idea that the world simply existed without a beginning. Aquinas argued that the age of the world could not be settled by appealing to reason alone. He said that Creation depends on God for its existence and that Creation does have a beginning of time. To speak in this way of time's own beginning is already to be outside of time, in a way, and so this fact can only be an article of faith, known by revelation alone.
Cosmology has tended to be about gravity, while quantum studies have been about other forces. The two perspectives of cosmology and quantum studies have been seen as reconcilable only recently. Scientists do sense a need to get a unifying theory, and this is not to say that the forces are basically unified as one super-unified force, but that the parts go together in a coherent theory because they are unhappily divided by the deliberately arranged unknowable singularity.
The current direction of quantum cosmology is to move from a special relativity view of gravity and cosmology to a quantum view. The Hawking model uses imaginary time, and uses only the present as the boundary condition. The universe would then just exist without explanation in this model, and it would be finite but unbounded. This model is similar to St. Augustine's position that time itself was created and that we cannot really understand what such a beginning is. It seems as though existence itself is the boundary, the universe exists in time, and is therefore finite. God also exists, but not in time, so He is not finite.
The grand unified theory is typically the purview of high energy physics, which measures beauty in a quantified manner, ostensibly gauging beauty by the degree of symmetry found in the theory. However, reformation of the grand unified theory lies in the symmetry found in the ontological trinity.

The Village Green's Doppelganger

2006-01-31T20:11:00.000+09:00

The Village Green

-

2006-01-31T07:02:00.000+09:00

I've been reading up on Stanley Kubrick recently; though he gave few interviews, he had a lot of interest to say on a lot of interesting things. I came across a couple quotes I thought might be relevant. I find myself agreeing with most everything he says (although part of it might be that many of his statements are not specific enough to be identified with any one definite ideological position).

[part of a Nytimes "Clockwork Orange" interview, one that subsequently provoked accusations of "fascism."]

"Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage," says Kubrick, reaching for the iced water. "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved - that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure."

and again, in another interview from around the same time:

Q. Contrary to Rousseau, do you believe that man is born bad and that society makes him worse?

A. I wouldn't put it like that. I think that when Rousseau transferred the concept of original sin from man to society, he was responsible for a lot of misguided social thinking that followed. I don't think that man is what he is because of an imperfectly structured society, but rather that society is imperfectly structured because of the nature of man.

I don't know about ya'll, but I think that's about right side up.

The Song of the Universe

2006-01-31T05:10:00.000+09:00

We all know the doppler effect as it pertains to sound, i.e., when a train races past, the pitch drops when the train is racing away from your fixed position. The doppler effect is then a relational problem resolved by studying wavelength behavior and relational positions. Light behaves in a similar manner it is speculated. When ordinary white light is broken up into the visible spectrum, there are black lines embedded in the visible spectrum. These black lines correlate to the jumping of an electron from one orbit to another level of orbit, which is what is emitting the light. If the source of light is travelling away from your fixed position, the black lines move -- they shift to the left into the red band of the spectrum -- an effect referred to the red-shift phenomenon. If the light source were travelling toward you, a movement of the black lines would occur toward the opposite end of the spectrum into the blue area for a blue-shift phenomenon. The red and blue-shifts are still somewhat theoretical, in fact, longer-wavelength radiation actually shifts away from red.
The red-shift phenomenon does not hold true when scattering takes place from the entropy effect. Many astrophysicists hold to a combination of the two possibilities of doppler and entropy affecting the spectrum marker line shifting movements being observed.
Compared to the moving train sound effect example, a red-shift correlates to a drop in pitch. Inversely, a blue-shift of the black lines indicates that the source of the light is moving toward your fixed position, and correlates to pitch in much the same manner as the train moving in your direction. Using a telescope and capturing the light emitted from a given star, a prism or light scattering device breaks up the white light into the spectrum, and the black lines are observed. This is mapped. The same procedure can be performed for a galaxy in relation to our somewhat fixed position on earth. If the light were to be correlated to what we know to be true about sound using the doppler effect as the unifier of light and sound waves, a song can be unravelled from the cacaphony of the universe. No one has done that to my knowledge.
Most atomic clocks of contemporary design are cesium isotope emitting devices that measure electron emission frequency from a cesium electron fountain, providing accuracy in some cases to plus or minus one second over the span of 300,000 years. However, the time of a single orbit of the earth on its axis does not exactly match a true day with the atomic clock. Why? There is a fraction of a second differential. This begs the question.
The speed of light itself, the red-shift phenomenon, and the rate of atomic clock operations are somehow related to each other, at least by interaction with the ZPE, if not totally in proportion to it. If this is so, the universe is in fact a ZPE container. Hubble’s law touches on the possibility of such an idea to indicate the relation of an expanding universe in a positive energy cosmological constant. Hubble’s law is proposition about the red-shift and distance relationship. The doppler effect of light has been given an interpretation that permits these possibilities to be considered, but the actual mapping of the light in the universe has permitted only partial information from the testing of this interpretation. The doppler effect interpretation of the behavior of light does not provide the degree of reliability to arrive at recent conclusions, however it would be great to uncover the song of the universe.

2006-01-31T00:23:00.000+09:00

Kosmiceggburst

Plank's Constant, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and the ZPE

2006-01-30T00:21:00.000+09:00

Psalm 19:1-6 states:
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day after day they speak, and night after night their knowledge shows forth. There is no language where their voice is not heard. Their line goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit is to the ends of it; and there is nothing hidden from the heat of it”.
The subject of quantum mechanics has shed new light on physics and cast a shadow of doubt on much of the prevailing orthodox theories, even raising questions about the theory of relativity. Even time is altered when dealing with huge magnetic fields found in black holes. Light is sucked into black holes, but how can this be if light is truly without mass?
This is pertinent to the current discussion as it relates to localizing cosmological functions and properly conceptualizing what a constant is outside of the locally observable domain. To work with quantum mechanics, the first good step is to put Plank’s Constant and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to memory as working concepts.
In my estimation, quantum mechanics is just another form of relativism in its current state, but given the Zero-Point Energy(ZPE), the relativism aspect of quantum mechanics is eliminated. Much of this is due to modern computing power that is able to perform extremely redundant tasks necessary to deal with a newly discovered domain of 26 dimensions, particularly impacting the sciences. That is right; in a way we are now developing post-Newtonian expression to deal with 26 operating dimensions, and quantum mechanics is just the start of this new expressive language.
A quick review of the quantum development goes back to notation history. With x and y Cartesian coordinate systems, people were able to map in 2 dimensions, and z provided velocity, or, a third dimension. If you take the square root of a negative number, you are in imaginary numbers, but there are limitations to the mapping of the imaginary numbers field in light of quantum mechanics, which attempt to explain the complexity of the operable 26 dimensions. Euclid and Newton served us well moving away from shapes into efficient expression, but it brought a degree of abstraction along with it. Computers will serve well to deal with management of 26 dimensions, which are even more abstract.
Much of quantum speculation originated in fractal theory where a new field of study was realized between differentiated and non-differentiated equations. You are now seeing the crumbling of old stumbling blocks as we speak with the rise of the field of quantum mechanics that answers a lot of unexplained cosmological phenomena. Naturally, with the new development, there are problems with quantum mechanics that are being hashed out. In addition to some assumptions underlying the interpretation of certain values in the quantum mechanical formulation, one of the fundamental cornerstones to the entire theory lies in the commutate relationship between the position operator and the momentum operator. This relationship is the Kronecker delta. For more information, see the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.
Planck's constant is used to describe quantization. Planck's constant was proposed by Max Plank in reference to black-body radiation. The underlying assumption to Plank's law of black-body radiation was that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body could be modeled as a set of harmonic oscillators with quantized energy, and is the quantized energy of photon radiation having Hertz frequency(Hz).
This model proved extremely accurate, but it provided an intellectual stumbling block for theoreticians who did not understand where the quantization of energy arose. Planck himself only considered it only a purely formal assumption at the time. This helped lead to the formation of quantum mechanics.
In quantum physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot assign (with precision) values for pairs of variables, including the position and momentum of a single particle at the same time, even in theory. With the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one could then argue one’s self out of a traffic ticket. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle precisely quantifies imprecision by providing a lower bound (greater than zero) for the product of the standard deviations of the measurements. Six standard deviations provides a high degree of confidence, but this is too imprecise, and at least twice the standard deviations as this governs the precision needed for nearly all applications involving the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This principle is one of the foundations of quantum mechanics and was first proposed by Werner Heisenberg in the 20s.

Kingdom of Heaven

2006-01-28T14:52:00.000+09:00

I got a dvd as a gift from someone last week of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven". I doubted Scott would have out-done himself after the smash hit "Gladiator" movie, however, I was impressed with Kingdom of Heaven as very close to the majesty of the Gladiator movie.

For those who have not seen this fine piece of cinematic work yet, and hopefully without spoiling it, it is set in the days of the crusades. The main character, who is followed throughout the story-line, is well-received as he arrives at Jerusalem, then still a walled fortress. Apparently, his father had preceded him and had become legendary among the defenders of the holy land. There is a crusader queen that he grows quite fond of.

Despite some bad theology used throughout the story-line, whether intentional or not, and the questionable historical developments evinced by the European defenders of the holy lands, there are some redeeming qualities to the crusades in real life. There is a magnetism that charms people about chivalry which had developed out of the crusades as a fine tradition that carried over into everyday life. Nobility was the derivative of chivalry, of the noble, or just cause. Furthermore, the Roman Empire had once dominated the Mediterranean area, and there were good reasons to reconstruct it, but as a decentralized and Christianized union. It stands to reason that it would have been more of a Roman republic without a senate, a pre-cursor of a Holy Roman Empire, a European compact or alliance as it were, and it would necessarily have provided important strategic benefits to European peoples in dealing with marauding Muslim armies that had occupied southern Europe by force for centuries. Yugoslavia was quite a mess even through the twentieth century from bitter wars waged on its territory over greed, disguised as religious disagreement.

But not today. Kingdom of Heaven is a surrender of the city of Jerusalem to attacking Muslim armies. So what is the Kingdom of Heaven then? The movie does not come out and say it explicitly, but the terms of surrender included safe passage for the main character, a knight, and the Queen of Jerusalem. Shamed or not, the gallant knight goes off into the sunset with the love he shares together with this queen, and love itself is rightfully and gracefully displayed as being of the essence of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a great message for those viewers who are of a shared experience or understanding, and not somehow ashamed of love, or for those who are more reserved about it. This anti-climatic -- or befitting -- ending (depending on how the movie is perceived), is fitting with what Christ said about the Kingdom of Heaven; that it is within you.

A fabulous cavalry and archery battle scene erupts on the plains leading to the approach to Jerusalem that the movie makers were able to convey with flair. The size of the Muslim army is enormous, and the execution of the cavalry maneuvers is superbly displayed from a good angle of view. The forward edge of the battlefield is fluid from both sides in their initial full speed charge at one another, and the close view of individual knights clashing in the middle is more spectacular than the life and death battle scenes depicted in Braveheart.

Suffering a catastrophe at the encounter, the tattered remnants of the Christian defenders of Jerusalem fall back into the gated walls of the city to await the inevitable siege. Faced with few able bodied men, it is made public that the main character has the power to knight others, and in his moment of decision, makes one of several stirring speeches given throughout the movie, in this case, to rally the checkered defense force together that he knighted on the spot. The siege of the city walls commences.

The Muslim general fights honorably it seems. There is something missing in this assessment of course, that when approaching a city, it is not to be attacked as standard procedure without a warning, but terms of peace are first offered to the representatives of the city, a teaching straight out of Deuteronomy. However, after avoiding massive casualties in what would have been an assured mutual destruction of both armies in the final siege of the Jerusalem battle, the Muslim general is asked: "What is Jerusalem?". The Muslim general replies - "It is nothing....It is everything". I was waiting for the knight to then ask "What is the New Jerusalem", which is everything, but that was not forthcoming. Be that as it may, the depth of the theological understanding that the script writer of Kingdom of Heaven does display is something that has been around, but had faded, and is therefore something new to theater audiences, namely, that the greatest things in life are intangibles like affection, etc, that are not created by people, but are blessings given.

When the "defeated" group arrives back home, someone asks the knight who he is as a fellow Englishman. He indicates he is just a blacksmith. It leaves you smiling.

Scince and Morality

2006-01-28T03:05:00.000+09:00

Interesting article from Reason on what science can tell us about moral decisionmaking. Know thyself.

The Future Strategic Landscape

2006-01-27T00:27:00.000+09:00

I am hopeful of the future as each of you, and this positive outlook influences directions to be taken, even in the times when it is the road being less travelled by. Keep looking forward, I say. Being in the minority view never meant that the minority view was always essentially wrong in every case to begin with.

A perspective is a limited view of a whole.

Very primitive descriptions of what a perspective is usually depict a single point that all things lead to with lines converging on that point. For instance, the entire creation can be put into an abstract perspective leading to the second coming of Christ in which everything bottlenecks into a new transformed future panorama on the other side of the event. We have a blueprint of its design, but do not know how far out this event is to be from this side of eternity, or how exactly it goes about arriving there as time goes by, therefore, it is not really in our power to bring it all about. It is not our game, or perhaps, we are at a severe handicap in ushering it.

A more developed refinement of what a perspective is, is seeing everything there is to know about a whole through a lens that filters out everything but a particular subject. For instance, to see the financial perspective of a firm is to be able to view everything that pertains to just the financial operation of that firm, to the exclusion of everything else. Such a comprehensive perspective as this is limited because we do not see the whole firm in this case. This process of perspective development is useful though for studying strategy.

Once all the perspectives that make up the whole are isolated, the linkages, correlations, and effects going on between the perspectives can be efficiently arrived at in a collection of facts that tells a concise story in a form that is useful to making informed decisions at improving things. I think the concerns raised about various tactics as they are employed in an overall strategy are valid, mostly because failed tactics waste resources when they do not work, however, we simply do not know what works best until we try out ideas and see what happens. There is a definite epiphany quality about the origins of things. We live in a climate that punishes initiative severely when it is tried and does not work, and this hostile environment always stifles that first initiative attempt.

The work would then be absorbing the impact of the stubbed toe, etc, learning rightly from these mistakes and developing new tactics. Consider; that even when depleted, there is still the zero-point energy, which is infinite. In order for that hereforeto described strategic process to proceed on course, we have to have a clear vision that we are aiming at. The importance of mapping vision in no uncertain terms cannot be overstated.

Who would think it would be all so complicated?

One of the benefits of mapping strategy is to un-complicate matters. One really can squeeze more blood out of a turnip using strategic thinking and vision-making activities, and that is a good thing. Efficiency is king, as a new aphorism. Considering shared concerns, values, etc, there are simply too many targets materializing in front of us along the way, so the battles have to be picked carefully.

Competition and creativity were mentioned earlier as catalysts for good stewardship of the available but limited resources, and these seem to be the best enhancements that adorn a determined community or society. The right idea is to extract more and more useful things from less and less available resourcing, but with the important distinction of these events occuring with a simultaneous action going off in two directions. For example, a better and better mouse trap that is cheaper and cheaper to create, or the computer that shrinks in size and becomes more and more powerful at the same time.

This concept of strategy making is transformation on this side of eternity, and much of what dominion is all about.

In summary, a future vision provides direction for a community, and is best represented as a collection of perspectives that are linked in some tested way with measurable targets for each link between the perspectives, and then the prioritization of what battles are to be selected is needed to complete a final determination or conviction about something, based on the information generated from the process of mapping strategy. Life is strange at times because in considering a strategic application or action, it seems that in whom even little is given, much can be done.

A benefit of the strategic management of things is that it keeps us looking forward, spotting the obstacles, and taking action now to mitigate those obstacles, telling us where to best apply the energies of work. If we are hopeful, the vision, the strategy, and the tactics will reflect that hope.

Kosmiceggburst

Community, Communism and Individualism

2006-01-26T04:03:00.000+09:00

I tend to agree with Justin that many of us tend to look at community as we suppose it to have existed in the past. That is, we think of early Twentieth Century community and that of previous generations as the ideal to which we are to strive. Although we, especially as Christians, should be mindful of the past and seek to learn lessons from past mistakes and triumphs in our own lives as well as in history, we must remember that rose-colored glasses are likely clouding our vision. Instead, we are called to be salt and light in the world in which we find ourselves, not the world we wish existed. That entails becoming involved in the world in which we live, which is the only way to promote true community. True community can never be enforced top-down, but rather wells up as a grassroots phenomenon when individuals decide to associate with one another. As these interactions grow more complex and permanent, institutions are formed, such as churches, businesses, charities, political parties, et cetera.

Though the Soviets called each other comrades, there was more isloation and lack of community there and in other communist nations than ever existed in the U.S. Instead, neighbor was pitted against neighbor and family members against each other, as all struggled for basic survival both due to state repression and the shortages inherent in socialist calculation. The hundreds of millions of people killed under such regimes is not merely a coincidence, like some sort of critical mistake was made in every single attempt to set up a communist regime, but rather the inevitable conclusion of any system that chooses to ignore that human beings are fallen. Even if we tried to form a Christian commune with the purest motives, it would soon devolve into tyranny or fall apart completely because we aren't and cannot be angels here on Earth, not can we set up God's kingdom in advance of His plan. I am not advocating defeat merely realism. We can do mighty things through Christ, but holing ourselves up in some sort of commune, where we all dress like the Polyphonic Spree, is probably not what Christ had in mind when He issued the Great Commission.

I don't want to get into a full-blown defense of free-market economics/capitalism/market liberalism or whatever you choose to call it, but Gilbert has made claims that need rebutting. Capitalism and Communism are not two equally valid economic systems that we are free to pick and choose between. As noted above, Communism ignores human nature and assumes that human beings will be able to fully rid themselves of their competitive nature, i.e., greed, envy, et cetera. It requires individuals to work for the good of the whole rather than for their individual benefit. As a result, no one has the incentive to work hard. We are selfish beings and we cannot escape that reality here on Earth. When the Pilgrims at Plymouth first arrived, they learned this lesson first-hand. They established a communal system for grain production and distribution and soon began to starve to death. Why? Because once everyone realized they could shirk their duties and still get a guaranteed amount of produce, they had no incentive to work hard. Here is the story from Governor Bradford himself: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/11/a_thanksgiving_.html
Capitalism on the other hand enables the sinful desires of man, such as greed and envy, to be chanelled into good and productive uses. As Adam Smith notes: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love. That is, the function of a free market is to make us do good to others even when we don't want to. In order to get what we want, we have to, in the absence of force, provide others with something they desire as well. In fact, that is the role of the state to provide a relativley violence-free marketplace, so that individuals may transact with each other without fear that they will have their property stolen. I submit that free trade, though it's far from perfect, has engendered the formation of communities and a sense of community among individuals thoughout history than any other activity. Radical individualism and crass consumerism are pretty nice "problems" to have when the alternative is starvation, massacre and war.

All of that being said, I too, like Justin, feel the alienation of modernism and post-modernism. The current age does seem colder than the past. I think this is due mostly to the rose-colored glasses effect described above, but also it's due the fact that we don't have enough individuals, and especially individual Christians, challenging old institutions and forming new ones. The modern church has failed Christians by abdicating its role in society to non-voluntary institutions such as the state with much of this abdication occurring in the early part of the Twentieth Century--the supposed Golden Age that some say we should be trying to reattain. If we are to be disciples of Christ, we must follow His example. In His ministry on Earth, Christ cared for the weak, the humble, the dregs of His society. He rebuked the religious and political leaders of His time. He rejected their claims of authority as illegitimate. He did not seek to lobby the Roman Senate for more welfare or community centers.

I apologize for the length and rambling nature of this post. I was attempting to respond to many different thoughts. I hope that my arguments, however imperfect, advance the debate and lend light.

2006-01-25T11:54:00.000+09:00

Certainly one kind of community is dying. In the suburbs and cities of today, shared geography does not make community. Communities are formed through voluntary associations of individuals.

To a large degree, people pick and choose the associations they make: I go to this church, I work there, I belong to this health club, etc. These associations may or may not have anything at all to do with each other. I may go to church with people who share a similar theological disposition, while drinking coffee with another group of people who share my music tastes. There is a lot more that could be said along these lines--along with a lot of subtleties and opposing trends I'm not going to deal with right now. Of course, often people still do move within certain small, cohesive circles. But, at least in principle, individuals can mix and match associations to their liking.

There is nostalgia for an earlier time of greater cohesion or whatever. There *is* something about how life is lived and associations are formed in modern life that is really dissatisfying and depressing. Being a kind of stressed out college student,
I feel like that a lot too.

But the truth is, there are exciting things about the present. I think that part of the problem may be that we are in the middle of a great transition--social reality is re-ordering itself, and, while in certain ways we have adapted, in many many ways we have yet to re-orient ourselves, to absorb the impact of such sweeping changes. Culture always lags a little behind.

More changes are coming, big changes. But the important things will still be important, and perhaps there will be greater freedom and potential. Any increase in individual agency and freedom is momentarily frightening; but mabye we should regain some of that Enlightment faith in human progress. Instead of being nostalgic for the communities of the past, mabye we should be nostalgic for the future.

The Red Communionists

2006-01-24T18:43:00.000+09:00

Was the wine used at the last supper made from white, green, or red grapes and why?

The theme of community is of concern to many people because it is a thing common to the human experience, and is a perishable resource. People develop a sense of community, mostly from the good influences of family life. The preservation and well-being of the community is always in the thinking and backdrop of a well-developed sense of community. Likewise, a well-developed sense of humor is akin to a well-developed sense of community as a hallmark of beauty in a person. Even those who gravitate more toward solitude in their personalities can still appreciate and support the benefits of community participation. Growth is the desired end-state of well-done community participation, and all members benefit from the growth of community. The accelerated trend toward individualism, particularly in the west, has brought with it a yet realized form of damage to people within the community that is difficult to pin down and articulate, but not impossible to express.

Sooner or later, people understanding little or nothing about community will not only have to rely on the community, but lacking practice, will not do so with ease. It is not too far out to say that we need to practice community, much like a musician practices an instrument, and then plays a part in an orchestra rehearsal. The orchestra practices to put on a live performance. Community participation has its professionals.

The more crass individualism as it is recorded by commentators of diverse backgrounds (particularly in the latter part of the 20th century), has caused some people to take pause and contemplate the causes of social retardation resulting from a poorly developed sense of community. One theory is that the high average national wealth in the west has led to the demise of a sense of community because of its removal of the need for dependence on one another, and with it, a loss of culture and virtue that radiates from a strong community. Like time, the perishable resource of community and the culture that individualism eviscerates from community is forever lost. My own observation is that the trend toward social individualism has brought with it a pervasive revulsion for community. The big-city "citizen" that refuses to come to the aid of someone being mugged in broad daylight (because they do not wish to become involved), is an excellent example of the result of realizing the ultimate "achievement" of the individualistic "society".

What is the proper balance and frequency of community is then the question.

The group is a community, the town is a community, and whole world itself is a community. The cliche "the butterfly flapping its wings in outer mongolia causes a hurricane to happen in miami" has a message about community within the context of its broader meaning, but the cliche is more about how cause and effect are related. The conveyance of the butterfly cliche reconfigured to capture the essence of what community is would be a stellar achievement for one to aspire to.

Part of communion is the benefit of community that it brings to people. The community practice is put to a live performance in the communion ritual because the community is sought to be put at the disposal of the Lord. The week was made for man. Community requires the understanding of one another to serve a unified purpose at communion when it defies the "conventional" understandings of the supreme individual. Understanding the communion rite relies on communication, but communion is not dependant on understanding. Community is all about communication, and communion is all about communication.

As east vs. west tensions eased, and a more open society emerged in formerly hard-core communist countries, an understanding took place. It is not uncommon to hear in contemporary international affairs that communists are people, but that most forms of communism fail over time because community is destroyed in favor of a supreme individual. The russian experiment with communism showed a violent series of decades of internal struggle for domestic security, hostility with the west, strength in its industrial output, and then collapse, but not a collapse as part of the normal cycle of a nation-state. The mid-level soviet echelons disintegrated from the dishonest title of a union of soviet socialist republics, into a russian federation. There was no republic.

The internal security paranoia of communism was most evident in former communist east germany where the stazi expended approximately one-third of the domestic gross national product for decades spying on its own people. Communism is scored with a history of excessive security controls that are anti-community in effect. Socialism is very similar to communism, and not the happy middle solution to the clash of civilizations in contemporary times. Socialism is anti-community in a non-domineering fashion.

The messianic state is a gang replacement for the family, and more particularly, the church. Given time, the messiah state blunders, and the salvation found in it is "lost", or found not to be perfect. The balance of the two governments, church and state, are theocratically united in communism's glorification of the state. It should be no surprise then that communism depends on the teachings of evolution, and another indicator as to why evolution has failed to qualify as science.

It is becoming evident to many people that fascism -- a modified form of communism -- is portrayed erroneously in the political sciences as a right-wing philosophy when it is in fact left-wing philosophy. Nazi germany, claiming to be the "national socialist" paragon of modern government (which was not socialism, but fascism), was not just a fascist state though, but more precisely it was an experimental hybrid fascist-dictatorship. The leftward trend -- whatever the structure of its governance -- is a move toward the glorification of the state.

One would think that anti-communism, found mostly in capitalistic societies, should wake up to the threat that individualism presents as a disunifying force. The quick way to power for a few individuals a century ago was to lead a communist revolution -- a movement that was fueled by the most savage greed ever seen displayed in individuals. It is no small charge though that greed is served better by capitalism, but not in the communist understanding of the problem. Greed is served much more efficiently to the elite few in communism. Greed is brought under dominion by making better people.

Kosmiceggburst

Angel Trumpets, Devil Trombones (Part 1)

2006-01-23T07:59:00.000+09:00

so, naverjag raises an interesting question. art can be viewed as a means to an end. thus, in principle, one can appreciate an artistic work simply for its "message." in other words, art is merely a way of elevating or celebrating a some kind of socio-political/religious Idea. (it makes more sense to think of this in terms of the whole society; a culture celebrates itself and its principles through its art. conversely, you can flip it around and say that, in order to answer the question: what does a certain society or culture value? , one can turn to art that society produces. Cultural epics such as the Iliad or the Mahabharata, monuments such as cathedrals, etc)

according to this way of thinkng, while there still may be good art or bad art, art must ultimately be appreciated in terms of its goal, its end. aesthetics is not a goal in itself; it is a means to a goal, just like, say, the technical knowledge an expert engineer commands. one can appreciate the brilliance of an engineer soley in terms of the mechanics of his craft; however, it certainly makes a difference if he is designing gas chambers or building space shuttles.

in summary, then, we have:

Sphere of Ideology/ideas (Political? Religious? Philosophical?)

underneath it, Sphere of Aesthetics (viewed as a craft)

Of course, the real meat of the two spheres theory of art, the content, depends on who is making the argument. To a Marxist, the ascendent sphere might be politics as viewed through the (materialist) historical dialectic... there is a pattern to history, a class war, blah blah blah. everything else must be subordinated to this Ideology: artists must produce art which toes the line ideologically.

Art = Ideology + Beauty.

(art can be "subversive," in which case it does not serve Ideology. but this implies it is created in line with another (albeit opposed) ideology). "subversive" art is NOT *simply art for the sake of art.

more cynically, then, it might be possible to say:

Art = Propaganda.

2006-01-22T14:00:00.000+09:00

Suppose for a second that you are standing in the middle of an art museum, looking at what has become one of your favorite peices of art. It became your favorite because every time you looked at it something about it talked to your soul a little sweeter than the last time. Or maybe it is just so odd or abstract it amuses you. Still, this particular peice of art could represent some cause or ideal that you hold dear, and consequently it means something to you in that way. Whatever the reason, there it sits, your favorite peice of art. You enjoy it, appreciate it, in a sense you respect the artist for his/her accomplishment even regardless of whether or not you can identify with his/her effort.

Take another situation: Suppose you are reading "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Heminghway. This short story can be read as one of the most beautiful peices of literature ever created simply because of the stark imagery and poignant moments contained within the dialogue. However, another position available to a reader of Hemingway's work is that it is a political message about abortion; or maybe not political, but at least some form of statement being made in that regard. Still there are others who would read it for both qualities.

In both situations, as well as others, the argument has been raised by educated and learned individuals, that the reason these peices of artistic acheivement can mean so many things to many people may be a vast reason indeed, but the essence of the issue is that with any peice of art the message written on the heart of the artist cannot help but reveal itself through the fruits of his labor. The idea is that no art can be void of a message, subliminal or abstract as that meaning might be because any given person has a worldview, albiet ignored or treated apathetically, it remains, and this same person will subconsciously express this worldview in art.

It could be said that just as a man's heart is known by the fruits of his life, so is an artists message known through his art.

So I pose these questions to the Villagers: Can art be devoid of a message? Does that message have political implications? Can art be simply art? What is art's definition and can beauty stand on its own? Does art neccesitate beauty?

p.s. even though you might have reason to require expert penmanship from me, please ignore the spelling errors.

Orthodox Communism?

2006-01-21T04:19:00.000+09:00

So what is wrong with Communism? The idea in itself is (much the same as a purely Free Market) only an ideal and very much impossible. While it is a pleasant thought that each person in a truely communistic society would be equal and all resources equally shared by all - it ultimately ends in totalitarianism. Take Orwell's Animal Farm, ultimately the ideal of a perfectly equal society ends in "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUALBUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS". Why is this? How can something set-out with such good intensions falter to ultimately result in Hitler's Facism?

So now we have erred to far in the other direction, all of my libertarian friends will tell me the answer to the corruption of the "perfect society" is to free the markets and allow the demi-god that is the Free Market decide. Again, this idea assumes that man will eventually make the "right" decision - but when has this ever been the case? However, a completely "free" marketplace is nothing more than an anarchy, which ultimately becomes an anarchy where the "mob" rules at the ultimate expense of the minority.

What form of society will work then, both extremes are essentially the same - ultimately the same faults that make true communism impossible also make a truely free market anarchy impossible. Man needs a system of inherant truths by which a society should be governed. While competition is a good thing, in that it fosters invention and new ideas - is that not what we are called to do? "Much is required from those to whom much has been given" (Luke 12:48)

The Zero-Point Energy

2006-01-20T21:47:00.000+09:00

Greetings.

My opinions are of a zero, but even a zero can be valuable. Double lazy zeroes touching each other represent infinity, and that is the power of community.

All quantum mechanically treated systems possess the zero-point energy. By definition, the zero-point energy is the ground state and lowest possible energy that something physical can posses, however, it is the energy in a vacuum; a vacuum that is not in equilibrium. A vacuum is not in equilibrium when it is expanding or contracting.

For example, the piston of an engine sweeping from top dead center to bottom dead center builds the energy of a vacuum in relation to the surrounding mass, and likewise, the expansion of space carries with it a gridwork of zero-point energy everywhere. It is generally agreed that zero-point energy cannot be tapped as a perpetual energy source, however the conduit that the gridwork of the universe possesses in the zero-point energy quantum field carries implications about mass and light constants, due to the expansion of space. As space is displaced in areas by mass, the vacuum energy emitted is taken to be the basis of the cosmological constant, a universal reference that explains how the expansion of space is accelerated by a positive energy imbalance. Experimentally, the zero-point energy of the vacuum correlates to the casimir effect, which attributes the resonance of the vacuum space between two objects to the zero-point energy. The resonance of vacuum at the zero-point energy related casimir effect is not due to any other influences; not to gravity, not particles, charge, or any other thing.

String theory attempts to explain everything away using something similar to a modified sub-atomic zero-point energy vibration that fills the sub-atomic particle voids as strings. The US department of energy catalogs official research in the area of string theory and its associated disciplines.

British physicists have studied light as a plasma, but most scientific studies have caused the photon aspect of light to become overstated. The plasma perspective on light has yielded testable and repeatable results that photon theory has not. The two perspectives of plasma and photon theory together have provided a profitable result in the analysis of the behavior of light. For example, in June 2002 the Ph.D. project of Dr. Warwick Bowen of the Australian National University achieved quantum teleportation of a laser beam. Using photon light theory, a light beam was fired by a laser gun, and the beam then stopped mid-point from its target, and immediately emitted from another angle without manipulation. It is quite possible that in space, light travels on the zero-point energy grid, its speed is accelerated as the grid expands, foregoing the definition of the tachyon, or becoming a tachyon if the definition of a tachyon is built solely on lightspeed, and observable light is only locally constant. This activity in turn might be what animates the oscillation of the space between two bodies in the casimir effect. It must also be noted that space is far from an absolute vacuum. Vacuum energy is background energy that exists in space even when devoid of matter. So just how old is the light from the stars? If we limit science with notions of the origins, science will never grow. Any theory about origins that has become overrated in recent years is impeding modern scientific progress, and must be banished from all scientific texts as irrelevant.

This becomes childish at a point when a little boy looks at the stars and enjoys what he sees.

Kosmiceggburst

Did Walmart destroy the Green?

2006-01-20T12:18:00.000+09:00

It truly is amazing just how secluded one can feel in even the most populous of cities. I can remember riding the subway everyday and not once saying "good morning" to one person. We can walk down the street with our iPods firming implanted into our heads and ignore every ounce of humanity that surrounds us, comfortably drowned out by our custom playlists and pre-tailored podcasts. What has happened to our sense of community? Have we consumed away our sense of community?

Unintelligible Design

2006-01-19T19:05:00.000+09:00

Contemporary scientific things are, generally speaking, overstated and overrated. Part of this condition is probably a deliberate effort in order to excite interest in the study of science. For example, Werner Von Braun dedicated himself to aeronautics after reading a forbidden book on space exploration and being mesmerized by it, much like JS Bach read the forbidden music notation of his brother, and then doggedly pursued the study of music. Von Braun was motivated to learn all the specialties necessary to pursue the complex task of rocket design as a result of the imagination run amok.

Naturally, this distortion of the value of science today heavily impacts people, and eventually touches on the idea of origins. However, this is just an opine about the intelligent design initiative as being of value only in its being the introduction of an idea in public.

It is a big idea, but a true pseudo-science, yet not in the same meaning of the phrase as the shallow criticisms it generates.

Since science in its present state is actually extremely crude, I believe the proponents of intelligent design saw no harm in introducing the idea, via the schoolhouse, of creation being ordered by some super-conscious act, and then applying the ordinary scientific method to its result.

Many reactions to the intelligent design initiative took place as the process of implementing intelligent design happened. Perhaps the intelligent design idea is a challenge to the vaunted place contemporary science has taken in society.

The intelligent design initiative at least got people to consider the position. Actually, the way intelligent design was drafted and introduced was involatile, and lacked the potency of a strong expression, it seems. It has an unintelligibility to it because it is deliberately ambiguous the way it is stated. It was thought that in this configuration, it would be able to withstand the tyranny of democracy, and leverage a public spot in schools in a pluralistic fashion.

Whatever the final analysis, intelligent design is at least co-equal to any other proposition about origins since the scientific method requires observation to qualify it. It is only by inference that any idea about origins arrives at any conclusion, therefore, science cannot explain origins on its own terms. The way the scientific method operates prevents science from being a pulpit, and therefore it is inappropriate for science to comment on the subject of origins at all.

The subject of origins must be banished from all scientific texts or risk being ruled as pseudo-religious.

Kosmiceggburst