Of course ....

Deep Thoughts

Confucius Say '...

Jim's Corpse

stuff I think about                                                           Time and Space Here's a story that Sister Edna, my 2nd grade teacher at St Francis Borgia, told us (to the best of my recollection). One Sunday afternoon, Jim was struck dead in his basement workshop.  Heart attack.  At the Pearly Gates he was remanded to purgatory for one year, in penance for various venial sins.  Having had a taste of what it would be like to be in the presence of God, Jim was crushed beyond words at being  denied HIS glory for so long.  If only he had gone to confession yesterday!  Too late now. Now, after what was certainly a period of 100 years, or more (certainly more than double the life he had lived on Earth) had passed, Jim was granted an appeal.  When he complained to St. Peter that a huge error had been made, St. Peter let Jim to see what was happening, in real time, back on Earth.  His wife Betty was just now standing over his body lying on his work shop floor.  She was sobbing while a rescue squad placed his corpse on a gurney.  So it was that we were introduced to time and space at a tender age.  I remember that when people attack the Genesis creation narrative.  JMJ

God Stuff

stuff I think about                                                           JMJ

"... and please don't say that God existed before the Big Bang ..." I'm not trying to start any flame wars, but more and more this is stuff I think about .... Here someone asks Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa .... If space and time started at the  time of the Big Bang, say 14 billion years ago, and time did not exist before that, we must assume that the creation of the universe  and of God were contemporaneous events, rather than the reverse ....

Philosophy; Cartman

Pointless Things

BedrockPhilosophy                   Tom Mann makes a point

The Daniel Project

At The Cinema                            The Daniel Project 2011 This has been hanging around NetFlix for awhile, but I wasn't much into watching yet another of the Bible end-time prophesies.  Not that I discount the possibility of their truth, but because I've seen so many of them already.  I accidentally clicked on it last night—if you watch the beginning you'll understand why I wasn't immediately alerted to what ticket I'd  just punched,  When I did, it was too late; I was hooked. This is quite different from anything you've seen along this line before.  I have only included the last 13 minute wrap-up in this clip (Hulu allows that bit of engineering). Since it's Bible prophesy being looked at, it's impossible of course to leave Judaism and Christianity out of it.  And Israel is central to Biblical prophesy.  What I hadn't put together before was how central. At one point, leading up to what Christians call the Anti-Christ, a world leader who will unify the world with the promise of making everything okay again,  it's noted that Islam is waiting for the Mahdi; Buddhist the 5th Buddha, and even hippies, who worship lines in the sand, have someone which name I forget. So there's room for everyone. I'm telling you this to maybe overcome a reluctance you may have to watch anything with religious overtones.  A blood curdling-for-me  moment is when Obama is shown prattling on about "what God  wants." Reading my mind, one of the commenters says, Obama was the first person to come to my mind, but since the (Anti-Christ) will be at first viewed as being full of wisdom and widely accepted; that's not possible.  Or to that effect. Another interesting point is the prophesy that all people will be marked on their head and right hand with the mark of the beast.  Not to have that mark means you die.  Chip implants, anyone?  But what set me back on my heels was this question.  The Bible specifically says the mark will be on the Right Hand.  To what group would this have special significance?   (Who wipes there arses with the left hand? )   You can watch it in fill on Hulu (with advertising interruptions every 10 minutes) or on Netflix.   For what it's worth.  If you were meant to watch it, you will.

Do you want ‘spirituality’ ...

“ The real question, John [of the Cross] suggests, is about what you are really after: Do you want ‘spirituality’, mystical experience, inner peace, or do you want God? If you want God, then you must be prepared to let go all, absolutely all, substitute satisfactions, intellectual and emotional. You must recognize that God is so unlike whatever can be thought or pictured that, when you have got beyond the stage of self-indulgent religiosity, there will be nothing you can securely know or feel. You face a blank: and any attempt to avoid that or shy away from it is a return to playing comfortable religious games. The dark night is God’s attack on religion. If you genuinely desire union with the unspeakable love of God, then you must be prepared to have your own religious world shattered. If you think devotional practices, theological insights, even charitable actions give you some sort of purchase on God, you are still playing games. On the other hand, if you can face and accept and even rejoice in the experience of darkness, if you accept God is more than an idea which keeps your religion or philosophy or politics tidy – then you may find a way back to religion, philosophy or politics, to an engagement with them that is more creative because you are more aware of the oddity, the uncontrollable quality of the truth at the heart of all things. This is what ‘detachment’ means – not being ‘above the battle’, but being involved in such a way that you can honestly confront whatever comes to you without fear of the unknown; it is a kind of readiness for the unexpected, if that is not too much of a paradox. [American Digest Sidelines] ” And yes, you can still like looking at women's breasts. I think.

Upon the rocks ...

Philosophy

Theoretically yes; each act results in the murder of 400 million potential peeps.  But ... what if the man has undergone a vasectomy?

Is there a Creator? - What if ...

What if ...?

In the "Is There a Creator" episode of Through the Wormhole, there seems to be a consensus that, yes there is, but of what form and genesis?  One that intrigues me, from a philosophical pov, is that God is a computer geek genius.  As an erstwhile Sim-City enthusiast, from the days when it ran in DOS, I readily accepted creator  Will Wright as an exemplar.  But, the computer analogy took me to a troubling place; an epiphanal  moment where something I accepted, albeit somewhat nebulously, or absentmindedly, became starkly real.  God the computer geek can push a button and  print the spreadsheet of my life, in the most minute detail, during my last heartbeat.  Depending on the result, and with unyielding and impersonal adherence to the program, a disposition will be made. Case closed.  Holy shit. Aside:  I always felt that public officials should be made to play Sim City until they successfully created a working city the size of the area they represented.  In that manner, our lawmakers would at least have some exposure to the role taxation, immigration, crime and infrastructure play, and none of them could possibly remain a  Democrat (as we know them today).  Those who did would be exposed as having an agenda not in the public interest, and be sent to the electric chair.

The not so fine line ...

The not so fine line between a great ass, and two asses

Penance

Crime and Punishment

Near Occasion of Sin. Very Near. I've been thinking about this since second grade First Communion class.  When you go to confession your penalty (penance) is saying  prayers.  This never made sense to me.  It's like - Murder - Electric Chair; Treason - Firing Squad; Bank Robbery - Leavenworth.  Steal Money From Mom's Purse - 3 Hail Marys and 3 Our Fathers It creates an unfortunate association the way I saw it. Who would play with an electric chair for fun? See what I mean? I brought this up in religion class, and the Sister Edna asked what I thought would be more appropriate?  I told her if the priest said, "Say a good Act of Contrition, and for your penance tell Tony Crimaldi he runs like a girl."  Tony Crimaldi later punched me during recess for being philosophical.  Prolly why I can't get through St. Augustine's De civitate dei.  I'm not making that up.

Philosophy

These musings are intended to frame a set of questions: What is the likely impact of ubiquitous surveillance on our moral personalities?

“ Imagine that right after briefing Adam about which fruit was allowed and which forbidden, God had installed a closed-circuit television camera in the garden of Eden, trained on the tree of knowledge. Think how this might have changed things for the better. The serpent sidles up to Eve and urges her to try the forbidden fruit. Eve reaches her hand out – in paradise the fruit is always conveniently within reach – but at the last second she notices the CCTV and thinks better of it. Result: no sin, no Fall, no expulsion from paradise. We don’t have to toil among thorns and thistles for the rest of our lives, earning our bread by the sweat of our brows; childbirth is painless; and we feel no need to wear clothes. So why didn’t God do that and save everyone a lot of grief? True, surveillance technology was in its infancy back then, but ... [Emrys Westacott asks a probing question continued] ” Pappy

The Template

Christmas Messages

What I've been saying, but said better

“ Usually, when people say they’re not religious, they’re looking to pick a fight or at least start an argument.  That’s probably because people who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics are often as dogmatic as Cotton Mather and have merely made a religion of their own non-belief. In my case, however, religion simply plays no role in my life.  Or perhaps I should say institutionalized religion, seeing as how I very much subscribe to the Judeo-Christian value system.  It’s the reason that I’m so grateful that two sets of Russian Jewish grandparents had the guts to pack up their kids and caboodle, and move to America. Unfortunately, they and many others like them included in their baggage several  hundred years worth of religious antagonisms.  In far too many cases, these fears and prejudices, although initially well-founded, have been passed along like precious heirlooms from one generation to the next. Even among some of my friends and relatives, there are those who half-expect their Christian neighbors to start organizing pogroms any day now.  They remain unconvinced that Hitler and the Nazis were pagans.  And even when I point out that it was American and British soldiers, mainly Christians, who brought down the Third Reich and liberated the concentration camps, it often falls on deaf ears. So, although I do not accept that we are all fallen creatures or that Jesus Christ died for my sins, I am thankful that I live in a Christian nation. [I’m Happy To Live In A Christian Nation] ”

Do Bears ... ?

Merrily