I love it when my peanut butter & chocolate go together, and by peanut butter & chocolate, I mean science & theology.

Remember this post?  Particularly point #5?

Here’s an interesting science news item from a few days back…

A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK…

The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies. The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.

The idea that there’s a lot of real estate floating around loose between the stars is not a new one.

This is the first time, however, that it’s been suggested that life itself originated with the universe, and was not simply a random byproduct.

Which leads me to ask the $64 trillion dollar question:
Is the Universe as we know it simply the byproduct of the creation of Life?

God, through His son and the prophets, constantly reminds us that the least shall be greatest.

Cosmologists are quick to remind us “that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people” and ask “if we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

With all due respect, I think they have it backwards.

We, who are physically
among the least in the Universe,
are the very reason it exists at all,
and long after this Universe is swept away,
we will just be beginning the great task
that we were created for.

There is a very real possibility that the span between the stars is not the vast ocean of emptiness we thought but a series of (relatively) small hops.

Step by step is how life spreads:
From this valley to the next, from this island to another.  Humanity is not confined to this system; there are countless worlds beyond on which to build way stations.

We’ve been looking at travel to the stars through the wrong set of lenses.

We should stop thinking about flying by jet and start thinking of getting there by stagecoach.

Who cares how long it takes as long as we get there?

As they say in the song:

“Who gives a damn?
We’re on our way!”

House servant or field hand?

There’s a lot to recommend being a house servant.

Privilege, prestige, power (to the limited degree the owners will let you feast off their crumbs)

Sure beats laboring in the hot, hot sun, don’t it?

Don’t work up a sweat, callouses, resentment

Cut yourself some slack

Enjoy the good things in life

(And if they’re not really good things, then at least better things than those poor bastards out in the fields get)

Doesn’t take much

Easy living

Soft work

All it costs is your self-respect

And you know it

And it eats at you

And you either fester in self-loathing (if you still have a soul)

Or hate and contempt for your cousins in the field

Greater hate and contempt than even the owners have for them

Because without you, the system can’t work the way they want

Without you, there is no system

So every time you smile and suck up their abuse

Every time you shuck and jive so the system can flourish

It’s as if you’re wielding the whip yourself

It would be better, in fact, if you actually were whipping them

At least that’s honest oppression

No hypocrisy involved

So you have to hate

You have to close off your heart

You have to say that you are worthy and they are not

That the system isn’t rigged

That the system is just

The system is correct

The system is moral

The system is righteous

Only then can you sleep at night

That’s what it takes for you to close your eyes

Otherwise your eyes will stay open wide

Darting anxiously in the dark

Constantly fleeing the question you never want to face:

“My God, what have I done?”

yeah, i’m trying to
be circumspect here…

What happened to the hat and the birth of the blues.  (click to find links if you’re reading this on Facebook.)

So there’s a community made up of predominantly conservative Christians.  They belong to various denominations, but all of them agree on one thing:  Drinking alcohol is a sin.

As such, they pass laws banning not merely the sale of alcohol but its consumption as well.

Time passes, however.  It always does.  The community grows and expands and soon there’s a significant number of non-conservative Christians among them.

These non-conservative Christians do not believe the consumption of alcohol — in and of itself — is a sin.

As citizens of the United States they exercise their right to freedom of speech to petition the government to change its laws and permit the sale of alcohol.

Now the issue breaks on purely freedom of religion grounds, one group asserting its right to declare alcohol a sin, the other to declare it is not.

Stalemate.

The teetotalers fight to keep the old laws on the books.  “Think about the children!” they say (they always do).

The drinkers agree they should think about the children
and agree alcohol should not be sold or served to them.

But adults should be allowed to purchase and consume.

“But what about drunk driving?” the teetotalers say.

The drinkers agree driving under the influence is A Bad Idea
since it imperils everyone equally, and as such support DUI laws.

“But we’ve never allowed the sale and consumption in our town before, ” say the teetotalers.

There’s a first time for everything.  Times change.

“Why don’t you just move to a community where it’s sold, or just visit such a community, buy what you want there, and bring it back but keep it hidden.”

The drinkers don’t want to.  Many of them were born
in the community; they all live here now.  Why should
they give up basic rights and jump through hoops to
buy and consume alcohol.

“But what about people who will become alcoholics?”

Those people will always be with us, unfortunately.
Banning alcohol won’t prevent drunks from finding booze,
but it may make it easier to ignore real alcohol problems and
keep people who could be helped from getting help they need.

“But…but…but…it’s a sin!” say the teetotalers.

Then don’t drink alcohol.

Now we’re back where we started.
Is that it?  Have you got nothing else?

There is no secular reason to prevent people from legally buying and selling alcohol, the same way they legally buy and sell a million and one other products.

That leaves only the Bible…

…but the Bible is a word of authority only to those who believe it is.
In the secular world, it’s just another book.

But say a Christian is looking for guidance on the topic of drinking alcohol (or any moral issue, for that matter)…

First off, there’s nothing in the Old Testament that applies to Gentiles or Christian Jews.

In Exodus 19: 3-6, in a run up to the issuing of the Decalogue…

And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;  Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.  Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:  And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

God is not issuing a command, God is negotiating with the children of Israel (i.e., the descendants of Jacob).* “If you will do X, I will do Y” which in this case was “If you will refrain from doing these 10 things, I will protect you; if you don’t refrain, I won’t protect you.”

That’s not a law.

That’s a deal, a bargain, a contract.

A covenant.

Moses is correctly identified as The Lawgiver because he’s the one who came up with all the picayune rules and regulations to force the Israelites to adhere to the terms of the contract.

It’s as if a landlord said to a homeless family, “I’ll let you stay here if you keep the front lawn mowed and the house cleaned” and the parents then assigned specific chores to their children, punishing those who refused to obey and help.

The landlord has no desire to whip any kid with a belt; the landlord may not even think whipping is a good idea.

But the family has the right to set discipline for its own members.

That doesn’t mean they can set discipline for the family across the street.

The Israelites were not the only followers of God in the Old Testament.  Several of the tribes and personages they encountered along the way were monotheists worshiping the single great Creator.

But the Israelites were the ones called to special service, and promised extra protection and extra blessings if they would devote themselves to God.

They agreed…

…and immediately started looking for loopholes.

While God was working with the Israelites (soon to be whittled down to just the tribe of Judah), He wasn’t necessarily ignoring the rest of the world.  Christ taught “other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

We see in the writings of the great Greek philosophers intimations of their recognition of a higher, greater Creator above and beyond the numerous deities of folk religion.  In China Lao Tze wrote of the Tao, which he understood to be the great force behind the universe.

Many, many peoples and cultures caught a glimpse, a hint of what we refer to today as God.  As C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity:

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole word is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest one, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic – there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.

The Old Testament is a collection of texts that provide the basis and the context for Christianity.  These texts are profitable for instruction and inspiration…but they are not for us.

We Christians could live without any of the Old Testament, provided our faith is solidly locked in on the teachings of Christ.

Therein lies the paradox:
Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testament covenant, but by fulfilling it, he did away with it:  The contract was completed.  We — all those who believe in what Christ taught — are to follow the new teaching:  That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

We know that Christ followed all of the ten points in the Decalogue, the covenant between God and Israel.

We also know he violated many of Moses’ picayune petty laws on holiness, such as working on the Sabbath.

We know he refused to condemn a woman caught in adultery even though Moses’ law required her death.

We also know God appeared to Peter in a vision and basically told him Moses’ kosher laws were bollocks, which Peter rightly interpreted as “The Word ain’t for Jews alone”.

So what do we not find in the Decalogue?  What matters were so trivial God didn’t think to include them in His basic deal with Israel?

No mention of proscribed food, or drink, or manner of dress.

No requirements for one gender to be held in greater esteem than the other.

No requirement to lord it over non-Israelites.

No proscription of pre-marital sexual relations.

No proscription of same sex relations.

Women are not forbidden to grab a guy’s junk if he’s beating up on their husband.

No penalties or jurisdictions.  (And why should there be?  This is a voluntary relationship.  Any Israelite who wanted to opt out and no longer be under God’s protection was free to do so.)

Human beings can get some mighty peculiar ideas in their heads about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s morally good and what’s morally evil, what’s socially acceptable and what’s not.

God apparently doesn’t care about 99.99%+ of the stuff that gets our knickers in a twist.

There’s a lot of hate being spread out there in the name of Christ, who repudiated hate and stood for unconditional love.

None of the hate is Bible based.  It can’t be.  The Bible — particularly the New Testament that does apply to us Christians — proscribes hate.

If you hate someone, you need to make your peace with them before worshiping God.  God’s first question to you is going to be, why are you hating your sibling, who is my child as well?  Go back and make peace.

There’s still time.

.

.

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*  Who’s who among the Hebrews and Jews:  Not all humans are Semites, not all Semites are Hebrews (descendants of Eber, who was a descendant of Noah & ancestor to Abraham), not all Hebrews are Israelites (descendants of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob), not all Israelites are Jews (i.e., from the tribe of Judah).  When Moses led the 12 Tribes of Israel out of Egypt, he picked up a few relatives along the way who were adopted into the nation of Israel.  Nonetheless, many of the nations and tribes the Israelites encountered were fellow Hebrews.  Technically, even Arabs are Hebrews since they are descendants of Abraham.

A few year’s back, Sam Henderson’s always entertaining blogsite The Magic Whistle ran a notorious well known 3-page comics story by Sam Glanzman called “Please Don’t Cry, Johnny”.

Lemme save you some time;
you don’t have to read the entire story.
The first two pages are padding,
all the info you need is down below…

This is why it’s an okay story, not a bad story:
It’s short, it gets to its punchline quickly,
it has a visually shocking enough ending
to make it stick in one’s memory.

This is why it’s an okay story, not a good story:
Because there’s a million and one questions to be answered with that last panel.
Who are these people?  Why does the father look like this?  Is this Johnny’s fate?
How do they live?  Don’t they ever have to go to town?
Will Johnny and his family always be outcasts?

This should have been the very first page of the story.  It should have answered all of those questions, or at least intimated at answers.

Then it would have had the chance of being great, and if not great, at least much, much better than what it is.

Bottom line:
Never settle for the obvious in your writing.

I don’t see movies
or buy comics from
people who screw over
friends of mine.

Writer Steven Grant recently posted the below on his FB wall.
I think he’s hit a particular nail square on the head — and I
think calling ‘em NACs (New American Calvinists) instead of
Andrew Sullivan’s “Christianist” does a better job of separating
them from more genuine followers of the faith.

Calvinism was never Christianity.  It was an active distortion of Christianity that aggrandized the rich, by making visible wealth on earth the signifier of God’s love.  Calvin’s core tenet is that all who will go to heaven were chosen at the beginning of time, as were all who weren’t.  “The reprobate are damned because they were always meant to be damned. The preterite are not saved because they were never meant to be saved.”  Needless to say, the wealthy citizens of Geneva embraced this.

In Calvinism, money=grace. The New American Calvinism takes this one step further: not only does money=grace but no money=sin.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the language of Citizens United, & the court decision allowing SuperPACs, funded by corporations & the ultrarich, unfettered ability to distort the American political process.  Unraveling the language, it becomes apparent that “citizen” now refers to exactly that: corporations & the ultrarich.  (This is also promoted by advocates of an “unamended Constitution” & “return” to pre-Constutional ideas of some founding fathers, specifically those who believed government was best served by restricting the vote to landed gentry.)  By contrast, those not fitting into that class are no longer commonly referred to as “citizens” but as “consumers,” whose position in life is to further fund (mostly but not exclusively by accumulation of goods) the ambitions of “citizens.”  Even lower are those most in need, now rarely called “the poor” & instead commonly derided as “welfare cases.”  America is now being actively stratified by the New American Calvinism into, by their reckoning, God-determined “natural order” of Citizen, Consumer & Welfare Case, paralleling the original Calvinist classifications of Elect, Preterite & Reprobate.  With a philosophical addition perhaps accidentally paralleling the philosophy of 1st Century Christianity, when the return of Christ to Earth was still thought to be imminent & occurring within their lifetimes.  Original sin would be washed away, & those saved would henceforth be without sin.  This has been interpreted by later generations as a world where no one sinned, but in their view it was rather that sin itself would no longer exist, that no behavior would be classified as sin.  In a similar turn of mind, in New American Calvinism, “grace” not only determines The Elect but removes them from the possibility of sin, so that whatever behavior they embark on, it is exempt from characterization as sin.

The bunny’s getting fat
Won’t you put a shamrock
In the krampus’ hat?

On a more serious note,
I’ll be posting heavily on
religious themes this week.
You have been warned.