Quantum Theology

The linking of Christianity with fascism or neo-fascism has generated debate among scholars and in the media; and some consider it offensive to Christians. Stanley Kurtz called comparisons of the Christian Right with fascism an ill-advised attack on conservative Christians:

The most disturbing part of the Harper’s cover story (the one by Chris Hedges) was the attempt to link Christian conservatives with Hitler and fascism. Once we acknowledge the similarity between conservative Christians and fascists, Hedges appears to suggest, we can confront Christian evil by setting aside “the old polite rules of democracy.”^[6]

Some Christian organizations believe that the Christian Right has become fascist. Rich Lang of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Seattle gave a sermon titled “George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism”, in which he said, “I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Mr. Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied.”^[7]

This is an excerpt from Wikipedia on something called Christofascism. 4 years ago I would have dismissed this out of hand as ludicrous and a sleazy assault on Christians. You need to look no further than the busses used to cart off the FLDS children and young adults, owned and operated by the local First Baptist church. The fact that the local church aided and abetted the violation of the constitutional freedoms of religion, due process and equal protection under law, and unreasonable search and seizure, is high disturbing to me.

I’ll have more to say on the FLDS raid, but suffice it to say that I am very angry about the whole situation.

Lets see here, we got rid of the dictator who wasn’t massing weapons of mass destruction and wasn’t harboring terrorists. We stood up a democratic and friendly government in its place. What are we waiting for? Peace in the middle east? Considering that Iraq was more peacefull before we got there, perhaps we should take this que to leave. Seriously, since when do we have a record for peace when it comes to anything middle east related?

I thought Huckabees retort to Ron Paul was classic. Something along the lines of ‘we broke it, we buy it.’ News flash, fighting is what they do over there. Cleaning up the middle east mess is not possible!!!! Sure, we made a mess. Lets kick those jokers out of power with the same vigor we kicked Sadam out of power, admit to the mistake, and move on. I bet you a lot of people just can’t sleep at night thinking that they made a mess that they can’t clean up, so they opt for denial. Denial is a strategy for coping, not foreign policy. Thank God he didn’t get the nomination. Nothing worse then a Christian in denial leading the worlds most powerfull military. His clinging to honor was pretty pathetic too. It’s pathetic when the decision makers deflect criticism of their decisions by saying that ‘we can’t dishonor the troops!!’ while ignoring the fact that serving in a voluteer army is only as honorable as how that army is put to use by the policy makers. They were put to a dishonorable use, which put them in a state of dishonor, and the continuing of a dishonorable policy without acknowledging it is even more dishonorable. Trying to turn dishonor into honor is icing on the dishonor cake. Ron Paul is a Christian too, but he gets it. Too bad not enough voters did. Too many voters in denial themselves.

Colorado has some strange weather. Take this morning for instance. I was driving home in partly cloudy skies, and to my left the mountain was in sun, and off to the right the mountain was burried in a cloud. Considering that I live on the mountain itself, the distance between the sunny side and the burried side was less than a mile. That cloud hit me in a few minutes and it was hail. WTF?!?! It’s 50 something degrees out here!!! Oh, and it got really windy all of a sudden. Then, it was gone and it was sunny again. All in less than 10 minutes.

I looked online, and what do you know … it was predicted!!! Tell me, how you predict something like that?

A blog posting from rdan over at Angry Bear struck me as very, very well said. His post is about a photo of a wounded child that was put on the front page of the Washington Post. Emphasis mine.

There is a cost to staying disconnected from acknowledging and even embracing pain and one’s role in the causing of it. We are paying that price as a people and a nation.

In Fanueil Hall in Boston is a mural depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence, where all the signers gathered in concert to free our country from tryanny. John Adams late in his life (he lived to 90), who lived in Braintree, upon seeing it, said we have lost the history of our nation already.

To speak of these things on a regular basis is not something I see as pessimisism and brooding, or denial of my success in life and the blessings I have. The pain in life happens, and cannot be denied in the long run, actually. Allow it to numb you and you lose the happiness as well.

Another quote from Leo Tolstoy.

And bit by bit, a person grows accustomed (with strong support from theologians), to the fact that he cannot trust in his reason and therefore everthing in the world is possible, for he has nothing with which to differentiate between good and evil, lies and the truth. And in the thing most important to him - his actions - he must not be guided by his reason but by what others tell him. One can see the terrible distortion of man’s spiritual world that inevitably results from such an education, and is supported in adult life by all the techniques of persuasion which, with the aid of clergy, are continually exercised on people.

If a person of strong personality, with great labor and suffering, frees himself from the hypnotism in which he has been educated since childhood and which he has maintained in adult life, the perversion of his spirit by which he has been persuaded to distrust his own reason cannot disappear without leaving a trace, just as in the physical world the poisoning of an organism with a strong toxin cannot vanish without leaving any trace.  Having freed himself from the hypnotic influence of this deceit, such a person, hating the falsehood from which he has just released himself, naturally adopts the doctrine of the leading figures, according to which religion is regarded as one of the chief impediments to man’s advance along the path of progress (i.e. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris). And having adopted this teaching, such a man becomes like his teachers: quite unprincipled, i.e. someone without a conscience, guided in life by nothing but his whims, who rather than condemning himself on account of this, considers himself as standing at the highest point of spiritual development that man can reach.

This is what happens to people with very strong personalities. The less strong, while being led to doubt, never entirely free themselves from the deceit in which they were brought up. By adhering to various fancifully construed  and obscure theories  intended to justify the obsurdity of the dogma they have accepted, and by living in a realm of doubts, obscurities, sophism and self-deception, they only enhance the blindness of the masses and oppose their awakening.

Leo Tolstoy
What is Religion, of What Does Its Essence Consist?

He just put into words what I’ve known to be true for the last 5 years. The preaching of religion as one of the chief impediments to man’s progress is straight out of the recent books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Not bad for a guy who died 100 years ago. It’s really sad to see that fake faith survives and is a cause of fake reason. Meanwhile, there is a group at my church mightily wondering why there is a black hole of a generation which leaves the church. I’m sure that there is not just one reason, but I’m sure what Tolstoy describes accounts for some of them. I think I’ll email this to one of the pastors.

I rotate my bathroom reading, and Stephen Hawkings book on quantum mechanics came up.  The discussion on the uncertainty principle and some of the other strange findings reminded me why I named this blog in the first place. Theology is simply the study of God. If God does exist, and God created the world, then it’s interesting to think how the fundamental properties of the universe might reflect on God’s nature. The uncertainty principle states that the more you know about an electrons position, the less you know about where it’s going. Also, the more you know where it’s going, the less you know about where it really is. I found this similar to the problem of faith and reason. By this I don’t mean that faith is the absense of reason, because a faith without reason is not worth having. Rather, this refers to where people go for what kind of knowledge. It is strange and rare to find the most intellectual with a lot of faith because so much has already been explained and the world is much less of a mystery for them than others. Others that have much faith do so because it is the only way to make sense for them of a strange world.

It doesn’t help matters much that the words ‘faith’ and ‘reason’ are so inadequate to capture in intricacies of their meaning. Faith does not mean thinking that the world was created in 7 days, and reason does not mean that man evolved without intent. Somehow certain assumptions about the natural world has been baked into ‘faith’ and ‘reason’, and this is not correct.  No matter how hard you try, science, aka reason, is not going to convincingly answer the question why. It even has its limits on the how part. Now matter how hard you try, religion or faith is going to answer why, but not answer how very convincingly. It even has its limits on the why part. For some, faith and reason is an either/or proposition even though it doesn’t have to be. Instead they appear to be complementary aspects of a rational persons life. It also seems that you can’t have both in full measure at the same time.

It is a very nice day to not work, so I took out the motorcycle for a spin. The neighbor was tweaking his little scooter at the same time I was warming up my bike. Apparently he is planning on using the scooter on his runs to clear the taps in the local bars and restaurants, a decision driven by 4 dollar gas and an old pickup. He was clever in finding ways to attach the tools of his trade to the bike, and that got me thinking. It is probably worth it to find a way to attach some racks to the back of my own bike. With a little bit of storage, I could do away with the car for things like grocery shopping and other small errands.

Of course, at the same time I was looking in Best Buy for a new car stereo to replace the one in the car I’m thinking of using less and less

This is an amazing photo. Wow, just wow.

And, this is amazing in a sexy way.

“It’s interesting to hear you talk about my responsibility, to the [American people]. I didn’t realize that, and maybe this explains quite a bit, is that the news organizations look to the comedy channel for their ques on integrity. … You’re CNN, the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.”

Jon Stewart

Hat tip to Housing Panic. Mass media is a joke. The political process is a joke. The remaining presidential candidates are jokes. And, this clip is hilarious.