Category Archives: Religion

The God Thing Redux

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Have you seen the TV commercial where a fellow hits a tennis ball over an off-camera net and receives hundreds of balls back? So it is with ‘The God Thing,’ a recent post. To mix metaphors, mariner thought he could, like a fighter jet doing a touch and go on an aircraft carrier, do a quick touch and go on the carrier of Christendom. He should know better.

Mariner is more than willing to engage in dialogue so don’t stop until you are satisfied. In the meantime until disagreements subside, the subject will remain part of a post rather than put into a reply. Let’s start by dissecting mariner’s theological shorthand into something with broader perception:

God is not directly a separate thing. Yes, in retrospect, that is obfuscating. If the word ‘God’ is an element in our discussion, the perception that God is the Trinity is not disturbed; the Trinity is intact. Mariner’s intent was to advance Father Christoforos’s statement that we, the humans, utilize God’s spirit when we take action to invoke the Second Commandment, the Ten Commandments, and most of the Beatitudes not to mention Old Testament prophets and New Testament disciples. The Father was advocating (if not admonishing) humans to carry out the responsibility side of their faith. Put your money where your faith is, so to speak: if we love God, we have no choice but to love people. God created all of us and commands in his name to love all things. Father Christoforos simply said if you don’t love people, you can’t love God.

Feeling God through empathy. Regarding the idea that the way we feel God is through sympathetic, empathetic and compassionate feelings is not one that can be dismissed. Jesus said more than once, especially in his parables, that if we behave in a certain way, great will be our reward in heaven. It may be helpful if one follows that thought as God’s tit-for-tat. Latch on to the experience that people describe when they have immersed themselves in a charitable act. Think about the athletes, celebrities, common citizens and just anyone who is committed to helping someone who has testified to the resultant deep satisfaction and reward; it is an experience too similar among them not to be a profound, deep seated human experience. Through an intense feeling of sympathy, empathy and compassion along with personal sacrifice, the flower that blooms is God’s Grace.

Showing a superior force. The superior force is the healing power of God displayed by Jesus in any number of healing events. This is frequently illustrated throughout the New Testament. Although most easily displayed as a medical advantage, the healing spirit of God applies to moments in the lifetime of every one of us. As God’s emissary, you show the power of God through the power of your commitment – expressed as sympathy, empathy and compassion. These three sensations are the tools by which you express your commitment to God, God’s domination of all things, and the power of love itself.

Mariner hopes these clarifications help. Clarifications aside, he wants to reiterate the importance of applying this portion of the body of Christian works, repeated from ‘The God Thing:’

Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

Ancient Mariner

The God Thing

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Mariner was watching the PBS News Hour the other day when the broadcast did a piece about the immigrants coming into Lesbos, a large island belonging to Greece. One of the locals in the video was an Eastern Orthodox priest, Father Christosoros, who was very receptive of incoming immigrants and was a leading helper organizing them and arranging shelter and food. All of Lesbos, in fact, has done the best they can for the immigrants despite an overwhelming obligation.

Father Christosoros, in an interview by the PBS reporter said, “How we see people is how we see God.” It reminded mariner of the years when he was a pastor and had the responsibility of assisting parishioners in seeing and knowing God in their lives. It still affects his conversation on occasion.

When you think about it, it is a difficult task to incorporate God – or any universal but not physical authority into one’s own very empirical existence with five senses and four dimensions. How can two such different entities coexist at the same time?

The Eastern Orthodox priest had it right. God is not directly a separate thing. God is experienced as part as one’s own ability to accept the reality that God provides. God’s existence can only occur as a result of your actions. Do you see sanctity in every individual? Do you feel a need to show a superior force spawned by respect, caring, and empathy that will easily assuage the difficulty that confronts others? Do you not judge or harbor feelings that separate you from others? The Bible is thick with comments that suggest if you take care of others, you will be taken care of. That’s about all you can ask, though oddly, the rewards of representing God are addictive.

Most literal, highly regulated rules about your relationship with God are antiquated in their presentation. They were formulated in past ages where knowledge, science, and culture were not as aware as they are today. Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

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Just a kudo for PBS. Watching the PBS News Hour has double or triple the insight into the world situation as the plastic, viewer share driven news channels elsewhere. If mariner can watch only one news program, it is the PBS News Hour.

Ancient Mariner

 

Loyalty is Everyone’s Mandate.

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During the holiday season many, many charity organizations are working at maximum speed to spread the cheer that someone cares for the wellbeing of another. The reader should become aware of the many efforts at feeding, gifting, paying for, providing shelter, providing warmth, and providing other critical support to the growing number of those left bereft and friendless by our abusive society.

Do you attend religious services? Your place of worship inevitably supports several charity projects – probably even sponsors volunteer activities in house to distribute evidence of care and concern but even more, befriending those who can’t afford friends. That includes more often than not families with children.

The best gift is you. That is hard for many people to do. But once one gives with personal effort and time, once one shares with another face-to-face, hand-to-hand, there are two gifts: You receive one, too, and it will be the best gift to you for the whole holiday season!

Our national culture slowly has worn thin. Citizens relate combatively. All the circus acts in politics, all the pretending that when whole industries have discarded wage earners, there is no human impact and that their futures are chopped off – leaving them homeless and penniless with families to support – these are not bad people; these are not failed people; these are not to be scorned; at least not yesterday why today? The US was founded on a new philosophy among nations that every citizen is responsible for every other citizen.

We have forgotten that in the US, we aren’t loyal to a regime or an ideologue. In the US, the strength of our society is not loyalty to the flag. No, it isn’t. We are loyal to each other. Not just in political rituals or paying taxes; each of us has a bonded responsibility to look after our fellow citizens and they must look out for us.

Loyalty to one another is a political mandate to keep the US together and strong. It is not a game for soft-hearts or ‘liberals.’ It is a hard game to be played every day, in every moment. Eric Metaxas said the US is founded on freedom. Freedom requires belief in freedom; freedom requires loyalty; loyalty requires virtue.

Now show your freedom, loyalty, virtue and wisdom: get out there and create some truly precious and needed holiday spirit!

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ERRATA

In a recent post lamenting mariner’s fortunes at the voting box, there was a poorly phrased sentence about the Presidential terms of Lyndon B. Johnson. To clarify, LBJ finished JFK’s term when Jack was assassinated; Lyndon won his own term in the next election but declined to run for a second elected term.

Did you forget your reading assignment? It’s “If You Can Keep It” by Eric Metaxas, copyright 2016, Penguin Random House. ISBN 9781101979983 hardbound — ISBN 9781101980002 ebook. $26.00 hardbound. Or see your library.

Ancient Mariner

About the Presumption about Shapes and Genomes

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Thoughts about the last post, A Presumption – Is it true or False? which assumed that a preference for a given shape is stored in the genome, are far ranging. Many arguments don’t address the genome-memory presumption; rather the responses provide evidence that would allow the presumption to be true or false.

Mariner lists different ideas submitted by readers, responding to cogent arguments. Many responses from readers were edited for length. The mariner’s response is in italics.

  • About the Presumption about Shapes and Genomes. This is more evidence that aliens visited Earth in prehistoric times.May or may not be relevant; did visiting aliens morph our genomes to prefer certain shapes or sizes?
  • Primitive cultures did not need the sky to explain their theology; they worshiped what they saw in nature. One might ask why low round shapes dominated religious edifices in a region that has several large mountain ranges with Mount Ararat topping out at 17,000 feet. Did the genome prefer round shapes?
  • It wasn’t until the Iron Age that humans had the materials to build upward. A good assumption in its own right – linking religious shapes to emerging paleontological skills. What decided what the shape would be – a genome or a committee?
  • The American Indian worshipped Mother Earth, a view of which was limited to the horizon – a circular view that influenced them in their religion. A good metaphor. Circles are everywhere in American Indian culture. Did the Indian genome prefer circles?
  • The genome drives everything. In birds especially, instinct predetermines nest shapes, height and building materials; plumage is an ingrained judgment to make decisions about mating, etc. Free will is not as prevalent as humans would like to think. I vote for the genome. A strong argument. The mariner considered birds as well. Do birds have a religious culture – the other side of the presumption?

The presumption is much ado about little. The human brain is a montage of experience, genetic instruction and external reality as humans interpret it. Completing the puzzle or not won’t change anything or mean anything. It’s just a puzzle.

Still, by following one’s thoughts, there are many side streets that help the brain stay supple and alert. For example, there is an old pop-psych quiz about preferred shapes: One is asked which of four shapes is most appealing – a circle, a square, a triangle or a squiggly line? Purportedly, a personality that chooses the circle likes things to be simpatico, undisturbed and pleasant; the person that picks the square likes things to be orderly, secure and well defined; the person that prefers the triangle is comfortable with change, conflict and existential attitudes. Finally, the one who picks the squiggly line is artistic, comfortable with surrealistic solutions, and dislikes redundancy. Which do you prefer?

4-shapesIn the end, does a personality select the edifice shape?

Is widespread use by others of an original religious shape simply practical and the simplest path?

In Washington D.C., edifices abound. Consider the Washington Monument, Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the Viet Nam Memorial. Which chose, the architect, the committee, the religion, or a shape preference in our genome?

Could it be all of the above?

Ancient Mariner

A Presumption – Is it True or False?

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Mariner begins a new series of posts that presume some idea is applicable to some process or result that may not be in the mainstream of history, science, or behavior. The posts will occur occasionally and unexpectedly.

Presumption – Over time, preferred geometric forms become ingrained in the genome. True or false?

To present a broad example, very early forms of religion (7,000 years ago or earlier) were not interested in height or divine sexuality until, abruptly, new gene pools from western Turkey and early Greece introduced a preference for vertical structures to express religiosity. The earliest gene populations built structures with rounded domes while later ones, like Egyptians, Babylonians, Mesopotamians and classic Greeks went with super large vertical architecture and focused on kings as gods (more a cultural preference). To a noticeable extent, the change in architecture was a rapid shift in preference for religious edifices; further, from the view of genetic anthropology, it is relatively clear that a new gene pool suddenly changed visual shape preferences.

Another illustration of circles dominating vertical architectures are the giant, geoglyphs discovered in the Peruvian desert; then there’s the example of soaring cathedrals and office buildings in large western cities. We could go on.[1]

On the other end of the European expansion, round edifices were preferred – consider Stonehenge[2] before the Roman occupation…

Another example occurs at the beginning and end of the great migration out of Africa – the one that travels through China, up to Japan and Russia, across the Bering Strait, down through North America and into Central and South America. Compare the architecture of the Xia Dynasty of ancient China to architecture at the end of the migration in Mayan and Aztec cultures – separated by 3,000 years and three continents.

In between were civilizations that did not create similar forms. Instead, one can see that these western civilizations, like the early religions in Turkey and Stonehenge, seemed to prefer round structures. The circle is prevalent in everything from igloos and tepees to religious symbols, to garment decorations to the Peruvian giant circles in the desert. Because these intervening civilizations existed in vast terrains that did not require reactions to mountainous geography, (the civilizations in between lived on islands, flatlands and ocean front) the theologies and godheads were vastly different yet none preferred vertical architecture until mountains were the primary topography.

There are historians who suggest that migrations traveled from the Indonesian area and settled in the middle of South America and are ancestors to a more primitive culture – remnants of which still exist in the great forests, Chile and Peru. However, in the deserts south of the Amazon basin, huge geoglyphs, well above normal size and often based on geometric design, reflect the same pattern of super sizing as the Mesopotamians.

It is agreed that terrain, over time, alters geographic preferences. But over generations, do certain cultural shapes become preferred as well? Darwin’s finches proved that finches developed new beak shapes and in England, feather colors matching local tree colors. Is this true about humans as well?

Can we presume that the genome carries a preference for certain geometric shapes – a preference ingrained over generations?

True or False?

Given the challenge, it will be hard to avoid association with successive generational adaptation.

Ancient Mariner

[1] The mariner cheats by including large, tall office buildings because they are neither religious edifice nor caused by one’s genome. They exist because there are too many people and not enough space. However, allowed to be taller than a religious edifice, one wonders whether capitalism is the actual religion.

[2] Weak example; It was a calendar. Nevertheless, circular architecture dominated the British Isles until castles came along.

Consider This . . .

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The last post did a short analysis of the causes and voting behavior of the electorate’s response to the candidates. In this post, we look forward – not so much about the cabinet and key players in the White House, which looks neither republican nor democrat but certainly a team who will fumble as the weight of running a democratic republic falls upon them. We must give them time to fumble and see how they recover.

The Guru still is contributing to the mariner’s thoughts so our focus will address – in the looong view – well rooted troubles evidenced by the election and the consequences that will occur if they are not addressed.

Consider religion –

Guru blames our religious difficulties on Puritans and other fundamentalists who relocated in America because their practices did not fit well with a rapidly liberalizing Church in Europe. Even today, employees of Planned Parenthood may be shot, burned off the property, forced by a government who ignores the US Constitution to dismantle financial support, lay debilitating regulations upon them and otherwise ostracize Planned Parenthood from their presumed right to pursue basic human rights. When was it that Protestants stopped slitting open the length of every Quaker’s nose just because they were Quakers?

The current fundamentalist unrest should not even be an issue. The nation was clearly founded on freedom of religion. The pettiness is not really religious; it is the belief that because our money references God, the nation is a theocracy – just the conflict our founders wanted to avoid. If this conflict cannot be put to rest, the conservative theocratic movement will keep our politicians from dealing with tough issues through politically democratic compromise. The tea party folks came close to bringing down the US for good. Further, throughout time since the beginning, religious practices have changed as society changed – but not without questionable abuses of religious doctrine in defense of tradition. It is not enough to be an American Citizen and be safe from beheadings and genocide by ISIL; we owe our own nation loyalty to its premise of freedom for all citizens. Being citizens of the only nation in the world that defines itself as ‘freedom for all citizens’ requires even the religiously devout to – in this nation at least – be loyal to that principle. Religious faith is relevant or it becomes destructive if not meaningless.

We need all three branches of the Federal Government and state governments as well to deal successfully with international politics, greed-based corporatism, scientific knowledge that may leave us on a pile of extinct species before we may want to do that and a planet that is pretty much fed up with us. The new world of governance cannot be held back by regional faith; virtually every issue will require international agreements involving many faiths, cultures and races.

 

Consider economics –

The United States is founded on principles never before used to run a nation. US citizens were required to manage themselves. True, there was a republic but that was for serious things like war, taxation, balance of national economy, and dealing with other nations. In practice, citizens believed in freedom – the principle that everyone could pursue a successful life without oppression; they were free to believe independent religious beliefs – the principle that ethnicity and prejudice would not interfere with the pursuit of happiness; and they believed in loyalty to their fellow citizens to support the principles of freedom of faith, freedom of opportunity, and the personal and cultural loyalty to believe in freedom for everyone. In other words, citizens had to believe in their nation’s principle and manage themselves as keepers of freedom.

Freedom includes citizen wellbeing. If one citizen takes from another unjustly, or prevents a citizen from opportunity, or fair exchange for labor, in public discourse protects a citizen’s equal rights under the Constitution but consciously interferes with citizen freedom as a shared right, to a just and fair economy owned by everyone, then the US concept that everyone has freedom to pursue life and liberty has disappeared. Mariner does not suggest every citizen be equal in assets but taking more than is deserved, necessary or leveraging dishonestly is not in the interest of the US – which depends on each citizen to be loyal to the right of equality and freedom.

Corporatism is the belief in profit above freedom; Corporatism provokes class prejudice; Corporatism is free of allegiance to freedom, compounded by guaranteed protection as a human participant, a corporation is a double-barreled abuse of the founding fathers’ intentions.

 

Consider Globalism.

The mariner groups several diverse movements under this term: corporatism, technology, biological progress through medicine and chemistry, protection of the biosphere, and competition by war for greedy and ideological reasons. All these activities have one thing in common: they are not based on the concept of nationalism; they are not based on one nation’s philosophy of government; and by definition, globalism cannot be allocated to nations individually.

If the reader thinks it has been a hard row to move humanity from 1760 to 2016, prepare for even more from 2016 to 2272. A person alive today cannot fathom what civilization will be like 256 years from now.

One wonders what events, provocations, inventions and changes in principles of governance will be required – either collaboratively or with great conflict – to achieve insights and rules that achieve solutions to global issues humanity has never experienced – let alone survive in the process. The triangle of strength and success written by Os Guinness[1] and resurrected by Eric Mataxas[2], that is, “Freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; faith requires freedom” is the only tool set available. Considering advancing historical eras by government ideologies, The United States is the beginning of a new, common governance that may be the only ideology capable to take on Globalism:

Freedom, if you can keep it.

 

[1] Os Guinness is an English author and social critic. Born in China, where his parents were medical missionaries, he is the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer. He was a witness to the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949, and returned to England in 1951, where he went to school and college. He received a B.D. from University of London in 1966 and a D.Phil from Oriel College, Oxford in 1981. Guinness first stated the Freedom Triangle when promoting his book, A Free People’s Suicide. Guinness is still alive at age 75.

[2] Reference to the Freedom Triangle is resurrected by Mataxas in his book If You Can Keep it, the Forgotten Promise of American Liberty. 2016 best seller. Mariner believes this book is required reading for every American citizen.

Ancient Mariner

We will Live Forever or Die Trying

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The mariner was re-reading a few of the more interesting articles in back issues of magazines. One from The Economist (August 13 2016) provoked thoughts about how culture would change if we lived a lot longer and how the economy and international relations would change and….

To share some thoughts with the reader, part of the article is copied below:

“Humanity must avoid the trap fallen into by Tithonus, a mythical Trojan who was granted eternal life by the gods, but forgot to ask also for eternal youth. Eventually, he withered into a cicada.

The trap of Tithonus is sprung because bodies have evolved to be throwaway vessels for the carriage of genes from one generation to the next. Biologists have a phrase for it: the disposable soma. It explains not only general senescence, but also why dementia, cancer, cardiovascular problems, arthritis and many other things are guarded against in youth, but crammed into old age once reproduction is done with. These, too, must be treated if a long and healthy life is to become routine. Moreover, even a healthy brain may age badly. An organ evolved to accommodate 70 or 80 years of memories may be unable to cope when asked to store 150 years’ worth.”

There are other social points made in the article. If the reader is interested, see: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2016-08-13 Page 14.

Using these thoughts as a springboard, one can take off running in many directions. The mariner provides a few:

How will family life change? Today, children typically are born before parents are forty; later adult partnership has a few awkward adjustments which may have to be taken seriously on a cultural level and dealt with differently than the present decorum provides. Will a lifespan become two or three life spans? The Economist says having children at 100 could be possible.

Today, one of the serious issues that confront us is the economics of older workers; not just at age 65 or 70 but the prejudice against the middle-aged worker – say someone approaching 50. If workers lived healthily beyond 100 or 120, should they be bumped off the first team so younger blood can move up the ladder?

Retirement is a growing problem today. Depression, boredom, lack of personal value and raison d’être are psychological traps even if one lives only a decade into retirement. How about living 50 or 60 years?

The economic side of the retired lifestyle is an even larger issue. Is a retiree required to carry a pension for self support? Where does the money come from to live another 100 years?

Sociologists say that a neighborhood has a span of 60 years. Built in 1960 as a new, upscale neighborhood with lots of young people, new houses and streets, and a bustling social culture – in 60 years it will be old houses, old people, lots of rentals and a slip in economic class. What if the neighborhood has to remain dynamic for 100 years?

Will there be senior pro sport leagues? Where does Roger Federer go to play when he reaches 50 given medicine will keep him young enough not to lose that step most athletes lose around 30?

Will hotspots like Sandals move their fantasy advertisements out a few decades? What do healthy 120 year-olds fantasize about?

Malthus[1] would be in a frenzy if he heard people would live virtually forever. He believed that overcrowding would force humans back to primitive cultures because resources would become scarce. Well, how will we manage excessive population when people won’t die?

Presented a bit tongue in cheek, actually these questions will require immense change in H. sapiens’ arc of life.

Joseph Campbell isn’t here to help us make a new one.

Ancient Mariner

[1] — Thomas Malthus, 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population.

 

Hades

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The mariner is reminded of the harsh apocalyptic and horrific movies popular today. Similar is his life wandering among fire pits and unexpected explosions caused by politics; ghoulish realities of extinct creatures and vacant deserts with burnt and smoking ruins where forests and clean water used to be; billions of hollow, starving humans sitting everywhere with swollen bellies; millions of fat, selfish billionaires and millionaires perched like vultures watching humans everywhere in case a profit pops up to be taken from the disadvantaged.

But all’s well – we will elect a new president on November 8, 2016.

But that is false hope. The mariner knows governments and class culture and disrespect for the planet are no more than scenery on the set – props. Reality will remain a fearful, deadly, poisoned place; it is likely that reality will not end nicely.

Times past could have been better but humans are not smart, orderly, or responsible. Humans will not be able to share the planet much longer.

The planet will take us to task. It’s called the Day of Reckoning.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Simple Religion

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Lifted from a small daily calendar providing a profound statement for each day:

“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple; the philosophy is simple kindness.”

– The Dalai Lama

Indeed a profound statement. One feels release and wisdom. If only humans could live by such a simple philosophy. It seems, though, that humans need discipline; they need doctrine; they need a harness to keep them on the path. Otherwise, humans degrade to undisciplined grazing for personal gain of some sort – a human’s own mind and heart no longer just a temple. They become the deity as well. Ownership of one’s own deity is not wise nor of its satanic gargoyles – wealth, greed, prejudice, violence, revenge and persecution.

Today’s turbulent transition in every aspect of human life throws down old bastions not only of faith but also of science, technology, culture, physiology and political strife. The core of human worth is laid bare for reconsideration.

Will humans survive into the next age?

Will satanic gargoyles and their human owners be struck down?

Where is a real God?

How does an individual clothe oneself in the harness that will keep them on the path? The answer is to dedicate one’s self to the lives of others; live by personal values that do not live inside the mind but live in the minds of others. The harness that keeps a human on the path has been a theme in recent posts: It’s what one does for others, not themselves. It is Campbell’s “Path of the Hero,” Jesus’ two great commandments, Albert Schweitzer’s lifelong commitment to lost tribes in Lambaréné, Africa. Adorned with the harness, don’t worry about God; God will have the traces in hand.

Ancient Mariner

Where is God?

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The eloquence of Reader Fred in his reply to The Greatest Sin is Prejudice has sparked responses that reflect the same plight in others. The Christian faith, among many, has not answered the need of “secular” individuals who, despite the rejection of classic doctrines and Biblical mythology, still want a place in a divine world. Where is God?

Many theologians try to address this; Dominic Crosssan, Marcus Borg and Walter Brueggeman are three prominent writers. Marcus Borg in particular has focused on transferring Christian values to a new Christian paradigm not dependent as much on Biblical mythology.

In the last post, mariner referenced a YouTube site showing several videos central to Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of myths as a tool to explain something we cannot understand or a value important in our lives but difficult to describe. The importance of Campbell’s work is that it allows us to observe how other ages and cultures used myths as a means of having faith. Campbell’s insight places faith and belief in a more understandable light.

As secularists pursue faith and doctrine that is meaningful, they must be willing to accept new beliefs of divine forces that replace inadequate beliefs; new beliefs that provide an understanding of extra-human realities that, for the individual, are not subject to human interference.

Six thousand years before Christ, the earliest cultures had no scientific basis for anything. These cultures, most found around Western Turkey, believed that an obese woman, quite fecund like a queen bee, was the source of all creation and for centuries was the origin of human beings. Clearly, we today consider this belief to be in error. However, it was the story that explained creation; faith in it was strong and lasted millennia.

How did we travel from a fecund woman as the source of life to Adam and Eve, to sorcerer powers like separating the Red Sea and turning a snake into a stick, to the belief in a personal god that manages our lives, to Jesus, to the source of love and grace and to an amorphous, impersonal god as the source of creation? Millions of pages have been written about the changing of spiritual icons and the power behind a universe we still are discovering.

After Saint Augustine, the story of love and giving became accepted as the true, central principle of Christianity. All other stories expressed lesser, but still important virtues that were meaningful to many believers. However, true faith lies in the two great commandments. Today, love itself as the power of creation is becoming popular. Could a secularist believe love – in whatever form – is the power behind the universe? Love is a power that humans can use that somehow has the ability to ameliorate a situation. Is amelioration a form of creation? Once asked in an earlier post, is love the true measure of evolution rather than intellectuality? Further, is “God” constrained by anthropomorphic assumptions?

The natural adoption of meaningful theological principles is relatively easy. It may take time but the process is simple. Continue to search for overarching ideas that cannot be disturbed by human knowledge but are a dynamic influence in your life. Your ideas must support a reality that explains how the universe was created, how the universe works – including all elements of evolution, both stars and bacteria.

There are many social behaviors that leave open questions: Will computers be the ultimate evolution of humanity? Is Stephen Hawking right that Homo sapiens will be extinct within ten thousand years? Whatever your belief, it must encompass all potential events.

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament speaks of an Armageddon that will end all life save the righteous. Interestingly, the end indeed will be an Armageddon when the Sun begins to die. The theological question is: what is the definition of “righteous?”

Ancient Mariner