MB>>Day Brown wrote to Mark Bloss about Ordered Universe?
MB> MB> I cannot accept an ordered universe without God.
MB> DB> How about one that is not *perfectly* ordered?  The time was when
MB> DB> the heavens were regarded as perfect and unchangeable, and this
MB> DB> was viewed as proof of the existence of God.  The revelations of
MB> DB> the telescopes which showed supernovae proved imperfection much
MB> DB> to the consternation of the Vatican.
The mistake here was that the universe was required to conform to
an arbitrary set of human beliefs.  The Universe will never conform
to any set of human beliefs.  Our beliefs are maps, so to speak,
and the map is never the territory.  Never ever.
MB> I must correct you here - the reason there was consternation, was not
MB> because the universe was imperfect - but rather that the universe's
MB> perfection was miscontrued to be a static universe.  It is quite
MB> obvious, that supernovae is part of a perfect universe - not because
MB> they are beautiful or magnificent, but simply because they _are_.
MB> It takes change for the universe to remain ordered.  Supernovae
MB> are part nature, the expansion of the universe is a part of nature,
MB> and whatever it is we find in nature - makes it natural - and thus
MB> is part perfect.
The universe is what it is.  "Perfection" is a human concept.
MB> DB>
MB> DB> The chaotic conditions in the microcosm of quantum physics are so
MB> DB> severe that cause and effect, at the heart of sin and damnation,
MB> DB> are no longer reliable.
MB> DB>
MB> I don't think the evidence supports you here - but it is interesting
MB> that you think so.  Sin and damnation are two separate things - sin
MB> being the "missing of the mark" - "mistake" is the modern analogous
MB> term - and if we used the modern term in your statement above it is
MB> more clear that we _must_ rely on what we learn from mistakes, more so
MB> than ever.  Damnation is never in the purview of God's judgement - for
MB> He is not the damner.  That's why it is vain and vulgar to say that
MB> God damns, He is not!  He's rather the saver.  It is ourselves and
MB> "the devil", in cooperation, who damns.  And considering how many
MB> still manage to do this to themselves, I would say damnation is alive
MB> and well in the 90's.  God is unwilling that any be damned.
I'm heartened that you reject the cruel god of the Old Testament
in favor of what Jesus taught:  God is Love, God is Light.
Spiritual practice is about forgiveness, wwhich is to say letting
go of what the orientals call karmas.
But I completely reject the NT teleology that "Jesus came here
specifically to enact an ancient guilt-release ritual."  That
seems to be a story put together long after the fact.  I think
Jesus came here to incarnate God, period, and that if you were in
his physical presence you were in the presence of God.  But how
does that become a stable tradition on earth?  Many of his disciples
were intitated, but they never attained the enlightenment of Jesus
himself.  Instead, he ran afoul of the Romans, who saw the crowds
he drew and knew that the Holy Land was a powder keg just waiting
for a spark.  He was killed for political reasons.
I agree with the idea that the best that could have happened would
have been for Jesus to die of old age surrounded by his great-
grandchildren.  During the intervening decades, some of his
disciples or children might have incarnated God as he did; at that
point, the time of his death would not have mattered.  What mattered
was the stable incarnation of God on earth, and that simply never
happened.  That is the real tragedy of Jesus.  Instead we got a
bunch of unenlightened misogynist patriarchs obsessed with
theological disputes.
You can argue, legitimately, that those patriarchs were deeply
sincere, but that does not matter -- they were not incarnations of
God as Jesus was.
MB> DB> The MRI shows the dramatic effect on the rational mind of drugs,
MB> DB> environmental pollutions, and hormone imbalance that *sometimes*
MB> DB> will, or sometimes will not, have on the thinking process.  Most
MB> DB> psychological studies of behavior show a chaotic distribution on
MB> DB> a given trend line so that while you can predict that some number
MB> DB> of individuals will be irrational, you cannot tell who, or when.
MB> DB>
MB> DB> It is the abundance of chaotic variability that has made progress
MB> DB> so slow for my planet, my race, and me.
I would disagree with Day here:  the real problem is the _appalling
predictability_ of the instinctive behaviors we all have, that were
once appropriate on the savannah, but which now cause genocide.
 * SLMR 2.1a * HEADLINE: PLANE TOO CLOSE TO GROUND, CRASH PROBE TOLD
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