Monday, April 23, 2007

B.Y. You, Dick, etc/Broughton Poem/Einstein's God


(P1) Political


Three Views From The Right Schools

(religious right, that is)



(1) B.Y. You, Dick


Amazingly, even Mormon bastion Brigham Young University's students and faculty have begun to find fault with the treasured Bush Administration, specifically with Vice President Dick Cheney. Their concerns have not centered so much around policy, but are more about the perception that Cheney is an "immoral" man. Two examples are cited by two different groups:

1. doesn't want him to speak at commencement due to his apparent use of the "f" word in addressing his political opponent Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT?


2. at least one faculty member is concerned that Cheney may not be a truthful man, eg. using the bogus "WMD" to support a pre-ordained attack on Iraq.



(2) Pat Robertson Lays (Down) the Law


Did you know that TV Evangelist and African mining investor Pat Robertson founded two institutions of "higher" education, Messiah College and Regent Law School avowedly to advance the agenda of his Christian Right. Nothing particularly alarming about either.......except that........Regent Law School, typically located at the bottom end of rated law schools, boasts no fewer than 150 members of the Bush Administration including Monica Goodling, Bush's liaison with the Dept of Justice. Goodling's attorney recently indicated she would take the fifth amendment rather than testify in GonzoGate. Instead, a few days later, she quit the Justice Dept.



(3) First it was Pluto - Vatican set to Dump Limbo


First it was Pluto. Now we're going to have to do without Limbo. Although never unpleasant, Limbo had been an obstacle to Heaven for unbaptized babies. So, apparently due to competition from other religions in Africa, the Catholic Church, is recognizing that the unbaptized-babies-can't-go-to heaven idea just doesn't play there where the infant mortality rates are through the roof. It looks like they may go to heaven after all. So, bye bye Limbo, and, therefore, when dancing, it's no longer "Limbo Lower Now," it's "Perhaps-Heaven's Lower Now."

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(P2) Poetical

Quit your addiction
to sneer and complaint
Try a little flaunt
Call for comrades
who bolster your vim
and offer you risk
Corral the crones
Goose the nice nellies
Hunt the bear that hugs
and the raven that quoths
Stay up all night
to devise a new dawn

James Broughton from Little Sermons of the Big Joy
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(P3) Philosophical


Einstein's God

Here are several Albert Einstein quotes re. God and the supernatural from Walter Isaacson in the April 16 issue of Time
  • "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."
  • In answer to the question, "Do you believe in immortality?" Einstein answered, "No. And one life is enough for me."
  • "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."
  • "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
  • "There are people who say there is no God...But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views...What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos,"
  • "The fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'--cannot hear the music of the spheres."
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3 comments:

Voltron said...

Is it Limbo or Pergatory ?
I guess it would be limbo. A catholic stated that Limbo is a place where unbaptised babies and small children go. Babies are there until 'judgment day' when they will be welcomed to heaven because they didn't do anything wrong.
Pergatory is for everyone else that has commited a smaller sin (venial sin) and you stay there until you have atoned for your sins or until enough people on earth have prayed for you to be released from there.

Anonymous said...

There has to be a Limbo! I have been there and seen it with my own eyes!

Anonymous said...

Of course there's a limbo. The lower you go the bigger your reward.

Old Al was quite a guy wasn't he? Why is that all most people ever know about him is E=MC2 (don't know how to make the little 2)?

I try to explain spirituality in my inarticulate way, then I read Einstein and see it all there in a couple of sentences.