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Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel



 
 
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Old August 4th 07, 01:38 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Sound of Trumpet[_4_]
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Default Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel


http://www.mark-shea.com/puny_f.html


Puny Humans, Geocentrism, and ET


Our place in the cosmos has been a source of fascination since the
first human looked up at the splendor of the night sky. Every culture
has reacted to the spectacle of the heavens with various sorts of
religious awe. Babylonians watched the stars for omens, as did the
Chinese. Petroglyphs in North America record novas. Greek gods are
bound up with the constellations. Vanished cultures erected immense
monuments like Stonehenge with an eye on the movements of the
heavens. Egypt was rocked by a religious reform movement led by
Akhenaten, who worshiped one god: the Sun.

The sense of wonder about our place in the universe was not lost on
the Chosen People either. The Psalmist pours out his amazement:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps. 8:3-4)

In antiquity, nobody had yet teased out categorical distinctions
between such things as miracles and magic, science and superstition,
revelation and folklore. Firmly defined barriers between different
species of knowing that later generations would erect did not yet
exist. To ask if a man was practicing the rudiments of chemistry or
alchemy, astronomy or astrology, science or magic, myth or religion
was usually a nonsense question for ancients. They knew things were
connected. But they were still only in the bare beginning stages of
understanding how they were connected.

Still, we moderns often try to force ancients into our categories. So
when some scholars tell us there is evidence Israel encamped around
the Tabernacle in such a way as to reflect the constellations (Numbers
2) we often get a mistaken notion. When we further discover that
there are ancient synagogues with mosaics of the zodiac inlaid in the
floor, that notion can harden into the certainty that Israelites
"believed in" astrology.

This is false. There is something more like sacramental symbolism
taking place here than astrology. Israel saw itself as the beginning
of a new world order, symbolized by the "heavenly host". Indeed, the
link between the "heavenly host" ruled by Yahweh Sabaoth (the "Lord of
Hosts") and the "earthly host" of Israel is very strong in the
biblical mind. For both hosts are ruled over by the same God. So the
earthly Tabernacle was a miniature of God's heavenly dwelling: both
were attended by the armies of the Lord, composed of the angels and
the people of Israel. Similarly, in Genesis 37:9, Jacob and his sons
are likened to the sun, moon, and twelve stars.

This conviction that earth and heaven are both guided by a common
Creator runs through Scripture. We are told "the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera" (Judges 5:20). Likewise, both Ezekiel
and Revelation portray heavenly creatures around the throne of God
corresponding to the constellations. Many scholars point out that the
four cherubim mentioned in Revelation 4:6-7 conform to the middle
signs in the four quarters of the zodiac. The lion is Leo, the ox is
Taurus, the man is Aquarius, and the eagle corresponds to Scorpio.
John lists them in counter-clockwise order backward around the zodiac.

But this, again, is not an appeal to astrology. Rather, it is an
example of biblical and sacramental understanding that the creation in
the heavens, like all the rest of creation, is a sign made by and
pointing to God. In the words of Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the
glory of God." Thus, to the ancient biblical mind, the groupings of
the stars are not random because nothing in all creation is random.
Rather, the macrocosm of creation showed the glory of God writ large
across the heavens and the microcosm of the Temple declared that glory
on a human scale. For the biblical authors, as for us, everything is
connected. But it is not the stars doing the connecting. It is God,
the creator of heaven and earth.

In Scripture, the main scene of action is the earth, not the sky. The
main thing is the story of God and his people, culminating in the
revelation of Christ. Astronomical events, such as the Star of
Bethlehem, tend to point straight back to what God is doing in the
affairs of men. And like road signs, once such phenomena have pointed
the pilgrim soul on his way to Christ, they are quickly forgotten.

However, in an age that has come to doubt or even forget Christ, pagan
ideas--including ideas about the heavens--can re-assert themselves;
sometime in amazingly crude forms. And we live in just such a time.

For instance, it is not unusual to meet people who have a surprisingly
"physicalist" view of man's place in the cosmos. One particularly
crude argument is simply this: The Bible errs to focus on the earth
and not the sky because man is infinitesimally small--indeed the
entire solar system is infinitesimally small--compared to the size of
the universe. All kinds of illustrations of that infinitesimal
smallness are produced and they make wonderful gee whiz graphics for
popular science shows. The camera pulls back until the earth shrinks
to (in Carl Sagan's phrase) a "pale blue dot". The solar system
becomes a pinpoint and vanishes into an arm of the Milky Way. Then
the Milky Way itself becomes a mere indistinct smudge of light
disappearing among billions of other galaxies. Finally, the H.G.
Wellsian creed is invoked: "Man is utterly insignificant compared to
the size of the Universe!"

People set real store by such thinking. But that's not because they
are hard-headed scientists looking at cold fact. It's because they
are poets who think they are philosophers. It's because they can't
refrain from supposing they know that immense differences in physical
size mean something. They have never internalized the wisdom of
Wells' friend, G.K. Chesterton, who drily replied, "Man is small
compared to the nearest tree."

In short, size doesn't matter. In our sane hours, we realize this.
Michael Jordan does not have greater spiritual worth than Michael J.
Fox because he's taller. Just because people are the size of ants
compared to the Twin Towers does not mean the buildings were more
important than the people killed in them. But when size differences
become vast, the poet in us awakens and we start to forget these
obvious facts.

Curiously similar thinking is on display in the insistence on
geocentrism by a small cadre of reactionary Catholics. Geocentrists
claim earth is the center of the universe and all other heavenly
bodies orbit it. Some even insist earth does not rotate on its axis.
Instead, according to them, the entire universe moves around earth
every 24 hours. The falsity of this folly has, of course, been shown
many times. Such a theory requires we believe galaxies billions of
light years from earth to make a complete circuit of the universe
every 24 hours at speeds orders of magnitude faster than light rather
than acknowledge the obvious fact that earth is just rotating on its
axis. Also, many satellite tracks appear highly erratic on maps
assuming a stationary earth, yet these maps accurately predict the
actual path of the satellite as any amateur with a telescope can
show. How do these apparently wandering satellites trace such erratic
courses? Easy. Factor in the rotation of the earth and suddenly the
satellites are revealed to simply be describing an orbit around the
turning earth.

None of this is, as they say, rocket science. But the question
remains: "Why would anybody insist upon geocentrism as vital to the
Faith in the first place?" The answer is twofold. First, converts
who were once Fundamentalists and who used to read Scripture in a flat-
footed and simplistic way become Catholic--and proceed to read
Scripture and Catholic documents in a flat-footed and simplistic way.
The assumption "If old, then part of the Tradition" takes hold. And
since pre-Copernican Christians assumed a Ptolemaic universe, why
then, that must be part of the Tradition and heliocentrism is just
another modernist corruption of the Faith of our Fathers.

To this, Augustine gives a reply

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the
sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation
or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite
eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons,
about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such
things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by
experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful
and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-
Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these
matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might
say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally
in error they are....

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For
that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding
the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these
matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the
same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance
with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe
that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or
accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said
that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it
was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to
teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their
salvation (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19-20; 2:9).

In short, as another famous Catholic named Galileo put it: The purpose
of revelation is to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens
go.

That said, I think the fact that modern geocentrists fall into the
confusion despite all the sound evidence to the contrary tells us
something else as well: namely, that it too is rooted in the tendency
to confuse physical with spiritual reality. Just as some people think
our physical size means something, so others think our physical
location means something. They have the strange notion that if we are
not literally at the center of the physical heavens, then we cannot be
at the center of God's heart. But the reality is, just as humans have
dignity because they are creatures made in the image and likeness of
God and not because of their size, so they have dignity no matter
where they happen to be physically located. Such crude physicalism
was put to bed 3000 years ago, when the king of Syria was rudely
disabused of the notion that God was a God of the hills, but not of
the plains (1 Kings 20:23). Neither is he a God of the earth, but not
of the Andromeda Galaxy. Wherever we are physically, spiritually we
are at the center of God's love.

Yet to say this often reveals lingering doubts in the modern mind.
Surely, say many people, there is something terribly provincial about
the Christian conviction that humans are "special" in a 14 billion
year old, 156 billion light year wide universe. This jittery
insecurity is seen every time somebody discovers new planets orbiting
distant suns or a Martian rock turns up with what might be fossilized
Martian bacteria in it. We are instantly asked what implication this
has for the (presumably) small-minded Christian faith.

Prescinding from the fact that the small-minded Christian faith has
always believed the universe contains non-corporeal, non-human,
created intelligent beings (called "angels and demons") it is worth
noting that, as C.S. Lewis points out, corporeal, non-human, created
intelligent beings called "extraterrestrials" only pose a problem to
the Faith if we know the answers to five questions:

1. Are there creatures on other planets? Answer: We don't know. We
don't even know if we will ever know.

2. Do these entirely hypothetical creatures possess what we call
"rational souls": that is, the ability to know (and sin against) God?

3. Assuming rational creatures exist on other worlds, are they
fallen? If not, there is no need for God's salvific incarnation,
death and resurrection.

4. Assuming the answer to all the previous questions is "yes", do we
know our mode of redemption is what such creatures require for
salvation? If not, then Christianity is not shown to be provincial.
It merely shows that the Great Physician prescribes particular
medicine for the particular illness of a particular species.

5. Finally (assuming unknowable affirmatives to all the previous
questions) do we know redemption will always be denied to these fallen
rational creatures? A visit to earth ten thousand years ago would not
have yielded much information to the outside observer about what God
was up to in preparing the way for Christ. Likewise, it would
probably be extraordinarily difficult for human observers to tell what
God has done, is doing, and will do toward the salvation of what are,
after all, entirely hypothetical creatures.

"But they won't be hypothetical forever!" says the modern person from
the depth of his being. For the mere suggestion that we may, in fact,
be utterly alone in the universe is deeply unsettling to the modern
mind. Say that you think we are, in your opinion, all alone and you
will discover the reaction of a huge number of moderns is visceral
outrage. What arrogance! What about the Drake Equation? What about
Star Trek? What about all that stuff?

Prescinding from whether such an opinion is right or not, I simply
note that such arguments for ET produce no actual evidence for a
simple reason: there is no evidence to produce. I note this, not to
propose "We Are Alone" as dogma of the faith, but to point out that
those who dogmatically insist we are not alone do hold it as an
article of faith, because they have nothing else to go on. Their
arguments are purely aesthetic, beginning with phrases like "Surely,
you don't believe...", "How can a universe this big...", and "Seems like a
big waste of space to me if...". And that is telling.

Why? Because every age creates an aesthetic mythos to support its
deepest beliefs and ours is no exception. A mythos is not necessarily
false nor necessarily true. It is rather a picture of the world with
a satisfying shape. Sometimes that shape will accord with reality and
tell us something about reality. Sometimes it will accord with our
wishes and tell us something about ourselves.

Now the Faith teaches that our ultimate hope is in Christ who will
come again in glory on the Last Day with his holy angels to judge the
living and the dead. A Christian mythos grew up around these basic
truths and populated the world with stories of angels, visions of
Judgment Day, and an entire folklore that adorned the Christian
imagination as it contemplated the truths of the Faith.

But a post-Christian culture, having abandoned the hope of Heaven, has
to hope for something else--and create another mythos to express that
hope--a mythos even serious Christians are quite capable of drinking
in deeply. And so instead of imaginative visions of Heaven and Hell,
we are given imaginative visions of beatific aliens in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and hellish visions of demonic aliens in
Independence Day or the War of the Worlds. Such things are part of
the standard emotional, imaginative, and cultural mental furniture of
our day and age.

The point is this: for millions in our culture, the Spirit of Progress
occupies the emotional and imaginative niche once held by the Spirit
of God mysteriously at work in the world, even for those who (with
another part of their brain) still believe in Christianity (not to
mention the millions who don't). For a significant percentage of
moderns, man's conquest of space and evolution into the Beyond holds
the emotional and imaginative niche once occupied by the Second Coming
(just watch the climactic "Star Child" scene of the greatest science
fiction myth of the 20th Century, 2001: A Space Odyssey). And not
surprisingly, aliens occupy the same emotional and imaginative niche
angels, devils, Heaven and Hell once did. Tales of being taken up
into the third heaven, visions of cherubim and seraphim: these no
longer have cultural currency. Indeed, even those who have had such
visions, such as Paul and Ezekiel, have them explained away by the
modern expedient of again pressing our ancestors into modern
categories via Chariots of the Gods scenarios involving alien
abductions and interplanetary craft.

In short, post-Christians need hope too. But having lost the hope of
the New Heaven and the New Earth, our culture places its hope in
immense distances, in colonization of the planets, in alien saviors
born of emergent variants, and in the Spirit of Progress. And because
they do, millions again act like poets who think they are rationalist
philosophers when they confidently declare aspects of Catholic
teaching such as the Parousia and angels to be "superstition" while
confidently assuming First Contact, the invention of the warp drive,
and the colonization of the stars are just around the corner.

Stated that baldly, such notions often evoke laughter. That's because
nobody but perhaps a few Trekkers dwells on such ideas consciously.
But millions receive them as a sort of cultural background music. The
force they exert is not like a wrestler pinning you to the mat, but
like barometric pressure. And that matters because if it not clearly
seen in the light of day for what it is-- the triumph of poetry over
both revelation and reason--many people will continue to mistake it
for reason, revelation, or both.

  #2  
Old August 4th 07, 03:11 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
BradGuth
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Posts: 21,544
Default Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel

Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.

The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.
- Brad Guth

  #3  
Old August 4th 07, 04:41 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
*Anarcissie*
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7
Default Without Abandoning The Bull**** Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Still Hopes For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 4, 10:11 am, BradGuth wrote:
Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.

The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.


Human beings will still bring themselves and their violent gods
wherever they go, along with the bull**** of heavens which are
essentially the absence of what they believe in and do.



  #4  
Old August 5th 07, 12:29 AM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
[email protected]
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Posts: 1
Default Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 4, 5:38 am, Sound of Trumpet
wrote:
http://www.mark-shea.com/puny_f.html

Puny Humans, Geocentrism, and ET

Our place in the cosmos has been a source of fascination since the
first human looked up at the splendor of the night sky. Every culture
has reacted to the spectacle of the heavens with various sorts of
religious awe. Babylonians watched the stars for omens, as did the
Chinese. Petroglyphs in North America record novas. Greek gods are
bound up with the constellations. Vanished cultures erected immense
monuments like Stonehenge with an eye on the movements of the
heavens. Egypt was rocked by a religious reform movement led by
Akhenaten, who worshiped one god: the Sun.

The sense of wonder about our place in the universe was not lost on
the Chosen People either. The Psalmist pours out his amazement:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps. 8:3-4)

In antiquity, nobody had yet teased out categorical distinctions
between such things as miracles and magic, science and superstition,
revelation and folklore. Firmly defined barriers between different
species of knowing that later generations would erect did not yet
exist. To ask if a man was practicing the rudiments of chemistry or
alchemy, astronomy or astrology, science or magic, myth or religion
was usually a nonsense question for ancients. They knew things were
connected. But they were still only in the bare beginning stages of
understanding how they were connected.

Still, we moderns often try to force ancients into our categories. So
when some scholars tell us there is evidence Israel encamped around
the Tabernacle in such a way as to reflect the constellations (Numbers
2) we often get a mistaken notion. When we further discover that
there are ancient synagogues with mosaics of the zodiac inlaid in the
floor, that notion can harden into the certainty that Israelites
"believed in" astrology.

This is false. There is something more like sacramental symbolism
taking place here than astrology. Israel saw itself as the beginning
of a new world order, symbolized by the "heavenly host". Indeed, the
link between the "heavenly host" ruled by Yahweh Sabaoth (the "Lord of
Hosts") and the "earthly host" of Israel is very strong in the
biblical mind. For both hosts are ruled over by the same God. So the
earthly Tabernacle was a miniature of God's heavenly dwelling: both
were attended by the armies of the Lord, composed of the angels and
the people of Israel. Similarly, in Genesis 37:9, Jacob and his sons
are likened to the sun, moon, and twelve stars.

This conviction that earth and heaven are both guided by a common
Creator runs through Scripture. We are told "the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera" (Judges 5:20). Likewise, both Ezekiel
and Revelation portray heavenly creatures around the throne of God
corresponding to the constellations. Many scholars point out that the
four cherubim mentioned in Revelation 4:6-7 conform to the middle
signs in the four quarters of the zodiac. The lion is Leo, the ox is
Taurus, the man is Aquarius, and the eagle corresponds to Scorpio.
John lists them in counter-clockwise order backward around the zodiac.

But this, again, is not an appeal to astrology. Rather, it is an
example of biblical and sacramental understanding that the creation in
the heavens, like all the rest of creation, is a sign made by and
pointing to God. In the words of Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the
glory of God." Thus, to the ancient biblical mind, the groupings of
the stars are not random because nothing in all creation is random.
Rather, the macrocosm of creation showed the glory of God writ large
across the heavens and the microcosm of the Temple declared that glory
on a human scale. For the biblical authors, as for us, everything is
connected. But it is not the stars doing the connecting. It is God,
the creator of heaven and earth.

In Scripture, the main scene of action is the earth, not the sky. The
main thing is the story of God and his people, culminating in the
revelation of Christ. Astronomical events, such as the Star of
Bethlehem, tend to point straight back to what God is doing in the
affairs of men. And like road signs, once such phenomena have pointed
the pilgrim soul on his way to Christ, they are quickly forgotten.

However, in an age that has come to doubt or even forget Christ, pagan
ideas--including ideas about the heavens--can re-assert themselves;
sometime in amazingly crude forms. And we live in just such a time.

For instance, it is not unusual to meet people who have a surprisingly
"physicalist" view of man's place in the cosmos. One particularly
crude argument is simply this: The Bible errs to focus on the earth
and not the sky because man is infinitesimally small--indeed the
entire solar system is infinitesimally small--compared to the size of
the universe. All kinds of illustrations of that infinitesimal
smallness are produced and they make wonderful gee whiz graphics for
popular science shows. The camera pulls back until the earth shrinks
to (in Carl Sagan's phrase) a "pale blue dot". The solar system
becomes a pinpoint and vanishes into an arm of the Milky Way. Then
the Milky Way itself becomes a mere indistinct smudge of light
disappearing among billions of other galaxies. Finally, the H.G.
Wellsian creed is invoked: "Man is utterly insignificant compared to
the size of the Universe!"

People set real store by such thinking. But that's not because they
are hard-headed scientists looking at cold fact. It's because they
are poets who think they are philosophers. It's because they can't
refrain from supposing they know that immense differences in physical
size mean something. They have never internalized the wisdom of
Wells' friend, G.K. Chesterton, who drily replied, "Man is small
compared to the nearest tree."

In short, size doesn't matter. In our sane hours, we realize this.
Michael Jordan does not have greater spiritual worth than Michael J.
Fox because he's taller. Just because people are the size of ants
compared to the Twin Towers does not mean the buildings were more
important than the people killed in them. But when size differences
become vast, the poet in us awakens and we start to forget these
obvious facts.

Curiously similar thinking is on display in the insistence on
geocentrism by a small cadre of reactionary Catholics. Geocentrists
claim earth is the center of the universe and all other heavenly
bodies orbit it. Some even insist earth does not rotate on its axis.
Instead, according to them, the entire universe moves around earth
every 24 hours. The falsity of this folly has, of course, been shown
many times. Such a theory requires we believe galaxies billions of
light years from earth to make a complete circuit of the universe
every 24 hours at speeds orders of magnitude faster than light rather
than acknowledge the obvious fact that earth is just rotating on its
axis. Also, many satellite tracks appear highly erratic on maps
assuming a stationary earth, yet these maps accurately predict the
actual path of the satellite as any amateur with a telescope can
show. How do these apparently wandering satellites trace such erratic
courses? Easy. Factor in the rotation of the earth and suddenly the
satellites are revealed to simply be describing an orbit around the
turning earth.

None of this is, as they say, rocket science. But the question
remains: "Why would anybody insist upon geocentrism as vital to the
Faith in the first place?" The answer is twofold. First, converts
who were once Fundamentalists and who used to read Scripture in a flat-
footed and simplistic way become Catholic--and proceed to read
Scripture and Catholic documents in a flat-footed and simplistic way.
The assumption "If old, then part of the Tradition" takes hold. And
since pre-Copernican Christians assumed a Ptolemaic universe, why
then, that must be part of the Tradition and heliocentrism is just
another modernist corruption of the Faith of our Fathers.

To this, Augustine gives a reply

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the
sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation
or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite
eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons,
about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such
things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by
experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful
and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-
Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these
matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might
say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally
in error they are....

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For
that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding
the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these
matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the
same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance
with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe
that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or
accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said
that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it
was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to
teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their
salvation (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19-20; 2:9).

In short, as another famous Catholic named Galileo put it: The purpose
of revelation is to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens
go.

That said, I think the fact that modern geocentrists fall into the
confusion despite all the sound evidence to the contrary tells us
something else as well: namely, that it too is rooted in the tendency
to confuse physical with spiritual reality. Just as some people think
our physical size means something, so others think our physical
location means something. They have the strange notion that if we are
not literally at the center of the physical heavens, then we cannot be
at the center of God's heart. But the reality is, just as humans have
dignity because they are creatures made in the image and likeness of
God and not because of their size, so they have dignity no matter
where they happen to be physically located. Such crude physicalism
was put to bed 3000 years ago, when the king of Syria was rudely
disabused of the notion that God was a God of the hills, but not of
the plains (1 Kings 20:23). Neither is he a God of the earth, but not
of the Andromeda Galaxy. Wherever we are physically, spiritually we
are at the center of God's love.

Yet to say this often reveals lingering doubts in the modern mind.
Surely, say many people, there is something terribly provincial about
the Christian conviction that humans are "special" in a 14 billion
year old, 156 billion light year wide universe. This jittery
insecurity is seen every time somebody discovers new planets orbiting
distant suns or a Martian rock turns up with what might be fossilized
Martian bacteria in it. We are instantly asked what implication this
has for the (presumably) small-minded Christian faith.

Prescinding from the fact that the small-minded Christian faith has
always believed the universe contains non-corporeal, non-human,
created intelligent beings (called "angels and demons") it is worth
noting that, as C.S. Lewis points out, corporeal, non-human, created
intelligent beings called "extraterrestrials" only pose a problem to
the Faith if we know the answers to five questions:

1. Are there creatures on other planets? Answer: We don't know. We
don't even know if we will ever know.

2. Do these entirely hypothetical creatures possess what we call
"rational souls": that is, the ability to know (and sin against) God?

3. Assuming rational creatures exist on other worlds, are they
fallen? If not, there is no need for God's salvific incarnation,
death and resurrection.

4. Assuming the answer to all the previous questions is "yes", do we
know our mode of redemption is what such creatures require for
salvation? If not, then Christianity is not shown to be provincial.
It merely shows that the Great Physician prescribes particular
medicine for the particular illness of a particular species.

5. Finally (assuming unknowable affirmatives to all the previous
questions) do we know redemption will always be denied to these fallen
rational creatures? A visit to earth ten thousand years ago would not
have yielded much information to the outside observer about what God
was up to in preparing the way for Christ. Likewise, it would
probably be extraordinarily difficult for human observers to tell what
God has done, is doing, and will do toward the salvation of what are,
after all, entirely hypothetical creatures.

"But they won't be hypothetical forever!" says the modern person from
the depth of his being. For the mere suggestion that we may, in fact,
be utterly alone in the universe is deeply unsettling to the modern
mind. Say that you think we are, in your opinion, all alone and you
will discover the reaction of a huge number of moderns is visceral
outrage. What arrogance! What about the Drake Equation? What about
Star Trek? What about all that stuff?

Prescinding from whether such an opinion is right or not, I simply
note that such arguments for ET produce no actual evidence for a
simple reason: there is no evidence to produce. I note this, not to
propose "We Are Alone" as dogma of the faith, but to point out that
those who dogmatically insist we are not alone do hold it as an
article of faith, because they have nothing else to go on. Their
arguments are purely aesthetic, beginning with phrases like "Surely,
you don't believe...", "How can a universe this big...", and "Seems like a
big waste of space to me if...". And that is telling.

Why? Because every age creates an aesthetic mythos to support its
deepest beliefs and ours is no exception. A mythos is not necessarily
false nor necessarily true. It is rather a picture of the world with
a satisfying shape. Sometimes that shape will accord with reality and
tell us something about reality. Sometimes it will accord with our
wishes and tell us something about ourselves.

Now the Faith teaches that our ultimate hope is in Christ who will
come again in glory on the Last Day with his holy angels to judge the
living and the dead. A Christian mythos grew up around these basic
truths and populated the world with stories of angels, visions of
Judgment Day, and an entire folklore that adorned the Christian
imagination as it contemplated the truths of the Faith.

But a post-Christian culture, having abandoned the hope of Heaven, has
to hope for something else--and create another mythos to express that
hope--a mythos even serious Christians are quite capable of drinking
in deeply. And so instead of imaginative visions of Heaven and Hell,
we are given imaginative visions of beatific aliens in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and hellish visions of demonic aliens in
Independence Day or the War of the Worlds. Such things are part of
the standard emotional, imaginative, and cultural mental furniture of
our day and age.

The point is this: for millions in our culture, the Spirit of Progress
occupies the emotional and imaginative niche once held by the Spirit
of God mysteriously at work in the world, even for those who (with
another part of their brain) still believe in Christianity (not to
mention the millions who don't). For a significant percentage of
moderns, man's conquest of space and evolution into the Beyond holds
the emotional and imaginative niche once occupied by the Second Coming
(just watch the climactic "Star Child" scene of the greatest science
fiction myth of the 20th Century, 2001: A Space Odyssey). And not
surprisingly, aliens occupy the same emotional and imaginative niche
angels, devils, Heaven and Hell once did. Tales of being taken up
into the third heaven, visions of cherubim and seraphim: these no
longer have cultural currency. Indeed, even those who have had such
visions, such as Paul and Ezekiel, have them explained away by the
modern expedient of again pressing our ancestors into modern
categories via Chariots of the Gods scenarios involving alien
abductions and interplanetary craft.

In short, post-Christians need hope too. But having lost the hope of
the New Heaven and the New Earth, our culture places its hope in
immense distances, in colonization of the planets, in alien saviors
born of emergent variants, and in the Spirit of Progress. And because
they do, millions again act like poets who think they are rationalist
philosophers when they confidently declare aspects of Catholic
teaching such as the Parousia and angels to be "superstition" while
confidently assuming First Contact, the invention of the warp drive,
and the colonization of the stars are just around the corner.

Stated that baldly, such notions often evoke laughter. That's because
nobody but perhaps a few Trekkers dwells on such ideas consciously.
But millions receive them as a sort of cultural background music. The
force they exert is not like a wrestler pinning you to the mat, but
like barometric pressure. And that matters because if it not clearly
seen in the light of day for what it is-- the triumph of poetry over
both revelation and reason--many people will continue to mistake it
for reason, revelation, or both.


C.G. Jung, the psychoanalyst, addressed this in his book called, I
believe, Flying Saucers. He reported at least one case (there may have
been more, but I don't recall) of people who have been 'contacted by
aliens' displaying flying saucer stigmata on their hands.

  #5  
Old August 5th 07, 07:40 AM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
American
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,224
Default Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 4, 7:29 pm, wrote:
On Aug 4, 5:38 am, Sound of Trumpet
wrote:

http://www.mark-shea.com/puny_f.html


Puny Humans, Geocentrism, and ET


Our place in the cosmos has been a source of fascination since the
first human looked up at the splendor of the night sky. Every culture
has reacted to the spectacle of the heavens with various sorts of
religious awe. Babylonians watched the stars for omens, as did the
Chinese. Petroglyphs in North America record novas. Greek gods are
bound up with the constellations. Vanished cultures erected immense
monuments like Stonehenge with an eye on the movements of the
heavens. Egypt was rocked by a religious reform movement led by
Akhenaten, who worshiped one god: the Sun.


The sense of wonder about our place in the universe was not lost on
the Chosen People either. The Psalmist pours out his amazement:


When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps. 8:3-4)


In antiquity, nobody had yet teased out categorical distinctions
between such things as miracles and magic, science and superstition,
revelation and folklore. Firmly defined barriers between different
species of knowing that later generations would erect did not yet
exist. To ask if a man was practicing the rudiments of chemistry or
alchemy, astronomy or astrology, science or magic, myth or religion
was usually a nonsense question for ancients. They knew things were
connected. But they were still only in the bare beginning stages of
understanding how they were connected.


Still, we moderns often try to force ancients into our categories. So
when some scholars tell us there is evidence Israel encamped around
the Tabernacle in such a way as to reflect the constellations (Numbers
2) we often get a mistaken notion. When we further discover that
there are ancient synagogues with mosaics of the zodiac inlaid in the
floor, that notion can harden into the certainty that Israelites
"believed in" astrology.


This is false. There is something more like sacramental symbolism
taking place here than astrology. Israel saw itself as the beginning
of a new world order, symbolized by the "heavenly host". Indeed, the
link between the "heavenly host" ruled by Yahweh Sabaoth (the "Lord of
Hosts") and the "earthly host" of Israel is very strong in the
biblical mind. For both hosts are ruled over by the same God. So the
earthly Tabernacle was a miniature of God's heavenly dwelling: both
were attended by the armies of the Lord, composed of the angels and
the people of Israel. Similarly, in Genesis 37:9, Jacob and his sons
are likened to the sun, moon, and twelve stars.


This conviction that earth and heaven are both guided by a common
Creator runs through Scripture. We are told "the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera" (Judges 5:20). Likewise, both Ezekiel
and Revelation portray heavenly creatures around the throne of God
corresponding to the constellations. Many scholars point out that the
four cherubim mentioned in Revelation 4:6-7 conform to the middle
signs in the four quarters of the zodiac. The lion is Leo, the ox is
Taurus, the man is Aquarius, and the eagle corresponds to Scorpio.
John lists them in counter-clockwise order backward around the zodiac.


But this, again, is not an appeal to astrology. Rather, it is an
example of biblical and sacramental understanding that the creation in
the heavens, like all the rest of creation, is a sign made by and
pointing to God. In the words of Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the
glory of God." Thus, to the ancient biblical mind, the groupings of
the stars are not random because nothing in all creation is random.
Rather, the macrocosm of creation showed the glory of God writ large
across the heavens and the microcosm of the Temple declared that glory
on a human scale. For the biblical authors, as for us, everything is
connected. But it is not the stars doing the connecting. It is God,
the creator of heaven and earth.


In Scripture, the main scene of action is the earth, not the sky. The
main thing is the story of God and his people, culminating in the
revelation of Christ. Astronomical events, such as the Star of
Bethlehem, tend to point straight back to what God is doing in the
affairs of men. And like road signs, once such phenomena have pointed
the pilgrim soul on his way to Christ, they are quickly forgotten.


However, in an age that has come to doubt or even forget Christ, pagan
ideas--including ideas about the heavens--can re-assert themselves;
sometime in amazingly crude forms. And we live in just such a time.


For instance, it is not unusual to meet people who have a surprisingly
"physicalist" view of man's place in the cosmos. One particularly
crude argument is simply this: The Bible errs to focus on the earth
and not the sky because man is infinitesimally small--indeed the
entire solar system is infinitesimally small--compared to the size of
the universe. All kinds of illustrations of that infinitesimal
smallness are produced and they make wonderful gee whiz graphics for
popular science shows. The camera pulls back until the earth shrinks
to (in Carl Sagan's phrase) a "pale blue dot". The solar system
becomes a pinpoint and vanishes into an arm of the Milky Way. Then
the Milky Way itself becomes a mere indistinct smudge of light
disappearing among billions of other galaxies. Finally, the H.G.
Wellsian creed is invoked: "Man is utterly insignificant compared to
the size of the Universe!"


People set real store by such thinking. But that's not because they
are hard-headed scientists looking at cold fact. It's because they
are poets who think they are philosophers. It's because they can't
refrain from supposing they know that immense differences in physical
size mean something. They have never internalized the wisdom of
Wells' friend, G.K. Chesterton, who drily replied, "Man is small
compared to the nearest tree."


In short, size doesn't matter. In our sane hours, we realize this.
Michael Jordan does not have greater spiritual worth than Michael J.
Fox because he's taller. Just because people are the size of ants
compared to the Twin Towers does not mean the buildings were more
important than the people killed in them. But when size differences
become vast, the poet in us awakens and we start to forget these
obvious facts.


Curiously similar thinking is on display in the insistence on
geocentrism by a small cadre of reactionary Catholics. Geocentrists
claim earth is the center of the universe and all other heavenly
bodies orbit it. Some even insist earth does not rotate on its axis.
Instead, according to them, the entire universe moves around earth
every 24 hours. The falsity of this folly has, of course, been shown
many times. Such a theory requires we believe galaxies billions of
light years from earth to make a complete circuit of the universe
every 24 hours at speeds orders of magnitude faster than light rather
than acknowledge the obvious fact that earth is just rotating on its
axis. Also, many satellite tracks appear highly erratic on maps
assuming a stationary earth, yet these maps accurately predict the
actual path of the satellite as any amateur with a telescope can
show. How do these apparently wandering satellites trace such erratic
courses? Easy. Factor in the rotation of the earth and suddenly the
satellites are revealed to simply be describing an orbit around the
turning earth.


None of this is, as they say, rocket science. But the question
remains: "Why would anybody insist upon geocentrism as vital to the
Faith in the first place?" The answer is twofold. First, converts
who were once Fundamentalists and who used to read Scripture in a flat-
footed and simplistic way become Catholic--and proceed to read
Scripture and Catholic documents in a flat-footed and simplistic way.
The assumption "If old, then part of the Tradition" takes hold. And
since pre-Copernican Christians assumed a Ptolemaic universe, why
then, that must be part of the Tradition and heliocentrism is just
another modernist corruption of the Faith of our Fathers.


To this, Augustine gives a reply


It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the
sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation
or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite
eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons,
about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such
things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by
experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful
and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-
Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these
matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might
say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally
in error they are....


With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For
that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding
the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these
matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the
same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance
with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe
that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or
accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said
that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it
was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to
teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their
salvation (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19-20; 2:9).


In short, as another famous Catholic named Galileo put it: The purpose
of revelation is to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens
go.


That said, I think the fact that modern geocentrists fall into the
confusion despite all the sound evidence to the contrary tells us
something else as well: namely, that it too is rooted in the tendency
to confuse physical with spiritual reality. Just as some people think
our physical size means something, so others think our physical
location means something. They have the strange notion that if we are
not literally at the center of the physical heavens, then we cannot be
at the center of God's heart. But the reality is, just as humans have
dignity because they are creatures made in the image and likeness of
God and not because of their size, so they have dignity no matter
where they happen to be physically located. Such crude physicalism
was put to bed 3000 years ago, when the king of Syria was rudely
disabused of the notion that God was a God of the hills, but not of
the plains (1 Kings 20:23). Neither is he a God of the earth, but not
of the Andromeda Galaxy. Wherever we are physically, spiritually we
are at the center of God's love.


Yet to say this often reveals lingering doubts in the modern mind.
Surely, say many people, there is something terribly provincial about
the Christian conviction that humans are "special" in a 14 billion
year old, 156 billion light year wide universe. This jittery
insecurity is seen every time somebody discovers new planets orbiting
distant suns or a Martian rock turns up with what might be fossilized
Martian bacteria in it. We are instantly asked what implication this
has for the (presumably) small-minded Christian faith.


Prescinding from the fact that the small-minded Christian faith has
always believed the universe contains non-corporeal, non-human,
created intelligent beings (called "angels and demons") it is worth
noting that, as C.S. Lewis points out, corporeal, non-human, created
intelligent beings called "extraterrestrials" only pose a problem to
the Faith if we know the answers to five questions:


1. Are there creatures on other planets? Answer: We don't know. We
don't even know if we will ever know.


2. Do these entirely hypothetical creatures possess what we call
"rational souls": that is, the ability to know (and sin against) God?


3. Assuming rational creatures exist on other worlds, are they
fallen? If not, there is no need for God's salvific incarnation,
death and resurrection.


4. Assuming the answer to all the previous questions is "yes", do we
know our mode of redemption is what such creatures require for
salvation? If not, then Christianity is not shown to be provincial.
It merely shows that the Great Physician prescribes particular
medicine for the particular illness of a particular species.


5. Finally (assuming unknowable affirmatives to all the previous
questions) do we know redemption will always be denied to these fallen
rational creatures? A visit to earth ten thousand years ago would not
have yielded much information to the outside observer about what God
was up to in preparing the way for Christ. Likewise, it would
probably be extraordinarily difficult for human observers to tell what
God has done, is doing, and will do toward the salvation of what are,
after all, entirely hypothetical creatures.


"But they won't be hypothetical forever!" says the modern person from
the depth of his being. For the mere suggestion that we may, in fact,
be utterly alone in the universe is deeply unsettling to the modern
mind. Say that you think we are, in your opinion, all alone and you
will discover the reaction of a huge number of moderns is visceral
outrage. What arrogance! What about the Drake Equation? What about
Star Trek? What about all that stuff?


Prescinding from whether such an opinion is right or not, I simply
note that such arguments for ET produce no actual evidence for a
simple reason: there is no evidence to produce. I note this, not to
propose "We Are Alone" as dogma of the faith, but to point out that
those who dogmatically insist we are not alone do hold it as an
article of faith, because they have nothing else to go on. Their
arguments are purely aesthetic, beginning with phrases like "Surely,
you don't believe...", "How can a universe this big...", and "Seems like a
big waste of space to me if...". And that is telling.


Why? Because every age creates an aesthetic mythos to support its
deepest beliefs and ours is no exception. A mythos is not necessarily
false nor necessarily true. It is rather a picture of the world with
a satisfying shape. Sometimes that shape will accord with reality and
tell us something about reality. Sometimes it will accord with our
wishes and tell us something about ourselves.


Now the Faith teaches that our ultimate hope is in Christ who will
come again in glory on the Last Day with his holy angels to judge the
living and the dead. A Christian mythos grew up around these basic
truths and populated the world with stories of angels, visions of
Judgment Day, and an entire folklore that adorned the Christian
imagination as it contemplated the truths of the Faith.


But a post-Christian culture, having abandoned the hope of Heaven, has
to hope for something else--and create another mythos to express that
hope--a mythos even serious Christians are quite capable of drinking
in deeply. And so instead of imaginative visions of Heaven and Hell,
we are given imaginative visions of beatific aliens in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind and hellish visions of demonic aliens in
Independence Day or the War of the Worlds. Such things are part of
the standard emotional, imaginative, and cultural mental furniture of
our day and age.


The point is this: for millions in our culture, the Spirit of Progress
occupies the emotional and imaginative niche once held by the Spirit
of God mysteriously at work in the world, even for those who (with
another part of their brain) still believe in Christianity (not to
mention the millions who don't). For a significant percentage of
moderns, man's conquest of space and evolution into the Beyond holds
the emotional and imaginative niche once occupied by the Second Coming
(just watch the climactic "Star Child" scene of the greatest science
fiction myth of the 20th Century, 2001: A Space Odyssey). And not
surprisingly, aliens occupy the same emotional and imaginative niche
angels, devils, Heaven and Hell once did. Tales of being taken up
into the third heaven, visions of cherubim and seraphim: these no
longer have cultural currency. Indeed, even those who have had such
visions, such as Paul and Ezekiel, have them explained away by the
modern expedient of again pressing our ancestors into modern
categories via Chariots of the Gods scenarios involving alien
abductions and interplanetary craft.


In short, post-Christians need hope too. But having lost the hope of
the New Heaven and the New Earth, our culture places its hope in
immense distances, in colonization of the planets, in alien saviors
born of emergent variants, and in the Spirit of Progress. And because
they do, millions again act like poets who think they are rationalist
philosophers when they confidently declare aspects of Catholic
teaching such as the Parousia and angels to be "superstition" while
confidently assuming First Contact, the invention of the warp drive,
and the colonization of the stars are just around the corner.


Stated that baldly, such notions often evoke laughter. That's because
nobody but perhaps a few Trekkers dwells on such ideas consciously.
But millions receive them as a sort of cultural background music. The
force they exert is not like a wrestler pinning you to the mat, but
like barometric pressure. And that matters because if it not clearly
seen in the light of day for what it is-- the triumph of poetry over
both revelation and reason--many people will continue to mistake it
for reason, revelation, or both.


C.G. Jung, the psychoanalyst, addressed this in his book called, I
believe, Flying Saucers. He reported at least one case (there may have
been more, but I don't recall) of people who have been 'contacted by
aliens' displaying flying saucer stigmata on their hands.


Jung ripped off most of Freud's work after Freud left Nazi Germany and
claimed it was his own work.

As far as 'people' who "believe in' flying saucers, why hasn't most of
our present technology been invented by ourselves?
(See the Dogon Tribe, who are believed to have known about
those visitors from Sirus B)

American

  #6  
Old August 5th 07, 09:12 AM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Gene Ward Smith[_2_]
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Posts: 17
Default Having Abandoned The Hope Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Has To Hope For Aliens And Space Travel

American wrote in news:1186296018.515181.79370
@g12g2000prg.googlegroups.com:

Jung ripped off most of Freud's work after Freud left Nazi Germany and
claimed it was his own work.


Aliens from Sirius B told you this?

As far as 'people' who "believe in' flying saucers, why hasn't most of
our present technology been invented by ourselves?
(See the Dogon Tribe, who are believed to have known about
those visitors from Sirus B)


I can't recall any sf featuring visitors from a white dwarf, or even life
on one. Looks to me like a real opportunity here for someone, especially
if they can explain why any intelligent being would go all of that
distance just to hang out with the Dogon. Why not the Mayans? They could
provide something useful--information about how to construct calendars
telling you when the world is going to end. If you were living on Sirius
B you would probably want to know when property values were going to take
a sudden slide, and hint it was time to move elsewhere.

  #7  
Old August 5th 07, 05:58 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
BradGuth
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 21,544
Default Without Abandoning The Bull**** Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Still Hopes For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 4, 8:41 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:
On Aug 4, 10:11 am, BradGuth wrote:

Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.


The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.


Human beings will still bring themselves and their violent gods
wherever they go, along with the bull**** of heavens which are
essentially the absence of what they believe in and do.


That is 100% correct, as we humans are always into "the absence of
what they believe in and do", especially when their own crapolla keeps
hitting their ceiling fans. However, why do you keep changing the
given topic name? Are you afraid of something?
- Brad Guth

  #8  
Old August 6th 07, 03:20 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
*Anarcissie*
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7
Default Without Abandoning The Bull**** Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Still Hopes For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 5, 12:58 pm, BradGuth wrote:
On Aug 4, 8:41 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:

On Aug 4, 10:11 am, BradGuth wrote:


Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.


The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.


Human beings will still bring themselves and their violent gods
wherever they go, along with the bull**** of heavens which are
essentially the absence of what they believe in and do.


That is 100% correct, as we humans are always into "the absence of
what they believe in and do", especially when their own crapolla keeps
hitting their ceiling fans. However, why do you keep changing the
given topic name? Are you afraid of something?


The original topics are created by Sound of Trumpet, a troll.
Since I can't get rid of SoT -- he is very popular and attracts
numerous responses -- I have decided to hijack his subject
lines and subjects whenever passably amusing opportunities
are offered.




  #9  
Old August 6th 07, 11:55 PM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
BradGuth
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 21,544
Default Without Abandoning The Bull**** Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Still Hopes For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 6, 7:20 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:
On Aug 5, 12:58 pm, BradGuth wrote:





On Aug 4, 8:41 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:


On Aug 4, 10:11 am, BradGuth wrote:


Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.


The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.


Human beings will still bring themselves and their violent gods
wherever they go, along with the bull**** of heavens which are
essentially the absence of what they believe in and do.


That is 100% correct, as we humans are always into "the absence of
what they believe in and do", especially when their own crapolla keeps
hitting their ceiling fans. However, why do you keep changing the
given topic name? Are you afraid of something?


The original topics are created by Sound of Trumpet, a troll.
Since I can't get rid of SoT -- he is very popular and attracts
numerous responses -- I have decided to hijack his subject
lines and subjects whenever passably amusing opportunities
are offered.


That's unfortunate, in that you can't manage to do any better than
"Sound of Trumpet", without having to hijack his topics.
- Brad Guth

  #10  
Old August 7th 07, 03:51 AM posted to alt.atheism,alt.anarchism,alt.messianic,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
*Anarcissie*
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7
Default Without Abandoning The Bull**** Of Heaven, Post Christian Culture Still Hopes For Aliens And Space Travel

On Aug 6, 6:55 pm, BradGuth wrote:
On Aug 6, 7:20 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:



On Aug 5, 12:58 pm, BradGuth wrote:


On Aug 4, 8:41 am, *Anarcissie* wrote:


On Aug 4, 10:11 am, BradGuth wrote:


Going off-world may become our only viable alternative, especially
since our resident LLPOF warlord(GW Bush) is still showing us his
intentions upon starting WWIII, over the spendy remainders of fossil
and yellowcake fuels, along with renewable energy getting next to
nothing in public resources. At this rate in our ongoing demise, in
no time at all we should be paying $10/gallon and $1/kwHr.


The poor will not even be poor any more, all because they'll have
become dead or soon enough to expirer.


Human beings will still bring themselves and their violent gods
wherever they go, along with the bull**** of heavens which are
essentially the absence of what they believe in and do.


That is 100% correct, as we humans are always into "the absence of
what they believe in and do", especially when their own crapolla keeps
hitting their ceiling fans. However, why do you keep changing the
given topic name? Are you afraid of something?


The original topics are created by Sound of Trumpet, a troll.
Since I can't get rid of SoT -- he is very popular and attracts
numerous responses -- I have decided to hijack his subject
lines and subjects whenever passably amusing opportunities
are offered.


That's unfortunate, in that you can't manage to do any better than
"Sound of Trumpet", without having to hijack his topics.


Yes, it's very sad, isn't it?

 




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