* Heavenly HTML vs. Pre-Copernican Triple-Decker Dantean Universe

Does the HTML Analogy Work?

Dare to think anew.




(Emerson called for a new theology 150 years ago. The time has come in this new millenium for us to stop using 13th century theological terms endlessly re-threaded through first century sacred documents to try to cobble together Sunday after Sunday a theology for the post-Einsteinian age:

Instead, dare to think anew.)






So, a poster(below) has suggested I reflect on "heaven" (see Yale Daily News opinion piece by Hendrickson, et. al., December 4, on the sandwich-board evangelist at Yale):

The problem with heaven AKA paradise is that it's ETERNAL: Who would want that? What a colossal bore.

The other problem with heaven is called Survival of the Personality. This one concept presents many, many more problems.

What about hormones? For so many of us large parts of our personality are governed by or at least shaped by hormones: those things that make us want to mate---or at least unite in a fleshly way.

So in this Eternal life, if SEX is excluded, what are hormoneless personalties going to be like? And why would we want to associate with them (an estrogen-less mother, for instance, who didn't want to "mother" us)?

With no disrespect intended, let us take a real example, the infant son of Jacqueline and President Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, who, sadly, died a few days after birth.

When he is re-united with his dead parents and uncles and grandparents, is he going to know THEIR SCARS, of assassinations, adulteries (Grandpa and Gloria Swanson), tragic deaths (Chappaquiddick; JFK Jr. over Martha's Vineyard), especially Grandma who lived to be 106 or Uncle Ted who saw it all and contributed to some of it?

If you tell me that in a perfected Eternal life we will ourselves be perfected and our scars removed, HOW VERY DULL that life must be.

Why would a Kennedy clan without its tragedies be at all interesting to each other or even infant Patrick? They wouldn't be the same people at all if Survival of Personality --- or painful biographical parts of the personality --- were erased. Repeat:They wouldn't be the SAME people.

And if you tell me that the infant will be raised to a perfected 30-year-old so he can converse with and understand his relatives, I say HOW SO?

There is no TIME in ETERNITY. Thirty years cannot exist. And even if they could exist, WHAT thirty years would it be? From 1962-92? Thirty years as an AMERICAN , white, male? Or thirty years as a hormoneless, angelic, entity?

The whole thing is way too messy. I think a perfect creator would have done much better than to create such a bland, eventless, timeless, celestial corral.

Sorry.

Doesn't interest me.

Doesn't lure me; and, it's opposite (hell) doesn't generate my respect, except as a deterrent for those who are prone to excessive behavior of the Ten Commandment type.

Both heaven and hell probably came from human inferences made from glorious sunsets and sunsrises in the heavens and volcanic turbulances--bubbling magma-- in the earth: hence the pre-copernican triple-decker universe of Dante.



















My own belief is that we are all 99.9% invisible atomic particles and will return to such a state--unanimated--for eternity: Much more like a moonbeam than an angel.

In fact, we might be a kind of atomic HTML while alive which gets written and uploaded on a celestial screen minute by minute for our three score years and ten, and then is released by death to the timeless "cloud" which retains it when the keyboarding is terminated.

Does the analogy work?

PK





#33 By Saving Saved AGAIN on December 11, 2009

Dear Saved Again,
The same could be said of Heaven. Is a false carrot not more insidious than a false stick? How much more evil would be the use of love to get people to do your will than just scaring them with hell. I come not from the perspective of who made what and when, but from a philosophical one. If, as most christians believe, there is a Heaven, then philosophically and theologically speaking, it is highly problematic that there is not a hell. Perhaps as several saints thought there are few people there, but free will demands we be able to choose heaven and god over hell, even if we are unworthy to make it there on our own effort. On the matter of fact or belief, one has only to read the skeptics of ancient times to know that evolution is a belief, the big bang is a belief, quantum mechanics is a belief. None are facts. I believe in all of them and I would eat my hat if the first two are proved wrong (I suspect a more complex theory may render quantum mechanics obsolete at least in part). We can know very little for sure (perhaps Descartes demon is fooling us or even Krampas). Even considering the electromagnetic spectrum, we can see and feel so very little of existence, I would be rather hesitant to claim my eyes are more valuable than my brain or my heart or my soul. Fact, as Stephen Colbert says, may be a thing of the gut.

#34 By Sentio Ergo Fio ( I feel,therefore I Become) on
December 12, 2009

# 32

Luring people with a hypothetical paradise is cruel too, no matter what the religion.

Sort of like Bernie Madoff of the spiritual world; If it's too good to be true, it ain't true.

The best one can do is try to get through the day without hurting others or the self.

Descartes tore us apart. [Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am.) ]

Process theology puts us back together: Sentio ergo fio (I feel, therefore I become.)

PK

* Who?

It's 1972. We've been trying to get Nixon to overrule his attorney general and convene a federal grand jury investigation of the slaughter at Kent State for a year now. A friend of mine says, "Why don't you write Garry Trudeau and ask him for help?" I say, "Who?" He says, "This cartoonist who writes Doonesbury."

"Never heard of it."


My friend says, "He's a Yale student who started this cartoon at Yale and then went national. He's counter-culture.He's big."

I say, "Yeah? Never heard of him. But I grew up in New Haven. Maybe I'll see if he's in the phonebook."

He is. I call. I entreat him for 40 minutes (Strangers are introduced to each other by and are loyal to "issues" in the 1970's). I write him afterward.

He sends me a note and a copy of the cartoon he wrote for May 4th the second anniversary of the killings. It gets him thrown out of a dozen newspapers that day.

Governor Rhodes of Ohio is pissed about the cartoon. Maybe Nixon too, I hope.

End of story.

PK

PS: (2009) I still don't read Doonesbury or any other cartoon (except the singles in The New Yorker); but, I understand getting thrown out of those newspapers 37 years ago didn't hurt Doonesbury one bit.

*Gloria Swansong : Reverse Sexism and "Small lobes."

I was 27 in 1972 and Gloria Swanson was 72. I'm sure she would have an astrological interest in that numerical inversion. Through no intention on my part, I wound up spending half an hour in a Watergate Hotel room with Miss Swanson (who was between her 5th and 6th marriage at the time). My mentor (mentess?) Miss Vivien Kellems had asked us both to join her in testifying before Rep. Wilbur Mills' House Ways and Means Committee on a bill Miss Kellems had succeeded in having introduced to equalize the tax burden between single and married taxpapyers. All three of us were unmarried at the time, albeit a brief interruption in a series of married states for Miss Swanson.

Miss Swanson's ego was like Eddie Murphy's expanding body in his "fat" pictures: it just grew and grew until there was no space left in any enclosure Miss Swanson inhabited for anything but that incessantly inflating monstrosity of self-absorbtion.

Miss Swanson took an instant dislike to me, perhaps because I did not bow when introduced. She reached up (she was short and I am tall) and took my right ear lobe in her fingers and said with patronizing (matronizing?) disdain, "Small lobes" only she drew it out with a hollywood-british [sic] pronunciation "Smaaaaawwwwwwlll loooohhhhhbbbbzzzzz".

I didn't quite catch on. The words seemed to make no sense even though she had her fingers on my ear lobe. I said "What?" puzzled; and she replied, "Small ear lobes mean you weren't breast fed* as a child," all in that upper crust phony auntie mame scarsdale-british accent [sic] that only hollywood [sic] seemed to produce in the 1940's and 50's. (BTW: She was correct: I wasn't breast fed as a child!)


Now I caught on. She was dissing me (before the word "diss" had been coined). Not one to back away from a challenge, I began to question the authority of such a biological axiom.

Miss Kellems saw an argument brewing and walked over between us and said "Paul..." something or other, changing the subject as a diversionary tactic.

There were only the three of us in the room and we were due to testify in an hour and Miss Kellems did NOT want to blow her chance to get her bill out of committee (it failed) and on to the House floor with some unexpected personality clash.

( I wish I had had the zest to say in return to Miss Swanson's "Small lobes" the words "Long face" "LOOOHHHHNNNGGGG FAAAASSSSUUUHHH". She had an enormously long face for a short woman, perhaps the result of 'heavy lifting', shall we say.)

So the storm was averted, I was invited to pose for a photo with both of them (see below or http://vivienkellems.blogspot.com) and we all testified and evaporated back to our respective lives.

But Miss Swanson had given me a wonderful anecdote which I have repeated dozens of times over the years. In 1972 she was herself now the very "caricature of the caricature" she had made famous in the movie Sunset Boulevard: the fading star Norma Desmond. Well into her four decade Swansong, she had precious few "gifts" to bestow.

She gave me something else which as a 6'2" male with the aura of still youthful looks, I had never felt before: the sting of sexism.

Miss Swanson was a woman in a open-air market shopping for male merchandise worth her attention, and my "small lobes" (and my failure to genuflect upon being presented to her starship) disqualified me instantly.

On to the next display case please.

Imagine the gazillion times a day women have been so dismissed as "inadequate" by men, including Rose Kennedy herself, the mother of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Edward M. Kennedy.

Rose Kennedy had to endure the quite public affair her husband, Joseph P. Kennedy, conducted in the late 1920's with none other than Gloria Swanson.

This I believe is called horizontal sexism, when one member of the same gender treats another member of the same gender as an inferior unworthy of respect.

So thank you Miss Swanson, for this fabulous anecdote, and for sensitizing me to the plight of women who are passed over disdainfully by the mercantile eyes of male flesh shoppers a trillion times a day on this planet.



* Miss Swanson was a macrobiotic enthusiast who was known to bring her own food to dinner parties in a paper bag. It didn't work. She died at 84, no longer a life span than the average woman of our day.

* The Bridge of San Luis Rey Desk

New Haven Register

6/10/08

Writer's furniture finds home at retreat

By Herb Epstein


After 33 years in Paul Keane's home, former Hamden resident Thornton Wilder's furniture is now on display at a New Hampshire artists' retreat where he wrote part of his classic play, "Our Town."

Keane donated Wilder's furniture in honor of the writer's late sister, Isabel Wilder. She privately gave Keane the furniture in 1976, a year after Thornton Wilder's death. Included in Keane's donation are the desk at which Wilder wrote "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"; his favorite chair; a Persian rug; and a bookcase from Wilder's study on Deepwood Drive in Hamden. Wilder was a Hamden resident for 50 years.

"Her private donation to me has been in my house for 33 years," said Keane, a former resident of Hamden, who now lives and teaches in Vermont. "This is the first year it'll be on display."

A year before Wilder died, Keane met him at dinner in the Old Heidelberg on Chapel Street in New Haven. Over the final year of Wilder's life the two exchanged a few letters.

"He was very charming," said Keane.

While on the Bicentennial Commission in Hamden, Keane had asked Wilder to endorse a project for fundraising for a museum in Hamden. However, Isabel Wilder wrote to Keane telling him that Wilder was unable to endorse the use of his name and pictures in promotion of the project because of his declining health.

Once Wilder died, his sister decided to make a contribution in his honor. She donated another desk of his, which is on display in the Miller Memorial Library in Hamden. It took nine years for an architect to create an exhibit that would display Wilder's desk in the library. http://wilder1985.blogspot.com

"I exchanged letters with Thornton enough that Isabel Wilder wanted to honor him," said Keane.

In a letter to Keane, Isabel Wilder wrote, "My brother wanted to make a contribution. Now I'll do so in memory of him."

Keane and Isabel Wilder developed a strong relationship over the years, as she even gave Keane some of Thornton's furniture.

"She took a liking to me," said Keane. "She treated me like a son."

Isabel Wilder died in 1995 at 95 years old. Now Keane has decided to donate the furniture in her honor. At 64 years old, Keane wanted to see the furniture go into good hands.

"I wanted to see for myself before I died that it got into appreciative hands," said Keane. "I have received as much pleasure in giving this furniture away as I have had in owning it for the last 33 years."

Keane offered the furniture to the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., and officials there were happy to have it.

"It means quite a bit for this piece of history to come back here," said Cheryl Young, executive director of the MacDowell Colony. "Especially as a writer to get his desk means a lot."

Keane added, "All I wanted was for someone to enjoy it. It is something that ought to be shared."

Keane understands how fortunate he was to meet Thornton Wilder and later Isabel.

"If I hadn't been invited to sit down with him, then none of this would've happened," said Keane.

Keane added that "Isabel and Thornton made a conscious decision to share with the public, and they were extremely generous in that way."

* See new blog for YDN sparring posts

Posting Board Sparring Matches with Yale Daily News posters have been put on a new blog: Sparring With Yale Daily News at http://sparringydn.blogspot.com/

* The Wind-up Aladden's Lamp of Knowledge

News' View: Great expectations, unfulfilled

Rachel Plattus could have been a great advocate for Yale and New Haven. Instead, as her term expires, she leaves an empty legacy.
By The Yale Daily News
Published Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Shortly after Rachel Plattus ’09 announced her candidacy to represent Ward 1 on the Board of Aldermen, she held a meeting in Jonathan Edwards College for those interested in discussing ideas to improve the city’s public schools. At the event, which was attended by more than 50 students, Plattus said she hoped New Haven could offer pre-kindergarten schooling to all its children and said she would work to create an Elm City Family Center, a kind of shelter for adolescent girls and a resource for families in need.
These were both good ideas that would have made New Haven a better city...


Education Revolution: Give every deserving person the Wind-up Aladden's Lamp of Knowledge




I don't want to tell Alderperson Plattus what to do. It's rude. But I was born in New Haven, my grandmother lived in a ghetto apartment with no hot water two blocks from the palaces of Yale, and when I went to Yale Divinity School I was an apartment superintendent in a low income housing complex which had its share of poverty, drugs and violence. I myself was mugged in the parking lot of St. Thomas Moore Church at night.

In other words. I ain't naive.

And there's one thing I know for sure : The Alderpersons can fiddle with education from now till doomsday and it won't change a thing. What WILL change something is GIVING THE INSTRUMENTS OF POWER TO THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE THEM.

Why not give every low income kid (indeed every low income person) in New Haven, a $100 Negroponte wind-up computer once a year and teach them how to use it. If they lose it or sell it during that year, they are out of the loop. No new computer till next year.

Children --indeed all humans---are born with cerebral softwear that says LEARN, LEARN, LEARN.

I couldn't stop a child from learning if I TRIED.

The only thing I can do is discourage, demoralize and disenfranchise the kid along the way with an elitist testing obstacle course which says: X kid is smart and Y kid is not smart. (BTW: Do we say a Daisy is smart and a Rose is not because they bloom at different times and in different soil? Then WHY do we say that about children?)

EVEN THEN, no one can't STOP a kid from learning. The kid will learn whatever interests him/her and at her/his own pace.


AND GUESS WHAT: There is a portable WORLD INTEREST MACHINE called a wind-up laptop computer available for a hundred bucks ($100) which could develop, facilitate, accelerate, enhance, multiply, synergize and solidify that built in cerebral learning softwear every kid is born with.

For God's sake take some of the taxpayers' money and give the kids those machines.

How hard is that?

And if the New Haven bureaucrats are too fat-headed to hear the idea, go to the GATES Foundation and propose a pilot program in New Haven. I think you can apply on-line. (OOPS! Sounds like I'm giving the Alderperson advice!)

Where there's a will there's a way.

I "learned" that, all by myself-----without any fancy curriculum tinkering by adults.

PS:
I know: There are a million reasons bureaucrats will say
this can't be done. (Would we have to wi-fi New Haven?) Blah, blah, blah.................

* The Quest, The Questor, The Question: Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965

Dr. Albert Schweitzer at his hospital in Lambarene, Gabon, where he is buried today.









































When Giants Still Strode the Earth: the Twentieth Century

(Schweitzer, Freud, Einstein, Churchill, Franklin/Eleanor Roosevelt, DeGaulle, Picasso, Stravinsky, Horowitz, Marian Anderson, Helen Keller, Mother Teresa, King)

It has been said that if you dropped Albert Schweitzer into a jungle with nothing but a pen-knife he could construct an entire organ from scratch. He gave organ recitals throughout Europe every few years to raise money to support his hospital in Lambarene. In addition to being a medical doctor, he was a scholar and theologian:("He held Doctorates in three major subjects - theology, philosophy and medicine and was an accomplished organist and world expert on Bach"). He practiced medicine in Africa until his death at 90 in 1965.












































One of my relatives insists that I wish him a “Merry Christmas” and nothing less. “What’s with this ‘Happy Holidays’ crap?” he says. “Its Jesus’s birthday. Say the word ‘Christmas' ”.

Well, my relative would be unhappy to know that Jesus’s birthday was more likely in March or April than December. And he’d be even more annoyed to find out that Jesus wasn’t Jesus’s name: His name was Joshua ben Joseph (Joshua, son of Joseph). Finally he would really be ticked off to learn that Jesus (Joshua) wasn’t even Christian: he was Jewish, from the day of his birth to the day of his death, and that he never intended to start a new religion.

He never uttered a word except in his native Galilean tongue, Aramaic, or his synagogue professional tongue, Hebrew. (Maybe a Latin or Greek word here and there for flavor.) He definitely NEVER uttered a word of King James's elegant and luscious English!

And then my relative would really flip out when he heard that scholars can’t even decide how many words spoken by Jesus in the New Testament can actually be traced to his mouth. Some scholars say as few as 31 words, others as many as 10,000 words.(The theological argument has a name---the ipsissima verba jesu: the very words of Jesus) None of them would declare, like some untutored lay folk do, that every word in the New Testament must have been written by God or his son, the god Jesus.

What would really drive my relative over the edge is that Jesus, like most middle easterners, was probably short, oval faced, greasy haired and brown-skinned, at LEAST as brown-skinned as Barack Obama, if not more so. (Even the forged Shroud of Turin outlines such a figure, so the forgers must have believed it historically accurate, unless they wanted their forgery discovered.)

Let's not even begin to raise the questions Albert Schweitzer asked in The Quest of the Historical Jesus.


Let's definitely not.

Merry Christmas.


.