Denials of Reality

As I move deeper into my communion with God, the stark contrast between that experience and what our culture focuses on and promotes becomes more profound. The material becomes the only reality for a growing number of people. The other reality, the unseen, gets pushed out of the picture. 

Secularists speak of freedom of choice, but it’s reduced to a choice of what is seen. They don’t want to acknowledge the unseen; it can’t be seen so it doesn’t exist. I suppose they would acknowledge emotions even if they can’t be seen, though I heard them posit the notion emotions are only neurological responses that release chemicals that cause the reactions we call emotion. Still, it’s a closed system, truly limiting.

One of my favorite observations from college is the idea of emergent reality vs. reductionism. Emergent reality expands from what we see and keeps going. Expand enough and you’ll get to the great void of nothingness. Reductionism takes you the opposite direction, and we find out there is more space between particles than there are particles, and you end up in the great void of nothingness.

Which brings us to this; the nothingness the secularists ignore is filled by God. They ignore it, but are in fact hostile to it. Their claim is the unseen can’t be known, nothing exists there, and attempt to take away our choice to connect to God. They also deny God exists in what we see, and promote materialism to justify their limited view of reality.

For them to promote this view, they move beyond science into the realm of Scientism. It’s their theology and philosophy. If it can’t be measured or quantified, it can’t exist. There's problem with that; they can’t see God, but have no scientific method to disprove His existence. They have to accept on Faith that God doesn’t exist. A paradox at least. Materialism and Scientism only acknowledge the tip of the iceberg of existence.

Science shows us the patterns, connections, rhymes and rhythms of reality. It can both expand and reduce, and truly show us God manifested in the natural order of things. 

 Fr Barron on Scientism and Science

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJosdqTRkgw

The political component of this is Secularists need to deny there’s a natural order to things, so we get the materialism of Marx and Keynes, Lenin and Galbraith vs. Jesus and St. Paul, Mises and Freidman.   The former have a cultural and economic belief system that denies the natural order, and the State decides political and economic realities; all based on the materialist notion that all that matters is “matter”, what we can see. They deny any mystery to life. Right now the practitioners of Scientism and Materialism have the upper hand. It's okay to quote and paraphrase Marx, but not Jesus.

We pray the God given natural order of things may again be recognized and Jesus being quoted and paraphrased becomes more okay that doing so with Marx.   

Hockey Sticks and Liars

These are the graphs of the great weather "hockey stick" that all the Statist media and gov't Statists, Gaia worshipers, etc., have been using to say that global warming is man made. It's from the Summary for Policymakers’ of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. It shows temperature dropping then a huge upswing in temperature. Except it didn't happen. What happened after 1961 is a drop in temperature, but it was obscured by some other large colorful lines. Of course the MSM didn't do any 'investigative reporting', it might reveal an inconvenient truth.





Thing is, it was warmer in 1000 CE than it is now. I'm not a professional historian, but I don't remember reading about any factories or cars and whatever during that period. Greenland used to be green to. Plus the global temp has been dropping for the last ten years.

As to the emails revealing this scam. If they were emails that embarrassed Conservatives or Christians, this would be whistle blowing, and the contents would be important. That they show alleged scientists to be political hacks, gov't lap dogs and liars, well then, the publishing of the letters is the outrage, not the content.

As to the alleged scientists calling other scientists names and saying nasty things about them; at one time, when science was actually science, peer review was the standard. As bad in science classes as I was, I remember every experiment had to be re-done and get the same result to be accepted. The alleged scientists language is political and not scientific, using "consensus". Politicians reach consensus. Science is to show something is or is not, or it's under investigation. Period.

I think the alleged scientists should apologize to the Catholic Church. They've been pounding on the Church for dragging its feet acknowledging the correctness of scientific discoveries. At least the church didn't tell big ol' whoppin' lies just to make a buck.

Does 'science fiction' have a new definition now?

Climategate: Science Is Dying (vid)

Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, about how Climategate is undermining the objectivity of science.

When Scientists Have Solved Everything

A thousand years from now when scientists have solved all the questions that plague humanity, they are finally ready for the ultimate challenge. They elect a representative to address God.

"God, " says the scientist in charge. "You are no longer needed. You served a function in you day, but that day is gone. We can do everything that You can do, so goodbye."

There's is a moment of silence. God asks, "Everything?"

"Yes" answer the scientist, "everything".

"Can you make a human being from dust?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay," lets see it."

The scientist reaches down and digs his hands into the earth.

"Oh no," God says, "Get your own dust."

Stubbornness: Religious and Atheist World Views

I watched a debate on my Facebook page about Atheism, Creationism (Intelligent Design), Evolution and Christian belief. I was grieved by the unthinking application of the belief templates from both sides. Same age old arguments, degenerating into the same insults. Christians objecting to science, Atheists objecting to the spiritual world view. They are not mutually exclusive, and the arguers painted each other into a corner so that the corners became defended. The corners being defended was not the beliefs of each, but how the other thought the opposition believed. A lot of other things were expressed, including insults, which didn't advance the discussion. A lot of ignorance was displayed, by the Atheists about Christianity, and Christians about Science and objectivitism. Sadly, much misunderstanding by Christians about their own beliefs. Incorrect templates all around.

Some advice to Christians, from no less than Augustine, about arguing science vs religion:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world. About the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrections of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?"

To the Atheists and others that reject the spiritual world view:

Einstein: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

John Polkinghorne: "The poverty of an objectivistic account is made only too clear when we consider the mystery of music. From a scientific point of view, it is nothing but vibrations in the air, impinging on the eardrums and stimulating neural currents in the brain.

How does it come about that this banal sequence of temporal activity has the power to speak to our hearts of an eternal beauty? The whole range of subjective experience, from perceiving a patch of pink, to being enthralled by a performance of the Mass in B Minor, and on to the mystic's encounter with the ineffable reality of the One, all these truly human experiences are at the center of our encounter with reality, and they are not to be dismissed as epiphenomenal froth on the surface of a universe whose true nature is impersonal and lifeless."

Astronomer Arthur Eddington relates a parable of a scientist studying deep sea life, and drops a net with three inch squares. He catches a lot, and notices that there is no life less than three inches long. He concludes there is no sea life less than three inches.

There are objective and spiritual elements to the truths of life. One view, excluding or not giving credence to another, is not going to reveal any truth. Both are necessary to understand ourselves, each other, our relationships, and our physical universe.