Oneness & The Heart of the World

Trappist Monk Fr. Thomas Keating discusses Christian mysticism and the mysteries implicite in the oneness of God. He relates the experiences of Christian mysticism with Zen and integral theory. From the official description:



"In this talk, Father Keating discusses the dynamic nature of God and the paradox implicit in experiencing divine oneness. With humor and wisdom, he explores the practice of contemplative prayer, and how we might begin to approach God through being present to our senses." (Length 34:41)

Juan Williams and NPR

The rich white head of NPR (National Public Radio) sent her goons to fire journalist Juan Williams after he worked there since 1999. They didn't like him because he wasn't their puppet, so they looked for any excuse to fire him, and they did. This act of cowardice was disgusting and disgraceful.

Ken Wilber and Weed

Ken Wilber is naive and believes politicians tell the truth. He also supports "rude boy" cultist Andrew Cohen (pictured above).



If weed were legalized the government could collect $400 billion a year in taxes and pay off both wars in a few years.





The Other Wiki's page on Cohen, the man who supposedly gained complete and final enlightenment in two and a half weeks.



The Other Wiki's page on Cohen's guru, H. W. L. Poonja. He pronounced Cohen's enlightenment after two and a half weeks.



Be Scofield's "Integral Abuse" article on Cohen and evolutionary enlightenment. He asks the brilliant question about Cohen's "rude boy" enlightenment: "But I must ask, if Cohen's tactics are so revolutionary and 'crazy wisdom' is needed to become enlightened, why haven't any of his students become enlightened? And why are these tactics so necessary when neither Cohen or Wilber attribute their awakenings to these sorts of experiences?"



WHAT enlightenment??! - a site where former Cohen devotees vent. May be true, may be lies, I don't know, I didn't read it.



The Urban Mystic versus The Shirtless Spiritual



Geoffrey D. Falk, a man with no kind words to say to anyone (except maybe Ramana Maharshi), has a site that demonstrates that all gurus, no matter how great, are still human, even if they are divine. Warning: Goeff does believe in the Randi prize, even though there is good evidence to suggest it is a fraud and even though so called "skeptics" say that winning the prize would prove nothing. Goeff might be skeptical of gurus but he sure isn't skeptical of his own skepticism. He quotes Randi several times and believes fully the sexual incidents involving Sai Baba, even though every single court case involving Baba was thrown. In one the so called "victims" were brought in and said they had never heard of the man who brought the case to court, had never met him, and had never claimed Baba molested them. The man, a disillusioned Western devotee, made the whole thing up to get back at Baba for giving him a ring with a zircon instead of a real diamond, even though he said it was a "die-mind" ring, not a "diamond" ring (meaning the death of the ego). He also says videos of Baba's miracles reveal sleight of hand when a magician interviewed for Haraldsson's book says the videos are all too poor quality to come to any honest conclusions. He also supports the view of scholars who find spurious homoeroticism in the life and teachings of Ramakrishna, based on bad translations of Bengali into English (Narasingha Sil and Jeffrey Kripal who mistranslate Bengali to English, misunderstand Tantra, and misuse psychoanalysis to do things it was never meant to do). Goeff also seems to have a thing for stories about gurus and blonds (both men and women). Gentlemen may or may not prefer blonds, but according to Goeff all gurus do. Virtually all of the sexual stories involve blonds from exotic lands like the band mates from ABBA. He also quotes Joe Nickell, another skep-dick phony paranormal investigator, and Indian "rationalists" who call themselves "rationalists" even though they are materialists who believe sense perception is the only means of true knowledge, and the original rationalists were people who believed the senses are unreliable and only reason can be used to gain true knowledge, like Descartes and Kant.



In fact, there's a caveat to his book, listed on his website that reads:



The inclusion of any particular individual in Stripping the Gurus is not meant to suggest or imply that he or she represents him- or herself as a guru, nor is it meant to suggest or imply that he or she has indulged in sex, violence, the abuse of others, or any other illegal or immoral activities.



So it all could be false. Most of it probably is.



He is a disillusioned spiritual believer, much like Michael Shermer, which would explain why he's so angry and full of vitriol. He also decorates his site with the anti-religious/secular humanist/utopianist "A" symbol, meaning he's a utopianist/secular humanist/anti-religious do away with others freedom of thought because they're too stupid kind of guy FakeSagan warned about.

Tibet: The Story Of A Tragedy

In 1950, China peacefully liberated the shit out of Tibet, ending roughly 1400 years of independence. Temples and monestaries destroyed, forced labour camps were set up, one million people were killed, one sixth of the total population, agriculture was ruined, leading to mass famines. The hammer of communism came down and by the time it was finished Tibet was thoroughly drenched in blood.

Here is a nice French documentary about the history of the West's interaction with Tibet and China's invasion (it's in English).

Theistic Science Fiction

I posted the following on UD, which despite its hostility toward certain issues and sometimes masquerading Christianity for ID does occasionally have some good science. It's in response to the question "why are so many atheists into science fiction?"

I’m a theistic science fiction witer, or to be more accurate I’m a theist who writes science fiction, among other things. There seems to be nothing intrinsically atheistic or theistic about science fiction that would lead me to see why one group would be more attracted to it over the other, if, indeed, that is the case, I don’t know. I suppose if I were to have to make a choice I would say that the allure of “science” or the air of “science,” what Ken Wilber calls “narrow science,” is appealing to atheists because it serves as an alternative to God and gives them a sense of authority. “Science” (hardcore materialism) has become the sort of gatekeeper of all that is real in the modern world, for various complicated reasons too many to go in to here. Without a belief in God (used as broadly or narrowly as you choose) one still has to believe in something, and that something might as well be “science” as the new world authority.

Moving on to the fiction part, well, humans are remarkable storytellers. Everything is a story, built up around facts. Facts in themselves are just pieces floating around waiting to be attached to a story that explains how they all fit together. For an atheist instead of writing about God why not write about the new authority, “science?”

Of course all this is speculation; the ramblings of a man with too much to say and too small an audience.

-Dee

Science News 28 September 2010

The UN has appointed an ambassador to greet alien visitors. Now when ET comes asking to be taken to our leader they won't be directed to some star chamber meeting room where the Bilderbergers are discussing the future of world politics, they'll be taken to see astrophysicist Malzan Othman. The propaganda machine at the other wiki says the story is fake. Who am I going to believe, them or the Daily Telegraph? That's not a tough choice.



















In other news, Jimi Heselden, the inventor of the Segway, died. He accidentally drove one of his devices off a cliff. I never thought those things were very safe, or practical, or didn't look completely stupid. What more proof do people need that these things are a bad idea? (Corrected 30 September. I put the wrong name for the Segway inventor.)

Balking Hawking Part 2

Stephen Hawking (see previous post for a more or less complete bio) has a new book called The Grand Design out in which he lays claim to an idea he didn't come up with, namely that the universe created itself from nothing by some sort of quantum fluctuation wizardry.

Stephen M. Barr, physics professor from the University of Delaware, writes in an article from First Things: "Right up front, it must be noted that this idea is extremely speculative, has not yet been formulated in a mathematically rigorous way, and is unable at this point to make any testable predictions. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine how it could ever be tested. It would be more accurate to call these “scenarios” than theories." He then cautions theists that just because the idea that a wizard did it isn't testable or has no mathematics doesn't mean it can be rejected outright. In order to reject it, Mr. Barr has more to say on what he feels are good reasons why Hawking's idea doesn't hold water.

First, Hawking and his ilk define the universe as a physical structure, like a bubble (at least pop science writers in Scientific American and Michio Kaku on his Science Channel program use the analogy of bubbles). This bubble universe is floating in some sort of plenum with many many other bubble universes that are also just physical structures. Also, these bubble universes are constantly popping into and out of existence due to quantum fluctuations in the soapy water plenum of all that is (which, if you want to be pickey would really be the universe and the so called "universe" bubble would be just a region within the real universe; hardley seems worth calling this bubble a universe, but some people want to blow some things way out of proportion).

Andrei Linde had an idea called eternal inflation about bubble universes branching off one-another forever within a false vacuum. When a new "universe" branches off, a big bang happens, but all that's really happening is the whole system is branching, nothing is really being created. That's why it's called eternal. The whole system has always existed, and so needs no explanation (at least Linde believes it's eternal in the past, most cosmologists don't think so*).

*Dr. Bruce Gordon says in an interview, The Argument for Design in Cosmology, that: "At first it was thought that it might be eternal into the past too, thus obviating the need for a universal beginning, but it was shown conclusively in 2003 that universes having an expansion rate of greater than zero over their history, universes like ours, must have a begining.... even if the string multiverse existed it would have an absolute beginning in the finite past." He continues to say that even if one were to postulate that quantum laws always existed, even before the multiverse, or plenum as is referred to above, such abstract mathematical laws are causally inert and cannot force anything to happen on their own.

For Hawking and Linde and others the universe wasn't created out of nothing, because nothing has no positive atributes, even if Hawking may misappropriate the word "nothing" to mean something completely else. The universe also didn't "create itself." What happened was the damn thing inflated. This reduced definition of the universe requires the preexistence of the plenum itself, inflaton fields, and quantum laws, but everyone has to assume the preexistence of something, so that itself doesn't toss this idea out. I would say it gets messy having to assume 10^500 random universes just to explain away the fine tuning of the laws of the universe, but parsimony only counts when the most parsimonious option isn't God.

Barr seems to think that Hawking has really goofed the flute with his new book, since in his A Brief History of Time (which I do have and wasn't all that great), Hawking acknowledged that the equations of physics are just numbers and can't cause anything to happen on their own and that physics can't address the issue of why something exists instead of nothing. Now Hawking proposes a new old story for how the universe always existed and so no explanation is necessary. I bet Hawking will rename this "theory" after himself like he does with every idea he steals. Barr concludes: "There are two answers to the question: “Why does anything exist rather than nothing at all?” The atheist answers, “There is no explanation.” The theist replies, God. An intelligent case can be made for either answer. But to say that the laws of physics alone answer it is the purest nonsense—as Hawking himself once realized."

And with that we leave the Sad Sad Tale of Stephen Hawking, a man so consumed by egoism that he no longer is the respected physicist of yesterday, but instead is now spouting nonsense.

-Dee