Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.

The Story of Sathya Sai Baba

A 9 minute video on the life of Sai Baba. There is no narration, you will need to read it.

A Question About The Quran

I've studied the world's major religions for years but it was not until a couple days ago that the following question came to me. I was watching a documentary on H2 (previously History International) called "Secrets of the Koran" (1 hour 30 minutes), and aside from the fact that the illegible map they used and everything else was bathed in red hues making it difficult to see what was going on, and that it was a typical "hagiographic" documentary about Islam (I have yet to see a Western documentary on Islam that even has one person interviewed who is even willing to raise a single question regarding the orthodox Sunni position on the history of Islam and Muhammad), a couple of facts, or statements, piqued my curiosity. I'm sure I had heard all of these facts before but they never came together until the weekend.



For sake of argument, let us assume that the orthodox Sunni account is correct in all these facts (I have no objection to any of them). What is interesting is the possible interpretation that can be drawn.



1. Muhammad was illiterate. This is said to be one of the important facts concerning why the Quran is genuine revelation. It is argued that since Muhammad was illiterate he could not have copied stuff from other holy texts (or other texts in general, like all the medical knowledge from the Quran that was known by pagan doctors like Galen of Pergamon five centuries earlier). Okay, most people were illiterate back then (an even today) so it is no stretch of the imagination to suppose Muhammad was illiterate as well.



2. The text of the Quran was memorised perfectly by companions of Muhammad for around 30 years before it was compiled by Caliph Uthman (although the diacritical marks were added 50 or more years later, without which the Uthmanic text can be pronounced in a number of different ways, leading to different interpretations, because written Arabic, like Hebrew, has no vowels). Again, there's no problem here. People living in an oral culture are trained from a very early age to develop fantastic memories. Bramins in Kerala are trained to memorise the four Vedas twice, once as it is and once as one continuous sound. Poets memorised very long epic texts like the Illiad and Mahabarata.



Can you see what my question is yet? I'll give you a hint: Muhammad was a merchant before he became a prophet at age 40.



If we take as fact that Muhammad was an illiterate merchant and that people from his village (and certainly Muhammad himself, since he was the first person to memorise the text of the Quran!) were capable of fantastic feats of memory, how is fact number one proof again that the Quran is divine revelation? The Israelites, Greeks, and Romans travelled all over the western regions of the Arabian peninsula, and the Sassanid Persians controlled the east and south (present Yemen and Oman). Both cultures had advanced technological and scientific writings, and well developed and cosmopolitan religions (there were missionaries from many Christian and Gnostic sects as well as Jewish merchants and members of the Persian mystery religions). Arabia was bathed with knowledge, secular and religious. Muhammad would have encountered Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, Persian, and Greek religious and scientific ideas when he made his rounds trading salt or dates or whatever it was he made a living from. Since he, and many people, had very good memories, there is no reason to assume he could not have heard stories from Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others and memorised them. Saying Muhammad was illiterate in no way demonstrates that the Quran is divine revelation.



If we look at the Quran we find a number of things: Greek medical and geological knowledge, Gnostic interpretations of Jesus (like that Jesus was not crucified, a look-alike was), "Reader's Digest" versions of stories about Abraham and other Jewish figures. It could be said that God revealed all this to Muhammad, I have no problem with that, but it means that evidence has to be brought up to cast doubt on the cryptomnesia hypothesis that Muhammad had heard all this stuff while he was a merchant, forgot about it, and then subconsciously reworked it together to form the Quran. Both scenarios are possible, and right now both have precisely the same amount of evidence.



As of now I do not have an answer to this question, nor do I forsee that I will at any time in the future. The most I can hope for is that more people will take this question to heart and ponder over it.

Stuart Meets Kermit

Stuart Davis interviews Kermit the Frog on Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll! They talk about movies, spirituality, and spawning. It's a really cool way to spend three and a half minutes.



Apparently there are some problems with HDnet, the site that hosts the show, and Integral Naked wants me to share some videos with you.



There's some pretty funny stuff that explores and exemplifies the side of spirituality that's above mere reverence, exploding out into the pure humour of duality that is the play of form and emptiness all over your Original Face. Check it out.

Charlie Sheen EPIC

Charlie Sheen talks about what it's like to smoke seven grams of crack.




Charlie Sheen tells the secret of winning after talking about how pain is all in your mind.

Why "The Walking Dead" Can't Happen

UPDATE: Everyone's infected! Problem solved. (18 March 2012)







Let's get it out first that this will be dealing only with the television series, not the comic book. The comic book nicely avoids this problem all together by having everyone who dies for any reason except brain injury reanimate.




Aside from the first half of season two being about two episodes stretched out to seven and not getting anywhere for no apparent reason (money?), and the improbable aiming skills the characters have (try making a head-shot every single time while both you and your target are moving top speed - bet you can't!)*, and the glaring inconsistencies with how the zombies work**, the whole business of zombification would render the story completely impossible from the start.




In the TV series "The Walking Dead" the only way someone becomes a zombie is to be bitten by a zombie, escape, die, and then reanimate. It doesn't help to be bitten and then devoured because there's nothing left to reanimate. You have to kill the zombie (kill, they're already dead!) or run away, and then go croak somewhere because a zombie bite is always fatal. Then when you die you have to be far enough away from the zombies to not have your body eaten, because reanimation isn't instantaneous. Dr. Jenner stated that it takes a few minutes to a few hours before the brainstem starts up again, so if you're eaten within that window you won't zombify.




Anyone who dies but is not bitten will not zombify, as the mess of bodies in the traffic pile up attest to. This leads one to wonder if the process of zombification takes so long and requires a bite from a creature that certainly won't say "he's dead, I'll attack a living now and leave his body to zombify," you're going to have a hard time reaching plague proportions. Consider next the fighting abilities of humans and zombies. Zombie to human kills are at least eight to one. Anyone with a gun will kill as many zombies as they have bullets, guaranteed. Unless a minimum of eight zombies attacks any person, no matter how big or strong or fast or smart or well armed, that person will survive. When we combine these two problems there is absolutely no way we can have a global zombie pandemic with only a handful of humans left. The mathematics just doesn't work. If zombies are so damn difficult to make and so damn easy to kill there is absolutely no way to get a zombie apocalypse going. Maybe a couple towns will be caught off guard, but not an entire country, and certainly not the whole planet.




Don't say that maybe one zombie bit ten or twenty people before being put down. They don't do that. A zombie will keep attacking someone until they eat the person or are destroyed. They are not smart enough to sacrifice themselves by biting several people to spread the plague before being killed. Zombiism doesn't spread fast enough for a zombie to bite someone, have them turn, and then move on to someone new. Unless we eliminate one or both of the above facts - the dificulty of zombification or the kill disparity - there is no way "The Walking Dead" can happen. That's what you get when you try to have dead zombies who spread like living zombies.












*Andrea is the only one that has ever missed, and only because missing was relevant to advance the story, and she still very nearly killed Daryl (with a head shot, as if I needed to mention it) at 200+ yards, from an unsupported prone position, facing the sun, with an unknown number of head winds, with five friendlies just feet away from Daryl, on the second time she's ever fired a gun. Damn! Now that's beginner's luck! Her stupidity could easily have killed one or more of six people. Even if there was a zombie there's no way a thinking person would have attempted a shot like that.




**Sometimes they hunt by smell, other times they don't; sometimes loud sounds like gunfire will attract them, other times you can teach people how to shoot all afternoon and attract no attention at all; whatever reanimates them only restartes the brainstem but people can hit them anywhere in the head and still bring them down, going so far as to have Daryl shoot one with his crossbow up through the jaw and hard palate into the nasal cavity and kill it after it started gnawing on his boot even though the bolt would have only gone through the frontal lobes, which were explicitly stated to not restart with zombification.

Balking Hawking Part 3: In The Beginning

Ever since the idea of the Big Bang was conceived cosmologists who hated God looked for a way around creation. The universe couldn't have a beginning; it would ruin the perfect harmony of an eternal universe. No beginning, no need for an explanation, right? To celebrate Hawking's 70th birthday here is a third installment in the series on him, his cosmology, and his theology.



See Also Balking Hawking Part 1, Part 2, and Georg Cantor's Infinities Part 2.



From NewScientist:



"Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against [the Big Bang] for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you need a creator?



Cosmologists thought they had a workaround. Over the years, they have tried on several different models of the universe that dodge the need for a beginning while still requiring a big bang. But recent research has shot them full of holes (see "Why physicists can't avoid a creation event"). It now seems certain that the universe did have a beginning."



Lawrence Krauss in his new book A Universe From Nothing tries to deal a knock-out blow to the deity by replacing one metaphysical system with another. God is given up for the multiverse, a cacophony of quantum randomness belching out universes like Our Idiot Brother.



It is in vogue now to redefine "nothing" to mean "the quantum vacuum that has always existed," but in an interview on Coast to Coast AM, Krauss does his fellow metaphysicists one better. He admitted that you don't even need a quantum vacuum or quantum laws, as NewScientist explains:



"However, the laws of physics can't be conjured from nothing. In the end, the best answer is that they arise from our existence within a multiverse, where all the universes have their own laws - ours being just so for no particular reason.



Krauss contends that the multiverse makes the question of what determined our laws of nature "less significant". Truthfully, it just puts the question beyond science - for now, at least. That (together with the frustratingly opaque origins of a multiverse) means Krauss can't quite knock out those who think there must ultimately be a prime mover. Not that this matters too much: the juvenile asides that litter the first third of the book (for example, "I am tempted to retort here that theologians are expert at nothing") mean that, by the time we get to the fascinating core of his argument, Krauss will be preaching only to the converted."


[emphasis mine]



The multiverse: the great unknown and unknowable. A meta-space that is beyond our space-time and thus forever beyond our ability to test it. Being untestable the multiverse must surrender its claim to the title "science" and accept that it is now, and forever, metaphysics. To do away with the idea of a creation, an absolute beginning of the universe, Krauss throws science away and invents an untestable story. Even the Bible contains historical details that can be tested, the multiverse is just "bullshit metaphysics".



Metaphysicists have tried to propose systems where the universe (or multiverse) is eternal into the past, but Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University has shot holes in all of them (even though he still believes in the multiverse, it had to have a beginning in the finite past).



Eternal inflation, the idea that the inflation that sped up the expansion of the early universe didnt' stop, it still continues in other regions of space beyond our cosmic horizon, spawning new bubble universes forever, was the first to go. Some thought inflation was eternal into the past too, but in 2003 Vilenkin and Alan Guth ran the calculations on Hubble's Constant and found that it doesn't work. Inflation may continue forever into the future, but it had to have a beginning in the past.



Next came the big bounce, the idea that after a long time, a trillion years or so, expansion slows and stops, eventually reversing until everything flys back into a single point called the Big Crunch. Then the shock of impact of everything on everything starts a new Big Bang, and the cycle continues forever. Unfortunately, disorder increases with time, so each new universe must be more disordered than the one that birthed it. If the cycle had been going on forever disorder would be infinite and the universe would be completely featureless. Since there's stuff in the universe the cycles couldn't have gone on forever. Some people then suggested that the universe just gets bigger with each bounce, so the disorder spreads out more so no one notices it (like in the M-Brane ekpyrotic model and possibly whatever the hell Penrose's new idea is - no one seems to understand his Aeons of time model, within the physics community or anywhere). But if the whole thing is getting bigger it had to start somewhere really really small, maximally small, and that means a finite beginning.



There's also an idea from the 1930s called the cosmic egg or primeval atom, where yes, there was a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, but the thing that banged was an uber-dense subatomic thing that existed forever until it got tired of existing as a tiny little particle and exploded. However, Vilenkin and a graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that quantum instability would have led to the egg's collapse after a finite time. The crack (the Big Bang) had to happen before the egg collapsed into oblivion so it couldn't have existed forever, even if it existed for a really, really long time before the Big Bang.



Vilenkin concludes[:] "All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning."



V.J. Torley of UD comments on the implications of a universe requiring a beginning. He reasons (muses, really), in line with William Lane Craig, that the cause of the universe, which cannot be within the universe itself, must be personal. Scientific and mathematic laws are just descriptions of observations. They are not Platonic furniture of reality, and they are causally inert. Only a person, an agent, can bring about the creation of the universe, acting for some reason. The evidence from fine tuning (not only of the universe, but if you read Georg Cantor's Infinities Part 2 and other links provided in the UD article, you'll see that the multiverse too must be fine tuned) is suggestive of a highly mathematical and aesthetic mind behind the constants of the universe.



There you have it, a birthday present, albeit a very bad one, from Alexander Vilenkin to Stephen Hawking: a universe with a definite beginning in the finite past.