The Self-Organizing Universe
Science has proven that there is a tendency to self-organization in the universe, through the mathematics known as chaos theory. Nothing can remain random, because the natural perturbations within randomly moving material will always eventually create nonrandom groupings and clumpings of matter. Stars will always form in the hydrogen clouds of the vastness of space. There is a bias for increasing order even when chaos (randomness) is the starting point.
This is the start of evolution. Stars form, and we are formed from stars, in a process that takes a few tens of billions of years. We are star-stuff, all of us. There is an urge, a tendency, a pressure, toward ever greater complexity, toward greater intelligence, in all of us. God is building not from outside of the world, but from within it. The Mind of God is working in each of you, in every instant when you allow It.
When we say we are searching for God, we are claiming that God is not here, but somewhere else. Meanwhile, what we are searching for, we are searching with! We are seeing empty air, using God’s eyeballs! We are standing knee-deep in the river, and dying of thirst.
Remember the Last Supper, where Jesus picked up bread and wine, and said “This is my body, this is my blood.”? This is the man who said “I and the Father are One.”
He could just as well have said, “The whole earth is my body and my blood, I am one with it all. We were formed in the heart of the same star. We came from the big bang that began the universe. I am one with all things.”
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
FINDING FAITH - 3
Where can we begin to unravel this ‘God’ question?
First we are seeking to explain our own existence, and the existence of others, and the existence of the things we see and touch all around us. We see that these things are complex; they appear to be the work of intelligence - especially us!
At this point the superstitious person makes a leap of faith and says, “There must be some great Power out there that made all this - including me.” Certainly that is one way to interpret what we observe. Religious superstition, as it turns out, often works!
The practical mystic takes a different direction. This person says, “There must be intelligence in the universe - in fact, I know there is, because I know I am intelligent. But since I see signs of this intelligence in everything, everywhere, then this Intelligence must be part of the very fabric of the everything.”
The conclusion is that we are part of a self-organizing universe, in which this Mind, this Intelligence is inherent throughout. In fact, we assume that this Mind is the creator of what we see, because after all creation is a mental act. Creation is not mindless, it is the result of a mental impulse.
There are only two possible conclusions.
One is that there is a Mental Force beyond myself that creates, throughout the universe, which we can call God, or any other name we want.
The other is that I myself am an insane Godling, merely imagining all that I think I see, with the entire universe inside my mind.
If I choose the second conclusion, then I am imagining you right now! Don’t worry, I won’t make you disappear!
First we are seeking to explain our own existence, and the existence of others, and the existence of the things we see and touch all around us. We see that these things are complex; they appear to be the work of intelligence - especially us!
At this point the superstitious person makes a leap of faith and says, “There must be some great Power out there that made all this - including me.” Certainly that is one way to interpret what we observe. Religious superstition, as it turns out, often works!
The practical mystic takes a different direction. This person says, “There must be intelligence in the universe - in fact, I know there is, because I know I am intelligent. But since I see signs of this intelligence in everything, everywhere, then this Intelligence must be part of the very fabric of the everything.”
The conclusion is that we are part of a self-organizing universe, in which this Mind, this Intelligence is inherent throughout. In fact, we assume that this Mind is the creator of what we see, because after all creation is a mental act. Creation is not mindless, it is the result of a mental impulse.
There are only two possible conclusions.
One is that there is a Mental Force beyond myself that creates, throughout the universe, which we can call God, or any other name we want.
The other is that I myself am an insane Godling, merely imagining all that I think I see, with the entire universe inside my mind.
If I choose the second conclusion, then I am imagining you right now! Don’t worry, I won’t make you disappear!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
FINDING FAITH - 2
I’d to say a word about those who don’t believe in God - and that is this:
The kind of God you don’t believe in doesn’t exist!
The images of God that we usually learn are either: the white-bearded old guy at a table with a big record book, or an angry guy with a staff or pitchfork or some pointy thing, ready to spew forth lightning or some other kind of wrath. There are Hindu gods with umpteen arms and two heads, and whatever else. There are animal-headed gods, animal-footed gods, and fierce monstrous beast gods. And finally, there are people gods, such as Odin and the ever-popular Jesus.
To the serious skeptic, non of these are very convincing. For one thing, none are recent - for another thing, the difference between history and mythology cannot be sorted out. To have faith, we must have more. We must have real knowledge, that comes from our own experience. We must have a commonsense faith.
When we teach the Science of Mind, we let you explore and practice for yourself till you can see the connection between your innermost desires and your experience. We teach practical mysticism - things you can try out. We show you have to build faith by trying it out.
Faith is something that many people have trouble with, because they have encountered situations which have caused them to be untrusting. Mistrust in things and people, all aspects of Creation, may lead us to mistrust the Creator as well. Do you honestly believe that the world, the universe is there for you? Or do you believe in Murphy's Law, that there is a built-in aspect to reality that means it is "gonna getcha"?
The kind of God you don’t believe in doesn’t exist!
The images of God that we usually learn are either: the white-bearded old guy at a table with a big record book, or an angry guy with a staff or pitchfork or some pointy thing, ready to spew forth lightning or some other kind of wrath. There are Hindu gods with umpteen arms and two heads, and whatever else. There are animal-headed gods, animal-footed gods, and fierce monstrous beast gods. And finally, there are people gods, such as Odin and the ever-popular Jesus.
To the serious skeptic, non of these are very convincing. For one thing, none are recent - for another thing, the difference between history and mythology cannot be sorted out. To have faith, we must have more. We must have real knowledge, that comes from our own experience. We must have a commonsense faith.
When we teach the Science of Mind, we let you explore and practice for yourself till you can see the connection between your innermost desires and your experience. We teach practical mysticism - things you can try out. We show you have to build faith by trying it out.
Faith is something that many people have trouble with, because they have encountered situations which have caused them to be untrusting. Mistrust in things and people, all aspects of Creation, may lead us to mistrust the Creator as well. Do you honestly believe that the world, the universe is there for you? Or do you believe in Murphy's Law, that there is a built-in aspect to reality that means it is "gonna getcha"?
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
FINDING FAITH - 1
What is faith?
Faith is confidence in something you can’t see or touch. It is knowing that something is there, even though you can’t see it.
We live in a world of scientific progress - how is it that we could have faith in an unseen intelligence that can guide us and work for us? Doesn’t that smack of the old world of superstition? Let's examine the issue.
The issue of faith breaks down into several questions:
• The first one is “Is there a God”
• The second one is “If there is a God, does that affect me?”
• And third, “If there is a God, and It affects me in some way, how does It affect me?”
• Finally, “If there’s a God, and It affects me, what should I be doing about it?”
The reason this is an issue faith is that most of us think we have never seen God. Most of us think we have never heard God. We are not sure if there’s anything there, and we don’t know if It affects us anyway. Do we even have an idea of who or what God is?
So what do we do about that? There are several approaches that people take:
• Some of us search high and low for God, and most don’t find anything. There is no office door with a “God” sign on it.
• And some people take the whole issue on faith, and with little or no evidence, we act as if God was there, and try to figure out what that means to us, and what we should do. These are people of blind faith.
• Some people reject the whole issue and refuse to believe in what they can’t see. These are the blind skeptics.
• Some of us ignore the whole issue, and get on with life. These are blind, period!
Which of these approaches is the right one? Would it surprise you if I said I think they are ALL missing the boat?
More next time...
Faith is confidence in something you can’t see or touch. It is knowing that something is there, even though you can’t see it.
We live in a world of scientific progress - how is it that we could have faith in an unseen intelligence that can guide us and work for us? Doesn’t that smack of the old world of superstition? Let's examine the issue.
The issue of faith breaks down into several questions:
• The first one is “Is there a God”
• The second one is “If there is a God, does that affect me?”
• And third, “If there is a God, and It affects me in some way, how does It affect me?”
• Finally, “If there’s a God, and It affects me, what should I be doing about it?”
The reason this is an issue faith is that most of us think we have never seen God. Most of us think we have never heard God. We are not sure if there’s anything there, and we don’t know if It affects us anyway. Do we even have an idea of who or what God is?
So what do we do about that? There are several approaches that people take:
• Some of us search high and low for God, and most don’t find anything. There is no office door with a “God” sign on it.
• And some people take the whole issue on faith, and with little or no evidence, we act as if God was there, and try to figure out what that means to us, and what we should do. These are people of blind faith.
• Some people reject the whole issue and refuse to believe in what they can’t see. These are the blind skeptics.
• Some of us ignore the whole issue, and get on with life. These are blind, period!
Which of these approaches is the right one? Would it surprise you if I said I think they are ALL missing the boat?
More next time...
Saturday, March 22, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US - 6
So now that we know where we came from, what exactly is out there. Many scientists believe that there must be more like us - like us meaning thinking, aware beings who express their creator as best they can.
The search still goes on and one. The SETI program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is run out of Berkeley, California. In the words of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame:
"There’d better be intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on earth."
I’m less pessimistic than that. For those who like to bet on a really long shot, the SETI-at-home project uses the screen saver on your computer to process data from the SETI program. You can use the spare time on your computer to run analysis on the data from the giant radio telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, helping the folks at Berkeley look for the LGM’s - Little Green Men. They probably aren’t green, but you can bet they likely won’t look much like us. A million years from now, WE won't likely look much like us!
A Trillion stars in each of Billions of Galaxies - doesn’t it just make you wonder? In the words of the first long-distance telegraph message by Samuel Morse, “What hath God wrought?”
END
The search still goes on and one. The SETI program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is run out of Berkeley, California. In the words of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame:
"There’d better be intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on earth."
I’m less pessimistic than that. For those who like to bet on a really long shot, the SETI-at-home project uses the screen saver on your computer to process data from the SETI program. You can use the spare time on your computer to run analysis on the data from the giant radio telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, helping the folks at Berkeley look for the LGM’s - Little Green Men. They probably aren’t green, but you can bet they likely won’t look much like us. A million years from now, WE won't likely look much like us!
A Trillion stars in each of Billions of Galaxies - doesn’t it just make you wonder? In the words of the first long-distance telegraph message by Samuel Morse, “What hath God wrought?”
END
Thursday, March 20, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US - 5
The materials from a previous Nova explosion form the heavy elements which our planets are made of, while the sun is still composed mostly of hydrogen gas, being turned to helium.
The key materials of our planet are carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and a lot of other things, including metals like iron. Many of these have been formed by complex nuclear cycles in a larger sun than ours, perhaps at the core of our galaxy. We really are made of star-stuff, each of us.
The planets came together the same way the stars did, a bunch of space debris pulled together by its own gravity. Our earth got luckier than most, and came together at the right distance from the sun to keep us alive. The Martians didn’t have that kind of luck, and neither did the Venusians. That’s likely why we can’t find them today.
On our Earth, there is no reason to suppose that life formed any differently than the stars did. There is an intelligence within all things that presses forward to become more and more. That intelligence has evolved into us, and continues to press onward, to greater and greater glory. We cannot be the end.
All human life on Earth has DNA that is identical to 99.99%. We are brothers and sisters, all of us. Recent work shows that all modern people can be traced back to a population of less than two dozen, some 200,000 years ago. This includes all colours and races of humanity.
The Mind within the Universe has brought us up from the ooze of Earth to express itself and be itself. We can have no greater glory than that. We get to express the creative energy of the builder of the stars. We have not merely been brought out of the ooze, but out from the Stars, where it was hot, so that we can be cool.
The key materials of our planet are carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and a lot of other things, including metals like iron. Many of these have been formed by complex nuclear cycles in a larger sun than ours, perhaps at the core of our galaxy. We really are made of star-stuff, each of us.
The planets came together the same way the stars did, a bunch of space debris pulled together by its own gravity. Our earth got luckier than most, and came together at the right distance from the sun to keep us alive. The Martians didn’t have that kind of luck, and neither did the Venusians. That’s likely why we can’t find them today.
On our Earth, there is no reason to suppose that life formed any differently than the stars did. There is an intelligence within all things that presses forward to become more and more. That intelligence has evolved into us, and continues to press onward, to greater and greater glory. We cannot be the end.
All human life on Earth has DNA that is identical to 99.99%. We are brothers and sisters, all of us. Recent work shows that all modern people can be traced back to a population of less than two dozen, some 200,000 years ago. This includes all colours and races of humanity.
The Mind within the Universe has brought us up from the ooze of Earth to express itself and be itself. We can have no greater glory than that. We get to express the creative energy of the builder of the stars. We have not merely been brought out of the ooze, but out from the Stars, where it was hot, so that we can be cool.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US - 4
Gravity is a fundamental property of any mass - a pull that it exerts on every other mass by the warping of space-time around itself. It pulls material together till the temperature rises from the increase in pressure, caused by the increasing proximity of material particles. Once temperature reaches a certain point, a nuclear reaction begins, fusing hydrogen into helium - and we have the beginning of a new star. There is an equilibrium reached, where the energy of fusion balances the pull of gravity, so a new sun can stay there for a very long time. Our own sun will last trillions of years, and then we’ll be back to kerosene to keep warm, unless we get some fusion of our own.
As hydrogen is converted to helium, it eventually gets depleted, and the reaction runs down. When the hydrogen runs low, there is no fusion energy to balance the gravity, and the star collapses on itself. What happens get depends on whether the star is large or small compared to our sun. If the star is small, it will flare up in size as a new cycle begins, turning helium into carbon, a mix of fission and fusion.
4.2 times the size of our sun is known as ChandraShekar’s limit. Above this limit, the gravity is large enough that when the hydrogen cycle is over, the collapse will trigger a new nuclear cycle - the carbon cycle. When this cycle is triggered, the star explodes, throwing material out into space. This is called a SUPERNOVA. The explosion disturbs new clouds of gas, triggering the birth of many new suns. More importantly it throws the material into space that planets are made of; leading to the eventual birth of our kind of life.
Note the intelligence to make this happen comes from within the Universe itself - not from outside. The forces and tendencies are built in to the fabric of space and time. No, it’s no accident, neither do we have to look to an outside God. Ours is an inside job. The kingdom is within. Both Galileo and Darwin are vindicated.
There are many billions of Galaxies, each with trillions of stars. Some are dying now, some just forming. Some are going to go Supernova, and seed our Galaxy some more. Some, like our own sun, will grow old and die, and turn into a cold dwarf star one day. This is star evolution, and it matches the evolution of life on Earth. In fact, it is part of the process.
More to follow .....
As hydrogen is converted to helium, it eventually gets depleted, and the reaction runs down. When the hydrogen runs low, there is no fusion energy to balance the gravity, and the star collapses on itself. What happens get depends on whether the star is large or small compared to our sun. If the star is small, it will flare up in size as a new cycle begins, turning helium into carbon, a mix of fission and fusion.
4.2 times the size of our sun is known as ChandraShekar’s limit. Above this limit, the gravity is large enough that when the hydrogen cycle is over, the collapse will trigger a new nuclear cycle - the carbon cycle. When this cycle is triggered, the star explodes, throwing material out into space. This is called a SUPERNOVA. The explosion disturbs new clouds of gas, triggering the birth of many new suns. More importantly it throws the material into space that planets are made of; leading to the eventual birth of our kind of life.
Note the intelligence to make this happen comes from within the Universe itself - not from outside. The forces and tendencies are built in to the fabric of space and time. No, it’s no accident, neither do we have to look to an outside God. Ours is an inside job. The kingdom is within. Both Galileo and Darwin are vindicated.
There are many billions of Galaxies, each with trillions of stars. Some are dying now, some just forming. Some are going to go Supernova, and seed our Galaxy some more. Some, like our own sun, will grow old and die, and turn into a cold dwarf star one day. This is star evolution, and it matches the evolution of life on Earth. In fact, it is part of the process.
More to follow .....
Sunday, March 16, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US - 3
Now, we can’t deal with whatever was before the Big Bang, because there WAS NO BEFORE. Time itself began for us at that point.
Stephen Hawking, in his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ deals with what happened next.
The Bang consisted of pure energy since the particles we know today could not have existed at the temperatures there must have been. But as the expansion took place, the temperature dropped, just as air trapped in a tire or a balloon feels colder when it get out. The expansion causes a cooling. And the particles that make up our atoms were formed as the cooling took place.
Here’s where we get the first inkling that Intelligence is built right in to the fabric of our Universe. From a pinpoint, there is nothing to suggest that the whole Universe shouldn’t just have been filled uniformly up with basic atoms of Hydrogen, with protons and electrons, and the odd neutron here and there. A uniform hydrogen ‘soup’ could not produce us.
There is a very modern branch of mathematics called Chaos Theory. What it shows it that pure chaos or randomness cannot be sustained. The tiniest of perturbations is inevitable, and leads to spontaneous creation of order from chaos. There is a movie called The Butterfly Effect, based on this idea - that a tiny perturbation creates a huge alternation of things over time. The title comes from a saying - that a butterfly flapping its wings sets in motion the stirring of air that starts a tornado.
In the case of our early Universe, hydrogen clumped together into clouds, till the clouds were pulled together by their own gravity, forming suns. The initial disturbance will have been a slight amount of turbulence in the early Big Bang, as energy condensed into the first particles of matter.
The bringing forth of order (non-randomness) out of chaos (randomness) is built right in to the nature of our physical universe. It is part of the Law by which we live.
Stephen Hawking, in his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ deals with what happened next.
The Bang consisted of pure energy since the particles we know today could not have existed at the temperatures there must have been. But as the expansion took place, the temperature dropped, just as air trapped in a tire or a balloon feels colder when it get out. The expansion causes a cooling. And the particles that make up our atoms were formed as the cooling took place.
Here’s where we get the first inkling that Intelligence is built right in to the fabric of our Universe. From a pinpoint, there is nothing to suggest that the whole Universe shouldn’t just have been filled uniformly up with basic atoms of Hydrogen, with protons and electrons, and the odd neutron here and there. A uniform hydrogen ‘soup’ could not produce us.
There is a very modern branch of mathematics called Chaos Theory. What it shows it that pure chaos or randomness cannot be sustained. The tiniest of perturbations is inevitable, and leads to spontaneous creation of order from chaos. There is a movie called The Butterfly Effect, based on this idea - that a tiny perturbation creates a huge alternation of things over time. The title comes from a saying - that a butterfly flapping its wings sets in motion the stirring of air that starts a tornado.
In the case of our early Universe, hydrogen clumped together into clouds, till the clouds were pulled together by their own gravity, forming suns. The initial disturbance will have been a slight amount of turbulence in the early Big Bang, as energy condensed into the first particles of matter.
The bringing forth of order (non-randomness) out of chaos (randomness) is built right in to the nature of our physical universe. It is part of the Law by which we live.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US - 2
Of course the down side of the fundamentalist view is that if there is no evolution, then we aren’t going to improve any more, either, and we’re stuck with ourselves as we are. That’s not so bad, I guess, but given all that we think is wrong with us, I’d like to think there was some hope that we’d keep getting better. You’d think God wouldn’t give up quite so easily, either! We need a little bit of evolution just to sort us out.
Well, it turns out the two questions are related quite a bit, because where we came from starts with a good look way, way up.
Our story today starts with Hubble. Not the telescope in space, but the guy it was named after. Early in this century, Edwin Hubble, who I believe was at the Yale observatory, noticed that the further a star was away from our galaxy, the faster it was moving away from us.
There was a German named Doppler who first figured out that vibrations from something coming toward us get shifted upward in frequency, and they get shifted downward when the thing moves away from us. Kids notice this - that’s why their model planes and cars all go like this: Neeeerrrrrowwwwww! The only difference was that Doppler did the math, which the kids hate to do.
So Hubble used the Doppler Effect to figure out that the closer you got to the edge of whatever, the faster things were moving away. It seemed that the whole Universe itself was getting bigger. Hubble calculated and charted the distance and speed of a lot of stars. That’s how you get your name on a nearsighted telescope, I guess - but of course NASA has fixed the Hubble so it sees right out to that edge that the real Hubble couldn’t. That’s evolution of a type, in action.
Well, the Hubble expansion meant that the Universe was smaller once, and when you do the math, it turns out that about a dozen billion years ago, the whole thing would have been smaller than a basketball. Sort of a pocket Universe, except there were no pockets. And something caused it to blow out of the pocket and start expanding. Now there’s a mystery. Maybe our Universe came out of another dimension, or maybe we’re the rear end of a black hole in some other universe, who knows?
The expansion process is called the Big Bang. The ‘whatever it was’ that started the Big Bang is that mysterious impulse that bewilders the scientific community. Since it is a mystery, we call it God!
More about that later.
Well, it turns out the two questions are related quite a bit, because where we came from starts with a good look way, way up.
Our story today starts with Hubble. Not the telescope in space, but the guy it was named after. Early in this century, Edwin Hubble, who I believe was at the Yale observatory, noticed that the further a star was away from our galaxy, the faster it was moving away from us.
There was a German named Doppler who first figured out that vibrations from something coming toward us get shifted upward in frequency, and they get shifted downward when the thing moves away from us. Kids notice this - that’s why their model planes and cars all go like this: Neeeerrrrrowwwwww! The only difference was that Doppler did the math, which the kids hate to do.
So Hubble used the Doppler Effect to figure out that the closer you got to the edge of whatever, the faster things were moving away. It seemed that the whole Universe itself was getting bigger. Hubble calculated and charted the distance and speed of a lot of stars. That’s how you get your name on a nearsighted telescope, I guess - but of course NASA has fixed the Hubble so it sees right out to that edge that the real Hubble couldn’t. That’s evolution of a type, in action.
Well, the Hubble expansion meant that the Universe was smaller once, and when you do the math, it turns out that about a dozen billion years ago, the whole thing would have been smaller than a basketball. Sort of a pocket Universe, except there were no pockets. And something caused it to blow out of the pocket and start expanding. Now there’s a mystery. Maybe our Universe came out of another dimension, or maybe we’re the rear end of a black hole in some other universe, who knows?
The expansion process is called the Big Bang. The ‘whatever it was’ that started the Big Bang is that mysterious impulse that bewilders the scientific community. Since it is a mystery, we call it God!
More about that later.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
THE COSMOS AND US
Ever since we humans discovered that we could think better than the other animals, we have been thinking a couple of things that has bothered our Western religions:
1) We have been looking up, and wondering what is out there, and
2) We have been wondering where we came from.
The answer to both these questions is in the same spot - the stars. No, I don’t mean the answer is in your horoscope! Those can be fun, but about as helpful as a good cup of tea or another Valium. I mean the actual stars, where the materials that form our bodies were made. But that’s a long story.
Some sciences were just meant to upset the churches. Astronomy is one of them. Ever since Galileo was locked up for saying the earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe, the Catholic church has had to back off and apologize for being wrong. Actually, I’m not sure if they apologized or not, but they said they were wrong, and since it took them over 500 years, I guess it doesn’t matter much. Most of the other churches beat the Catholics to the punch on that one, and Galileo can pretty much start the year 2000 with a clean slate. Too bad he’s dead.
That pretty well sums up the history of people looking up. The more we learned, the more we rubbed up against the dogma of traditional religion, as a class I once took in Bible History showed.
The other question, where we came from, is the other sore point. Darwin took a stab at partially answering that one, and once again, offended the churches, which surprised Darwin, since he thought he was just helping out. In this case, the Catholics beat many other churches to the punch. Last year, they admitted that Darwin was more or less right, only three hundred years later. Who says improvement isn’t possible? But the Fundamentalists, are still holding out, insisting that the whole thing happened in 6 days, which doesn’t leave much time for evolution.
(See my book on www.lulu.com called Creation and Evolution)
More on this to follow......
1) We have been looking up, and wondering what is out there, and
2) We have been wondering where we came from.
The answer to both these questions is in the same spot - the stars. No, I don’t mean the answer is in your horoscope! Those can be fun, but about as helpful as a good cup of tea or another Valium. I mean the actual stars, where the materials that form our bodies were made. But that’s a long story.
Some sciences were just meant to upset the churches. Astronomy is one of them. Ever since Galileo was locked up for saying the earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe, the Catholic church has had to back off and apologize for being wrong. Actually, I’m not sure if they apologized or not, but they said they were wrong, and since it took them over 500 years, I guess it doesn’t matter much. Most of the other churches beat the Catholics to the punch on that one, and Galileo can pretty much start the year 2000 with a clean slate. Too bad he’s dead.
That pretty well sums up the history of people looking up. The more we learned, the more we rubbed up against the dogma of traditional religion, as a class I once took in Bible History showed.
The other question, where we came from, is the other sore point. Darwin took a stab at partially answering that one, and once again, offended the churches, which surprised Darwin, since he thought he was just helping out. In this case, the Catholics beat many other churches to the punch. Last year, they admitted that Darwin was more or less right, only three hundred years later. Who says improvement isn’t possible? But the Fundamentalists, are still holding out, insisting that the whole thing happened in 6 days, which doesn’t leave much time for evolution.
(See my book on www.lulu.com called Creation and Evolution)
More on this to follow......
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
NEW SERIES OF BLOGS - TO BE DETERMINED!
Time for a new blog series - I think it's time to take a different tack for awhile.
I am thinking of either a series on philosophers or science and how it links to spiritual teaching.
Watch for the results of my pondering!
I am thinking of either a series on philosophers or science and how it links to spiritual teaching.
Watch for the results of my pondering!
Sunday, March 9, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - YOUR PURPOSE
So, your big life Purpose is unclear, you haven’t a clue how to find it, and you don’t know where to start. What do you do?
Well there is something you can do. All of us share one common purpose in Life, and that is to connect with our inner Spirit, and start to reveal the good qualities of Spirit out to the world around us. Our search for true purpose begins there.
The qualities include Love, Peace, Joy, Abundance, Courage. All these are recognized by us as good when we see them in the world around us. All of these are there within us, waiting to be reflected. When you spend some time thinking about these, and searching for them inside and outside of yourself, you will find that your life is transformed, a bit at a time.
As you find yourself changing, you will get new insights about your place in the world. Your purpose will become clear. Some call this being born again, we call it getting to know who you really are. You are that Intelligence passed on from the instant of the Big Bang - a fragment of the Mind of the Universe itself.
I have faith in you. Your path lies bright ahead.
Well there is something you can do. All of us share one common purpose in Life, and that is to connect with our inner Spirit, and start to reveal the good qualities of Spirit out to the world around us. Our search for true purpose begins there.
The qualities include Love, Peace, Joy, Abundance, Courage. All these are recognized by us as good when we see them in the world around us. All of these are there within us, waiting to be reflected. When you spend some time thinking about these, and searching for them inside and outside of yourself, you will find that your life is transformed, a bit at a time.
As you find yourself changing, you will get new insights about your place in the world. Your purpose will become clear. Some call this being born again, we call it getting to know who you really are. You are that Intelligence passed on from the instant of the Big Bang - a fragment of the Mind of the Universe itself.
I have faith in you. Your path lies bright ahead.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - FAITH AND PURPOSE
So how can you have faith in your own life, your purpose?
1) First work on knowing who you are.
There is a new way to look at the world. We are taught to think of matter possibly having spirit in it. Today we know better - Spirit, or Mind, IS the main stuff; and it creates all matter. First Intelligence, then form. First Idea, then form.
2) Know that you are no accident.
There are no accidents. There is a random factor that operates on a small scale. But there is a guided purpose at work on a grand scale that stack the deck, loads the dice, and overcomes randomness.
If this were not so, then evolution would be downward as well as upward, and over billions of years we would have made no progress.
You cannot get a donkey from a pigeon’s egg, and you can’t get a carrot from an acorn. Everything flows out of the potential in the seed. If you trace your origins, back, and back, and far beyond back, you eventually get to the Big Bang that created the Universe. The potential for YOU was there, or you couldn’t be here. We are the children of the Big Bang, and it’s time to remember that.
3) Your purpose will be known if you are open to it.
Twenty years ago, I would never have believed I would be writing this. I know now that my purpose is to learn, and to teach. I will do this by speaking, and by writing.
Know that you have an unfulfilled purpose. So do your children. So do the people that drive you craziest. All those people you just can’t stand - Aall are here for a reason - and all have a chance to find out who they are, and be transformed in the process.
Can you believe that for yourself? Can you respect that for other people?
Finding out is so important, that it should take a fair bit of your time. Can’t you feel something urging you to live more, be more, love more, see more? Abundant Life is what Jesus taught. That means more of everything Good.
1) First work on knowing who you are.
There is a new way to look at the world. We are taught to think of matter possibly having spirit in it. Today we know better - Spirit, or Mind, IS the main stuff; and it creates all matter. First Intelligence, then form. First Idea, then form.
2) Know that you are no accident.
There are no accidents. There is a random factor that operates on a small scale. But there is a guided purpose at work on a grand scale that stack the deck, loads the dice, and overcomes randomness.
If this were not so, then evolution would be downward as well as upward, and over billions of years we would have made no progress.
You cannot get a donkey from a pigeon’s egg, and you can’t get a carrot from an acorn. Everything flows out of the potential in the seed. If you trace your origins, back, and back, and far beyond back, you eventually get to the Big Bang that created the Universe. The potential for YOU was there, or you couldn’t be here. We are the children of the Big Bang, and it’s time to remember that.
3) Your purpose will be known if you are open to it.
Twenty years ago, I would never have believed I would be writing this. I know now that my purpose is to learn, and to teach. I will do this by speaking, and by writing.
Know that you have an unfulfilled purpose. So do your children. So do the people that drive you craziest. All those people you just can’t stand - Aall are here for a reason - and all have a chance to find out who they are, and be transformed in the process.
Can you believe that for yourself? Can you respect that for other people?
Finding out is so important, that it should take a fair bit of your time. Can’t you feel something urging you to live more, be more, love more, see more? Abundant Life is what Jesus taught. That means more of everything Good.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - FAITH
There are several things we can do to realize our faith.
1) Realize that we already have faith in many things.
We have faith in the sun rising, in science, in doctors, in microwave ovens. For crying out loud, we have faith in Lloyd Robertson, according to the surveys, so why not in God and our own future?
2) Recognize that faith is based on knowledge;
It’s not all blind; our faith in science is based on our knowledge and understanding of Science. You can build faith in God by building and understanding of God; and you can gain faith in yourself by getting to know your true self better as well.
3) Look for the faith OF God.
Understand that only God, the creator of all things, has perfect knowledge; so we are not seeking Faith in God, we are seeking the faith OF God. When we unify our mind with the Creative Power, we also unify with Universal Knowledge. All things that exist are written in the Mind of God, because it is the very fabric of the Universe. That means that at some level WE KNOW.
We think we have an idea how long a cold will last; God, as the Mind of the Universe, knows exactly how long it will last. Faith consists of a certain knowledge of the unseen. That knowledge does not belong to us as individuals; only at the level of inner Spirit do we have this knowledge. This is where we are at one with God.
1) Realize that we already have faith in many things.
We have faith in the sun rising, in science, in doctors, in microwave ovens. For crying out loud, we have faith in Lloyd Robertson, according to the surveys, so why not in God and our own future?
2) Recognize that faith is based on knowledge;
It’s not all blind; our faith in science is based on our knowledge and understanding of Science. You can build faith in God by building and understanding of God; and you can gain faith in yourself by getting to know your true self better as well.
3) Look for the faith OF God.
Understand that only God, the creator of all things, has perfect knowledge; so we are not seeking Faith in God, we are seeking the faith OF God. When we unify our mind with the Creative Power, we also unify with Universal Knowledge. All things that exist are written in the Mind of God, because it is the very fabric of the Universe. That means that at some level WE KNOW.
We think we have an idea how long a cold will last; God, as the Mind of the Universe, knows exactly how long it will last. Faith consists of a certain knowledge of the unseen. That knowledge does not belong to us as individuals; only at the level of inner Spirit do we have this knowledge. This is where we are at one with God.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - NO ACCIDENTS
So what if you don’t now what your life purpose is?
What if you’re just too busy to care? What if you don’t get any feeling that you have a mission in life?
Start with the knowing that there are no accidents.
Everything that happens, no matter how bad it looks, contains the seed of something good in it. The Science of Mind is a teaching that shows you how to grab the good out of any situation.
The starting point is to realize that the cosmic pattern is always asserting itself in the background of every situation. It cannot do anything else; it’s nature is to create always; and always move toward greater good.
Our narrow viewpoint blinds us to the cosmic possibilities in each circumstance, until we deliberately move our mind to a point of cosmic awareness. We get to this point through TREATMENT of our Mind.
Our mission is to fully realize the Potential that is there at every step in our life, no matter how it might appear.
But it takes time to reach a Cosmic awareness; some of us might never do that; what do we do in the meantime?
Well, this is where FAITH comes in. Faith is a knowing that things are working for Good, no matter what they look like. It is a feeling of certainty that things are OK. That certainty is hard to get hold of, sometimes.
What if you’re just too busy to care? What if you don’t get any feeling that you have a mission in life?
Start with the knowing that there are no accidents.
Everything that happens, no matter how bad it looks, contains the seed of something good in it. The Science of Mind is a teaching that shows you how to grab the good out of any situation.
The starting point is to realize that the cosmic pattern is always asserting itself in the background of every situation. It cannot do anything else; it’s nature is to create always; and always move toward greater good.
Our narrow viewpoint blinds us to the cosmic possibilities in each circumstance, until we deliberately move our mind to a point of cosmic awareness. We get to this point through TREATMENT of our Mind.
Our mission is to fully realize the Potential that is there at every step in our life, no matter how it might appear.
But it takes time to reach a Cosmic awareness; some of us might never do that; what do we do in the meantime?
Well, this is where FAITH comes in. Faith is a knowing that things are working for Good, no matter what they look like. It is a feeling of certainty that things are OK. That certainty is hard to get hold of, sometimes.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - MEANING
What does it mean to you if your life is not an accident?
• It means that you are here for some reason, and you should find out what that is.
• It also means that your life is a precious thing, and it should not be wasted. It has a great value, even if you cannot see right now what that value is.
• It means that the creative force which drives all things is part of you right now. It is that voice which cries out for order instead of chaos, for life instead of death, for love and faith instead of fear. Ernest Holmes said this in a prayer treatment; “There is but One Life, and that is my life now”
• It means that you are here for some reason, and you should find out what that is.
• It also means that your life is a precious thing, and it should not be wasted. It has a great value, even if you cannot see right now what that value is.
• It means that the creative force which drives all things is part of you right now. It is that voice which cries out for order instead of chaos, for life instead of death, for love and faith instead of fear. Ernest Holmes said this in a prayer treatment; “There is but One Life, and that is my life now”
Monday, March 3, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - RANDOM BUT NOT BY ACCIDENT
Don’t confuse the random processes found in evolution with the Spirit that guides it. If evolution was totally random, things would evolve downward just as often as upward. This is not generally what we find. We find that an overall trend lies behind things, and this trend is up.
Any knowledge-based system does this. As more knowledge accumulates, the system gets more complex and more sophisticated. In the same way, Life has gotten more complex. We are more complex than the dinosaurs, (even if we’re smaller).
In the same way, as we learn more, our thinking becomes more complex, more sophisticated. In the words of Jesus, “We put away childish things” as we grow.
So your life is not an accident. It’s a gift from a creative principle which determines the very nature of the Universe. This principle lies behind everything from the creation of suns to your toenail.
Any knowledge-based system does this. As more knowledge accumulates, the system gets more complex and more sophisticated. In the same way, Life has gotten more complex. We are more complex than the dinosaurs, (even if we’re smaller).
In the same way, as we learn more, our thinking becomes more complex, more sophisticated. In the words of Jesus, “We put away childish things” as we grow.
So your life is not an accident. It’s a gift from a creative principle which determines the very nature of the Universe. This principle lies behind everything from the creation of suns to your toenail.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
LIFE AND THE LAW - PURPOSE 2
Does life have a purpose?
The reason we read or listen to things like this is often because deep down we understand that life cannot be an accident. We seek to know more about Its nature. To form Life, to create Awareness, is built in to the behaviour of the Universe. Chaos theory now shows that randomness cannot remain - it always gives way to order; so order, not chaos is the natural state of our world.
So we are not here by accident. Yet we do create chaos by our poor, limited understanding of the world and our place in it. We generate randomness by senseless interference with nature, squandering resources, leaving pollution behind.
How many people do you know who don’t know what their purpose in life is? Countless people go from day to day, focused on meaningless things, never thinking of how precious and important they are. To know your purpose is to know how wonderfully important you are. To know this makes your life appear precious. To know this is to stop wasting your life, to stop de-valuing yourself.
Do you really think that such as complex creation as you is here by accident? To use an old example, if you found a digital watch in the middle of the desert, would you assume it just happened there by accident, by the rubbing together of a billion grains of sand and soil? Or would you assume it was made somewhere? Aren’t we more complex than a digital watch? How could we think that we just happened by the working of a random process?
Well, it turns out that is an argument considered insufficient by some. The proof is not in the watch, it turns out; that is merely strong evidence. The proof, for me, is not in the watch, but in our awareness of a watch; our understanding of a watch; our ability to recognize, to classify and to CARE about finding a watch, or a dinosaur bone, or anything else.
The reason we read or listen to things like this is often because deep down we understand that life cannot be an accident. We seek to know more about Its nature. To form Life, to create Awareness, is built in to the behaviour of the Universe. Chaos theory now shows that randomness cannot remain - it always gives way to order; so order, not chaos is the natural state of our world.
So we are not here by accident. Yet we do create chaos by our poor, limited understanding of the world and our place in it. We generate randomness by senseless interference with nature, squandering resources, leaving pollution behind.
How many people do you know who don’t know what their purpose in life is? Countless people go from day to day, focused on meaningless things, never thinking of how precious and important they are. To know your purpose is to know how wonderfully important you are. To know this makes your life appear precious. To know this is to stop wasting your life, to stop de-valuing yourself.
Do you really think that such as complex creation as you is here by accident? To use an old example, if you found a digital watch in the middle of the desert, would you assume it just happened there by accident, by the rubbing together of a billion grains of sand and soil? Or would you assume it was made somewhere? Aren’t we more complex than a digital watch? How could we think that we just happened by the working of a random process?
Well, it turns out that is an argument considered insufficient by some. The proof is not in the watch, it turns out; that is merely strong evidence. The proof, for me, is not in the watch, but in our awareness of a watch; our understanding of a watch; our ability to recognize, to classify and to CARE about finding a watch, or a dinosaur bone, or anything else.
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