Canto
VII
Gangster
Gospel
Canto VII
Petrus Romanus
Weird Science
Ancient Greek philosophers get a bad rap from modern scientists because they discerned their cosmology through logic and reason rather than by experimentation and peer review. We could stop here, but let's continue.
According to ancient Greek philosophy, there are four preexistent elements that comprise all of Reality: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Beforetime, these elements were static. They did not move; they could not move. Yet, we observe motion in the Universe, which begs the question: At what point did the static Universe suddenly become dynamic?
When the ancient Greeks pondered this, they postulated that there must be something else in the Universe that acts upon the other four elements -- a fifth element, which they called quintessence or spirit.
Now, the fifth element is not really an element per se, it is the motion of elemental matter itself. Fire is not alive; neither is water or earth, but life (and the spirit of life) is the motion of the dead element. Hence, the Greeks knew that the planets were gods because the planets moved. If it moves it lives:
(1 Tim 6:13) I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things,
Is it any surprise that the Greek association between motion and life is so emphasized in Scripture? After all it was God's first creative/genetic act that his Spirit "moved upon the face of the water" (Gen 1:2). Later, when God made man, he gave them dominion "over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen 1:28). Living waters?; quickening spirit? It is a matter of common human knowledge that living things move and moving things live. Elsewhere, the notion that moving things have a spirit has long been a staple of most world religions throughout the entirety of human history -- from Reincarnation to the Kamikaze (divine wind); from Native American Tree Spirits to the Bodhi Tree. The notion, therefore, that an object can somehow move on its own not only defies logic and reason, but also flies in the face of several millennia of wisdom and experience. Not only is Newtonian Mechanics ungodly, it is inhuman!:
(John 6:63) It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
Of course matter cannot move on its own. That would be anti-Newtonian -- an object at rest will stay at rest! But modern science is searching and lurching, trying to find a way to get matter to move without a mover -- le marteau sans maître! But what does Einstein say? E = mc2? And if matter somehow produced its own motion, wouldn't mass and force be essentially the same thing?
But if matter cannot move itself, then what causes it to move? Perhaps the better question to ask is who causes it to move? Or better yet what is his desire?; his intent?; his character? What hath God wrought!
If the Universe moves, then the Universe lives; If the Universe lives, then the Universe has a consciousness; If the Universe has a consciousness, then she has a design, a character, a relationship with her children who rise up and call her blessed whereby her existence is validated! She witnesses us and we witness her as LORD and God; as two cherubim atop the ark of the covenant perpetually facing each other -- their wings outstretched! And hidden within the ark is the bread of life; manna from heaven -- even the body of Jesus Christ in the Heart of the Virgin.
How wonderful it is to be the object of so great a love? Your God and mine; God of our fathers; Holy LORD God of Abraham and of David:
(Ps 119:25) My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.
Oh if this could have been our heritage -- and it can be! But were it not for the sheer and brazen act of spiritual vandalism and staggering intellectual dishonesty wherein Newtonian mechanics seeks to dissociate movement from life!
No wonder we have lost touch with our ancient selves! Have we now become wiser than Solomon?; or are we less naïve than the ancient Greeks? No wonder modern science continues to fail in its stated quest to understand the so-called "laws of nature." Newtonian Mechanics is one theory that just doesn't hold water:
(Jer 2:13) For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
Now let's have a queer review study to determine the difference between Newtonian Mechanics and Marian Mechanics:
Newtonian Mechanics: An object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless interrupted by an opposing force.
Marian Mechanics: Old Man River must know something. He just keeps rolling along!
(To restate Marian Mechanics in modern terms: Dead matter cannot move on its own. Therefore, whatsoever moves does so by conscious intent).
We knew this in ancient Greece, but rejected this quintessential truth in order to perpetuate godlessness and science fiction, which we teach to our school children, perpetuating ignorance to the detriment of humanity. Newton says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, but Paul warns us against "oppositions of science falsely so called" (1 Tim 6:20). Newton says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, but I say: If you cannot explain what caused it to move in the first place, then you cannot explain what keeps it going. I guess that would make atheism a mystery religion!
But the Catholic Religion teaches us that God exists in three Persons. The Person of Christ who can be manipulated, tested, interviewed -- and he was, wasn't he?; and the Person of the Holy Spirit who is immaterial; ineffable. We experience the Holy Spirit in Christ so that the two are inseparable in God the Father, but Science is concerned with the physical Person only, whereby Science is a Unitarian religion. The question therefore is not whether or not we will teach religion in school, the question is which way will it go?:
(Prov 22:6) Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Unlike the ancient Greeks, modern scientists premise their investigation of the cosmos with the foregone conclusion that there is no God, having subjected her to rigorous testing she cannot pass. Immortal, invisible, God only wise! You can't see the Blessed Virgin through a microscope -- she is the microscope! Rather than advancing human knowledge, scientific method has hindered our ability to understand our place in the Universe. If scientists are serious about acquiring knowledge, they should abandon scientific method and Newtonian Mechanics altogether:
(Job 38:31-36) Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? 32Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? 33Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? 34Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee? 35Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are? 36Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?
Now, the entirely redundant term "Intelligent Design" has been advanced by Creationist scientists to explain certain anomalous events which occur in the Universe. While the term is accurate to be sure, I am not quite satisfied with it due to vagaries regarding how one defines "intelligence." Is an entity which inspires intelligence intelligent? Is an entity which cannot speak except by a human prophet intelligent? Nevertheless, whatever term we use, it is intellectually dishonest and a travesty against the spirit of discovery that the "Intelligent Design" argument is looked upon with such disdain within the scientific community.
How then should we define intelligence? The Blessed Virgin defines intelligence as anything which moves on its own. This is because movement requires direction and direction requires decision. If an entity makes any kind of decision, it is necessarily intelligent; and if an entity moves on its own, it makes a decision. Therefore, the Universe, which began (and continues to inexplicably accelerate) on its own, would be a definite candidate for intelligence. I submit this finding for peer review: peer into the cosmos and review your Bible -- they agree!
How intelligent is God? She's not smarter than a fifth grader -- she flunked out of science class! Give her an IQ test and she'll send a prophet to take it for her! So what does she know? She knows the heart of her son Jesus Christ and is obedient to him. She also knows your heart and answers your prayers. Bless her and the Universe knows to bless you; Curse her and the Universe knows to curse you; Repent and the Universe knows to forgive you by the grace manifest in Christ Jesus. Yet it didn't have to be that way! Our LORD and Savior was at utter liberty to end his Passion at any moment, but instead choose to subject his body to the fury of man's sin unto the redemption of his elect. There is no causality in Marian Mechanics. Neither is the Universe some sort of dead mechanism. Every molecule, every atom, every particle is under the express and mindful control of the B.V.M. in accordance to the gospel. There was no causality at the time of the Big Bang -- how can there ever be? Our relationship with the Universe is not causal, it is crucial!
How do we portend to measure God's intelligence when we cannot even define it for ourselves? There are literary and musical geniuses as well as mathematical ones! So are you smart because you can crunch the numbers? Or because you can munch cucumbers? This is why scientists who search for life on other planets disagree on what constitutes a living organism. Is it alive if it consumes, excretes and multiplies itself? That would be fire! Yet we have preconcluded fire to be a nonliving organism. Why on Mars would we do that? To quench the fire of the Spirit? The question is not whether or not there is life on Mars, but rather, is Mars indeed alive?
Yet we cannot live in a dead Universe! A dead man may show up for work once, but he wouldn't show up on time five days a week packing a lunch like the Universe appears to! At the moment of the Big Bang, at the quantum level and also in deep space -- practically everywhere we look, we observe a chaotic Universe, yet there is order at just the right time to nurture and sustain human life. Scientists want to light their Bunsen burners from both ends -- they want to embrace cosmic accident and cosmic order simultaneously. But scientists have yet to explain how chaos can yield order -- it can't! This brings us to the 2nd law of Marian Mechanics: A Big Bang cannot produce Ellington's Big Band -- that A-train ain't goin' nowhere! (White-people's translation: Chaos cannot produce order and vice versa.)
And what about the Church? Theologians and philosophers; prophets and saints; all of the sharpest minds that over two millennia of human history can muster have all subjected the Word of God to the most severe scrutiny and harshest criticism and yet, they still have all conceded that the Word of God is profitable for reproof and instruction (2 Tim 3:16). Are the Newtonians smarter than the Ionians? Are atheists the enlightened few who stand in opposition to the world? (And I thought Christianity was the only religion with a righteous remnant!)
And what about miracles? From the time that Enoch walked with God to the modern-day Charismatic movement, people have claimed extraordinary experiences with God and that those experiences convicted them of the truth of the Bible. It's funny how the miracles always seem to happen right on cue! If the volcano that triggered the tsunami which (supposedly) parted the Red Sea had happened a day later, the Exodus would end a few chapters sooner -- although I doubt it would still be called "the Exodus"! And what did we learn from the Exodus? That God has liberated us from Egyptian bondage with a mighty hand and outstretched arm! And yet having been freed from the tyranny of the law, science has sought to reenslave us with the equally tyrannical laws of physics.
Without a doubt, the Universe has conspired to do me good, but while I've experienced more miracles and gifts than I can record in this book, the greatest of these is the beating of my own heart. The fact that I live at all is all the proof I need of God's existence:
(Ps 4:4-5) 4Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. 5Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord.
But Science says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion while faith teaches that God upholds the pillars of the earth (1 Sam 2:8)! Science says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, but cannot explain what caused it to move in the first place! We are basically no wiser than our Greek predecessors!
No wonder Newtonian Mechanics breaks down at the quantum level; neither can Sir Isaac Newton explain the cause of the Big Bang or the endless expansion of the Universe! Astrophysicists have proposed a godless "dark matter" theory in order to compensate for Newton's shortcomings. According to this hypothesis, there is invisible, undetectable matter in the universe gravitationally acting on distant stars and galaxies (whose movements cannot be otherwise explained). They call it "dark matter" in the hopes that the "light" of Science will one day reveal it -- and I thought Christianity was the only religion with a Messiah! What's next? -- When apples fall, we sin all?
In the old days, if you walked into a building and saw a bunch of people raising their hands, you would think you were in a temple. Same as if you walked into a room where everyone is reading out of the same book! And what about the school anthem, the so-called "Alma Mater"? Our once proud Christian schools have devolved into a Pagan Rite of passage -- an epicurean cult of the Sweet Mother! We don't need no education; we don't need no thought control! It's time for the student to teach the teacher -- they can't expel us all: if they did, they'd be out of work!:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?
(Shakespeare, Hamlet II.ii.316-321)
But why would God create a Universe that appears to run like clockwork? Of course, Werner Heisenberg may disagree, but regardless, the way things appear certainly speak more to the viewer than to the objects themselves. Hence, if the Universe appears to us as orderly, it is because we choose to see it that way. If we conduct a scientific experiment and the results conflict, we deem them statistically negligible and relegate them to the margin of error. But the Universe has no margin of error. Opps!
Why doesn't God part the Red Sea in front of everyone and settle the debate over his existence once and for all? Because it wouldn't work -- if the experiment cannot be repeated, the results are tossed out. If God parted the Red Sea repeatedly, it would no longer be a miracle -- it would be science. Therefore, a miracle can never be scientifically established. This is a glaring weakness in the so-called scientific method: It fails to explain events that only occur once (like the Big Bang). This, of course, presumes that there ever can be repetitive events in the Universe. Conceptually, 2 + 2 equals 4 every time, but we don't live in a pure, platonic universe. If we fill two beakers with the "same" amount of water, they won't be perfectly the same as one beaker may have an extra drop that evades our detection. Likewise, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus posits that "no man can cross the same river twice, because neither the man nor the river are the same." Thus, because the Universe is in constant flux, Science is utterly incompetent to explain it.
(Matt 16:3) O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
But why couldn't God just kick off the Big Bang and then let the universe run its course? Impossible! Because temporality is an illusion created by motion, we are, in effect, living inside the ongoing Big Bang. The same hand that sparked creation must, therefore, also sustain it or else it couldn't create it to begin with. This set-it-and-forget-it argument (initially put forth by seventeenth century Deists), is quaint, but somewhat specious as there isn't any real time for God to forget what she set.
Of course, the apparent transcendence of the Universe is a great source of frustration to the scientific community:
The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the moment is known in this instant, and vice versa.
(Heisenberg Principle)
And so what if you can't tell the momentum and position of a subatomic particle simultaneously? What cosmological implications does that science fact have? Could it be that if you can't tell the momentum and the position of an object simultaneously, then you don't know what's making it move? Or maybe you're scared to party with a real God!
Now we know why scientists are ripping their teeth out trying to come up with a theory to explain the seemingly chaotic motions of quantum particles -- but how can they? It's a mystery! Embrace it and get on with your life! Wait -- better idea! Use your life to touch others with the gospel! A head full of equations might serve humanity well -- especially now! But instead, atheists use Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory to shirk their responsibility to humanity and hide from the LORD God of their fathers!:
(Ps 14:1-4) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. 2The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. 3They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 4Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord.
What will they think of next? Are we now wiser than the Greeks who taught us that light travels at a finite speed?; who were the first to develop an atomic theory?; who gave us the golden mean?; who charted the course of the gods with the Antikythera mechanism?; who built Alexandria?; who built the first coin-operated dispenser? Have the gods become greater than the Titans or are we just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?:
The air which stirred within him not only prompted, but instructed. The air as the origin of all things is necessarily an eternal, imperishable substance, but as soul it is also necessarily endowed with consciousness. (Diogenes Apolloniates)
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LORD JESUS CHRIST,SON OF THE FATHER,SEND NOW YOUR SPIRIT OVER THE EARTH.LET THE HOLY SPIRIT LIVEIN THE HEARTS OF ALL NATIONS,THAT THEY MAY BE PRESERVEDFROM DEGENERATION, DISASTER AND WAR.MAY THE LADY OF ALL NATIONS,WHO ONCE WAS MARY,BE OUR ADVOCATE.AMEN.
LORD JESUS CHRIST,
SON OF THE FATHER,
SEND NOW YOUR SPIRIT OVER THE EARTH.
LET THE HOLY SPIRIT LIVE
IN THE HEARTS OF ALL NATIONS,
THAT THEY MAY BE PRESERVED
FROM DEGENERATION, DISASTER AND WAR.
MAY THE LADY OF ALL NATIONS,
WHO ONCE WAS MARY,
BE OUR ADVOCATE.
AMEN.
