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Father, Finally

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My father is in the final stages of his journey here. For the last month, he has been surrendering to the prostate cancer that is invading his bones. His principal fear has been of being a burden to my mother, and so he has methodically tried to further the process. The degradation of his sense of taste is facilitating his resolve. It is clear that his extremities are being consumed in the effort to maintain the operation of his heart, lungs and brain.

I could mourn the loss of his brilliant intellect, but that intellect was a mixed blessing to his intimates. It was a very powerful tool that supported convictions that could lead to harsh judgments. What I am finding instead is that as he weakens and submits to confusion, for the first time in my life I am able to proffer simple acts of tenderness. Stroking his head, rubbing his chest over his heart, holding his hand: these have been rewarded by looks of wonder.

I was caught up, for much of my life, in my father’s ambitions for programming. On the title bar, the “Programming” link offers entries that introduce his philosophy of design. It is my own formulation: my father adopted obscure terminology to ensure precision of meaning, and believed that practice under his tutelage was essential to competence. In fact, inspired by Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game”, his vision of a training center was a monastery. Having grown up with Diagrammatic Programming, when I joined him in the family business in 1995, I rapidly began to innovate. He found this intolerable, and when I finally had the opportunity to articulate my logic to him, his retort was “Well, it’s clear that if you talk long enough, Brian, you could convince people of anything.”

My mother dreaded our conversations. Even as recently as a few months ago, she would retreat into her office when I came by to visit him. I recognized the dynamic that evolved between us, but also saw that the problem was far more complex than just our personal history. During a transfer to the residents of ownership of the mobile home park property, my father fought a tremendous legal and spiritual battle with the lawyers seeking to maximize the developer’s profits at the cost of displacing old friends. My father eventually shared that the lead lawyer was ticketed on a DC10 that crashed when the cabin door popped open in flight, but chose at the last minute not to board. (Yes, a textbook case of misdirected anger.) I had my own struggle with the family law community that cultivated fear on the 7th floor of the Van Nuys court house. After one conversation with my father, I heard the thoughts of one of them admitting of me, “He’s far stronger than we’ve given him credit for.” Eventually I used my father to send a message back: “I’ve done what I’ve done in order that it couldn’t be said that people weren’t given a chance to do the right thing.”

In spite of his spiritual capacities, my father always pooh-poohed my own experiences. I received several clues as to his motivations over the years. Having suffered the traumatic losses of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., he observed once that “All the good people get killed.” Although he was bailed out of the financial consequences of his own ambitions by an inheritance from a distant aunt, he worried about my financial insecurity, and may have considered wasteful my itinerant attendance at churches throughout the Conejo Valley.

But there was a deeper aspect to the problem that became clear only in 2008 when I went out to the Netherlands on a business trip. As I stepped to the visa counter in Amsterdam, I caught the thought “Well, [the Americans] are finally producing real people.” I immediately entered a warm and open relationship with the engineers we had come to visit, and a couple of nights into the trip, I woke up to them poking around in my mind. They found my father, and showed me behind him the tomb of an ancient Germanic king, still struggling to retain control of his line.

My father never had a father. Grandfather Balke left my grandmother, at the time a professional ballet dancer and later an anesthesiologist, after my father was born. From my father’s response to my physical affection, I came to see that the lack of a father was the wound that his antagonists, both ancient and modern, used to attempt to control him and his children.

That realization brought me back to a day when, returning to work after lunch, I waited at a stop light outside the executive suites rented by my brother. The usual argument over priorities was raging in my head. Suddenly, a wave of energy moved through my mind from left to right. Both the stop light and the radio in my car went dead at the same instant, and a woman’s voice announced firmly “His job is to prove to people that love works.”

My father worried about his lack of success, voicing his concern that he didn’t know what it was about him that brought failure where others less talented had achieved success. On Sunday he let me tell him this: “There’s so much good in you, Dad, but the world is full of things that see good and pile dirt all over it. It’s really hard to love somebody without leaving an opening back the other way. One of the great frustrations in my life has been that every time I tried to reciprocate your caring was that you shut me out, as though there was something frightening inside of you that you wanted to protect me from. I’m sorry if I became angry with you at times.

“There are some things about loving that a man can learn only from a father. Next time, find a good father, Dad. It will be a wonderful life.”

Faith “Makes No Sense”

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Another attempt to heal the wound of scientific materialism that condemns spirituality and so undermines faith in unconditional love:

Christianity is not about having faith in general. Christianity is about a specific faith: a faith in the presence of unconditional love that emanates from the divine source. While I have concluded from my own analysis of the scientific evidence that the existence of souls is not thereby contradicted (being that current physical theory actually contradicts itself), and even come thereby to the conclusion that this reality was designed so that love works, that is not the basis of simple Christian faith. The proposition that compels most Christians is that faith connects us to a source of psychological strength.

The most common phrase in the Bible is a variant of “fear not.” If you haven’t studied neurophysiology, fear is antagonistic to reason. The rule-based system of laws in the Old Testament was authorized by God after the story of the Flood, where he basically said “I’m tired of managing you squabbling children. It’s time for you to try to manage yourselves.” That exercise in rule-making was a demonstration of the limits of reason. Jesus came along to point this out, confronting the hypocrisy of those that used the rules to separate the people from God, and taught them “OK, you’ve learned how to reason. Now it’s time to [focus on] love.”

Looking at this program of development and the state of affairs in the world, I’d hope that you’ll be better able to recognize those Christians who write here in an attempt to facilitate the same development in those that still struggle with fear and moral confusion. Yes there are those that use “faith” (as they define it) as a way of browbeating others, [but] Christianity contains elements within itself that motivates believers to heal that wrong. IB and I are among them, and you should recognize and respect the intellectual and moral resource that we represent.

On Whether I’m Right

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This was previously attached to “Faith and Intellect.”

Club Schadenfreude’s position appears to be that I believe that I have proven souls exist. Well, that seems fair, although my reference is not physics but the recorded history of spirituality. I believe that I have presented ideas that lead in the direction of reconciling our observations of physics and cosmology with the existence of spirit. Club Schadenfreude’s complaint appears to be that I shouldn’t ask people to consider them until I’ve received broad agreement from the community of working scientists. My general point here is that working scientists don’t do as good a job of explaining the world as they generally take credit for, and so until they solve the problems I’ve identified, it’s fair for me to offer alternatives, and UNFAIR for people to use science as proof that spirituality is just plain-old craziness.

Some of the contents, and in particular the characterizations of my relationship with my sons, are clearly out-of-bounds under my Comment Policy.

This is still incomplete – I’ll be transferring the comment thread over from “Faith and Intellect” as I have time.

Club Schadenfreude:

I am wondering, if your hypotheses in physics are so great, then why have you done nothing to show they are true? There needs to be evidence. It seems you want others to do the work you should be doing. It’s also curious that you claim you can use physics to show that “love” works, when all of your fellow theists are claiming that only their religions can show this.

ideas are indeed strongest if they are shared. Threatening your child so he won’t share his ideas so yours aren’t challenged is quite the hypocrisy and the actions of someone afraid that his claims will be shown wrong.

Myself:

Have you read the material? The writing documents clearly the contradictions in current physical theory. The community should be looking for new answers. They are not. By your criteria, I am doing their work for them, not the other way around.

You mischaracterize the situation with mu children. My elder son immediately accepted that he was unfair to his brother, and his peers at school are astonished by the energy he invests in helping others to succeed. That has manifested in very lucrative and sought-after internships – last year at SpaceX and this coming summer with one of the largest high-tech companies in the world.

But you misdirect from the central issue: interpreting your comment as an indication that you are an atheist, what is your position on spirituality?

Club Schadenfreude:

I’ve read the material. It does nothing of the kind. And again, you have no evidence to support any of your claims. You have no answers and you are not doing any work at all, for anyone else or to show your hypotheses are true.

I do not mischaracterize your relationship with your children at all. You made a threat and your son backed down. What your claism about how wonderful your son is have to do with the matter at hand, I do no know. I suspect that your son never got an internship at SpaceX or at this unnamed high tech company He very well may have and then would know that his position was right and his fathers was wrong and only supported by threats.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by spirituality. If you mean the claim that there is some god or something “bigger” that we are attached to, I find it a claim that has no basis in fact. Theists and others who make claims about magic and gods have nothing to back up their claims. There is nothing to show that the mind and the brain are separate. If this were true, brain damage would not change people as it does.

Myself:

Your observation regarding brain damage is accommodated by my model. If the brain is an interface, damage to the interface will affect the linkage to ideas.

You assert that I present no evidence, but much of the evidence that I present is actual research results by working scientists. The cosmologists and nuclear physicists have all kinds of problems they can’t explain – the particle theorists just ignore them.

Please be advised that your ad hominem attacks on my character are inappropriate for this forum. I will edit them out if they continue.

Club Schadenfreude:

If the physical interface can be damaged, then we should be able to detect these magical emanations, if they interface with reality e.g. the electrochemical brain. Do you have such evidence?

And yes, there are problems that can’t be explained *yet*. Where is your evidence that your claims are true, Brian? All you have so far are claims that others are wrong but nothing at all to show you are right.

And it’s “ad hominem”, not “ad nominee”. You may want to know what you are accusing me of before just throwing something out there randomly. I have not attacked your character. You have indicated you made a threat.You have made claims without evidence. I am happy to wait for that evidence if you have it.

Myself:

While I am happy to comply with your request, realize that you would procure information far faster if you would simply ask, rather than attempting to construct a moral claim against me.

First, electrical fields are also magical emanations, similar, as I’m sure you are aware, to a quark, a gluon or a Higgs boson, which no one has ever seen. Physicists posit them as an explanation that correlates with observations of the behavior of macroscopic experimental components. So I’ll provide you a list of observations that defy “conventional” explanations and have often been attributed to “spiritual” phenomena.

Those interested in reading the New Physics material will eventually find that I believe massive particles are formed when the smallest unit of electric field is tied to the components of the dark energy field. So “spirit” is actually unbound “electric charge.” They’re really the same thing, just under different conditions.

The Princeton Electronic Anomalies Research Study was commissioned by the Air Force when fighter jet flight recorder data showed that electronics were generating signals that should have been impossible in the circuits as designed. The investigators could not explain the data using electrical engineering. For reasons unclear to me (perhaps interviews with the pilots) the study examined the correlation between electrical signals and the emotional state of experimental subjects. They found a positive correlation even when careful steps were taken to ensure electrical isolation.

The study was followed up by IONS, which in collaboration with other institutions runs a set of random number generators. The study looks for correlations in the sequence of numbers generated by the independent sites. They discovered inexplicable synchronization of the generators around the time of major stock market crashes and the 9/11 attacks.

Both studies have been ignored. As a recall, PEARS has been actively suppressed.

Robert Monroe (whose work is carried on by the Robert Monroe Institute) published an exhaustive study of out-of-body experiences. He would tell his subjects when he planned to “visit,” and ask them to record their activities. He duplicated their records, which I recall were sent independently to a third party for verification.

There is also exhaustive documentation of reincarnation and faith healing. I published a review of The Lost Language of Plants by a trained biologist that documents his experiences. Again, these studies are ignored or denigrated by the scientific community.

Studies of mature meditators uncovered a third resonance mode of the brain, adding a gamma mode to the previously known alpha and beta states.

Finally, there is the evidence and testimony of philosophers, mystics and theologians throughout the history of mankind. If you want to go to the outer limits, I suggest F. Scott Peck’s Glimpses of the Devil and Father Amorth’s An Exorcist Tells His Tale. Both of these men faced professional condemnation for publishing their experiences.

But of course to put all this in front of the physics community would be really too much, wouldn’t it? I chose to organize my campaign by focusing on issues that they consider to be appropriate for publication in refereed journals.

Thanks for pointing out the typo. I intended to write “ad hominem.” The spell-checker intervened.

At some point, I will elide all the personal attacks and publish them in a separate post. I don’t have the energy for it now.

Of course parents make threats – although I prefer to call them “clearly defined consequences.” I was angry. Believe me, it wasn’t the first time the behavior had been exhibited, and I had tried other methods previously. Obviously I followed up with my son and repaired the damage. And – BTW – he’s still an atheist, and I love him just as he is. He’s not ready to share the work that I do in the world, and I’m just glad that he’s enjoying his life when mine has been such a struggle.

Club Schadenfreude:

You’ve made quite interesting claims here. According to you, electrical fields are magical. That is not true and your attempt to bring quantum physics into this is nothing more than the usual attempt by a charlatan to validate his nonsense with actual science. Current science has that we do know the Higgs boson exists and we have evidence for it. No one needs to see it with one’s own eyes, one only needs evidence. Unsurprisingly, you have no evidence for your claims at all.

You do make a lot of claims. Evidence that they are even remotely accurate? No. You’ve simply made up nonsense. What are these “components of the dark energy field”? What is the “smallest unit of electric field”, because those terms don’t mean anything? The PEAR claims are considered at best controversial and at worst utter nonsense, claims that cannot be replicated, not even by the people who originally did them. So you are starting with questionable and likely false information to base your claims on.

The Institute of Noetic Science is an organization that has the same problems with being able to show any proof of their claims as PEARS, just like groups like the Discovery Institute, ICR, etc. For all of the claims they make of doing research and promises of evidence real soon now, they never can show this evidence or replicate it. These claims are quite similar to claims of prophecy, where there is never anything seen before some event to actually be of use, but lots of claims of correlation are made after the fact with no ability to show actual causation. They certainly get a lot of mileage out of selection bias. It’s also the usual attempt to try to cloak nonsense in sciency sounding words to make it sound true when it’s nothing more than fantasy, like the idea that thetans are souls of extraterrestrials who came earth and were destroyed by hydrogen bombs and you can sense these being by meters.

Now, I am expecting you to offer the usual excuses, that no one understands the science but you, but if it is actual science, it can be supported with evidence and understood, if your claims aren’t simply made up. The studies have been ignored since they are untrue. There is nothing support the claims about these studies. PEARS was discontinued since its mission was a failure and the only people who accept its claims are those who can’t produce any evidence, just like them. It was not actively suppressed at all, it’s available to anyone who wants their information. That’s the great thing about the internet. So, your claims of conspiracy also fail.
Publishing a list of claims doesn’t make those claims true, and there was no “exhaustive study” of OBE or NDEs or faith healing, reincarnation, etc. They are just repetitions of the claims and no analysis done at all. Unsurprisingly, you only claim a recollection, not actual evidence. Who was this third party, Brian? Unsurprisingly, faith healers always fail when they are actualy required to show evidence. The usual excuse by people like this is that somehow “unbelievers” keep their magical powers from working. How convenient.

Claiming that the “Lost Language of Plants” is somehow true since the author is supposedly a “trained biologist” is an appeal to authority, and in no way confirms that the claims are true at all. If I claimed that crystals have magic properties isn’t true just because I am a trained geologist; I have to provide evidence of my claim. There is no evidence offered, only anecdotal claims. If the results are true, then they should be replicable without concern. They aren’t. The reason that they are ignored and denigrated by the scientific community is the claims are false and they don’t work, just like claims of perpetual motions machines, engines that run on water, etc. What’s sad is that people die because they believe in such nonsense.

Yep, there are lots of testimony from philosophers, mystics, etc but there is no evidence to support their claims at all. Unsuprisingly, again, no evidence of demons or devils, nothing at all but claims of causation and no evidence at all. Peck (and his first initial is M, not F) and Amorth deserve ridicule and professional condemnation for telling such stories. I enjoyed how Peck decided to take it upon himself to redefine what an exorcist “really” is, and inadvertently making this god of his rather worthless letting all of these demons run around, which does a great job of showing how believers invent their own nonsense. Amorth’s stories are no more believable. Again, amazing how slack this god is in leaving demons all over the place, just for priests to show off evidently, since if it is to be believed, Amorth did around 2 or more exorcisms a day. Now, he claims these powers are from his god and references matthew 10. Funny how such imaginary things can be claimed to have been done but something that would actually have evidence to support it, healing people of sickness and injury and even more spectacular, raising the dead, these beleivers just can’t do that at all. How convenient. Not one healed amputee, not one person suddenly free of leperosy. But imaginary demons, why we take care of thousands of them.

Theologians make all sorts of claims and again, no evidence for their claims. No gods, no miracles, no events as described in their holy books, just myths and then excuses why there is no evidence. The magic decoder rings come out and each believer decides what is true and false based on what they want to believe, not what is supported.

No, it wouldn’t be too much at all to put this to actual review and experimentation in front of the physics community. That’s the excuse of someone who doesn’t want his claims actually examined. Rather than finding your own evidence for your claims, you insist that it is other people who have to do that. Unfortuantely for you, the burden of proof for your positive claims is on you, no one else.

It is no surprise at all that you offer an excuse for not actually showing the supposed personal attacks you accuse me of making. You can write many many paragraphs but cutting and pasting is just too hard. It’s evidently also too hard to explain why your magical emanations can’t be detected by other electrochemical instruments if they can be received by the brain.

Parents do make threats. Your case is different than just a threat to behave. You made a threat so your opinion wasn’t challenged. I’m sure that did make you angry that someone dared to point out the problems with your claims. That’s not the reaction of someone who is sure that their opinion is true and can support it. A claim that has nothing to support it must have no challenges offered. I suppose you did follow up with your son and insisted that he believe no one but you. It seems you are little different than many parents, who want their thumbprint on their child’s mind, creating their own external validation.

Still waiting for evidence for your claims, just like I’ve been waiting for evidence for ESP, faith healing, etc. It would be great if such things existed. I used to read Fate Magazine, watch In Search of.., hope for evidence of aliens on earth and hope that gods existed. As of now, there is absolutely no evidence that these claims are true.

Myself:

Please see my recent post titled Comment Policies.

I have made an honest attempt to provide you with public information that matches my experience of life. I have met some of the people that work in these institutions, and they are good, earnest, and care deeply about the future of humanity.

We are clearly at a political impasse, and I believe that continued discussion is not going to serve the purpose of illuminating the content of the original post. My goal here was not, contrary to the thrust of your comments, to prove that I am right. My goal was to voice my befuddlement that researchers facing a huge theoretical deficit in their field should be so deaf to new ideas – much as some claim Christians are deaf to new ideas.

As this entire thread is irrelevant to the OP, I’ll build another post from its contents so that future readers don’t have to wade through it.

As for the personal attacks: “It seems you are little different than many parents, who want their thumbprint on the child’s mind, creating their own external validation.” At this point, my belief is that you are transferring your own experience onto my relationship with my son, WHO IS STILL AN ATHEIST.

Club Schadenfreude:

It is unsurprising that you have decided to create a brand new comment policy to keep people from commenting on your claims. Since your comment policy didn’t exist when I posting comments, your claims that the posts are out of bounds is a lovely example of attempting to retcon a situation. Again, still waiting for you to show where I was making ad hominem attacks. I am sure I do offend your sensibilities; no one likes to be shown their claims fail. However, your sensibilities don’t make your claims true. They still fail. You further make false comments about others and your bible. You call people sociopaths and you claim that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow abused, in order to ignore their positions. The claim that the New Testament “deprecates” the commandments in the bible is most curious since the character JEsus Christ says that all of his father’s commandments should be followed, until earth and heaven pass away, that those who follow them are the first in his father’s kingdom (Matthew 5).

You have yet to give any evidence of your claims. You cannot explain what you mean by your terms. You ignore questions about your claims that point out the failures in your hypothesis. The claims by the organizations and people you mention are just as baseless as your own. They have been shown to be false repeatedly. It doesn’t matter how good or earnest or deeply caring one is if one is spreading false information.

“We” are at no kind of impasse. *You* have refused to support your claims. It’s always quite curious that you claim you aren’t here to prove you are right, but that is the only thing you have claimed, by saying that current science is wrong, that atheists are wrong, etc. It seems that you are trying to say you weren’t claiming you are right in order to excuse yourself from actually presenting evidence. You did not voice your “befuddlement”, you said they are wrong and claimed your position was correct. But when asked to show how you know, it is no surprise that you have now come up with one more excuse so you can run away from supporting your claims again. Show your “new ideas” are supported by fact at all. You made the positive claim, so the burden of proof is on you.

It seems that you are afraid to have people read this thread and are going to do your best to present it falsely. Again, unsurprising. You claim that this thread of comments is “irrelevant to the OP”. This is not true, since the comments address your claims and point out how they fail.

You seem to have no idea what an ad hominem attack is. This is bringing up something unrelated to the discussion at hand to throw doubt on the position of an opponent, for example saying that someone is ugly and that should make one doubt him. When I pointed out that you seem very little different than many parents that want their children to think exactly like them, this is relevant to the discussion that contained you claiming you threatened your son for his daring to contradict you by telling your other son you were wrong. His still being an atheist is not relevant, though it is good to hear. Your actions are relevant as they apply to your claims and your reactions to those who question them.

I shall ask you my questions again: What are these “components of the dark energy field”? What is the “smallest unit of electric field”, because those terms don’t mean anything? If the brain is only a receiver, then why can’t we detect these mysterious emanations you claim exists, with electrical or chemical devices since that’s all the brain is, no magic needed? Where is the evidence that supports your claim “those investigations force them to confront his existence.”?

Myself:

You demand proof in terms that you accept. Why should souls comply?

Let me provide you an analogy: let’s say that you were friends with a neurosurgeon and you both had brain cancer. The friend comes to you and says that he’s going to dismantle your brain so that he could cure himself. Would you participate?

Souls take billions of years to construct. Scientists are reductionist – they take things apart. Why would souls submit to validating their bag of tricks?

Our brains evolved to couple to souls over billions of years. They are the tool that is provided. We should use them appropriately.

And you posit your conclusion in your question: “Since that’s how the brain works.” If you study neurophysiology, you’ll discover that there are many manifestations of behavior that cannot be explained using the “electrical signaling” theory of the brain. Nobody actually knows how the mind works.

As for detecting these emanations: people have been known to turn the lights of in a room so that they can see my halo.

Club Schadenfreude:

Still waiting for evidence for your claims. Again, you claim others are wrong and you are right. What supports this? And no, Brian, you haven’t just used spirituality, you’ve claimed that the brain is a receiver. If this is true, then the soul should be detectable by electrical or chemical means since that’s how the brain works. Can you show this?

Myself:

You claim to have read the material under the “New Physics” tab. You obviously have not. A comment thread is no place to deal with material as complex as I am presenting.

My comment policy is not new. I have exercised it in the past. I am publishing it so that I can provide reference to it in the future.

Your comments are not relevant to the OP. Your comments may be relevant to the material on the “New Physics” page. But as I explain “On Whether I’m Right”, you are demanding proof for something that I don’t claim. The ideas that I’m presenting are in their infancy. All that I seek to prove here, as explained in “On Whether I’m Right” is that there are huge gaps in our understanding of theoretical physics that allow for the existence of the soul. I’m just surprised the someone isn’t interested in the topic.

Comment Policies

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When I published my books, I established Facebook pages for them and cultivated a presence in a group that advertised tolerance. I’m pretty open about my spirituality, and had several deep and rewarding interactions with members seeking fellowship as they navigated life’s many crises. I also express a great deal of confidence in my interpretation of scripture, defining clear and consistent boundaries between Hebrew and Christian teaching.

I obviously became a thorn in the side of the moderator. The moderator frequently directed people to a sister web site containing an exhaustive collection of religious dogma and creed. The material was frequently drawn upon by atheists in the group to deconstruct arguments for faith. As I methodically asserted the message of love offered by Christ, they became more and more antagonistic. Ultimately, the moderator revealed herself as a troll. Facebook is a conversational experience, and as a working professional, I often came late to discussions, and had trouble maintaining the focus of the threads I established. She took advantage of that, posting warped “explanations” of my positions, and then referencing them elsewhere to create the impression that I was trolling the group. When it became clear what was going on, I responded to the last of her posts with notice that I was leaving the group, and told her not to expect that I would lose any sleep over it.

Since establishing myself here in Word Press, I have noticed a lot of similar back-and-forth in the comment threads. I don’t tolerate it here on Ever Deepening. This is a place for ideas. I am happy to discuss them with anyone. I do take on sacred cows, and occasionally lampoon boorishness in our public figures. But I don’t allow anyone to tell me who I am, and do the best that I can to avoid labeling the individuals that visit here.

I do allow leeway. While the situation on Facebook was clearly sociopathic, I recognize that the issues I discuss are often sources of deep sorrow. In “The Sociopath Next Door,” Martha Stout identifies five sources of trauma, and one of them is spiritual abuse. Stout characterizes this as arising when an authority figure places themselves between their victim and an authentic personal experience of God. When I was a member of the local Unitarian Universalist Church – a community dominated by pagans and humanists – I encountered many people recovering from Christian spiritual abuse. This is often sourced in the threats of the Pentateuch which New Testament scripture deprecates. I recognize the problem, and often hear pain behind the angry statements made by those the disagree with me.

Recognizing these realities, I tend to be pretty tolerant of suggestions that a specific idea is wrong or that I am misrepresenting the ideas of others. But broad generalizations were the technique applied by the troll that managed the group on Facebook. Attempting to maintain the focus of the threads I was managing, I would respond to specific claims, and then discover that the broad generalizations were reasserted as characterizations of me as a thinker.

I have seen two strategies in response to this kind of dialog. One is to ask the poster to reference specific statements to back up their claim. This degenerates into a he-said-she-said pissing match that detracts focus from the subject of the original post. Another is to edit or delete posts that offend the sensibilities of the blogger. This is not consistent with my purpose here – I want to have dialog built upon disagreement. The ideas I offer are often abstract, and require elaboration through discussion to support concrete realization.

So what I do here on Word Press follows two steps: I’ll take the dialog to one side, and identify the specific statements that violate my sensibilities, and ask the poster to restructure their points as affirmations of their personal experience and perspective. If they continue with personal denigration, I delete the offending material and add their names to my comment filter so that I can review anything they post.

God and Human

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One of the more frustrating problems faith is trying to make sense of pronouncements that characterize realities that we cannot understand. In Christianity, a great deal of dialog, derision and good-old-fashioned blood-letting revolves around the concept that Jesus was at once both God and man. It is related to the problem of the Holy Trinity that was the most controversial issue in the Council of Nicea, and continues to divide the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

To critical onlookers this probably appears to be ludicrous ado about nothing, merely an attempt to layer a veneer of respectability over a huckster’s mumbo-jumbo. But to those that take the program of Christianity seriously, the mystery is a real problem. Jesus clearly expected us to be more. That is hinted by his repeated pronouncement “Your faith has healed you.” It becomes more explicit when he tells the disciples “there is nothing I do that you cannot do yourselves” leading him to observe peevishly, when waken on a stormy sea, “Oh ye of little faith!” And of course, ultimately he avers to his students “Things even greater than these shall you do.”

Clearly, Jesus’s expectation was that he was only an existence proof, not a singular phenomenon.

So how do we become like him? What is this faith? What power does it allow to enter into us? And as Jesus demonstrated, how do we establish a permanent and continuous living with and through that power?

The key, I believe, is clear through Jesus’s teachings. He began with parables that characterize the unconditional and infinitely forgiving love of the Father. At the midpoint, he simplifies the Law as “Love your God, and love your neighbor as though he was yourself.” And finally, in the great struggle in Gethsemane, he conquers the fears of the flesh and surrenders himself fully to his love of the world. And in his resurrection, his glory testifies to the authority earned in his remaking of heaven and earth through the mechanism of his sacrifice.

So he is God and Human. But why God? Why the best, most powerful God? What is it about love that is so powerful?

To understand this, we have to turn to the realm of the Almighty, where the ethereal host evolves under different laws of physics. What we know is that angels do not have flesh. They are souls living in pure relation. What is common between their realm and ours is that some of those relationship are beneficial, and some harmful.

Two forms of relation are particularly potent. First is the relation of Death, which creates insuperable barriers between the angels, preventing them from entering in relation. Although there is a certain restfulness in death, by its very nature its grasp is difficult to escape. The second is Unconditional Love, which seeks restlessly to maximize the benefits of relation. It is a force that helps angels escape circumstances that suppress their expression, liberating them into mutually beneficial engagements that generate new and unexpected possibilities. As we are told, liberated spirits facilitate the spread of love by “singing” its praises.

In the Book of Revelation, John is brought into Heaven. While Heaven is not the Realm of the Almighty, but reflects its dynamic. Around a throne occupied by Unconditional Love, twenty-four principal angels are gathered wearing crowns. When the living creatures sing the praises of love, the angels are compelled to lay aside their crowns and bow in praise to the one on the throne.

Why is this so? If so powerful, why should love sit on a throne, isolated from us, guarded in fact by fearsome predators? That is not its desire, as revealed in the final Chapters, where no light and no temple is found in the city of God because love has been woven into its very fabric.

The problem is that when offered power, we think first of ourselves. Trapped here in this physical existence, full of pain and struggle, we use our strength to compel others to serve us. We violate the compact of unconditional love. We corrupt it with “sin.” To become as Jesus, we must surrender our self-concern. We must think only of others, and trust that they will concern themselves with us.

This was the compact that Adam and Eve sundered in the Garden of Eden. Given the task of tending God’s kingdom on earth, they thought of themselves. God tried for many generations to overcome that sin, but the gap was too great between his perfection and our fallen state. Jesus came down to experience that fallen state, to struggle with its frailty, to have his compassion sharpened on the point of our daily peril. It was only in the intimacy of the disease that healing could be given.

So this is how Jesus was both God and Human: he was a one-way street. Through him, only love came. Impervious to self-concern, no sin went back the other way. And through the humanity of his courage, love gave those he encountered the strength to turn aside from fear and accept the healing power of love.

And finally, in his encounter with death on the cross, love suffused that presence and turned it into the agent of peace. Death is no longer a final separation, but an agent that brings surcease when fear pushes us into violence. Having submitted death, the Prince of Peace is capable of cocooning us in love until we recall our better selves.

So this is the answer: in submitting to the teachings of Christ, we become gods in loving one another, and thus receive from each other the power to bring good into the world, and thus experience good to the limit of our capacity.

Faith and Intellect

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The atheist’s complaint against religion is frequently rooted in charges of anti-intellectualism. This is evident in Nicholas Baker’s article in this quarter’s Skeptic (Volk. 20 No. 4), Christianity’s Negative Impact on Modern American Education.

I must admit to being befuddled by these charges. Upon encountering atheists decrying intellectual incoherence in the faithful, I often invite the critic to come out and respond to the writings under the New Physics page of this blog. I have also offered the material to scientists through various forums. So far, I have received no response.

A colleague at work invited me down to the atheist Sunday Service in Santa Monica. In the event, a couple of sarcastic remarks regarding faith rankled, but for the most part I found a group of well-meaning people that seemed to have no interest in their spirituality. I confirmed this with my friend later, saying that I didn’t think that I would fit in to the community. When I offered that my experience was that my very presence forced people to confront their spirituality, he confirmed my decision.

It is the anti-spirituality of atheism that concerns me most. Until it is recognized, I am afraid that it is going to be impossible to reconcile the two communities.

An anti-spiritual emphasis is not entirely unique to atheism – I had a Kabbalist tell me that men were not to enter spiritual experience until they were forty. The violence outbursts of nationalism that rocked the world in the 20th century may be symptomatic: where once European politics was dominated by the egos of kings, public education may have facilitated the formation of gestalts that were driven by the masculine urge to power. Jung’s work on the collective unconscious may have been an attempt to understand the dynamics, and he writes in his biography of looking up at the mountains before World War II and seeing a tide of blood pouring over them. I sometimes suspect that, in the aftermath of the war, psychologists settled on denial of spiritual experience as a necessary practice of quarantine to prevent future epidemics. I have encountered some that say they diagnose schizophrenia only if the voices create fear in the patient. And when I sought counseling to deal with family-related stress, once the therapist determined that I was stable, she began asking me questions about reincarnation and process theology, with a focus on understanding why so many of us are immature spirits.

Unfortunately, any policy of denial creates a context of conspiracy that feeds a revolutionary counter-reaction. I believe that this is probably the basis of the anti-intellectualism that Mr. Baker confronts.

The illustration for Mr. Baker’s article shows Jesus whispering a test answer into the ear of a struggling student. This is a point made explicitly in the article: “When it comes to academic achievement, helping a student solve a math problem, using math and the student’s actual brain, displays better family values than does teaching the student to distrust intellect while pleading for an answer to fall from the sky.”

Mr. Baker’s attitude is rooted in the conflation of the brain and mind. While I did not force my children to read the Bible, I struggled against this prejudice with making them aware of the nature of intellect. As I perceive the operation of my mind, the brain is not a logic circuit, it is an interface that ideas use to become invested in the world, and an anchor that they use to create new forms of association. Ideas are spiritual constructs. As possessors of brains, we are their dance partners.

The most painful part of parenting my children through the prejudice of scientific materialism was when my younger son, struggling with his studies, attempted to engage me in discussion only to have his older brother come downstairs and tell him how wrong he was. For years I had attempted to open Greg’s mind to the world of ideas that Kevin had gained access to as an infant. Before Kevin’s intervention, I had felt the door finally opening, and it broke my heart to have him slam it shut. I dealt with the matter pretty harshly, telling him “If you don’t stop abusing your brother, I am not putting a single cent into your college education.” In later conversation, I told Kevin that “ideas are strongest when they are shared.”

This is known among mature scientists. Edward Teller’s office at LLNL had pictures of all the great scientists of his era, and I could feel their personalities reaching out through them. In another incident, I saw a divorced father at dinner with his son, the beautiful mother, and the wealthy man she had married. The son had asked a technical question, which the father answered after a pause. The child challenged him “How do you know that?” To which the father could only answer “I was informed.”

Personally, I had the experience in high school AP Biology of working in a classroom of collaborative students. During the AP exam, I became stuck on a couple of questions and found the answers arriving during final review. The teacher reported that to her surprise – given the brilliance of students in prior years – we had achieved the highest average score on the test in all her years of teaching. And in discussing morality at work, I have shared that when I reach a road block, I frequently open my mind and  an answer comes to me. At times that has been as explicit as having a person’s voice come into my head and say “Do it this way…”

Baker does not articulate this experience, and given his reaction to Christian values, I think that he may not be conscious of the operation of his own mind. If he was, he would understand the preconditions for sustaining such exchanges. It requires surrender of the ego (something that nature often forces upon scientists) and a genuine concern for others. This is the teaching we find in the Bible. In denigrating the value of the book’s moral teaching, Baker and his colleagues are undermining the attempts by Christian parents to open the door to the gestalt of civilized ideas known to the faithful as “The Holy Spirit.” That is no small matter.

Until they arrive at an alternative technology, Baker and others might do well to be more gentle with their public pronouncements. The emotion they attach to their crusade is going to make it extremely difficult for them to reconcile themselves to Christ when those investigations force them to confront his existence.

Arguing Toward the Middle

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As a benefit of my attendance at the Skeptic’s conference last may, I have been receiving copies of their flagship magazine. The magazine has begun to entertain the views of theists that work in the sciences. The dialog is generally pretty counterproductive, with the participants often talking past each other. Motivated by the debate between Dave Matson and Douglas Navarick (Debating the “God” Construct) in Vol. 20 No. 4, I address the issues of abiogenesis (the origin of cellular life) and the distinction between “supernatural” phenomena and those such as spirituality that lack an explanation.

You’ll find another response to Navarick’s original article here.

Dave:

As a scientist who believes that the soul is a part of the physical construction of this reality, I am dismayed by the tone of your response to Douglas Navarick.

“Supernatural” is a tendentious term

The scientist loves to ask “Why?”, and comes up with theories that propose explanatory relationships. In propagating those abstractions, an elite cognoscenti is created. As this elite solidifies its political power, funding of scientific research tends to crowd out radical ideas (I refer you to Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

So the researchers at CERN focus on the discovery of the “Higgs boson” (which looks nothing like the Higgs boson I studied in graduate school), despite the fact that the Higgs mechanism actually doesn’t explain particle masses – you still need to generate the coupling constants that determine the mass of each individual particle. The “Higgs boson”, however, has been built up as an accomplishment worthy of pursuit, and so is trumpeted as a Nobel-worthy achievement even though – with the exception of charge – no property of the simplest composites (the mesons and nucleons) can be calculated from the standard model of the fundamental forces – even given the measured properties of the quarks. Thus we have a situation in which the obvious failures of current theory are ignored to the purpose of sustaining funding for large-scale research programs with many stakeholders outside of the sciences.

Following Kuhn, I would argue that fundamental physics is ripe for a revolution. The issues as I see them are outlined here. Conceptually, it would seem that if one posited structure inside the current collection of “fundamental” particles, it actually wouldn’t be too hard to make room for the soul. I also have a far simpler picture of this reality, without the unobservable (and highly unstable) Planck-scale plasma and alternate universes. (The multiverse theory, BTW, being obviously another version of your magical hare-brained Easter Bunny.)

So rather than “supernatural”, I would prefer a term that suggested “beyond the things that scientists can yet explain.” “Spirituality” may fit. I would hope that you would admit that scientists, with their emphasis on material experience, may self-select from among those that are spiritually insensitive. As one not so insensitive, often marveling at the healing power of love, I find that “hare-brained Easter Bunny” provides no explanatory leverage. There is something to life beyond what particle physics can yet explain. I’d like to have a rational dialog on the topic.

Of course, if I am right, everyone will be confronted with the need to rethink the record of scripture that has been brought forward from many cultures. Clawing back the sarcasm is going to take a great deal of courage, I recognize, but no less than surrendering the comfort of dogmatism on the other side.

Abiogenesis

This really isn’t that hard a problem. Assume that the oceans contain distributed pools of heavy hydrocarbons in contact with various sources of heat and minerals on the ocean floor. The hydrocarbon pools will develop a skin of polarized molecules (maybe even phospholipids, as phosphor is not rare). Other fundamental components of life (nucleic acids, amino acids, etc.) may also be sourced from the complex chemistry of the pool, which could support (as we know) selective exchange of materials with the water. Agitation of the pool (through earthquakes, overflow, or venting) will result in formation of protocells. These events will  produce innumerable trials, liberated into sub-sea currents. Eventually among those trials will be cells that can scavenge materials for growth from the environment. Voila! Life.

Pools lying on different mineral strata will form protocells with different morphologies. Those with compatible membranes could merge, producing further biochemical trials. Which is what we actually know happened – cells are composed of organelles that were protocells in their own right before being absorbed.

BTW – there’s an IMAX on life around thermal vents in which the pilots of the deep sea vehicle actually interact with such a hydrocarbon pool.

Regards,

Brian Balke

Christianity and Paganism

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In response to this post in Gods and Radicals.

It is misguided to found any argument about the future of a spiritual tradition upon the success of political figures in corrupting Christianity.

All gods wish for their followers to worship only them, because it is through the acts of their followers that they are invested in the world. That investment long predates humanity – there were Neanderthal gods, and before them gods of mice and gods of dinosaurs. The problem facing humanity was to create a human god in the context of billions of years of predecessors. That is the project of monotheism – to create a god that manifests and supports the expression of humanity’s unique talents.

Now perhaps the essence of humanity’s talent is political organization, but I see it differently. Looking at our evolutionary success, I would argue that humanity is a manifestation of intelligence. For the original adherents (not those indoctrinated in service to the priests, which is a problem in any tradition), the attractive proposition of Christianity was that the divinity served humanity. Christianity is the original humanism – it is to assert that the human god should be a god of love, and serve all equally, without regard to station or industrial skill.

Obviously this is a reasonable proposition, and the power of the Church in the Roman world came not because of the allegiances that joined the interests of emperors and priests. Rather, it was because in the Roman context of utilitarian worship, the Church followed Christ’s edict of charity. The Church, though oppressed, took care of the orphans and widows, the sick and poor, and organized their gratitude to the service of others. When the Empire collapsed, the Church assumed control because they were the administrative and organizational backbone of Roman society.

I see paganism as a political act on the spiritual plane. Humanity, having succeeded in propagating the tyranny of utilitarianism through the application of intelligence, is confronting the fact that it is destroying the fundament of its own existence. It needs to think about all of those forgotten gods. It needs to infect them with rational understanding, and engage them in expression of mutual support. In other words, Humanity needs to join in loving the world, rather than just itself.

This is a difficult pivot. Our religions are still infected by expressions of our physical vulnerability: as an illustration, the vulnerability of a child whose cave is invaded by the saber-tooth cat while father and mother are away. Many people still live in circumstances of vulnerability, although the predators are no longer other species, but rather politically powerful people.

Jesus preached that the meek will inherit the earth. As a reaction against abusive political structures, I see paganism as furthering that goal.

Master of PC?

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I wonder if Trump’s first act as president will be to lift the gag order on Ivana so that she can tell us all how she survived his narcissism?

“I’m nice to people that are nice to me.”

“I’ll support the Republican nominee as long as the Party treats me fairly.”

Trump enforces “political correctness” with court orders, threats and whining. And at the end of the day, he knows that he can say anything he wants and nobody can touch him.

Well, let me explain “PC” to you, Mr. Trump: it means focus on the problem, not the people. It wouldn’t be an issue if you would frame intelligent policy positions, rather than simply insulting those that take our nation seriously.

Refugees : Creatures Of Circumstances.

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From Iraq to Syria to Turkey…but not the US?

For those with an abstract concept, framed mostly by fear of terrorism, of what it means to be a Middle Eastern refugee.

Fifty Shades of Reality.'s avatarThe Ignited Mind !

It was a fresh new morning of 14th `December 2015 when I logged onto Facebook and found this post about a really young Iraqi refugee, named ‘Aya’. This is Aya’s picture as posted on the page of Humans of New York.

Aya

A page called “Humans Of New York,” had posted about how her life took a surprising turn, with the unfavourable events unfolding for her one after the other. She’s just about twenty years of age, but once you know what her entire story is all about, I’m sure you’ll be as compelled as I am at this point of time. Her tale is sure to leave you spellbound as well as in tears. I am about to narrate. It is in her own words, that she describes what she has been through, all thanks to Humans Of New York, for supporting persons like her and letting the entire…

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