Stephen Hawking's Mistake

Since "A Brief History of Time" was published Stephan Hawking has declared that there is no need for God the Creator. His most recent comments reaffirm this opinion. The law of gravity shows that "spontaneous creation" is possible. As an additional indication that a personal Creator is absurd he points to the discovery of extrasolar planets. Mankind's place in the Universe is not unique or special.

And where did the law of gravity or, as he put it in Brief History, the properties of zero come from? The complete scientific view of the physical universe today is not the collection of either observed mass or dark mass but space and time itself.
In other words, to return to a Biblical metaphor, energy and mass are contained within the "bowl" of space-time. When Hawking and other physicists say that the universe is the result of the law of gravity or string theory "branes" colliding they are incorrectly referring only to the contents of the bowl. Experiments do seem to show "virtual" particles arising in a vacuum. But a man-made vacuum cannot eliminate the very structure of Space. Space-time is a thing. It may be a property of this thing to perhaps "spark" a particle.

A critic correctly said that Hawking did not answer the question of why anything exists and continued on to state this was a matter of faith. I beg to differ. It is a matter of empirical physical scientists not being properly trained in classical philosophy. Hawking sees "spontaneous creation" within the container of space-time. He fails to ask the question again, "What is the cause of space-time?". Aristotle was not a man of religious faith. At this point he simply has the necessary scientific humility to say that there must be an "uncaused cause".

And those extrasolar planets? How great God is!

The Snake Speaks

The Snake came slithering into N.D.U. seeking only "open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words... common ground". The Snake wanted Adam and Eve to listen.

"No, you shall not die; for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Genesis 3:4-5

John Jenkins, president of N.D.U., said "...President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him". So, for the sake of the appearance of good, Jenkins and the graduates of N.D.U. listened to the Snake. When a protester shouted "Stop killing our children!", the crowd responded "Yes we can!"

"Barabbas!"

Obama was right in declaring that there are "irreconcilable differences" between abortionists and those who hold human life as sacred.

"...the Lord God said... I will put enmity betwen you and the woman, between your seed and her seed..." Genesis 3:14-15

We must respond to the idea of compromise with evil with hate. But hate the sin, love the sinner. We must continue an undespairing witness to the sacred origin of human life. We must increase our pleas to our Blessed Mother for help. Our Lady will crush the head of the snake under her heel.

Stem Cell Big Lie

Please do not fall for the Nazi Big Lie technique. They want you to be fooled into confusing all stem cells with embryonic stem cells. Stem cells are just a type of cell; embryonic stem cells are the result of the frankenstein making of an unborn baby and then killing that baby for body parts. Another basic aspect of this lie is to label human beings and make it easier to forget their humanity. Remember: embryo, fetus, infant, adolescent, adult are all terms referring to a stage of human life.
Please go to the site: WWW.STEMCELLRESEARCH.ORG for a complete education on the subject.

Important News

Jesus loves his mother Mary very much.
Mary wants you to listen to Jesus.
You would be well-advised to do so.
To Jesus through Mary

I Didn’t Know Washington D.C. Was This Isolated

January 6^th I mailed a formal first-class letter to the new Senator from Pennsylvania congratulating him on his election and urging him to show leadership in opposing killing newly conceived unborn babies to get their body parts (embryonic stem cells). I tried to remind him that “embryo” is simply a clinical term for a stage in our human lives just as “adolescent” or “adult”.

As of February 12^th I had received no reply so I emailed his Washington office. I had written early before Senator Casey even took the oath of office to allow time for the postal anti-anthrax scanning and the set-up of his new office. But I thought five weeks was enough. February 14^th I called directly to Washington. The office staff acted as if the first-class letter I had sent was a non-issue. The fact that they neither had the letter nor cared about answering it was something they expected me to think was understandable.

The administrative officer working for Senator Casey said that the Senator had released a statement on January 22^nd and it should be on his website. As we were both looking at the site she realized that it had not been posted. She assured me that she would email it.

As of the 22^rd of February the statement was not on the website so I called again. This time I got the press assistant. She seemed to understand my concern. She emailed the statement below. (The administrative officer had apparently emailed the document but my AOL spam filter must have dumped it.)

This statement was printed to be handed to the Right-to-Life marchers when they went to the Senator’s office. No press release was given to the press for the rest of the public.

How To Crash The Party In Heaven

Comes Judgement Day I have a suggestion about how to sneak into heaven. Have you noticed that when people go to church the right side tends to fill in first? I think this has something to do with our predominate righthandedness. Now imagine the great plain on Judgement Day: people are running in to fill up the best spots, mostly on their right. But when our Lord Jesus comes to face the crowd in judgement those on the right will be on his left. The gospel says that Jesus will separate those on his right and left; the charitable on his right going to heaven and the selfish on his left going to hell. In other words those who depended on their own right will be on the left.

Well, our Lord’s standard of loving service may be too high for someone like me. Here’s my two part plan to get by. First I am going to try my best to practice humility in this life. Why? I don’t think there is any guarantee that the intellectual concept “I must remember to go to the left, Jesus’ right” will survive the experience of death and judgement. I want to be so practiced in humility that I will automatically let everyone in ahead of me and be forced to go to the few places left on the left. (This “automatic” tendency of the will is a virtue.) The second part is this: I want to pray to Jesus’ mother Mary as much as possible. After several billion people have filed past our Lord and I am close to the Gate, I want to wave at Mary the Queen Mother and say “Hail, Mary!”. I hope she will then recognize my voice and give me at least a faint smile. Jesus will see this and think anyone who’s a friend of his mother is alright with him and let me pass.

Global Smoking

My natural tendency is to doubt popular analysis of public issues. The popular misconceptions about “population explosion”, abortion “rights”, two-party “democracy”, etc., etc., shows the public is easily misled by whoever owns the media. So when the popular media chants together about the dangers of global warming I am on my guard. I listen very carefully to any voice raised in disagreement. My caution is re-enforced when proponents of the idea of human activity increasing global average temperature engage in alarmist rhetoric. Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel originally seemed to suggest that anyone who disagreed with the above idea should have their credentials revoked. Later she said that she would listen to others – once – and then move on. A recent episode of her show was promoted with the blurb that the Florida Everglades were “on the brink of extinction”. The phrase “on the brink” in a promo does not imply that forty or fifty years from now the Everglades will vanish, it seems to warn of their disappearance in four or five years. The Everglades, just like the Mississippi delta, have been severely damaged by mistaken water management. They are not going to disappear tomorrow if corrective action is taken.

Yet despite my misgivings I sense the issue of global warming is historically comparable to the issue of tobacco smoking. If you ceaselessly pump toxic smoke into your lungs and bloodstream you can expect negative consequences. If we ceaselessly pump pollutants and greenhouse gases you can expect negative consequences. Those who oppose this general concept of cleaning the environment remind me of those scientists and businessmen who downplayed the dangers of smoking to health. Doing things to make our energy production and consumption less damaging to the environment is the same as quitting smoking.

New York Republicans Attack Right-To-Life Party

After the 2002 Governor’s race debacle, the New York State Right-To-Life Party lost its place on the ballot. Supporters this summer attempted a comeback. The RTL submitted 17,237 signatures to the Board of Elections for John Broderick to run as candidate for Governor. The bad news--they were just 2,237 signatures over the minimum and the Republicans challenged the petitions. The Board declared 5,500 signatures invalid on various technicalities, and gave 11,737 as the official and insufficient count. Broderick is reported to be challenging the Board's determination in Court. A final judgment is due by 10/6--but with the arcane and difficult election laws designed to favor the Democrats and Republicans, it doesn't look good.

Casey or Santorum in Pennsylvania

Senate candidates Casey and Santorum are both anti-abortion. Casey is immediately suspect because of his affiliation with a rabid pro-abortion national organization, the Democratic Party. But just as the Republican Party is perfectly comfortable supporting pro-abortion senators, congressmen and governors, the Democrats are trying to appear more tolerant in the Pennsylvania race. The argument about party affiliation is a wash. If a pro-abortion Republican is a negative then it must be admitted that a pro-life Democrat is a positive.

The real difference between Santorum and Casey is Santorum’s ignorance of the plight of working people in America and his unconditional support for Bush’s publicly stated policy that if we think another country might attack us we have the right to kill them.

Santorum endorsed and strongly supported the recent change in the Federal bankruptcy law. The poor credit card sharks were being cheated! The companies ( and not poor people) that borrow their cash from the Federal Reserve at 4 or 5 percent and the minute you miss a payment charge 25 to 29 percent!

I’m voting for Casey and praying he makes a difference. I hope the pro-unjust war policy and pro-robber baron Republicans can learn a lesson.

News Analysis: Mr. Pope, Know Your Limits!

A few days before Pope Benedict XVI’s speech in Germany sparked widespread protest in the Muslim world, a priest friend forwarded a short article to me on the “dhimmitude” of Christians and Jews in Islam. “Dhimmi” describes the cultural prison in which all non-Muslims are held hostage in an Islamic country. When I clicked on a short report on AOL.com about the reaction to the Pope’s speech against religious violence and the marginalization of religion, the above headline was on a large street-wide protest banner.

Pope Benedict finds himself in an ironic position: he faces a problem parallel to Pius XII – say anything that could be construed as negative about Islam and provoke a pogrom. Still more ironic is that the speech apparently repeated a constant theme of the contemporary Papacy in Europe: building a society hostile to religious faith is self-destructive.

The ignorant reactions of religious fanatics are far less to be feared than the systematic elimination of religious beliefs in public life practiced in the “Western” world. And even that may be less to be feared than some of religion’s “friends” in sheep’s clothing – Let us crusade (oops, Mr. Bush) for Secular Democracy!

Yeah, let us make the world think the Christians in the West are fighting for unlimited
pornography, divorce, same-sex unions, abortion and the ousting of religion from the public square!

A Personal Experience

Recently I responded to a communications company employment advertisement for technical support rep. I filled out the online application. Then I was asked to come in to take pre-employment tests. I was then invited to come in for Human Resources and management interviews. During this process I was told two things very clearly: first, I would have to sign an agreement to help provide “Adult” (pornographic) content to subscribers and, second, my request to have time either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning to attend Church was not possible.

When they called today to offer the position I said they were not offering me reasonable accommodation to practice my religion. The HR guy said they could not. I said I could not in good conscience assist in the delivery of “Adult” content. The HR guy said thank you and goodbye.

Mr. Christian, Jew or Muslim - know your limits.

Where is the true, most evil and destructive “dhimmitude”?