To the 2008 National Political Conventions
The present day dire global eco-social crises of Planet Earth document the bad accounting of Earth's self-reflective inhabitants. Planet Earth is radically imperiled by the self-destruction of greed, resource consumption and warfare.
This terminal effrontery of humankind and the pusuits of RELIGIOUS/ POLITICAL MISDIRECTION need to be reversed if the precipitous and radical degradation of Earthlife, including human, is to reversed.
Religious conversion and political redirection are possible; but one cannot happen without the other.
A way toward religious conversion and political redirection is proposed at www.evolution101.org and www.secondenlightenment.org
Let the serious dialogue begin. Let CHANGE REALLY HAPPEN.
Your post has conjured up
Your post has conjured up many images in my mind like Calamity Jane as McCain's Wingman. Editorial cartoonists should be having a field day with this stuff. I doubt that the bought and paid for media will allow much of it. In a recent article, Fr. Andrew Greeley casts the Republican Presidential candidate as ' Scary '. His response to the Georgian invasion and recent musings about resurrecting the military draft to supplement more adventures which may include Iran, show him to be a most undesirable choice as a leader. Greeley cites the words of a local Chicago columnist who urges an invasion of Cuba as a response to Russia's actions. These are the kinds of thinking that have involved us in Large Wars in the past. The good Father asks when we will refuse to allow our youth to be exploited for the ability to bluster as a substitute for real leadership. McCain likes to view himself as a warrior; Greeley has said in the recent past that fighter pilots are not expected to think strategically. It would appear that the tightly controlled Palin supplement to this campaign will not deviate from the fear tactics of the past. Even Conservative Catholics cannot ignore the past Pope's global campaign motto , ' Be not afraid ! ' . How does the Right respond to that ? Bluster is no substitute for true courage.
Beauty is not opposed to truth. It is simply truth in its most attractive form.
'Planet Earth is in danger
'Planet Earth is in danger of self-destruction as a result of greed' That's a line we should always remember Sylvester. We have to believe that what we need and what we enjoy must revolve around the circle of recycling. We can only survive if we use our resources wisely. Government must intrude. Government must step up to face the rape and pillage of the Earth. [Earth should always begin with a capital letter]
That government is too intrusive is a heresy. The statement that government is too big may be true but it isn't too intrusive.Transfering wealth, a favorite whine of the wealthy,is only intrusive if it it giving wellfare to the underpriveledged. It's not intrusive if it is giving benefits to the corporation or the wealthy, an activity that happened too often during the last 8 years.Wealth is transferred every day by the government.It is difficult to think of a piece of legislation that is revenue neutral.That's the way government works.
Government's job is levelling the playing field even when one side makes the playing intolerable and makes the entire field a disaster area.
God speaks to man
God speaks to man continuously. The first obvious time was when we got the rules of conduct through Moses. He[she] agan spoke through the prophets. He spoke through the life and death of Jesus. He speaks again through the Church and the Sacraments. He also speaks through Science and through the eternity of evolution.
Moral conduct is always an
Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even "revealed religion", but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher spiritual levels of religious experience. The adoration of the abstract beautiful is not the worship of God; neither is exaltation of nature nor the reverence of unity the worship of God.
Evolutionary religion is the mother of the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity to "revealed religion". The evolutionary picture of human existence begins and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one evolutional and biological, the other revelational and periodical. And so, while religion is normal and natural to man [humankind], it is also optional. Man does not have to be religious against his will.
Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind; hence the function of theology, the psychology of religion. The essential doctrine of the human realization of God creates a paradox in finite comprehension. It is well-nigh impossible for human logic and finite reason to harmonize the concept of divine immanence, God within and a part of every individual, with the idea of God's transcendence, the divine domination of the universe of universes. These two essential concepts of Deity must be unified in the faith-grasp of the concept of the transcendence of a personal God and in the realization of the indwelling presence of a fragment of that God in order to justify intelligent worship and validate the hope of personality survival. The difficulties and paradoxes of religion are inherent in the fact that the realities of religion are utterly beyond the mortal capacity for intellectual comprehension.
Religion is the most rigid and unyielding of all human institutions, but it does tardily adjust to changing society. Eventually, evolutionary religion does reflect the changing mores, which, in turn, may have been affected by "revealed religion". Slowly, surely, but grudgingly, does religion (worship) follow in the wake of wisdom--knowledge directed by experiential reason and illuminated by "divine revelation."
Only two influences can modify and uplift the dogmas of natural religion: the pressure of the slowly advancing mores and "the periodic illumination of epochal revelation." And it is not strange that progress was slow; in ancient days, to be progressive or inventive meant to be killed as a sorcerer. The cult advances slowly in generation epochs and agelong cycles. But it does move forward. Evolutionary belief in ghosts laid the foundation for "a philosophy of revealed religion" which will eventually destroy the superstition of its origin.
The more we discover how much we are Loved by God, the more we want to do God's Will
It's 3 a.m. and the phone is
It's 3 a.m. and the phone is ringing, what will Sarah Palin say? This situation has been going through my mind over the past few days. Some of my thoughts have been funny but the situation is not. In a calamity I don't know of any chief of staff who would even call Sarah. [unless it was a problem in that little town she used to manage] She has been overseas once a round trip to military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan with a refueling stop in Ireland on the way and a another in Germany on the way back.
Which side of the Scopes trial would she have been on?
She never met a black person she did not like. She has yet to meet one.
What kind of SUV does she drive?
Disconnect the phone please.