Saturday, September 13, 2008

Ding, Dong. It's alive, it's alive!!!


Well, I just couldn't take it anymore. Three months ago, I decided to put Rupture to bed. While it has remained quiet, there have, nevertheless been a few people coming by checking things out. Rupture has, in the past few days, been beckoning - "Feed me, feed me!"


So. It's back! I've sent notice to the media. There should be preemptive break-ins over the coverage of Hurricane Ike and the presidential campaign any minute now on all the major networks: "FLASH! RUPTURE THE RAPTURE IS BACK! Film at 11."


What I intend to do is focus pretty much all postings on matters concerning religion/atheism here. I will also maintain Indy Boomer for pretty much all other postings. Boomer hasn't really taken off and perhaps won't, but being an eternal optimist, in time I'm confident that thousands - nay - hundreds of thousands of eager readers will eventually be treading on Indy Boomer's virtual doorstep clamboring for my wit and wisdom.
Note: I caught the above image of angels actually emerging from the walls of a Munich department store building. They proceeded to fly over the street and then alighted together at the entry to a Starbucks across the square. They then entered the store enmasse and all ordered Mango Passion Fruit Frappucinos. It was a truly "grande" sight.

Is God Really in the Details?


Just a question and a note here: How long has man seriously been involved in truly scientific inquiry? Surely, there were some discoveries made going back even thousands of years, but the results of many of those efforts have either been lost, or were thwarted, often by the powers that be.


Only since the Renaissance has there been a more or less uninterrupted and concerted effort to discover our origins along with other scientific inquiry. Given the totality of human history, those few hundred years are hardly a blip on the proverbial screen. Look at what has been accomplished just since, say the middle of the 19th century in science and technology. To believe that humans can NEVER reach a core of understanding about the universe, our origins, and our place within it, is at the least, selling ourselves short.


Much of what we know and can do today would have been thought the stuff of magic or fantasy just a couple hundred years ago. Thousands of people were burnt at the stake for just imagining such things. Humans have an enormous capacity to explore and understand. Most of us, myself included, have no idea about much of it. Scientific research has become so specialized, so concerned with seeming minutia that again, most of us can't relate to it. Ultimately, the trick will be to put it all together, to assimilate all of the discreet data into a cohesive and manageable understanding of it all. I won't predict that we WILL accomplish that, but I do believe we CAN.


While, I suppose it is possible that the ultimate answer to it all could be something that one could aptly call a god, at this juncture, however, that is no more likely than hundreds of other possibilities. Further, the possibility that the answer is an omnipotent, omniscient god consciously involved in the second to second lives of us humans is so remote to be considered ludicrous. It is a human conceit to believe that we are the one and only chosen beings of god.


As I have asked before: What possible interest could an all powerful, all knowing entity have in such insignificant beings such as ourselves? I always think of "Star Trek TNG" and the character "Q" played, I believe, by actor John Delancey, who had god like powers over the fate of all humanity. He was depicted as being contemptuous and bored by humanity, but then alternately intrigued and curious about us as well. In my opinion, the former view would hold sway more often than not.