Iron Sky

Yesterday I had nothing to do and I envied my neighbors DVD marathoning, so I went to the nearest bootleg dvd vendor and bought a movie collection. I opted for European movies some of which are in Germanic or Nordic languages with English subtitles superimposed on Chinese subs that, unfortunately, gave me headaches for the rest of the day and up to now I still feel a little hangover.

 Anyway, one of the movies I saw was Iron Sky. The US sent space mission over the darkside of the moon. Two astronauts, one a model and the other a real astronaut,  was sent there as a propaganda to boost the re-election campaign of the President of the US, who by the way was a lady with treadmill addiction.  Unknown to the president and the model astronaut, the other mission was to look for Helium 3.

While exploring the darkside of the moon, the astronaut discovered a Nazi base.

The Nazis evacuated to the moon in 1945 and constructed a base. There they continued on their plot to re-conquer the world in 2018.

Anyway, better look for the movie to enjoy it. The movie was low budgeted but it had good CGI effects and the space battles between the Nazi's space zeppelins and saucers vs. the US, Japan, UK etc. space ships was quite entertaining. There was also some racist stuff in the movie which was really inevitable since this was a movie about Nazis.   

There was funny scene about computers. The astronaut was caught and the nazi scientist, who by the way looked like Einstein, took a look at his iPod and asked what it was. The astronaut told him that it was a computer. The scientist laughed and showed the astronaut his computer which occupied the room. Anyway, the ipod was the key to run the space Nazi's giant space warship.

If you're a sci-fi fan and really love movies that doesn't take itself seriously, watch this movie.

Monotheistic polytheism

I have been thinking about God. Being a personal God, that we could relate to literally it is then safe to say that believers have different and may I say individualistic conception and understanding of God that depends upon the individual's need. There this psychological vacuum and this vacuum shapes or influence the conception of God. This is undeniable. The idea of God during childhood is different from that of adolescence, adulthood and old age. Each stage has its own development of the understanding of God and though they may be called developmental, but there is also that element of  conceptualization involved with it--creating personal ideas of God, I suppose it could be called revelation.

What I imagine this to be is that each individual have this doctrinal understanding of God as taught be religious teachers that becomes the framework or the skeleton for the developing idea of God. 

On the theological level we have the doctrine of God's omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, perfection, uniqueness, immutability, transcendence, immanence and all that stuff and fancy words that no ordinary folks ever think about or may not even attempt to understand.  

There's the moral or ethical side of God being good, hates evil, punishes sinners by sending their souls to hell and rewarding the believers by sending their souls into heaven and that good and bad stuff that goes with ethics. 

There's the mythological and anthromorphical side to God like the talking bush (I think 'botanical' is more apt), the story of Noah, Jonah etc. The virgin birth, resurrection, etc. 

There's the historical controversies that killed a lot of people like the trinity (this is not a clear doctrine since this is not clearly taught in the scriptures), the hypostatic-union of the natures of Christ (again, the teachings are implied but not directly taught and I sometimes wonder if the first Christians even thought about these things); the war on the interpretation of the word "body and blood" in the Lord's Supper that also almost split a nation; baptism, clerics, church organization,...etc.

Then there's relational side of God, the master and servant, potter and the pot, father and son (and daughter, may I add). All these things (hmmm...did I forget something?) Ohh, I forgot the prophetic or the eschatogical things but, as complicated as things are already...let's just, let's leave the second coming and the end of the world alone fr the meantime.

As these characteristics or picture of God or idea of God are slowly assimilated in our mind, the idea then becomes too bulky and heavy and I don't think ordinary Christians even knew or bother to think about these stuffs, which, may i say, is very, very understandable.

Clearly many or most philosophers and scientists (may I add theologians who may like to play in theological arena but personally...I mean what can I say to a theologian who thinks of God as the ground of all being but that his foundations are shaken...)  could not accept such a personal being for a God. Which quite understandable because it smacks of polytheism.

Polytheism? yes, this is what I think it is. There's this two level of the understanding of God.

First is what is taught about God by the revelation of scriptures, whatever the scriptures maybe. God is presented together with his characteristics as defined by inspired revelation or the scriptures (or holy books). So, this is the superficial picture of God; the doctrines, the creeds, dogmas, etc. which gives an illusion of uniformity. I call it an illusion of uniformity because, like I said before, these theological concepts are too abstract for the common folks and that's why symbols are used to represent these concepts, but the oversimplification created by the use of symbols created more problems for the church, like the adoration of idols and icons.

The first layer, unfortunately, is superficial and may I add, resides in the cognitive faculty of the mind. This knowledge of God is what gives this idea of  unity or the idea of monotheism--that is worshiping one true God. well, this could be true at this level. 

The idea of a personal God is what gives me some discomfort because in espousing this idea that one an relate to God like relating to a father or a friend etc.somehow creates this secondary understanding of God to which most of the times is a self-ish conception of God. This has become a challenge because the unity or uniformity of God is also being diluted (or even polluted) by the diverse way in which God is being understood and related to.

So, there's this second level of grasping God and at this level, the identity of God is somewhat dissolved in the psychological...hmmm. At this level, we each have our own God--uniform at the top but diverse, different and unique at the personal level.

Of course one could argue that, like in a family, the chidlren have different idea about their father but this does not make the father different for each children. But then again...this analogy is inadequate because fathers are physical beings.

(Why o why do I even think about these things!)

Einstein, God, blah, blah...

I was oft amused whenever I see quotations supposedly made by Einstein about God with the idea or intent that Einstein believed in God, as I would supposed, the Christians conceived God to be. This is kinda weird because Einstein and other thinkers for that matter, who we may assume(d) to profess belief in God do not really believe in the personal God in the tradition of the Judeo-Christian faith.  

The man who is thoroughly convinced of of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of natural events--provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that man's action is determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, anymore than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviors should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

The main source of present day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God...

In their struggle for ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God...

The further the spiritual evolution of  mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie in the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. (Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein)

Einstein's conception of God is that of Spinoza.s God, impersonal, cool, and that everything is in God and that nature is the expression of God. So, Spinoza's conception of God is antithetical to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Cyber-libel thing

Though I’m an internet user, I am not really that interested in the newly implemented anti-cyber crime law because I consider myself a law abiding citizen with no intention of engaging in any cyber crime. I mean, I don’t do hacking, phishing, identity theft, cyber sex, etc. All I do on the net is watch video, listen to music, read and share articles, write badly about some stupid stuff, look for weird things on the net,  etc. I mean these things are harmless and no one, I imagine, would persecute me or other people like me for these things.

But then again, I was watching the news when a lawyer, who opposed the libel clause of the law, explained that even the act of liking or sharing what could be considered as libelous stuff on the internet especially on the social media is tantamount to breaking this law, being a party to the crime. Well, that caught my attention because I and most people share stuff on the net openly without really thinking about whether the stuff shared is true, relevant, nice, okay, morally aligned, politically correct, holly and blessed, etc. 

People share stuffs on the net because they maybe interesting, weird, thought provoking, stupid, gory, yucky,  insane whatever and sometimes people “like” stuff on the internet not because they like what was shared but simply because they like the person who shared and sometimes they do not even bother to view or read what they liked. What is worrying is the thought that I or anyone could be --real or hypothetical—charged with libel for sharing or liking some stuff that friends shared for whatever reasons.

Imagine the thought, even if this is just hypothetical, that I could be or anyone charged libel for writing libelous stuff like saying that Senator ______ ______ is a nincompoomp, ignorant, no good do-gooder, for putting that libel thing in the law. (See I could not even put the senator's name for fear of being charged with libel!)

This is taking the fun out of the internet. I don’t go to rallies and carry placards name calling politicians and I do not do burning of effigies (why are these people not charged with any crime, by the way? They burn things, pollute the atmosphere, cause traffic jams, use children to hold placards etc.). I and many of my countrymen and country women and the youth (the elderly) have the net to express our disgusts,  anger, frustrations,  #(&^()*(^&a***_%$, against the government, politicians, and petroleum companies etc. and  we do not burn paper, pollute the environment, or cause traffic…now internet freedom is being policed.

Of course the Department of Justice assured that what the opposers of the new law are saying would not happen that’s why the word “prima facie” was in there. DOJ can not shut down or persecute anyone without prima facie evidence (what in the world is a prima facie evidence and how could they determine it? Keywords?). Have no fear because the DOJ would not just sweep down on sites or arrest anyone for writing or posting or sharing libelous stuff, there are rules and stuff that has to be worked out.

I don’t know much about these things and I try not to think about these legal blah, blah, blah, and I do see the need for this kind of law but I would sure feel better and freer and safer if the good sneators would just scrap that libel thing because then it would really be…hmmm….hmmm…this is stupid: really be more fun surfing the net in the Philippines.

Blah…sue my neighbor.