Everyone knows what fear is — if we are normal, all have experienced it. It is the natural emotion of unpleasantness which rational people experience when they perceive danger of any kind from any source. It can be applied to individuals, groups, organizations, or nations. As an example, I suspect that everyone living in Ukraine is fearful of Russian invasion and its potential consequences. Likewise, I suspect most fans of the opposing NFL Super Bowl teams are fearful their team will lose.
The fear I want to address today is the fear which religion has of science. Knowing that all religion is founded on ignorance, superstition, mythology, astrology, imagination, and wishfulness makes any religion shudder at the prospects of scientific knowledge undermining and refuting it basic fundamental tenets. In fact, Pope John Paul II once told Stephen Hawking to not study the beginning of the universe because it was the ‘work of God’.
So, what does that tell us? It tells me that science was getting too close for comfort by scientifically discrediting the Church’s fundamental belief about creation as outlined in Genesis — Adam and Eve story —all the creation story in Genesis. That story describes an infantile insight into the size and makeup of the firmament, which in my childhood bible, was depicted as a semi-globe extending from the edges of the flat earth in all directions, with the sun, moon and stars above. It represented their imaginary God’s six days of hard work. In fact, he was so tired after all that work, he had to rest an entire day —hence, we have Sabbath.
So, with that in mind, a few examples discrediting that mythology might help.
1. In 2008, a gamma-ray burst was observed. It was a violent cosmic explosion, 7.5 billion light-years away, which is halfway across the visible universe. It could have been seen with a naked eye from the surface of the Earth. People who saw it were looking billions of years into the past with their eyes.
Here is another discrediting piece of evidence:
2. The oldest and therefore farthest known galaxy we have discovered to date is over 13.7 billion light years away. It’s called z8_GND_5296. Its light has taken so long to reach us that the star which collapsed to form the gas that particular Sun is made out of wasn’t “born” yet. Galaxies this far away from earth help astronomers understand the very early universe and how it has evolved over time. Due to the expansion of space, that distant galaxy technically wouldn’t be there anymore and would actually be “currently 13.1 Giga (13,100,000,000,000) light-years away from us.
3.Galileo was placed under house arrest by The Holy Office until his death in 1642 for defending his views about the Earth not being the center of the universe. The Vatican formally acknowledged they were wrong, and Galileo was right in 1992 — can you imagine, 350 years later. Pope John Paul 2 also grudgingly admitted the Church was wrong in burning people to death for being witches, but in so doing he attempted to ameliorate the gravity of that activity by declaring that only a paltry few hundred thousand, rather than the acclaimed millions, had been burned at the stake.
4.The largest galaxy in the observable universe is an elliptical galaxy, IC 1101. It has 100 trillion stars and is 6 million light years across. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a mere 100 billion stars and is 120,000 light years across. Can you imagine? — and light travels 186,000 miles per second through space.
5.Another astonishing observation reveals the nature of a neutron star which is the super-dense core of a collapsed supernova (megastar). It is so dense that if an object was dropped from one meter (39.37 inches) above the star’s surface, it would hit the surface at a speed of 7.2 million km per hour. One kilometer is equal to 0.62 miles. So, 0.62 x 7,200,000 means the dropped object from such a short distance would accelerate to a speed 4,464,000.00 miles per hour before hitting the surface — incredible. As a comparison, an object dropped from the outer reaches of the earth’s gravitational pull can attain a maximum speed of only about 120 mph before hitting the earth’s surface. Consider this then; it has been postulated that the big bang, roughly 13.8 billion years ago released all the energy particles in this universe from a spot no bigger than a pin head — some unimaginable density known as ‘The Singularity’. I think of it as God. Not a ‘personal God’, not a ‘whimsical God’, but rather a God of Perfect Rationality — a Rationality which cannot possibly be changed without total destruction of its own Perfect Truth System.
6.Also, there is a “one-electron universe” hypothesis which proposes that there exists a single electron in the universe that propagates through space and time in such a way that it appears in many places simultaneously. We know that there seems to be an inestimable number of electrons in the universe. In fact, each uranium atom alone has 88 electrons rotating around its nucleus. So, as Hawking proposed, there may be an inestimable number of parallel universes in existence.
As a consequence of the above astrological and cosmological observations, it should be rather obvious that those immensities could not be attributed to a God depicted as a grizzled old man sitting in the clouds somewhere above the earth, tired from his work but still willing, able, and eager to thrash us humans severely for breaking his laws.
So, with those few examples, the Church has plenty of reason to be very fearful of science (truth).
From the very beginning, the Church has proclaimed itself to be the unquestioned and unquestionable, ultimate authority in matter of faith and morals. That ‘faith’ encompasses the Genesis story, a flat earth, an earth as center of the universe, devils, witches, hell, purgatory, limbo, indulgences, and much more mythology. Eventually, attempting to shore itself up, it proclaimed the Pope to be infallible, and the Bible to be inerrant. That ‘old dog’ might have hunted once upon a time, but I believe without doubt ‘he won’t hunt anymore’.
In the Roman Catholic Church, there are liberal and conservative factions. The so-called liberals, among whom are Pope Francis and many bishops, are trending away from old, hardline theology and pseudoscience to a more adaptive understanding and acceptance of science while, simultaneously, not budging on the basic theme of Eucharist — sacrifice of the mass. The hardline conservatives seemingly would still love to live in a universe with a ‘flat earth’.
It seems to me that the liberal group have begun to realize that the Church can no longer defend its foregoing philosophy of a vengeful God who, not only allowed ‘hell, purgatory, and limbo’ to be created, but also, demanded that every human individual be functionally and emotionally attached to the overt sex into which it was born. They recognize the scientific truth that variations in sexual identity regardless of sexual tools, just as every other gravid entity in this universe, are an indisputable fact of life as observable by the bell-shaped distribution curve— not everyone is heterosexual, nor does everyone identify emotionally and sexuality with their birth sexual tools, as the hardliners would have it be. Pope Francis seemingly has condoned gay marriages and seems to be in accord with LGBTQs place in life.
As noted before, I have observed changes in the Catholic Mass consecration prayers which seem to be subtly moving away from the old Zodiac form to a more ‘modern’ form. However, it still depicts a God who is selective in his choice of adherents to him. In former days, that prayer read “from age to age, you gather a people unto yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made…..” Now it reads; “you never cease to gather a people unto yourself so that, from the rising of the sun to its setting, a pure offering may be made….”. That ‘perfect offering’ in the older version seems to be a direct holdover from Jewish ritual whereby the High Priest made a Perfect Offering to appease a vengeful God — does anyone remember Jesus running the High Priest’s money changers from the temple and overturning their tables? I do.
It should, therefore, be rather obvious that those who formed the Holy Roman Catholic Church in the first instance in 325AD, did so in direct disregard for Jesus and his dictates of love, but rather, formed a church directly patterned after the Jewish religion, with them and their successors in total control. They did, however, conveniently use a contrived version of Jesus as their purported pattern.
It has taken 1700 years, but it’s finally catching up with them — science is displacing them and their mythology. They may paint a smug air but I’ll bet you those who truly understand the ‘gravity’, of their situation are ‘trembling in their boots’.
I’m neither stupid nor dumb but I am fully aware that I and my elder Catholic brethren, who remember ‘how things used to be’, will soon be gone. Then the gradual but subtle changes in the church to bring it into a closer conformity with realistic science, will go unnoticed by the majority — the church will conveniently sweep its dirt under the carpet, pretending as though it never happened, and very few will ever notice. That exact process has been going on already for centuries —it’s their only way out.
The next time you have an opportunity, ask your priest or minister; “exactly why did the Jewish hierarchy want Jesus dead? What was he preaching that precipitated such disdain for him?” I doubt many direct meaningful answers will be forthcoming. The bibles that we have now have been altered so much as to make that reason obscure. If the bible did tell us directly, there would be no need for any priests or preachers in their present capacity. We must ‘read between the lines’ to discern that truth. Certainly, if any one of them did know, it is very likely it would not be divulged to us — there’s a very specific reason for that. If they did tell us truthfully, they would negate any need and purpose for their existence in their present capacity.
What Jesus was preaching was in direct opposition to the Jewish sacrificial religion and their hierarchy saw it as a direct effort to undermine their livelihood. They were making a fortune feigning appeasement of a wrathful, vengeful, but merciful God while Jesus was teaching about an all-loving God who rejected no one. Jesus reportedly told us that our only duty was to Love (accept) God, and love (accept) our neighbor as ourselves.
The Jewish hierarchy incited the crowd to proclaim Jesus a traitor deserving of crucifixion. He knew they would, but he was determined that his people would know the one, true, all-loving God. Just as important, he wanted them liberated from the terrible persecuting blanket of guilt imposed on them originally by Moses, but perpetuated by the hierarchy, all for power, control, and money. To this day, I have been unable to discern much real improvement. Oh, we no longer have people being burned to death as witches, or for denying the earth is flat. But we still have a God who is wrathful but merciful, rather than a God who is all-loving and accepting.
As suggested in my little book, Wilderness Cry, If the church does not rapidly convert it basic tenets to coincide with known and accepted science, its ‘days are numbered. The church must heed my call for The Worldwide Communion Spirituality so people may become like-minded about a singular concept of God’s essence and the reality of his attributes. Then, and only then, can fear be eliminated from the Church, and peace and joy can prevail.
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WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 