vol 7: Notes
1999
Sunday 11 July 1999
Site map
Directory
Search this site
Home
1: About
2: Synopsis
3: Development
Next:
Previous: Notes 1999: Toc
... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Notes
[Sunday 11 July 1999 - Saturday 17 July 1999]
[Notebook MA, DB 51]
Sunday 11 July 1999
Monday 12 July 1999
Tuesday 13 July 1999
Wednesday 14 July 1999
Thursday 15 July 1999
Friday 16 July 1999
[page 163]
Saturday 17 July 1999
. . .
[page 164]
I am intensely conscious of the immense mass of the Church, so immense that it has acted rather like a classical black hole in the universe, taking in everything within its field and giving nothing out. But now I feel that I can move it. NO. Not academic. Instead I feel that it is moving.
. . .
Since I left the Church I have been a builder, trade that often involved the movement and placement of objects that are too heavy to lift by hand in places that cannot be reached form the ground. In such situations, the answer is some combination of temporary structure and lifting machinery. The energy source for the lifting machinery will be an engine, physical or biological.
I can now envision the structure necessary to set the Roman Catholic Church on a new course, and it is the purpose of this [project]to outline both the change of state proposed
[page 165]
and a scheme for bringing it about.
I document the change of course through my own experience. To change the course of the church is simply to change the course of a set of individuals within the church. At present the cardinal number of the set is one. To increase it, I must communicate my change of course to you. What Christians might call witness.
My starting point is the Dominican Order and the writings of Aristotle and Thomas of Aquino.
Witnesses are expected to restrain themselves to recounting their own definite experience and to avoid hearsay. The gossip channel is to be shut down.
Christianity is founded in the Bible, and believes that the Bible is a credible record of the intervention of god in the affairs of people.
[page 166]
When we begin to look at the Bible through the eyes of modern scholarship, the foundations of this belief are tested and sometimes found wanting. In particular, in my youth, I acquired the conviction that Jesus really did die on the cross as a result of his respiratory and circulatory systems [being disabled]. That his mangled body was really buried and a few days later came alive again, healed except for the wound that Thomas experienced.
. . .
Ecumenism is a subset of Ecclesiology.
Ecclesiology is in effect a theory of management: how to get a group of people to work together for a goal,
Essay: [topic 9] 'Critically outline a pneumatology of church for a united christian church. Show how this theology will be acceptable to a number of denominations . [ie symmetry arguments].
[page 167]
. . .
Each action is a reflection or transform and we look for thins that are not altered by the transform and call these symmetry.
SYMMETRY ==> SAMENESS + DIFFERENCE
. . .
Why Christianity must change or die. Spong Spong
[page 168]
NO Why Christianity must die and change.
CHURCH = INTERWITNESSING = HONEST WITH ONE ANOTHER GROUP
CHURCH = COOPERATION = EMBODIMENT
Church is [a] corporation subject to written and unwritten contracts between the members eg support of pastors and teachers, acquisition of spatial structure, etc etc,
Christology is fundamentally an epistemological question. What was / is / will be Jesus? Like other scientific questions, the search for the answer is a matter of putting up models and fitting them (or failing to fit them) to the evidence.
. . .
[page 169]
Text as a differential equation, constraining but not constricting the meaning, allowing, often for a virtual infinity of solution.
. . .
Ecclesiology
Every corporation is the embodiment of a plan to modify the environment in some way.
. . .
Inherent in almost all christian conceptions is the idea of exiles / outcasts / etc. I felt very strongly my expulsion from the Dominican Order. After a year or two in mourning, I went on with
[page 170]
my life
NATURE vs NURTURE
We have a common nature. Religion is a matter of nurture, that is of environment. Let us consider our physical being to be that specified by our genetic code studied by the more molecular end of biology.
. . .
VISIBLE UNION / INVISIBLE
The spirit moves: the building moves must all be precise, adequate and connected. At every point both the force and the control necessary for a safe and effective move must be present. It is not suitable to have a step in the protocol and then what? We explode the bolts, hit the starter and pray. This sounds altogether too gung
[page 171]
ho for a builder.
The fundamental structural secret is that thee are a large number of ways of realizing a given structure, and these can be sorted by the amount of resources each structure takes to realize.
A I KHINCHIN Mathematical foundations of quantum statistics Dover Khinchin
People of God P = {p}, as a corporate whole, rather similar to the mystical body of Christ.
We can name each person pi , i is a natural number N. Although the natural numbers are ordered, people are not ordered. To avoid any chance of low numbers lording it over high numbers etc etc, we instead represent people by complex numbers z such that |z | = 1. People are then imagined as distinct points in the unit circle in the complex plane. Rotational symmetry. Permutation of points.
[page 172]
CONTROL = MASTERY
. . .
Trying to dissect the christian message out of the multitude of particular encodings (faiths, sects, cultures, churches, etc etc)
Similar to dissecting the Christian message out of Judaism.
SPIRIT = INVISIBLE FORCE
Books
| Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants"--a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.' Amazon back |
| Khinchin, A Y, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics ... may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability' Amazon back |
| Pauly, Daniel, and Darwin's Fishes: An Encyclopaedia of Ichthyology, Ecology and Evolution, Darwin's Fishes: An Encyclopaedia of Ichthyology, Ecology and Evolution, Cambridge University Press 2004 Amazon Book Description: 'Presenting everything Charles Darwin ever wrote about fishes and many more topics, the entries in this encyclopedia are arranged alphabetically and extracted from Darwin's books, short publications, notebooks and correspondence. Readers can start wherever they like and are then led by a series of cross-references directly or indirectly to Darwin's original writings. The material is interpreted in the context of Darwin's time as well as of contemporary biology.' Amazon back |
| Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosoph, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon & Schuster 1945 Amazon ditorial reviews: Ray Monk: 'A History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell...writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context... The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written.' Amazon back |
| Spong, John Shelby, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile., HarperCollinsPublishers 1998 Jacket: 'Spong demolishes the stifling dogma of traditional Christianity in search of the inner core of truth. It is a courageous, passionate attempt to build a credible theology for a skeptical, scientific age.' Paul Davies. Amazon back |
Click on an "Amazon" link in the booklist at the foot of the page to buy the book, see more details or search for similar items
Related sites:
Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty
