Hands on a Hard Body
Yes, it does seem that the disclosure and salvation game has devolved into an endurance contest being played out at OMF.
If that is the case, then I'm showing less signs of fatigue than the others, at this juncture.
It has been a learning process for me, in upholding the BPWH in discussions with Biblical conservatives. I am even encouraged by the progress in understanding the ins and outs of that PoV. I continue to be more hopeful that progress on this front can supplant additional disclosures by the insiders. A continuing low level of phenomena and insider rumors ought to be sufficient to move forward on the religious issues. If this is possible, it would be the optimal course.
The discussion at OM is unique on the web, and long overdue. Why has it not occurred before now? It is an 'accident' of history, relating back to the Cartesian dichotomy, that religion has been ruled out of bounds in polite and intellectual discourse. Of late there have been some exceptions, mainly as a reaction to the Intelligent Design initiative being carried out in the schools. Christopher Hitchens is a case in point.
There are a number of 'progressive' Christian sites, but I don't see signs of an active dialog with the conservatives, and particularly not on issues related to eschatology. The progressives do not contest the massive conservative dominance in that arena. On the side of progressive eschatology, the BPWH is a lone witness.
Nibiru @OMF points us to: veryelect.shtml.
This one idea ought to clinch the argument for: Great Deception >> Falling Away << Scientific Materialism. This, in turn, would clinch the argument for the BPWH.
There is a mystery, however. Why am I the only one to be making a cosmic/biblical case for the above connections?
Surely the growing ID movement ought to be making these same Biblical/historical connections. But they have not, to date. Not as far as I can tell. How could they, without coming up with the whole BPWH enchilada?
Point of fact is that there is no plausible scenario for a personal AC. If there were, I would be as good a candidate as any proposed so far. How do we explain this to the literalists? It need not be that difficult a job. There is just a lot of social inertia to overcome, but there will be help, when and where it is truly needed. But what is the rush, now that Mahmoud has relented on his nuke surprise? We have as much time as we need to do this right.
ScaRZ @OM responds:
The very elect in my opinion are those who have been sealed by God. They will be protected from the great flood of deception that comes from the mouth of Satan. The whole world will swallow up that flood of deception, hook, line and sinker.
The very elect will have in place the full armor of God. They will know that the first bridegroom who came is a false bridegroom.This is the sink or swim issue for the BPWH.
I have read the above linked page: Can 'The Very Elect' Be Deceived? Here is the Biblical passage in question:
Matthew 24:24, "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."
The author points out that:
Notice, the words "it were" are in italics designating that these words ARE NOT IN THE ORIGINAL scriptures, and for our more perfect understanding we should eliminate those words.
Besides John 16, no other biblical passage has 'til now garnered such scrutiny from me. What is at stake here is the SoT vs. the aX.
There are also references to a 'falling away': 2 Thess. 2:
3: Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
This is the key passage in the Bible, besides John 16, dealing with SoT vs. the aX.
Notice, first off, that 'man' and 'son' are not capitalized. The reference here should thus be taken as generic. Yet, this is the closest encounter with the concept of an aX, outside of Revelation. The other references are all to the 'many' false Christs and prophets.
I am reading the Wiki entry on the 'man of sin'.
Consider 2 Thess. 2:
4Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
5Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
6And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
7For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
I submit that the balance of the biblical evidence favors an impersonal interpretation of the aX.
In Revelation there is mention of a Beast and a Harlot. These hardly seem to refer to personal historical figures.
The more I look at the biblical references relative to the anti-christ, the less support I find for a singular historical figure matching that description. The closest such comes from the commonly held interpretation expressed by Dwight Pentecost as quoted in the Wiki article. I have not seen a plausible modern-day scenario for this interpretation. Examples of such come from LaHaye and Lindsey who suggest the Secretary-General of the UN and the head of the European Union, respectively.
On the contrary, there is general agreement that modern secularism has given rise the greatest apostasy in history. Why then do so few biblical commentators make a connection between the rise of Secularism and the aX? A few who come close may be found by searching Amazon under secularism & antichrist, but I find no notable examples.
Secularism is old news. Preachers of the end-times need drama to entertain their flocks. It is surprising that such a superficial and implausible plot could capture the attention of so many. It is less surprising that the author of Revelations would wish to personify the devil. It fit the mindset of those being persecuted by Rome. The fact that even Hollywood has been able to do so little with this popular plot is a good indication of its unworkability.
In contrast, apocalypticism has never been more popular in Hollywood. But I cannot recall any such movies that feature anything resembling an aX, let alone a plausible one.
In modern times, the primary reason for the popularity of the aX is that it relieves (conservative) xians of any proactive social responsibility. It allows them to remain in a defensive posture, even while pursuing an aggressively reactionary political agenda. That this agenda should conform so remarkably to the agenda of the PtB can hardly be entirely fortuitous.
There is no thought here of reformation. There is no point of reform with Armageddon just around the corner. It is a perfect excuse for political negativity and social apathy.
But I don't believe this is the whole story. There is a deeper agenda here. Is the hidden-hand hard at work to deflect attention from what would otherwise be so obvious?
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X'ianity, amongst all traditions, has had a special connection with the eschaton.
How so? Why so?
Deism provides a special connection with the Alpha. Theism also provides a special connection with the Omega. This is true particularly for Judaism and X'ianity. Let's consider them individually.
Judaism has the God of history and the messiah. Why the chosen people?
How better for God to manifest in history? There must be a vehicle. There must be an historical Omega to match the Alpha. But what is to be accomplished with history?
Is it even the case that we have a need to know the answers to any of these questions?
History is a story. What is a story if there is not a challenge and a resolution? At the least there is a separation and a reconciliation. What is a reconciliation that does not entail a mutual understanding? What is a story that does not provide insight?
The concept of the messiah, alone, does not provide all of this. It provides a simple justification through a political or military victory. Might makes right. What lesson there?
These questions need not be so hard to answer. The hard part is asking them. I truly wonder if these terribly obvious questions have ever been asked before, in any systematic fashion. I am skeptical that anyone has. It comes back to the question of WWJD/WWGD. Yes, this question can be seen on any number of bumper stickers. But it seems only to be taken personally. There are progressive Xians who would apply it politically. But no one has been inclined to raise it to a metaphysical level. The Anthropic Principle is required to start this ball rolling. Only thus can there be a sufficiently high level of seriousness and confidence.
But there is more. Besides needing the very impersonal physics background, one has to be able to take the metaphysical question personally. In my case, this would not have been possible without Sophia, and perhaps not without Ron, as well. This does narrow the field considerably, and also specifies a time window. Add to this the necessary independent means, and it is surprising that anyone fit at all.
So here we are, asking the terribly obvious questions that everyone else forgot to ask.
And where were we? What is the point of Judaism, other than to demonstrate God's power? Israel was God's Trophy Tribe.
Where does that leave the J-man? The jilted suitor? If the Xians are not to be left standing foolishly at the altar, then we must suppose that God was looking for something more than a trophy tribe.
Great. But did Jesus have to be a Jew? There's the rub. There are pros and cons, but perhaps so, if he was to be taken seriously enough to get crucified. And from where else could the messianic part of his story derive?
Clearly, also, Rome proved to be quite a convenient conveyance for the message, so why could Israel not have gone the way of Rome?
It has to do with reconciliation and covenants. Xians recognize that, belatedly. Muslims have not yet. We know about unfinished business. They don't.....not yet.
Israel is a witness to God's unfinished business. Israel is a witness to the necessary finality of history, in a singular fashion. Xians borrow from that, but on no uncertain terms. Between us, we see how God has to connect the two biggest dots in history. Then come the Moslems, then the pantheists. Yes, there is a logical historical sequence, keeping in mind that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
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Why these separate conveyances and covenants? Why this historical compartmentalization?
But what is the alternative? Homogeneity? Is it simply a matter of historical aesthetics, or is there an underlying ontological necessity?
As a first approximation to an answer, the historical separations are likely an extension of the ontogenetic separation of Creator and Creation.
Yes, there was, of course, a primordial communication problem that only now, with the Internet, can be transcended. But we are talking here about more than just logistics.
There was a lot to learn in a short time, so the pedagogical problems had to be divvied up. We were multi-tasking, parallel processing throughout history until the end.......until the Internet. It is that simple. Everything in its time and place. Minimize the redundancy; maximize the organicity.
This historical logistic should also provide a lesson in cosmology. Organicity is the name of the history game. How can the Gaian eco-historico-logistic be applied to the cosmos?
So as not to belabor the point, it obviously cannot, without stretching the organicity to the breaking point. What's a cosmologist to do?
The choice is simple: think up a new religion, or think up a new cosmology. Given that choice, is it small wonder that the cosmologists turn to pantheism. Historicism is irrevocably parochial in the sense of being geocentric. The Transhumanists do make a stab at projecting history onto the cosmos, but the failure of that exercise should be instructive.
So history and cosmology don't really mix. We can't reinvent history, but maybe we can reinvent cosmology. That does seem like a tall order, especially in the space age.
But wait, who is afraid of NASA? Must we place one piddling Agency above all of history? I don't think so. They can barely keep one space-station aloft, and we are supposed to concede to them our hearts and minds.....the hopes and fears of all our years?
The cosmological question, which is the heart and soul of the BPWH, comes down to the question of the provenance and agenda of the Visitors, if there be such.
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What if there are no visitors? Right there you have killed the possibility of a transhumanist solution to the history problem.
To paraphrase Fermi, Where the heck are they? If they have not managed to get here, after millions and possibly even billions of years, what is the chance of our ever getting there?
But set aside the travel problem, and just consider a SETI-style Contact. We're talking cosmic Internet. Sending photons should be a lot easier than sending rocket ships. But nada.......nary one measly photon have we been able to detect, despite some seriously concerted efforts.
Even a medium bandwidth cosmic Internet would not be practical without an unprecedented breakthrough in Physics, involving the supra-luminal propagation of signals. This one change would make a shambles of physics as we know it. Fringe physicists like Jack Sarfatti have been playing with such ideas for decades, without being able to make any inroads amongst their colleagues, or even to suggest how such signals might be detected.
What the layperson fails to understand, and what the fringe physicists fail to explain is that Physics is not open to being hacked into, like some computer system. It is a self-contained, closed system, and we are an integral part of it; we not a deus ex machina, as is the hacker, relatively speaking. The more we learn about the system, the more obviously is it tamper-proof. You cannot tweak one part of the system without having everything else be effected. The Anthropic Principle shows how everything has to be tuned just right, or the whole system will self-destruct, starting with us, the observers.
In the early days of radar, there was a game amongst the maintenance crews to see who could remove the most vacuum tubes, and still have the contraption work. The Anthropic Principle tells us that this game is not possible with theoretical physics.
If there is going to be a paradigm-shift at all, it will have to stand the whole system on its head. And this is just what the BPWH proposes.
According to the BPWH, we are more closely aligned with the Deus ex machina than we are with the machine itself. God is the source of reality, and especially of us creatures. The rest of Creation is epiphenomenal relative to us who are God's co-creators. That is all that it takes to make sense of the world, just allow us humans to be a little bit closer to the Creator, as if we were her proxies. The result of that shift is to shed a whole new light on the nature of reality. Mind over matter becomes the order of the world. All sentient beings have this potential, but only we have the freedom to exercise it to its full and intended conclusion.
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As long as we are going to have to bust a paradigm in order to make sense of the world, and explain our peculiar status wrt it, we might as well do it correctly and decisively the first time, and not exacerbate the pain and confusion by prolonging the process with mere palliatives such as adding more epicycles to an already overburdened system.
'Murnut', a colleague from OM, attended the recent Bud Hopkins' Intruder event in NYC. Speaking there was Leslie Kean, one of the organizers of last month's UFO press conference at the NPC in DC. Ivo is asking us to consider the question posed by Leslie:
"Assuming the US Gov't agrees that some type of study needs to be done of the UFO phenomena....what agency should do the investigation?"
To be perfectly frank, this question strikes me as more than just a bit silly and ill-posed.
First off, name one credible investigation that was not publicly supported by either the President or a Congressional committee. To the best of my knowledge, it is a null list. A possibly exception might be a GAO investigation, but they are not a likely candidate for this topic.
IMHO, the Larry King/NPC show, far from being an initial push, was a last hurrah. It was a damnation with faint media praise. It was a deliberate misdirection into a political dead-end. It was a belated reaction to the last couple of years increase in public interest internationally in things ufological. Of course, Leslie would not be aware of this unless she was paying very close attention and filling-in between the lines. Someone, with Ron's approval has tossed us a bone to play with. There just isn't any meat on this bone, in case you didn't notice.
At best, this errand into the governmental wilderness is a place holder for something substantial. The only new thing that ufology has going for it is the Internet. This is our power base right here. Pointing us back toward some kind of governmental action is a regression to what has been amply proven to fail. Why beat this dead horse, when we are already sitting on a perfectly healthy one?
What is new, in the last couple of years since Serpo, is the ufo forum, of which OMF appears to be the state of the art. There has not been anything like this since the pre-Internet UFO Forum on CompuServe, on which I also participated back in 91-93. Between '94 and '06 everyone and their cousin was setting their personal websites. There was a push for content, at the expense of discussion, until Serpo came along.
Reverting from this new departure back to some creaky governmental bureaucracy is just a non-starter. That such a move would be seriously considered can only be seen as an act of desperation, a desperation born of lack of other news.
And here I am, telling Ron and the visitors to stay cool. Mama don't 'low too much pot-stirring at this juncture. I am not suggesting that ufologists should roll over and play dead. I am suggesting that they need to set aside their shiny toys, and get back to basics.
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This ufological juncture, IMO, is a critical component of our much larger historical juncture. We wont be able to make sense of the individual trees, if we have no sense of the forest, or bigger historical context, in which they are all situated.
In such situations there are ever only two schools of thought:
- Keep on trucking, muddling along..............
- Get out the monkey wrench and roll up our sleeves...........
Yes, every one agrees that events are accelerating, but why..........
- Is it just a technological push, or
- Is there also something pulling us forward?
There's no doubt that we are accelerating, but toward what end....
- the edge of a precipice?
- a new dawning?
Here's the nub of it......
- Leslie & Co. run around in the same old circles, berating us to just keep muddling along. Just keep pulling those oars, mates!
- Dan (& ?) sees an unprecedented opportunity to think big thoughts. Nay. Think the one Big Thought.
The naysayers are many. The horses refuse to leave the burning barn. The lobster refuses to leave the boiling pot. They can see no alternative, and they sure don't want anyone else to look for one, either.
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We have come to an historically unprecedented intellectual, spiritual and political grid-lock. Someone, something has to break this logjam, or the whole darn mess is headed right over the briny brink into the drink.
Humanity has just one thing going for it: the Internet. Whatever solution is out there, the Internet will be an essential component.
Granted that, so far, the Internet has been generating more noise than light. It is a postmodern version of the tower of Babel. But there are hopeful signs, and foremost amongst these is the Wikipedia. Its drawback is that it is merely an encyclopedia. In its heyday, the Britannica was to be a compendium/thesaurus of wisdom and knowledge. But on the way to that Utopia, knowledge became Balkanized by Academia, which based itself on the Henry Ford model of efficiency: breaking every field of knowledge into a subset of mindless components. Quine demonstrated the futility of any such analytic strategy that was not geared simply to mass production.
So how do we get from a mindless analysis to a mind-full synthesis?
There is only one way that has ever worked: cherchez la visionaire. Cherchez Sophia.
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Whither Sophia? Are we looking for a needle in the haystack/internet?
Sure, there is Google. Having spent most of my life studying the history of ideas, I know pretty much how ideas can get linked together, and it is not difficult to determine the essential set of old ideas that any new idea will have to address. And, yes, I own the domain name of the one, absolutely essential idea. If someone is not entirely clueless about the history of ideas, they could sooner find the BPW website than they could roll off a log. If they are clueless about that history, they have no business in the visionary business.
But web pages are not going to solve any problems. Only people do that, and only people working in concert.
If an idea is sufficiently radical, folks will shy away, maybe after kicking a tire or two. A radical idea goes nowhere without an armed escort; that is a group, however small, that is willing to stand up and fight for it.
Where to find such ones?
Where else than ufology? And here's why..........
Ufology comprises an international, self-selected group of individuals who are in the market for something earthshaking, and they are open to any number of possibilities. Yes, there is a strong bias toward the Nuts&Bolts mindset, but even there they are mindful that the critters will surely have earthshaking ideas. All I would have to do is pass myself off as a critter! But that need not be such a stretch, when you think about it.
And nothing else comes close, IMHO. And there aren't many fully functioning ufo forums. They are easy to find.....hard to miss.
And in the Greater Scheme, is it not probably the case that this audience has been established by the Phenomenon itself, for a good reason? And what better reason?
So, no, no point in wasting our time looking for bold strokes from some stuffy committee room inside the Beltway. What better fulcrum for moving the world than the ufo Internet arena? I'm sure open to suggestions on this front, but I'll be surprised if proven wrong. I'm doubting that my 15 years with the aviary/aquarium was entirely fortuitous.
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What has developed during my few months at OM is a realization that the not insignificant Xian presence within ufology could expedite the consideration of the metaphysical aspect of the phenomenon. Jake has been the main one opposing my attempt to do so, but in the process he has educated me on the in and outs of the various xian interpretations of the visitor presence. I now have a better idea of how to proceed on that front.
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Ufology is the loose cannon on the deck of our storm tossed ship. Most everything else has been battened down in its most protected/conservative position.
So we have ufology + the Internet to contend with. One is the wild card, the other is the ace in the hole.
Even a definite negative result from both ufology and SETI would be an earthshaking outcome. It would spell the doom for our blue-sky/transhumanist dreams. It would leave us twisting in a very chill cosmological wind. This, however, is the least likely of the outcomes, with a probability approaching zero, on any reasonable estimate. How so?
Ask almost anyone, besides the remnant handful of die-hard materialists, who are the professional debunkers of all things religious and paranormal. Then consider the overwhelming evidence. Next consider the intractability of the mind-body problem. Consider the Anthropic Principle......., and the list goes on. To say that materialism is in retreat is a gross understatement of its dire straights. That ufologists cling to the hope of selling a nuts&bolts version of ufos to the rapidly dying mindset that is materialism, is an historical irony of the first water.
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The Internet, for all its tower of Babel cacophony, is creating a vacuum. It is creating a vacuum of coherence. Yes, we have heard of the knowledge explosion, but we haven't seen anything until we have seen the knowledge implosion. Is it inevitable? What goes up, must come down? Or is it just one darned thing after another? Physics, math and biology are separate examples of coherence. From whence did they come? Art provides its own, widely ranging examples of coherence. What is aesthetics or ethics without coherence?
From whence came this coherence? Is it subjective? Is it intersubjective? Is it objective?
Certainly coherence emerges. Does it emerge spontaneously, or does it bespeak of either a Source or a Telos? The Anthropic Principle is the definitive example, and it points to both an Alpha and an Omega. It points to a Logos. Coherence does not come from nothing. It bespeaks of a cosmic Potentia, a vital force. That human history is an outworking of that force seems beyond question, unless you happen to be a professional debunker/nihilist. The Force has been with us for Aeons. Has it and we come to the end of our rope?
Yes and no!
It's been swell, folks, but it is time to move on, and there are not too many options before us.
We can annihilate, or......we can experience Apokatastasis. On first blush, there might not be so much difference, but, in the end, who will forego redemption? Jesus was crucified for our redemption. You might wish to think twice before spitting in the face of the most influential person who ever lived. But that is just my suggestion.
Before the sky falls on our heads, there will be the knowledge implosion. This is simply due to the fact that the world is more like a great thought than a great machine. This is theism vs. deism. It would be nolo contendere, were it not for the vagaries of history. God is best seen in those vagaries.
Like any great masterpiece, it has a singular existence in the mind of the beholder. Hum a few bars, and the whole of Beethoven's Fifth will fill the mind of the connoisseur. It is the holographic principle at work.
12/26
The basic and practical issue before us, still, is the ET vs. UT identity of the visitors. The BPWH is up against the standard assumption that the ETs are physical and the UTs are not. In the Bible there are three general types of entities: angels, demons and fallen angels or sons of God. The demons are almost always discarnate and without physical trace. Angels have the power to shape-shift into seemingly physical form. The sons of God (Elohim) are are mainly from the time of Genesis. They had offspring with the human females.
Ufologists generally suppose that the fallen angels or sons of God refer to ETs. According to the BPWH, humans are fallen angels. In Christianity, generally, we are the fallen children of God.
According to the BPWH there is just one order of being, with degrees of physical and non-physical attributes.
Christians tend to distinguish between spiritual and physical beings, in accord with their dualist metaphysic.
Xian oriented ufologists are thus inclined to minimize the modern presence of UTs/angels, in favor of ETs. There is also a distinction to be made between evolved vs. devolved beings, with humans on that border.
With the BPWH, all beings are devolved, with the possible exception of God who might be partially evolved.
Then there is the issue of ETs vs. humans, This is where Jake and I have had considerable discussion. ETs, evidently, are allowed to wander the stars at will, using their own technology. We will be allowed to wander only after being saved, and after receiving glorified bodies. Our technology will be derived from ETs, but may be adjusted to our special bodies. The ETs technology allows them to perform all feats alleged to be performed by angels. Will the ETs still need to reproduce biologically? Only as a possible option, one might suppose.
Or not? Would we not be given angelic powers at the same time we receive glorified bodies. Why can the ETs not provide themselves with glorified bodies? What is the ultimate difference between the saved and unsaved? Not all ETs need to be saved.
Jake became quite exercised about my denial of ETs, supposing that I was denying the existence of physical visitors.
According to the BPWH, we are the most fallen of the ensouled beings. But that fallen state will serve as our springboard to a special grace.
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A key point of the BPWH is that the existence of ETs, as opposed to UTs, virtually precludes an xian Soteriology. And it would create enormous difficulties for the Jewish understanding of the God of History, an essential ingredient of the Gospel.
There may not be enough xian ufologists to turn the tide against the Nuts&Bolts crowd. The N&Bers want to distinguish themselves from the Angels&Demons crowd.
It does appear that Ron has been replaced by Jesus, in the Aquarium. Naturally, many xians will be upset by this substitution, but I must say that Ron has been most gracious: nary a complaint.
That this might be the case, barely registered with me until a few weeks ago. An interesting swap.
Part of the inspiration does come from watching this debate:
From The King's College in New York, Dinesh D'Souza, author of "What's So Great About Christianity," and Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great," debate the question Is Christianity the Problem?
Dinesh won, even with his hands tied. He used the anthropic principle and Hume. But mainly he won just by being nice in the face of Hitchens' over-the-top critiques. The sum of his arguments in the 90 min. debate could barely hold a candle to the BPWH. But there is a big difference in that the paranormal was mentioned only obliquely, via Hume.
The BPWH focuses on the Fermi Paradox: where are they? There is a great, yet to be revealed, irony behind this paradox. Enrico, and most of the top Manhattanites, almost certainly knew that SOMETHING was here. They knew, for sure, that they were the primary provocation for this latter-day advent of the Visitors. That he would have his name so prominently associated with its apparent negation, makes him the first public proponent of the UTH over the ETH. Did this make him and his colleagues closet xians? Quite possibly.
But now the focus is back on Jesus. Yes, this is about the Second Coming. Why? Because Jesus, of all our historical figures, has the most to gain or lose wrt the Fermi 'Paradox'.
Jake, @ OM, has made the best possible case for putting an xian spin on the ETH. But is falls way short of compensating for the enormous, nay, fatal problems raised by the ETH for X'ianity.
Taking Jesus from the literalists should be as easy as taking candy from a baby. I have made it look difficult, because I wasn't really trying. No one has tried, and therein lies another historical paradox.
The simple fact is that X'ianity makes far bigger ('negative'!) cosmological claims, relative to science, than any other tradition. And so it has been the most severely impacted by the rise of scientific cosmology. Jake's xian version of cosmology continues the capitulation of X'ianity to science, precipitated mainly by Darwin. As materialism has seemed to conquer the objective world, liberal xians have responded by subjecitivising Jesus and his message.
The only political response has come from the literalists. Their primary targets have been abortion and evolution.
The BPWH reverses this history, in the only way possible, by focusing on the fundamentals. And what are they? The fundamentals of any belief system are its basic or foundational ideas. The literalists have, however, taken the Bible as their foundation. This is just the Back to the Bible movement that figured in the rise of Protestantism. It is just the renaissance of this biblicism or bibliolatry that has figured in the 'fundamentalist' revival of the latter half of the last century.
Literalism in the 16th century was a belated response to Papalism. Literalism in the 20th century was a belated response to Scientism.
In each of those historic periods, there was the weak sister: pietism first, charismatics lately. The first was a quietism, the second is its nominal opposite, particularly the speaking in 'tongues'.
It is the role of the BPWH to give voice to the quietism and to those tongues. Provide the Truth that they dare not speak outright.
Every spiritual tradition has its mystics and its charismatics. They provide the spiritual lifeblood. It is only thus that the Charism is not routinized to its death. It is the terrible irony that the suicide bomber is the lifeblood of latter-day Islam. We have the blood of Jesus, we don't need no suicide bombers.
Nowhere is the Charism more powerful or more central than in Christianity. It is this brute fact that no amount of bibliolatry can subvert.
Reason has always been taken as the enemy of Charism. But that is not to reckon with Sophia. That is to ignore the Spirit of Truth:
"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you."
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If you wish to know the truth of Jesus, you must follow the blood of the martyrs, including that of the heretics. It is their blood that most clearly distinguishes the Charism of Christ. Blood is thicker than words. It is the task of the BPWH to turn that blood into water, if you will. Thus the universal baptism in the Truth.
It is the strange irony of history that all of this will hinge on the Fermi 'Paradox'.
In effect, the future of humanity is being held hostage jointly to the liberation of Jesus and to the disclosure of the Visitors. Why this peculiar three-way linkage?
To understand the linkage at the end, we have to understand it at the beginning. Creation is the history of the Logos. The Logos is the Alpha and the Omega. That is the ultimate Link here.
Our cosmic Visitors show up only at the beginning of the story, and then again at the end. They act as our midwives/facilitators in both instances. Think of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Jesus' own life is a microcosm of the cosmic story. His final tribulation was to expiate ours, despite what the literalists may make of John's Apocalypse. Expiation was the point of his life. To suppose otherwise is to render it meaningless. In two thousand years, there has been enough tribulation to go around. We needn't ask for more.
The solution to Fermi's Paradox is that the cosmos is Christocentric, and so anthropo-geocentric. What a strange and disturbing message for the then very select audience of those latter-day Prometheans. Yes, indeed, What hath God wrought?
This is just the UTH over the ETH. That is the disturbing message of the BPWH.
And who will believe it? Christian ufologists are few and far between. They should have enough problems without the BPWH. Half of them probably already belong to OMF.
12/28
Can anyone think of a better way to proceed? How better than with xian ufologists? What other intervention might better expedite their attending to and understanding of the BPWH? Any such would be turned into a circus by the other ufologists.
If any insider were to intervene on behalf of the BPWH, they would be set upon by the others. If it were any other reputable person, their reputation would quickly be targeted.
But then we have to explain why God would apparently go to such lengths to disguise the geocentric nature of the cosmos.
The best answer is that the cover is generated mainly through us in a teleological fashion. It is a minimal filling-in of an otherwise blank sky. How else would we have it?
What other explanation for the phenomenon and the treatment of it by the PtB?
If even just a few people cannot handle the disturbing message, what else can we do?
And here is my posting to OM:
If the BPWH is substantially correct, then I would recommend a strict adherence to the Prime Directive: a minimum of intervention in the dissemination of the ‘disturbing’ message.
This message is directed first to the Christian ufologists. Until someone of them can give it serious consideration, then there should be no further steps taken toward disclosure.
My efforts here constitute a sufficient test of our readiness for disclosure.Next we consider the cost and benefits of a strict adherence.
A minimal intervention would be to guide a suitable recipient to the message, rather than just leave it to a 'chance' encounter. That such has not already occurred is evidence against the BPWH. However, it may be that the negative reaction needed to be elicited first. Apparently, having accomplished that preliminary task, the clock is just starting. That is where we are now. Each additional day of silence argues against the hypothesis, unless an explanation for the additional delay is forthcoming.
I don't know what might be a plausible rationale for a planned hold, at this critical juncture. Perhaps there is a cosmic neutrality. Mine is the only finger to be lifted. It could simply be that the cost/benefit of a continued business as usual remains positive. But then why this token effort? Just to keep the cosmic option open? To demonstrate a good faith effort relative to the truth, on the part of all the interested parties?
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How can we be proxies for the timing of the eschaton, if we don't know exactly what is entailed thereby? There would likely be others who would know more, but we are the only ones who can deliberate in public. No one can say that the Truth was not proffered in plain sight. Being too lazy to look even in as obvious a place as this, does not argue for our readiness for the eschaton.
The Christians have the most at stake (sic!) wrt disclosure. We have the most to gain or lose depending on whether the ETH or the UTH proves out. That is one reason why the US is the designated discloser. The other reason is that we are the global power broker. The further point is that these two facts are probably not unrelated. As long as we refrain from overplaying our hand, as we are sometimes wont to do, the other nations and faiths are willing to accede to this cosmic arrangement.
The BPWH is the potential proof of that pudding. It is also the pie in which no extraneous fingers are allowed.
The scriptural literalists at OM have provided a valuable lesson for all of us in the finer points of apologetics. Relative to the BPWH, they have helped to hone the arguments for elevating the Word over the words. It is an obvious case of not seeing the forest for the trees. For all their noise about the words, the rest of us may more clearly distinguish the Word. Nothing is wasted in this sausage factory down here.
I do anticipate that, as the wrath of the literalists is further quenched, there will slowly emerge more moderate and measured voices. The Internet is like a flood plain after a recent rain. The water will eventually find the shortest path to the sea. That this path runs through the BPWH or its cousin, is nearly a foregone conclusion. There is no greater point of coherence on the vast horizon of this plain, a plain that may be so easily reconnoitered.
So, no, we can't hurry love. Love don't come easy. It's a game of give and take...........
That there is a cover for this exercise in agape is assured. That its core can only be a Christian conspiracy is beyond doubt. They are sworn to neither interfere nor permit interference in this incubation of the truth. They only have hints as to the outcome. They, too, are bystanders. They may feel as much frustration as do we. But they also know the consequences of any failure of diligence. They, too, have an ultimate faith in the process.
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There can be ETs, and there can be UTs, but having them together would only make for chaos.
The only path to a cosmic interface would be in the transformation from ET to UT. The Xians understand this about us, but they cannot see how to apply it to the other ETs, without violating the the Spirit of the Trinity, and so they feel they must postulate a conventional path for the ETs. In attempting to do so, they jump from the frying pan into the fire. It is not a pretty picture. Jake & Co are beginning to see this picture, and so are caught between the twin literalist dogmas of science and religion. It seems too big a leap for them to transcend those contradictions. They wait for the frying pan to get hotter, especially in the Tribulation.
If there are ET visitors, then there almost certainly is a Design along with a Vital Force or Telos. This is tantamount to the notion of God, which entails the existence of UTs, who seem much more likely than ETs to fit the profile of the visitors.
Furthermore, given the existence of a Creator and UTs, the role of additional ETs becomes problematic. More likely is it that we are 'fallen' UTs, than risen ETs. The positive needs of eschatology and the concomitant concealment, more than justify the appearance of the heavens. The compulsion to populate the visible heavens with ETs renders incoherent the notion of eschatology. Christians should and will understand this notion better than anyone. If not, those who do will soon find themselves of that general persuasion.
All I am attempting to do is to translate the Christian message into a broader idiom, pouring old wine into a new bottle. In that process, we incorporate the salient points of other belief systems. And we use that composite to revamp and reinterpret Scientific Materialism into an immaterialist frame, so that it, too, may be incorporated into the BPWH.
This new and comprehensive translation of the xian fundamentals will, along with disclosure, transport us into the aeon of the eschaton. This transpires under the aegis of the promised, definitive advent of the Spirit of the Truth.
What the literalists are ignoring is the virtual necessity of a pre-millennial revelation. They speak instead only of a rapture or of the wrath of God meted out to the unsaved at the end of the Tribulation.
I find the following to be an interesting interpretation of the first horseman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse#White_Horse
Compare this with:
http://www.pbc.org/files/messages/5762/4209.html
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12/13/07