The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

The Rise of Dominionism and the Christian Right

God does not call Christians to "Suppress the Rights of Others" but to

"Express the Rights of Others." No, my friends, Christianity isn't being

persecuted; it is persecuting those around it for not being Christian.

- re slater

I give Tripp Fuller a lot of credit for speaking kindly to the radicalized far right church while trying to draw it back to its lost faith. But yesterday's Capital demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, showed the nation all too clearly what toxic "Christian" Dominionism really is all about. It's the old idea of creating Old Testament governance into postmodern societies. It enforces religious ("biblical") prejudice and principles that are uncivil and undemocratic upon complex polyplural public societies.

Let me say it again, the American society is not a Kingdom society. Nor are its democratic institutions in want of Kingdom-like Reconstructions. Like Christian Zionism, Christian Dominionism is extreme in its attitudes towards others; is oppressively unhealthy in all aspects of its outlooks to others (including those of its members within); and leads to greater societal division and hatred as exampled by Trumpism's injustice and oppression, circa 2016-2020, in the United States. In fact, I'll go farther and state that the belief system held by the radical Christian far right is unGodly, unBiblical, and unJesus like.

As example, look at the Washington D.C. Rally held earlier this past summer of 2020 which intentionally sought to bring far right Christians together "to repent of sin and pray for the nation." What I had hoped would come of it did not come to pass. I had hoped that Christians would recommit themselves to loving the world around them. Instead, it focused on their rights and civilities as they saw them, denied the pandemic virus, and became more strident in their convictions that what they were doing was God-sent and judged worthy.

And yet, by their continual actions of suppressing democratic votes throughout the year of 2020 and by storming the Capital on January 6, 2021, we can see that it's efforts of repenting were a big fail. The rally had only served to gin-up more strident voices and unrepentful spirits.

Essentially, the DC Rally provided more self-justification among radicalized Christians to conduct unholy/unloving actions against its American brothers and sisters of all colors and faiths, and to create a roiling stridency of temperament, attitude, and deeds against America's civil democracy. Which, among other things, included deep voter racial suppression and extortion of the truth supporting radical Q’anon conspiracies and lies.

What the fake-Christian DC Rally really created was an unholy baptism and avowal of permission by radical Christians to commit religious tyranny against a civil society. Thus I speak to its efforts as Dominionist in perspective. Or, as a secular effort at Christian reconstruction of God's Kingdom here on earth. Most certainly, the far right has given itself permission to any future acts of violence, hate, and exclusion, by condoning or conscreting itself to these tasks because of their surreptitious DC Rally. Which is highly unfortunate and exactly opposite the direction the God I declare would have them pursue.

Folks, this isn't Christianity. Christianity is a radical faith by its demand for personal transformation into the loving image of Christ Jesus. But not as a radicalized faith demanding an overall of civil democracy designed for all religious faiths and beliefs. Nor do we live in the Old Testament any longer. Its dead and gone. We live in the present. Not the past.

And importantly, Christianity is a trans-national, trans-generational, trans-geographic, trans-religious, and trans-temporal faith. When God comes in everything we think and believe must be conformed to Jesus' love and faith in people. It embraces our wills while also deconstructing our wills. The Christian faith is a faith of charity, forgiveness, and wellbeing.

The Christian faith is meant by God to be pliable, flexible, and adaptable to any economy, culture, religion, or society. It isn't meant to be all one thing. Just because ancient bible cultures were used to kingdom-based governments in the Near East doesn't mean kingdom-based government is the preferred vehicle of government by God. No. If anything, kingdoms were oppressive and dominating over other cultures and societies. They did not recognize the polyplural rights and liberties of others.

In contrast, democratic institution goals are to recognize and support the polyplural rights and liberties of its citizen-based societies. Democracies are designed to be less oppressive of its people, more entertaining to everyone's equality and rights, and interwoven in layered complexities of social networking, work, and play.

Christianity is a peaceable religion and not meant for violence however much one reads of it in the Old Testament or thinks about the end times of Christ coming again by world tribulation or armageddon. And though we might dispute the future, a loving God is always a loving God in any future. The trials and tribulations we bring upon ourselves is our own judgment for not obeying God to love and respect one another. God doesn't come back to reap havoc and calamity upon the world, but is here presently intending to prevent us from doing the same to ourselves. The lesson of Revelation is to repent and love. To forget and show mercy even as our Lord Jesus had done.

What was done by "bible" people back then in the past isn't what's to be done today. Process Theology says we are to grow and expand from our present wickedness and learn to love and accept one another. "Love God, Love One Another." This commandment is what makes Christianity r-a-d-i-c-a-l. The Sermon on the Mount is our new "Torah" Commandments by God to share His love with all the world... AND each other.

Jesus and guns are wrong. The bible and hypocrisy doesn't work. And faith must be seen apart from lying lips and injurious deeds. The proof? Look at what President Trump has done and continues to do. Look at his elected officials who voted against State Rights on January 6, 2021, this week. And look at that same day's seditious "Christian" mobs as they tried to prevent the People's vote for a more just president and society be actualized against all the horrors it saw under the Trump administration.

And yet, a day later, radical Christians and their elected officials are continuing to speak smooth lies, gaslighting each other with more deceitfulness, blaming societal failures on liberals, and generally unrepentful and unloving.

"What ye sow so shall ye reap," my brothers. If radical Christians want anarchy and fascism it will come with the same violence it is being birthed with by its own hands. And it will fall hard upon it's head.Shutting mouths at the horrors it has created. Let's not go this far. Let's truly repent and call upon the God of Salvation to truly redeem our black hearts.

But whether you call today's far right "Christian" oppressions Godly judgment or not, its source is a direct corollary showing to us a defunct radicalized religion masquerading as Christianity while being embraced by its unholy faithful and disruptable leaders.

R.E. Slater

January 8, 2021

2 Peter 2 (NIV)

False Teachers and Their Destruction

2 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3 In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell,[a] putting them in chains of darkness[b] to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. 10 This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh[c] and despise authority.

Bold and arrogant, they are not afraid to heap abuse on celestial beings; 11 yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not heap abuse on such beings when bringing judgment on them from[d] the Lord. 12 But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

13 They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you.[e] 14 With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed—an accursed brood! 15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer,[f] who loved the wages of wickedness. 16 But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—an animal without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

17 These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[g] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

Footnotes

2 Peter 2:4 Greek Tartarus

2 Peter 2:4 Some manuscripts in gloomy dungeons

2 Peter 2:10 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh (sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as a power in opposition to the Spirit; also in verse 18.

2 Peter 2:11 Many manuscripts beings in the presence of

2 Peter 2:13 Some manuscripts in their love feasts

2 Peter 2:15 Greek Bosor

2 Peter 2:22 Prov. 26:11

* * * * * * * * *

We need to call Trump Christians back

to the faith they left

Article link

SUSAN M. SHAW, SENIOR COLUMNIST  |  JANUARY 7, 2021

i

"The Father's Forgiveness," Daniel Bonnell.

Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. Despite allegations, falsehoods and lies, no election fraud affected the outcome of the race. That’s simply a fact.

I’m not sure what will become of evangelical Trump supporters now that their expectation of God’s intervention to give Trump the election has not been fulfilled and now that we won’t have outrageous, false and divisive tweets emanating from the White House all through the day and night. I imagine some will continue down the rabbit hole of QAnon and apocalyptic fanaticism, but I am hoping many will decide to make their way back to the central tenets of Christian faith — love, truth, justice, peace, hope and welcome.

Susan Shaw

As we move into the Biden-Harris era, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we invite Trump-supporting evangelicals back into the fold of the church.

Not so long ago, I was introduced to a song, “Hymn for the 81%.” It’s a song for evangelical Trump supporters from someone raised by them in the church. These lyrics stopped me in my tracks: “You said to love the lost, so I’m loving you now.”

Much to my surprise, that image immediately evoked incredible compassion for Trump-supporting evangelicals: They are lost.

I felt the impact of that word. In a single moment, all the feelings of my evangelical upbringing rushed upon me. I felt the emotions of a little 6-year-old girl walking the aisle while the congregation sang “Just as I Am.” I recalled all those Sunday school teachers and GA leaders and pastors and ministers of music teaching me that we were to love the lost, and I remember the mix of relief and joy and release of knowing “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

All those memories and emotions swept over me like an avalanche as I realized that Trump-supporting evangelicals got lost somewhere along the way. They are lost. And that changes my responsibility toward them.

Feminist activist Loretta Ross says that rather than calling people out, we should be calling them in. Calling in, Ross says, is “a call out done with love.” Calling in “means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.”

We have to leave a light on for them.

“At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption.”

At the core of the Christian story is the possibility of redemption. No matter what we do, the Gospels tell us, we can repent and change our ways. No one is too far gone for the love of God to reach, to convict, to receive, to transform.

I think about what we heard in all those invitation hymns:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling

Calling for you and for me.

See, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home,

Ye who are weary, come home.

Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home.

Just as I am without one plea,

But that thy blood was shed for me,

And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

I’ve wandered far away from God.

Now I’m coming home.

The paths of sin too long I’ve trod.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Coming home, coming home,

Never more to roam.

Open wide thine arms of love.

Lord, I’m coming home.

Come home. That is the invitation we must offer evangelicals who supported Trump and who became lost in the mixture of Christian nationalism, white supremacy and authoritarianism that promised them it would bring in God’s community through the exercise of raw power.

“Our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.”

Our prophetic task is to speak truth, denounce injustice and advocate for justice for all people. And, at the same time, our evangelistic task is to call people home, to call them in.

This story gets passed around a lot. I can’t find any verification that it’s true, but I think, true or not, it points to something important about calling people in. As the story goes, in a people group in Africa, when someone commits an unjust or illegal act, the community brings the perpetrator to the center of the village, and then all the community members come and tell this person all the good things this person has done. The community believes, as the story goes, that people are good but makes mistakes and forget who they really are. By telling them all the good they’ve done, the community seeks to remind them of who they are and reconcile them to the group.

Let’s call evangelical Trump supporters in. I’ll start:

• You taught me to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself.
• You introduced me to a world that was much bigger than my hometown and told me to love them too.
• You told me to love my enemies.
• You taught me to love the Bible and read it because God could speak to me through its words.
• You told me I could be anything God called me to be.
• You taught me to give generously, without thought of return or reciprocation.
• You taught me to tell the truth.
• You found a way to accommodate difference when it was up close and personal and love people who were unlike you — the lesbian aunt, the agnostic friend, the weird kid, the deaf neighbor, the immigrant co-worker.
• You stopped to change a tire for a stranger; you took a meal to a bereaved family; you volunteered at a local shelter; you drove an older person of a different political party to vote; you served as a conversation partner in a language program for refugees; you visited sick people in the hospital; you helped Habitat for Humanity build a house; you started a clothes closet in the church basement.

People are much more than the worst thing they ever did. We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home. I know that’s hard after everything we’ve witnessed the past four years.

“We have to make a way back for evangelical Trump supporters who may want to come home.”

If nothing else, though, the gospel is a story of lavish grace and welcome, a banquet set for a prodigal son, workers who came late to the field, a thief on a cross, all of those in the highways and hedges. In fact, we ourselves are recipients of this lavish grace, this love without limit, and, as my friend Paula Sheridan once said, “We are not the maître d at God’s table. We don’t get to decide who gets seated and who doesn’t.”

My Southern Baptist church did indeed tell me to love the lost. Our Trump-supporting evangelical siblings are lost. They followed a demagogue and lost sight of Jesus. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to make a way back for them; we have to seek them out like a lost coin or a lost sheep and call them in, “out of shameful failure and loss, into the glorious gain of (the) cross; out of unrest and arrogant pride, into (Christ’s) blessed will to abide; out of the depths of ruin untold, into the peace of (Christ’s) sheltering fold.”

This must be our response to the past four years: Come home. Come home.

Susan M. Shaw is professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore. She also is an ordained Baptist minister and holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her most recent book is Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide, co-authored with Grace Ji-Sun Kim.

Miley Cyrus - The War Is Over

✩🎄★Happy Xmas (War Is Over)★🎄✩

Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon

Dec 12, 2019

Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon

- Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Lyrics ★🎄★

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young

A very merry Christmas

and a happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)

For weak and for strong (if you want it)

For rich and for poor ones (war is over)

The world is so wrong (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)

For black and for white (if you want it)

For left and for right ones (war is over)

Let's stop all the fight (now...)

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Oh, let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)

And what have we done (if you want it)

Another year over (war is over)

And a new one just begun (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)

We hope you have fun (if you want it)

The near and the dear one (war is over)

The old and the young (now...)

A very merry Christmas

And a happy New Year

Let's hope it's a good one

Without any fear

War is over, if you want it

War is over now!

Happy Christmas everybody!

★🎄★

New Years Require Better Resolutions

by R.E. Slater

December 29, 2020

I have been enjoying Miley Cyrus a lot lately. I love her voice, how she thinks and envision's life, her need to speak out against civil and human injustice, and for the beauty she sees all around her. Miley is sounding better to me the older she gets and the more she discovers who she is and what she wants to speak to. And though she's very good at capturing cover songs like the one here, I am more interested in her edginess and how she sees humanity in all its vices and colours.

With the onset of a new year coming in three days I'm asking that we commit ourselves to healing. To the healing of our hearts, our friendships, our community, our country, and our world.

To redirecting all our nervous, sometimes exasperating, sometimes agitating, energy, into goodness and wellbeing for all things human and earthly. Mere wishing for, or singing of, "Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men" are but empty words if we don't actually practice these qualities at all times through all our seasons of life.

Over the last several years we've seen the ugliness of hatred and division and what it does to leaderless people who follow those dark souls who are destroyers of present goodness. They have vexed our hearts and our relationships with one another. They are a scourge to be remonstrated against and removed.

Let us today, this coming year, take up the challenge of our destroyers to rebuild a truer equality and justice for all around us. For each other as well as for nature. So often rebuilding cannot come without deconstructing our past and present. Black Lives Matter has challenged us to do just that. And we will. These are the fundamental challenges we must step up to. Let me share an all too frequent example of expectations versus reality.

The Challenges of Loss

Several years ago I naively bought a house thinking it needed remodeling. I had met the builder and the owner, sent an inspection company out to confirm the site, and read what was written in the contracts. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The house was fundamentally built wrong, found akilter with itself upon it's several elevations, and with a craftsmanship absently confounding. It all was hidden from view innocently enough but the structure was fundamently flawed behind its rustic beauty. The words on the contract which I needed for clarification weren't written down but kept off and hidden (as keeping to the letter of the law of the county but not its spirit of full disclosure). And the inspecting agency counted the nails on the roof, the missing electrical safety features but missed the foundations which were rotting and sagging. These were drywalled over from the inside and packed with gravel around the perimeter making it seem aesthetic when it was actually functional fifteen feet all the way down. A simple tapping of an iron rod through the gravel would've confirmed further discovery. Or a screwdriver through the furnace walls would've told of a wooden foundation. But none of this was disclosed or confirmed. The result? It was all on me. Everything. It was not a good place to be.

An older man, my neighbor, whom I came to know, spoke wisdom confirming what my own heart was saying, against all the others who spoke contrary. I took it as a word from God and proceeded to destroy-and-rebuild and never looked back. It would be another loss in life. Unexpected. Injurious. But something to be overcome. I told my neighbor the house needed a deep renovation - including a completely new, and much stronger foundation, and not the rotting foundation it was lying upon which I had perchance discovered midway through remodeling the lower floor as a front end loader removed the dirt from the buried walls so we could add an extra bedroom and bath to the end of the house. I remember that weekend as being grievous. We were facing a total loss.

Bottom line... I would have to deconstruct the house before reconstructing it properly. It would cost a good deal of money, personal time I didn't have, and the labor of many talented trade workers to overcome the obstacles and oppositions I was facing. And I would have to live with my decisions good or bad. However, the Lord has gifted me with the ability to create investments out of loss. It has been true with lay ministries as it has been true in my life. My gifts it seems is to take challenges and create beauty. Which also means I've had a lot of experience with losses. Or with shoddy envisioning of what beauty means. Or with people or institutions content with the trauma they are living out.

My website, Relevancy22, is a postmodern Christian testament to recreating, or reimagining, a Christianity I was deeply blessed and trained in to maintain its traditional structures. It's classic forms. It's unmitigating foundations. But those structures and foundations needed demolishing - keeping the good as I could while trashing all that withheld seeing God's love truly through the biblical passages and churchly histories and otherwise actions of its people. I had to go through dark days to get there. But the Lord sent me His Holy Spirit to guide through a challenging wilderness to find a way to His light and beauty. It was done by learning to unlearn so that I might re-learn.

So too it is with our lives. We need the Lord's guidance and the discerning grit of hard decisions to be made when we do not know which way to go amid the cacophony of voices telling us what we should do. And for that God had brought to me the help of gifted craftsmen and trades people, a blessed general contractor of generosity and talent, and a small window of purchasing opportunity to buy discounted materials during America's worst times of hurricanes and wildfires. As I labored with the labourers I blessed God many times over during those long 14 months. From beginning to end it was fraught with difficulty personally, financially, health-wise, and emotionally. It was a hard time.

As another example of rebuilding out of neglect let's look at societal structures in their many ways of casual callousness to the suffering and neglect of people living with rot and difficulty on a daily basis. The dispensing of Covid-19 vaccines readily shows to us the struggles we are challenged with in a society when naively promoting our ideals over aiding those truly in need of the miracle vaccine. Rather than serving the homeless, ghettos, the essential, and enfeebled, our dispensatory systems have been prejudiced towards those who have the resources, class, wealth, standing, or perception to receive them. Yet, any nurse, social worker, school administrator, city mayor, priest, pastor, or even private industry boss will learn on their first day whether to choose for equality and fairness or to overlook it in their occupations. Let us chose the path less travelled. The one promising fuller resolve than capitulate to the norm such as profit over care, income over restitution, greed over generosity.

To Serve rather than be Served

Let us at all times be mindful in all things to serve those around us rather than be served ourselves. This is the mindset of Jesus. The challenges in Jesus' day were no different from ours today. So much of our best intentions get usurped by the politician, the greedy, the proud, the corrupt of heart. Their kind of world is dark and odious. But let us be of the light and not of their mindset of self-serving oblivion.

Even those words, or worlds, which might sound "Christian" or "righteous" to our ears can be anything be loving or divine. More like broadbills for waylaid sheep lost and looking for a shepherd but finding crooks and thieves of their souls. And yet, the Lord God has shown His real Self through His Incarnation in the Trinitarian personage of Jesus who opposed the wicked, granted release from bondage to the suffering, and ministered God's love until His death and resurrection into glory while renewing His Covenant of Love double-stamped by His Spirit that He abides with us moment-by-moment in this life and the next.

Those leaderless churches of another gospel are not God's churches of love and welcoming embrace. They are the churches of men who worship the idols of their cultural inheritance and the lies of their future. They protect their past to live as dead people to God in their present. They fear the challenge of change and run from its necessity to moderate, or minister, to the unfortunates in life. Such words, creeds, structures, societies of darkness we would remove, demolish, overcome and replace with love, truth, goodness, and light by leaning into God's continually evolving process of death for renewal, wreckage for reclamation, atonement for redemption, denial of self for resurrection, fear for transformation, and beauty for revival by His Spirit at all times.

Jesus is the benchmark for all humanity. He is the goal and perfector of one's faith. Not the church, not the unenlightened mobs which come and go to the distress of the world of God and man. But Jesus. He is the One we look to for example, truth, and love. Upon Jesus' uplifted Cross we can see the God of Love in full display.

Now this Christmas has come and gone. It's short season is over. Yet Christ has come to us in wintry celebration of His Incarnational Advental Coming. Let us then ask the Lord that Christ's "panpsychic being and becomingness" enters all the way into the deepest parts of our hearts, minds, and souls, as we approach new challenges in this coming new year. Let it be a year of healing. Of atonement. Of redemption. Perhaps, even, a year of hope becoming realized in the work of our hands and feet and lips. Amen and Amen.

And as Ms. Cyrus has well said, "The War is Over." But stop and think... it really is - if... we really want it to be. Thank you Miley.

R.E. Slater

December 28, 2020

11 Memorable Poems About Peace

Goodwill Quotes by GoodReads

Christmas Bells

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Peace and Goodwill

Since Adam ate from off that tree,

Earth spins without tranquility.

No golden age of ancient Greece

Nor Pax Romana gave us peace.

The Son of God and Mary brought

The hope that midnight angels taught.

If you’d find peace from Heaven’s King,

Then join the song the angels sing:

“To God the highest glory be!”

That’s goodwill’s faithful melody.

All sinners, willing to believe,

Alone that Prince of Peace receive.

-- David L. Hatton, 12/7/2018

Peter Drucker quote from President Abraham Lincoln

Peace and Goodwill

True peace on earth will never be, without The Lord of Eternity,

And goodwill towards all men, truly begins as we’re Born-Again.

Men sing that Christ has come, but they must embrace the Son,

God’s Son who came to earth, so all man could have New Birth.

That little baby born in a stall, isn’t a babe, but He’s King over all,

As songs about a baby man sings, Christ reigns as King of kings,

The Only True Prince of Peace, with a reign that shall not cease,

And while a babe, nations adore, The Savior, men simply ignore.

Christ came to grant all salvation, but they ignore His Revelation,

Being born of God from above, brings the peace songs speak of,

Born Again by the Spirit of God, while living upon this earthly sod,

Becoming part of God’s Family, with a Peace that lasts Eternally.

Christ did not come for Christmas, but, to redeem sinners like us,

Starting with lost sheep in Israel, then the Gentiles, per God’s will,

To bring the message of Salvation, not to some, but every nation,

A message lost in festive fray, as men sing about Christmas Day.

Jesus is why Christmas came, but songs seldom utter His Name,

In many songs what’s not heard, are those Truths in God’s Word,

Sadly many, enjoying the song, even observe this holiday wrong,

And without embracing the Truth, instead of joy shall see reproof.

Bob Gotti

(Copyright ©01/2011)

Carl Jung's Archetypes within Whitehead's Process Metaphysic

Introduction by R.E. Slater

I have started to listen to Matt Sagall's apprise of Whitehead's Process Philosophy from a number of different settings such as Panpsychism and Jungian archetypes (this latter topic will be spoken here by his student Becca Tarnas further below. I've provided a transcript as well). Both topics I've shared with a certain amount of validity, or assurance, for the Open and Relational Process Theology (aka Alfred North Whitehead) I've been developing over the last several years.

The area of Process Panpsychism has solved a LOT of (classical) theological conundrums which couldn't be solved without it's application. Regarding Carl Jung's Psychic and Panpsychic Archetypes I suspect these too will work out in the same way as I hope when conjoined with Whiteheadian Process Thought. Thus my interest in today's discussion despite it's occasional absorbtion with astrology.

To re-interate, when reading through Carl Jung's psychoanalytical archetypes I've become interested in its linkage to Whitehead's Process Philosophy. Becca Tarnas's video found further below works along these lines and has thus piqued my interest.

But I really have no interest in astrology (my apologies to those who do). It may work for some individuals but for the kind of Process Theology I've been developing there is no place for astrology or any such element working with predictive forces.

As an Open theist I have no interest in the pseudo-science of astrology except as an interested polymath on all subjects. Otherwise, the future is not given to us to know nor predict. Not even God Himself knows the future, let alone controls the future. This would be completely contrary to open theism and especially to Process Philosophical Thought.

Not to confuse the subject but I should mention two subjects along this line:

1 - Astral panpsychic arts can, and do, integrate with that part of process psychoanalytical psychology / group sociology which may run parallel with each other re our humanity's being, very creation itself, and how we-and-creation operate as a process-based living organism - or collective - of organic feeling. Even creation's future direction, or teleology, will show fundamental connectivity with one another. But for the process theology I am envisioning, I do not intend to go in the direction of the many kinds of astrology I have listed below in a separate article. They might conjoin with my direction, which is ok, but I cannot see going their direction for philosophical theological purposes.

2 - Beyond process there is also no kind of "controlling" aspect to God's process of creation. It is an independent process set onto its own path. One set onto its own accord with its own movement forward. That movement will always be unique, novel, unpredictable, full of chaos and randomness. If we wish to synch ourselves up with it and nudge it forward re goodness, wellbeing, equality, and so forth, we can, and it will respond, to those directional "pushes" or "assurances". (Ex. Your typical backyard gardens: till the ground, plant the seed, and it will bloom. It's a kind of "nudged process" becoming a "material organic form of beingness.")

This is how Creational Process works. It's it's nature. It derives from, or is birthed by, or is regenerated and sustained by, God nature of Love. God, being the first process of all subtending processes which have proceeded from Him but of its own indeterminate and freewill agency. Begun by God but separated from God giving it it's own autonomy and "being-ness". God, Himself, His Self-Identity, His nature is the base and substance of all proceeding processes. These subtended process have exuded from God, which captures the classic idea of God "willing things forward, or controlling things." But for Open and Relational Process Theologian these words of exactitude and controlling no longer work as they once did. Blame it on science or on postmodernism.

Whatever it is, the process future is unknowable and yet can be interacted with as we can by capturing the essence of its process nature of movement and grooming it towards greater fulfillment. Which is probably why Eastern philosophies feel so familiar to me in how I am seeing God in all His divine becoming in solidarity with creation as He eternally "urges" creation forwards towards its base nature of being and becoming.

Now I realize more can be said of these two sublime areas. And perhaps with time and insight I might be able to say more on these things more clearly. But for now I don't mind a kind of murkiness (or mysticism) when contemplating God and all things God. The mirror of self - even self knowledge and contemplation - will always be a murky looking glass to stare into. It's how life's processes are. And that's ok with me.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater

December 21, 2020

Beings, as Creation, are involved and evolving with one another even

as the Lord God Himself is evolving with all things creative. - re slater

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Definition of Astrology - the divination of the supposed influences of the stars and planets on human affairs and terrestrial events by their positions and aspects

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Wikipedia - Astrology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology

Astrology is a pseudoscience that claims to divine information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. 

Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person's personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.

Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. It was present in political circles and is mentioned in various works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. Following the end of the 19th century and the wide-scale adoption of the scientific method, researchers have successfully challenged astrology on both theoretical and experimental grounds, and have shown it to have no scientific validity or explanatory power. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined.

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Jungian Archetypes

What are the different kinds of Astrology

https://www.astroyogi.com/articles/what-are-the-different-kinds-of-astrology.aspx

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Astrology is basically the method of predicting everyday events by basing on the positions and certain behaviors of the celestial bodies, such as planets and stars. These behaviors of the celestial bodies are also known as constellations. 

Now a day we work with many such types of astrology. They are - Western, Sidereal, Natal, Electional, Horary, Judicial, Medical, Chinese, Indian, Arab and Persian, Celtic, Egyptian.

Consult our expert astrologers online on Astroyogi.com for an in-depth and personalized analysis of Horoscope. Click here to consult now!

Let us go a bit in detail about these types of astrology. 

Western Astrology -  This system is mainly used in Western countries. It is the type of augury that uses all of the twelve zodiac signs. These zodiac signs are the signs that match the position of the sun in the zodiac. These are observed at different times of the year. Birth charts, various types of horoscopes are made from this kind of astrology. 

Sidereal Astrology -  This is the term used to define the year astrology. This system also uses all of the twelve zodiac signs but uses the vernal equinox position. 

Natal Astrology - This system of astrology uses the endemic charts. These are the astrological maps that lead to the position of the stars at a person’s birth. These are used to predict the traits and paths of a person’s life. 

Electional Astrology - This type of astrology is a branch that takes the help of the positions of the stars in the sky to predict the advantageous events that are about to take place. It is mostly used to make future predictions and answer future related questions. 

Horary Astrology - Horary Astrology represents the type of astrology which uses the complexity in the positions of the stars to provide suggestions to questions that were asked during the reading were taking place. 

Judicial Astrology - This is the type of astrology that uses the positions of planets, not stars, to predict the outcomes or events of the future.   

Medical Astrology - Medical Astrology is a system that is based on finding out relations with the medical conditions or certain parts of the body with the twelve zodiac signs. This is usually used during the weaknesses or diseases in the body. 

Chinese Astrology - This type of astrology came from the Han Dynasty. It is formed on the knowledge from the Han Dynasty and relates strongly to the three fundamental harmonies, which are: Water, Earth, and Heaven. Consisting of 12 earthly branches and 10 celestial stems, the Chinese Astrology also includes a lunisolar calendar.

Indian Astrology - Indian Astrology is formed from the Hindu concepts and cultures. It is basically a Hindu system of astrology or, as sometimes known as the Vedic Astrology. Siddhanta, Sahita and Hora are the 3 different branches within the Indian Astrology.   

Arab and Persian Astrology -  It takes us back to the medieval Arabs and its concepts. It is basically a mixture of Muslim beliefs and related scientific observations.   

Celtic Astrology - The Celtic Astrology, or also known as the astrology of the druids, takes the help of trees. It says that each and every personality has its own relationship with the properties of a tree and can also be defined through them.  

Egyptian Astrology - The early Egyptians were interested more in fixed stars. So, the Egyptian Astrology mainly uses the position of the Sun, rather than those of the planets and other stars. The twelve zodiac signs all cover two different time zones.   

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Whitehead and Archetypal Cosmology

by Becca Tarnas, Jan 8, 2016

Jung's Archetypal View + Whitehead

This presentation briefly explores the ways in which Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy can provide one possible metaphysical basis for the practice and perspective of archetypal cosmology. 

Becca Tarnas is a doctoral student in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She also received her MA from CIIS in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, and her BA from Mount Holyoke College in Environmental Studies and Theater Arts. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on the synchronicity between the Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien. She writes regularly on archetypal cosmology and is an editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. Becca’s website is BeccaTarnas.com where she posts her current writings, paintings, and lectures.

 

* * * * * * * * *

Transcript: Whitehead and Archetypal Cosmology

presented by post-doctoral student Becca Tarnas

(a student of Matthew Segall)

Jan 8, 2016

Discussion of Archtypes: Hillman, Jung, & Whitehead

1

Speaker 1

0:22

I'm gonna be talking today on a topic I presented this as a paper at the summer, and I'm going to just kind of give you a brief taste a sample of what that kind of larger presentation was there. And a lot of what I'm going to be talking about the presentation just has the simple title right now of Whitehead and archetypal cosmology. And a lot of what I'm speaking about has really arisen in conversation with Matt, who's the great white head in scholar in my life. And these ideas have really arisen between us so he's very much co author of this presentation. So what I'd like to pause it and open up for further conversation. Is that whiteheads process philosophy can perhaps provide us with a metaphysical basis for archetypal cosmology for archetypal astrology. And for these ideas, I'm going to be drawing just so you have kind of the background of the thinkers I'm bringing into this young on James Hellman Katharine Keller, David Ray Griffin and Owen Barfield, among others, but those are kind of the primary players, and I'm just going to try and touch on the concepts. And I think at times you may be in a wash of white heady and language, and just allow what images arise, to come with with those terms, and with the hope of this sparking further conversation that I can learn from and we can carry on this conversation. So I feel really blessed to be in a community and family that explores the question of the astrological cosmos, and we are able to look at the multi Vaillant ways in which astrology works. And so today I want to explore another question, which is why astrology works. If we can try and do that. And before I go further, I just want to touch on the nature of archetypes and I'm going forward with the premise that you will have some sense at some level of what an archetype is, but to kind of set the tone I want to draw on the great articulator of archetypes Carl Jung. Just this quote where he says, a kind of fluid interpenetration belongs to the very nature of all archetypes. They can only be roughly circumscribed at best, every attempt to focus them more sharply is immediately punished by the intangible core of meaning losing its luminosity. No archetype can be reduced to a simple formula. It is a vessel which we can never empty and never fill. It has a potential existence only. And when it takes shape and matter it is no longer what it was. And I give you this quote to present how archetypes are not fully definable, or describable, without misrepresenting them without doling their divine luminosity. And so as I try and discuss a metaphysical basis for an archetypal cosmology. I am recognizing the impossibility of actually capturing the archetypal presence in the single metaphysical system. That can't be fully explained, so this is just touching on it in a conference in the early 80s put on by David Ray Griffin and Katherine Keller. There was this conference called archetypal process bringing together whiteheads process, philosophy and young and Hellman's archetypal psychology and Griffin drew a parallel between Jung's concept of archetypes and whiteheads eternal objects. So for Whitehead an eternal object is an A quote, any entity, whose conceptual recognition does not involve a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world. So, an eternal object, it's potentially relevant to some actual occasion, it's a possibility. That's not yet defined as an actuality, so eternal objects. They're like Plato's forms in that they're real, apart from their particular expression, but they're unlike Plato's forms in that, as Whitehead says they're deficient in actuality, and so because of this deficiency of the eternal objects. They long to enter into actuality, to Ingress is the term that Whitehead uses long to aggress into actual occasions, of experience.

1

Speaker 1

5:19

So what are eternal objects. They're the ways we describe the world. They're the adjectives. The colors the shapes, the feelings, the smells, tastes, the qualities. Now, archetypes, we come to actually understand through such qualities. But archetypes seem to be larger than those simple adjectives archetypes are unifying fields, they're gravitational attractors that draw together, a complex array of eternal objects into a singular. And yet, always fluid form. So I want to make clear here that from how I'm approaching this archetypes and eternal objects are not to be equated and grant Maxwell has written about this in a previous issue of the archive journal as well. So planetary archetypes. They include both the potential reality of whiteheads eternal objects. And the incarnate experience of actual occasions. So how we're living them in daily life. So, archetypes are not just eternal objects or potentials because they have agency. They have autonomy archetypes are complex persons or personalities, to use James Homans language. Yet, they have a metaphorical unity to their complexity. So Hellman says, always of speaking of archetypes are translations from one metaphor to another. In whiteheads system, the source of all things is creativity, capital see creativity is primary creativity is the realm of pure potential, and thus it is chaos. I'm not going to go into the details of this but Whitehead has in his philosophical system reasoned his way back to the existence of God, but God and Whitehead system is not primary creativity is. So God is actually a creature of creativity, which solves a lot of problems that God has had to carry. So God orders this chaos of pure potentiality chaos of creativity into a hierarchy of eternal objects, I want to be careful with that term hierarchy that there's a relational order, but not a ranking of value. So God orders the chaos of pure potentiality into the hierarchy of eternal objects. And I posit orders. The archetypes. So God takes the chaos and turns it into cosmos. And God is born of that chaos. So God is the first compresses the first and everlasting Crescent coming into being the first achievement of chaos, becoming cosmos. There's an image that I like to draw on to try and express this idea of chaos becoming cosmos, and I'm grateful for Travis's presentation this morning speaking about light feels very related to this, so the image, I want to draw is one of the prism. And if you think of creativity that realm of pure potential and chaos. As the white light, and then you can think of God as the prism, and the white light passes through God God orders that creativity into the refracted colors. The archetypes, but within the band of light that is each of those colors, is there's an infinity of shades that are at play within each one. And so you can think of that like the archetype of Venus, every shade of, let's say, green every shade are all the possibilities of what Venus could Ingress as or all the shades of blue are all the possibilities of how Neptune could enter into incarnate reality. So the moment that a child takes their first breath. That's their. That is the first concrete essence of that being independent of the mother's body. Now, to use like whiteheads language. Technically, a child is actually a society of actual occasions, each of which are compressing, making the experience of the newborn in that moment. Now, that, that first moment that inhalation that first breath, that's when the birth chart is set, that's the time that we take that when we calculate the birth chart. Why, why that moment. Well,

1

Speaker 1

10:20

when conquests happens all past actual occasions, everything that's ever happened. That has to use whiteheads language perished into objective and mortality, they all become one. And are presented by this moment the child. So Whitehead says the many become one, and are increased by one. And that happens every moment, every actual occasion is compressing. So every archetypal expression that has ever existed is in that moment gifted to the child. But Whitehead says that past actual occasions that are most felt by the compressing actual occasion of that moment. So in this case, again, the child, are those that are immediately prior. So, the positions of the planets and the correlated archetypal energies enacted everywhere on Earth. At that moment of that. Inhale of breath is independence. All of that is inherited by the child. And as the child lives and grows into her subjectivity can see as the crest of her compressing wave. She continues to inherit the archetype we ordered actual occasions and this we see in transits. Yet, the birth charts still effective still effective throughout the whole life, why is that why isn't it in Whitehead scheme, it would be just that each next moment is the most important, but there's something specific about that first breath. How is that I want to return to the image of God for a moment. As an eternally compressing actual occasion, you can think of God. If you think of a compressing actual occasion like a wave that crashes, you can think of God as a wave that never crashes that just keeps going, it's never perishing, and as God's wave is in this everlasting conquest since. God is feeling the precession of the cosmic community of finite actual occasions. So perhaps it's the same as with the child in the moment is that first breath that actually the first breath that concrete essence is an everlasting concrete essence that wave also never crashes. And so each proceeding concrete lessons unfolding transits takes place within the Gestalt set by that first concrete essence. And that's how transits to the birth chart can be experienced by the individual. So I'm trying to imagine it like the birth chart also is like a prism, and the refracting archetypal potential becomes the archetypal particulars of this person gods that whiteheads God has to nature's dipolar nature of God. And there's the primordial pole and the consequent pole. Now, the primordial pole orders the realm of eternal objects like we talked about before, so that they can Ingress into the actual occasions, of the cosmic community, the consequent pole is actually what's going on when they Ingress so the consequent full pole fuels the experiences of this world, and adjust the ordering of the eternal objects, according to that so it's this recursive loop that, in a way, God is experiencing the ordering of the eternal archetypes through all of our experiences, and then changes them changes that ordering so new experiences arise. And just as God reorders the eternal objects.

1

Speaker 1

14:11

Perhaps that is also what's happening with eternal objects within the archetypes. So as they progress into living manifestation. We participate in their becoming. We co creatively engage with them. So archetypes also have a consequent nature. They feel what we feel, which forever reshapes the potential for their future and aggression. So basically, the way we live and procreate with the archetypes forever reshapes and continues to reshape, how they will manifest later in our lives. And then in the lives of future generations. So it's almost like the cosmos is inviting us through that. to. to participate or participation is actually enacting an evolution in the archetypes themselves. And so by consciously engaging with them by co creatively manifesting them. We're each able, and also have the responsibility to reshape the potentialities of the future. So I'm going to leave it there for now and see where we go from there with a conversation.

15:40

So you've processed it the first time at Claremont

15:45

integrate an

1

Speaker 1

15:47

expert like pieces he or she is when you talk about

15:54

mainstream was called like

15:56

white. He spoke about it. So how was it.

1

Speaker 1

16:00

Well, I'll just say the conference was huge. There were 82 tracks. And we were in one of those tracks. And I was wonderfully cushioned by a PCC filled audience. So, all of my fears going into it thinking that I was going to have things thrown at me and I would be ridiculed didn't happen. And I had a very supportive audience that I could engage with with a lot of familiar faces and a few unfamiliar faces who I was able to dialogue with there, and the longer portion of the talk was drawing, why I was even bringing archetypal cosmology into the discussion. So I was speaking to Whitehead Ian's. Or at least that's what I kind of had in mind, and justifying to them why I was bringing in archetypal cosmology, and it was really Hellman that kind of set the stage for that so there was this conference in 83 at the same university, and he was the one who said that we need a metaphysics for archetypal psychology. He had thrown out Young's metaphysics too as he said save his psychology, but realize metaphysics is always operating whether you're conscious of it or not. And so he wanted to draw on this term cosmology that he could connect with Whitehead and cosmology being a worldview and cosmology being of course related to the astronomical bodies and so Hellman provided kind of my gateway into feeling like it was safe to speak at Claremont about the subject walls. You should be up here helping me answer them.

 

18:02

Thanks Becker's.

 

18:05

Follow ons were

 

18:08

speculating about why it works. And my question

 

18:13

for you personally. I mean,

 

18:16

you articulated this paper so it must be important for you in some sense to understand the why ology but maybe you can talk about the relationship between that question and the practices, ecology which can

 

18:30

operate independently of

2

Speaker 2

18:32

having an explanation for how it could be possible. Right, so there's the practice and then there's the theory. And, you know, for me I'm interested in why because it's all

 

18:42

theory and I love theory. I love the theory and practice even,

 

18:46

it's great but how do you

 

18:51

differentiate the two and why is it important to do this work to try to understand why it works

1

Speaker 1

19:02

almost want to answer that question backward, because it's an engaging. Really, this was my way to try and understand Whitehead. And so it was that with the practice of astrology, that I could try to understand what Whitehead was saying, and then realizing, again and again. How much what he was saying, fit what seemed to be happening in the practice and engagement with how transits manifest every, every day and throughout our lives and in world events and so on. So it's almost like the practice drew me into the theory. And that's probably why so many of the ideas here are arose between us, because you're coming with the theory. I feel like I'm not going to answer every

2

Speaker 2

20:05

one of the ideas that you've put forward that got a lot of people excited and talking. After Unicron was the possibility of the polytheistic processes of physics. And so, There's a kind of mutual intelligibility that arises between archetypal cosmology and processive cosmology, but then he also had a way of sort of massaging process metaphysics, through a kind of polytheistic societal sense. So I wonder if you could rehearse that for us now, it was great, rich. Well,

1

Speaker 1

20:47

I mean, with the idea of a god ordering the actual occasions, and I mean kind of the mysterious part is the archetypes being we've kind of attractors for the actual occasions that continue to be expressed with them and those archetypes as attractors are in their own way. God gods and the in a way you could almost see it as many nested prisms God as the prism that refract, the many colors and then each color with as many shades is another refraction. And then maybe each of us is another prism that refracts that once again as we live,

 

21:38

you know I

1

Speaker 1

21:39

I may have one aspect and you might have the same one but we live them out completely differently. And so we're each prisms as well and so there's kind of a polytheism within each of us going all the way back. Okay,

2

Speaker 2

22:13

maybe I don't know why, but it seems that the physics of the process. You can do so you're doing so much in understanding how archetype to to to to articulate that archetype process based on pointing. I don't see the warning what happens, what happens, or what happened to young side of things. Where were processes not merely the kind of endless cycling back and forth between primordial and consequences. But it's actually attacking trying to go somewhere. We're trying to get with, with whiteheads idea of creativity and creativity. For young, of course there is a sense to tell us in a world of scalability. Is there any heavy logical dimension that you're intuiting that you can get out of the encounter between Whitehead archetypal cosmology.

 

23:16

I don't have an answer.

1

Speaker 1

23:18

It feels overwhelming to try and give an answer. But the, the kind of dialogue between the primordial and consequent natures seems not so much cyclical as spiral ik. And what I was attempting to touch on with the idea of us, participating in that evolution is that the reordering of the eternal objects. The reordering than the archetypes of those potentials. It's, it's always new because of what we're doing. And so there is, kind of, there is this movement forward in a certain way with that that it's not just for, for, if that helps.

3

Speaker 3

27:01

Hello everyone. Here we are again for another one of our live conversations and these are live conversations always amused when I see in the chat people say is this live is this live yeah it's live if you're watching live right if you're not watching it live. It's not live. And I don't know maybe just to establish that fact it's always good to respond in real time. There was one question here from someone in Fiji I don't know where the, the question runt question went, I should say had to do with black holes in string theory. If you want to ask that question again, our participant from Fiji, our try to look at it. But the main event today. As you all know, is a conversation with Lenny Susskind who is really one of the great theoretical physicists of our time. So it's an exciting guest to have on the program, as many of you know many has had profound impact in string theory. Black Hole physics quantum mechanics elementary particle physics I mean it's quite a lot. Quite a lot of accomplishments and we'll obviously only be talking about part of those insights, but I think will likely skew heavily on black holes, you know as you reach the end of the year. There's a tendency to think back on the good things the bad things summarize you know they're always best of lists worst of lists, things of that sort. If I was going to focus upon the best of physics, or let's say theoretical physics and 2020 even perhaps even earlier. Black Holes would be near the top, perhaps at the top. You know we've had a great run and is continuing onward and we're going to discuss today. Some of the puzzles that remain but some of the deep puzzles of the past that today just are not as puzzling any longer. It's not that everything has been resolved, or it's rare that deep puzzles just get fully thoroughly resolved, but there are many things that were very unclear, even as early as 15 2025 years ago that now have really been unraveled and Lenny and a bunch of other folks that will no doubt make reference to critical to making that happen so Lenny will join us at about 130 or so. I'll do a little bit of q&a, maybe just a couple of questions if there's something to get us going. And then I'll maybe give a. I don't know, a little background to the conversation that we're gonna have Atlanta so here's a question from Captain Vietnam. How are dark energy and dark matter related Captain Vietnam asks, and I like questions like that because the answer is short. Basically I don't know and nobody does know how these dark things are related, they may be related they may not be related remember dark matter is this idea of matter that is out there we believe in space, and we come to that conclusion because when we take account of the gravity that can be exerted by the matter that's not dark, which means matter that we can see gives off light reflects light matter of that sort. The amount of gravity that such matter can exert just is not enough to account for the motions that we see through astrophysical measurements astrophysical data right i mean the analogy that I like to use I think it's a pretty good one. If you have a bicycle wheel, that's wet as it spins you know that the water droplets fly off as the wheel turns. Similarly, in galaxies are spinning. If they're spinning at a sufficiently fast rate stars should be flung outward. And we see galaxies for which the stars should be flung outwards, but they're not which must mean there's something else out there that's holding those stars inside of those galaxies the belief is that there's additional matter, beyond the matter that we can see with our telescopes and that dark matter is responsible for the gravitational pull that's keeping those stars from flying outwards, like the water droplets good that's dark matter as you'd say, there's a lot of dark matter we think when you do these calculations. There's on the order of four or five times as much dark matter as there is ordinary matter, you know the stuff that we're made of

3

Speaker 3

31:52

dark energy is a different beast, dark energy. The most convincing evidence for it. Are these observations that we've discussed in this series from time to time of the accelerated expansion of space. Space is not only getting larger over time that was a shock right. That was the shock that initially was really confirmed through the observations of Edwin Hubble. But, not only is the universe getting bigger it's getting bigger, at an accelerated clip, so the expansion is speeding up. How can expansion speed up right galaxies they pull on each other with the force of gravity force of gravity we usually think of as pulling things inward. But yet, something's pushing outward. And the remarkable thing is that an Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Gravity can actually be repulsive it can push outward. Not if the source of that gravity is a clump like a star, a clump like a galaxy a clump like a planet rather if there's a diffuse energy that is spread uniformly throughout a region of space then under modest assumptions, it will give rise to a repulsive push an outward push that can drive the expansion of space to accelerate. And because this energy does not itself give off light we call it dark energy. So there are the two dark things Dark Matter dark energy and again I gave you the amount of dark matter, dark energies in terms of the energy mass budget of the universe is even more substantial on the order of 70% of the mass energy of the universe is this dark energy. So that are these two components now are they related. Many people have written down theories which suggests that they are none of these have really gained the consensus of the scientific community as yet, but who knows. You know, they both have dark in their name. Is that the end of the connection, or is it deeper, I don't know. All right anyway so that's a good question to get us going here. Mark Kennedy also has How much do you miss mama joys. I don't know what that means but it does ring a bell. Somewhere deep in my childhood or something. I know what you're talking about Mark I think. Or maybe not. Maybe it's something that I don't want to remember, I don't know. But anyway, I can't answer the question cuz I don't remember exactly what it means, quick one more before we head on to a little bit of background. Physics forever asks, What are strings made up we'll talk a little bit about string theory here today no doubt many sides gein founding father pioneer of string theory I'm sure it will come up in our conversation. And look when you think about any proposal for what stuff is made of. And you think back on the history of ideas, any proposal for what stuff is made of seem to ultimately have finer stuff inside of it. Right, molecules made of atoms. atoms. Yeah nucleus, with electron.