The Science Behind "Creatio Continua" versus "Creatio Ex Nihilo" (Process v. Classical Thought)

Multiverse Timeline

Introductory Questions

• Can humans manufacture matter from nothing?
• Can light be turned into matter?
• What Does the First Law of ThermoDynamics have to do with all this?

Observations

The First Law of ThermoDynamics says, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

Then Albert Einstein came along and theorized that "Energy" and "Matter" can be interchangeable.

E = M   or   M = E

Atoms, of course, is matter on a quantumtative scale. A molecule is made up of many atoms.

What is light? Light consists as quantum units of energy called "photons." Thus light is composed of photons which we call light (another term for this energy is "radiation").

When two photons are smashed together they produce "quarks" and "gluons." A quark is a unit of quantum matter; and a gluon is a unit of quantum energy. Thus, smashing two photons together produces both matter and energy.

2 Photons --->  Smashed Together

produces

Quark(s) + Gluon(s)   =   Matter + Energy

Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. What is changed are the matter/energy states. Thus retaining the First Law of ThermoDynamics (in theological terms this is known as creation ex continua in Latin, meaning "creation from something").



Big Band Timeline



This event was massively demonstrated in the early history of the primordial universe when it consisted entirely of primordial quantum energy. Within this intense energy a quantum state existed in which "time" was liquefied into a spatial mass giving a maximum of 3 dimensions, and more probably, 2 dimensions - not the 4 or more dimensions that we live in today (sic, string theory requires at least 11 dimensions). And since only space existed, and not time, there existed an infinity of time without reference to itself until released in the Big Bang explosion. At this moment, in the merest fraction of a second, energy violently expanded outward, time was released, and the universe was birthed. And as the universe expanded (known as inflation) it rapidly cooled over an intervening period of several hundreds of thousands of years. And as it cooled it formed into units of quantumtative matter which created the universe we now live in today leaving behind "time islands" of hot mass (stars, galaxies, etc.) amid a much larger lattice of massless cold and darkness known as dark matter and dark energy. Taken together, all the stars and galaxies form 5% of the visible universe. Leaving 27% of it as dark matter which cannot be explained. And a remaining 68% as dark energy (cf. link here) which also cannot be explained.

We can express this event in a simple formula:

Light   --->   Matter

Now what is matter? Matter consists of a paired combination of quantum particles arranged as "matter and anti-matter."

By smashing matter particles with anti-matter particles we may reverse the process and produce light.

2 paired particles   --->   Matter + Anti-Matter  --->  Light

And, as discussed, light consists as a pair of quantum energy particles known as photons.

Light = 2 photons

Thus, from light we may produce matter by smashing two photons together. And, from matter we may produce light by smashing a unit of matter with a unit of anti-matter to get light.

"Can we manufacture matter?" - Epic Science



Published on Oct 18, 2013

Is it possible to make matter out of nothing? What about matter out of energy?

Learn more about matter/energy in this video from Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Quantum Conclusions

So, yes, humans can manufacture matter from light; and turn light into subatomic matter particles. But this process is not creatio ex nihilo but creatio continua. We have neither created something from nothing nor made that something disappear to nothingness. According to the First Law of ThermoDynamics, all energy must be retained, and can neither be created nor destroyed. It is simply transferred between quantum states of energy, or matter, according to Einstein's theory of General Relativity. More simply, energy and matter may be interchanged, exchanged, or rearranged, as transitional quantum states between one another.

Theological Conclusions

From the outset, "creatio ex nihilo" (sic, Latin for "creation from nothing") becomes a moot point to the scientific discoveries of quantum physics.... Meaning there is no "creatio ex nihilo" to be created from because the universe has already been shown by quantum physics to have a beginningless mass where time was non-existent because of (infinitely) dense gravitational forces (for more on this see, The Quantum Evolution of the Universe, amongst other articles).

If anything, we might more accurately describe creation as "creatio ex continua" (creation from something that always was) as Wolfhart Pannenberg did in his theologic writings many years earlier. (You may find this argument here on a previous article I wrote, Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern, Quantum Age, in the third section down under the title "My Postmodern, Quantum Response: to Craig's Modern Epistemic Apologetics").

Thus answering how God created. And if we go with a multiverse state of physics than God created from something... not nothing. This is the Process Model of Theism. However, as a matter of philosophical argument, we might suppose that "God would not be God if He couldn't create from nothing" as Classical Theists posit. And in the long run of things, given the nature of each theistic system, it has been demonstrated that the process model holds the upper hand re scientific proof, but that the classical model may be retained without demoting our idea of God being God based upon philosophic arguments one way or another.

"[In Process Theology] it is an essential attribute of God to be fully involved in, and affected by, temporal processes, an idea that conflicts with traditional forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal, immutable, and impassible, but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in other respects temporal, mutable, and passible."  - Wikipedia

"... process philosophical thought paved the way for open theism, which sits more comfortably in the [progressive] Evangelical Christian camp." - Wikipedia

More simply said, let us move on from our favorite predilections and learn to see relevant, newer theologic systems as more helpful than we first thought. Process wants a God who is here... One who is with us, who is experiencing our experiences. However, Christian classicism saw a God who was out there, away from us, up in the heavens, who was sometimes with us, but more generally removed from our human experiences as a heavenly being, speaking to us as He would a Job, unmoved and unfeeling. This is the Greek-Hellenistic side of Medieval Christianity which the church has inherited through its traditions and cultures.

All rhetoric aside, the argument becomes moot in Jesus as classicism must now adjust its dogmas by virtue of God's incarnation. Who, in His holy Being, doeth now bear mankind's humanity with us. More specifically, God can no longer stand wholly apart from our humanity, nor remain dispassionately unmoved (or stoical) from our physical sufferings and ethical dilemmas, by reason of His experience as a man (even though the philosophical argument could be made that God was never dispassionate even in His eternal state regardless of classicism's speculated need for His incarnation by some, God being God and all). Even so, by Jesus' incarnation all philosophies may drop away as to whether God was impassive, or passionate, towards man's humanity with the historical occurrence in time and space of His incarnation as fully God and fully man (cf. hypostasis). And because of God's incarnation amongst mankind, He passionately understands us now as our Creator-Redeemer (though we suspect that He knew this subject intimately even before His incarnation). Which is what process theology is plainly stating.

As to the charges of panentheism, they are true. God and the cosmos are one. But not ontologically, as some process theologians would state, for God is the Creator of the cosmos, and not the created of the cosmos.

Nor is God "the All" so popularized by Oprah Winfrey, whose philosophy wanders into pantheism (not pan-en-theism, as stated above) where God and the universe are an ontological oneness. Yes, God is "the All" but He is also greater than "the All." Even distinguished from "the All" as separate from "the All" as its Creator-Redeemer.

Nor is God dependent upon His creation even though He has intricately (and mysteriously) bound Himself to it by decree, by incarnation, by His death, and redemption of it. Each phase of this process should be necessarily understood as relational processes whereby God is creation's Creator, Sustainer, Nurturer, Provider, Savior, and Redeemer. As such, God is shown to be deeply involved with His creation (even as ancient Judaism proclaimed, though it now denies God's incarnation in Christ Jesus). Nor is God impassively separated from His experience of creation's groans and sufferings against the early claims of the church's more classical doctrines erroneously based upon the predominant philosophies of Greek Hellenism.

This then is the position of Relational Theism, which is the halfway-house between the two competing positions of process theology v. classical Christian thought (or theism). The idea of Relational Theism (which we have worked on here quite a bit at Relevancy22) would meld both systems into one synthetic soup, making the waters even murkier than they were before... but hopefully clearer as well. As purists, neither side likes a synthesis of their positions, do they not? But then again, the extremes of any position are fraught with their own special dilemmas when not taking into account the other's arguments and observations.

For myself, the process model bears relevancy over the classic model for the postmodern age that the church now lives within. Even as we have developed it here as a synthesis between two competing positions, which have been described as relational-process theism. A theism that is neither fully classical, nor fully process. That stumbles over each other when trying to assert (or deny) ex nihilo creation. Where in the end we mince about words rather than seeing the reasonableness of either view.

Life is messy. And so is doctrine. Let us learn to open our spirits to believing that we are not alone in this world. Nor this wide, and amazingly complex (multi)universe. No. Within it, around it, about it, is our Creator-Redeemer God who is truly with us in all that He is and was and will be. Whose everywhere-bound-presence should be our comfort and help, our hope and deep knowledge that we are not abandoned. Nor alone. Nor left to ourselves, whatever trials and tribulations come. To know that God is there as He has always been there. That He is - and has become - our Titanium. Amen.

(For more discussion on these matters, simply go to the sidebars to the right under "theism." Thank you.)

R.E. Slater

November 4, 2013

continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"

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5 Cheat Sheets with Michio Kaku | Mysteries of The Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_lGRGc0co&list=PL0AD0581D8B41A28C

Michio Kaku Explains String Theory

Michio Kaku: Is God a Mathematician?

"How does a mathematician read the mind of God? The Mind of God is read through cosmic music.

It is the music of strings, resonating through eleven dimensional hyperspace of supersymmetry. The

latest renaissance of mathematics." - Dr. Michio Kaku

From Universe to Multiverse

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Light Changed to Matter, Then Stopped and Moved

http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=28520

Also reported at PHY.org - http://phys.org/news90077438.html

 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 8, 2007 -- By converting light into matter and then back again, physicists have for the first time stopped a light pulse and then restarted it a small distance away. This "quantum mechanical magic trick" provides unprecedented control over light and could have applications in fiber-optic communication and quantum information processing.

---

Harvard University professor Lene Hau explains how she stops light in one place then retrieves and speeds it up in a completely separate place. (Photo: Justin Ide/Harvard News Office)

---

In quantum networks, information optically transmitted over the network is converted into matter, processed, and then converted back into light. The physicists at Harvard University hope that their discovery could provide a possible way to do this, since matter, unlike light, can easily be manipulated. Their findings were published this week in the journal Nature.

"We demonstrate that we can stop a light pulse in a supercooled sodium cloud, store the data contained within it, and totally extinguish it, only to reincarnate the pulse in another cloud two-tenths of a millimeter away," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

---

In a "quantum mechanical magic trick" devised by Harvard University physicists, a light pulse is extinguished in one ultracold atom cloud (purple), converted to matter and then revived in another before being allowed to exit the second cloud in its original state. (Image courtesy of Sean R. Garner)

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This marks another milestone for Hau in light manipulation. In 1998, she slowed light, which travels in free space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, to just 38 miles per hour in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Einstein and others have theorized that the speed of light in free space can't be changed. Two years later, she stopped light completely in a similar cloud, then restarted it without changing its characteristics. She received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (so-called "genius grant") for these experiments.

In her latest work, Hau and her co-authors, Naomi S. Ginsberg and Sean R. Garner, found that the light pulse can be revived, and its information transferred between the two clouds of sodium atoms, by converting the original optical pulse into a traveling matter wave which is an exact matter copy of the original pulse, traveling at a molasses-like pace of 200 m (600 ft) per hour. The matter pulse is readily converted back into light when it enters the second of the supercooled clouds -- known as Bose-Einstein condensates -- and is illuminated with a control laser.

"The Bose-Einstein condensates are very important to this work because within these clouds atoms become phase-locked, losing their individuality and independence," Hau said. "The lock-step nature of atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate makes it possible for the information in the initial light pulse to be replicated exactly within the second cloud of sodium atoms, where the atoms collaborate to revive the light pulse."

Within a Bose-Einstein condensate -- a cloud of sodium atoms cooled to just billionths of a degree above absolute zero -- a light pulse is compressed by a factor of 50 million, without losing any of the information stored within it. The light drives some of the cloud's roughly 1.8 million sodium atoms to enter into "quantum superposition" states, with a lower-energy component that stays put and a higher-energy component that travels between the two clouds.

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Diagram showing the time line for the Harvard research. (Image courtesy of Naomi S. Ginsberg, Sean R. Garner and Lena V. Hau)

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The amplitude and phase of the light pulse stopped and extinguished in the first cloud are imprinted in this traveling component and transferred to the second cloud, where the recaptured information can recreate the original light pulse.

The period of time when the light pulse becomes matter, and the matter pulse is isolated in space between the condensate clouds, could offer scientists and engineers a tantalizing new window for controlling and manipulating optical information; researchers cannot now readily control optical information during its journey, except to amplify the signal to avoid fading. The new work by Hau and her colleagues marks the first successful manipulation of coherent optical information.

"This work could provide a missing link in the control of optical information," Hau said. "While the matter is traveling between the two Bose-Einstein condensates, we can trap it, potentially for minutes, and reshape it -- change it -- in whatever way we want. This novel form of quantum control could also have applications in the developing fields of quantum information processing and quantum cryptography."

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

For more information, visit: www.harvard.edu

Evolutionary Theory and Moral Development

Bio - Mark A. Maddix
Northwest Nazarene University

Professor of Practical Theology and Discipleship

Mark A. Maddix is Professor of Practical Theology and Discipleship, and Dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Northwest Nazarene University. Before coming to NNU he served in pastoral ministry for twelve years. He has published several articles and co-authored books including Discovering Discipleship, Spiritual Formation: A Wesleyan Paradigm, and Missional Discipleship: Partners in God's Redemptive Mission.

Evolutionary Theory and Moral Development

http://exploringevolution.com/essays/2013/11/04/evolutionary-theory-and-moral-development/#.UngHdE8o69J

by Mark A. Maddix

November 4, 2013

Growing up in a Christian home, evolution was only referred with negative connotations. I was taught that evolution was an atheistic theory which undermined the authority of Scripture in general and specifically Genesis 1 and 2. If a person believed in evolution he or she could not be a Christian. This view was substantiated during my first biology class at a nearby state college. The professor supported evolution and took great pride in degrading uneducated and ignorant Bible-believing Christians who denied evolution. The professor, teaching in the Bible Belt, enjoyed arguing with students who opposed his views. This experience confirmed the assumptions of my upbringing that evolution was from the "pit of hell."

A year later I sensed God calling me to be a pastor so I enrolled as a Bible major in a Christian liberal arts university, rooted in the Wesleyan tradition. During my first semester I took Introduction to the Old Testament. I was eager for the professor to support my view of the creation accounts and to deny a humanistic view of evolution. In my amazement, the professor said nothing about the creation-evolution debate. Rather, he began to explain that the creation story in Genesis 1 & 2 was a hymn that was theological and had nothing to do with proving or disproving creation from a scientific perspective. He said the author of Genesis, probably not Moses, (that created another anxiety) had no understanding of modern science and was writing to show God's relationship with God's creation. His explanation changed the course of my understanding of the creation-evolution debate and helped me understand Genesis 1 and 2 as theological not scientific.

I was convinced that Genesis 1 & 2 had a different purpose and meaning, until I took a course in the natural sciences, taught by a young earth, seven day creationist (YEC). He argued that the creation accounts in Genesis could be scientifically traced, and the world was only 6,000 years old. He talked about dispensations of time and used the Bible to support his views. Now I was really confused.

I continued to wrestle with what I believed until I took Introduction to Biology, a course I had taken at the state university and had to take again because of a poor grade. In class the professor affirmed his belief in evolution by stating that Darwin's theory was the best way to explain how God created the universe. He affirmed what my Bible professor had articulated about Scripture. He also indicated that many scientists, who were Christian, see connections between science and the Bible. After class I asked the professor to explain how he could hold to evolution and creation. He responded by stating, "Believing in evolution does not reject Scripture, since Scripture was not written for such purposes."

My Christian liberal arts education provided me with a clearer understanding of a Wesleyan view of Scripture, particularly as it related to the creation accounts and a view of creation that could include evolution. As a pastor, and now as a professor, this theological understanding of the creation accounts are foundational in discussing creation and science with parishioners, students, and constituencies. Many of them think that the more recent focus on evolution among evangelicals in general, and Nazarenes in particular, is something new. I often remind them that it was something I learned in college over twenty-five years ago.

Evolution and Moral Development

Since I am not a scientist, I cannot speak about the details of evolutionary theory. I can only rely on the vast amount of research that supports evolution as a viable option in explaining how God may have created the universe. I can speak, as a practical theologian, on the theological significance of the creation accounts and my expertise in the integration of theology and the social sciences. Beginning with my doctoral studies in the interdisciplinary fields of Christian education, theology, and the social sciences, I explored how evolutionary psychology impacts the understanding of how people grow and develop. I began to see clear evidence of the impact of evolution on development theories as it relates to how we grow physically, cognitively, and morally. More recent studies in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have expanded my understanding of how persons grow and develop. I want to explore in more detail how evolutionary theory impacts my understanding of moral development.

In my search for understanding how persons grow and develop morality, I first asked whether humans are born with the capacity to know what is right or wrong (nature), or is morality shaped primary by our environments (nurture). Developmental theories argue that human consciousness - how we determine right and wrong - is developed during the first years of life through our interaction with our parents. In other words, humans are created in the image and likeness of God, with the capacity to know what is good and evil, but a person's moral consciousness is shaped and developed by our parents and/or guardians. This is why some people have a higher level of consciousness (morality) while others do not. Since persons inherit a particular environment, it impacts their morality.

On the one hand, we are shaped morally by our environments, but on the other hand, recent studies in evolutionary ethics show that morality is not merely learned through one's environment. Many of our moral instincts are inherited through our evolutionary past. We are created with a universal morality that is imbedded in our nature, which is biological. Thus, humans don't simply learn moral behavior, but humans are biologically designed to acquire morality. In other words, humans are biologically wired with the necessary components for morality. Therefore, all human persons, created in the image and likeness of God, have the inherit capacity for morality.

Evolutionary ethics does not contradict a Biblical view of human persons Instead it provides a scientific explanation for how God created humans with the capacity to be moral, and through our environments, we grow and develop morally.

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

Rob Bell Joins Oprah to Discuss Christianity and Religion

Some quick observations. I have noticed Rob's initial focus on the themes of faith v. doubt, and the idea of openness, to be the very themes we have been exploring here at Relevancy22 these past many years. Nice to know great minds think alike! LOL

 

Too, I quickly understood Oprah's confusion between pan-theism (God and creation are one) and pan-en-theism (God in creation, but separate from creation) in her descriptions of God as being "the All."  Rob graciously lets it go as a matter of convenience even as he was working out the larger dilemma as to how to bridge the missional distance between Christianity and societal evangelism. Basically, you don't go to these shows to correct, but to explain, in attempts to move the discussion along to a larger audience which may be intrigued and searching for hope.

 

R.E. Slater

November 4, 2013

 

 

"When Rob Bell — pastor, best-selling author, provocative thinker — recently joined me on the show, we talked for two and a half hours, and I could have kept going," wrote Winfrey. "The ideas Rob sets forth in his books Love Wins and What We Talk About When We Talk About God opened my heart and my mind. People like him are the reason I set out to build OWN in the first place: to be able to gather a global community of like-minded seekers."

 

The post titled, "What Oprah Knows for Sure About Spirituality," was accompanied by a picturesque photo of Bell and Winfrey deep in discussion with the media mogul grasping a copy of What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

 

 

 

 

Considered one of America's most influential and progressive Christian pastors, Rob Bell joins Oprah to explore his latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, and to discuss why more people are identifying with spirituality over religion. 

 

 

Watch

Full Episode
Here

 

 

 

 'It's Not Crazy To Acknowledge That There's A God' (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/rob-bell-oprah_n_4174651.html

 

October 30, 2013

 

Considered as one of America’s most influential, progressive -- and controversial -- Christian pastors, Rob Bell joins Oprah this week on "Super Soul Sunday" to explore his latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

 

"So let's begin where you begin in the book," Oprah says in the above video from the upcoming episode. "We first need to open."

"First and foremost, to all the really smart, studied people who have been to the TED conference and have iPhones: It's not crazy to acknowledge that there's a God," Bell says. "It may actually be the rational move, is simply to say, 'I've come to the end of my own logical powers and acknowledge there's too much that's beyond what we can sort through using these little brains that we have.'

 

"And for 300 years the water we've been swimming in, that we've been handed by the enlightenment tradition -- which has brought us medicines and hospitals and all sorts of wonderful things -- has also brought us, ultimately, if you cannot explain it ... I don't know. And yet we're fascinated as humans. We're wired for the mysterious. We love it. We're drawn to it. You can't stifle it."

 

"So you're saying just open to that," Oprah says.

 

"It's OK to be open," Bell says. "It's OK to be open."

 

Oprah's conversation with Bell on "Super Soul Sunday" airs Sunday, November 3 at 11 a.m. ET on OWN.

 

 

 

 

Rob Bell Says Faith And Doubt Go Hand In Hand (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/rob-bell-oprah_n_4195219.html

By OWN Posted: 11/04/2013 10:03 am EST

 

In Pastor Rob Bell's 2011 book, Love Wins, he pondered questions that are often considered taboo in traditional Christianity: What if heaven is open to all, rather than a select few? What if hell doesn't exist at all? Though the book became a New York Times bestseller, it also caused controversy among conservative Christians.

 

Now, Bell sits down with Oprah on "Super Soul Sunday" to discuss his latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, in which he explores why some people resist talking about and embracing God.

 

In the above video, Bell explains why he believes that faith and doubt are not opposites but instead really "excellent dance partners." He says we're all leaping, even if we don't all realize or acknowledge it.

 

'Everybody's really taking sort of fragments and the shrapnel you have of your experience and you're leaping into this story or this story. 'I'm going to make the leap that what I do matters, that I'm not an accident, that there is some call on my life,'" he says.

 

He says that people who believe in God aren't the only ones making a leap, though. "I think the people in the modern world with the most sort of, 'This is the rational scientific evidence why there is no God' -- that's just as much a leap."

 

"So that is what you mean by God being a reality known and felt but difficult to analyze," Oprah says.

 

Oprah also asks Bell about his description of a "lethal division between the science and the sacred."

 

"Well, I think it cuts people off from celebrating," Bell explains. "To me, the only kind of faith worth having is faith that can celebrate the good and the true and the beautiful, wherever you find it."

 

"Super Soul Sunday" airs Sundays at 11 a.m. ET on OWN.

 

 

 

 

 

What Kids Say About Their Moms

 

There isn’t a single day that I don’t question my abilities as a parent. And when these mothers start reflecting on their issues and doubts — yeah, that struck a nerve. But when their kids start saying what they really think about momma bear? I. Was. A. Total. Wreck.

 

There's a lot of pressure being a parent. We want to raise our children the right way, but there is no definitive handbook for every difficult situation and we're bound to make mistakes along the way. For most of us, we're our own biggest critic.

 

But what do the people who matter most think? How do our children see us? For Mother's Day this year, we did an experiment asking moms to describe themselves, and then compared that with what their own kids said about them. It's amazing what you can see when you look from a different perspective.

 

 

A New Perspective For Moms from Elevation Church on Vimeo.

 

 

 

 

The Video Every Mom Must Watch On Repeat

Until... She... Gets It

The Huffington Post  |  By Farah L. Miller

Posted: 10/31/2013 9:32 am EDT  |  Updated: 10/31/2013 9:58 am EDT

 

 

"I struggle with my temper."

 

"I wish I was better at taking time to sit down with my child."

 

"I wish I was more confident."

 

Sound familiar? Motherhood comes with doubts. From the moment you hold your first baby at the hospital, and wonder if you've got her cradled the right way to the day your child calls from college with all the questions. There is no map. We're raising little humans here, and it is scary. And some days, the only voice in your head is the one screaming, You don't know what you're doing.

 

Except you do.

 

The women in this video were asked a simple question -- to describe themselves as mothers. They expressed those concerns listed above. Then, their kids answered. It's like when Dove had women listen to what other people remember about their faces, only it's not selling soap and is just about parenting (which really isn't a "just" at all).

 

Press play. Send it to all the mamas you know. Most importantly, believe it.

 

 

 

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50 Quotes on Mothers

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201205/50-quotes-mothers

 

by Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D. in Here, There, and Everywhere

May 4, 2012

 

Touching, funny, and provoking quotes about moms and mothering

 

 

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie

for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

- Tenneva Jordan

 

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs

in my field, since the payment is pure love.

- Mildred B. Vermont

 

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once,

and by car forever after.

- Peter De Vries

 

The phrase "working mother" is redundant.

- Jane Sellman

 

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.

They have clung to me all my life.

- Abraham Lincoln

 

Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers,

but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

- Pearl S. Buck

 

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss

at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

- Honoré de Balzac

 

All women become like their mothers.

That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

 

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

- Spanish Proverb

 

She never quite leaves her children at home,

even when she doesn't take them along.

- Margaret Culkin Banning

 

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.

A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

- Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

 

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.

Everything gets reduced to essentials.

- Meryl Streep

 

In all my efforts to learn to read, my mother shared fully my ambition

and sympathized with me and aided me in every way she could.

If I have done anything in life worth attention,

I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.

- Booker T. Washington

 

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.

- Lisa Alther

 

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child.

They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean?

In my heart it don't mean a thing.

- Toni Morrison, Beloved

 

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future

but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

- Honoré de Balzac

 

With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.

- Isadora Duncan

 

Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.

- Erich Fromm

 

I miss thee, my Mother!

Thy image is still the

deepest impressed on my heart.

-Eliza Cook

 

Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;

a mother's secret hope outlives them all.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

- James Joyce

 

Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.

- Oprah Winfrey

 

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me,

but I think she rather enjoyed it.

- Mark Twain

 

My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw.

All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to

the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.

- George Washington

 

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box

has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes

from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

- Erma Bombeck

 

When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?"

it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no.

You're going to get it anyway.

- Erma Bombeck

 

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

- George Eliot

 

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

- Ambrose Bierce

 

If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

- Ferrell Sims

 

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege,

but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for

physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death.

- Rebecca West

 

The best way to keep children home is to make the home

atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.

- Dorothy Parker

 

No matter how old a mother is, she watches

her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

- Florida Scott-Maxwell

 

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic.

It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this

very love must help the child grow away from the mother,

and to become fully independent.

- Erich Fromm

 

There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.

- Jill Churchill

 

Mothers are all slightly insane.

- J.D. Salinger

 

I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford.

Then I want to move in with them.

- Phyllis Diller

 

Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs...

since the payment is pure love.

- Mildred B. Vermont

 

When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child,

I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.

- Nancy Friday

 

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.'

We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

- Zora Neale Hurston

 

Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

- Jane Welsh Carlyle

 

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

 

A mother's love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking;

it never fails or falters, even though the heart is breaking.

- Helen Rice

 

A mother's arms are more comforting than anyone else's.

- Diana, Princess of Wales

 

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not

have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children.

- William Makepeace Thackeray

 

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though

I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

- Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

 

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think

whatever else you do well matters very much.

- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

 

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

- H.W. Beecher

 

The hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

- W. R. Wallace

 

 

 

Book Review: Peter Oakes, "Reading Romans in Pompeii"

Pompeii, Italy

 

Who “attended” those earliest churches?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/04/who-attended-those-earliest-churches/

 

by Scot McKnight

Nov 4, 2013

Comments

 

On the basis of a new approach at looking how to discern the social makeup of the earliest Christian house churches, one based more on housing space occupied than on ideal social types, Peter Oakes has offered to us a new way of thinking more realistically and concretely about who was in the earliest house churches. His book is called Reading Romans in Pompeii.

 

First, the big picture. Oakes, a lecturer in New Testament at Manchester, has studied the evidence of Pompei, a place without any Christian presence so far as I know, to discern how housing and space worked. Then, with that clear evidence in hand, he compares Pompei to Rome to see the differences, and then on the basis of this careful study of who occupied what spaces and who was represented in typical locations in the Roman empire, Oakes makes the following proposal for a house church of 30 people in 1st Century Rome:
 

• A craftworker who rents a fairly large workshop (c. 50 sq yards) with separate living space, his wife, children, a couple of male craftworking slaves, a female domestic slave, a dependent relative.

• A few other householders, mostly male, who rent space less than our craftworker, some of their spouses, children, slaves, and other dependents.

• A couple members of families whose householder is not part of the church.

• A couple slaves whose owners are not part of the church.

• A couple of free or freed dependents of people who are not part of the church.

• A couple of homeless people.

• A few people renting space in shared rooms (migrant workers and their families).

• Now mix in the important element of the Pauline mission, namely evangelism of Jewish synagogues that leads to some converts, so we now have a mosh pit of Christians all in a house church.

 

The earliest churches, then, are not made up of pietists who wanted to study the Bible but ordinary Romans from all sorts of backgrounds, needs, yearnings, and connections — each bringing to the table different ears for the gospel.

 

Oakes then discusses Romans 12 and how such folks would hear what Paul is saying, and his discussion here is nothing if not very interesting and profitable. The he examines how his invented characters — Primus (bottom of the heap slave), Sabina (freed slave), and Iris (inn worker whose body was owned by a master who gave her to his patrons at times) — would hear Paul’s message of salvation, and he sees three processing ideas: justice, survival (eternal life matters!), and redemption of the body. Holconius, his major character who is a householder, is examined through the lens of social body, the church, and salvation as a holy people.

 

Undoubtedly, one the best books on Paul/Romans I’ve read in a long, long time. Oakes combines judicious historical sensitivities with solid exegetical insight, all wrapped into a proper caution that is not always observed among those who use social evidence.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

 

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Fortress Press; Reprint (June 1, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451476671
• ISBN-13: 978-1451476675

Peter Oakes combines archeology and biblical studies to give the reader a fresher, deeper understanding of Paul's letter to the Romans. An investigation of the archaeological evidence from Pompeii helps us to think about the ways in which Paul s letter may have been understood by different people —such as a slave girl, cabinet-maker-cum-surgeon and an educated slave concubine—might have understood Paul's letter when they first heard it.

 

This encounter helps us to picture the lives of ordinary first century people more vividly and offers new insights into Romans. The result of this ground-breaking study is a fuller, richer appreciation of Paul's most important letter.

 

Amazon.com link here

 

The Benefits of Christian Doubt: Fitting Faith and Atheism Around Each Other



 

Embracing ambiguity: Philosopher Pete Rollins. Photo: Fiona Morris





 Open arms embrace the benefits of doubt

http://www.theage.com.au/national/open-arms-embrace-the-benefits-of-doubt-20131103-2wuw0.html

 

by Barney Zwartz, Religion Editor

November 4, 2013

 

Most visiting evangelists want to convert people to faith, but postmodern Christian philosopher Pete Rollins wants to encourage people to doubt.

 

''I want us to embrace doubt, complexity and ambiguity. If we don't do that we project our insecurities onto someone else,'' said the 40-year-old New York-based Irishman, in Australia for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas that ends on Monday. ''My dangerous idea is to examine ourselves honestly.''

 

On Sunday in Sydney his topic was ''to believe is human, to doubt divine'' and on Saturday he debated atheist polemicist Lawrence Krauss - ''it felt like I was invited to a papal audience. He didn't do a presentation or engage with me. He just wanted me to say what I believe so he could contradict it.''

 

Krauss, like many within the church, represents the certainty that Rollins, the apostle of doubt, wants to diminish, believing it is a carapace used to hide brokenness and insecurity even from the self.

 

Religion, he told Fairfax Media, was often about what people believe - if they can affirm a certain set of doctrines they will get to heaven.

 

''I'm more interested in how belief functions. Two people can believe the same things, and it might make one joyful and compassionate and the other angry and aggressive. I don't say people should doubt, I say we already are and don't want to admit it. We are full of unknowing and we suppress it.''

 

Doubt was natural to all, he said, but the church at its worst promised guaranteed satisfaction - ''we can make you whole and complete'' - and just looked like every other product.

 

''The world is a huge vending machine, and the church is one product among many. But Christianity is a sledgehammer that smashes the vending machine - God is found in brokenness, unknowing and doubt.''

 

Rollins said the church demanded people believe 100 per cent, but most ministers were full of doubts that they could not share.

 

Converted at 17, an Anglican, he became an evangelist. ''I would go out and convert people, and I was good at it. It was easy to get people to believe, because they want to, but we have to get them to doubt.''

 

He creates ''pop-up'' churches where people start to deconstruct their beliefs helped by poetry, art, music and reflection. Atheists and agnostics are welcome too.

 

Rollins, who has spent three weeks in Australia talking at churches and universities as well as the festival, says there is no point worrying about a looming crisis because we are already living in ''apocalyptic end-times''.

 

 

 

 

Is Fundamentalism a Problem or the Solution to a problem:

A debate with Lawrence Krauss

http://peterrollins.net/2013/11/is-fundamentalism-a-problem-or-the-solution-to-a-problem-a-debate-with-lawrence-krauss/

 

by Peter Rollins

posted March 11, 2013

 

Recently I engaged in a debate with Lawrence Krauss at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas under the title “New Religion vs. New Atheism,” (terms that neither of us felt comfortable with). My primary interest in this debate was to begin to test whether some of the tools I use when working in religious circles to break open fundamentalism might be of use in the context of New Atheism. The video will probably appear at some point, but for now I’ll give you the text of the argument I gave in my opening address (this differs a little from what I actually said as this is slightly shortened and I was extrapolating from notes on the day). I should also say that Krauss was bemused by my approach and felt that my arguments below were an exercise in “empty talk.”

 

Introduction

 

I’m not here to beat Lawrence in some debate or win cheap points. Nor am I here to build an alternative fortress to New Atheism from which to lob flaming rocks. Or to be an apologist for some outdated religious worldview.

 

I’m here because I bleed, because we all bleed. I’m here because we are all a little like that perennial philosopher Winnie-the-Pooh who we are introduced to in the following way,

 

"... Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it...."

 

Like this bear it can often feel like we’re all bumping our heads as we journey through life. Not sure we’re doing it right and trying to find a slightly less painful way to journey.

 

So what has this to do with New Atheism?

 

Well I want to argue that religious beliefs are often used to cover over our anxiety and prevent an encounter with this disturbing feeling, and that, while New Atheism is better than the fundamentalism it critiques, it is ultimately caught up in some of the same problems as that which it attacks, acting as a new means of creating a sense of mastery, solidifying tribal identity, and ultimately hiding from us an experience of our unknowing.

 

To explore this I wish to make three interconnected points.

 

 

Point 1: New Atheism is a shadow of the fundamentalism it attacks - [moving from a critique of a system to a system in its own right]

 

Firstly, I want to argue that New Atheism treats fundamentalism as a problem rather than as the solution to a problem.

 

To understand this we can look at how alcohol abuse functions [in a person, or in society]. Excessive alcohol consumption is not the problem, but an attempt at self-cure, it is then the solution to a problem. If the person doesn’t deal with the problem for which the alcohol is the solution they will always struggle. Even if they do manage to stop drinking another symptom will simply arise whether that be chain smoking, excessive fitness or bouts of aggression.

 

In a structurally similar way, instead of seeing fundamentalism as a problem it is more helpful to see it as a defense mechanism that is providing a psychological service to the individual. Because of this, if someone gives up their religious fundamentalism and adopts a new system, without addressing why they embraced religious fundamentalism in the first place, the new system will simply function in the same way as the old one.

 

For example, in Northern Ireland, it is not uncommon to see a former paramilitary join the church. But generally the type of religious commitment they adopt has the same belligerence, intolerance and tribal signifiers/markers as their previous political fundamentalism. Why? Because their new found religious belief is functioning in the same way as their political fundamentalism. Namely protecting the person from dealing with a complex set of personal and political antagonisms.

 

In response to this, the New Atheist will point out that they are not advocating another system, but rather are offering the critique of a system. They claim that atheism is a religion in the same way that baldness is a hairstyle or health is a disease i.e. it isn’t.

 

However this answer fails to address the way in which even the rejection of a system can itself operate in structurally the same way as a system. In other words, “Nothing” can be given a positive charge and can act as a tribal identity.

 

This is captured beautifully in a joke that Derrida would tell of a Rabbi walking into a synagogue and publically saying, “I am dust, I am nothing.” Then a priest came in and did the same. Followed by an Imam. Finally the caretaker of the building entered and also said, “I am dust, I am nothing.” On hearing this the three religious leaders turn to each other and whisper, “who does he think he is, saying that he’s nothing?”

 

The simple point here is that even a negation can take on a substantive form for the one holding it, and thus can become a new form of protection mechanism. It is this that we can see in New Atheism, where its rejection of a religious system takes on [its own] religious texture and tone.

 

In contrast, the “New Religion” that I am advocating doesn’t operate at the level of what one believes (offering a new system), but rather asks how our various beliefs function. Inviting us to ask ourselves whether our various beliefs (and even our professed non-beliefs… “I’m not like them”) function.

 

 

Point 2: New Atheism strengthens the fundamentalism it critiques by directly attacking it

 

Secondly, it can be argued that, by directly attacking fundamentalism, New Atheism only strengthens its power. This is because fundamentalism, as a defense mechanism, is strengthened by direct attack. A defense mechanism, like the dark force in The Fifth Element, only becomes stronger when directly attacked.

 

Imagine that you have just had an argument with your mum. If I see this and berate you for what you said you’re more likely to defend yourself, even if you feel that you might have acted badly. In contrast, if I buy you a drink, have some small talk, and then ask how you felt about the argument, you’re more likely to admit to having overreacted.

 

The point here is that my direct assault on your actions naturally evokes a defense and ends up doing the opposite of what I want. Instead I must find an indirect means of bringing the issue up.

 

This, of course, presupposes that you have doubts over the position you’re defending, and this brings me to another problem with New Atheism: it treats fundamentalists as if they naively believe what they’re saying and thus the mere supplying of information will be sufficient.

 

However one of the weaknesses of fundamentalism is precisely found in its seeming strength, i.e. its aggressive overconfidence when directly confronted hints at the existence of a repressed or disavowed insecurity. The more aggressive someone is at being contradicted the more insecure they generally are. Someone who is genuinely secure in her position will not be angry when challenged, but rather indifferent.

 

The point then is that the more attacked a fundamentalist feels the more they will hold onto their belief, but the more they are given space in a non-aggressive atmosphere the more likely they are, with the right prompts, to begin to admit to their doubts.

 

The approach that I advocate uses parables, stories and the Christian tradition itself to create non-aggressive prompts that help people with repressive religious beliefs to glimpse the undying traumas hidden by those beliefs in a way that they can deal with.

 

This approach thus operates from within religious discourse, drawing out those central elements that break open new possibilities and allow us to glimpse the reasons why a person might be holding onto an unhealthy and morally problematic system.

 

 

Point 3: New Atheism isn’t well equipped to help people experience the humility it proclaims

 

By this I mean that we embrace a more humble comportment to the world, not through a change in worldview, but through rituals and communities that help us face our struggles and narcissism.

 

Take the example of breaking up with someone. If we complain to a friend about all the times our ex did something wrong and, in the midst of this our friend stops us to correct our interpretation, we might tell them that we already know that our interpretation is wrong. That we are well aware that we are not taking into consideration the other person’s perspective etc. The point is that we need to rant and rave a little so that we can come to accept that. In other words, we need the space to shout in order to get a better perspective on the situation, a perspective that we already are dimly aware of. More than that we also need certain activities to help in gaining a better perspective. Perhaps listening to certain songs, burying shared things, or just having a drink with someone who’ll listen to us.

 

Here we come to embrace the fact that we are not the center of our own universe at a deeply personal level. We can easily understand that we are not the center of the universe in a cosmological sense while still acting in a way that betrays our embedded belief that we are the center of the universe. In contrast, the approach being called here “New Religion” doesn’t seek to bring about a sense of humility by giving people the “correct” way of seeing ones place in the universe, but rather by helping people encounter their own violence and encourage concern for the other through the use of various rituals.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The “what” of our belief is important, however we need spaces were we explore how our beliefs function. Indeed often we can use the debates over what we believe to avoid the more difficult question of asking whether they are a symptom.

 

Take the example of Batman. He might look brave; going out and taking on the criminal underworld. However this activity actually comes from his fear of dealing with the death of his parents. His seeming bravery covers over a cowardly refusal to deal with issues. One might want to say that the result is still good, however the point is that Batman could make a far bigger impact on Gotham city if he spent his money on after schools programs, health care and job training, than on high tech military hardware.

 

In an analogous way fighting and dying for ones metaphysical beliefs can be the activity of someone who is unwilling to do the really difficult work of looking at why they hold them in the first place. It becomes easier to fight for them than question them.

 

So then, by directly attacking fundamentalism New Atheists end up taking on the same form (albeit as an antithesis) of that which they oppose. In addition to this they also strengthen their enemy by directly feeding it. Instead, what we need are places were people can lay down their various weapons and ask themselves what all the fighting covers up. It is at the level of the how that “New religion"  (as it is being called here) operates.