Chicago's Pleonastic Schnook and the Science of Snobbery Against Faith

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."

John 20:24-25

Religious zealotry is alien to me —but I understand that lots of people are fired up by their own creeds, and hot to impose them upon anybody and everybody, eagerly using any tool at their disposal, from little tracts left in bus station restrooms to fanciful doctrine jammed into public education disguised as legitimate science.

But this ploy must be resisted. Primarily because we live in a diverse society now. This issue lingers because not everyone has gotten that memo, and pools of fervent consensus exist — lots of fundamentalist villages in Tennessee, apparently. This encourages the grouped faithful to convince themselves that everybody thinks the same, or should. They don’t and shouldn’t. That’s why science is appealing — the atomic structure of hydrogen is unchanged whether you are Protestant or Catholic, Jewish or Muslim.

Neil Steinberg- Chicago's scornful schnook

The dimensions of the atom which forms its structure is a function of radiation power change that the atom undergoes. As the atomic component masses in a material are initially accelerated to near light speed there is a mass change and a shortening of its dimensions,(The electron orbital radius is relatively responding accordingly)
This is relative to the atomic temperature energy changes.The mass structure changes phase as a function of temperature power and the time that the radiation power that the atom in the mass structure responds to.
Never the less the architecture of the atom keeps its form unless a Nuclear fusion occurs due to extreme gravity field pressure and temperature energy changes between interaction of the atoms.

An good example is Hydrogen nuclear fusion which causes a new structure assembly into Helium atom transformation.

Some Science guy. ( emphases my own -of course)

Religion and religious beliefs are targets of bullies. You see religion is big to most folks and the end of religious belief is God and no one is Bigger than God - but science. Immanuel Kant, a guy who never travelled more than forty miles from his Prussian Königsberg, is the grand daddy of scientific zealotry, evident in our Chicago lummox's column.

Science was once the means of getting to the Truth. Science was used by Franciscan Schoolmen in the 13th Century as means supporting Faith. Muslims, Jews and Christians had a big part in this effort all the while slaughtering one another in the Holy Land.

These days people of faith are zealots, bigots, Rubes and people of science are better dressed, thinner, and handy with the babes.

Science in the West can be traced to John Scotus Erigena, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and Roger Bacon, insular Irish and Brits - the last three gents belonged to the Order of Friars Minor -Franciscans.

All of these guys got in Dutch with Popes and Princes and it is believed that John Scotus Erigena ( Irish John from Ireland) was murdered by monks unhappy with this works on the Psuedo Dionysius, or that he gulped down the last of the beer.

Faith and science had a bumpy road, we got here.

Religion can be blamed for the Inquisition and Science can be blamed for Chernobyl.

Neil Steinberg seems to be painting with a very broad brush again - Religious Zealots, he warns, are asking that the Bible might get a mention in a science class. Chilling? Well, to the thin blooded I suppose.

Science errs. Ask the rocket boss in North Korea, if he is still drawing breath.

Religion can be a huge pain in the ass - ask any Coptic Christian in Post Spring Egypt.

Consider the words of Thomas the Twin in today's Gospel "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Now that is Pure Empiricism that would made Immanuel Kant plotz."Ja! Out stehen! Es bleibt immer ein Skandal der Philosophie und universelle menschliche Vernunft, dass die Existenz von Dingen außerhalb von uns ... haben sollte, lediglich auf Glauben angenommen werden, und dass, wenn es jedem auftritt, daran zu zweifeln, sollten wir nicht in der Lage, ihn mit einer hinreichenden Nachweis zu beantworten. " ("It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof.")

That particular Koingsberg goof required certainty.

It is said that the citizens of Königsberg set their clocks according to the position of the gray presence of Professor Kant on his daily walk down and back the same street every day. It is said that the only time he missed his walk at the exact same time was when he first discovered Rousseau's book, Emile, and became so engrossed that he forgot his walk.

Imagine this - Kant would walk his dachshund while immersed in prolegmnas of intense import. He would return home after verifying each and every Linden tree, wrought iron fence, post and building on the route - several trees were removed and Kant could not find his way home with any certainty. It rained. Some religious zealot had to go out bring the man of science home and in out of the rain.

Dr. Samuel Johnson said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080925193830AAkTPrI

http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/paschons/language_http/essays/Kant.html

Jurassic Genes Awakened! Rip Van Winkle Micro-Bugs Are Back!

Now, that's a nap! From the wonderful science site Neatorama (click me post title) it is reported that bacteria Hermeniimonas glacei asleep at the bottom of a Greenland glacier have been told 'Get Your Ass, Up and Do Something! It's Nice Out!'

The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

"We don’t know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating. [...]

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience has the fascinating story: Link