felicem diem Sancti Valentini

I read in my friend's, Phil Christman's, blog, that he was agitating for better care for disadvantaged members of society during Lent. (By the way, right now I am taking a class in basic software design at PVCC, so I am going to work on putting up links to other cool people's blogs soon, like Pharaoh DeVrieops himself. Continuing this aside, Guamo, Cato was talking about patience with reference to destroying that great seafaring state, Carthage, which posed as much threat to Rome as Saddam did the good ol' U.S. of A. before the Third Punic War.)
Anyways, Phil's concern for the downtrodden of society is extremely noble and puts me to shame, but I think we Christians either take this world or the next too seriously. Personally, I believe that intention is the force that holds the spiritual/physical universe together. I think when you get beyond the basic building blocks of matter, there is merely will and desire. So, taking care of the poor is important because, as the angels said, the pax hominibus, requires bonae voluntatis. Also, the quest for knowledge and wisdom in the universe is important. It represents that bona voluntas that keeps the Nuclear Force Strong, as if it were our universal Pimp Hand.
Therefore, I am extremely concerned about the Hubble Space Telescope, which represents the bona voluntas of all humanity. If we let this precious gem crash to earth in a million pieces, it will be as tragic as the death of a Palestian child or a working family declaring bankruptcy due to unpayable medical bills. This is an e-mail and a letter to my congressman I sent in reference to this topic.
"Write your congresspeople. This is pure idiocy, we spent millions of dollars putting this spacecraft into orbit and making it operable. There is a list miles long of astronomers wanting to use it for observations, and its replacement is going to be designed only to see extremely distant objects. This telescope has revolutionized astronomy, yet we are going to let if fall back to earth like some cheap Russian rocket toy. Let congress know we'd rather our tax dollars go to funding real science, rather than George Bush's Martian Adventure, which, if it is carried out the same way he carried out the Iraq War, will result in five dead astronauts, a defunct space cat, and 20,000 space ants floating aimlessly somewhere between here and the asteroid belt."
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Esteemed Representative Goode,
As a conservative, and a fiscal one at that, I would suggest to you that the Hubble Space Telescope is a program worth funding over and above other NASA programs, especially, plans to go to Mars. Hubble’s scientific value to all humanity is priceless. Its future replacement would be specialized in viewing very distant objects and would not be ready until 2011. Many astronomers doing valuable research would not be able to pursue the knowledge which is our universal patrimony. There are already many whose research on the Hubble is being turned away; therefore two space telescopes, whose observational fields would be different, would be to our advantage.
As a taxpayer, I am glad to see that my tax dollars were spent in an attempt to gain more knowledge of the heavens. However, I am very displeased to learn that this investment of tremendous sums of money would not be allowed to mature to its full potential. You are pulling out our scientific capital from our astronomical IRA too soon. Billions of dollars to travel to Mars could easily be exchanged for millions doing scientifically proven research.
God has given us the intellect and curiosity to explore his creation. To turn our awestruck eyes away from the heavens, which declare his glory, to focus on hubristic attempts to conquer other worlds smacks of the arrogance of the builders of the Tower of Babel. Please show your true conservatism, and conserve this investment we, the people, have made in knowledge. Please, do not waste it on our foolish pride.
Sincerely,
Matthew James Lind
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The desire to see our origins, whether we storm the Kansas State Board of Education, or we look to peer-reviewed science to give us answers ties us together as a human species. The mythos which pervades every society about creation is something that tells us more about ourselves then it does about how the world was really made. I believe science that science will infinitely provide ever more complicated explanations for the origin of the universe, which will never resolve the basic question of nothing versus something.
Science demands those that engage in it must endorse positivism, WYSIWYG. Therefore, Scientists are very queasy about creatio ex nihilo, just as I am equally queasy about certainty, due to my nature as a humanist. God defines herself as the only one with the ability to choose their own existence. In fact, as humans, we can only choose suicide, which most religions believe merely to be a transmogrification of the form of our existence, not the fact that we exist, have existed, or will exist.
Therefore, the bona voluntas of a scientist can only endorse the unmystical part of the universe, even though scientists themselves are equally susceptible to all of the infirmities of our spiritual/physical existence. By the way, my second chakra seems to be sorting itself out, my throat hasn't hurt all day.