Freking out

 

Timothy (Tim) Freke is mostly known as the co-author of "The Jesus Mysteries", the book that launched my own personal quest for the (Non)Historical Jesus. He also co-wrote "Jesus and the Goddess", which purportedly exegetes the true message of the Gnostic Christ, but ultimately lands in teachings surprisingly similar to certain esoteric and Tantric strands of Hinduism and Buddhism. In other words: not Gnosticism. And probably not my man Jesus, either.

However, it seems Freke has changed his messaging the last couple of years, perhaps under the influence of process philosophers, Ken Wilber and Rupert Sheldrake (although none of them can be made directly responsible). His new understanding of God *is* intriguing to be sure. "God" is seen as an emergent property of a natural process, the beginnings of which can be described by modern science. Thus, the universe begins with a singularity and a big bang, much later life appears, and even later intelligence. Only in the present stage does "God" appear, apparently due to the social and spiritual communion of humans. Presumably, we will see even greater things in the future...

Like the process philosophers, Freke sees the theodicy associated with this evolving-naturalistic god as one of the theology´s strong points. Suffering is an inevitable consequence of the fact that God actually isn´t omnipotent. From the top of my head, the objections to Freke´s peculiar understanding of the divine would be pretty much the same as towards all similar approaches. First, who really wants to worship an evolving limited god? What guarantees do we have that evolution won´t bring about even more evil and suffering in the future? Indeed, what guarantees do we have that God (being an emergent property of human activities) can´t be turned malevolent by a pernicious human group-soul? Or that such a god, even if good, is eternal? He does have a beginning, after all.  

And while Freke is contented with a god that emerges from matter, super-strings, quantum fields or whatever, most people will ask "what came before" and draw the conclusion that where there is evolution, there must have been prior involution. Nor will scientists find Freke´s visions compelling or even comprehensible, so the dialogue I think he wants between science and spirituality isn´t likely to become very succesful.

Yes, I sound negative, so let me end by saying that your more than welcome to check out the latest intellectual peregrinations of our mystery man...    

Tesla war

 

Does Trump *want* all US allies to move closer to China, Russia, BRICS or what? A trade war (or is it a Tesla war) seems to be looming between the United States and Canada.

Chrystia Freeland says Canada should target Tesla in tariff fight

Klan country

 

No relation to anything 

Just spotted on YouTube: an ad for a Halloween costume (!) which looks like a Klan outfit (!!). Also known as "the whole world went mad in November", episode 7,621.   

Ice, ice baby

 

AMOC again...

Sabine Hossenfelder seriously worries about northern Europe (including Sweden) becoming dramatically *colder* due to man-made climate change. Perhaps with as much as 10 degrees Centigrade on average! The reason is the so-called collapse of the Gulf Stream (actually the AMOC).

Weirdly, southern Europe will see heat waves instead, while the fate of Sabine´s native Germany is unclear, being hemmed in between the super-cold north and the super-hot south. At the very least, it won´t be pretty. 

Does this mean we can´t just move to some nice cabin in the Bavarian countryside to escape the apocalypse? 

Cryptid bush meat

 

An entertaining YouTube clip about cryptids which were *eaten* by those who encountered/discovered them. I didn´t know bush meat could be cryptid, but I suppose there is some logic here. After all, I read somewhere that biologists sometimes scavenge the wet markets in Indochina hoping to find new or elusive mammal species, so who knows what else might be found in the stomachs of hungry post-chimpanzees... 

A voice crying in the wilderness

 

Joe Rogan talks to outdoorsman Steven Rinella who cracks a tale (or tall tale) about a crazy Canadian hippie in Alaska who claimed to be the Biblical character John the Baptist?! The hippie turned out to be a parasite and petty thief, but ultimately met his doom in a small cabin during the unforbidding Arctic winter. Apparently, he lacked the proper Essene survival skills. Anyhow...

Rinella´s friend evidently gave the hippie a classical "sky burial". He just threw his corpse outside and the next day it was gone, presumably consumed by some hungry denizen of the Alaskan hinterland.

I admit that this story didn´t move me as much as I expected, but perhaps I´ve been hardened by too much consumption of Tantric material from the happy generations of Tibet...

The marvel of comics

 

Doreen Virtue strikes again, this time interviewing a fundamentalist Christian who believes that Marvel Comics have a demonic and downright Satanic agenda. Well, maybe. 

I admit that his analysis of Stan Lee´s poetry and the characters "Galactus" and "the Silver Surfers" is at least vaguely interesting. The idea seems to be that the comic "Fantastic Four" has a Gnostic subtext, with Galactus being Yahweh (who is cast as an evil devil-like character) while the Silver Surfer is Lucifer. Naturally, the latter turns out to be good and even goes through a Christ-like passion! 

Sure, this may even be true. And therefore...what?  

Trolling the Chosen Ones

 

LOL. This is a blast from the recent (apocalyptic) past. I blogged about "Anointed Ashley" or "Prophetess Ashley" myself. I´m about 90% convinced that she was a long-term troll, but on the web you never really know. 

Frankly, the "Watchwoman" in the second clip above also sounds like a troll, or an extremely mentally unbalanced cultist. Her main problem with Ashley seems to be that she is the wrong kind of apocalyptic crackpot! The first clip sounds more serious and is posted by a Christian who is opposed to the apocalyptic Rapture-watchers.

I´m not sure what happened to Ashley (did she take to the hills to avoid last summer´s cicada emergence?) but both trollish and un-ironic "Watchmen" and "Watchwoman" are sure to emerge again soon, so I don´t think there will be any dearth of content in this particular corner of cyber-space...

Mary´s Little Remnant

 

I never heard of *this* sub-branch of sedevacantism before. Richard Ibranyi and his little sect Mary´s Little Remnant somewhere in the United States have taken sedevacantism to its quasi-logical conclusion, rejecting all popes since...wait for it...1130. Yes, really! Not sure why, tbh, but apparently Ibranyi is an adherent of Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1953. 

Feeney´s ideas, known by his opponents as Feeneyism and here called "Feeneyiteism", include the rejection of baptism by desire and baptism by blood, instead arguing that only baptism by water is valid. As far as I understand, these ideas are older than 1130, so perhaps somebody should form an even more consistent "more Catholic than thou" sect? Or why not become, you know, Protestant?

Another point of hot contention seem to be the idea that sexual intercourse without the intention of procreation should never allowed at all. That is, not even "natural family planning". Since NFP was allowed by some popes pre-Vatican II, again you could argue that the Chair was vacated already before that council.

The content-creator considers Ibranyi´s sect interesting precisely in that it shows how absurd sedevacantism becomes if applied consistently. But (of course) you could also argue in the opposite direction: the papacy is absurd since it doesn´t seem to actually protect the Church from heresies in the first place!    

 

When Muslims saw Mary

 

Catholic content-creator interviews Eastern Orthodox scholar abour Oriental Orthodox miracle witnessed by thousands of Muslims.

Yes, really. And they even mention Persinger´s speculations about earth lights and tectonic stress! Now, *that´s* a blast from the past (bring back Boomer science)! 

I admit that I never heard (or probably never heard - some of the photos look vaguely familiar) about the Zeitoun Marian apparitions, which took place above a Coptic church in Egypt during a period of several years around 1970. The original witnesses were Muslims, and since Christians are a minority in Egypt, it can be safely assumed that many in the large crowds which gathered ouside the church were followers of Islam, too. Nasser´s secular government decided to play it safe and apparently declared the apparitions to be genuinely supernatural! 

The Orthodox scholar Travis Dumsday (who has written an entire book on the topic) argues in the clip above that no convincing naturalist explanation has ever been put forward. He discusses the "tectonic strain" hypothesis at some length, apparently because its originator Michael Persinger tried applying it to the Zeitoun situation. 

Dumsday and his Catholic interviewer Cameron Bertuzzi also discuss theology at some length. For instance, why can´t Protestants accept Marian apparitions? There is a lot of conflict in the commentary section on precisely this issue. I get the impression that while Bertuzzi has no problem claiming Coptic apparitions for Catholic apologetics, Dumsday is somewhat more cautious about Fatima, no doubt because of the heavy Roman theological baggage surrounding it. (He doesn´t say it, but "errors of Russia" could, I suppose, be interpreted as a reference to Eastern Orthodoxy!) Note also that the Coptic Catholic Church, a pro-Rome breakaway from the Coptic Orthodox Church, accepted Our Lady of Zeitoun. So Bertuzzi´s positive appraisal of her could be seen as part of the Uniate project. 

While the Zeitoun apparitions are interesting to be sure, I think the theological angle is rather weak. After all, would Bertuzzi accept similar apparitions of al-Khidr, Krishna or the Three Nephites? Maybe, but I suspect he would like to use the same strategy as his Protestant critics in the commentary section and explain theme as demonic!

Finally, it´s not clear to me what exactly the crowds were really seeing. Even Dumsday tacitly admits that the best photos of "Mary" are also the most problematic ones...

Still, worth the while watching.