[at-l] Extinction?

[shane at theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

> "Why not mention it?" I reasoned to myself.

Because it's off topic?

> As far as I know, the only credible witness to creation and it pending
destruction was and
> is God himself.  He even has a name; Jesus the Christ.

So, you were there?

The 'scientists' are accused of saying that the universe arose from nothing.

Others ('non-scientists'?) say that the universe is far to complex to have
arisen by chance.

Those same 'others', though, are perfectly willing to tell you that God (who
is responsible for this complex universe, and by definition would have to be
a complex being himself) arose from nothing.  They frequently say that God
actually has no beginning, which is really saying the same thing.  The
Unmoved Mover paradox is alive and well...

So, really, that's just adding another step in the chain.

"The universe arose from nothing."

or

"The universe arose from God who arose from nothing."

The statements are equivalent.

None of it helps me sleep at night.

> And, you are willing to die for this?  I do not think so....

I don't really see any difference.

It used to be that lots of folks knew - just like you know what you know -
that the world is flat and rests on the back of a large turtle.  Or was it
four?  I forget...  Turtles, Gods, Atlas...whatever...  You are welcome to
revise the cosmology however you like.  I simply don't care what someone's
opinion is on a subject that we can't actually answer.

Rather than spending time arguing about turtles, and relationships with
entities that aren't talking back, we ought to be working on our
relationships with one another and our planet.

For a broader discussion, see:

http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/voiceoftheuniverse/stgoe.htm

So, last night, you know, I decided to do some light reading.  Gunfighters
of the Old West was a little too hokey, so I picked up _A Field Guide to
Infectious Agents and Biotoxins_ and found this:

***

Blood Borne Pathogens, Part Two, Qualitative

Section One: What are Blood Borne Pathogens?

A river of blood encircles the earth. It is the plasma of creation. It is
tinged with the hues of birth -- blue breathless gasps and deep red oxygen
flares. It emits from the heaving, volcanic heart of the unknowable
universe. The river flows through cavities blasted out in the pressure wave
of genesis and rubbed smooth in timeless flow. You live within it, a fish
adrift in an ocean beyond your understanding. It knows you, surrounds you
and sustains you. It flows through you. Your body is almost invisible to
it -- not even faint airspaces or a sketch of bones mark your life. But the
river recognizes and enfolds you like a pregnant woman with one gentle hand
laid over her belly.

In this river you float, along with every other living creature on the
earth. You are nothing but a trace outline which the river fills with its
fluids. You share this amnion with everyone else you will ever know.

[Show slide #1: "State of Universal Communion with the River of Life."]

Millennia pass in a saline blur. The you that is you begins with a simple
skein of membrane, thin as an idea. It is an edge, beyond which you end and
the river begins. This single whisper of tissue becomes a wedge the carves
out your life from the unformed medium of the universe. Past and future fall
to either side of it.

You discover that a change introduced on one side of the membrane does not
always pass across it. The currents and temperate swirls of the river fail
to roil the fluid within your borders. Your twitches and acid burbling
remain enclosed, wholly your own. You are self.

[Show slide #2: "The Membranous Division Into Self and Not-Self"]

[Show slide #3: "Congruence of Nested Systems (Fractal Pattern)"]

You have become a river, with your source conjoined to your effluence. The
bloodwaters wend through the smooth caves of your inner core. Within your
river, new skins enclose the tiny lights of dependent lives, the soft
miracle of edges. Their pores open and close wordlessly, swallowing your
sustenance and expelling their minute creations.

You float in the river of blood that girds this earth. You stretch open your
intakes and ingest the life giving plasma. You squeeze out moist breaths and
the unused remains of your sustenance. You devour the river of creation and
leave behind that which is culmination of your desires, built in the
material of your own wastes.

The luminescent tide of other lives passes through you, consuming and
reconstructing you according to their own unknowable ends.

***

So, that's what I think about that.

Now I'm depressed again.

Anybody seen Curtis?

Felix, where were you about six years ago?

Somebody tell me a story...

Shane