Seven Deadly Sins
Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Science without humanity, Knowledge without character, Politics without principle, Commerce without morality, Worship without sacrifice.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
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Science, Technology, and Society
‘When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.’
Alfred North Whitehead, 1925
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“Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.”
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SAGAN: My feeling, Charlie, is that it’s not that pseudoscience and superstition and New Age so-called “beliefs” and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They’ve been with us for as long as we’ve been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology, with formidable technological powers.
ROSE: Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.
SAGAN: That’s right. And if we don’t understand it, and by “we” I mean “the general public,” if it’s something that, “Oh, I’m not good at that, I don’t know anything about it,” then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in? Just some members of Congress? But there’s no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all. And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own Office of Technology Assessment—the organization that gave them bipartisan, competent advice on science and technology. They say, “We don’t want to know. Don’t tell us about science and technology.”
ROSE: Surprising. What’s the danger of all this? I mean, this is not the thing that…
SAGAN: There’s two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about. That we’ve arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? And the second reason that I’m worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along. It’s a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Oherwise we don’t run the government—the government runs us.
Charlie Rose: (Carl) came to this broadcast last May 27th, 1996, and he talked about his illness. He talked about science and he talked about the universe. Here is that (FULL) interview— May 27th, 1996. Carl Sagan is one of the pre-eminent astronomers of our time.
What has taken over…
Mathematical Mind
ABSTRACT, Latin – “pulled (drawn) away, detached”
Strengths, Weakness, and Limitations
Lawrence Krauss and Steve Paikin
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“Many of the revolutionary effects of science and technology are obvious enough. Bertrand Russell saw in the 1950s that there are also many negative aspects of scientific innovation. Insightful and controversial in equal measure, Russell argues that science offers the world greater well-being than it has ever known, on the condition that prosperity is dispersed; power is diffused by means of a single, world government; birth rates do not become too high; and war is abolished. Russell acknowledges that is a tall order, but remains essentially optimistic. He imagines mankind in a ‘race between human skill as to means and human folly as to ends’, but believes human society will ultimately choose the path of reason.”
Science and Transcendental Realization
(27 May 1947 – 25 August 2012)
Certainty, Doubt, and Ecstasy
Conventional certainty is a selfish pretense, always based on limited experience.
Conventional uncertainty, or chronic doubt, is a selfish presumption, always based on limited understanding.
Ecstasy is the only and selfless absolute, based on the transcendence of limited experience and conventional or limited understanding while yet being itself the basis for unlimited experience and unlimited understanding.
Scientific of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House! – Adi Da Samraj (Da Free John)
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1. THE CRISIS OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
Human civilization is like a mighty river, composed of countless branches, currents, pools, stagnant waters (the cultural failures), and numerous tributaries. It leisurely meanders through space and time, until it meets with massive resistance-the great natural and man-made crises-then having to force its way through perilous, narrow ravines and cascade down sheer precipices, to gather in wild torrents below, until its path begins to even out and run smoothly once again. It inexorably presses on toward the ocean-the emergent global culture of the twentieth century. But unlike its counterparts in Nature, the river of human civilization, though ocean-bound, does not inevitably merge into the sea. Rather, it is still in the process of shaping its riverbed: The unitary world culture of which peace-lovers and visionaries dream is no predetermined destiny. Its creation is entirely dependent on conscious cooperation, well- grounded in just those sentiments, attitudes, and moral values that are exceedingly rare among today’s cultural leaders >>> continue reading
The Western Setting Sun
A sunset captured off San Diego on December 13, 2007 – Jim Grant
Adi Da Samraj: This is the late-time, the dark epoch, East and West. This is the long-prophesied time of the setting sun, the Western sun. This is the time of the decline of the mind and the culture of the rising sun, the Eastern sun.
Now the human world is in its “Western” and “Westernizing” phase. For centuries, there has been the slow motion toward this grotesque mockery of end-time, wherein all, now at the end of day, look forward only to their long-anticipated nightlife of lower and subhuman and always struggling occupations of body, emotion, and mind.
The “Western” time of Man is that epoch which is characterized by ambiguity relative to any kind of dependency, any kind of “authority”, or even any demand from without. The “Western” and “Westernizing” Man (male or female), including even all the “modern” and “modernizing” human world, is deeply set in rebellion. This dark time is thoroughly characterized by a reactive and adolescent, immature, egoic, and ego-bound, and ego-binding rebellion against all that is not the ego-“I”- and all that can be described as true “authority”, and all “authority-figures”, and even all “others”.
In this adolescent “Western” (or sunset) time, the “kingdom” is ruled by the separate and separative ego-“I”, one by one, and every “one” suspects and accuses every other “one” of threatening the “freedom” of the suspicious and accusing ego-“I”.
Even in this time of the politics of “reality”, and the society of “reality”, and the “culture” of “reality”, and the science of “reality”, and the arts of “reality”, and even the religions of “reality”, or even all the empty and fleshy monotonies and mere “ego-systems” of this would-be “utopian” era of the “realism” of mere lowness and illusion, it must be Said that, now that this sunset time of night games is upon all, the Diurnal Fuse yet Crackles overnight, and will Make an inevitable Dawning. And, in the meantime, much can be Said and Done to bring the nightwalkers to Rest, and to Awaken them Early, to Feel toward the inevitable Morning, and to watch for the Flying Horse of Dawn that Lights the Single Eye and Heart, and Restores the Divine Kingdom within, and (if only there is Compassionate Love) without as well.
This is the vulgar time for each and all are mad “monarchs” and false “authorities”, making a universal “democracy” by destroying all “Kingship”, all “Queenship”, all Rule, replacing the “Center” everywhere with “Centerless” mobbery and refusal, and the constant “no” and caricaturing satire of “uncourtly” and merely “realistic” behaviors, intrigues, controversies, and suspicions, always making sure that no head rises above the rest, and that no head bows to any foot, and that all are constantly reminded of their blowing backsides and how that “means” there is no “soul”, no God, no Truth, no Ultimate and Divine and Only Self, but only mocking contempt of these is allowed (and mocking contempt of anyone who dares to be made serious and Sublime by What only the Heart can hear and see).
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