The Apocalypse of Selfishness

When I first started my manuscript in progress nearly three years ago, I began with the belief that if the Shroud of Turin was authentic it was the most important material object on earth.  I now believe that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate its authenticity.

What I did not anticipate is where I would wind up.  I’m now beginning work on the 17^th chapter which is tentatively entitled “The Apocalypse of Selfishness.”

The point is this: humanity, for the first time since its emergence as a self conscious entity, faces extinction.  The driving forces for that extinction primarily involve the selfish exploitation of the environment.  Our air, water, and land are all yielding to onslaughts from interests seeking immense wealth, whatever the environmental costs.

The use and misuse of pesticides, antibiotics and hormones in agriculture have engendered plagues, not only by the direct action of toxins, but through the evolving of super pathogens that defy medical treatment.  Rising ocean levels have already inundated the homes of millions of residents in coastal areas including Bangladesh.  Heedless extraction of oil, natural gas and coal not only fuel the runaway carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere but leave behind masses of unusable and deleterious waste.

That is only a partial litany of what plagues humanity.  The common thread that results through that litany and other evils inflicting humanity is selfishness.  The combined result is that for the first time in recorded history the survival of the human race is at issue.

In my manuscript, what is emerging is the identification of Jesus selfless sacrifice as the personification of love, and the selfishness of the rulers that propelled his crucifixion is the personification of evil.

Stay tuned.  

The Triumph of Love

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not knows not God; for God is love.
	St. John 4:7-9

 A.   Cosmic Love

(1)   Before the daystar, I begot thee[i]

On December 25^th of each year, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. It is not the precise date of his birth. However, it does give Christians, at least, cause to celebrate in the face of the tightening grip of Winter (at least in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway).

Among the hymns sung Christmas is the French hymn Canitque Noel (O Holy Night). It captures the mystery of the night and its enduring message of Jesus birth in these words:\

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.”

Chapter 15 identifies the soul with the reflective consciousness described by Teilhard. It also identifies “original sin” as selfishness, one of the driving forces of evolution. Before humanity evolved with a reflective consciousness, there was no sin. Metaphorically, the first sin was Cain’s murder of Abel, an angry selfish response to God’s favor being bestowed on his younger brother that Cain thought should have been his.

The “sin and error” which the caused the world to pine were the bitter fruits of selfishness which, like the paths of glory, lead but to the grave.[ii]

Christian theology describes Jesus as the Son of God, the second person of a Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (One God in three persons). Having been taught from an early age that we can never truly understand this divine mystery, I will not try to explain it here. However, I have asked myself, if we are made in the image and likeness of God, where is the holy trinity of  our personality?

I came up with some tortured metaphors, if not answers. There is human psychological dysfunction of multiple personalities demonstrated in the 1957 movie The Three faces of Eve. Freud found three aspects to human personality: ego, super ego and id. How far of a reach is three persons in one God?

As Chapter 15 demonstrates, nothing appears as it seems in the Newtonian universe. The concepts of Quantum Mechanics including Quantum Information have turned traditional macro physics on its ear.

On January 4, 2005, The New York Times published the answers of a several scientists to the question: “What do you believe even if you can not prove it?”

Richard Dawkins, who in the Introduction to this book was anointed the “Atheist Pope” replied

“I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design” anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.”

There is one problem. Certainly, the laws of physics both Newtonian macro and Quantum Mechanical micro were formed within a microsecond of the Big Bang. For Dawkins to hypothesize a role for the application of “Darwinian natural selection” to that infinitesimally small microsecond would be nonsense. It’s safe to say that Darwinian natural selection played no role in the creation of the basic quantum forces of our existence and the rules of physics that govern ‑ and design ‑ our existence. At the quantum level, consciousness plays a role. There is no role for consciousness at any stage of Darwinian Natural Selection,

Rosenbaum-Kuttner in Quantum Enigma quoted the answer of cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman to the same question:

“I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being.”

This book has defined God as the primordial consciousness which birthed the cosmos. In attempting to unlock the mystery of creation of both the Universe and our own consciousness, we have to rely on such objective facts as we can ascertain and the inferences and conclusion we can draw from them. The written Gospels are in themselves material facts whatever their veracity. So too is the Shroud of Turin. Can these material facts help us untangle the Gordian knot of our own existence. Do they in fact verify each other?

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. He claimed to offer a way to the eternal life: that way was love. In the Introduction, it was stated that a Tennessee Williams remark ‑ that most important moments of life are when we break out of our own egoistical shell and really sense the presence of another person ‑ was in fact a definition of love.

Is such a definition real – or practical?

(2)   The Prophet of Love

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[i]  Psalm 109:3, Douay-Rheims edition

[ii] Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".

The Shroud of Turin: Henrietta Lacks and ASM carbon dating

It may seem stretch but there is a connection between the saga of Henrietta Lacks and ASM carbon testing. It’s simply this: greed. 

I had a conversation with someone well versed in the Shroud from way back. I spoke with him about trying to get the three labs to open up on their samples to see if they have a relationship to Ray Rogers findings. He said it would never happen because ASM carbon testing is now a billion dollar industry and the labs could never admit they were wrong because the financial repercussions would be horrendous. I immediately thought of Henrietta Lacks.

Here’s why.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Baltimore who died of cancer several decades ago. The Hospital preserved some of her stem cells and they were replicated and became the source of a billions of dollars industry. Her stem cells have built sky scrappers.

What did the estate of Henrietta Lacks get out of this: na da, nothing.

The C-14 testing of the Shroud was an entirely different procedure and industry. However, we are being naive (as I was) in thinking the labs would ever take any steps to jeopardize the validity of their most famous case – the Shroud of Turin. There is too much money at stake.

I am reminded in the story in the Gospel where Christ cured a women of possession but that the demons then went out an possessed a heard of swine which became enraged and stampeded over a cliff. The pig herders then drove Christ away. Salvation could wait, the money mattered more.

I think that enormous progress has been made but the C-14 tests have not yet made it to the dust bin of history. You can not serve God and Mammon. The scientists who stand-by the C-14 testing knowing it was flawed, have made a choice. So did the scientists who exploited Henrietta Lacks’ stem cells and never paid her heirs a dime.