God of small ‘ sensations’

An electron is a small ball of negative charge that is smaller than an atom. Does it have a shape?
Conjure electrons as charges and it surrounds the nucleus of every atom that determine how chemical reactions proceed. Their uses in industry are abundant: from electronics and welding to imaging and advanced particle accelerators they are the main components of atoms making up the world around us.
As far as physicists currently know, electrons have no internal structure — and thus no shape in the classical meaning of this word. In the modern language of particle physics, which tackles the behavior of objects smaller than an atomic nucleus, the fundamental blocks of matter are continuous fluid-like substances known as “quantum fields” that permeate the whole space around us. In this language, an electron is perceived as a quantum, or a particle, of the “electron field.”
Suppose we treat fields as ‘entities’ in terms of space. Firstly we must adapt our definition of shape so it can be used at incredibly small distances, or in other words, in the realm of quantum physics. It gives us a way to define an electron’s properties such that they mimic how we describe shapes in the classical world. For example a photon striking a needle and deflecting it is a new indication of shape. Its shape is comparable to how we perceive in our macroscopic world the rays of light bouncing off different objects around us. It is a sensation of a fleeting flash but as tangible as inspiration when it can fire up another Hafiz or Keats who composed Ode to a Nightingale after hearing the bird. Yes one can dash out a couplet of exquisite beaut or see visions. When it happens it is not merely quantum field but the whole being has had a transcendental experience, which is other worldly to put it baldly. Simply put, we define shapes by seeing how objects react when we shine light onto them and when we are moved with its sensation to find meanings that were never thought up before it is truth. The Ode to the Nightingale has its own truth to which only the poet is the sole arbiter. Its enduring quality derives from it

What replaces the concept of shape in the micro world? Since light is nothing but a combination of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, it would be useful to define quantum properties of an electron that carry information about how it responds to applied electric and magnetic fields. Having said this when we walk on cloud number nine or shuffle our feet as though dragged down by some oppressive mood is how we we respond to space about us.
When I say I can feel presence of God who shall define my space, or its extent or what I can subjectively vouch as true?
Benny

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News on the March: Texas Church shooting

Pact to the Devil- Church mayhem

When a mass shooting happens in a small town like Sutherland Springs, Texas, everyone knows a victim. “Time for worship turns to horror,” says the headline in the San Antonio Express-News. One of the locals thinks the town will heal, but it will take time. He said, “For this to happen in a little country town with 300 people, it’s inconceivable,” he says. “You kind of expect it in big cities. Not here.” When trouble erupts it can be anywhere but the tragedy is that no one sees beyond its effect. Why?

Unfortunately Christians in the US have been since late 70s very much riding the tailwind of political parties of which Pat Robertson is pre-eminent.

CNN has this interesting story about Pat Robertson in their international edition of Jan.13,2010 “Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Officials fear more than 100,000 people have died as a result of Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti.

Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.”

The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast Wednesday. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.'”

Pat Robertson once seriously wanted to run for President. His political aspirations are not to be curbed. In Jn.6:15 we read thus: “When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make Him a king, He departed again onto a mountain alone-KJ21″. He never wanted to do anything outside the will of his Father. He knew from where he had come and where he was going. Unlike the ChristianityUSA he did not want honor from man.

After all the prophecies concerning Messiah were all too real for the orthodox Jews. They were like the Evangelical right or Moral Majority of today. They were too sure of their learning and place as pillars of the community. But they were looking for Messiah to come in glory and lead them free from the yoke of the gentile Rome. Are the ilk of Jerry Falwell, Joel Osteen or Pat Robertson any different than they? When they preach prosperity theology they are more like the Pharisees of the time of Jesus. So the Jewish nation got it all horribly wrong. How wrong was it? In AD70 blood would run through the streets of Jerusalem and their pride of Temple worship will be trampled on as some filthy rags. All because they did not know the Anointed One when he came as servant-King. This is exactly happening right before our eyes.

” After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Pat Robertson suggested that God was angry over abortion. “I was reading… a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood… Have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected?”(CBS News)

Foolish Pat. The evangelicals in the USA have been aborting godly seed with their pernicious but so seductive theology, still a travesty of the teachings of Jesus. They have a beam in their eye yet they are castigating less fortunate in circumstances than they for the mote in their eyes. Are they to sit judge over LGBT issues or abortion? God alone is the judge. By usurping the office of God what is their goal?

benny

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Achilles Heel of Human Understanding

 

It is said religion is the opium for the masses. In Lotos-eaters Tennyson writes the effect of the lotos:

” Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory,…”

 

Poetic fancy of the poet however does not connect with reality as we know today. This is not how religion is practised.

The Scripture teaches us God is Love; good moslems similarly declare their Allah is compassionate. In that case what is the problem? Somewhere along the line prophets and their sayings are interpreted to mean entirely false. Whether God of the Jews or Allah of moslems religion has become synonymous with hate. In short religion has become the Achilles heel of mankind.

Through human understanding what can we know of love of God; or what is mercy? At least reason ought to teach us to try our best as human beings to demonstrate what love and compassion would mean. Would it not? In what way we can show holiness by some rituals? In India those who practice Jainism cover their mouth lest they swallow some little flies by mistake while yawning. However little do they see the millions of bacteria that float in the water they drink. It is impossible to match holiness of divine Being or be perfect in observing injunctions of prophets with regards to our cleanliness and diet. For the simple reason in a world of acid rain and tainted earth with various chemicals all our idea of cleanliness come with margin of error.

In Jonathan Swift’s immortal tale the central character Gulliver is brought to the land of Brobdingnag. It is written that he was repelled by the women of that land. They were monstrous in size compared to him. Their faces when magnified so much skin pores seemed to his scrutiny as moon craters! Matter of size brought about this change naturally. If we were to see as an eagle our eyes would require the size of an orange. To sum view of our world is limited by our human-ness. As a result our sense of beauty is affected; so must our understanding. How noble or mean is your God?

When Prophet Moses gave the Children of Israel the law, was it his understanding or that of God at fault?

Under the Law it was an eye for eye, a tooth for tooth. Shall we say under the Old Covenant the law represented a certain values but it was codified according to human understanding? It is of this St Paul writes to the Hebrews thus: ‘For the law made nothing perfect…(He.7:19) Instead It erected a screen between God and them. For instance during the Feast the Jews mistook the voice from heaven as thunder. (Jn.12:29) The Jewish nation lived by the law for a millennia or so and yet when God spoke, ‘I have both glorified it (name) and will glorify it again (vs.28)’ they understood it altogether in another sense.

Moses gave the law but with Jesus came the New Covenant. For Christians this New order supercedes the Old. Jesus brought grace and truth(Jn.1:17). When Jesus came to save the world he had a clear mandate. It went thus: turn the other cheek if one smites on your right cheek. He showed it in practice as well. Luke 9:51-56

Before he was to be crucified he wanted to visit Samaria. He sent an advance party to make arrangements and the people of Samaria refused them. When they told Jesus of their refusal John and James were furious and would have brought fire from heaven as Elias did. Jesus rebuked them saying, ‘they did not know what manner spirit they were of’. He did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them. Jesus quietly led them to another village.

When I hear fellows casually use ‘Jihad’ to justify their criminal actions and mask foolish notion of global domination I can only say, their understanding is far off the mark. If they are misled, how much more foolish are their imams who preach hatred and violence as though it were a religious duty?

benny

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Progress: tilting at the windmills

Man for whom abstract thinking is natural can always latch onto an idea, however impractical it may turn out in the end. Like the hero of Cervantes ideas turn always, blades one blowing this way and another in that way. History is such ideas creating a blur that only a fool would want to claim his idea is the best.

There is nothing heroic about taking on impossible if it is going to end in wholesale bloodshed. See the savage butchery recently perpetrated by the so called Daesh. They imagine they would thereby revive a Caliphate. Earlier  Joseph Stalin sent some millions to gulags and to death for creating a Worker’s paradise. How did it fare?

We only need consider Lenin’s idea of a Worker’s paradise when the Bolsheviks violently over threw the Tsarist regime. It was similar to a theocratic state John Calvin ushered in Geneva several centuries before. It did not work in Europe then; neither did it in Soviet Russia. Ideas are fine but man cannot stick to it all the way through. Did not the Allies set about ridding the post-war world of Totalitarian ideology? Nuremberg, the German city associated with the pageantry which the Nazi regime staged as they climbed to power was a potent symbol for the German nation. The Allies was sending a message loud and clear to the world. Nuremburg Trials was to be a show trial but as the legal process went about its rounds there was a perception among the Western powers that Soviet Union was the Threat that they needed to thwart. After all did not they dismantle the Nazi apparatus root and all? The US saw to that scientists who had helped Hitler’s war efforts were smuggled out to their country under Operation Paperclip*. V2 rocket program soon would provide the nucleus for the space war that came in play in the 60s. It was not surprising that the Trial of the century evaporated in the hustle and bustle of meeting the Cold War in offing.

Man has capacity to develop an idea like a Nuclear bomb to bring the WWII quickly to a halt. Neither his foresight and hindsight do match evenly. Of this we see even now. The Allies are at presented seized of the fact the Jihadi elements may lay hands on a dirty nuclear bomb. It has been thus progress that man cobbled up in the many innovations, has fared. Progress without exception has proved false.

Man is loath to turn 180 degrees from an idea, to which he has sold himself as well in which his experience also gives him certain pointers. Though failed in practice he trusts in his own power to pull it off. After the demise of the Imperial Rome, under Constantine the Great and Charlemagne (the Holy Roman Empire) the idea has been tried; Under Mussolini it was revived to no avail. Each idea and those who stake their legitimacy on its basis must cope with changed circumstances. In France the Second Empire under Napoleon III was a fiasco. He did not anticipate the revolutionary spirit of Europe and emergence of Germany under Bismarck. The events across the globe never stand still but like group waves negotiate with new ones where energy is passed around. Who shall cash in on these transactions by means of war, religion and cultural trade off remains to be seen. Pagan Rome under Constantine underwent a sea-change. Christianity became the state religion. The split between Rome and Constantinople as a result of political upheavals, became further weakened: The Church of Rome and the Greek Orthodox Church of the East would no longer come as one due to the  doctrinal differences. At present the idea of Caliphate like the idea of Imperial idea of Rome is doomed if lessons of history are of any guide. Cashing in on the demise of an old order of Byzantine Empire the hordes of Saracens, Moors and Arabs created a Caliphate that died its natural death. Those who are beating the dead donkey shall soon know what it is to stop the tide engulfing them from all across the globe.

benny

* Operation Paperclip (1949–1990) was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program in which more than 1,500 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States from Nazi Germany and other countries for employment in the aftermath of World War II. It was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) and in the context of the burgeoning Cold War. One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, as well as to inhibit post-war Germany from redeveloping its military research capabilities. The Soviet Union had competing extraction programs known as “trophy brigades” and Operation Osoaviakhim. (ack:wikipedia)

 

 

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News on the March: fundamentalism with machete

Bangladesh’s anti-terrorism unit said it had arrested on Monday the main suspect in the killing of a U.S. blogger who was hacked to death in Dhaka last week in the latest attack on critics of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation.

Forces from the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested Farabi Shafiur Rahman, who was previously jailed for his ties to the extremist Hizbut Tahrir Islamist group, at a bus stop in Dhaka, a RAB spokesman told reporters.

The spokesman said Farabi had confessed to threatening to kill blogger Avijit Roy. Farabi was still being interrogated.

Roy, an engineer of Bangladeshi origin, was killed by machete-wielding assailants on Thursday while returning from a book fair. His wife and fellow blogger Rafida Ahmed suffered head injuries and lost a finger. She remains in hospital.

The police said Farabi was arrested in 2013 for social media comments that supported the murder of another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, but he was later released on bail. Last year, Farabi posted on Facebook: “It’s a holy duty of Bangalee Muslims to kill Avijit”, the police added.’

Holy duty of anyone who professes faith in a religion is to save and nurture lives, men and animals included. There are some 1.5 billions of Moslems world wide. Hardcore radical Moslems who espouse violence as the means to profess their belief is merely 250,000 or so. (I am not quoting exact figures) It is this lunatic fringe that hits the headlines while the pious believers go about their daily grind adding what is possible to the community in a positive manner. So it is not silent majority but the terrorists  that have come to misrepresent the religion. Tolerance, moderation, equity, justice all the virtues that the Prophet has demonstrated with his life and in writings have been thrown overboard by these misguided elements. The saying ‘A fly in the apothecary’s ointment spoils the whole contents’ sounds apt here. Since moderates prefer not to draw the ire of the Jihadists we may conclude that the Jihadists have won by default. This minority does not represent the religion. Secondly and of vital importance is their practice or Sunnat. In spirit and example their doings have nothing remotely linking to the teachings of the prophet. He said that believers should not be punished with fire since it was only reserved for the final judgment. When one hears ISIS* trying to justify the brutal murder of the Jordanese flier by citing some cleric of the 13th century one may be sure it is a fraud. Such brutal edicts historically coincided with the falling off the Islamic hegemony under Mongol invasion. Having failed to live up to the Prophet’s teachings failure has to be laid on someone else.  With such stranglehold on intellectual ferment of the Moslem scholars what have the clerics achieved? What you see is a consequence of change in direction. Neither their religion nor their political ambitions ever found feet again.

Greatness of Prophet Mohammed or Buddha or Gandhi was in their ability to forgive and make peace with those who have chosen to disagree in the most vituperative manner. Of course we need not expect in the midgets who thrive in hate speeches such nobility. They prefer to slaughter the victims with a machete as occurred in Bangladesh.

*

IS not only misreads the texts it cites, most clerics say, it also ignores Quranic verses and a long body of clerical scholarship requiring mercy, preservation of life and protection of innocents, and setting out rules of war — all of which are binding under Islamic Shariah law.

Many mainstream clerics compare the group to the Khawarij, an early sect that was so notorious for “takfir,” or declaring other Muslims heretics for even simple sins, that it was rejected by the faith. The Islamic State group denies that, but it draws heavily from 20th-century theories of “takfir” developed by hard-liners.

(ack: AP news -How Islamic is Islamic State group? Not very, experts say’ of March 2,2015 reprinted in Yahoo.com news)

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On Religions- an Opinion

The Scriptures tell us Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness. Wisdom of the Most High dwells in humility. Moses was the humblest of all men. God chose him to be his spokesman. But he tried to shirk the responsibility saying he was slow of speech. God patiently tried to buck him up by signs and yet he would rather not. Consequently God let Aaron serve as proxy. “ And thou shall speak to him, and put words in his mouth. (Ex.4:15) ” Later when Moses was long in coming from the mount we read that Aaron complied with the demands of the people to make gods that should lead them. It was a golden calf (Ex.32:4). When Aaron built an altar before the calf, his complicity in making glory of the Lord God in the likeness of a calf was complete.

Any religion that overlooks the precise arrangement of people and forces acting on them is in danger of being quite contrary. Take for instance Islam. The Prophet wanted each Moslem family to be a miniature state in which the father was to be the priest, instructor and law. The Prophet had clearly seen the abuses that had crept into the two other major religions of his time. The rule of the monks and rabbis was to be avoided in the Third Way he proposed. No clergy was intended by him.
If we want to know why Islam has become a thorny problem in the world look at the way the Mullahs have usurped the role of father of family. No sooner the glorious prophet was dead succession for the mantle of the prophet divided the religion. It was never the same. Ultimately flaw in religion surfaces. God’s the first two commandments enjoin the believers to honor God the Father as well as their earthly parents. You disregard the strict hierarchy and you are in peril. Europe may boast about the Enlightenment and Rational Spirit but it is all exercise in confusion. Children of Islam take pride in their religion of Peace but in allowing Imams and Mullahs to cut and paste the intent and words of the Prophet stealthily has made the religion now a byword for religion of hate. Where do you think this will end?

benny

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Science Notes- teleportation

If we wish to colonize Mars in some distant future it may not be a far fetched idea. Teleportation of humans is a giant leap but as Niels Armstrong said, a small step’ has been already achieved. Quantum teleportation is the moving of quantum data from one location to another without having to travel the distance between them. Have qbits will travel to paraphrase a TV series in my youth.

Teleportation in general sense does away with constraints of space and time. Think today as exchange of information. We sometimes have that gut feeling and it is later proved out to be right. Or we make our needs known to God and later we may say our prayers were heard. It is borne out in the way our needs were met. We need not prove if God exists or not. But information has been exchanged just the same. Quantum entanglement as I look at it is one way Science underpins my faith using quantum mechanics. In classical physics light may open up as a glorious sunrise and with the Psalmist I say it is revealing the glory of God. Only that light is a symbol for the nature and workings of the supreme Being.

What is faith but knowing certain exchange of information could exist outside proof between either A or B?

For example, if you and a friend have two playing cards — the ace of spades and the ace of hearts — and you each blindly pick one, walk into different rooms and then look at the card in your hand, you’ll both know instantly know what card your friend has. It’s that kind of instantaneous awareness between two points — instead of cards, think spin states of an electron — that physicists call teleportation because the data point doesn’t require you to observe it directly or have someone send it back for confirmation.

ii

A research team out of the lab of Professor Nicolas Gisin in the physics department at the University of Geneva achieved teleportation of the quantum state of a photon — in this case, it’s known as the photon’s polarization — to a crystal-encased photon more than 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away. The distance breaks the previous record of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) set 10 years ago by the same team using the method. This marks the latest success in a series of experiments the group, led by physicist Félix Bussières, has been conducting over the last decade in an effort to better understand quantum data transfer with ever-newer technology.

The results, which were achieved in March, were published in the journal Nature Photonics on September 21. (ack: cnet of Sept 23,’14)

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The World of Science : Quantum computing

The Turing machine, developed by Alan Turing in the 1930s, is a theoretical device that consists of tape of unlimited length that is divided into little squares. Each square can either hold a symbol (1 or 0) or be left blank. A read-write device reads these symbols and blanks, which gives the machine its instructions to perform a certain program. Does this sound familiar? Well, in a quantum Turing machine, the difference is that the tape exists in a quantum state, as does the read-write head. This means that the symbols on the tape can be either 0 or 1 or a superposition of 0 and 1; in other words the symbols are both 0 and 1 (and all points in between) at the same time. While a normal Turing machine can only perform one calculation at a time, a quantum Turing machine can perform many calculations at once.

The Godhead in the Trinity is as God the Father God the Son and God the Spirit. In a quantum computing God can be as Father the Son and as the Spirit. Think of a polygon box in which each side can be opened. You open one side you get God as the Father and you open another you get God the Son and so on.  There is a randomness and superpositions of values assigned normally to a symbol. When we read in the Book of Revelation we need to understand ‘I am Alpha and Omega’  it is not some  juggling of words but quantum nature of cosmos.

ii

Today’s computers, like a Turing machine, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers aren’t limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, orqubits, which can exist in superposition. Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as computer memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today’s most powerful supercomputers.

This superposition of qubits is what gives quantum computers their inherent parallelism. According to physicist David Deutsch, this parallelism allows a quantum computer to work on a million computations at once, while your desktop PC works on one.  When Jesus says the kingdom of God is within you  it demonstrates parallelism. From a moral standpoint secular world and moral world are parallel in which any one must be able to read from the other. (How StuffWorks/How quantum computers works-by Kevin Bonsor and Jonathan Strickland)

benny

(ack: How Stuff Works)

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Hasidic movement,Kabbalah etc.,

Hasidic Judaism is not one movement, but a collection of separate individual groups with some commonality. There are approximately 30 larger Hasidic groups, and several hundred minor groups. Though there is no one version of Hasidism, individual Hasidic groups often share with each other underlying philosophy, worship practices, dress (borrowed from local cultures), and songs (borrowed from local cultures). The word means “piety” or loving kindness and it is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and was founded in the 18th century Eastern Europe by Rabbi Issrael Baal Shem Tov as reaction against overly legalistic Judaism. His emphasis was on redemption for the individual in the present ,the here and now. Compare this with St.Pauline dictum:’Today is the day of Salvation’. Hasidim worshiped God not only in prayer and study, but at work and play. Their style was to make a song and dance about it literally!
Kabbalah and Rabbinic Judaism has different views of human sexuality. The former saw humanity in a more romantic light than the other.Rabbinic interpretations of the Torah is called the Mishna.
“Know whence you came: from a putrefying drop; and whither you are going: to a place of dust, worm and maggots.” Kabbalah on the other hand views man as the last highest of the divine emanation.(Isaac Luria)
Evil came into being and became intermixed with good at the moment of creation, when God’s masculine and female aspects became separated. This concept of ‘Ardhanari'( the concept of half male and female principle in godhead is also found in Hinduism)
When these aspects came as one it signified God’s wholeness. Kabbalah would denote denote the glory of god as shekinah (from Shachan meaning presence of God in human events. In my opinion any man who conducts himself from highest motives that stem from his moral sense, and where his own personal fortunes are at stake giving the glory of God precedence over his own, has God as his friend.(ack: wikipedia-Hasidic Judaism)
benny

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Gray’s anatomy-religion

Color of Religion
Is there a color to code religion as founded by a prophet and organized by his disciples?
The purity of a vision seen from the unconscious mind has to be translated by the rational mind. Prophet can only approximate rationally what is revealed in the other. To compound the confusion it has to dictated to one. From there how a prophet’s teachings are translated by his scribe or faithfuls into an order is anybody’s guess. It is neither white nor is it black but gray.
Of this I had touched upon in the concluding part of the Silk Road and Via Appia.

Mexican Americans who are living in the south-western border states of America may be citizens of the U.S.A but they trace their origins to Mexico; pattern of belief-systems as it is impressed in them goes still deeper. The Roman Catholic beliefs were imposed on the New World by force and coercion some 500 years ago; These serve now as the basic religion in Mexico. It did not mean that the Mexicans could not work from within. The result is obvious.The policy of the Church in the sixties was to Americanize these people. But it was not much of a success. The Church found that whenever the priests offered masses in other than Spanish the flock tended to go to other churches where Masses were in Spanish.
In Haiti the Church was first associated with the Francophile elite, and which by 1940’s became identified with African values. Naturally a reconciliation with voodoo was inevitable. The Masses are now sung in Creole accompanied by voodoo drums. Devotion of the celebrants see no distinction between the Christian, Indian or African spirits which are merely lubricants that smoothen their daily grind of living. No Church can hope to establish dogmas per se and expect it to be held pure. It is people who give its vitality to beliefs and in the process it is transmuted into something unforeseen by the founder of the Religion himself.
Fools stone nevertheless some because of blasphemy or impiety. Or it may be for breaking the oath. In some cases these fools burn with lot of mumbo jumbo attached to it. Grand Inquisitor and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem alike can rest. If we pee on the clod of the earth neither will know the difference. They have become one with earth where no infidels or believers, arami or kaffirs exist. The peace that they feel can only matched by worms that specialize on dead bodies.
benny

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