Red State, Blue State and Le Miz

There was an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times (Saturday, 2/9/2013) today on the fact that soldiers on both sides of the Civil War read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in the trenches.  What follows is my comment.

The fact that Le Miz was popular in the camps and trenches of the Civil War is an ironic comment on the status of popular literacy today. The same comment ran through the "The Civil War" presentation by Ken Burns.

Today Congress is full of babbling idiots who dispute the elemental facts of science and deny both global warming and evolution which for all his tragic administrative failures is accepted by even Pope Benedict. There are repetitive stories of books being banned and textbooks being censored by Red state education authorities. In one state, there is a proposal to mandate the reading of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which is the bible of a philosophy which is totally dismissive of the great ideals of equality which have governed this country since the Declaration of Independence and for which we fought the bloodiest war in our history – the Civil War.

This country is facing as great a divide as that of the Civil War. Not between free state and slave state, not even among classes of wealth, but among those who accept and understand that ideas progress as well as people and those who cling to an idealized vision the past, but do not learn from it.

The knowledge gap between Red states and Blue is the most invidious gap we face to day. The fact that soldiers on the line could read and relate to Le Miz during the Civil War is a witness to the fact that progress is not guaranteed.

Clumsy me and the Shroud of Turin

Once, while reporting a debate I  participated in some years ago, the New York Law Journal referred to me as the “most avuncular” of the participants. I was a little upset because it looked like a reference to my weight, which wasn’t that bad until I looked the word up. Avuncular means “uncle like, a tendency to make points by telling stories”(or perhaps to bore relatives to death). I took satisfaction in that because in history, two of the most avuncular personalities were Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ. To make their points, Christ told parables and Lincoln told jokes – some of which, if you saw the recent movie or read any of his biographies, were a bit uncouth. I was in good company.

Right now in the course of drafting my manuscript, I am struggling a bit to capture the flavor of the scientific miracle that was the 120 hours of scientific analysis by STURP in Turin. I am particularly taken by the tale of aragonite limestone being found. But first let me tell MY story.

As some may know, my wife Rene and I have a particular empathetic but rambunctious Yellow Labrador Retriever  named Bogart. One morning a week or so ago I was walking “Bogie” and  he had a confrontation with another dog (unusual for him), He jerked the leash hard and I fell forward,  landing flat on the sidewalk. I suffered as a result an abrasion on my right knee and  a slight one on the tip of my nose.  Neither was a big deal.

Later, when I was reviewing the 120 hours, I came across one of the most significant finds (I now believe) of the research in that time period. I smiled a bit in recognition of what I was reading.

The Gilberts were running spectrographic analysis of the Shroud. They came across some anomalies and found that they were on the soles of the feet, one knee and the tip of the nose of  the Man in the Shroud. Sam Pellicori who was the chief microscope person on the STURP team was called in to check and see if he could find what the problem was. He found it quickly. There was dirt on the soles of the feet, one knee and the nose. The dirt on the soles of the feet indicated that he was barefoot on his way to his crucifixion. The nose and the knee were likely from a fall, as tradition has held, he did.

Most importantly, perhaps, scientific analysis of the dirt, which was picked-up by chemist Ray Rogers from the points on the Shroud, indicated that it was a specific, rare form of aragonite limestone, found only so far in the area of Jerusalem.

Obviously, my minor discomfort is nothing compared to the agony He suffered on the way of the Cross. But I can attest from personal experience, if you fall flat on your face, your knee and your nose are likely to be bruised. The evidence of just such injuries on the Shroud, while small and petty compared to the gross suffering inflicted on him, is one more item of the myriad of circumstances attesting to the authenticity of the Shroud.

The Shroud a product of forgery? As we say in New York, forget-about-it. You can’t make this stuff up. (I hope He has a sense of humor, Lincoln did.)

A Reflection: Nancy LaMott, Eva Cassidy, Planned Parenthood and Thomas Aquinas and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

As some of you may know, I am working on a manuscript the working title of which is “The Coming of the Quantum Christ: The Shroud of Turin and the future of Science and Humanity.” I have just completed the draft of Chapter Seven (:Game Change”) which ends with the Shroud of Turin Research Group (STURP) in 1978 flying from New York to Turin to begin what is undoubtedly the most concentrated scientific study of the Shroud in its arguably two millennia history. (Some of what follows may wind-up in the “quantum” part of my manuscript., the Aquinas and Teilhard part.)

But in the past few days, the news has been of renewed efforts of the right wing extremists elected in the 2010 elections at the state level to gut Planned Parenthood again on the mistaken claim that Planed Parenthood is dedicated to abortion and that it spend most of its money providing abortions. That is simply not true. Ninety-Seven per cent of Planned Parenthood activities are devoted to women’s health issues, a part of the 97% does include contraception services, BUT, the number one way to prevent abortions is contraception.

But was does this have to do with Eva Cassidy and Nancy LaMott, two female vocalists. They have one thing in common: they both died in the prime of their singing careers from cancers that if discovered in time might have saved their lives.

First, a word about their music. Eva was a relatively unknown quantity when she died of melanoma at age 33. It was three years after her death that she came to the attention of a British disk jockey singing “Some Where Over the Rainbow. The rest is, as they say, history. There is a You Tube of an ABC Nightline story on  Eva at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXU219b3Zdw  (It's 15 minutes long so you might want to finish this article before going to it.)

Eva first came to my attention when I stumbled across arecording of her singing “At Last” on Napster some years ago. You may recall that in the Inaugural Balls of 2008, Michelle and Barak Obama danced to “At Last.” Beyonce was the singer but I recall hearing the song many years before. Like a lot of songs some of it may seem over done, but I have always cherished the last verse:

You smile,

And then the spell was cast.

And here we are in heaven,

Because you are mine at last.

I was had a moment like that, New Year’s Eve, 1961.

Eva’s version is on You Tube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2odll7s8q0c

I stumbled across Nancy LaMott when I was once looking for tracks of “You’re Clear Out of This World.” I thought it was a Kurt Weil song because it seemed to draw from “Speak Low” one of Weil’s most beautiful songs. It wasn’t though. But Nancy LaMott did a set of “You’re Clear Out of This World” and Cole Porter’s “So in Love” that was out of this world. You find a recorded live performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS4nnxA-IDE

The first time I heard Eva Cassidy sing, I knew she had passed away. I remember hearing of Nancy LaMott on NYC disk jockey Jonathan Schwartz’s Saturday morning jazz centered program. It was not until I discovered her recording of “Clear Out of This world” that I discovered that she too had died. Hers was uterine cancer. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960324&slug=2320684

The implication  in Seattle Times story  was that she was on the brink of stardom at the time of her death

I will not claim that either of these two precious women could have been saved by Planned Parenthood because I am not familiar enough with their economic circumstances to know if they either qualified for, or needed, Planned Parenthood services. But millions of American women have qualified for these services and in many instances owe their lives to Planned Parenthood. You can see some examples at:

http://plannedparenthoodsavedme.tumblr.com/page/5

See also: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/womens-health/pelvic-exam-4306.htm

Now the commercial: What has any of this have to do with Thomas Aquinas and Teilhard?

The issue is the human soul and when does that immortal soul come into existence. We now have claims that a fertilized egg cell, even before implantation in the womb, is a human being entitled to all the due process rights of a human being which would mean that even “morning after” pills would be murder because they prevent implementation. Thomas Aquinas would have disagreed.

He lived 800 years ago, long before Darwin. Aquinas  along with St. Augustine was one of the pillars of Christian theology. Aquinas  wrote concerning the issue of when the soul was infused into the fetus that it occurred at the time of “quickening” and that before quickening there  was not a human soul but a vegative one. He seems to foreshadow both Teilhard and Darnwin

Teilhard wrote in the “Phenomenon of Man” that it was at the point in the evolution of a species of primates that it developed the quality of reflection or self awareness, that the human species was born. To credit the metaphor of Genesis, that would be the point when humanity  became the  “image and likeness” of God.

As I have written in the Introduction to my manuscript, science today has advanced to the point where it is grappling with the issue of human consciousness. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have written that the human mind and(and necessarily awareness) arise from trillions of micro-tubules in the brain acting as a quantum computer with among other attributes, the ability to participate in “quantum entanglements.” That is the development among quantum phenomena to react identically and thus communicate instantaneously across time and space beyond the normal constraints of time and space. Einstein called the concept “spooky” but to paraphrase Cole Porter, it is strange, dear, but true.

I discuss this on my blog at

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2012/08/michael-redux-quantum-mechanics.html

Where does it leave us. Ironically, it leaves us at the door step of Roe v. Wade which divided the pregnancy into three stages of legal concern. The first stage would correspond to Aquinas vegative state at the very least.

To the best of my knowledge, the Catholic Church has not yet stated as a matter of faith and morals that God has infused the soul in the ovum at the time of fertilization. Because science is now grappling with the issues of self-awareness that so closely resemble the Aquinas dichotomy, it would be best perhaps to avoid such speculation.

Galileo was nearly burned at the stake for challenging the Ptolemaic view that the earth was the center of the Universe. It might be best for everybody to take a deep breath before demanding all of our laws bend to the fundamentalist view about soul creation.

And it would certainly be a very good idea to those who are demanding the defunding of Planned Parent to back-off a bit. Millions of women have depended on Planned Parenthood for life saving services. As for me, I can not get the voices of Eva Cassidy and Nancy LaMott to be still.

Okay STURP team, it’s time to land.

Jesus Christ, Feminist

In my research for a manuscript I am working on, I came across one enigma concerning the purported apparitions by Christ after the Resurrection. The earliest written report surviving of the Resurrection was the epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. All the apparitions reported by Paul were strictly masculine. Yet, according to the Gospels, whose surviving written text post-date the Epistles, the first witnesses to the Resurrection were Mary Magdalen and women accompanying her. Why this disparity and does it have any significance?

For one thing, Paul’s account is evidence that the traditions recorded in the four Gospels predate St. Paul’s epistle. For His time and His place, Jesus was a feminist, arguably a radical feminist at that. Leonard Swidler, among others, have written of written of this phenomena.[i]

In Judea, at the time of Christ, according to tradition and written law, women were virtually non-people. The reference by Paul to the post-Resurrection appearance to 500 “brothers” is an indication that in the First Century CE, the number of men was significant and the number of women not worthy of mention. Women were not regarded as credible witnesses. Generally speaking, except in the rarest of instances, women could not bear witness in courts of law.”[ii]

Females were not allowed to even read the Torah, nonetheless study it. Fathers were not allowed to teach their daughters the Torah. In the prescribed daily prayers, men prayed: "Praised be God that he has not created me a gentile; praised be God that he has not created me a woman; praised be God that he has not created me an ignorant man.”

Law and custom forbade men speaking with women in public, even a husband was enjoined from “speaking much” with a woman.[iii]

There are several instances of Jesus breaking taboos in his relationships with women. A woman having her period was regarded as unclean and any one who came in contact with her was unclean. Jesus cured a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years when she touched him, even though that touching rendered him unclean.

In one incident, while traveling through Samaria, he met a much married woman at a well and discussed the scriptures with her, identifying himself as the Messiah.[iv] She was so moved by his words that she went into the village and spread the word that the Messiah had come

Another time, Martha was upset with her sister Mary, because when Jesus visited their home, she sat at his feet discussing Scripture while Martha was busy preparing food for their guest. When Martha asked Jesus to chastise Mary for not helping, Jesus instead chastised Martha. “Mary,” he said has “chosen the better part.”[v]

It was the degraded state of women generally that makes it remarkable that the four Gospels record women as the first witnesses to the Resurrection. In fact, N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop, and perhaps the foremost scholar of the Resurrection, uses that fact to conclude that the traditions that were formalized as the Gospels, predate St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

“Even if we suppose that Mark made up most of his material, and did so some time in the late 60s at the earliest, it will not do to have him, or anyone else at that stage, making up a would-be apologetic legend about an empty tomb and having women be the ones who find it. The point has been repeated over and over in scholarship, but its full impact has not always been felt: women were simply not acceptable as legal witnesses. We may regret it, but this is how the Jewish world (and most others) worked. The debate between Origen and Celsus shows that critics of Christianity could seize on the story of the women in order to scoff at the whole tale; were the legend-writers really so ignorant of the likely reaction? If they could have invented stories of fine, upstanding, reliable male witnesses being first at the tomb, they would have done it.”  (Interior citations omitted).[vi]

The obduracy of the bachelor hierarchy to the ordination of women is an anarchism that the Church must put behind it. There is a desperate shortage of priests in many countries, particularly the United States. In the US, dioceses are importing priests from Africa. They are fine men, however, their presence in the United States is contingent to their strict hewing to the Vatican line.

However, the Church does change. Remember, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a heretic. Among her heresies was dressing as a man.  Twenty-five years later she was exonerated and, after a few centuries, canonized. When dealing with the Church, sometimes these things take a little time.

[i] This discussion is drawn from “Jesus was a Feminist” by Leonard Swidler, Professor of Catholic Thought & Interreligious Dialogue, Religion Department, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA An Editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and a member of religion department at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA at the time this article was written. The article first appeared in Catholic World. January, 1971. The article can be found on the internet at which can be found on the web at http://www.godswordtowomen.org/feminist. See also, Swidler, Jesus Was a Feminist: What the Gospels Reveal about His Revolutionary Perspective, Sheed & Ward, 2007,

[ii] Idem

[iii] Idem

[iv]  John 4:4-26

[v] Luke 10:38-42

[vi] Wright, N. T. (2010-04-28). The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) (Kindle Locations 12206-12209). Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Kindle Edition

Rev. Peter Rinaldi Apostle of the Shroud

In my research of the history of the Shroud, I have come across the unique contributions the late Rev. Peter Rinaldi.

He was a seminarian in Turin and was present for the 1933 exposition of the Shroud and served a an interpreter for an informal seminar of participants. The Enrie photographs were then being distributed in 1933, and seminarian Peter Rinaldi rubbed shoulders with giants such as Paul Vignon and Secondo Pia.

In 1934, he wrote an article on the Shroud for The Sign, a Catholic monthly in America. When he returned from Italy and was ordained, he eventually was appointed pastor of Corpus Christi Church in Port Chester New York . He established a shrine dedicated to the Shroud of Turin.

His most important contribution came in 1978 when he was an expediter for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). Because of a customs problem, the local authorities had placed an embargo on the STURP scientific apparatus necessary for their analysis of the Shroud.

It was Fr. Rinaldi, meeting alone with the Italian authorities he convinced them to release the equipment and the STURP analysis proceeded. The rest, as they say, is history. Without Fr. Rinaldi's intervention, the entire project would have been thwarted.

I was able to locate an archive of Sign Magazine which has long since ceased publication. I have a posted a copy of the 1934 article on my web site at: http://johnklotz.com/Shroud/RinaldiJune1934.pdf

While science has advanced since 1934 when the article was written and some of his conclusions may have been overtaken by further research, much of it is valid today.

The article, written by this young seminarian on the brink of his career of  service to the Church and the Shroud, is a landmark on the journey to the truth.
___________________________________________________________
You can read more about Father Rinaldi and the Shroud of Turin in my book, The Coming of the Quantum Christy: The Shroud of Turin and the Apocalypse of Selfishness. For more information go to:  

http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Michael Redux: Quantum mechanics, consciousness and love

“Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter. But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to need to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium — not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

The Phenomenon of Man

The question of whether human consciousness is a distinct phenomenon that survives death, is at the core of most religious belief. Now, it is becoming a scientific issue as well. Science is dealing with two related phenomena: the existence of human consciousness and the nature of existence of all matter at the quantum level. Science in attempting to explain human consciousness is science attempting to define the soul. Is our consciousness a discreet process that may operate independent of space and time? Or,  is it only an accumulation of sensations that ends when the individual dies and the brain is  rendered inert and decaying? Can  our consciousness operate independent of time and space? Is there any scientific basis for eternal life? Is the Resurrection real?

Two scientists, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have advanced a theory that answers some of those questions and indicates, that contrary to the militant atheism now rampant in our culture and science, survival of consciousness after death is an attainable scientific proposition. Hameroff appeared on “Through the Worm Hole,” a scientific series of the Discover Channel hosted by Morgan Freeman. You can view his presentation at http://vimeo.com/39982578.

Penrose and Hameroff are not cow college savants. In its  September 2009 issue, Discover Magazine summarized Penrose’s accomplishments:

“A theorist whose name will be forever linked with such giants as Hawking and Einstein, Penrose has made fundamental contributions to physics, mathematics, and geometry. He reinterpreted general relativity to prove that black holes can form from dying stars. He invented twistor theory—a novel way to look at the structure of space-time—and so led us to a deeper understanding of the nature of gravity. He discovered a remarkable family of geometric forms that came to be known as Penrose tiles. He even moonlighted as a brain researcher, coming up with a provocative theory that consciousness arises from quantum-mechanical processes.”

Hameroff is a practicing anesthesiologist and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at The University of Arizona, Tucson.

The  Discovery video speaks for itself. In sum, Penrose and Hameroff contend that human consciousness arises from microtubules which appear in brain cells by the trillions and function as a quantum computer. The microtubules communicate with each other by a process of quantum entanglement or non-locality. How that process works is a quantum mystery, but it exists and it does work. Einstein called the concept "spooky." Entangled particles have been demonstrated to affect each other instantaneously across huge distances, defying Einstein's theory that nothing travels faster than light.

The quantum information collected and maintained in the microtubules is collectively our consciousness. Penrose and Hammeroff theorize that this quantum information becomes a part of the quantum information that permeates existence and has permeated existence since the creation of the Universe at the Big Bang.

Hammeroff suggests that the fact that conscious information is quantum information explains many phenomena that more traditional scientists reject. Among them are near death (NDE)  and out of body experiences (OBE). Hammeroff states that at death, quantum information of consciousness is no longer stored in the body. (It's as if microtubles were a computer’s Random Access Memory (RAM) that is lost when the computer is turned off.) He then suggests that the memory is not lost but becomes a part of the quantum information that permeates the Universe. When the individual is revived and drawn back from death, the brain is recharged with the quantum information that had been saved as a part of the universal quantum information. (Cloud computing, so to speak.)

Hameroff concludes in the video: “So far, nobody has landed a serious blow to the theory. We're still very viable and evidence continues, new evidence continues to support theories we put forth 15 years ago.”

There are other scientists who are also grappling with the issue of the quantum existence of consciousness. One of them is Edgar Mitchell, a former Astronaut who also holds a Doctor of Science Degree. In a lengthy examination of the consciousness issue entitled “The Quantum Hologram And the Nature of Consciousness” published in the Journal of Cosmology, he cites Penrose and Hameroff and argues that the information is stored in holographic form – a “quantum holograph.”

Is love a quantum entanglement?

My adult son Michael passed away April 7, 2007. In October 2007 I published a piece about his death analogizing it to an event horizon which surrounds an astronomical black hole. I also discussed the reality of love and my belief that love created a joint part of the psyche of both the lover and the beloved. http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

Since that time, I have explored scientific and philosophical progress related to the issues of evolution, consciousness, and quantum mechanics. What I have now concluded is that I understated my case for love and the joint psyche. In fact, the propositions advanced by Penrose, Hameroff and Mitchell lead me to the conclusion that the concept of quantum entanglement and advances in understanding the physical reality of consciousness point the way to the existential reality of love. The joint psyche I hypothesized is real, and so is the prospect of lasting love into eternity.

My question and proposal is that survival of the psyche is dependent on its quantum entanglement through love of others and through that love entanglement with the primordial consciousness from which existence flowed.

But what then of the Christ? Whose son is He?

I also believe that there is sufficient evidence that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ  and has become a scientific revelation not just of his existence but of the potential of his Resurrection and ultimately our own.

Is there a primordial consciousness from which all existence sprung? Is quantum information real? Is entanglement with the primordial consciousness entanglement with God? Do the great commands of the Gospel, to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, call us to a quantum entanglement beyond comprehension?

In my posting on Michael, I closed with a quotation from St. Paul that love endures forever. For this posting, perhaps, the best closing is not the Omega but the Alpha, the first verse of the Gospel of St. John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Why Rachel Maddow needs reading glasses and the public needs Romney’s tax returns

Let me say a at the outset, I am a Rachel Maddow fan, but the other night when discussing Mitt Romney’s missing years at the Olympics and his income form Bain Capital, Inc, she kept asking the question: why was he paid  $100,000 a year by Bain from 1999 to 2002. That was a big mistake, because the Financial disclosure form with the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission for 2001, Romney  disclosed not $100,000 from Bain capital but “Over $100,000” As others have pointed out, this means we don’t know how much Bain Capital paid Romney more than $100,000. Was it a million? Two million?

But there is more. Actually Romney was paid “Over $100,000” by four other Bain related entities: Bain Capital LLC, BCIP Associates, BCIP Associates II, and BCIP Trust Associates.You can view the whole disclosure form at: http://romneyfacts.com/assets/Personal%20Financial%20Forms/Personal%20finances/SFI/2001%20SFI%20WMR.pdf

Assuming that his actually take from each of these five Bain entities was “only” one million dollars a year, that would mean he received five million dollars a year. Without his income tax forms, we can only estimate his income.

Does any one really believe that he was uniformed of  ‑ or informed and opposed to ‑ the actions of Bain while he was pulling in “over” $500,000 a year and quite likely more than $5,00,000. There is only one way to get real answers to Romney’s Bain related income from 1999 to 2002. He should release his income taxes for those years.

He gave John McCain 12 years of income tax returns in 2008 when being vetted for a possible Vice Presidential nomination. Does the public deserve any less.