Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

 … the very people who are trying to use that record to justify billions of dollars in payments to themselves.

That’s the gist of it.  But don’t forget the sex.  Wherever money is grubbed, sex is also.

This is, in my opinion, the greatest scandal in the history of science.

Concur.  At least the flat-earthers had horizontal observation on their side.  And some psychological and spiritual/operational-piety observations as well.

A follow-on question: if this is the greatest scandal in the history of science, what does that say about science qua human endeavor?  Has it reached the apogee of its utility — experimental, legal and otherwise — has it failed the universal spiritual yearning, has it become boring for not engaging enough of human capacity to maintain interest in its use?

Science in the hands of scientists became a battering ram to destroy theologians and the Church, even though a Franciscan invented modern science and monastics — with help from Mutazilite Islam — preserved classical experimental theory, data and doctrine.  Those battering scientists succeeded … in seating themselves as prelates of a fresh iteration of a very ancient religion, a non-dimensional religion that has the person-satisfying power of a point, becoming its fact-optional partisan totalitarians (i.e., anti-religion zealot zeros).

Science lost its utility — and attractiveness — by claiming authority that over-reaches its epistemological limitations.  This is the aspect of these affairs that intrigues me.

Update 1: Over the past two years the increasingly skeptical citizenry of the United States and Europe has been treated to a stream of op-eds and television appearances lamenting the looming collapse of the liberal world order, to be accompanied by a surge of illiberalism, nationalism, and fringe politics. Rarely, however, does such hand-wringing stray beyond shopworn comparisons of the “complex interdependence” of the glorious past and the parochialism and narrow-mindedness of the current era. In truth, we are not witnessing a dramatic systemic change driven by conniving external forces, but a meltdown of political authority in the West caused by the relatively straightforward indolence of its political class. Our troubles are less about liberalism’s decline or the ascendancy of left or right politics. Simply put, the citizenry in the West has been frustrated for decades with its elites’ inability to deliver workable solutions to the problems of slow growth, deindustrialization, immigration, and the overall decline of self-confidence across the West.

The legitimacy, and hence stability, of the international system rests to a degree on the ability of the leading powers to deliver at home—or, simply put, to govern. The increasing volatility of international politics is in part a byproduct of systemic dysfunction across the West at the level of domestic politics. Americans and Europeans alike are running out of patience with the governing class. In Europe, the government’s inability to control mass migration or develop effective solutions to domestic terrorism are two important drivers of the growing public discontent. In the United States the middle and working classes have been frustrated for decades with the government’s inability to remedy de-industrialization, urban decay, and declining economic opportunity.

Glenn Reynolds comments: And in both places, as the “elite” has grown demonstrably less competent and honest, it has also grown visibly more contemptuous of the people it purports to govern. That contempt is, I think, the most poisonous part of the whole equation.

My essays on the question of authority are here.

Update 2: Federal Contracting Explained Simply

Update 3:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.

David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion.  I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.

Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow.  Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?

David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means.  It also is in Hebrew Prophetism.  Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end.  Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways.  In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways.  Far, far more.  Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance.  Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound.  Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.

Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct.  Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society.  Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S.  And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA