{"id":94156,"date":"2015-11-07T00:15:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T07:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=94156"},"modified":"2015-11-07T10:33:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T17:33:27","slug":"why-you-need-to-read-more-michael-flynn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2015\/11\/why-you-need-to-read-more-michael-flynn.html","title":{"rendered":"Why you need to read more Michael Flynn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I was going to post just a quote, but then I thought, \u201cNah, I\u2019ll steal the whole vignette and then send youse guys over to his blog<\/a> to see all the other great stuff:<\/p>\n

\n

Bad News for God, or Someone<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Flashing point shows relative position of Earth 2.0<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

M<\/b><\/span>eanwhile, in other news, a marine biologist who blogs at something called the Huffington Post announces that the\u00a0discovery of Kepler 452b<\/a>\u00a0is \u201cbad news for God<\/a>.\u201d The author is evidently a theologian, for he declares with certainty that \u201cThe discovery of just one such world is good evidence for many more\u201d and \u201cwe come ever closer to the idea that life is common in the universe.\u201d Not that we have found any such life, mind you, but it\u2019s just gotta be out there, somewhere, because\u00a0numbers<\/i>. We note too that Mars is also within the habitable zone, but is no so far was we know actually inhabited.<\/span>

\n<\/span>(IOW: \u201cin habitable zone\u201d \u2260 \u201csupports life\u201d \u2260 \u201crational beings.\u201d It is from this string of inequalities that the author deduces the downfall of religion, which apparently amounts to bad news for God.)<\/span>

The reason this is bad news for God and not for, say, the author of the article, is that \u201cthe Bible is unambiguous about creation: the earth is the center of the universe, only humans were made in the image of god, and all life was created in six days.\u201d So we see that the author is a fallen-away fundamentalist, or possibly that his mother was frightened by a fundamentalist when he was\u00a0in utero<\/i>. He gets his disbeliefs from the Bible.<\/span>

However, if Augustine of Hippo and Thomas of Aquino could consider that the six days were metaphorical or even allegorical, any non-fundy type \u2014 like the Catholic and Orthodox churches \u2014 could likewise consider it. Besides, one needn\u2019t discover a planet a mere\u00a060% larger than earth<\/a>\u00a0(est.) to deduce that the six days just might not be literally fact. Both Gus and Tom reserved judgement on the six days because they didn\u2019t have the data to support a firm nay or yea, a stance that TOF whimsically hopes marine biologists who blog on issues astrophysic might one day take to heart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>

\n<\/span>The author seems to suppose that the Earth being, in the old models, at the\u00a0bottom\u00a0<\/i>of the world is in some sort of exalted place, whereas the medievals supposed the place\u00a0ignoble<\/i>, the bilges of the World, as far from the heavens as one could (get other than Hell). Besides, there is no privileged frame of reference, so it may as well be here as somewhere from which we cannot as yet make meaningful observations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
impala, lower case<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Impala, capitalized<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Then there is the curious announcement that \u201conly<\/i>humans were made in the image of god.\u201d Now, it is actually in the image of\u00a0God<\/i>, not god. (The capital carries semantic load. An impala is not the same\u00a0kind<\/i>\u00a0of thing as an Impala, after all.) But the image refers to man\u2019s nature as a rational being, not to his physical body. Augustine said that sciopods, blemyae, pygmies, and other then-fanciful beings would be human provided only they possessed reason. And nowhere, save perhaps to fundies like the author, does doctrine say that \u201conly\u201d humans were so endowed. After all, the Church has always taught of angels, whom we may dub \u201cextraterrestrial energy beings\u201d in order to remain orthodox to modernity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
St. Christopher the doghead<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


\n<\/span>The author declares that if extraterrestrial life is ever discovered (and we might take passing note that it has not yet been) that \u201creligion\u201d (whatever that means) will \u201ccontort\u201d itself to accommodate it. He seems unaware that it already has been accommodated and that no contortions were necessary. Once medieval legend had it that a\u00a0doghead\u00a0<\/a>had not only been baptized but had become a saint. So it\u2019s not as if anyone had problems imagining intelligent aliens or incorporating them into their world-view.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019ve not read his science fiction, you really should:<\/p>\n

Michael Flynn\u2019s Books on Amazon<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to post just a quote, but then I thought, \u201cNah, I\u2019ll steal the whole vignette and then send youse guys over to his blog to see all the other great stuff: Bad News for God, or Someone Flashing point shows relative position of Earth 2.0 Meanwhile, in other news, a marine biologist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,7],"class_list":["post-94156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-recommendations","tag-doings-on-other-blogs"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy you need to read more Michael Flynn<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I was going to post just a quote, but then I thought, "Nah, I'll steal the whole vignette and then send youse guys over to his blog to see all the other\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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