NOW SHOWING: “MORALITY PLAY ON GMA”

Fortunately or unfortunately for Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), the Sandigan Bayan criminal court’s verdict on her predecessor Joseph “Erap” Estrada has more or less been settled. Despite the latter’s understandable yet shallow claims of a martyr’s innocence, even those of us, myself included who seven years or so ago were at the forefront among those demanding for his resignation, now look upon today’s karma-confronted Erap with some pity and empathy. Or even sympathy. Why so? Because Erap’s past mistakes as President though serious and truly condemnable, appear to be much less vicious and hypocritical than…

GMA’s social, marital, economic, Catholic and political pedigrees obviously constitute an overwhelming 100-to-1 advantage in life for her, over those of Erap. In moral theology and particularly in relation to the parable on Silver Talents (Matthew 25: 14-30), GMA’s God-given 100-to-1 capital advantage for life, will certainly also require from her that much more rectitude and moral excellence in governance, than from Erap. And perhaps even more so because she has often publicly flaunted her supposed miraculous and thus “God-ordained” assumption to the Philippine presidency. Therefore, her personal and moral culpability for her sins of misgovernance, would at least be also 100 times more than Erap’s!

And if, as the following excerpts from non-partisan and knowledgeable opinion makers today strongly suggest, GMA appears to be ten times worse than Erap ever was as a benighted leader, shouldn’t GMA tremble in fear a thousand times more, every time she appears before the Lord at Holy Mass, without a clean and honest conscience? Especially whenever she receives the “Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity” of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist?

By the way, corrupt Catholic politicians and bureaucrats including those who condone corrupt practices through their own silent acquiescence or grotesque attempts to cover-up, should be reminded that it is outright sacrilege and a mortal sin, everytime we receive Holy Communion without having been a) genuinely sorry, b) sincerely committed to adequate restitution for our victims, and c) have confessed these mortal sins, especially those involving grave injustice and rank hypocrisy.

Excerpts from the Philippine Daily Inquirer of 21 September 2007

EDITORIAL
Turning point

The testimony of businessman Jose “Joey” de Venecia III before the Senate on Tuesday and the testimony of three Cabinet secretaries before the same Senate committees yesterday define a true turning point in post-Edsa People Power II politics. Beyond the all-consuming question of an unpopular president’s continuing political survival, we face history’s ruthless judgment: Do we ever learn?
The political sharks certainly smell blood in the water. But the red stain is wide and visible even from a distance. The wounds the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration has sustained are real; whether they are deep enough to prove fatal will be determined in the next few weeks or so…

What do we know for certain?

The young De Venecia’s testimony was, by and large, credible. Some inconsistencies exist, and the failure to mention the alleged “Back off!” encounter in his affidavit is problematic. But overall, with its sometimes gratuitous specificity, his testimony has the ring of truth…

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s musings on human nature are absolute nonsense. As in the Estrada impeachment trial six years ago, Santiago again suggests that people -- lawyers then, businessmen now -- are motivated only by base greed or sheer self-interest. It may be that that is the world she lives in, but her world is not ours…

First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo’s belated response to the young De Venecia’s allegation that he had tried to intimidate him into backing out of the National Broadband Network project, as coursed through his lawyer Jesus Santos, sounds plausible... As we said, it sounds plausible, but it is hardly credible…

The by-now-clearly-documented role of Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos in the ZTE Corporation’s proposal for a national broadband network is incomprehensible -- and truly reprehensible. He has denied his involvement, but he can no longer deny the unusual trips to China, the series of meetings with the young De Venecia, and now that alleged mid-March meeting with Arroyo. Of all officials involved in the ZTE scandal, he has the most to explain…

We have long called for this disgraced and disgraceful official’s resignation or impeachment. Abalos’ involvement in the ZTE scandal is further reason to repeat our call... We cannot imagine enough congressmen mustering the political courage to impeach him. We certainly cannot imagine him resigning. We will have to bide our time and wait for a plunder case to be filed against him…



As I See It
Neil H. Cruz

I think we will discover more overpriced projects as the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo winds down to 2010. In basketball lingo, this is its last two minutes and public officials, knowing they would be out of jobs and out of power in less than three years, are now providing for their futures. What better and faster way to do that than to overprice projects.

The President cannot stop her subordinates from doing that because she is a lame-duck president. She is still in MalacaÒang only because of the support of her allies. If she cracks down on them, they can withdraw their support and where would she be? Look at what happened to former President Joseph Estrada. Ms Arroyo knows that what she did to him can also be done to her. So she will just sit tight, please her allies and hope that she lasts until 2010.

In fact, it is possible, she herself is thinking of providing for her future. She will need lots of money for lawyers when she is no longer President and plunder and graft cases are filed against her for the things she did while in office.

I hope not, but it is also possible she is the “mystery woman” behind the ZTE broadband case as her husband is the “mystery man.” Circumstantial evidence points to that.

She flew all the way to China to witness the signing of the ZTE contract. Why? Obviously to show her support for the project. What was signed was allegedly “stolen” soon later. Why?

Ms Arroyo did not order that the contract be reconstituted or that a copy be obtained from the Chinese. And in spite of a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court, she issued a statement that the Philippines would honor the contract which nobody but the signatories have seen.

The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

‘Back off!’: the new idiom of corruption
Raul C. Pangalangan

Thirty years ago, we celebrated Sept. 21 as Thanksgiving Day, as declared by President Ferdinand Marcos. A whole nation backed down when told to back off, and ended up celebrating the first day of the dictatorship, the day martial law was proclaimed, to sing hallelujah for their chains.
Jose de Venecia III has implicated no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s husband as the “mystery man” who tried to bully him out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) deal. Already De Venecia’s life has been threatened and his phone bugged, and nasty personal innuendoes circulate. “Reformers” plot to oust his father as Speaker of the House of Representatives. The chief presidential legal counsel threatens him with jail -- and reminds the Ombudsman of its “motu proprio” powers to investigate without waiting for a complainant -- yes, the same Ombudsman who had to be prodded by the Supreme Court before it charged anyone -- the small fry, mind you, not the big shots -- in the Comelec computerization scam. And for a while, the government even claimed that the NBN contract was either lost or nonexistent!…

NBN is an abrupt reversal of the settled policy of public-private partnerships in “information infrastructure” that shifts the costs to private investors and spares government funds from that burden. Moreover, the project, originally priced at P5.1 billion, has now bloated to a whopping P19.3 billion -- all this to offer a redundant service already performed by private capital on its own…

Without the De Venecia testimony, these weighty issues might not have ignited public outrage. Contrast that to the drama of the Joseph Estrada trial, with the image of a “bayong” [big native bag] full of cold cash hand-carried by thugs to the “lord of all jueteng [underground lottery] lords.” This time, the thievery is far more suave, and players threaten one another in “coÒo English” in chic places.

In the Philippines, there is a class divide even in the treatment of witnesses. The Estrada trial flourished because of witnesses like the warlord Chavit Singson, who is a “Witness Protection Program” on his own, and the bank vice president Clarissa Ocampo, who has her own built-in credibility as a professional. In contrast, who remembers those witnesses against MalacaÒang in all the past scandals? The low-level minions have either recanted and apologized or been shredded to pieces, like T/Sgt. Vidal Doble earlier this week.

And then the young De Venecia came, with all the advantages of both Chavit and Clarissa. Hence the vicious attacks on his character, because the NBN debate is at its core a battle for the hearts and minds of the Filipino public. The UP deans conclude: “The only backbone the government needs today is a moral one, not fiber optic but “fibre politique.’”

The Ombudsman’s “motu proprio” powers? “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth….”

BUTO’T BATO-BATO SA LANGIT

Mga Awit 10 (Pslam 10)

O Panginoon!
Sa panahon ng bagabag, bakit po kayo nagtatago?
Ang masama’y naghahambog sa buktot na nilalayon.
WHY, 0 Lord, dost thou stand afar off, why hide thyself in times of trouble, while the wicked man is proud, the needy man is distressed, he is caught in the plots which the wicked has devised?

Sa kanilang paghahambog, ganito ang binubulong:
“Hindi ako papansinin nitong Diyos na huhukom.”
Wika nila sa sarili, “Lagi akong may tagumpay. Ang bagabag sa akin di sasapit kailanman.”
For the sinner glories in his covetousness, and the despoiler blasphemes, he scorns the Lord. For the wicked man in his pride of spirit, says: "He will not punish; there is a no God:" such is all his thought. His ways succeed all the time; thy judgments are far from his mind; he despises all his enemies. He says in his heart: "I shall not be moved; from generation to generation I shall not be unhappy."

Sinungaling magsalita, lapastanga’t mapagbanta, at masakit kung mangusap, masama ang kanilang dila.
Hinahamak dinudurog, kaming taong kulang-palad, at lubusang inaapi ng malupit at malakas.
His mouth is filled with cursing and fraud and deceit; under his tongue are labor and sorrow. He waits in ambush near the villages, in hidden places he murders the innocent; his eyes spy out the poor man. He lies in ambush in dark places like a lion in his den; he lies in wait to catch the helpless man: he seizes and drags the helpless one into his net. He stoops, he crouches on the ground and the poor fall before his violence. He says in his heart: "God has forgotten, he has turned away his face, he never sees."

Panginoon! Kami’y nalulungkot at nagdurusa. Kayo’y laging nakahanda sa pagtulong sa amin. Ang wala nang maasahan ay sa iyo nagpupunta, pagka’t di ka nagkakait ng tulong mo sa kanila.
Yaong mga masasama ay alisan mo ng lakas, sa kanilang kasamaan,parusahan silang lahat. Lubusin mo ang parusa, pahirapan mo ng ganap.
Arise, 0 Lord God, lift up thy hand! Forget not the poor! Why does the wicked man spurn God, and say in his heart: "He will not punish"? But thou dost see: thou considerest labor and pain that thou mayest take them in thy hands. To thee the poor man entrusts himself; thou art a helper to the orphan! Break thou the arm of the sinner and the wicked: thou shalt punish his wickedness, and it will not remain.

Diringgin mo yaong api at ulilang lumuluha, papanigan sa paghatol, yaong mga taong aba. Pakiusap O Diyos, iyan ang gawin mo, upang itong masasama ay wala nang maidulot na pangamba at dalita.
The Lord is the king forever and ever, the nations have perished from his land. Thou, 0 Lord, hast heard the desire of the afflicted, thou hast reassured their heart, thou hast lent an ear, to uphold the right of the orphan and the oppressed. And that evildoers may terrify no more.

AMEN!

Pinoy Politikomiks

04-091907

I deeply share the private grief of an archbishop friend of mine, over the fact that most of our supposedly intelligent (clerics included!) and well-informed Filipinos nowadays, even the young but especially the most well-off, have practically lost their sense of moral indignation, despite the increasingly bizarre perfidies perpetrated by our high-powered politicians and government bureaucrats.

And so I have decided to try something different (hereunder!), so as to prick our collective conscience. For we the people are not stupid, nor hopeless. We unmistakably smell the nauseating, stinking garbage that emanates from way up there in the highest corridors of influence and power.

Believe me dear and supposedly well-educated Catholics who are knowingly involved or covering up for the latter in this ongoing "broadband cyberspace" tragi-comedy with its orchestrated brazen mendacity, you can’t and won’t get away scot-free from such out-and-out mockery of truth. For Truth is God Himself! And your victims are the long impoverished tens of millions of Other Christs who have already been mocked and plundered repeatedly by many other similarly greedy and rapacious politicians and bureaucrats.

Where are our new generation of the fiery patriot Lorenzo Tanada, the martyr-hero Ninoy Aquino, the prophet and father-figure Jaime Cardinal Sin, the simple yet sincere Ramon Magsaysay and yes, Jose Rizal too?

Let’s all sincere Muslims, Catholics and Christians come out now and support our few outnumbered yet already heroic old and young prophets and advocates for moral governance. Including you too JDV pere! For your son and namesake has just gifted you with a one-in-a-trillion OPPORTUNITY of a lifetime, to sacrifice and redeem yourself magnificently for and in behalf of our people.


"Bato-bato sa langit, pag tumama kanino man, sana’y di magalit!"

Politiko-miks (Sep 19, 2007)

*********

Faith in God vis-a-vis Science

03-091207

That TIME magazine account in its 15 January 2007 edition describing the Richard Dawkins-Francis Collins debate has re-ignited the age-old dilemma over a transcendental Prime Being whose existence and attributes, have never been “scientifically proven”. From the point of view of a school of physicists, cosmologists, biologists, mathematicians and their fellow skeptics in other fields, such a proof if without resorting to a prior faith in God or in the Bible, is IMPOSSIBLE. And in that, I agree with them!

It is also a fact that God Himself has not (yet) settled the issue once and for all. He could easily do it anytime if He were truly God, by revealing Himself to the whole world in all His power and glory so that even skeptics, agnostics and atheists would all fall down on their knees and sincerely worship Him. In fact, Christ Himself could have come down from the Cross and obliterated all His tormentors. And so that is also a nagging corollary issue even to many of us Christians who nonetheless believe He does exist.

And the only way Christians can reasonably resolve that nagging issue is HUMBLY to re-affirm their faith in God and in His divine attributes by saying:

“If He is the Almighty, All-Knowing and infinitely merciful and loving God, all of which we believe He is, therefore we ought also to believe that He knows best as to when and how and why He will finally reveal Himself to everybody, in full and beyond doubt.”

Similarly as an admirer of Gary Kasparov, for his versatile human qualities and his being a chess virtuoso, it would not be logical for me albeit a frustrated one-time chess addict, to question why in an on-going, long drawn-out game, Kasparov has not yet moved his King to the fore for the kill. For considering his prior scintillating performances or revelation, there is a reasonable basis or “a preponderance of evidence” for me to have faith in Gary Kasparov’s chess-playing prowess!

Francis Collins’ argued the same way: “Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation”. And if I may add, together with a large dose of HUMILITY and consciousness of our puniness.

But for those who have never admired nor rooted for Kasparov, they will never have such a faith in him unless and until the fellow proves his mettle by beating everybody hands down including a more powerful version of IBM’s Deep Blue. By that time however, it would no longer be a matter of “faith”, but a belated acknowledgment of a proven fact. By analogy, Professor Dawkins and his fellow atheists would belong to that crowd.

And so it is a logically consistent doctrine of the Catholic Church that our faith in Jesus Christ as true man and true God has a REASONABLE basis, i.e. the existence of the historical Christ in the Palestine area of today some 2000 years ago, written accounts of His spotlessly virtuous life and miracles wrought particularly in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles and in the Letters of St. Paul.

And yet the Church also maintains that the theological virtue of faith is still and above all a gratuitous “gift of God”.

Thus Christ said to Peter in response to the latter’s fervent declaration somewhere in the plains of Ceasarea Philippi that “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God!”, (Matthew 16:16): “Flesh and blood (i.e. human logic) has not revealed it to you but my Father in Heaven”.

And yet it would still surprise many science-educated people to be informed that the entire community of “physical” or empirical scientists themselves apply a similar faith-based thought process in many of their so-called “scientifically proven” conclusions, where these are backed by some evidence, often not even with a clear preponderance but only with some probability of empirical consistency. Nevertheless scientists often believe in these premature conclusions or theories, even if they have not yet been proven beyond the shadow of ANY doubt.

Thus Professor Dawkins himself adverted to the existence of a “multiverse” or multiple universes in addition to our presently visible one whose diameter is already at least 20 billion light years wide in all directions.

Well, Dawkins must have been referring to cosmologists’ recent predictions (speculations!) arising from “String Theory” and the corollary “Kaluza-Klein Theory” whereby they BELIEVE that there COULD BE as many as 10 multiplied 500 times (or 10 with 500 more zeros to its right!) cosmic “valleys”. Each one of these cosmic “valleys” would have its own set of unique physical laws of physics. Our visible universe would be merely ONE small region within ONE such “valley” or cosmic bubble. In short, an infinity of infinities!

Wouldn’t that add even more mind-boggling evidence of God’s infinite power? And thereby practically demolishing any likelihood that each of all these “happened by chance” thru their own unique sets of inexplicable self-energized evolutionary process?

And what about the INFINITESIMAL aspect of God’s creation? The 10 August 2007 issue of SCIENCE magazine reports that the latest discoveries in the Attoscience of applied nuclear physics have already been applied to measurable and yet still significantly relevant increments of time – duration as incredibly infinitesimal as one attosecond. It is one second divided by 1018. It is therefore one-billionth of one nanosecond, or one-billionth of one-billionth of a second!

And so I believe there is a preponderance of physical and logical evidence all around us to lead me humbly to cry out: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord! God of power and might, heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”.

God in Science (Part 2)

02-091207

The article entitled God vs. Science in the January 15, 2007 edition of TIME magazine, had this opening paragraph under the byline of David Van Biema:

“It’s an argument that has generated heat and light for centuries: whether religion and science can coexist. In the 4th century B.C., more than 2,000 years before Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory took hold, Aristotle questioned the role of a supernatural deity. When St. Thomas Aquinas unveiled his “proofs” that God existed circa 1270, he inflamed, rather than extinguished, the debate. And although the rapid progress of scientific discovery has demystified much of the world, disagreement over the unprovable elements has only intensified.”

From Mr. Van Biema’s very title itself, God vs. Science as against that of mine, God in Science, it is immediately clear that he and I are on opposite sides of this never-ending but still most fascinating issue. And so our professor and author of The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), Richard Dawkins, was clearly Van Biema’s pre-selected champion in denying God’s role in creation during that January 2007 Time-orchestrated debate-interview of Prof. Dawkins against the eminent genome research pioneer Francis Collins.

Let me weigh in only on the following question posed by TIME because it is the least abstract and the only question posed whose various possible answers can be understood by most lay people without the need of expertise on philosophy or cosmology.

TIME: Professor Dawkins, you think Darwin’s theory of evolution does more than simply contradict the Genesis story?

DAWKINS: Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God’s existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: “Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer.” But Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection. Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it. (emphasis supplied)

COLLINS: I don’t see that Professor Dawkins’ basic account of evolution is incompatible with God’s having designed it.

TIME: When would this have occurred?

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.


Mr. Collins was side-tracked from proceeding with his reply by another question from the Time referee. And so if not for such interruption, here’s what Collins could have or I would have said further, in order to complete the refutation of Prof. Dawkins’ highly improbable conclusion on evolution.

Let me start with Prof. Dawkins’ admission that “the most powerful argument for God’s existence”, is the fact that “living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently (better yet, OBVIOUSLY!) purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer”. And so if Dawkins’ attempted refutation of St. Thomas will be proven to be a dud, therefore my favorite mystic-theologian’s some 737-year old argument should remain as powerful as ever.

Dawkins’ attempted refutation of St. Thomas was Darwin’s discovery that some but NOT all fauna and flora (actually just a few thousands out of hundreds of millions of existing species!) evolved over millions of years from “simple beginnings…to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection”.

If Darwin’s findings a million years hence, were the year-by-year performance of computer programs over the past 50 years, our present day software would surely also exhibit such a purposeful improvement over time. Today’s Information Technology experts would laugh contemptuously a million years later even in their graves, if a latter-day Darwin would theorize that probably these remarkable improvements all happened by chance, without any intelligent Microsoft or IBM or Filipino computer-program designer having had any role in it. And wouldn’t that be exactly the same illogical substance of Prof. Dawkins’ sophistry?

Actually, Prof. Dawkins himself shot down his own argument in the same vein, by adding this comment: “Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest.” (emphasis added!)

For true enough, the God-created human brain of my chess hero Gary Kasparov alone by his lonesome, would have soundly beaten the prior years-long collective efforts of a “Dream Team” of IBM-organized artificial intelligence and chess experts and computer-programmers equipped with and represented by IBM’s Deep Blue super-computer. If not for Kasparov’s uncharacteristic mental lapse in a simple end-game situation, Kasparov would have clinched the 5-game match in his favor. It would therefore be mindbogglingly more of a “monster of improbability”, for us to believe that hundreds of millions of living species, including homo sapiens itself, were capable simply by chance, of evolving into their present day “complexity…elegance…(and) adaptive perfection”.

And so I submit that contrary to Professor Dawkins’ opinion, it is far more logical to believe that it could NOT be mere random chance as the prime cause of any purposeful evolution, Darwinian or not, but a conscious super-intelligent BEING “who am” and whom we call God Our Almighty Father!


ED OLAGUER
12 September 2007

God in Science

Inside my military prison cell some 27 years ago, I was engrossed with a book about the "Cosmos" written by the late and popular cosmologist Carl Sagan.

Among the many of the fascinating wonders of our universe Sagan described, was the fact that at the time he wrote the book in 1978 or earlier, there were already some 10 billion known galaxies, each galaxy with a specific name or code number for identification, containing anywhere from 3 billion to as many as 100 billion stars each.

Now some thirty years later, astrophysicists tell us that the total number of known galaxies have grown by at least ten fold, or 100 billion and still increasing every day. These scientists have also found out (only recently in 1998) that the expansion rate of the universe continues to ACCELERATE ever since the "Big Bang" exploded some 13.4 billion years ago. As of last year, the estimated radius of the universe is AT LEAST 10 billion LIGHT YEARS, in ALL DIRECTIONS reckoned from the Earth.

And so, the most faraway galaxy must also be at least 10 billion light years away from our astronomers’ observation points here on earth. If so, that farthest galaxy must be as of today 8 September 2007, AT LEAST 186,000 x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365.25 days x 10 billion miles away from the Earth. Or 587 Billion miles multiplied by 100 billion! That galaxy is also going farther away at the rate of at least 186,000 miles per second, the distance traveled by light in one second.

Consider the fact that one of those 100 billion plus galaxies, is our own Milky Way, whose number of stars was first estimated many years ago to be some 3 billion. It is now even considered to have as many as 100 billion stars. One of those multi-billion stars is our own sun, to which our planet (meaning wandering body), Earth with its one solitary moon, is only one of eight (8) real planets revolving around the sun - - Pluto having been delisted last year. Our bigger wandering neighbors even have multiple moons. Neptune has 13, Uranus 27, Saturn 47 and Jupiter has 63 with 8 of them regular and 55 irregular moons!

My early fascination and wonder about our cosmos as a result of reading Carl Sagan, have more than doubled ever since I subscribed to the magazine Scientific American (www.sciam.com). At this point however, I must first admit in transparent honesty dear readers/visitors, that these factual astronomical premises, have been trotted out in order to set you up! Yes, in order to lead as many of you as possible into, maybe just maybe, realizing how humblingly small and puny each of us are, in comparison with the Great Prime Being, who if He truly exists and which yours truly firmly believes He does exist and whom I call GOD our Almighty Father, must have been responsible for creating this mind-bogglingly limitless "cosmos". Its mathematically precise orderliness yet still with unfathomable complexity could not have been the result of random unplanned chance. Unless, unless one can logically believe that something like IBM’s Big Blue super computer which beat Kasparov in a chess match, can also be a product of self-design-and-construction by mere CHANCE. To me therefore, God must be far beyond our own individual or even collective minds to fully fathom, much less to second-guess or deny His existence.

Thus, I would like to "light a fire" or even just a small spark in the minds of my readers/visitors, and in my own mind even more, that human humility is not just a laudable virtue but a logically necessary attitude for truly understanding ourselves, human society and the whole wide world as well.

In my book Light a Fire II (homepage.mac.com/dolaguer/lightafire) on Chapter 18, page 292 thereof, I referred to Charles Townes, the co-inventor of the laser and a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, who was honored for his long and excellent record of talks and writings about the importance of relating science and religion. Some of these articles were published by IBM and M.I.T. of Cambridge, Mass. For that Mr. Townes also won the Templeton Prize for Progress on research and discoveries about spiritual realities. The much belated recognition and award was worth £795,000 pounds-sterling, or more than U.S. $1.5 Million in March 2005.

During the award ceremonies Townes said that "Many people can’t realize that science basically involves assumption and faith", and that therefore "nothing is absolutely proved!"
In the November 2006 edition of Scientific American, astrophysicist Abraham Loeb’s article "The Dark Ages of the Universe", started with the following similar thoughts about the transcendent nature of mankind and the universe:

"When I look up into the sky at night, I often wonder whether we humans are too preoccupied with ourselves. There is much more to the universe than meets the eye on earth. As an astrophysicist I have the privilege of being paid to think about it, and it puts things in perspective for me. There are things that I would otherwise be bothered by – my own death, for example. Everyone will die sometime, but when I see the universe as a whole, it gives me a sense of longevity. I do not care so much about myself as I would otherwise, because of the big picture.

Cosmologists are addressing some of the fundamental questions that people attempted to resolve over the centuries through philosophical thinking, but we are doing so based on systematic observation and a quantitative methodology. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the past century has been a model of the universe that is supported by a large body of data. The value of such a model to our society is sometimes underappreciated. When I open the daily newspaper as part of my morning routine, I often see lengthy descriptions of conflicts between people about borders, possessions or liberties. Today’s news is often forgotten a few days later. But when one opens ancient texts that have appealed to a broad audience over a longer period of time, such as the Bible (emphasis supplied!), what does one often find in the opening chapter? A discussion of how the constituents of the universe – light, stars, life – were created. Although humans are often caught up with mundane problems, they are curious about the big picture. As citizens of the universe we cannot help but wonder how the first sources of light formed, how life came into existence and whether we are alone as intelligent beings in this vast space. Astronomers in the 21st century are uniquely positioned to answer these big questions."

Some 2,000 years ago, a former killer-Pharisee suddenly and dramatically turned Christian apostle, wrote about his unbelieving erstwhile colleagues as follows:

"For everything that could have been known about God was clear to them: God Himself made it plain. For though we cannot see Him, we can at least discover Him through His works, for He created the world and (thereby) we understand Him to be eternal and all-powerful, and to be God." (Romans 1: 19-20)

Enough for today! But I shall continue and proceed from these lines of thought next Wednesday September 12.