Why Statues Were Removed by Reformers from Some Formerly Catholic Churches

Why did some Protestants remove statues from formerly Catholic Churches?  The reformers such as Luther, Zwingli and Calvin wanted to stay true to the Bible- the word of God, and to eliminate errors and authorities that seemed to be in contradistinction to the word of God. That is easy. Luther opposed the sale of indulgences that was ubiquitous and corrupting, the sale of relics that were normally bogus, the veneration of idols/statues and other items that had to much in common with pagan idolatry and so forth. 

Since Martin Luther believed in a priesthood of believers that all Christians are priests he was inclined to be more egalitarian in his approach to reading the word of God. Since the Catholic church had eliminated the married priesthood about 400 years before, and because the New Testament elaborates that marriages is o.k. for Christians, though Paul said it is better to be as he was (single), Luther supported married priests (as apparently has the Catholic Pope recently as he suggested that be allowed again). About Protestants buying Catholic Churches- I think there is quite a lot of ecclesiastical history people are missing- such as the Smalcaldan War, the 100 years war etc that was more important to ecclesiastical structure control than real estate markets. Napoleon made St. Peters a stable for a time, yet consider what iconoclasts and others such as Muslims did to Orthodox and catholic structures alike- The Hagia Sophia- The Church of Holy Wisdom- was converted into a mosque, and communists converted churches into museum-while in Juneau Alaska, a Protestant Church was converted into a public radio building until the public radio network were able to buy a television station.

Von Mises, Hayek and the Decline of Rational Liberal Economics

Monetary policy and a theory of capital were much more important issues to the field of classical economics in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century than today. It was very, very important in the west and not just in opposition to theories of value type discussions with socialists and communists (much less actual philosophers. Monetary policy had real political consequences in applying economic theory to political economy of the United States and the free world. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-14366054 Keynes vs Hayek

After Reagan and the taming of inflation and with the dollar cut loose from the gold standard, economics sort of lost its mind regarding solid political economy; neither did it transition to ecological economics (Democrat candidates for president 2020 would like to spend 52 trillion on health care and another 30 trillion on global warming remedies for example).

It is interesting that Hayek differentiated socialism as state control of the economy from a welfare state within democracy. Right now people tend to conflate the two. 

 https://mises.org/library/why-mises-and-not-hayek

Wesley So Wins World FR Chess Championship

American chess federation member Wesley So won the world Fischer Random chess (chess 960) championship in Norway today becoming the first American chess player to win a world chess championship since Robert James Fischer. The late Bobby Fischer invented Fischer Random chess with different starting positions because he felt chess theory was too well known and boring.

The 2019 championship event was the inaugural F.I.D.E. event. Making American chess great again in winning the first world title match for Fischer random chess was quite an achievement for the Philippine-American.

Candidate Warren Wants 52 Trillion for Medicare- V.A. Budget is 200 Billion

Senator Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for all plan is so expensive that it would cost 2.5 times the existing U.S. Federal debt. The former special education teacher has advanced a 52 trillion dollar program that would require the participation of all.  One must wonder who did her math for her because it doesn't add up to sobriety.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warrens-52t-medicare-for-all-plan-revealed-campaign-still-claims-no-middle-class-tax-hikes-needed

If the U.S. government was to spend 52 trillion on the space program I could live with that more easily. The Veterans Administration has just a 200 billion dollar budget and it does reasonably well, yet a ludicrously expensive medicare plan that dwarfs present government spending and debt is just about crazy.

Raising the V.A. budget 1000% to 2 trillion and linking new centers that would treat all poor Americans for nothing as well as veterans would be a lot cheaper and more effective, while keeping the existing Medicare program and eliminating Obamacare. A hyper-loop fast train system could be built nationally to link all remote areas to V.A. health centers for poor Americans and veterans, though anyone could ride the trains.  A national worker's comp style program could verify the financial eligibility of patients for the service- say anyone earning $20,000 or less annually would be eligible.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-musks-hyperloop-economically-feasible.asp

For a cost of three or four trillion dollars a public health network for treating the poor and a network of ultra-fast electric trains to reduce global warming gases could be constructed and become new normal American infrastructure. Democrat politicians need to stop finding ways to bankrupt the U.S.A. with uncoordinated and hyper-inflated, bureaucrat heavy Rube Goldberg government schemes that don't work. Elizabeth Warren's plan will ossify Medical innovation and create a vast Soviet Medicare system of bureaucrats with much work probably outsourced on-line to China and India.

Time is the Contemporary History of Universe Thermodynamics

Time could be said to be the rate of change dimension of the thermodynamic expansion of the Universe from T=0. It is relative though, and there may be a Multiverse. In theological time relativity perhaps there is as Tillich described it; "an eternal now". One may have an I-thou time relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God. Physicists have tried to trace the patterns of the expansion of the Universe like time deposition striations...

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-origin-of-time-bootstrapped-from-fundamental-symmetries-20191029/

Halloween P-Zombies

The p-zombie paradigm seems silly for-itself. Everyone might be regarded as a philosophical zombie and without implicit physical consciousness with consciousness merely attending a body in a reverse out-of-body experience kind of way. While Christians can regard everyone as spiritually dead unless and until an individual is saved and regenerated spiritually, people tend to take that meaning too literally as if they were legalists of the soul. They cannot be certain at all about the mechanics of that.

I tend to believe the soul is information of consciousness as a life record (envision digital data) and when saved the regeneration in behavior changes given through grace. God may recognize the soul as regenerated. Literal dualism is a water and oil kind of relationship- maybe there is emulsification to engage one with the other, yet that mechanics is really odd. Maybe there is a wide window fan that is also a spiritual council for zombies someplace in thought experiment utopia, I wonder why or what would associate non-physical thought with any physical place in particular. It does seems like an occult paganism sort of Halloween topic.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

 I could write something about duality of mass energy and spirit problem; probably the topic requires more time than I have to address it, now, yet for Christians faith goes a long way to compensate since the grace of God provides regeneration and whatever knowledge one needs about some issues. I believe mass and energy are contingent being and spirit is primary in the Christian paradigm. Neo-Platonism of Plotinus in his Enneads (54 tractates) explains the relation of the One to the Intelligence and creator of forms of things that are the material world. If spirit is the primary fact of reality (such that for instance, the Universe is a thought in the mind of God and divine relativity makes steady state of matter seem 'real') yet worldly people simply recognize matter and energy because it is apparent, then faith in God and the Spirit of God when it occurs (through Jesus Christ) is being born again (especially since it isn't the same as being born materially in-the-world) because it is a fundamentally different outlook and relationship to the Spirit of God. So I think one avoids the problem of spirit-matter duality as a literal problem since spirit is real (like Platonic realism) and matter-energy contingent). When one enters the kingdom of God spiritually, it is a relationship that is established to God, rather than a place one need travel in the material Universe. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you.

A Brief Sketch of 20th Century Ukraine Issues re Crimea

President Putin's reconquista of the Crimean Peninsula helped piece back together historical Russia. The Crimean Peninsula was part of Russia for about the same time as New England was part of the United States; should the U.S.A. give New England back to the previous owners, or just cut New England loose from the U.S.A. so it could come out as Blue Soviet Nude England?

The Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the Soviet Union 72 years from 1922 to 1991. Nikita We Will Bury You Khrushchev transferred the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 to ‘show the brotherly love between Russian and Ukrainians’. When the Soviet Union ended so did the Communist program.

Ukraine had mostly been part of Russia for hundreds of years before Ukrainian Bolsheviks put down “the national government in Kiev” and created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of which the present government arguably is the lineal descendant. When all of Russia and Ukraine was under communist rule the alienation of Russian from Ukraine was not relevant; dissenters could always move to the Gulag Archipelago after all.

History of Ukraine - Wikipedia

During the confusion following the end of the Soviet Union, Russia was at a military disadvantage, President Clinton’s policy helped wrest away Russian lands that pre-existed the Soviet Union in the drive to erase the former Soviet Union. It was bad policy in regard to Crimea.

I believe President Putin is fairly conservative in asserting natural Russian rights as far as international relations go. Invading any nations that weren’t part of the historical Russia in a settled and obvious way isn’t likely, unless it is in some sort of proximal self-defense requisite situation that does not presently exist. There probably is no Von Putin deus ex machina plan building up to beat down weak Europe.

Restoration of Russia does not mean restoration of the Soviet Union. Personally I prefer restoration and stability for nations and the ecosphere. The Bahamas could use some restoration now, except it should involve ecospheric building syntegrity.

A Bit of Space Navigation Desiderata

Navigating in space apparently requires exploiting gravity of solar system objects to save on fuel. The direct line, or curving line/tensor to meet moving objects like planets is different than just finding out where one is. N.A.S.A. is trying traditional sextants on the space station and they also have a program called SEXTANT that uses pulsars for navigation. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/x-ray-pulsar-space... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nFs0k36uro
https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/.../deep-space... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=29&v=LVqjvvLO5XY

A Lt Col Should Not Judge Presidential Int. Diplomacy Conversations

The rather disgusting news that an Army Lt Colonel on the National Security council turned into an informant because he disagreed with Presidential policy he heard or learned about in a call to the President of the Ukraine concerning the Bidens is a plain sign that something is wrong in high places in D.C. Maybe the Colonel is a deep state informant-it's hard to say. 

The military should not be trying to manipulate domestic politics in order to support their own foreign policy agenda. If field grade officers-professional soldiers are corrupting civilian foreign policy efforts at the highest level that is a deep state activity; one that fundamentally disregards U.S. egalitarianism and civil leadership. Military people may be skillful at killing and Mongolian idiots at foreign policy with nothing more than a desire for a great defense budget.

What can be discerned is the disloyalty to the office of the President that people in high government positions may feel entitles them to become rats and weasel out information useful to opposition political party interests.

The Colonel felt that it was wrong for the President to ask the Ukrainian President to investigate the role of the Bidens in corruption in the Ukraine. The Colonel felt that somehow American policy of bi-partisan support for keeping Ukraine in conflict with Russia would be endangered so it was his duty to rat out the President for having a different policy interest- though it was speculative and derivative in the Colonel's mind-interpretation of the fallout of the conversation, and that is wrong.

The military cannot be a minder of civilian leadership initiatives in foreign policy. Civilians not the military make foreign policy. I for one have wanted the United States and Russia to have close, amicable relations since the end of the Cold War and actually, before. Russia and Ukraine should have shared a border on the Dniepr River so commerce could have more freely flowed and Russian history given its dignity. 

The military industrial complex may want permanent conflict to keep defense expenses and budget inflated, yet it would be better to address necessary threats rather than to prop up unnecessary ones to threat level on an equal footing.

A Colonel has a right and duty to report illegal orders from the Commander in Chief but not to frag the President politically for his convenience. Loyalty counts too.

President Trump should find some opportunity to say in a speech; "Look, this isn't my first rodeo", in order to recover from the damage.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alexander-vindman-a-white-house-nsc-official-twice-reported-trump-ukraine

What the Universe and Mind are Made of

I am not sure what the question; 'what is necessary for physics" means. W.V.O. Quine assented to the question of was he a physicalist, that is, did he believe anything other than physical stuff exists (and he said no). With energy and mass being convertible, the stuff of which the steady state of matter is apparent to people as embedded mass is just what is. 

Paradoxically Christian theology does not require a substanceless 'spirit' that is the mind at all, or for a soul constructed of spirit, since a soul in some respects is simply everything that one does and think as a physical being during a lifetime- and I am sure that God can keep track of that information as easily as someone using ebay tech can video capture stuff and keep track of what happens during one day at some place and store the information on a terrabyte thumb drive. The question of what is God made of as Spirit isn't answerable by anything that is substance and form in the Universe that one might refer to. 

Of course the entire Universe is simply what it is and no one really knows what anything is made of ultimately- even strings and zero dimension points can't solve that question. One can know the forms and shapes of things and how the forces and particles-waves interact, and that is a lot, yet the question of what they really are-perhaps digital information itself at some level, might never be known exhaustively.

Why would Bishop Berkeley have invented ideaism- idealism as an alternative explanation for reality, if he wasn't Christian or a theologian as well as a philosopher- and what about St. Augustine's concept of what time is? People should quit being insulting about Christian perspectives, or theistic perspectives concerning reality. One wouldn't want to start lining out people like Spinoza for instance, and so many others. The entire Universe could be a thought of God's; and every mind in it comparable to a subroutine; philosophers should have an interest inf finding truth and increasing knowledge rather than defending political popular repression.

I wrote yesterday about Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorems concerning sets and the set of all sets. Some Christians are theologians as well as philosophers and are not antipathetic to Cantor's trans-finite infinity paradigm concerning some infinities being greater than others. I suppose some would like to rule out relativity and infinity as mutually exclusive from Hilbert space metaphors of the verse (uni or plural/multi etc).

 Ontology as a definition- everything, might preclude use of the word 'entity'. I am not an ontology expert. Deontological abstractions from one may include 'nouns-entities"? If one were referring to God as 'an entity' i don't think that would work for me. I suppose one could use Heidegger's language etymology meanings to track down a reason why that lexicon  selection would be inadequate. Russell's paradox was a good point. I view these matters concerning intelligence as contingent being something like humans being subroutine trying to define a much larger programs containing n kinds of subroutines, with God being more than a large A.I. program-really undefinable. Godel's incompleteness theorems seem to reflect that inability, or work as a simile.

People noted the problems with language and means concerning philosophical issues in the mid 20th century. Russell too wrote about objects and sensation in his 'Essay on Metaphysics' early in that century. Quine and Strawson wrote a lot on the topic. In physics perhaps monism is more true than pluralism, since 'objects' are part of a unified field that has pluralistic features on the surface. People have knowledge as well as awareness- in fact that may be how intelligence evolved- with triangulation and re-enforced memory to better analysise and classify motion and 'objects'. Objects may initially have been more of a verb experience than an ossified class of 'nouns'. Nouns (nows) are presorted things. Knowledge of cosmology is concatenated learning. I trust Jesus Christ and God for various reasons that are not simply learning. Life is quite brief in some senses and God is good- those without faith might not experience the goodness of God so much as His incidental general provisioning of grace. Oh well, to return to just philosophical things. Sartre's Being and Nothingness explains present awareness and perception as epistemology. I read that book pretty well, its good yet there are so may philosophical works and schools concerning subjective epistemology and perceptions- that's what 'PF Strawson's 'Individuals' and Quine's 'Word and Object' are about for example. Still, there are so many more, even the very hoary 'Mind and It's Place in Nature' by C.D. Broad. Self-awareness probably differs from awareness. Then one has Cartesian rationalism, sensations, forth. Awareness exist within a unified field of physics. 

There is a Christian ontology, and many don't understand the trinity. The way God with a perfect divine economy relates to the imperfect in-the-Universe with entropy for being in time is through the Son Jesus Christ. Because of original sin- missing the mark-humanity was cast into entropy, birth, death, work. It is a sorry condition and people forget about God. They are lost and without merit. Jesus is perfect though and God sees the Son rather than the lost for those that have accepted his sacrifice. Jesus is the most remarkable individual that has lived. Look at what he said and compare that to what anyone has said before in history to that point.  Morality is what people actually do regarding patterns of social behavior and ethics is how they do it, or consider it. 

 Humans have the original sin of being temporal and subject to willfulness, entropy and imperfection-they consume energy to sustain existence. They have biological and reproductive drives, they gather in clusters and conflict sometimes. They have imperfect knowledge and conceits. Faith in the Lord and his kingdom (the Kingdom of God) is the only way to transcend the problem of original sin that governs humanity, yet humans that are saved are still imperfect. 

The Universe is like a train station and people should do the best they can while here regarding stewardship and helping or loving others. Jesus Christ was crucified though. That was the essence of human morality. Even wolf packs have a kind of morality-social behavior and ethics of who leads, follows, gets first bite on the prey etc. One may reason about everything in the Universe obviously. Isaac Newton was fairly good at that and was Christian as were so many others. One of the primary differences between the saved and those remaining lost is the different destinies when the individual's time in-the-Universe ends.