Democratic Party Platform 2012 Declares War on The Defense of Marriage Act

The Democratic Party 2012 convention has made the destruction of the Defense of Marriage Act part of their platform. They also seek to bring sex change to the legal criteria of marriage in order to adulterate the institution to include homosexuals in twos I think.

 I find that supporters of homosexual ingressions into political hegemony usually attack opponents to their platform on a personal, ad hominem basis. I believe that is a consequence of their lack of principle and correct content and perspective on issues. To oppose rotten Democratic platform planks does not require anything more than good judgment and better ideas of history and society.

On the topic of homosexuality being wrong sexually-of course it is. Sexual reproduction was the reason for the development of marriage as a social establishment to facilitate that fact of life. Homosexuality is a dysfunction of the heterosexual nature of the species, and empirically today maybe a preponderance of homosexuals and assuredly the Democratic Party leaders seek to terminate the rationale for marriage and confer the financial benefits of marriage upon homosexuals. That is a fundamental nihilistic act that will probably lead to the end of marriage supports from society socially.

When the reason for marriage is surpassed and the transmogrification of the empirical phenomenalities are ended the conference of financial benefits of marriage upon everyone except for single people creates an evident burden upon single adults that discriminates unjustly. If reproduction is not the purpose of creating a marriage then establishing special, unequal financial categories for various classes of citizens with a marriage paper as the qualifier is wrong. The constitution is not about setting aside special groups of citizens for more-than-equal financial treatment. Groups should not have advantages over individuals before the law. Corporations are not individuals and homosexuals do not marry-single people should get all of the tax breaks that couples do when reproductive theory is removed.

In the era of dynamic subjectivism it is common for people to describe too many things as 'phobias'. Perhaps some don't consider it rude for people to confer 'phobic' status upon indigents that don't support one's own political will-for-others, that doesn't mean that it isn't. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect that the corruption of a few thousand years of human history in the institution of marriage should develop in American politics without substantial and lasting opposition.

It may be that some homosexual social nihilists will seek to establish their subjective psychological characteristics and desires as a joker in the deck of the national political psyche, yet those sorts of changes in the temporal stream of historical time are aberrant rather than transformative. The recurrent characteristics and cycles of history return just as mice always stick their heads into a mousetrap in the same way.

On the subject of hunting, my concern about guns are surpassed on the topic of self defense instead of hunting. Just night before last about midnight a black bear walked over to my tent door and began sniffing around before moving in. I awoke and shooed the bear away, yet if that had been a brown bear instead of a black I might have been a late night snack like so many others in Yellowstone now and then. Guns for self-defense are a part of human necessity, as are guns for home defense and guns for defense against a Stalinist, leftist social movement by the state to conform society to it's supremist decretals. The founders recognized that a well armed citizenry is the best defense against state tyranny, besides of course a citizenry intelligent enough to have at least a viable, progressive republic if not democracy.

One may develop a philosophy of what life is about as one wishes. The accuracy may or may not be achieved such that the beliefs are representative of what actually is. Some believe the purpose of life is about gaining personal power, and many of those enter politics. The pre-Socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides differed about the question of does everything always change or in the change does everything remain the same. One can never step into the same river twice.

One likes to find a less subjective foundation for the real world of physical experience than 'everything changes'. Challenges and responses are a component of Toynbean historical cycles, even a salient feature. It is a sad fact that people in the sciences tend to lack good historical perspectives on civilization and prefer to take a scientific and narrow view of the capacity for society to change to the way they believe that perhaps it could. Scientists also tend to have a less than democratic point of view upon their own right to determine what is best for humanity politically on occasion.

So challenges and responses today to the internal and external proletariat in an age of globalization, twitter and facebook, a declining domestic industrial production, exhaustion of environmental resources, decline of comparative standing in education, corruption of marriage, demographic increases such that myriad species are exterminated-these challenges and responses are being prevalently met with failure if not outright ignorance. One Princeton historian wrote a book named 'The Age of Fracture' describing the political evolution in the U.S.A. that since the 1960s created a somewhat existential and hedonist political philosophy that is mal-adaptive to the times. The Democratic Party certainly is going in the wrong direction, is a failure at economic reform and creativity and even extended the Bush II tax cuts making them the Obama Tax Cuts in December 2010. They are a mal-adaptive joke that ought to be reformed.

On the Riemann Hypothesis, The Magnolin and Spuds

Reading further in 'The Music of the Primes' I have learned more about the Riemann hypothesis of prime numbers. It is a more specialized conjecture than simply proving that their are an infinite number of primes or of finding the number of primes within N numbers. Riemann's development of the hypothesis occurred within an interesting period of the development of mathematics generally in France, Germany, Norway, Italy, and Russia etc wherein imaginary numbers were invented. Imaginary numbers as you know are negative numbers.

Mathematicians like Gauss, Cauchy built foundations for Reimann's study with origins from Euclid to Euler. Riemann found that the zeros of the zeta function (with imaginary numbers) plotted on a graph or chart invariably would turn up with a value of 1/2. That is a philosophically satisfying place for prime number zero zeta values on Reimann's critical line to fall.

Not being a mathematician the zeros of the prime zeta function with a location of 1/2 appear to be logically situated between being and nothingness. In the development of any self-consistent mathematical series there should be a golden mean of 1/2 denoting the midway between the two boundaries existentially.

Prime numbers are indivisible within a given number series and so in relation to the number system place midway- or at the .50 percent location between theoretical deviations in any direction. That is quite non-mathematical yet as I mentioned, philosophically satisfactory. If there were other number systems with primes the zero zeta function of those two should have a value of 1/2.

Irrational numbers have values to the right of the decimal sign that go on for infinity such as pi while fractions have an end to their decimal extension. Prime numbers as midway locations in a self-consistent criterion have a balance that might represent some values in another field I don't know much about; particle physics.

The strong force bind the nucleus of atoms together is made of quarks I seem to recall and they are bound in such a way that their force gets stronger as they are pulled apart. The numerical values of particles are in ratios consistent with their force distance, spacing, momentum and numbers from other particles. They have valence values of how many can be in a shell (e.g. electrons) without flying apart or otherwise effecting the composition of the structure. Loading a boat or building a mountain range of offices and condos has similar weight, load and materials limits.

 The Reimann hypothesis for prime numbers presents a general statistical way of finding primes with a zero zeta function it seems (so far as I presently understand the hypothesis). It seems like a good book to read on a rainy day after a bear visit.

Fourier found mathematical foundations for harmonics that support the premise that prime numbers too have a musical progression rather than general chaotic noise. On might build metallic or ceramic strings held in place by super-conducting electro-magnetic that would let the harmonics trail off either like a clarinet or a violin as the player made adjustments for simple pure harmonics or complex overtones such as a violin has.

The strings at each end would go into the electro-magnetic receiver and not make direct physical contact. I suppose one could adjust the strings so that they could have variable pitch characteristics themselves with magnetic force. Yet that idea might be more effective than making a dehydrated potato factory in Wasilla Alaska to take in northern potato growers produce and convert it into packaged powder spuds for the growers for just 19% of the crop. Northerners with a few hundred or thousand pounds of potatoes might find it simpler to store mashed potatoes for the winter instead of raw.

Adam & Eve, Original Sin, Morality etc.

I believe that original sin has several meaning consequents. The one most meaningful is that human experience would occur within a space-time paradigm with entropy and temporality such as is the Universe. The 'testing'and fall of Adam and Eve brought about birth and suffering as corrections for their moral failure. It is a complex criterion. The space-time relationship of mind and body is simpler to describe after the fall for it occurs within a paradigm congruent generally with evolutionary parameters.

Adam and Eve seem to have been spliced into an already existing evolved society outside 'Eden' eventually after their expulsion. Cain was concerned about being killed by others, and was given the mark of Cain as a warning to others. I have written about some of these topics in my book 'Creation and Cosmos - The Literal Values of Genesis'lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/ ... 22612.html

The problems of self-awareness or innocence compared to non-self-awareness as a paradigm for itself is not a positive or negative, but one that brings recognition that the self-aware necessarily acquire a moral structure and need for one whereas the purely animal world of non-self-aware beings does not. God helpfully provided moral instruction to humanity and it has been a tremendously challenging project as has been described in the Bible. Humanity forever fails to live by fundamentally good moral principles-even the U.S. economy is not founded in rationality but instead within a paradigm of unlimited consumption and increase of consumption existentially without empirical limits-and the immorality of the pursuit of power for itself eclipses even democracy and reform of both capitalism and democracy.

There is a good reason why the apocalypse described in the Bible is inevitable - human nature is fundamentally wicked and unable to live with advanced social intelligence well enough to avoid disaster.

Development in Free Online College Courses

Free online college courses for the masses is a growing trend at several elite institutions. A few universities have already offered courses (e.g. M.I.T.) and more on going on-line this fall (Harvard).  At the Coursera site more than 16 academics disciplines from 16 Universities are providing coursework.

https://www.coursera.org/ A MOOC center with more than a million students.

The offerings so far as modest, and only a few Universities so far intend to offer college credit for the free, unaccredited course, yet its is an encouraging development because a mind in a brain is a terrible thing to just stick in a football helmet from an early age and to get trained for concussions. Evidently the average life span for pro footballers of the N.F.L. who play more than 5 years is fewer than 60 years.

An introduction to mathematical thinking course is being offered at Stanford beginning September 17, 2012   https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

http://mooctalk.org/tag/stanford-mooc/

https://www.coursera.org/

http://mooc.ca/

http://moocguide.wikispaces.com/0.+Home+Intro+to+MOOC

One would think that math courses on-line could be made as interesting as chess videos and learning to play chess watching chess videos at YouTUbe. Human beings need to get their thinking caps on even more in an era of mass entertainment consuming zillions of hours of citizens watching living room television screens..

Basic Questions About U.S. Middle East Policy

The Obama doctrine of providing overt and covert support for Middle Eastern revolutionaries in Libya and Syria presents questions that don't have simply answers for many Americans. I will go over a few of the points .

Before the First World War Turkey's Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Middle East and North Africa-even Iran was under its authority. Saddam Hussein and Al Qa'eda both wanted to restore a unified Arabic or Sunni empire, caliphate or modern state in the Middle East. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war for the Arabs was an opportunity to bring that to fruit starting with the destruction of Israel. Though that didn't work out for the Arabs the goal of creating a larger Middle Eastern Moslem bloc of nations remained in the forefront of Arab thinking so far as I know.

Though Nasser and Sadat were gone a secular drift in Egypt continued with Mubarak. Because the Moslem Brotherhood machine-gunned to death Anwar Sadat in a parade stand the Mubarak regime and the Egyptian military continued to keep the populous Moslem Brotherhood repressed a little. Egypt would have a preponderantly secularized state somewhat like that of Turkey. With the post 9-11 new world order of terrorism the Mubarak government probably was more repressive in keeping power and putting dow2n terrorism. Institutions that develop those practices tend to develop inertia of their own developing a logic of pervasive civil oppression in concert with the need to defilade real terrorists. Paradoxically the state itself can become a public enemy.

President Obama's policy of support to remove the corrupt secular Khaddafi regime of Libya and support for the removal of the Mubarak Regime in Egypt followed by the support for Syrian revolutionaries aided by Al Qa'eda and several Sunni States presents the prospects for accomplishing a Sunni belt from Turkey to Algeria with just Israel the sole island of religious pluralism. If the Alawite Government of Syria is removed it would perhaps stimulate a kind of theocide of the hybrid Shi'te sect those people practice, the very real dangers for continuing purges of the Alawi people from Syria is something some might expect as well.

The administration may be concerned with the history of the Assad government allowance for terrorist to journey through the nation on the way to Iraq. It isn't certain that it could have prevented that, yet Iraq's Bathy party had its origins in Syria's Baath party of Afflack-they may have viewed U.S. developments in Iraq as some kind of danger to their own political survival.

Yet the question of what U.S. foreign policy is remains unanswered. The United States has removed its military forces from Iraq and Iraq is experiencing continuing terrorism against the Shi'a of Iraq. It is known that the United States since the revolution against the Shah and the later Iranian Hostage crisis has had a firm anti-Iranian foreign policy that for some seems to be a self-fulfilling policy of bad relations. I will write a little about that...

In the 1930s I believe it was, the United States had an economic adviser that helped design the Iranian economy-the U.S.A. was on good terms with Iran having never had a history of conflict or perfidy with it, while the British and others were exploiters and schemers of long standing.

Eisenhower was perhaps too busy managing world affairs to get involved with support for democratic populism in Iran-we tended to support the removal of the left-leaning Prime Minister Mossadeq and prop up the Shah who had already left the country only to return.

The Shah had a grand vision for the role of Iran in the Middle East working to let it become a unifier something like Saddam Hussein believed he might lead. With deep American military support and aloof to Iranian in-country politics while pre-occupied with the Vietnam War the U.S.A. viewed the region through cold war lenses. U.S. oil corporations and staff in country had something of a separate and aloof attitude toward 'the natives'.  We did not work enough to eliminate the torture of the SAVAK organization.

After the end of the Vietnam conflict without a plain victory for the United States the international communist and revolutionary movements were emboldened to work against governments such as that of the Shah often with support from the left. It is one of history's ironies that the left in Iraq and Iran were mostly liquidated after they helped depose the government of their day. Ayatollah Khomeini let his hard-line supporters purge the Tudeh (Iranian Communist Party).

After the end of the Cold War for more than a decade thousands of pounds of enriched uranium and plutonium were stored unguarded and likely plundered by hidden nuclear arms speculators. Forward thinking revolutionaries could have sent hundreds of pounds of plutonium to the United States in ordinary shipping containers for before 9-11 most U.S. ports did not screen well for radioactive materials.

 The economic value for wmd entrepreneurs and political revolutionaries of fissile materials in the U.S.A. or anyplace buried like treasure to be sold later would be very high. Iran too as well as Saudi Arabia may have made purchases. The secret world of 1990s plutonium, enriched U-235 and biological agents is one of the darker mysteries of the present generation. Only those caught are generally known to legal authorities while the successful are secretly holding their bomb materials like hoarders of gold, if they exist.

Some wonder if Iran might have made a purchase-it is known that Iranian agents were in Kazakhstan at a plutonium storage site in the 1990s. What difference to American security or financial interests will a Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi Syria make in the decades ahead? Is the idea of pressuring the Shi'a of Iran through formation of a Sunni Near and Middle East on its borders a good idea?  

The Allies of the United States in Afghanistan in the Northern Alliances are mostly Shi'a. What are their long-range prospects if U.S. policy is toward the elimination of the Alawi and the degradation of the Shi'a politically speaking in a quantitative context regarding nation? Obviously Pakistan is Sunni and radicalized with support for Kashmir fighter against Indian and Hindu interests, and I suppose President Obama living in Indonesia experience a Sunni version of Islam rather than the Shi'a variety.

Can the United States lead the world toward a better future with a pursuit of classic 'great game' policy possible in favor of supporting nations with vast oil and gas reserved in a global warming era with demographics against a sustainable policy of resource consumption expansion globally? Wouldn't it be a better idea to exploit transformative economic renewal development toward pragmatic infrastructural efficiency in the United States and then provide nationally transformative cultural technology to Middle Eastern nations instead of the implements of war?

In failing to upgrade and humanize the U.S. national economy toward a post-modern ecospheric and social hyper-efficiency U.S. foreign policy interests suffer too as they seem inevitably to lead toward temporal pursuit of illusory goals that pass off to the future the generation of the new illusions of rational policy objectives.

Barrack Soetoro-Obama; Four More Years to Deepen Public Debt?

It was only yesterday that I learned that President Obama formerly had the last name Soetoro. I recall learning that Gary Hartshorne changed his name to Hart during his Primary campaign-why wasn't Obama's name change publicized more broadly? There is a renewal of interest in the President's somewhat vague origins currently, yet it is the economic road ahead that should be of equal concern.

The President's classmates at Columbia evidently don't remember him-even those in pre-law and political science programs attending the same year. Well, keeping a low profile can be a virtue, yet the President hasn't released any Columbia or Harvard transcripts or financial aid information either, and that is more relevant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

There is speculation that Mr. Sterol-Obama took out Indonesian citizenship or applied as some sort of foreign student in order to get preferred costs and admissions ratings. I would like to know if he took any history or economic courses since the only phrase he seemed to learn in that regard is deficit-financed stimulus.

If there were no Presidential campaign this year, and the President had another four years to go in his program to deepen U.S. debt what would that be like?

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke would still be around contemplating printing up money to buy public debt, Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner would still be offering advice that prop up select too-large to fail banks and the President would make a speech now and then asking to tax the 2% uber rich, golfing and awarding State of the Union seating of honor to Warren Buffet or George Soros' secretary for paying higher taxes than their bosses.

Meanwhile the Congress would probably remain gridlocked with 3/4s of a trillion dollars of interest on the national debt going out for payment to those in the middle class and rich the President cares so much about and the next two Congresses won't get anything done regardless of who controls Congress unless its the Democrats so they can discover new ways to pass more homosexual and abortion bills and provide more vital benefits to the middle class. Charging that debt will be easier with a majority and Presidential leadership-it will only cost another 5 to 10 trillion dollars (one cannot foresee disaster invariably).

The present course just seems to lack much creative economic thought about how to reform things. When the President had the chance to let the Bush tax cuts expire in December 2010 in worked energetically against that. Senator Reed and Minority Leader Pelosi appear to lack any sort of political economy for reform and progress either. Washington D.C. seems to be a vacuum of intellectual energy since President Reagan left-most Americans are not aware that it was Reagan that led to remove nuclear weapons from the world-and the U.S. Russia and China, Pakistan etc still have plenty.

In reading an essay of Paul Tillich's from 1925 I found that he described the historical phenomena of a moral and cultural break from a social state of grace in relation to the unconditional that breaks up existing functional social structures as the demonic. I probably haven't defined Tillich's use of that word precisely, yet its difficult to distill what is an abstract historical paradigm for analysis into an abbreviated phrase.

What concerns me about a Democratic party with a demonic lack of interest in traditional Democratic values-even L.B.J. sought to reform society positively and wasn't afraid to get jiggy with honorable economic reforms, is that a present Democratic demonic drift toward degrading equal protection of the law for all American citizens and to seek full employment with reduction of the public debt is for the party an acceptable direction. It may not be intentional yet they seem not to be able to see the wood for the trees.

Jesus Christ, Comparative Religions/History/Universe Comment 1.0

The renormalization context was a referent to original sin. It is possible that the nature of human experience fundamentally changed after that-the Bible seems to indicate that, although one might interpret that context in several ways.

God seems to be perfect and a divine economy would not tolerate deficit spending (sin)-humans made sacrifices to reconcile unto God, and not just in the Christian tradition. Augustus once sacrificed 80,000 animals on the plain of Mars before he went to war.

The particular and the Universal are two salient approach in philosophy of logical categories and applicable for differing particular objects pluralistically in what is a monistic field one supposes-ultimately. Jesus Christ is remarkably a particular manifestation of God. That seems relevant to me.Not only must mankind be relieved of their imperfection and sin in the divine economy, they are themselves perhaps too insignificant in the context of the universe to find God without Him. Scientists often like to point out how insignificant humanity is-Christians don't worry about that-Jesus said that even the hairs on one's head are numbered.

I read Joseph Campbell decades ago, and Bullfinch's too and like the latter more than the former. Comparative religion readings are something rather standard for philosophers these days I would think unless they are academically tenured and specialists in that.

Reading history and philosophy together brings more depth in comparative religion, for how can one read of the settling of Japan without reading of Buddhism and Shinto history, or of the Thervada, Mahayana baskets throughout Asia or the history of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeanism when going over Iranian history?

It is difficult to read of Muhhamad and not reflect upon Hagar or of Abrahms journey that led him to become Abraham. One can read of India and skip the Sikhs formation in the 16th century and evolution as a warrior tribe or of the Mughal dynasty supplanted by the British Raj, however one looks back to the Vedas and earlier times and traditions that make us realize with Jeremiah that' everyone knows me, they just forget who I am'. Religious is part of cultural history, and we can learn of the Yurok Indians of California and their idea that the world was the distance one could walk in three days etc, and still consider Shopenhaur's influence by Zoroastrianism that led him to believe an odd, eclectic paradigm that the world is something like maya (illusion) and evil-and to be overcome even as he was the next best Kantian after Kant on the Critique of Pure Reason.

It is too easy to accept that Hegel's millenialism and evolution of the spirit affected the opinions of Darwin when each were influenced by the Bible and the evolution of history toward a pre-determined end.

Scientific American has a good article (August 2012) on the behavior of the black hole at the center of this galaxy, and of how this large spiral galaxy's black hole that is about 65,000 years distant isn't very active presently at putting out huge streams of gamma rays, cosmic rays and other ejecta harmful to life. It is an uncharacteristic moment in the history of the central force in the history of this part of the Universe-one that is luckily very good for the prospects for human life existing in a fraction of it's history.

From some points of view humanity is an organic life form on the surface of this planet. The edge of the world is beneath our feet. It exists with four corners or dimensions of space-time and for anyone alive they are at the center of the universe-for there is not center in a sense to the nowhere ( utopia) bounding all reference systems unconditionally.

Its a wonderful opportunity to experience life and contemplate God so far as grace allows as well as the spectacular nature of the Universe. One doesn't want to be to negative about it.

Knowledge vs. Experience?

 Individual experience is the foundation of reality as Sartre approached it, yet Tillich looked more toward reality-meanings as the worthwhile prospect. Subjective dynamism in psychological pragmatism with mind being a kind of fiction is another philosophical approach.

 I am skeptical about gurus or whatever that advocate reliance simple on personal experience so that one has an amoeba-like existence. The Khmer Rouge were for ignorance-taking things back to the year zero. In the information age it really wouldn't place one in a good economic vantage point. Rulers sometimes like subjects to contemplate their navel and swill vodka.

 Carl Jung and his greater-than-Freud- observations surpassed his teacher's interpretation of dreams. Jung's w ere archetypes such as drowning or freezing, suffocating/witch sitting on one's chest, interpretation of pulsating blood with a cask of amontillado, a plekasaurus pit and a pendulum or whatever (just joking), having an animal bite off an appendage or of a collective unconscious was one interesting approach to common experience and then having a common PTSD experience/analysis about it. Without reading Jung it would be difficult to form a good opinion about his thoughts

 Jesus Christ was/is God though. Some want to morph that into he had a special relationship as the Son to the 'Father' who is the absolute transcendent for-himself. Christology is a field in-itself. He often quoted scripture and had a relationship with God who is the source of all experience.

 The Buddha aka Sakkyamuni was a brilliant prince from a decaying social order without upward mobility who went out to find his own way to relate to the pervasive social changes of his day. He obviously was familiar with the Vedic tradition and developed his own form of Stoic pragmatism to the challenges of reality.

 I think it is a common experience for people to associate all learning with authorities or hierarchical structures and then seek to controvert everything spiritually in some sort of a liberation process. The United States though was about individual freedom and liberty to learn for-oneself from whatever sources. Intellectual capital is a valuable thin. People make errors in regarding knowledge and in placing it's value in relation to personal experience. One doesn't want to be a programmed minion and instead needs to think for-oneself. One can learn to read, learn to tie knots, build boats, learn how to build electro-magnetic mass drivers or whatever and compartmentalize that knowledge without becoming a robot regurgitating data.

 Emerson and the transcendentalists were well educated as was Ben Franklin, William James and so many others. It is important to free oneself intellectually and pursue one's interests on a disciplined course following truth where it leads rather than to simply rise in a hierarchical social role that requires politically correct course curriculum, yet that can be very costly.

 It's an ancient role too-Socrates mentioned that the unexamined life isn't worth living and that probably is right. Jesus said that those who save their lives would lose them, yet if losing them for His sake will find them.

 The founders of the United States sought to free man from the oppressive burdens of class hierarchies yet corporations and government today informalize methods for driving government to become in opposition to democracy and to call corporate or social hierarchical control democratic. It is through education that is free than one can learn of the macro-social problems stifling rational social response to common challenges. The answers may not exist except as one makes a good judgment upon the basis of abstract learning as well as personal experience.

 Maybe its like flying an aircraft in zero visibility without relying just on one's personal senses to know up/down or guess how far from the mountain that is somewhere ahead one's location is.

 One cannot reinvent or rediscover all of history and philosophy with personal experience, and if people had to invent everything anew they wouldn't have clothes to wear and would need to hunt the fur-bearing mammals for hides. The world is a fly-by-wire kind of place today given its resources and demographics and the effort to conserve as much human liberty and resource health as possible requires brilliance as well as the ignorance of all social learning for two or three minutes a week to honor the tradition of trial and error development of science and liberty.

 I would agree that a priesthood of believers rectification of the ecclesiastical structures would support a better Christian experience for most today when even some Christians might be uncomfortable in churches where the congregants have a higher standard of living and go for other reasons than discipleship.

On 'The Unconditional'

The unconditional that Tillich writes of is set off the world culture for-itself. It is something comparable to Augustine's City of God/City of Man relation. Tillich's view is fascinating for many reasons yet especially so for it historical, cultural and philosophical dichotomies. If one reads the German idealist philosophers as well as Toynbee and Augustine then it is easy to appreciate Tillich's synthesis and analysis of the role of religion, philosophy of religion, culture and scientific-empirical thinking and actualization within social structure and the world.

Of course I believe that Jesus Christ is the only  way to renormalize human being with God. Tillich though is quite a bit more radical in his world view. He also seems happy enough to make the unconditional available to several religious beleifs, yet he has different meanings for faith and even topics such as 'the existence of God' and so forth.

Presently I am considering theonomy and autonomy in the context of the auto nomos (extent of law) and cultural practices such as the corresponding decline of creativity concurrent with lack of faith. The unconditional seems to be requisite for social creativity. I may buy a copy of 'What is Religion' eventually so I can grubby it up in S.E. Alaska along with 'Ontological Relativity' and a few other books sometime.

U.S. Unemployment Rate Surges Upward to 8.3%

The U.S. unemployment rate in July moved up to 8.3 percent with tens of millions more that have work staying in low-paying jobs with few benefits.

The U6 figure of people without work or underemployed and would like to find a good job even if discouraged trying to get on with a state government a contractor in Afghanistan, a new Chick Fillet in Boston to rival, Boston Chicken and Col. Sanders and etc. is somewhere around 20%.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/03/Unemployment-Rate-Rises-to-8-3-Percent