Pat Oliphant for July 12, 2012

now that they have it what will that do to lower human misery and end wars unless they make into a bomb and wipe out humanity

My favorite Oliphants are the ones with Heaven. Last December’s with Mark Twain was excellent, and still hangs on my wall. So many clever details in today’s and … God drinks coffee?!

My theory of the expanding Universe is that it is God’s Cosmic Joke:

It is a balloon that God blows into…it gets bigger and bigger … until He lets it go and … phhbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt

And the wingnuts will blame it on someone in 10…9…8…

I love the cherubs playing badminton. Could you hunt up that Mark Twain one for us, emptc12? I might have missed that one.

“…Non-existence is bliss…” That can be arranged. Just say that phrase three times the day after you die.

Why does that angel’s phone have a curly cord on it? No iPhone?

Ima:

It’s interesting to read commentaries that appeared when certain religious denominations started./

In his early 1950s book, FADS AND FALLACIES/ IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE, Martin Gardner wrote about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. /

Mark Twain, in his book ROUGHING IT, wrote long sections about the Mormons. Brigham Young was still alive at the time, and Twain told an amusing joke about him and his wives. Also, some very dark, sinister things./

As various sects and cults arose over the centuries, contemporary observors wrote of them. During the Reformation period, many that appeared have since become mainstream respectable, although they had strange things about them at first./

It would be cool to read the nitty-gritty about the origins of Islam, Christianity, and the various Eastern faiths./

Arthur C. Clarke, in CHILDHOOD’S END, wrote that the alien Overlords had visual recordings of human activities for thousands of years. He wrote that historians were especially eager to view the beginnings of various religions – and were invariably disappointed in the truth./

Told ya.

Anyone tell God that He shouldn’t take the name of His son in vain?

“And the liberals deny the God particle exists…”

This liberal’s belief concerning the Higgs Boson is similar to his belief concerning Jesus: I believe it exists, I believe it’s important, I just don’t believe it’s God.

I think we’re all bosons on this bus

@emptc12 Thanks for hunting up that one. I remember it now but I couldn’t think why Mark Twain would’ve been in the news enough to warrant a strip. (Being a fellow Missourian, I personally think Mark Twain should be in the news more often than he is…I always like to see people keeping active after they die.)/As I recall his Mormon joke, it was something like, “We asked the children how many mothers they had, and if they recognized them when they saw them.” Of course, Twain had more than a few things to say about Christian Science, also./One of the best science lectures I ever attended was given by a man (I’m sorry, I can’t recall his name at the moment) who was both a Jesuit priest AND a practicing physicist. The lecture was about the Big Bang and points south. My own father is a devout Catholic AND has a PhD in organic chemistry, so I’ve never had a problem reconciling science with religion.

Here’s my somewhat shallow understanding of the Higgs Boson and why it’s called the “God” particle. Scientists have struggled with the concept of gravity and mass. Gravity is a function of the mass of objects, but as the understanding of matter increased it was apparent that there was no explanation for the existence of mass. The particles making up matter consist entirely of energy. Without mass, no gravity. Higgs Boson particle was proposed, hypothesized as the “creator” of mass. It is the basic unit of empty space, which goes against all logic, but, it turns out that it’s probably true, and the energy particles are given mass by the resistance they experience moving through the HB particles. Therefore, mass and gravity exist in a system in which there is no apparent solid matter. A truly revolutionary discovery that changes the fundamental way we look at the universe (unless of course, you’re IMa or rightisright, or the other knuckleheads on these pages). Pleasant dreams.