I don’t know which is worse: the permanent smile of TeeVee presenters or the Jesuits’ grand hubris about soul cleansing.

It’s a difficult choice, till one realizes that the pretty female smiles that are like inverted coat-hangers with teeth the size of white piano keys are about a horse race, or a local international golf championship, while the Jesuit hubris is about flagellation, sadness, educating junior into the art of belief in sin, or something like that, by choice.

And no. I am not a pessimist. I enjoy life despite appearing grumpy. Grumpy is the privilege of old people who have passed their used-by date a long time ago and have a catalogue of accidental mistakes to their names, while seeing the up and coming idiots doing the same bad decisions by not wanting to know better from the previous idiot elders like me. We try to warn them about the quick sands of life, but they don’t hear us, as our spruiking platform is more like our next hole in the ground of life, six feet under.

But we cannot be stopped to try, unless our brains packs it in and we start to forget our own names — and end up being spoon-fed by Bupa.

As the book suggests in its blurb, in philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved. When you think through exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about.

If you don’t know what this means, you’re welcome.

It seems that’s a lot of circular rubbish (I have inverted a couple of sentences to try to make more sense but it does not), because there is a great variety of answers to the same question. Some people will accept some answers over others because… Well, I don’t know. It seems that some beliefs tend to be easier to swallow, like placebo pills, than to investigate the meticulous “decorticage” (husking) of the fascinating seeds of life.

In the Jesuit manual there are a few doozies that show how these guys are completely out of reality, despite appearing practical in their processes of education. At least, should you be close to a horse you can smell the beast, the horseshit — or smell the hop in the beer in your hand, should you be in your living room watching the race or lonely men hitting a little white ball into a hole, on the flickering box.

A Franciscan, a Dominican and a Jesuit are arrested during the Russian revolution for spreading the Christian capitalist gospel, and are thrown into a dark prison cell. In a bid to restore the light, each man reflects on the traditions of his own order.

The Franciscan decides to wear his sackcloth and pray for light. Nothing happens. The Dominican delivers an hour-long lecture on the virtue of light. Nothing happens. Then the Jesuit gets up and mends the fuse. The light comes on — in his own mind. The only contretemps is that the fuse box is outside the prison cell and the three men remain in the dark.

The Jesuits, an order founded in 1534, devoted to poverty, chastity and obedience, are used to darkness. It’s part of their delusional training of the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. They know how to pray in darkness for long hours and how to turn the candlelight on, to go piss and eat.

The order is exclusive to Aryan male-hood. One exception was made for a young female in 1555. She took a fake male name, Mateo Sánchez, to remain hidden.  She had been accepted because, as of royal blood, she could fill the coffers of the Jesuits with ease. Money buys you anything. Her real name was Joanna of Austria*. She was the daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Aragon and of Castille — and of his wife, Isabella of Portugal, who died when Joanna was four years old...

Is cash an essential part of the philosophical ideal? Can a philosopher be a rich man like de Botton? Is de Botton a philosopher? So many questions with no answer…

So, the 16th century was full on. Many discoveries, styles invention and creations were made. The Renaissance and the Inquisition were plodding along.

On 1 November 1536, Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua, wrote to Copernicus from Rome:

Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject ...

By then Copernicus's theory had reached many educated people in Europe. Despite urgings, Copernicus, a religious man, delayed publication of his book till he was on his death bed, perhaps from fear of criticism—a fear delicately expressed in the subsequent dedication of his masterpiece to Pope Paul III. Copernicus's concerns were either about astronomical errors in his observations, philosophical controversies, or religious objections.

It did not matter. At the time the Church controlled the philosophical high ground. And Copernicus’ idea was scuttled till Galileo Galilei pushed it again in the 17th century. Despite many scientists understanding the obvious then and now, the Church still held onto its stupid cum “flat earth theory” (Earth as the centre of the world) for a long time after this. Meanwhile the Jesuits who had supported Galileo in “his pursuit of knowledge” abandoned him like a smelly sock when he pushed for the acceptance of Copernicus’ theory.

Meanwhile, Martin Luther (1483- 1546), professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, rejected many teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. For example, he opposed the cash practice of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce his views, resulted in his excommunication by the Pope — and be declared an outlaw by Charles V (the father of Joanna of Austria*). A long war of religion war started thereafter. The philosophical peasants had enough of being robbed by Charlie and sided against the emperor.

Luther and his main collaborator Philipp Melanchthon, also took issue with Copernicus’ theory. After receiving the first pages of De libris revolutionum Copernici narratio prima, written by Georg Joachim Rheticus to introduce Copernicanism, Melanchthon condemned it  and called for it to be repressed by governmental force, writing "certain people believe it is a marvelous achievement to extol so crazy a thing, like that Polish astronomer [Copernicus] who makes the earth move and the sun stand still.”

The science of observations and belief systems did not go too well together. God’s work was not to be messed up with. It was not until the 18th century with the invention of “Enlightenment” in which god was banished as a human created idea, that more scientific progress were made. The belief in god and the real world did not mesh. But this does not bother a lot of people these days… It did not bother the Jesuits then as one could change one’s mood by choice. Should you wish to be joyful, one Jesuit only had to think about the glorious resurrection of Christ — and should you wish to feel pain, all you had to do was to think of Jesus suffering on the cross. Piece of cake. Your prayers answered instantly like noodle soup. All this in relation to “sins” — bad deeds promoted by Lucifer-the anti-god. Philosophically speaking, we made bad choices that took our life along a certain path we wish we had not gone through. No regrets though...

The Jesuits were fairly anti-Semitic (against Jews and Arabs alike) with a 16th century “decree de genere” that was in force until 1946.

All this, to set the scene for further men of the cloth or believers like Copernicus, who discovered the complexity of the universe, in parallel with secular atheist scientists.

Some did some real scientific studies, others only assumed stuff or got the scientificum stuffum totally arse-up, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin did.… As an anthropologist, the old Pierre could not avoid seeing “evolution” — a concept that still irks many a religious person, leading to “creationism” and that other fake stuff called “intelligent design” which our Mr Murdoch is fond of, not by being godly, but these cretinists idiots do not believe in global warming.

Prevented by the church to be published while he was alive, Teilhard's posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, is his account of the unfolding of the material universe in the past, the development of the noosphere, including his vision of the Omega Point  (a point of universal convergence) in the future. All crap.

Pierre was a proponent of the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal driven way, a teleological view of evolution. However, his view did not deny the capacity of evolutionary processes to explain complexity, and thus differs from Intelligent Design. To Teilhard, evolution unfolded from cell to organism to planet to solar system and finally to whole universe.

This does not make any sense whatsoever. It’s arse up.

This is where another man of the cloth trying to unravel god’s work came up with the idea of the Big Bang, a concept other scientists were onto as well.

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, (1894–1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven. He proposed on theoretical grounds that the universe is expanding, which was confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble’s observations. Georges was the first to extract what is known as Hubble's law, now controversially known as the Hubble-Lemaître law, and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927. Two years later, American astronomer Edwin Hubble announced his discovery that galaxies, from all directions, appeared to be moving away from us. This phenomenon was observed as a displacement of known spectral lines towards the red-end of a galaxy's spectrum (when compared to the same spectral lines from a source on Earth). This redshift appeared to have a larger displacement for faint, presumably further, galaxies. Hence, the farther a galaxy, the faster it is receding from Earth.

Lemaître also proposed what became known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe, originally calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom" or the "Cosmic Egg".

By then, Einstein had written his Relativity manuals and Neils Bohr had just captured the quantum theory with his “Copenhagen” views. Other theories have had a hard time getting heard.

We have already mentioned Lemaitre on this site, and I might contradict what I said about him before, but who cares. Contradiction is the privilege of grumpy old men.

Anyway, as mentioned, there is a controversy in the renaming of a hubble stuff, because Lemaître thought of it a few instant before. But should we fossick through the Greek, Roman and Aboriginal philosophers, we might find some parallel of the Big Bang idea to explain the universe. For a man of the cloth, Lemaître was quite on the ball, scientifically. Subsequent calculations/observations in the mid 1990s have shown that this expansion is ACCELERATING — and we don’t know why.

My own view on this is limited to the size of my small brain but I will bother you with it. It’s about the temperature (energy loading) of stuff. Matter and energy of the universe is cooling. Entropy. But there are many pockets where temperatures are still super hot. And pockets where gravity plays up by becoming too concentrated. There are pockets where temperatures are cooling but bracketed in a range that is sufficient to support the development of life — that is to say the way some molecules can assemble to duplicate themselves in a complexity that can increase or decrease, but not necessarily so. Billions of earth-like planets supporting life? Sure. It's what I call random specific. 

It’s like cooking: you can have your flame, if you don’t have your saucepan and water, you will end up singeing your ingredients. It can work as food, but it’s very basic and not prone to develop into “cuisine”...  Temperature control is the key to making a non-gluggy sauce. And there is still a lot of glug in the universe... 

And then there is a big occupied(?) void, in between these pockets, where temperature goes below the average temperature of the universe. This super low temperature could lead to super-fluidity of what we cannot see, that in turns accelerate the process of universal development into primeval nothingness. It’s the story of our life. We’re born, we live, we die. No god. Thank you.

If I want to become irate, all I have to do is think of all the dizzying number of religious groups ever invented to satisfy our despair at being human. We are told that there are about 4,300 religions and many sub-beliefs in the human world. The 20 largest religions according to their number of believers are:

Christianity (2.1 billion)

Islam (1.3 billion)

Nonreligious (Secular/Agnostic/Atheist) (1.1 billion).

Here we must confirm that Atheism ISN’T A RELIGION. Agnosticism? Not a religion, only a belief status. Secularity: not a religion either — it’s only a non-belief system of governing relationships.

Hinduism (900 million)

Chinese traditional religion (394 million)

Buddhism 376 million

Primal-indigenous (300 million)

African traditional and Diasporic (100 million)

Sikhism (23 million)

Juche (19 million)

Spiritism (15 million)

Judaism (14 million)

Bahai (7 million)

Jainism (4.2 million)

Shinto (4 million)

Cao Dai (4 million)

Zoroastrianism (2.6 million)

Tenrikyo (2 million)

Neo-Paganism (1 million)

Unitarian-Universalism (800,000)

Should I wish to feel elated, all I have to do is look at that little beast, a butterfly in my Sydney garden, Australia, wondering where did he come from (he is a male awaiting females) considering he is “native of North America”… This little creature, Polites themistocles, the tawny-edged skipper, has the ability to separate its wings while at rest, like Vulcans can separate their fingers. Some wings will be up, while others will be down. Observe, my friend, observe…

And unlike my Neanderthal days, I need to wear shoes, instead of walking barefoot.

Gus leonisky

Your local happy-grumpy kook...