The Great Awakenings

The problem with Great Awakenings is that there is another on the way in less than 100 years.

 

1.  First Great Awakening

 

The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1743, though pockets of revivalism had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards's grandfather

 

2.  Second Great Awakening

 

The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival that occurred in the United States beginning in the late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century. While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest. This awakening was unique in that it moved beyond the educated elite of New England to those who were less wealthy and less educated. The center of revivalism was the so-called Burned-over district in western New York. Named for its overabundance of hellfire-and-damnation preaching, the region produced dozens of new denominations, communal societies, and reform.

 

3.  Third Great Awakening

 

The Third Great Awakening in the 1850s–1900s was characterized by new denominations, active missionary work, Chautauquas, and the Social Gospel approach to social issues.^[7]  The Y.M.C.A. (founded in 1844) played a major role in fostering revivals in the cities in the 1858 Awakening and after. The revival of 1858 produced the leadership, such as that of Dwight L. Moody, out of which came religious work carried on in the armies during the civil war. 

 

The Christian and Sanitary Commissions and numerous Freedmen's Societies were also formed in the midst of the War.

 

4.  Fourth Great Awakening

 

The Fourth Great Awakening has not received the acceptance of the first three. Advocates such as economist Robert Fogel say it happened in the late 1960s and early1970s. Others call this the Charismatic Movement. Some of the ministers of the Charismatic Movement were Kenneth Hagin, Chuck Smith,John Wimber, and Kathryn Kuhlman. The Vineyard Movement and Calvary Chapel emerged during this movement. Both these movements still exist. Expository teaching along with the Signs and Wonders movement emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Mainline Protestant denominations weakened sharply in both membership and influence while the most conservative religious denominations (such as the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans) grew rapidly in numbers, spread across the United States, had grave internal theological battles and schisms, and became politically powerful. Most of these organizations still stand today.

 

5.  Fifth Great Awakening

 

This Awakening Consisted of Two Major Revivals: The Toronto Blessing and The Brownsville Revival.

The Toronto Blessing describes the revival and resulting phenomena that began in January 1994 at the Toronto Airport Vineyard church, now the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF), a neo-charismatic evangelical Christian church located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Participants in the conferences and meetings sponsored by TACF have reported healings, incidents of personal transformation and a greater awareness of God's love. It has also been referred to as the Father's blessing, the Anointing, the Awakening, the Renewal, the River and the Fire. The blessing has become known for ecstatic worship, including what is known as falling or resting in the Spirit, laughter, shaking, and crying. "Holy laughter" was a hallmark manifestation, and there were also instances of participants roaring like lions. Another "manifestation of the spirit" encountered at these meetings was a gesture commonly called "crunching" consisting of a vomit-like heaving as a reaction to inviting God to "cleanse" one's emotions or releasing forgiveness to those involved in past negative experiences. Leaders and participants claim that these are physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit's presence and power. One TACF teaching, the Golden Sword prophecy, has been spreading among charismatic churches.

The Brownsville Revival (also known as the Pensacola Outpouring) was a widely reported Christian revival within the Pentecostal Movement that began on Father's Day June 18, 1995, at Brownsville Assembly of God (a church in the Assemblies of God) in Pensacola, Florida.  Characteristics of the Brownsville Revival movement, as with other Christian religious revivals, included acts of repentance by parishioners and a call to holiness, said to be inspired by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Some of the occurrences in this revival fit the description of moments of religious ecstasy. More than four million people are reported to have attended the revival meetings from its beginnings in 1995 to around 2000.

I have borrowed heavily from the Wikipedia entry on Great Awakenings

The Collapse of the Grand Narrative

Jean-François Lyotard

Lyotard's work is characterized by a persistent opposition to universals, meta-narratives, and generality. He is fiercely critical of many of the 'universalist' claims of the Enlightenment, and several of his works serve to undermine the fundamental principles that generate these broad claims. Most famously, in La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he argued that our age (with its postmodern condition) is marked by an 'incredulity towards meta-narratives'. These meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science, and the possibility of absolute freedom. Lyotard argues that we have ceased to believe that narratives of this kind are adequate to represent and contain us all. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives. For this concept Lyotard draws on and strongly reinterprets the notion of 'language-games' found in the work of Wittgenstein.

In Lyotard's works, the term 'language games', sometimes also called 'phrase regimens', denotes the multiplicity of communities of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced and rules for their circulation are created.

This becomes more crucial in Au juste: Conversations (Just Gaming) (1979) and Le Différend (The Differend) (1983), which develop a postmodern theory of justice. It might appear that the atomisation of human beings implied by the notion of the micronarrative and the language game suggests a collapse of ethics. It has often been thought that universality is a condition for something to be a properly ethical statement: 'thou shalt not steal' is an ethical statement in a way that 'thou shalt not steal from Margaret' is not. The latter is too particular to be an ethical statement (what's so special about Margaret?); it is only ethical if it rests on a universal statement ('thou shalt not steal from anyone'). But universals are impermissible in a world that has lost faith in metanarratives, and so it would seem that ethics is impossible. Justice and injustice can only be terms within language games, and the universality of ethics is out of the window. Lyotard argues that notions of justice and injustice do in fact remain in postmodernism. The new definition of injustice is indeed to use the language rules from one 'phrase regimen' and apply them to another. Ethical behaviour is about remaining alert precisely to the threat of this injustice, of paying attention to things in their particularity and not enclosing them within abstract conceptuality. One must bear witness to the 'differend'.

DR2H

Obama's Way is a 30 year program

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling was a bipartisan presidential commission, established by Executive Order 13543 signed by Barack Obama on May 21, 2010, that was “tasked with providing recommendations on how the United States can prevent and mitigate the impact of any future spills that result from offshore drilling.”

This commission got the wrong answer.  We never heard about the results.  A description is available on Wikipedia.

Constitutional lawyer Barack Obama as the recently elected President of the United States of America rapidly surmised that BP was the responsible party.

The US Government has established a 30 year program described in http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18962/gulf-research-program-a-strategic-vision .

PV=nRT

The ideal gas law.  Seems nothing is ideal since Obama first got elected.

The ideal gas law says that the pressure P times the volume V is equal to n the number of moles of gas contained in the volume times the universal gas constant R times the temperature T.

T is the temperature above absolute zero.  P is the absolute pressure.  The absolute pressure is the gauge pressure plus atmospheric pressure.  I recall 1 standard atmospheric pressure to be 14.7 pounds per square inch.

Most solids, liquids, and gases expand with increasing temperature and contract with decreasing temperature.

Typically, gases expand(contract) more(less) than liquids which expand(contract) more than solids with increasing(decreasing) temperature.

In brief, both the leather of the football and the air in it should expand with temperature and contract with decreasing temperature.

Physicists usually consider the simplest model first.  The simplest model is that the ideal gas law holds and that the only material affected by the temperature is the gas inside the football.

This model will assume that n and V are constant.

Any decrease in temperature will cause a ball inflated to 12.5 lbs/sqin to be outside the official range.

One atmosphere is 14.7 lbs/in**2.  A minimally inflated ball should have an actual pressure of 27.2 lbs/sqin.

The temperature in Rankine is the temperature in Fahrenheit plus 459.67. 

P2ndhalf =( P@inpection+14.7)* T2ndhalf/T@imspection.-14.7

Assume room temperature is 72 degrees F and the temperature at the beginning of the 2nd half was 51 degrees F.

Under these conditions, the pressure at the beginning of the 2nd half would be 11.43 lbs/sqin.

DR2H

Counter Terrorism

Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to exploit George W. Bush's counter-terrorism definition.  Joe Biden has assisted BO in exploiting it much more.

Just following Orders was not adequate defense for the Nazis.
 
In the best of all worlds, Dick Cheney would not have prodded George W. into invading Iraq.  George W. Bush was/is a "born again" Christian.  He and Tony Blair shared some vision/fear of the Moslem Hordes.  Norman Podaretz, founder of Commentary, came around to the position that the Arab - Israeli peace process was "fatally flawed".

Religious fundamentalists do not get along with each other very well.  I found the book Stealing Jesus to be informative and accurate.  I belong to a people of the Book.  My brother is a retired Methodist minister.  My father-in-law is a retired Methodist minister.  I used to have Jewish neighbors and I have led a Sunday School Class in Florida.  We shared the presentation responsibilities.  I gave the presentations of Islam, twice.

Bush's wetback Attorney General was the one who decided it is OK for us to torture.  Until this guy, the answer to the "hypothetical" was, in Hugo Black's words "Of course we would but we can never say that!"  My view is that we should have to rely on a trial by peers to show us mercy.
  

Joe Biden Benefits

Joe Biden was a co-author of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).  Vice President Joe Biden has favored using drones to terminate terrorists.

George W. Bush defined Counter-Terrorism (CT) poorly.  He defined it as a war against terrorists and countries which host them.

President Obama, aided and abetted by Joe Biden, has implemented a policy of striking terrorists wherever they are and whenever they can be found.  In CT, there are no innocent victims.  Due largely to Bush's definition, all citizens of a country which has not expelled the terrorist is an enemy.

Ferguson Grand Jury does the right thing

ISIS is lopping off heads and Obama wants to straighten out our police.

Obama has shown us what is much worse than a compassionate conservative - a Compassionate Liberal.