christians-from-the-united-states

"During World War II, Violet Oakley crafted twenty-four portable intended for American battleships, military bases, and airfields. While they seem conventional at first glance, a closer inspection uncovers distinct elements, such as the spirit’s victory over matter, which promises triumph and tranquility. With Oakley, art created by Christian Scientists matured. She demonstrated that illustrating Christian Science books is not essential to conveying the principles and spirit of the religion within the evolving realm of modern art."

"Some of you may or may not be aware that my husband is the Lt. Governor of North Carolina and is currently running for governor of North Carolina"

"I didn't know her, didn't know personally. She was not a friend of mine.”"

"With that being said, my life has gotten extremely busy over the last few years and those obligations no longer allow me the time to be a sponsoring organization.”"

"She screenshot a picture from my personal Facebook page,"

"We felt like we were being targeted from the beginning"

"She used her state cell phone to send that picture to her colleagues on their state cell phones, telling them: ‘Look who this is. Look who her husband is. Her husband is Mark Robinson.”"

"“I was doing this way before anybody knew his name"

"... this is the first science fiction film I know of that's based on character rather than hardware. I read the story on a plane from New York to LA and, at a critical point, I had to throw the script down. I was in tears... it touched me that much. It's such a wonderful story. Here's two guys who are enemies. One happens to be an alien. They could easily be an American and a Russian."

"The way I look at it, I am the alien! I'm the one devoid of human values. Drac has them. Not me. Not Davidge, the spaceman. For me, the film is the discovering of the human side of myself. You know – How to be human!"

"It's the biggest, most satisfying role I've ever had. Davidge is a human being who gets to know a lot of sides to himself. Wolfgang thought he was a bit too Han Solo, at first. Now, Davidge really evolves through everything in the story: humour, anguish, tears, hate, pride, love, pain, action. There's no end to the action! I'm trying to do most of it, myself. So, it's also, physically, a very gruelling experience."

"Actually, it was quite bad. It is a bad film. Only good thing about it was meeting my gal, Marie, we've been together two years now. And Lou, of course. Lou calls it: Sharks Don't Like Soul Food! Other than that, it was a learning experience for me. At the time, I felt I should be in a film which had a good chance of commercial success. A wrong reason to make any film."

"I didn't earn it. I wear it for those Marines who lost their lives protecting mine."

"Everyone has some instinct of bravery. As long as you can control the fear, you can be brave."

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as demolition sergeant serving with the 21st Marines, 3d Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 23 February 1945. Quick to volunteer his services when our tanks were maneuvering vainly to open a lane for the infantry through the network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, buried mines, and black volcanic sands, Cpl. Williams daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machine-gun fire from the unyielding positions. Covered only by four riflemen, he fought desperately for four hours under terrific enemy small-arms fire and repeatedly returned to his own lines to prepare demolition charges and obtain serviced flamethrowers, struggling back, frequently to the rear of hostile emplacements, to wipe out one position after another. On one occasion, he daringly mounted a pillbox to insert the nozzle of his flamethrower through the air vent, killing the occupants, and silencing the gun; on another he grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets and destroyed them with a burst of flame from his weapon. His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strongpoints encountered by his regiment and aided vitally in enabling his company to reach its objective. Cpl. Williams' aggressive fighting spirit and valiant devotion to duty throughout this fiercely contested action sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service."

"Woody doesn't think he's done anything special. He was just doing his job."

"[A] von Neumann cannot become obsolete... instructed by radio to make the latest devices..."

"Hunter has pointed out that by using a Jupiter swingby to approach the Sun and then giving a velocity boost at perihelion, a solar system escape velocity... is possible with present-day chemical rockets... [M]ost other stars should have planets (or companion stars) with characteristics sufficiently close to... the Jupiter-Sun system to use this launch strategy in reverse to slow down in the other solar system."

"Once the exploration and/or colonization of the Galaxy has begun, it can be modeled... by the mathematical theory of island colonization... developed... by MacArthur & Wilson... since... islands... are closely analogous to stars in the heaven, and von Neumann machines are even more closely analogous to biological species."

"[T]he von Neumann machine would be programmed to explore the stellar system... and relay information... back to the original solar system..."

"I shall assume that such a species will... develop a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the human level—such a machine should be developed within a century, according to the experts...—and... combined with present-day rocket technology would make it possible to explore and/or colonize the Galaxy in less than 300 million years, for an initial investment less than the cost of operating a 10 MW microwave beacon for several hundred years, as proposed by SETI..."

"The payload of a probe to another stellar system would be a self-reproducing universal constructor with human level intelligence (...a von Neumann machine) together with an engine... travelling... within the stellar target system—[the engine] could be an electric propulsion system... or a ..."

"Even if there were no planets in the stellar system... the... machine could be programmed to turn some of the material into an O'Neill colony..."

"What one needs is a self-reproducing universal constructor... a machine capable of making any device... capable of making a copy of itself. Von Neumann has shown... that such... is theoretically possible, and... a human being is a universal constructor specialized to perform on the surface of the Earth."

"[M]aterials [to reproduce the von Neumann machine] should be available in virtually any stellar system—including systems—in the form of meteors, asteroids, comets, and other debris from the formation of the stellar system. ...[M]aterial in asteroids are highly differentiatied; many... are largely nickel-iron, while others contain large amounts of hydrocarbons."

"As the copies of the space probe were made, they would be launched at the stars nearest the target star. When these probes reached these stars, the process would be repeated... until the probes covered all the stars of the Galaxy."

"[T]he information to manufacture a human being is contained in the genes of a single human cell. Thus if an extraterrestrial intelligent species possessed the knowledge to synthesize a living cell—and... experts assert... the human race could develop such knowledge within 30 years—they could program a von Neumann machine to synthesize a fertilized egg cell of their species. If they possessed artificial womb technology—and such... is in the beginning stages... on Earth... they could... synthesize members of their species... As suggested by Eiseley... these beings could be raised... by the robots... free to develop their own civilization..."

"[T]he problem of interstellar travel has been reduced to... transporting a von Neumann machine to another stellar system. This can be done even with present-day rocket technology."

"[T]hus... any intelligent species would develop at least the rocket technology capable of... a travel velocity ves of 3 x 10-4c. At this velocity the travel time to the nearest stars would be between 104 and 105 years. This... would necessitate... self-repair capacity... Nuclear power-souces would supply the power... If power utilization during the free-fall period was... low, even chemical reactions could supply the power."

"As ves is of the same order as the stellar random motion velocities, very sensitive guidance would be required... not... an insuperable problem with the assumed level of computer technology."

"The probability that intelligent life which eventually attempts interstellar communication will evolve in a star system is usually expressed by the :p = f_pn_ef_lf_if_cwhere f_p is the probability that a given star system will have planets, n_e is the number of habitable planets in a solar system, f_l is the probability that life evolves on a habitable planet, f_i is the probability that intelligent life evolves on a planet with life, and f_c is the probability that an intelligent species will attempt interstellar communication within 5 billion years after the formation of the planet..."

"The essential difficulty with divorcing morality from facts is that... there would be no way to resolve moral disputes. Morality would... be... a matter of taste... [I]n... so-called disputes over morality there is... no disagreement over fundamental moral principles, only... over facts. ...[C]onsider ...the abortion issue. There is no dispute over "Thou shall not kill,"... only... whether a fetus is a "person.""

"[T]he claim that the central concern of religion is nonsense. Throughout human history, the central concern of religion has been human self-interest. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, all morality has been obtained from declarative sentences of the form "Thou shalt not kill—because you'll go to Hell if you do!" In the Hindu-Buddhist tradition... "...—because you'll be born as a cockroach if you do!" ...In both cases, the appeal is to physics, not to fundamental moral postulates."

"It is often said that the central concern of religion is an attempt to answer... "What is the relationship between humanity and the universe (and/or God). I agree... the factual answers... led to the ethical norms of... religions. The sharp distinction between fact and value which is common in twentieth-century philosophy and in the West was not present in the traditional religions. ...[T]his sharp distinction is ...contrary to the continued existence of science ...The growth and existence of science require certain ethical norms: for example, THOU SHALT NOT IMPOSE YOUR THEORIES ON OTHERS BY FORCE. Only persuasion, based on rational argument and experimental results, is allowed."

"[W]e cannot "see" a person who lived a few centuries before, because the light rays... have... left the solar system. Conversely, we cannot "see" the Andromeda galaxy as it now is, but... as it was 2 million years ago. So we experience as "simultaneous" the events on the boundary of our past ... But all timelike and lightlike curves converge upon the Omega Point. ...[L]ight rays from all people who died... from all... people now... from all [future] people... intersect there. The light rays... from people... are not lost forever... [T]hese rays will be intercepted and intercepted again, by the living beings who... engulfed the physical universe near the Omega Point. All the information which can be extracted from those rays will be extracted at the instant of the Omega Point."

"[T]he human-type mind is a manifestation of an extremely low level of information processing... Nevertheless, the Omega Point is still a Person... because a Being with Its level of computer capacity could easily create a Turing-Test-passing subprogram to speak for it. ...[O]ur resurrected selves probably will interact with such a program... For lack of a better term, I shall refer to the total universal information processing system in existence at any given global time as the "universal mind.""

"It would... not be... inaccurate to regard one of the subprograms of the universal mind in the far future, one with a Turing Test-passing subprogram, as an "angel.""

"The germ theory was resurrected... by Pasteur and his new medical physics. Thus... physics had to be extended to medicine in order to save the germ theory. Similarly, for religion to survive, physics must be extended into theology."

"[T]o really test the Theory, we will need the upgrade and either the SSC—the Texas Supercollider—or the European LHC. ...[P]erhaps it would be worth several billion dollars to establish that God exists, and that one day we will all be resurrected to live forever with Him/Her."

"The basic idea... is straightforward and... has led other authors, such as Fermi... Dyson... Hart... Simpson... and Kuiper & Morris... to conclude that extraterrestrial beings do not exist: if they did exist and possessed the technology for interstellar communication, they would also have developed interstellar travel and thus would already be present in our solar system."

"There is an interesting connection between my claim that the Omega Point is a Person because it contains a Turing-Test-passing subprogram, and the Christian notion of Person, as this word is applied to God. In classical Greek, the word prosopon (πρόσωπον)—persona is the Latin equivalent—primarily meant "face" or "countenance," but the word also meant a mask that an actor wore to indicate the character... By the fourth century A.D. ...this word had come to refer to those innate aspects of the human mentality which differentiate one human being from another. Today the word... refers to the total individual human mind, including the innate and learned aspects... [T]o interact with us human beings as a Person... the Omega Point would be revealing only a miniscule portion... a Person in the original sense and in the fourth century sense... '."

"[I]nclusion of the whole past, present, and future universal history in the Omega Point is more than a mere mathematical artifact. ...[T]he Omega Point "experiences" the whole of universal history "all at once.""

"[T]he probability of the evolution of creatures with the technological capability of interstellar communication within five billion years after the development of life on an Earth-like planet is less than 10-10, and thus we are the only intelligent species now existing in this Galaxy."

"With the introduction into physics of the Dirac/Dyson Eternal Life Postulate, science has taken the last independent stronghold of theology."

"The biologists argue that the number of evolutionary pathways leading from one-celled organisms to intelligent beings is minuscule when compared with the total number of evolutionary pathways, and thus even if we grant the existence of life on 109 to 1010 planets in our Galaxy, the probability that intelligence has arisen... [there] on any planet but our own is still very small. I agree..."

"It is argued that if extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then their spaceships must already be present in our solar system."

"[T]hat any intelligent species which develops... interstellar communication will also have... rocketry... is... a consequence of the principle of mediocrity... (that our own evolution is typical)... [T]he human species developed rockets 600 years before... radio waves..."

"[I]t seems likely that a species engaging in interstellar communication would possess a fairly sophisticated computer technology. ...Sagan has asserted that 'Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence... will require... computer actuated machines with abilities approaching... intelligence'."

"It is a deficiency in computer technology, which prevents us from beginning the exploration of the Galaxy tomorrow."

"This new... physical indeterminism was... discovered in the 1980s and is... a consequence of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem"