This Month
Date 07-02-2012
Time 08:30:45

Questioning Belief

What Heaven is According to the Poet Rupert Brooke

Abstract

Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
Page Tags: Beyond, Fish, Fishy, Fly, Heaven, Mud, Water,
Site Tags: Joshua Christendom contra Celsum crucifixion tarot Israelites CGText Truth Christianity Jesus Essene Adelphiasophism Solomon dhtml art svg art morality Site A-Z
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Experts, though they defend their own dogmas as determinedly as any medieval prelate, are liable to regard unorthodox ideas with contempt and show little eagerness to investigate them.
Who Lies Sleeping?

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004

What is Heaven?

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!—Death eddies near
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.
Rupert Brooke, Collected Poems, 1936

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Could there be an incest gene? By conditioning its owner to prefer sex with close relatives and its children could it allow speciation via sexual isolation within a breeding group? The incest gene would make an animal prefer its own kin, perhaps by linking with a gene which expresses itself in some subtle physical feature, recognizable even at a subliminal level by parents and siblings—a pheromone, perhaps. If, by breeding together, an incestuous family retains some advantageous characteristic, the incest gene will spread and will ultimately determine a new species to replace the previous one.
Who Lies Sleeping?

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The Wisdom of Carl
Which is more likely, that we’re undergoing a massive but generally overlooked invasion by alien sexual abusers, or that people are experiencing some unfamiliar internal mental state they do not understand?
Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (1996)