Humor...angels dancing on a pin...

Date: July 20/2003

Late, late one night, after all the brain cells had been drained of thought, a dear friend sent me this URL and suggested that I might derive some laughter from it... I looked at it, and in the macabre mood I was in, wrote a satirical response below...some of you might enjoy it:

Here was the URL:

Quantum Gravity Treatment of the Angel Density Problem"

https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume7/v7i3/angels-7-3.htm

from the Annals of Improbable Research

...and here was my strange-mooded response (smile):

"Just checked out the article...there are HUGE problems with it...the whole 'type of dance' question DWARFS the density issue...e.g., slow dancing avoids the friction and momentum problem, but the "uncertainty principle" issue means the angels might not be able to even find their partners. C&W Line dancing would have an entirely different set of momentum (but little friction) issues, with the concentrated momentum ALTERNATING in directions (and requiring additional inter-angelic spacing, and allowance for the endpoints to sometimes fall down/off the current excitation level)...certain ritual/tribal dancing is known/used to attract EVIL spirits, and since we don't know their 'specs' relative to good angels (e.g., density, spin, % attendance...but they are clearly asymmetrical: "R. Huna Said: "Each and every one among us has a thousand demons at his left and ten thousand at his right' [B. Ber 6a]), perhaps in mockery of the Right-handed amino acids?), then we cannot even control for 'number of agent-units'...And the complexity of a maypole type of dance with these many angels(!)--presumably using the strong-attractive forces for the ropes/ribbons(?)--with all that 'bobbing and weaving' would obviously require some correction for 'wakes' in the Ether...

"So, I personally think the prior question of the type of dance needs to be discussed/determined first, and THAT may require additional exegetical work on the gospel passage ('there is more rejoicing over one physicist who repents...') to determine what the FORM of dancing is (e.g., what kinds of dance are done to the sound of harps?).

"One additional theological problem associated with this doctrinally-naive discussion, I might contemptuously add, is that according to the older theologians, each angel was sui generis. There WAS not a 'class' specie of 'angel', but each one was 'its own species'...that means that ANY scientific attempt to make all angels THE SAME SIZE smacks of reductionism and oversimplification...(I can appreciate their attempt to assume some 'average' size of angels, but without some Mean/STD/kurtosis/skewness figures to work with, all such calculations will necessarily involve even more PROBABILITY adjustments than even those involved in the Quantum calculations--although one might be justified in believing they cancel one another out, conscience permitting..."let every man be persuaded in his own mind", the Apostle taught us)...

"Anyway, I think its undoubtedly a sincere attempt to address a serious lacuna in evangelical theology (probably the MAJOR cause of the disunity of the Church, as will no doubt be seen when the 'hidden things are brought to (visible wavelength) light'), but unless these physicists are of the extreme paleo-Pentecostal variety and have a 'word from God' on this (culpably omitted from the Annal footnotes, I might add, revealing a possible 'temporary gap' in their sanctification --i.e., not citing divine revelation--with the inevitably consequent reduction in 'degree of sensitivity to the Divine Voice'), I think we may be misled by the mathematics...Remember, better men that we have said "divergent series are the  invention of the devil" (Niels Henrik Abel, 1802-1829, Norwegian), and even Bishop Berkeley ridiculed with sarcasm the infinitesimals in 1734: "They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?"...(hmmm...I wonder how many of THESE ghosts could fit on...nevermind)...so, why would we trust anything with such ethically-questionable higher math in it, eh?

"I suspect that their efforts will prove fruitless--like foam of the sea, tossed about by every collapsing quantum waveform-- UNLESS good ole biblically-based algebraic topology is used (sanctified by the reference to the '4 corners of the earth' in Holy Writ...by mapping the semi-spheroid earth to a 2D square geometrical figure, using simple transformation formulae...sorta like a reverse Inversion of a Unit Circle)...Without this biblical basis, they will never arrive at truth..."If the (math) foundations are destroyed, what WILL the righteous do?!"

"But you try to tell these folk that?! "For when they can not endure sound teaching..." (sigh)...

..........

Anyway, thanks for the email-- I had fun with that--thanks for the "occasion of sin" (chuckle)

warmly, glenn