 We dedicate this page to honor the many people from antiquity to the present who sacrificed their lives or their livelihoods to tell the truth - and we are all better for it.
 “Hopefully honesty will erupt in a ground-swell of individuals who say 'let's look at what we do and where we are going' the ethics and laws are not appropriate to forge the kind of world we want at all.
Are we willing to give up our sacred cows in pursuit of ecumenical brotherhood? Ignorance IS the 'Original Sin' and we all must accept our ignorance as an opportunity for growth, rather than cling to each other in cults of denial!” - Robert Bruce Baird
Artwork by Vincent van Gogh ~ 'The Sower' and 'Blossomed Gardens'
A Prayer In Homage ~ To The Spirit of Divine Harmony:
"Go to them with your Heart, so they will find bravery."
"Go to them with your Soul, so that they remain the keepers of Knowledge."
"Go to them with your sword of Truth, so they will never be overcome by the force of Ignorance".
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Written by Sandra Repash
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 Much has been written about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was born in 1904. The substance of his life, his intellect, his patrician manner, his leadership of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, his political affiliations and postwar military/security entanglements, and his early death from cancer, amount to a highly compelling story.
"His lectures were a great experience, for experimental as well as theoretical physicists," commented the late physicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005), who would later work with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.
"In addition to a superb literary style, he brought to them a degree of sophistication in physics previously unknown in the United States.
 Here was a man who obviously understood all the deep secrets of quantum mechanics, and yet made it clear that the most important questions were unanswered. His earnestness and deep involvement gave his research students the same sense of challenge. He never gave his students the easy and superficial answers but trained them to appreciate and work on the deep problems" wrote Bethe.
In 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed to the Manhattan Project, code name for the project formed to develop an atomic bomb. When the war ended, the government set up the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to replace the Manhattan Project. The AEC was charged with overseeing all atomic research and development in the United States. As Chairman of the General Advisory Committee, Oppenheimer opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb. Known as the "Super Bomb," the hydrogen bomb was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb. In the context of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power, Oppenheimer's stance was controversial. In the 1950s, while Oppenheimer was Director of the Institute, anti-Communist hysteria was sweeping through Washington, D.C., spearheaded by the conservative Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.
In 1953, he was denied security clearance and lost his position with the AEC. Doors that had formerly been open to him were closed. "Oppenheimer took the outcome of the security hearing very quietly but he was a changed person; much of his previous spirit and liveliness had left him," recalled Bethe. |
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Written by Sandra Repash
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 Giordano Bruno: The Forgotten Philosopher
by John J. Kessler, Ph.D., Ch.E.
It is easy to get an impression of the reputation which Bruno had created by the year 1582 in the minds of the clerical authorities of southern Europe. He had written of an infinite universe which had left no room for that greater infinite conception which is called God. He could not conceive that God and nature could be separate and distinct entities as taught by Genesis, as taught by the Church and as even taught by Aristotle. He preached a philosophy which made the mysteries of the virginity of Mary, of the crucifixion and the mass, meaningless. He was so naive that he could not think of his own mental pictures as being really heresies. He thought of the Bible as a book which only the ignorant could take literally. The Church's methods were, to say the least, unfortunate, and it encouraged ignorance from the instinct of self-preservation.
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Written by Sandra Repash
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This is a classic example of why religious entities should not have power to enforce their beliefs.
In the spring of 1633, Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist, was delivered before the dreaded Roman Inquisition to be tried on charges of heresy. He was denounced, according to a formal statement, "for holding as true the false doctrine . . . that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves!" The statement went on to read that "the proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and... heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture!" Galileo was found guilty and forced to renounce his views. Ill and broken in spirit, he was sentenced to a life of perpetual imprisonment and penance. |
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Written by Sandra Repash
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In 1951 while writing his classic textbook ‘Quantum Theory’, David Bohm came into conflict with McCarthyism. He was called upon to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee in order to testify against colleagues and associates. Ever a man of principle, he refused. The result was that when his contract at Princeton expired, he was unable to obtain a job in the USA. He moved first to Brazil, then to Israel, and finally to Britain in 1957, where he worked first at Bristol University and later as Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, until his retirement in 1987. Bohm will be remembered above all for two radical scientific theories: the causal interpretation of quantum physics, and the theory of the implicate order and undivided wholeness.
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Written by Sandra Repash
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 CATHARS
In west-north-west of Marseilles on Golfe du Lion is the old province of Languedoc where in 1208 the people were condemed to death by catholic pope Innocent 111. In 1209 a papal army of more than 30,000 soldiers descended on the region under the command of Simon de Montfort. The soldiers had been sent to kill and exterminate the Cathar religeon. The papal troops arrived in the foothills of Pyrenees and the savage campaign was called the Albigensian Crusade. The people were murdered in their thousands, including men, women and children. Whole towns were destroyed. The Cathar religeon was completley genicided. |
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