Tuesday, September 05, 2006

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us...

We are all familiar with this mnemonic for planets in the Solar system. Since Pluto's demotion, I recently saw this - "My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums. "

My take on this is this: Humans, educated morons or not, came up with this classification system in the first place and therefore inherently have the right to change it as necessary.

Sentimentalism is another thing, but that is not my point.

Officially a "planet" is a celestial body that:

  1. is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants;
  2. has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape;
  3. is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and,
  4. has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

Change any of these parameters, and the celestial body ceases to be classified as a planet.


God has set down some parameters too. It is all here.

Again, my take on this is that we, in our current state of existence, come to know of him only after we are born ( I mean physically ) through some medium (books, audio (grandma), TV etc) or the other.

When we do, if we choose to live according to his parameters, then we qualify to receive what he has to give; both now and eternally, and I gladly add that he is only too happy and willing to give to those who comply and ask.

If we don't, then we get to live with and as others who don't; both now and eternally.

The difference here is that God does not need to hold a referendum to adopt a new resolution because he has discovered something new, or because he now has a deeper revelation of something which he did not have before.

The point to note here is that we are composed of materials that disintegrate if we choose to change the parameters set by our creator.