The U2 Claw and the Large Hadron Collider

All machines are spiritual.

And Kurzweil has suggested we are already enmeshed in the spiritual machines age.

Of course, this can be good news and or bad news..

(See:

• "You only love me for my machine."

• Gentle Rage Against the HospitalMachines)

The U2 Claw is not the most expensive and complex machine ever built.
But it might be one of the most prophetic; and a word from God to the church...via U2 again.

For one, it expresses the next step in U2's stage progression:
from the extended ramps of the 90s to the "heart" an "ellipse"of recent tours,
do whatever it takes to be with/among the people.

That is spiritual. And a machine facilitates it all.

The Claw may even reveal some hidden powers when it is switched on Tuesday in Barcelona.

Bono suggests it was inspired in part by Gaudi's Sagrada Famillia Church.
(see videos below, and this article):

"The Claw" is built, rehearsals have started, and in just a couple days, the first cast of thousands will show up in Barcelona to bear witness in the Church of U2. In an interview for Barcelona TV this week, Bono says, "Music is worship," and tells the reporters that the massive structure in the middle of the stadium was inspired by one of the world's most famous unfinished structures and one of Barcelona's biggest tourist attractions, La Sagrada Familia church, designed by Antoni Gaudi.
-Marilym Maione

He always tells us the concerts will take us to church. Maybe they've now gone completely missional and messianic and manic...and are bringing church to us.




ANYWAY, the device that IS one of the most expensive and complex machines ever built, the Large Hadron Collider, is also due to be activated this year. Even if it really doesn't

• discover the God particle,
• become a time machine,
• rip the fabric of spacetime
  
• provide evidence of creation ex nihilo,
• or (at least) usher in the end of the world,

when it is kickstarted again in October..

something significant...if not quite as immediately dramatic or obviously theological as all the above will eventually happen.

It may not bring Jack Benny back, or convert thousands to Christ.

But it might. (:

It may even equal a U2 concert (which often does both, and is in fact time travel (see Time Travel part 2 and "Music is time travel" ).

Would the discovery of "the God particle" bring us any closer to the discovery of God? Not really. The God particle is merely a particle, not God. It would be an exciting discovery in the highly specialized field of particle physics. But our ordinary world would go on just as it did before.
-Vern Polythress

Or would it?

Somehow or another, the paranoid among us think that carrying out those tasks will rip the world wide open or leave you stuck in 1990 with nothing in your CD player but Ice Ice Baby. Okay, so maybe that last scenario is worth getting worked up about.
link

At least there is a rap video about it:




Uh, maybe the Claw IS the Collider. (:
See you Tuesday..here, there,or in the air(: