God I love analysing things

I've come across two different songs about Jacob's Ladder, both the toy and the biblical story. I found some interesting comparisons to be made between them. The first song is a spiritual hymn* called "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder."
It goes thus:

We are climbing Jacob's ladder, we are climbing Jacob's ladder
We are climbing Jacob's ladder, brothers, sisters, all

Every rung goes higher and higher, every rung goes higher and higher
Every rung goes higher and higher, brothers, sisters, all

Every new one makes us stronger, every new one makes us stronger,
Every new one makes us stronger, brothers, sisters, all

We have toiled in dark and danger, we have toiled in dark and danger,
We have toiled in dark and danger, brothers, sisters, all

We are dancing Sarah's circle, we are dancing Sarah's circle
We are dancing Sarah's circle, brothers, sisters, all**

Every round a generation, every round a generation
Every round a generation, brothers, sisters, all

We are climbing Jacob's ladder, we are climbing Jacob's ladder
We are climbing Jacob's ladder, brothers, sisters, all

Another version I found is a bit simpler:

We are climbing Jacob's Ladder x3
We're soldiers of the Cross

We run goes higher and higher x3
We're soldiers of the Cross

The interesting thing to note is how it talks about either the upward or circular journey, never the downward one. "We are climbing Jacob's Ladder" and " every rung goes higher and higher" are the upward references; "we are dancing Sarah's circle" and " every round a generation" are the circular ones.

Now, compare the old spiritual's lyrics to the modern song about Jacob's Ladder, Patrick Wolf's "Jacob's Ladder," with the lyrics being the following:

Jacob
Jacob ladder's falling down
Heaven is out of reach for us now

The golden gates
The closing clouds
Jacob's ladder's fallen down

The modern song talks about going "down" and "falling" in presumably both the physical as well as the spiritual sense. Is this simply a sign of our pessimistic modern lives compared to the optimistic past? Has the prevelance of the toy Jacob's ladder - which certainly seems to cascade down - influenced the lyrics? Or did I just stumble upon two oddly polar songs by coincidence and I'm reading far too much into this?***

All I know for sure is that both songs miss the point of the biblical story:

And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.****
(italics mine)

They went two ways; up and down. I guess I'm puzzling over this: why did the artists***** represent them going only one way and not both?

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Opinions? Other songs about the subject? If you have any of the above, please give them to me!

*It was labeled to as a "Negro Spiritual" but I'm not sure how PC that is
**Does anyone with more biblical knowledge know what this line means?
***Probably.
****Genesis 28:10-22, King James Version
*****By artists I mean lyricists. Most painters seemed to have little issue depicting the angels going both ways.

Phelp's hates Falwell

There isn't a word to describe what I'm feeling over this. Apparently Fred Phelp's and the hateful bastards* at the Westboro Baptist Church loath even the deceased Jerry Falwell. They're going to "preach" at his funeral.** Part of me feels sorry for Falwell. That isn't a big part of me. A bigger part of me is just swimming in the poetic justice of this. Falwell was a horrible bigot and the idea of having an even worse bigot ranting about how lenient Falwell was just seems awesome. A third part of me is trying to decide of Phelp's is some sort of sick performance artist who wants to make Christianity look bad.

*I normally try to avoid using words like that against people, but Phelp's is one who I think honestly deserves it.
**Don't look at that site unless you're prepared to deal with high blood pressure and excessive amounts of outrage.

Properties of God

There are some problems with a completely atheistic view of the universe. For starters, how the heck did the universe come into existence in the first place? One of the common answers to this is "the universe didn't come into existence, it has always been here." There is a problem I can see in this argument. If the universe has been around for an infinite length of time, how could we ever get to the present? If you go infinitely far back into the past and then start going forward, you would never reach the present because it is an infinite distance away. Another common answer would be "the universe just came into existence." This doesn't work unless you find some sort or property that the universe has that would allow it to pop into existence. That sort of property, one that would allow something to appear out of nothing, would violate the first (?) law of thermodynamics which states that you can't add matter or energy to a system.

So, the universe being created by itself would violate one of its own rules. This is a problem, especially since it obviously has been created by something. What's a puzzler like myself supposed to do? Theorize some sort of answer, of course! Since the universe doesn't have an infinite past and because it has to have been created by something, I'm going to try to theorize what that something is. Since most cultures call that something God, I'll stick with that name. This isn't the Judeo-Christian God or the Muslim God or any of Hindu's many God's, just a general creator-type being.

The one property of this God that I've got here is that it is what created the universe. What does that mean for God? Well, it means that God isn't constrained by the natural laws of physics, for starters. God doesn't have to worry about adding or subtracting matter or energy from the universe since it can obviously do that already. That means that God's could everywhere at once or even nowhere. Also, time doesn't necessarily have to work with God the way it does with everything else. This makes theorizing about God's behavior really, really difficult.

I'm going to try really hard to post more of my beliefs about the world that really don't jive well with the scientific view. Possible subjects for the future include free will and the source of morality!

Correlation V Causation

This is something that has always struck me as odd: both Capitalism and Communism are considered "godless." Commie Karl Marx thought that religion was a tool used by the bourgeois to keep the lower class in place. Capitalist Ayn Rand said that religion was, to put it politely, a load of irrational crap. The two big names of the opposing economic theories both had negative views on religion. This brings me to the little question floating around in my head: is religion a product of a mixed economy? Probably not, but it is an interesting correlation.