TODAY

Today is Friday, July 29, 2005 and Iraq drags on. It's a fiasco and we're not going to see a democracy come out of there at all. Women will be oppressed, and it'll soon be a terrorist training ground of the first caliber because no one is going to control the religious teachers there anymore than religious teachers are controlled in Saudi Arabia. Bush's folly has made America and the world less safe rather than more safe. I cannot imagine the American citizens living right after WWII allowing this to go on. Those folks would have had Bush's popularity ratings down to twenty or thirty percent by now. America is no longer a peace loving nation which the world can look up to and follow. Two Texas politicians have destroyed everything that America once stood for, LBJ and GWB.


SOLDIERS SULLIED BY PURPOSELESS WAR. . . AGAIN

NEWSWEEK'S Baghdad bureau chief comes home after two years in Iraq and he's got some more sobering news:

"Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's [the most protected enclave for foreigners in Baghdad] check-points. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers—to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They're overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours—and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family." (Newsweek, June 13, 2005, p. 40)

I'm 67 and I can tell you that all this sounds very much like Vietnam. And this is the modern condition of America and many western and westernized nations. Politicians can no longer fight and win wars which citizens are not convinced are actually necessary. That's why, historically, America always allowed itself to take the first blow.


MEXICAN IMMIGRATION BIGGER THAN ANYTHING EVER!

"Being brutally candid means recognizing that the huge and largely uncontrolled inflow of unskilled Latino workers into the United States is increasingly sabotaging the assimilation process. . . What's particularly disturbing about the Borjas-Katz study is that children of Mexican immigrants don't advance quickly." (Samuelson's column in Newsweek, June 13, 2005)

This slowness of the first generation of Mexican immigrant children to advance runs counter to the history of all the other immigrant groups who have come to America. Rather than blame that slowness on anything having to do with being a Mexican, perhaps we better be getting the word out to the rest of the world that America is no longer the vibrant economy which can lift up hundreds of thousands of immigrants arriving endlessly on our shores. Maybe blue collar Americans need to look closely at what's happening to them too. Maybe we ought to be looking at what happened to Britain in the last fifty years.


HOW ABOUT A LITTLE SONG TO MAKE OURSELVES FEEL BETTER?
A WHALE OF A TALE SUNG BY A MEISTERSINGER

"The sea is murky. Sight and smell, which work well for mammals on the land, are not of much use in the depths of the ocean. Those ancestors of the whales who relied on these senses to locate a mate or a baby or a predator did not leave many offspring. So another method was perfected by evolution; it works superbly well and is central to any understanding of the whales: the sense of sound. Some whale sounds are called songs, but we are still ignorant of their true nature and meaning. They range over a broad band of frequencies, down to well below the lowest sound the human ear can detect. A typical whale song lasts for perhaps fifteen minutes; the longest, about an hour. Often it is repeated, identically, beat for beat, measure for measure, note for note. Occasionally a group of whales will leave their winter waters in the midst of a song and six months later return to continue at precisely the right note, as if there had been no interruption. Whales are very good at remembering. More often, on their return, the vocalizations have changed. New songs appear on the cetacean hit parade.

"Very often the members of the group will sing the same song together. By some mutual consensus, some collaborative song writing, the piece changes month by month, slowly and predictably. These vocalizations are complex. If the songs of the humpback whale are enunciated as a tonal language, the total information content, the number of bits of information in such songs, is some 10 [to the sixth power] bits, about the same as the information content of the Iliad or the Odyssey. We do not know what whales or their cousins the dolphins have to talk or sing about. They have no manipulative organs, they make no engineering constructs, but they are social creatures. They hunt, swim, fish, browse, frolic, mate, play, run from predators. There may be a great deal to talk about." —Carl Sagan in COSMOS, p. 271
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"Ronald Reagan [was] the Fred Astaire of foot-in-mouth disease." —Jeff Davis

MORE ON THE WORLD’S TAKE ON IRAQ

“My vacation has been remarkably eye-opening. Now, when travelers say things like that, they usually are talking about being introduced to new cultures, different foods, singular settings... but in my case, I'm talking about war. Specifically, how shockingly different the coverage of the war in Iraq is here in Europe compared to what we get back home.” —Huffington (July 20, 2005)


PAIN ASYMBOLIA

What do you make of people who laugh at pain? Of course, in movies, we sometimes think we are watching people who laugh at pain and chortle at danger, but in reality, laughing when in excruciating pain is a whole 'nother kettle of molasses altogether. But, believe it or not, some people, because of brain damage can laugh hysterical while they suffer real pain. Read the following paragraph.

"So perhaps in this patient the insular cortex was normal, so he could feel the pain, but the wire that goes from the insula to the rest of the limbic system and the anterior cingulate was cut: a disconnection similar to that seen in the Capgras patient. Such a situation would produce the two key ingredients required for laughter and humor: one part of the brain signals a potential danger but the very next instant another part—the anterior cingulate—does not receive a confirmatory signal, thereby leading to the conclusion 'it's a false alarm.' Hence the patient [in pain] starts laughing and giggling uncontrollably." (From Ramachandran's A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, pp. 22-23)


TOM DELAY—WILL HE PLAY THE JESUS CARD?

Maybe you’ve forgotten Tom Delay. The Republican administration is so full of corruption and sham that he is being forgotten in the general stampede of Republican duplicity. In fact, I hear that the Republican strategy for covering up bad politicians is to give us so many corrupt, dishonest and treasonous characters that our memories fail us or that we get to the point that we can’t recognize liars and lying anymore because all Republicans do it and corruption becomes the norm.

And of course Tom Delay will play the Jesus card. All crooked Republicans do, from Spokane’s mayor, Jim West, to Tom Delay and Kenneth Lay. Once caught, these men and women sure know how to pull the Jesus trick and, of course, fool their gullible Christian base of fundamentalists.

The following information comes to me by way of MoveOn.org. They were circulating a petition awhile back and I’m passing on the full text of their communication:

[Open quote] After you sign the petition please help us spread the word. Pass it on to your friends, family and colleagues and ask them to help fire Tom DeLay. If they need some information about DeLay here is a good summary.

FULL TEXT OF THE PETITION

TO: (Your Representative)
FROM: (Your Name and Email)
SUBJECT: Fire Tom DeLay
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Dear (Your Representative),

Republicans in Congress should fire Tom DeLay as Majority Leader because of repeated and flagrant ethical misconduct.

(Your Personal Note)

Among his offenses, Tom DeLay:

*****Accepted trips from corporations and later helped kill legislation they opposed

*****Accepted trips from the lobbyist for a foreign government in violation of House rules

*****Paid family members more than $500,000 out of campaign contributions

*****Helped sweatshops in the Mariana Islands at the behest of a lobbyist.

*****Promised a role in drafting legislation to a corporate donor

*****Tried to coerce a Congressman for a vote on Medicare

*****Allegedly used corporate money given to his PAC to finance Texas campaigns in violation of state law

*****Used Homeland Security resources in a dispute with Democrats in Texas

*****Diverted funds from a children's charity for lavish celebrations at the Republican convention

*****Threatened retaliation against interest groups that don't support Republicans

*****Stacked the House Ethics Committee with representatives who have contributed to his legal defense fund

*****Crippled the effectiveness of the House Ethics Committee by purging members who had rebuked him

*****Pushed for a rules change for the House Ethics process that paralyzed the panel

*****Sought a rule change that would have no longer "required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted"

This sort of abuse of power needs to be stopped. Please act today.
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“The reason there are so few female Republicans is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.” —Me (with the huge support of Maureen Murphy whose original statement I altered by one word to make better sense of the matter)

MEN, WOMEN, HENRY JAMES, GORE VIDAL AND NEWSPAPERS

The following is an imaginary exchange between Caroline, a young, French-educated American woman; Del, her intended; and Henry James, the American novelist and brother to William James, psychologist, as written by Gore Vidal. This conversation would be taking place very near to 1900, and I think it's a informative piece of writing, specially when I think of how print media are in decline at this present time almost exactly 100 years later.


[Open quote] [Caroline:] "I've thought of one difference. At least between American men and women. Mr. James called the United States 'the newspapered democracy.'"

"Mr. Jefferson said that if he had to choose between a government without a press and a press without a government, he would choose a press without a—"

"How stupid he must have been!" But when Caroline saw Del's hurt expression—plainly, he had identified himself with the sage of Monticello—she modified: "I mean, he was not stupid. He just thought that the people he was talking to were stupid. After all, they were journalists, weren't they? I mean if they weren't journalists of some sort, how would we know what he said—or might have said, or didn't say? Anyway, back to men and women. We women are criticized, quite rightly, for thinking and, worse, talking about marriage and children and the ordinary people we have to deal with every day and the lives we have to make for our husbands or families or whatever, and this means that as we get older, we get duller and duller because we have, at the end, nothing left but ourselves to think about and talk about and so we become perfect—if we're not already to begin with—bores," Caroline concluded in triumph.

Del looked at her, quite bewildered. "So if you are—like that, then men are . . . what?"

"Different. Boring in a different way. Because of the newspapers. Don't you see?"

"You mean men read them and women don't?"

"Exactly. Most of the men we know, that is, read them, and most of the women we know don't. At least, not the news—what a funny word!—of politics or wars. So when men talk to one another for hours about what they have all read that morning about China and Cuba and . . . Tierra del Fuego, about politics and money, we are left out because we haven't read those particular bits of news."

"But you could, so easily, read them . . ."

"But we don't want to. We have our boredom and you have yours.

But yours is truly sinister. Blaise says that practically nothing Mr. Hearst prints is ever true, including the story about how the Spaniards blew up the Maine. But you men who read the Journal, or something like it, will act as if what you read is true or, worse, as if, true or not, it was all that really mattered. So we are excluded, entirely. Because we know that none of it matters—to us."

"Well, I agree newspapers are not always true, but if . . . foolish men think they are true—or perhaps true—then it does matter to everyone because that is how governments are run, in response to the news."

"Then worse luck for foolish men—and women, too."

Del laughed at last. "So what would you do if you could alter things?"

"Read the Morning Journal. " Caroline was prompt. "Every word."

"And believe it?"

"Of course not. But at least I could talk to men about Tierra del Fuego and the Balance of Power."

"I prefer to talk about the theater in Paris . . . and marriage." Del's lower larger face reddened; the small forehead remained pale ivory.

"You'll be the woman? I'll be the man?" Caroline smiled. "No. That's not allowed. Because we are divided at birth by those terrible newspapers that tell you what to think and us what to wear and when to wear it. We cannot, ever, truly meet."

"But you can. There is, after all, the high middle ground," said Henry James, who had been listening, the ruins of an elaborate pudding before him.

"Where—what is that?" Caroline turned her full gaze on that great head with the gleaming all-intelligent eyes. "Why that is art, dear Miss Sanford. It is a kind of Heaven open to us all, and not just Jim Bludso and his creator."

"But art is not for everyone, Mr. James." Del was respectful.

"Then there is something not unlike it, if more rare, yet a higher stage, a meeting ground for all true—hearts."

On the word "hearts," Caroline felt a sudden premonitory chill. Did he mean the specific mysterious five or did he mean just what he said? Apparently, he meant just that, because when she asked what this higher stage was, Henry James said, simply, for him: "Dare one say that human intercourse which transcends politics and war and, yes, even love itself? I mean, of course, friendship. There—you have it." [Close quote]
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"When they asked George Washington for his ID, he just took out a quarter." —Steven Wright [You almost have to know who Steve is and how he delivers his non sequiturs in order to get the full flavor of this joke.]

CONSERVATIVELY MENTALLY ILL

Several months back I remarked about Roger Ailes, the chief dog at the Fox News liars club, who was a big time pooch with the Bush Sr. White House. I mentioned his troubles with his kennel of origin and pointed out that conservatives are often people who make fun of what they call "touchy-feely types" who have worked on their issues and sought counseling to deal with troubling personal issues. It's a claim among such conservative types that liberals, who often find the courage to face and work through their pasts, are too understanding of others, and conservatives often mock people who try to do something about personal problems other than ignore them which is what conservative types usually do.

Conservatives frequently sweep their pasts under the carpet and think they've thus escaped them when they actual spend the rest of their lives teetering precariously on uneven footing. Their imbalance is all too obvious to those of us who have had the courage to do the hard emotional work required to face and deal with personal troubles.

You can see conservatives' pasts working through them as if they carried signs on their chests, reading, "Troubled Childhood". Their disfunction is obvious to anyone even partly schooled in neurosis, yet they think themselves fully clothed and covered. They are emperors without clothing. Their inability to find the courage to face their pasts makes conservatives mean, nasty infighters with little compassion for others because they have no compassion for themselves.

Here's some facts about Carl Rove, another truly conflicted personality and cutthroat person, like Roger Ailes and George Bush. NEWSWEEK (July 25, 2005) describes Rove's tactics thusly: "In the World According to Karl Rove, you take the offensive, and stay there. You create a narrative that glosses over complex, mitigating facts to divide the world into friends and enemies, light and darkness, good and bad, Bush versus Saddam. You are loyal to a fault to your friends, merciless to your enemies. You keep your candidate's public rhetoric sunny and uplifting, finding others to do the attacking. You study the details, and learn more about your foes than they know about themselves. You use the jujitsu of media flow to flip the energy of your enemies against them. The Boss never discusses political mechanics in public. But in fact everything is political and everyone is fair game."

As you can read, Carl Rove is a very nasty character to whom winning and losing are the only values. Other than that, he has no values. He's part of the problem with the world rather than part of the solution. He's still stuck in evolutionary short pants, one of the animals with a highly-active lizard brain. But we should really have compassion for Rove because it's so obvious how his troubled past creates his pugnacious present. Carl's dad walked out on the family when Carl was 19 and the year following his dad's abandonment Carl learned that the man he thought was his dad was not his dad at all. Carl and one other brother were actually fathered by another man. Carl's psychic self lost two fathers in back to back years. Then, also and most troubling, Carl's mother killed herself 11 years later. Now if those aren't huge markers for psychological problems, I'm a Texas jackrabbit. So, of course, Carl, abandoned by everyone most important to him, would be drawn to a man who puts loyalty to friends above all else, and of course, Carl would become W's sycophantic attack dog. Carl Rove is an embattled personality. It's in his bones and genes. He's nurtured and natured to be a devious trickster who sees the world in black and white terms and to cast everyone into only two categories: friend and enemy. It's kind of sad, really.


THE BASIS OF LIFE IS IN ALL LIFE

"It has come to pass that for almost 4 billion years the essential chemical processes of life have remained the same." —Harold Morowitz

In the following poetic passages, with a great gap between the first and second passage, Harold Morowitz explains how chemical process created the first cells and remain in all forms of life to this day. His entire essay, "In The Beginning"' may be found in MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE, p. 55. He is a professor of biology and natural philosophy at George Mason University.

[Open quote] One of the basic rules of chemistry known to every schoolchild and every chef is that oil and water do not mix. This rule also has exceptions, such as: soap removes grease from soiled clothes by floating it away in water, and egg yolk combines the oil and water of mayonnaise into a smooth mixture. These exceptions always involve structures called amphiphiles, which have the property of partitioning so that one end of the molecule is in oil and one end in water. Amphiphile means "loving both"—oil and water. Among the molecules brought to the surface of the early Earth, or made there by the action of the Sun's ultraviolet light on molecules of terrestrial origins, were these amphiphiles.

Amphiphiles are strange entities; they are not completely at home in either oil or water. In the waters of the ocean, when these molecules collide the oil-seeking parts adhere to each other, while the water-seeking parts interact with the aqueous surroundings. This results in collections of amphiphiles called coacervates (from the Latin meaning "to heap together"). Membranes are coacervates made of amphiphiles bonded together in sheets two molecules thick, the oil-seeking ends forming the interior of the structure and the water-seeking ends the exterior. We name these membranes bimolecular leaflets because they measure two molecules across. These spontaneously forming entities are a core structure of life—like all such structures, a gift of the laws of nature.

In obedience to the inexorable laws of physics and chemistry, biomolecular leaflets have one more remarkable property. In water they spontaneously form into closed shells called vesicles. Thus when the first bimolecular leaflet formed and arranged itself into a vesicle, something radically new entered the world. The membrane became a barrier to separate the interior waters of the vesicle from exterior waters. The partitioning of the inside from the outside is the beginning of individuality. In some vague and primitive way, the distinction between the I and the Thou was beginning to appear. . . .


Long before there was life as we know it, a great evolutionary branching of species of vesicles with memory molecules took place. More and more elaborate and sophisticated networks and memory-storage devices developed. One pathway to memory and metabolism eventually proved to be far more efficient than the rest. Along this evolutionary pathway there developed a species of vesicle that outcompeted all others. This species was the universal ancestor, for its descendants also speciated, but they preserved the intermediary metabolism and method of storing information that emerged from primordial evolution. All life on earth— grasses and fruit trees and fowl and beasts of the field—carries within every cell the metabolism and molecular genetics of this universal ancestor.

It has come to pass that for almost 4 billion years the essential chemical processes of life have remained the same. Mountains have risen and eroded away; continents have migrated over the surface of the planet; magnetic poles have shifted. All manner of geological changes have occurred. Through it all, the basic chemistry of life has remained fixed since the original ancestor. It is the most permanent feature of the Earth that we know. Therefore, the biogeochemical beginning is still within us: our cells are vesicles wherein the interiors are separated from the exteriors by amphiphilic bilayer membranes. These membranes are a tangible reminder of the beginning and the interrelatedness of all things.

And so it was that primordial chemistry begat amphiphiles, and amphiphiles begat vesicles, and vesicles begat pyrophosphates, and pyrophosphates begat keto acids, and keto acids begat amino acids, and amino acids begat nucleic acids, and nucleic acids begat the genetic code. And chemicals formed the first cells, the universal ancestor. This is the first book of generations. [Close quote]
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"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." —Will Durant, historian

JUST ROBOTICS, PLEASE

What are we to make of so much information which shows us that our deepest beliefs and feelings, our core selves, are made up of bits of wiring in the brain called synaptical systems?

The following is from the book, A BRIEF TOUR OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, by V.S. Ramachandran:

"So, what really causes Capgras syndrome?* To understand this disorder, you have to first realize that vision is not a simple process. When you open your eyes in the morning, it's all out there in front of you and so it's easy to assume that vision is effortless and instantaneous. But in fact within each eyeball, all you have is a tiny distorted upside-down image of the world. This excites the photoreceptors in the retina and the messages then go through the optic nerve to the back of your brain, where they are analyzed in thirty different visual areas. Only after that do you begin to finally identify what you're looking at. Is it your mother? Is it a snake? Is it a pig? And that process of identification takes place partly in a small brain region called the fusiform gyrus—the region which is damaged in patients with face blindness or prosopognosia. Finally, once the image is recognized, the message is relayed to a structure called the amygdala, sometimes called the gateway to the limbic system, the emotional core of your brain, which allows you to gauge the emotional significance of what you are looking at. Is this a predator? Is it prey which I can chase? Is it a potential mate? Or is it my departmental chairman I have to worry about, a stranger who is not important to me, or something utterly trivial like a piece of driftwood? What is it?

"In David's case, perhaps the fusiform gyrus and all the visual areas are completely normal, so his brain tells him that the woman he sees looks like his mother. But, to put it crudely, the "wire" that goes from the visual centers to the amygdala, to the emotional centers, is cut by the accident. So he looks at his mother and thinks, "She looks just like my mother, but if it's my mother why don't I feel anything toward her? No, this can't possibly be my mother, it's some stranger pretending to be my mother." This is the only interpretation that makes sense to David's brain, given the peculiar disconnection."

*Capgras syndrome is a condition in which a patient can recognize some person familiar to herself (like one's own mother) but believes the person is an impostor.


THE POWER OF PRAYER

We’ve heard so much about the healing power of prayer that I think we need to finally prove the efficacy of prayer in a real way. Prayer needs its day in court. The only test that would be legitimate, I think, would be to take 100 lung cancer patients and divide them in half. Fifty of the patients will receive standard medical treatment while the other 50 will try prayer only. They must be true born again believers too and volunteers. Then we can see clearly how the results come out. Will fifty born again, true believing evangelicals please step forward?


WHY IS SOCIALISM BETTER?

A goodly part of this week's U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT (June 20 2005) is given over to a report on China, it's mighty growth. A time is coming when they, still socialist, will surpass America's capitalistic output.

Then there is health. In a recent NEWSWEEK SPECIAL ISSUE on health (Summer, 2005), we discover that science is close to solving hundreds of health problems, yet in America, according to The Institute of Medicine, 18,000 Americans die every year for lack of health coverage. Further, America "ranks 46th in life expectancy (behind Japan, Singapore, Canada and virtually all of Europe and Scandinavia)". Forty-one countries (including the hated Cuba) have achieved lower infant mortality rates.

What's wrong with this picture? Perhaps we need to listen less to those right leaning religious politicians who promise us heaven in heaven but do nothing about the hell on earth some Americans experience on a daily basis. And if you look closely at the countries who lead us in health science and economic growth, you'll see that most of them are what righty Bushites call "socialistic" nations. But perhaps America does still lead the world, does lead the world in going backward to the 19th century when things were really bad for the average bloke.
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"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots." —Rebecca West (Now there's a totally unbiased evaluation of the difference between the sexes.)

VENEZUELA! LATEST BUSH ENEMY

All you got to do in this modern world is wish to aim your government to help the poor, and you become a Bush White House enemy. Condoleeza Rice recently called Venezuela’s new, very popular Presidente, Hugo Cha´vez, “a negative force in the region”. (USAToday, 5/23/05, p. 8A) And why would she, representing Bush, say this, why does Bush want to label this Venezualan an enemy to America? Because Cha´vez is using Venezuela’s oil revenues to help the poor of his country. He’s building health clinics, pushing for increased literacy by improving education, funding many social programs and, generally, building the same kind of social safety net which Bush and his people are busy destroying here in America.

Hugo Cha´vez is spending the wealth of Venezuela’s natural resource, oil, which ought to belong to all the people of the country, on his nation’s people. Yep, old Cha´vez is certainly a negative force for doing good. To the Bushites, a country’s natural resources belong only to the wealthy few who hundreds of years ago got hold of them. Goodness forbid that the natural resources of a country should be dedicated to helping a country’s struggling population to succeed.


NOT TO FEAR! AMERICA’S LOST WORLD RESPECT BEFORE THIS

I’m reading John Martin’s 1977 biography of Adlai Stevenson, ADLAI STEVENSON AND THE WORLD, and am struck frequently by the parallels between the Eisenhower Fifties and our current time under Bush, specially the connection between the rabid hatred of our current religious fundamentalists for progressive Americans and the hatred of the McCarthyites for the progressives of his time, and the consequent affect these negative forces have and had on world opinion.

Note this 1953 response by Adlai to a question about McCarthyism’s negative influence on world opinion. Stevenson was in West Berlin, during a world tour, and he said, “I am distressed by the injury to the American respect and prestige that I have observed all the way from Tokyo to Berlin....” A similar situation to these Bush times, isn’t it? Only this time, it’s our President who is losing us the respect of the world and not just an American senator who was being indulged by a Republican President.

We should remember that soon after these Eisenhower years, within 7 years, we saw the election of John F. Kennedy, and he quickly rekindled the respect of the world. Bush currently may have earned the fear of the world, but Kennedy had the respect of the world. Which would you rather have—respect or fear?


STAR WARS? WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT HUMANITY?

We haven’t even populated the stars yet, and already we are looking forward to, imagining with great enthusiasm, “star wars”! Is there no hope for us there? Will we be forever stuck with the Bible prediction of endless wars?


PERHAPS CULTURE CAN BE GENETICALLY TRANSFERRED

Dr. Stanley Gitlow, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, in a taped talk at the Betty Ford Clinic, tells of an experiment with goldfish who were conditioned by electrical shocks to avoid an orange wall of their fish tank. Ground up later and fed to other goldfish, these sacrificial goldfish bodies served as transmitters of learned behavior to the new goldfish. These newborns were born avoiding the orange walls of the fish tank w/o benefit of shock. Gitlow claims that memory is laid down in polypeptid strands of DNA by which learned traits can be passed on to later generations. This is nurture over nature.
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“Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tires to hit him is a communist.” —Alvin Dark [Nobody ever said that jocks were intelligent!]

THE SAVIOR MYTH

How can anyone not see the connection between the Bible stories of the arisen Christ and the stories that came before as revealed in the short article below, and further, see how the Jesus stories grew out of those earlier myths? Then just how much more sense does it take to imagine those times and how stories were told around the campfire and were woven into the mythologies of the desert tribes and eventually got written down and made powerful by the Roman Empire? All one needs do is to see how in just two-hundred years the Mormon Church has risen out of the dreaming of a madman, named Joseph Smith, who made up out of whole cloth the Book of Mormon, now taken as gospel by how many millions? Just follow the bouncing ball and you can see in this modern Mormon religion how all religions were begun, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity. All one needs do is imagine those days in a realistic way, those days when old age was 30 and none but a few read, and superstition ran riot in the minds of the ignorant, when no one knew about the Atlantic Ocean nor the Pacific. When the world was probably no bigger to the average citizen than a few leagues outside the city wall or the reach of the herdsmen’s herds. Yes, that’s right, Christ never existed except as an ancient myth passed on and passed on and which is still being passed on by those whose imaginations are just not powerful enough to walk in the shoes of the fishermen of those ancient days and then to reflect further and see how myths that lived then still live amongst us in Easter Celebrations and are nothing more than myths.


[Open quote.] Mithra was an ancient sun-god worshipped 600 years before Christ, and whose birthday was celebrated on what is now December 25th (three days after the solstice when the lengthening days became apparent.) His first worshippers were shepherds and he was followed in his travels by 12 companions. Mithra was slain upon a cross in Persia to atone for humankind and take away the sins of the world. His ascension to heaven was celebrated at the spring equinox (Easter).

Quexalcote was a Mexican god worshipped for more than 500 years before Christ. Quexalcote too was said to be born of a virgin, was crucified on a cross, and resurrected three days later.

Horus was born of the virgin Isis in Egypt around 1550 B.C. Horus as an infant received gifts from three kings, and was crucified on a cross. There are close to 200 parallels to the myths of Horus and Jesus Christ.

Attis was worshipped 200 years before Christ and was said to be born of a virgin, Nana. The Attis cult became prominent in Rome, and its influence on Christianity is undeniable, for in Italy, Gaul and Phrygia, early Christians adopted March 25, the day Attis was said to have died, as the date of the passion of Christ.

Krishna, Adonis, Quirinus, and Indra are the names of other god/prophets worshipped before Christ, all said to be born of a virgin and sacrificed to save humankind. All of these myths, including Jesus, are tales woven from even more ancient pagan rituals. Twelve followers symbolize twelve months, three day resurrections symbolize the three months between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and the virgin birth is a metaphor for spiritual renewal.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that "the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." The story of Jesus was copied from earlier theologies and more ancient superstitions.

Information for these articles was taken from copies of NonTracts published by FFRF (Freedom From Religion Foundation) Inc. . [Close quote.]


THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN MYTH

Many people claim to be proponents of Intelligent Design, but very few are reputable scientists. According to H. Allen Orr, in an excellent article, “Devolution” (THE NEW YORKER, May 30, 2005), only two stand out: Michael J. Behe (biologist) and William A. Dembski (mathematician). But even these two, whose seem to be men of integrity, have backed off on their claims. Orr works through these two scientists' major complaints with Darwinism and shows how recent discoveries have answered their challenges. In fact, both men have made recent statements which show their reluctance to push their claims against Darwin’s truths much further.

According to Orr, “Behe has confessed to ‘sloppy prose’ and said he hadn’t meant to imply that irreducibly complex systems ‘by definition’ cannot evolve gradually. ‘I quite agree that my argument against Darwinism does not add up to a logical proof....’ Behe and his followers now emphasize that while irreducibly complex systems can in principle evolve, biologists can’t reconstruct in convincing detail just how any such system did evolve.” Thanks to Orr for clearly devolving Behe’s arguments, and if all Darwin needs is a reconstruction of some irreducibly complex system, I’m sure that clever scientists will eventually supply that last requirement to silence Behe’s arguments.

And Dembski who used complex mathematical formulations to undermine the possibility of evolutionary successes now admits that “I certainly never argued that the N.F.L. theorems provide direct refutation of Darwinism.”

And these admissions come just as the ID people are making huge pushes to bring ID into our public schools as science when it is still only religion warmed over. Interesting also is the “Wedge Document” out of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a leading Intelligent Design pusher, which shows that IDs have no scientific purpose in pushing ID. They clearly have the goal to bring god into science in the classroom.
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“I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.” —Jack Kerouac on god.

HAVING A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GODS

I’ve recently questioned what one means when one says he’s having a “personal relationship” with a god. Is it really a personal relationship like one has with friends, lovers and family? I think not. For one, Jesus can’t respond except as you wish him to respond. It’s certainly just an “imaginary” relationship, based on one’s imaginations about Jesus.

Or is the relationship delusional and sort of an actor’s trick?

An actor studies a character (reads the Bible) he’s to portray and then fills out the character (Jesus) in his or her imagination. He takes the character inside himself and then tries to imagine speaking and thinking just like that character. An actor develops an inward relationship, almost personal, with his character, but most actors know that they are creating the character which they are psychologically relating to. I think that’s what a born again is having, an actor’s relationship with a fictional character that he carries around in his psyche, but unlike the professional, the born again is not able to distinguish his own self-deluding.


GORE VIDAL’S WORLD HOMOSEXUAL VIEW

Strange that in reading Gore Vidal’s fictionalized world histories, the reader can hear so many people who talk so brilliantly. Is it really like that in polite, political society or is that talk a figment of Vidal’s literary imagination? When I was in college in the 60s and 70s, we used to repartee and debate back and forth like that, though not always so brilliantly, so I imagine, if my college peers are now in charge of Washington D.C., they might sound like a Vidal character. Sometimes, though, in Vidal’s sarcastic repartee, I also hear the sound of a bitchy homosexuality in his characters. Don’t ask me why. Am I wrong? Does that say something about my reading skills? Yet, I do enjoy his work. I took a long time to discover his novels of American history. Better, I suppose, late than never.

Speaking of repartee, I still recall a campus movie at Southern Illinois University while I was a grad student there. We watched “The Blue Angel”, a German film about a naive but pedantic authoritarian college professor who becomes entranced by a cabaret woman, played by Marlene Dietrich, to the point that he loses job and career and becomes a clown at the cabaret. Coming out of the film, we were jabbering away about how the pedant reminded us of certain hawks in the Johnson administration and etcetera—endless repartee and dialogue. One of our number, a young man, a musician, who tended not to be as loquacious as the rest of us, when asked what he thought, replied, “German whores sure are fat.” Did I tell this tale in an earlier blog?


BODY: A VEHICLE OF BUDDHIST CONSCIOUSNESS



“And although each may tend to identify himself mainly with his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one’s body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think, then, of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all.” —From MYTHS TO LIVE BY, by Joe Campbell, p. 131.

Yet, isn’t consciousness only experienced as an individual phenomenon, so that consciousness can never be separated from the individual experiencing consciousness? Thus, the abstract concept of consciousness is not outside of consciousness itself and can’t be spoken of except in an individual and distinct sense?


STEVENSON BRINGS BACK MY YOUTH

As I read the Adlai Stevenson biography (1952, his post election loss, through 1965, his death), I’m called back to my youth and how I felt, writing my journals, then, and working on my fiction and poetry, having, all the while, a sense that I would “amount to something”. That’s what retirement means to me, sometimes, now, I fear—a loss of the “sense” that I’ll amount to something, the sense that what I think and do will make a difference. That sense of importance or purpose is the state of mind which I still long for but which I had to give up in order to get and stay sober. In short, I no longer “imagine” that what I do or say makes or will make the slightest difference in the world, and even though nothing I did do ever amounted anything, I still feel very bad about losing the “hope” that I would amount to anything. That’s quite a longing!
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“If you are going to go cross-country skiing, start with a small country.” —from Saturday Night Live

SECULARISTS UNDER SEIGE

The heading above and the article below are all by Spokesman Review writer Shawn Vestal who did a bang-up job of putting together a nice survey of some of our local atheist humanist agnostic freethinking skeptical troubadours. It’s a long one (2500 words), but I wanted to put it in here in its entirety. Your truly is included.

[Open quote] More people in washington and idaho said they had no religion than any other single category, according to an American Religious Identification survey in 2001:

They gather on Sundays. They discuss social issues and moral responsibility. They break bread, sip wine and plan the next potluck. But you wouldn't call the members of the Inland Northwest Freethought Society a congregation. They don't believe in God – or they entertain serious doubts. Where others might pray for guidance, they say they turn to their inner resources. Where others might turn to a belief in heaven for comfort in times of strife or heartbreak, they seek consolation in each other, in family and friends.

"I don't curse religion," says Ross Woodward, a leader in the regional humanist community. "I just don't find it very useful anymore."

Including atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious people, the group's members are part of a population that's feeling embattled lately – the "seculars," as one religious survey calls them. A lot of them are unhappy about what they see as an expansion of religious influence in government and public life, and they feel the country has wandered from what they see as its essentially secular roots.

"I think things are as bad as they've been in a long time," said Susan Harrington, a 40-year-old Boise-area woman who was among the founding members of Idaho Atheists. "In my lifetime, this is the worst it's ever been."

About one in 10 Americans is an atheist, and that figure may be higher in the Inland Northwest, where church affiliation is among the lowest in the nation. Still, vast majorities of Americans say they believe in God and identify themselves as Christian. And the political activity of evangelical Christians has boomed – USA Today recently called them "the most powerful emerging force in American politics today."

Seculars say they object only when religious belief is inserted into government, when government endorses religion through funding, or when religious beliefs are used to influence scientific fact.

Groups such as the Boise-based Idaho Atheists, Spokane's Humanist Focus Group of the Inland Northwest and the Inland Northwest Freethought Society – an organization of about 30 that meets one Sunday a month – provide a forum for discussion and socialization for people who say they sometimes feel alone in a religious society.

"You have freedom of religion in this country," says Sherrie Nash-Bryant, a 57-year-old Spokane atheist, "and I would argue you should also have freedom not to be religious."

Of course, many others – particularly religious others – see things in a dramatically different light. Many Christians are unhappy about what they see as an expansion of secular influence in government and public life, and they feel the country has wandered from what they see as its essentially religious roots.

"People were trying for freedom of religion" when the country was founded, said Brad Benson, a Spokane senator. "They try to say it's freedom from religion." Benson describes himself as a "basic Christian."

Evangelicals argue that God is being forced out of public life. Seculars argue he's being forced in.

"In short, what I think is going on is a battle for cultural dominance of two different sets of values," said Dale Soden, a Whitworth history professor.

EVOLUTION OF BELIEFS

If there's a typical atheist, it's not Ray Ideus.

A Lutheran pastor and minister for about 30 years, Ideus found his beliefs gradually shifting over his career as a rather freethinking member of the clergy. His doubts had grown substantial by his retirement, but it took a while to acknowledge the change.

"I think it was 10 years before I really admitted I was an atheist," said Ideus, 73, a jovial man who retired to north Spokane with his wife, Lorraine.

Growing up, Ideus said, "I believed God created the world in six 24-hour days. In college, the professor started talking about the Stone Age."

He slaps his forehead theatrically.

"Holy cow! The Stone Age doesn't fit in."

Ideus has a hard time pinning down a single moment when his beliefs changed. He began to doubt the primacy of the Lutheran faith and took steps – such as performing interracial marriages – that more traditionalist clergy would not.

After a divorce, he was guided into the chaplaincy, he said, because his church wasn't comfortable with divorced pastors. As he worked at a drop-in center with Native American students in Lawrence, Kan., he began to develop more respect for other faiths and less certainty about his own. He began to identify strains of cultural chauvinism in religion and to worry that people were basing ideas he considered bigoted or unwarranted on religious faith.

"One day I just sat in my office and said, 'Why am I here? Why do I choose to sit here on the edge?' "

But Ideus felt trapped – not by ideology, but by worldly needs.

"Can you imagine being a professional and jumping out of that to where you're almost unemployable?"

Other atheists in the Inland Northwest describe different journeys.

Woodward, who grew up in a Canadian Mormon family, had a high school science teacher who exposed him to the ideas of Thomas Malthus – that human populations would always outpace natural resources. That led Woodward to Darwin, and he began reading widely among prominent thinkers.

"So many of them had no use for religion," said Woodward, 78. "They just had no need for it."

His split from religion was gradual; when he and his family moved to Spokane in 1959, he just stopped identifying himself as a Mormon or religious in any way.

He started a group now known as the Humanist Focus Group of the Inland Northwest in 1995. "The purpose of our group is to give an intellectual and social milieu for like-minded people," he said.

Dennis Bower, vice president of the Inland Northwest Freethought Society, recalls performing in the Christmas pageant at his Presbyterian church when he was a child. "It occurred to me that this is not a lot different than the Santa Claus myth," said Bower, 50.

Others in Bower's group also talk about making their conversion as children. But for George Thomas, a 67-year-old retired Spokane man and frequent critic of religion on The Spokesman-Review's letters page, the journey to atheism was both long and strange.

He grew up in an irreligious family, was baptized into the Southern Baptist church by his grandparents, declared himself an atheist at 20, attended the Lutheran church with his first wife and checked out the Church of the Nazarene on his own.

In the last several years, Thomas has reverted to atheism. That change was prompted by an increased interest in science, particularly evolutionary science and research into consciousness. He talks about a history of knowledge being squelched by religious fundamentalists ranging back to the early astronomers. And he essentially boils his belief down to an existential statement: If God does not exist in the real, observable world, then for human purposes God does not exist.

Like many local humanists, Thomas is interested in discussing evolution, intelligent design and other scientific issues. Also like other members of the group, he is passionate about his beliefs, referring people to books and articles and holding his own in any debate.

"My preaching," he said after coughing during a recent interview, "is going to cost me my voice."

DIFFERENT WORLDS

There is perhaps an unbridgeable gulf between atheists and Christians – at least between the most ardent and outspoken in each camp. Even when the two sides engage in civil discussion, each has a world view that precisely opposes the other's – night and day, black and white.

Thomas is troubled by the rise of what he calls the "political Christian," versus what he calls the "dying Christian" – the kind who "prayed in the closet and served others." To him, the Constitution clearly establishes America as a secular state in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law establishing a religion or restricting the free exercise thereof."

In a diverse society, say those who argue for the separation of church and state, any apparent support of a religion will naturally exclude people of other faiths – or of no faith. So the First Amendment calls, in their view, for a secular state.

To Lynn Schindler, however, the Constitution says something very different about religion – that the government should not establish a religion or a state-sanctioned church. Nonreligious people have used the idea of a separation of church and state to restrict the free speech of Christians, she said.

"We used to be able to have Christmas called Christmas," said Schindler, a state representative from Otis Orchards. "Now it's winter holiday – which in my mind is going out of the way to suppress the freedom that we have always enjoyed."

Where atheists see a growing trend against science and Enlightenment principles, believers see a growing effort to recapture the society for a heretofore silent majority. Where atheists see Christians asserting improper influence, Christians see themselves as finally speaking up. They don't feel they ought to be expected to pray only in a closet.

"Christians now feel like it's OK for them to vote their beliefs," said Benson, the Spokane senator.

Benson sees Christianity as a foundation for morality, and one that is important for public servants to have.

"I'd be worried about what moral compass does this guy have if he's a devout atheist?" he said.

That's the kind of comment that drives many atheists crazy – equating religion with morality. Harrington, the Boise woman, said she hates to see people cringe when she tells them she's an atheist.

Sometimes they say: "Oh, but you're so nice."

Seculars say their morality derives from an interest in humanity and helping others, and they tend to see religions as corrupt or corruptible – the kind of comment that might drive believers crazy.

For Lorraine Ideus – the wife of the retired Lutheran minister – one of the first steps away from the Lutheranism of her youth was meeting nonreligious people whom she considered moral.

"I met a lot of non-Lutherans who were just as good as I was," she said. "I was taught that people who didn't go to church were not good people, and I began to see that's just not so."

"INNER RESOURCES"

When Doranne Miller's daughter was 5 or 6 years old, she asked her mother whether there was really a God.

"The first thing out of my mouth was, 'A lot of people think so,' " Miller said. " 'I don't, but a lot of people believe very, very strongly.' "

Miller said her daughter – who now shares her beliefs – attended church with friends and came to her own conclusion.

"My values require that my children see all points of view and hear the whole story from everybody and make up their own minds in the long term," Miller said. "That's what freethinking is about."

Atheists say they understand the appeal of religion to many people – though they tend to view religious belief as something they've grown out of. At the meeting of the Inland Northwest Freethought Society on a recent Sunday at Arbor Crest, members discussed the ways their world view affects their daily lives.

For instance, though the members do not believe in God, some of them described prayer-like activities. One said she had prayed to an invented deity at a moment of strife – a process of thinking through the situation that she found very comforting. Others said that in circumstances when a believer might pray, an atheist might do something meditative – looking inward, to their knowledge and strength, to get through rough times.

"I turn to my inner resources," Ray Ideus said.

For comfort and community, they turn to friends and family – and to groups like the Inland Northwest Freethought Society.

"I'm sure in many religious groups, that's really what people are deriving comfort from," Miller said.

Humanists also say they gain comfort – and moral authority – from the idea of helping others in concrete ways. For some, that means working to promote social programs that help the less fortunate. For Nash-Bryant, it means playing the fiddle and mandolin at nursing homes.

"It's comforting for them," she said, "and you brought that to them."

PRAYING FOR RAIN

America is a stubbornly religious country. While other Westernized democracies around the world tend to show a decline in religious faith the longer they're around, Americans' belief in God remains high.

A lot of seculars think that's changing more than the numbers reflect. For one thing, they note that the number of people who are "spiritual but not religious" keeps increasing, and say that – for some people – expressions of faith in God and Christianity may sometimes be nothing more than the expected norm that people carry from years of socialization.

They also say that many non-religious people – those who may not actively define themselves as agnostic or atheist, but who lack belief – may keep it to themselves, to protect family or friends or out of a desire to avoid confrontation.

"I really deep down think that more and more people are falling away from religion," said Lorraine Ideus. "But right now it's not a popular time to admit that."

The National Study of Youth and Religion, conducted in 2002-03, shows that religious faith remains strong among American teens – 80 percent say they believe in God, and 3 percent don't.

But for many kids, faith takes the form of "moralistic therapeutic deism," according to researcher Christian Smith – a belief that was described in a Salon.com story as believing that "God is an undemanding, all-fulfilling entity existing only to help us feel better about ourselves."

Smith, in the Salon interview, said that many teens had little actual knowledge of religious teachings. The idea of making a personal commitment to Christ "can turn into thinking that Jesus is your buddy. … it can easily slide into thinking like 'I prayed for a parking spot, and God gave it to me.' "

Ray Ideus, the former Lutheran pastor, argues that religious belief along those lines is actually damaging – prompting already comfortable Americans to pray for their own comfort and diverting them from helping the truly needy.

He remembers that he was once at a clown convention – even before his conversion to atheism, Ideus was unorthodox – when another conventioneer told him why she never prayed for rain.

The way she figured it, he said, if God heard her prayer for rain but doesn't hear the prayers of millions starving to death around the world, "he's got his priorities mixed up."

"After that," Ideus said, "I never prayed for rain."

AT A GLANCE WHO IS SECULAR?

"Seculars" are non-religious people, including atheists – those who don't believe in God or phenomena beyond the observable world – and agnostics, those who believe it is impossible to know whether God exists.

But the category includes a wide range of beliefs and does not preclude spirituality. Among other terms used are naturalist, skeptic or freethinker.

The American Humanist Association defines humanism as "a progressive life stance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity."

The Council for Secular Humanism defines the term as a world view that might include: a commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific methods; a conviction that ideologies must be tested rather than accepted on faith; a search for the principles of ethical conduct, principles judged by their ability to improve human well-being. Specific beliefs, of course, vary by individual. According to a 2003 Harris Poll, 10 percent of Americans don't believe in God; 16 percent don't believe in miracles or heaven; 32 percent don't believe in the devil; and 49 percent don't believe in ghosts. [Close quote]

by Shawn Vestal of the Spokesman Review (July 10, 2005)
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"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." —James Thurber

OLD TIME PROP FOR MY PREJUDICES AGAINST THE RIGHT WING

I can't tell you how many years I've believed the following characterization of authoritarian people in order to justify my mistrust of conservatives. One of the movies I've always accepted which showed this in the earliest days is the German film "Blue Angel" which was made by Germans in Germany. What am I to think now?

"What was there about the German people that had led to this horror? The answer proposed was that their rigid father-oriented upbringing had caused them to develop an “authoritarian personality,” characterized by an “intolerance of ambiguity” and passive compliance to authority figures. Authoritarianism achieved the status of a psychopathological syndrome in and of itself, to be distinguished from normal psychological functioning; paper-and-pencil scales of it were developed that asked subjects to endorse or reject such statements as “respect for parents and authorities are the most important virtues that children can learn.” To accuse someone of being authoritarian became the same sort of insult that accusing someone of being “passive-aggressive or “sexists’ would later become. Authoritarians were thought to be particularly prevalent on the extremes of the political right and left, although they could be found anywhere. Unlike the rest of us, authoritarians were unthinking, gullible, passive sheep who in group settings could be led by accepted authorities to wreak great havoc on the world." (from HOUSE OF CARDS by Robyn Dawes, p. 201)


WE CAN'T AFFORD RELIGIONISTS

America is facing tough economic and cultural times. We need to rally to our secular, scientific and technical traditions. Now is not the time to try to compete with our superstitious, religious, unscientific Moslem neighbors in the Middle East, trying to out-religion them as our fundamentalist Christians would like us to do. Though some Americans can compete with the religiosity, ignorance and anti-intellectual aims of the Moslem nations, most Americans are still, I hope, made of much more realistic and practical stuff. Come on, America, roll up your sleeves and return to the secularism of your founding fathers who built this nation into a mighty engine for democracy, not by religiosity but by industry, science, technology and hard-headed realism. These namby-pamby Christian types will only sink us into the ignorance of the backward Moslem nations we are currently struggling against.


LIFE STUFF IS EASILY CREATED BY MEN

Here's some good science, even twenty something years old by Carl Sagan:

“In my laboratory at Cornell University we work on, among other things, prebiological organic chemistry, making some of the music of life. We mix together and spark the gases of the primitive Earth: hydrogen, water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide—all present, incidentally, on the planet Jupiter today and throughout the Cosmos. The sparks correspond to lightning, also present on the ancient Earth and on modern Jupiter. The reaction vessel is initially transparent: the precursor gases are entirely invisible. But after ten minutes of sparking, we see a strange brown pigment slowly streaking the sides of the vessel. The interior gradually becomes opaque, covered with a thick brown tar. If we had used ultraviolet light—simulating the early Sun—the results would have been more or less the same. The tar is an extremely rich collection of complex organic molecules, including the constituent parts of proteins and nucleic acids. The stuff of life, it turns out, can be very easily made.” (COSMOS, Carl Sagan, p. 38)

That's right—life is easily made. It's not so tough that only a hypothetical superbeing can do it. Don't let the religious right, mumbo jumbo us into intellectual backwardness.


HEROES

Today, I heard a man called a hero because he found a lost child while part of a search party. Is that all it takes to be a hero nowadays? Well, let me tell you, I'm a hero too. Yesterday, in a crowded elevator, I held in a mighty bean fart which might have decimated the entire elevator population. It really hurt to hold that mighty bomb in check, let me tell you.
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"Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps." —Emo Philips

WAR WAR WAR, AND THEN SOME, BUT NOT FOR GROTIUS

Pick your poison!

[Open quote] To summarize, then: There has been from earliest times the idea that war (of one kind or another) is not only inevitable and good but also the normal and most exhilarating mode of social action of civilized mankind, the waging of war being the normal delight, as well as duty, of kings. A monarch neither engaged in nor preparing to be engaged in war would be, according to this way of thinking, a fool: a “paper tiger.

But, on the other hand, in the annals of world history accounts are to be found also of a diametrically opposite point of view to this, where the aim is to become quit of war and strife altogether in a state of perpetual peace. However, the usual corollary of this aspiration is that, since strife and pain are intrinsic to temporal existence, life itself, as we know it, is to be negated. Examples of this negativism are seen most strikingly in India, in Jainism and early (Hinayana) Buddhism, but have appeared also in the West, as in certain early Christian movements, and in twelfth-century France among the Albigenses.

Reviewing the mythologies of war, we have found in both the Torah and Koran a belief that God, the creator and sole governor of the universe, was absolutely and always on the side of a certain chosen community, and that its wars, consequently, were Holy Wars, waged in the name and interest of God’s will. A not very different notion inspired the “Flowery Wars” of the Aztecs for the capture of sacrifices to keep the sun in motion. In the Iliad, on the other hand, the sympathies of the Olympians are on both sides of the combat, the Trojan War itself being interpreted not in cosmic but in earthly, human terms: it was a war for the recovery of a stolen wife. And the noble ideal of the human warrior-hero was there expressed in the character and words not of a Greek, but of a Trojan hero, Hector. I see here an evident contrast to the spirit of the two Semitic war mythologies, and an affinity, on the other hand, to the Indian Mahabharata. The forthright resolution of Hector, going into combat in fulfillment of his clear duty to his family and city, and the “self-control” (the yoga) required of Arjuna in the Gita, in fulfillment of the duties of his caste, are of essentially the same order. Moreover, in the Indian as in the Greek epic, there is equal honor and respect bestowed on the combatants of both sides.

But now, and finally, we have discovered also in our survey a third point of view in relation to the ideals and aims of war and peace, neither affirming nor denying war as life, and life as war, but aspiring to a time when wars should cease. In the Persian Zoroastrian eschatological myth, which appears to have been the first in which such a prospect was seriously envisioned, the day of the great transformation was to be in the nature of a cosmic, crisis, when the laws of nature would cease to operate and an eviternity of no time, no change, no life as we know life then come into being. Ironically, there would be wars enough during the centuries of struggle just antecedent to this general transfiguration. Within the Persian Empire itself, however, there was to flourish and increase, meanwhile, a prefigurative reign of relative peace—enforced by imperial spies, informants, and police; and with the expansion of this peaceful empire, the bounds of the reign of temporal peace also would expand—until. . . .

But we have heard the likes of all this more recently and close at hand. The idea, as we have seen, became assimilated to the Biblical image of Israel; and in the period of the Dead Sea Scrolls passed on into apocalyptic Christianity (see Mark 13:3—37). It is the idea essentially of the dar al-Islam and dar al-harb of the Arabs. And we have it again in the peace of Moscow—spies, informers, police crackdowns, and all.

As far as I know, there is, in addition to these, only one more thought about war and peace to he found among the great traditions, and that is the one first announced by the eminent seventeenth-century Dutch legal philosopher Grotius, in 1625, in his epochal treatise on The Rights of War and Peace. Here, for the first time in the history of mankind, the proposal is offered of a law of nations based on ethical, not jungle principles. In India the governing law of international relations has for centuries been known as the matsya nyaya, “law of the fish,” which is, to wit, that the big ones eat the little ones and the little ones have to be smart. War is the natural duty of princes, and periods of peace are merely interludes, like periods of rest between boxing rounds. Whereas war in Grotius’s view is a breach of the proper civilized norm, which is peace; and its aim should be to produce peace, a peace not enforced by might of arms, but of rational mutual interest. This, in turn, was the ideal that Woodrow Wilson represented when he spoke, at the end of the First World War, of “peace without victory.” And we have the ideal symbolized also in the figure of our American eagle, which is pictured with a cluster of arrows in the talons of its left foot, an olive branch in its right, and its head—in the spirit of Grotius— turned rightward, facing the olive branch. Let us hope, however, in the name of peace, that he keeps those arrowheads over there sharp until neither asceticism nor the power of arms, but an understanding of mutual advantage, will have become for all mankind the guarantee, at long last, of a knowledge of the reign of peace. [Close quote]

All the above is from MYTHS TO LIVE BY by Joseph Campbell
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"There is no such thing as fun for the whole family." —Jerry Seinfeld

IT WAS CALLED MCCARTHYISM THEN,
NOW IT'S CALLED CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM

In the 1950s Americans had to face the ugly face of slander present in the scowls of Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. Now we have the ugly, religious and oppressive face of fundamentalism in the face of Tom Delay of Texas, and others. Some of us may not think that what's going on now in America, when to disagree is called the work of Satan, is truly warmed over McCarthyism, but here's a bit of a March 6, 1954 speech by Adlai Stevenson at Miami Beach, during the height of McCarthyism. Many politicians, specially Eisenhower, were afraid to tackle Senator Joe McCarthy, but Adlai Stevenson was not. Note how Stevenson's comments could easily be expressed today by Democrats, liberals or anyone who dares question current Republican leadership and who are promptly assailed as traitors:


"This has been a fateful week in the history of American government. We are witnessing the bitter harvest from the seeds of slander, defamation, and disunion planted in the soil of our democracy. I do not propose to respond in kind tonight to the calculated campaign of deceit to which we have been exposed of late, nor to the insensate attacks on Democrats as traitors, Communists, and murderers of our sons....

"The loyalty and patriotism of a whole political party, of one half of the nation, has been indicted. Twenty years of bipartisan effort, highly intelligent and highly successful, has been called 'twenty years of treason'—under the auspices of the Republican National Committee....

"That such things are said under the official sponsorship of the Republican Party in celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln adds desecration to defamation. This is the first time that politicians, Republicans at that, have sought to split the Union—in Lincoln's honor....

"Extremism produces extremism, lies beget lies.... And those who live by the sword of slander also may perish by it.... When demagoguery and deceit become a national political movement, we Americans are in trouble; not just Democrats, but all of us.

"Our State Department has been abused and demoralized.... The American voice abroad has been enfeebled. Our educational system has been attacked; our press threatened; our servants of God impugned; a former President maligned; the Executive Departments invaded; our foreign policy confused; the President himself patronized....

"And why, you ask, have the demagogues triumphed so often?

"The answer is inescapable: because a group of political plungers has persuaded the President that McCarthyism [Christian fundamentalism] is the best Republican formula for political success...." (From ADLAI STEVENSON by John Martin, pp. 104-105)


PRESIDENT KENNEDY COULD ALSO TELL US
WHY CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM IS UNAMERCAN

According ot Adlai Stevenson's biographer, John Martin, p. 135, Stevenson in the Fifties set up the themes which were later proclaimed by Kennedy, such as the following theme from a Kennedy speech in 1960 which calls for a forward looking, progressive, might I say, "scientific" attitude in America's future:

"This is not merely a contest between Mr. Nixon and myself. In a very real sense it is not just a contest between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. It is a contest between all citizens of this country who believe that progress is our most noble product, who believe it incumbent upon us as the chief example of freedom to build a strong and vital society, and between those who wish to stand still [to go in reverse]. I ask your help. I ask you to join us. I ask you to help us move this country forward." —JFK


MORE ON MCCARTHYISM THAT SOUNDS LIKE RELIGIOUS NOWISM

In another speech from Cooper's Union in NYC, during the 1954 mid-term election season, Stevenson responded to a typically nasty Vice-President Nixon speech which charged that disagreement equaled treason, that to seek election of Democrats was an act of treason against the Eisenhower Congress. Where have we heard that recently?

[Open quote] ". . . I fear that irresponsible politicians, tearing the nation apart in the search for votes, have recklessly damaged our freedom, our self-respect, and our unity of national purpose. The challenge is not just to win elections. The greater challenge is to live as a proud and free nation in a future so precarious and so threatening that we can risk no missteps or miscalculations. We need to unite our country, not to divide it; to heal wounds, not to enlarge them. The times demand, not mistrust and suspicion and fear, but more mutual respect and confidence and understanding than we have ever before had in our history." [Campaigns such as this [Nixon's] threatened to] "corrupt the very processes on which the functioning of democratic government depends. To say that one or another American lacks patriotism or favors Communism or wants to subvert our freedom—when his only crime is the crime of disagreement—is to shake our system to the foundation. If we lose our faith in each other, we have lost everything; and no party victory is worth this.... I would plead with all Americans to cleanse their minds of suspicion and hate; to recognize that men may differ about issues without differing about their faith in America or their belief in freedom...." [Close quote]
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"I went around the world last year and you want to know something? It hates each other." —Edward J. Mannix

THE UNIVERSE STILL MAKING THINGS UP

From SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Sept. 2004, p. 91: “The classical universe is really no less arbitrary than the quantum one. The difference is where the arbitrariness comes in. In classical physics, it goes back to the dawn of time; once the universe was created, it played itself out as a set piece. In quantum mechanics, the universe makes things up as it goes along, partly through the intervention of observers.”


OF COURSE LUTHER KNEW WHAT WAS UP!

Martin Luther knew that Copernicus’s work [he discovered that the Earth circles the Sun] was the work of “an upstart astrologer.... This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Sacred Scripture tells us,” Luther said, “that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still and not the Earth.”

Ah, yes, Sacred Scripture! How often has it been right when confronted with the hard edge of scientific methodology? Evidently Martin Luther nor Joshua knew that the Earth circles the Sun. Their god, the intelligent designer, it seems, doesn’t know how his own universe works, according to the book he commanded to be written in his name. (COSMOS, p. 53)


KEPLER HONORED HIS IDEA OF GOD AND FOUND SCIENCE

Kepler thought that God’s Creation was perfect. Studying the Creation was heavenly to him until he discovered that heavenly perfection is a relative concept. Kepler asked questions with an integrity that modern fundamentalists are afraid to muster up as they cower in the dusty, ancient caverns of their Bibles. Kepler asked, “If the world was crafted by God, should it not be examined closely? Was not all of creation an expression of the harmonies in the mind of God?” (COSMOS, Sagan, p. 56)

Before Kepler, humankind believed that the planets traveled in perfect circles, reflecting the wonderful mind of the Geometer god they worshipped. The circle was perfect, so the planets must travel in perfect circles. Kepler, however, through careful measurement, saw that the Sun affected the paths of the planets into elliptical orbits. “Somehow, the distant planets sensed the Sun’s presence.” He made a comparison to magnetism to explain the yet unknown “gravity”.

Kepler was excommunicated from the Lutheran Church “for uncompromising individualism on matters of doctrine.” (COSMOS, pp. 64-65) “Uncompromising individuality”...! The Lutheran Church was not to be outdone by the Catholic Church in censoring scientific methodology... and what else did you expect from the Church?

Instead of going to the creation itself for a glimpse of the mind of god, theologically inclined Christians, Jews and Moslems went and go to the faulty books men of the past wrote long before the scientific method was well established. Will our current fundamentalists have the political strength to pull us into the backward past?


IT’S SO OBVIOUS

It’s so obvious when you read the history of religions—the history of gods actually—that religions are just stories we human animals tell ourselves to explain the origins and purposes of life as the generations experienced them. No one explanation can be “the” explanation. There are so many of them, and it’s so obvious that political power has much to do with which religions survived and which didn’t and don’t. It’s so obvious once you reach a certain detached viewpoint that religions are bunk. Yet people do cling ot them, stay inside the narrow people-centered boundaries of their various religions.


PEOPLE LOOKED UP AND FOUND GODS

From COSMOS, p. 47: “The ability to read the calendar in the skies was literally a matter of life and death”. Planting, hunting, gathering together with other tribes for commerce and trade depended on reading the signs in the skies. No wonder that eventually gods were discovered in those heavens and then, later, were brought down to Earth to rule here. All of this is so primitive and retrograde... how come modern peoples can still cling to such ancient belief systems?
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“God seems to have left the receiver off the hook.” —Arthur Koestler