CREATIONIST GALL
Creationists set no limits to their deceit. The other day I was looking over one of their web sites in which they were discussing how to get around the idea that so many feathered serpents, dinosaurs and lizards are being found in China that they’ve got to face the possibility that, perhaps, science is actually looking at fossils of missing links between dinosaurs and birds. The creationists use many tricks, such as casting doubt on the evidence, saying that it’s manufactured, even suggesting (without evidence) that there’s a factory in China which manufactures false fossils, or they use one argument to discredit one piece of data, then turn that argument on its head to discredit another piece of evidence. This flip-flop is exactly how they pretend to be scientific in order to argue against scientific data but, then, fail to use science to discredit the claim that there is a “spiritual world” out there beyond time and space. A claim for which there is absolutely no data. Creationists are extremely dishonest and duplicitous.
But the most worrisome lie for someone who understands sophisticated lying is their claim that the Bible has nothing to say about “feathered dinosaurs”; therefore, “feathered dinosaurs” must be okay with the Bible. I’ve got to admire their gall, turning ignorance into wisdom. Neither does the Bible say anything about computers or automobiles or gasoline. The list of things not in the Bible would run into millions of items. Now the reason these things aren’t in the Bible is that no one had heard of them in those days. The Bible writers were as ignorant of the modern world as a pile of turnips, but the creationist apologists turn that ignorance into a strength. They claim that everything the Bible writers didn’t know about, had never heard of, is, therefore, okay with the Bible. They pretend that the Bible writers knew about all these things but just didn’t bother to write them in.
How can you argue with such gall, such conceited and conscientious lying? See some feathered dinosaurs!
BUSH STALLS DEMOCRACY IN LEBANON
George Bush’s attack of Iraq is unsettling one Middle-Eastern democracy:
“The term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a staunch Syrian ally, was scheduled to expire this November. The Lebanese Constitution prevents presidents from standing for consecutive six-year terms. Yet there had been rumors circulating for the past several months that Syria, which has many allies within the Lebanese political establishment, might wish to see the Constitution amended to allow Lahoud to stand again for a new term.”
As Bush sought to force his will on Lebanon, a “call went out to the members of the Lebanese government to convene 12 hours later. The next morning the Cabinet voted to amend the Constitution and extend the term of an overwhelmingly unpopular president who had himself publicly admitted that he had failed domestically, even though he had ‘succeeded in his regional strategic policies.’ ”
From the Lebanese Daily Star
BUSH STIFLES DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA TOO
Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, (Oct. 11, 2004, p. 29) writes that “. . . the Bush camp has told undecided voters hoping to participate in this week’s ‘town meeting debate’ that they are not welcome. Apparently the idea of the president’s having to respond to someone who hasn’t made up his [sic] mind is too intimidating for the leader of the free world.”
THE JINN GAME
According to Islamic belief, a jinni can take any physical form or possess a human, but according to Abu Yussuf, a Moslem from Michigan, who has caught the faith healing ways of American televangelists, "The powers I command can help people who are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a glance of hope."
Read more at An Islamic faith healer talks about his profession.
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"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy." —Oscar Wilde
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
SEX AND STUFF
A Newsweek report (Oct. 4, 2004, p. 44) tells us that “hooking up” is a new campus phenomena. One researcher, Professor Elizabeth Paul, claims “... it’s the campus norm. If you’re a normal college student, you do it.”
Of course, not all the hooking up is actually fornication. Some people just smooch a lot with deep tongue kissing. For others, it’s oral sex and for others, it’s rounding all the bases, a home run, going all the way! That’s what we called “doing the nasty” when I was kid. Professor Paul thinks that as many as 78% of all college students have hooked up by the time graduation rolls around.
Why would this phenomena appear, we ask? One study suggests that college students, because of the pressures of competition, don’t have time for the commitments of full time relationships.
Could something healthy come out of all of this? Allison Caruthers, a Michigan Ph.D student who’s researching “hooking up”, “cites research showing that people who’ve experimented with alcohol or marijuana are often psychologically healthier than people who abstained entirely. She believes there’s a similarity in hookups.”
From my own experience, a once-upon-a-time heavy-drinking, four times married, three times divorced, man, I’d say that experience is worth something. I feel about as free as a person can feel, self-directed nowadays and married by choice finally rather then by the normal obsessive/compulsive drives which used to motivate me. Granted, if you looked back at all the struggle and suffering I put myself and others through, you might agree with those many religious people who turn back quickly to their early religious indoctrination rather than discover the hard-earned ultimate human freedom which is empty of god. They’d say that freedom isn’t worth all the pain; best to turn it all over to their mythology and don’t argue with it. Let me assure you that freedom is precious. . . if you survive the bouncy flight and bumpy landing.
DRAFTING THE BUSH DODGE
In an article about a possible military draft by Jonathan Alter in the Oct. 4, 2004 Newsweek, I came across an interesting comment by the columnist which I think is very true but which conventional wisdom would argue is false:
“One thing we’ve learned about Bush is that he has never taken a position that he knew beforehand would be politically unpopular, including invading Iraq.” (p. 39)
By the way, Newsweek, in Alter’s article, was nearly a week ahead of our local paper, the Spokesman Review, in reporting the threats to our soldiers that they’d better reenlist or face being sent to Iraq. Look, I think there should be a draft with nothing but medical and age deferments allowed. Unless, we put our children and their fathers on the line, we never get to face just how important the cause is. It’s so easy for cowboys like George to send off a few of our fathers, mothers and children to war if most of us have nothing at stake. It’s so easy to pay lip service in support of a president’s bullheadedness if we have nothing to lose personally. That’s always been the weakness in an all-volunteer army, that we have no stake in their deployment.
EXISTENTIALISM FROM DOSTOEVSKY TO SARTRE
I never did finish this book, and this is why:
I do feel that I live in a different world than these ancient philosophers. . Most of their problems are not my problems. Their way of approaching reality is not my way. They seem, and I mean no disrespect, from a far distant time, almost as if their consciousness is of another species. As they try to divide the world into categories for discussion, I see errors and falsehoods in their simplest statements. For example, by Ortega: “The stone is given its existence. . . [man] has to make his own existence.” (p. 153)
What the hell does that mean? Who gives the stone its existence? How simply insufficient for modern men are generalized statement like Ortega’s! So much changes for us when we fully accept the possibility that we are almost robotic in most of our functions and thoughts. All the terms for discussion alter.
___________________________________________________
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are." —Gore Vidal
A Newsweek report (Oct. 4, 2004, p. 44) tells us that “hooking up” is a new campus phenomena. One researcher, Professor Elizabeth Paul, claims “... it’s the campus norm. If you’re a normal college student, you do it.”
Of course, not all the hooking up is actually fornication. Some people just smooch a lot with deep tongue kissing. For others, it’s oral sex and for others, it’s rounding all the bases, a home run, going all the way! That’s what we called “doing the nasty” when I was kid. Professor Paul thinks that as many as 78% of all college students have hooked up by the time graduation rolls around.
Why would this phenomena appear, we ask? One study suggests that college students, because of the pressures of competition, don’t have time for the commitments of full time relationships.
Could something healthy come out of all of this? Allison Caruthers, a Michigan Ph.D student who’s researching “hooking up”, “cites research showing that people who’ve experimented with alcohol or marijuana are often psychologically healthier than people who abstained entirely. She believes there’s a similarity in hookups.”
From my own experience, a once-upon-a-time heavy-drinking, four times married, three times divorced, man, I’d say that experience is worth something. I feel about as free as a person can feel, self-directed nowadays and married by choice finally rather then by the normal obsessive/compulsive drives which used to motivate me. Granted, if you looked back at all the struggle and suffering I put myself and others through, you might agree with those many religious people who turn back quickly to their early religious indoctrination rather than discover the hard-earned ultimate human freedom which is empty of god. They’d say that freedom isn’t worth all the pain; best to turn it all over to their mythology and don’t argue with it. Let me assure you that freedom is precious. . . if you survive the bouncy flight and bumpy landing.
DRAFTING THE BUSH DODGE
In an article about a possible military draft by Jonathan Alter in the Oct. 4, 2004 Newsweek, I came across an interesting comment by the columnist which I think is very true but which conventional wisdom would argue is false:
“One thing we’ve learned about Bush is that he has never taken a position that he knew beforehand would be politically unpopular, including invading Iraq.” (p. 39)
By the way, Newsweek, in Alter’s article, was nearly a week ahead of our local paper, the Spokesman Review, in reporting the threats to our soldiers that they’d better reenlist or face being sent to Iraq. Look, I think there should be a draft with nothing but medical and age deferments allowed. Unless, we put our children and their fathers on the line, we never get to face just how important the cause is. It’s so easy for cowboys like George to send off a few of our fathers, mothers and children to war if most of us have nothing at stake. It’s so easy to pay lip service in support of a president’s bullheadedness if we have nothing to lose personally. That’s always been the weakness in an all-volunteer army, that we have no stake in their deployment.
EXISTENTIALISM FROM DOSTOEVSKY TO SARTRE
I never did finish this book, and this is why:
I do feel that I live in a different world than these ancient philosophers. . Most of their problems are not my problems. Their way of approaching reality is not my way. They seem, and I mean no disrespect, from a far distant time, almost as if their consciousness is of another species. As they try to divide the world into categories for discussion, I see errors and falsehoods in their simplest statements. For example, by Ortega: “The stone is given its existence. . . [man] has to make his own existence.” (p. 153)
What the hell does that mean? Who gives the stone its existence? How simply insufficient for modern men are generalized statement like Ortega’s! So much changes for us when we fully accept the possibility that we are almost robotic in most of our functions and thoughts. All the terms for discussion alter.
___________________________________________________
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are." —Gore Vidal
Monday, October 11, 2004
ENDLESS DEBATE IN WHICH I REPEAT MYSELF FUNDAMENTALLY
From: D.O.
To: "George Thomas"
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:46:16 -0700
Subject: Re: Slight corrections on last message.
[Dear Blog Reader: because of the nature of the editing facilities of this web site, I'm unable to use colors as I did during the following exchange with D.O. Basically, he sent me a three paragraph response to an earlier email, and, then, I broke up his message into fragments and responded to each of Dave's observations, charges and claims. In each segment, separated by a line, the opening statement is Dave's, and my reply follows.]
1) i continually am amazed that you refuse to say how much your science and "facts" are based on guesswork and faith. the gradual changes that blend together are not fact.
Science is based on research, observation, and facts, not guesswork. The hypothesis is a “guess”, but no hypothesis becomes a fact until it has become a theory and has been tested and peer reviewed. Science is a method for arriving at the truth; it doesn’t claim to be a finished thing like Bibles and Korans do. The facts are what we see before us. For the thousandth time: science only explains the natural, material world. If you want to say, on the basis of an ancient book of prophecy, that some invisible, intangible force you call god started the whole ball of wax going, then I won’t argue with you. I can’t. Go ahead. But the facts of evolution are in, and those who understand these things no longer have any doubt about what they observe and measure every day.
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2) it wasn't that long ago that science was saying that animals evolved at an extremely slow rate and then experienced quantum development that took them to the next level. how can you look at the universe and not see intelligent design?
Please read Richard Dawkin’s excellent book, The Blind Watchmaker, which explains “intelligent design”. Where you see intelligent design, I see constant change. No design exists because nothing is finished. The constant state, physical principles which underlie change guide the processes of change, but they don’t have a finished design in mind. They are just physical constants which act upon and within matter. If I arrange a drawer in the desk by some principle known only to me, my wife might not see design there at all. She’d see chaos. The principles “arranging” (influencing?) the constantly changing universe are the only constants which act upon the design we imagine we see in the continuous state of material flux which is our Cosmos. The order in the universe is much different than the drawer analogy which most Christians think is evidence of design.
In the forgoing passage you put your finger on the humble strength of science. Science changes as evidence accumulates. Old hypotheses are put aside as the evidence shows that it should be put aside. Science never claims to be god-like. Science no longer accepts what early Bible science accepted: that the world is flat and has four corners or that the earth is the center of the universe. Those old Bible science truths were put aside as new evidence proved them wrong. Now, even most religious people would admit that the earth is round and that the earth circles the sun. Science is open ended, always available for testing and revision. It accommodates human error by giving us a way to arrive at the truth and to challenge old truths with new evidence. This method is superior to the flawed method of appeals to absolute authority. Religions, the dead ones and the living ones, have always claimed to have the absolute truth. That’s why they’re dangerous. Anybody who claims to have the ultimate truth or to be speaking for god is dangerously out of touch with his or her own humanity and fallibility. Science accepts human fallibility by giving us an objective way to challenge it and to change with the evidence. Bible truths are locked in with no way of changing with the evidence.
Here’s a strong reason why science is superior to religion when it comes to arriving at knowledge: its predictive capacity. Another word for prophecy is fortune telling. The Bible is a fortune telling book. Two months back, Cal Thomas quoted the apostle Paul on when to expect the end times: "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power."
Okay, how successful has this fortune telling been in predicting the end times? How many false alarms have we had in the past 2000 years? In other words, this Bible prophecy is completely useless, yet general enough to be called up should a comet ever appear in the sky which might hit and end life on earth. It’s a fortune teller’s trick to speak in these general ways. It’s always true that people are like the people Paul refers to, so that’s true, anybody can see that, but that truth about humanity’s animal nature has no predictive power as to when the end times will happen. Whereas, science observes the continental drift and can tell you that eventually Los Angeles will appear off the coast of Washington and approximately when if the facts remain the same.
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3) you remind me of a man who can't see the forest because you're fixated on a tree: science. science is part of the whole.
I agree, science is only one field of intellectual endeavor among many, like literature and sociology and Bible exegesis, but the “method of knowing”, called the scientific method, is more basic to the human picture for it deals with epistemology and is fundamental to how we experience reality in our heads. We can approach every field of study and everything in the universe with scientific clarity and methodology or we can stay forever locked in appeals to authority. Literature, like the Bible, which is personal and subjective, is always relative because its depends on what the individual experiences. Those subjective truths are not open to scientific debate. If a man tells me he’s Jesus or an angel, as many a crazy I’ve met with in my volunteer work tells me, I’m not going to argue with him. He really believes that and no amount of objective evidence will change him. He’s suffering from a delusion. But if he tells me the earth is flat, then I’m going to go to the scientific method to debate him.
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4) as far as i'm concerned science merely confirms the overall design described in the bible. as i mentioned before, the opening verses of hebrews sez that everything that's seen was made up of things unseen. hundreds of years later, science discovers the atom.
Actually, the Greek “atomists” were the first to come up with that idea, and the Bible isn’t referring to atoms in that passage. It’s obvious the Bible writers are referring to that hypothetical spiritual world of ghosts, demons, angels and such, to the fearful world they feared was all around them and invisible. The Bible writers also stole the idea of an afterlife from the Persians while the Jews were in one of their diasporas.
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5) and i'm curious about this ... how do you use your science to explain the spirit within a man -- that untouchable part that is the base of our thoughts, desires, emotions, soul, etc.? where did that come from? how does science explain what i call a God-shaped hollow which spurs a man to strive for fulfillment and meaning.
What do you mean by untouchable and by spirit? Are we referring to that invisible world again which is still only an hypothesis, a guess? “Spirit” is a word some people use to explain that which they don’t yet understand. Most of what the they call spirit is easily being observed and explained by current scientific experiments with the human brain. That’s why I’m reading books like Freedom Evolves, The Moral Animal, Consciousness Explained, Going Inside, How The Mind Works, etcetera. Thoughts are measurable and observable electric brain waves and chemically triggered synaptic patterns; emotions are “physical” measurable body states; ambition and love are emotional, animal strivings easily measured and observed with mechanical measuring devices and explained by evolution; desires are another word for the “physicality” of emotions. What others call stress and rage and hope are all physical sensations easily observable with current measuring equipment. Nothing mysterious in any of this except for those who have an enlarged, overly prideful view of themselves and their place in the universe. Lots of pride goeth before their fall.
One of the most daunting findings about how the brain works is that there is no observable control center where a soul or an observer might be functioning. Decisions are brain and body wide synaptic happenings. Data comes in through the senses, many circuits begin firing, feedback loops are energized. There’s a brain-wide competition by incoming data to reach the level of attention. The human animal can’t even control which stimuli will reach its attention. Basic animal instincts come into play here. Threats have a tendency to get attended to more quickly when something dangerous is happening to us. That’s why human animals still have gag reflexes, the ducking reflex, a tendency to freeze all motion when a threat suddenly appears. These are all animal reflexes in us, easily measured and explained.
In short, there is no observable “hollow” or “central place” where a judgment mechanism or a soul sit in the whole circuit of incoming data and outgoing actions. If you ask me, the hard science of brain research is doing more to undermine the ideas in the Bible than evolution ever did. While Bible people are still trying to put down the fires of evolution, the front line has moved on to newer realms and to ever more hard science and indisputable evidence that a soul doesn’t exist. Brain science is a much harder science than evolutionary science, by “harder”, I mean with much more demonstrable cause and effect connections.
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6) you fill your hollow with intellectualism, atheism, helping military veterans, debate and bedding women. others pursue sports, wealth, power, fame, etc.
I don’t have a hollow inside me, and when I thought I had one, I now know it was a physical rather than a spiritual sensation. I think I’m going to regret telling you about “bedding women” as one example of all the experience I’ve ever had that taught me something.
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7) i don't see any animals so possessed with trying to find out why we're here or leaving a legacy. science is only a part of the story. you need to look at the forest — dfo
“Curiosity” (i.e. striving, why-ness, how-ness) is a basic animal instinct. Watch any animal in a trap. Watch an animal ferret out food and act to protect itself. Watch the ceaseless exploratory paths of most animals as they wander through their daily lives. There “curiosity” as expressed in action is the root of our animal curiosity which we express when we ask “why” or, as science does, “how”. Actually “why” is for philosophers and dreamers who ask the unanswerable questions, but “how”-ness (how do I get enough money to get that food, or the bear’s how-ness, how do I get into that house to get that food I smell) is for science. These are answerable questions with predictive and practical power.
Animals don’t “think” about leaving legacies, but they have left us one or two: they’re called the human animal and consciousness. And we don’t know anymore about what kind of legacy we’re leaving than animals do. We just imagine we do. A legacy is only a word which describes the memories in other people’s consciousnesses which our animal ambitions and strivings put there while we lived. What some call “legacies” are only the historical remnants of what alpha people leave behind from their animal striving to be superior beings in the eyes of their herd mates so that they can have power and prestige while they live which will contribute to their chances to have progeny and for their progeny to survive.
[HERE ENDS THE QUESTION/RESPONSE PART OF THE SERVICE. BECAUSE OF MY SIMULTANEOUS EXCHANGES WITH BOTH HOWARD AND DAVE, I MAY HAVE REPEATED MYSELF IN THESE PAST 5 TO 10 POSTINGS. FOR BORING YOU, I APOLOGIZE. MY CLOSING REMARKS TO DAVE FOLLOW:]
I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t supply you with “nobler” views of the human animal, but I can’t. I used to think as you do, but all I’ve got now is reality. Too much is explainable by the facts I have at my disposal. I imagine it disturbs you to imagine the world that I live in. If there is anything more revealing about the “relativity of truth” it should be the two entirely different worlds you and I live in. You get your truths by reference to a fortune telling book while I get mine from seeing the undeniable evidence which the scientific method at work has given us to tame rivers, fly to the stars, explore the brain, go to the bottom of the ocean, understand the atom, explore the physiology of the human body, to create thinking machines, to understand how the continents drift like ships on the surface of the planet, how to slingshot a space ship into orbit. The list of the achievements of the scientific method is endless.
Dave, I wish I could be shorter, but you ask serious questions which trigger serious answers. I keep giving you lists of scientific books written for lay people, like you and me, where you can read about these discoveries and discussions without having to debate someone like me.
Take care and all the time you need to answer.
Geo
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." —Galileo Galilei (One of those people shut down by the fundamentalists of his own time. Though he believed in a hypothetical superbeing, he suffered from a fundamental lack of information on this subject.)
From: D.O.
To: "George Thomas"
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:46:16 -0700
Subject: Re: Slight corrections on last message.
[Dear Blog Reader: because of the nature of the editing facilities of this web site, I'm unable to use colors as I did during the following exchange with D.O. Basically, he sent me a three paragraph response to an earlier email, and, then, I broke up his message into fragments and responded to each of Dave's observations, charges and claims. In each segment, separated by a line, the opening statement is Dave's, and my reply follows.]
1) i continually am amazed that you refuse to say how much your science and "facts" are based on guesswork and faith. the gradual changes that blend together are not fact.
Science is based on research, observation, and facts, not guesswork. The hypothesis is a “guess”, but no hypothesis becomes a fact until it has become a theory and has been tested and peer reviewed. Science is a method for arriving at the truth; it doesn’t claim to be a finished thing like Bibles and Korans do. The facts are what we see before us. For the thousandth time: science only explains the natural, material world. If you want to say, on the basis of an ancient book of prophecy, that some invisible, intangible force you call god started the whole ball of wax going, then I won’t argue with you. I can’t. Go ahead. But the facts of evolution are in, and those who understand these things no longer have any doubt about what they observe and measure every day.
______________________________________________
2) it wasn't that long ago that science was saying that animals evolved at an extremely slow rate and then experienced quantum development that took them to the next level. how can you look at the universe and not see intelligent design?
Please read Richard Dawkin’s excellent book, The Blind Watchmaker, which explains “intelligent design”. Where you see intelligent design, I see constant change. No design exists because nothing is finished. The constant state, physical principles which underlie change guide the processes of change, but they don’t have a finished design in mind. They are just physical constants which act upon and within matter. If I arrange a drawer in the desk by some principle known only to me, my wife might not see design there at all. She’d see chaos. The principles “arranging” (influencing?) the constantly changing universe are the only constants which act upon the design we imagine we see in the continuous state of material flux which is our Cosmos. The order in the universe is much different than the drawer analogy which most Christians think is evidence of design.
In the forgoing passage you put your finger on the humble strength of science. Science changes as evidence accumulates. Old hypotheses are put aside as the evidence shows that it should be put aside. Science never claims to be god-like. Science no longer accepts what early Bible science accepted: that the world is flat and has four corners or that the earth is the center of the universe. Those old Bible science truths were put aside as new evidence proved them wrong. Now, even most religious people would admit that the earth is round and that the earth circles the sun. Science is open ended, always available for testing and revision. It accommodates human error by giving us a way to arrive at the truth and to challenge old truths with new evidence. This method is superior to the flawed method of appeals to absolute authority. Religions, the dead ones and the living ones, have always claimed to have the absolute truth. That’s why they’re dangerous. Anybody who claims to have the ultimate truth or to be speaking for god is dangerously out of touch with his or her own humanity and fallibility. Science accepts human fallibility by giving us an objective way to challenge it and to change with the evidence. Bible truths are locked in with no way of changing with the evidence.
Here’s a strong reason why science is superior to religion when it comes to arriving at knowledge: its predictive capacity. Another word for prophecy is fortune telling. The Bible is a fortune telling book. Two months back, Cal Thomas quoted the apostle Paul on when to expect the end times: "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power."
Okay, how successful has this fortune telling been in predicting the end times? How many false alarms have we had in the past 2000 years? In other words, this Bible prophecy is completely useless, yet general enough to be called up should a comet ever appear in the sky which might hit and end life on earth. It’s a fortune teller’s trick to speak in these general ways. It’s always true that people are like the people Paul refers to, so that’s true, anybody can see that, but that truth about humanity’s animal nature has no predictive power as to when the end times will happen. Whereas, science observes the continental drift and can tell you that eventually Los Angeles will appear off the coast of Washington and approximately when if the facts remain the same.
_______________________________________________________________
3) you remind me of a man who can't see the forest because you're fixated on a tree: science. science is part of the whole.
I agree, science is only one field of intellectual endeavor among many, like literature and sociology and Bible exegesis, but the “method of knowing”, called the scientific method, is more basic to the human picture for it deals with epistemology and is fundamental to how we experience reality in our heads. We can approach every field of study and everything in the universe with scientific clarity and methodology or we can stay forever locked in appeals to authority. Literature, like the Bible, which is personal and subjective, is always relative because its depends on what the individual experiences. Those subjective truths are not open to scientific debate. If a man tells me he’s Jesus or an angel, as many a crazy I’ve met with in my volunteer work tells me, I’m not going to argue with him. He really believes that and no amount of objective evidence will change him. He’s suffering from a delusion. But if he tells me the earth is flat, then I’m going to go to the scientific method to debate him.
______________________________________________________
4) as far as i'm concerned science merely confirms the overall design described in the bible. as i mentioned before, the opening verses of hebrews sez that everything that's seen was made up of things unseen. hundreds of years later, science discovers the atom.
Actually, the Greek “atomists” were the first to come up with that idea, and the Bible isn’t referring to atoms in that passage. It’s obvious the Bible writers are referring to that hypothetical spiritual world of ghosts, demons, angels and such, to the fearful world they feared was all around them and invisible. The Bible writers also stole the idea of an afterlife from the Persians while the Jews were in one of their diasporas.
_____________________________________________________________
5) and i'm curious about this ... how do you use your science to explain the spirit within a man -- that untouchable part that is the base of our thoughts, desires, emotions, soul, etc.? where did that come from? how does science explain what i call a God-shaped hollow which spurs a man to strive for fulfillment and meaning.
What do you mean by untouchable and by spirit? Are we referring to that invisible world again which is still only an hypothesis, a guess? “Spirit” is a word some people use to explain that which they don’t yet understand. Most of what the they call spirit is easily being observed and explained by current scientific experiments with the human brain. That’s why I’m reading books like Freedom Evolves, The Moral Animal, Consciousness Explained, Going Inside, How The Mind Works, etcetera. Thoughts are measurable and observable electric brain waves and chemically triggered synaptic patterns; emotions are “physical” measurable body states; ambition and love are emotional, animal strivings easily measured and observed with mechanical measuring devices and explained by evolution; desires are another word for the “physicality” of emotions. What others call stress and rage and hope are all physical sensations easily observable with current measuring equipment. Nothing mysterious in any of this except for those who have an enlarged, overly prideful view of themselves and their place in the universe. Lots of pride goeth before their fall.
One of the most daunting findings about how the brain works is that there is no observable control center where a soul or an observer might be functioning. Decisions are brain and body wide synaptic happenings. Data comes in through the senses, many circuits begin firing, feedback loops are energized. There’s a brain-wide competition by incoming data to reach the level of attention. The human animal can’t even control which stimuli will reach its attention. Basic animal instincts come into play here. Threats have a tendency to get attended to more quickly when something dangerous is happening to us. That’s why human animals still have gag reflexes, the ducking reflex, a tendency to freeze all motion when a threat suddenly appears. These are all animal reflexes in us, easily measured and explained.
In short, there is no observable “hollow” or “central place” where a judgment mechanism or a soul sit in the whole circuit of incoming data and outgoing actions. If you ask me, the hard science of brain research is doing more to undermine the ideas in the Bible than evolution ever did. While Bible people are still trying to put down the fires of evolution, the front line has moved on to newer realms and to ever more hard science and indisputable evidence that a soul doesn’t exist. Brain science is a much harder science than evolutionary science, by “harder”, I mean with much more demonstrable cause and effect connections.
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6) you fill your hollow with intellectualism, atheism, helping military veterans, debate and bedding women. others pursue sports, wealth, power, fame, etc.
I don’t have a hollow inside me, and when I thought I had one, I now know it was a physical rather than a spiritual sensation. I think I’m going to regret telling you about “bedding women” as one example of all the experience I’ve ever had that taught me something.
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7) i don't see any animals so possessed with trying to find out why we're here or leaving a legacy. science is only a part of the story. you need to look at the forest — dfo
“Curiosity” (i.e. striving, why-ness, how-ness) is a basic animal instinct. Watch any animal in a trap. Watch an animal ferret out food and act to protect itself. Watch the ceaseless exploratory paths of most animals as they wander through their daily lives. There “curiosity” as expressed in action is the root of our animal curiosity which we express when we ask “why” or, as science does, “how”. Actually “why” is for philosophers and dreamers who ask the unanswerable questions, but “how”-ness (how do I get enough money to get that food, or the bear’s how-ness, how do I get into that house to get that food I smell) is for science. These are answerable questions with predictive and practical power.
Animals don’t “think” about leaving legacies, but they have left us one or two: they’re called the human animal and consciousness. And we don’t know anymore about what kind of legacy we’re leaving than animals do. We just imagine we do. A legacy is only a word which describes the memories in other people’s consciousnesses which our animal ambitions and strivings put there while we lived. What some call “legacies” are only the historical remnants of what alpha people leave behind from their animal striving to be superior beings in the eyes of their herd mates so that they can have power and prestige while they live which will contribute to their chances to have progeny and for their progeny to survive.
[HERE ENDS THE QUESTION/RESPONSE PART OF THE SERVICE. BECAUSE OF MY SIMULTANEOUS EXCHANGES WITH BOTH HOWARD AND DAVE, I MAY HAVE REPEATED MYSELF IN THESE PAST 5 TO 10 POSTINGS. FOR BORING YOU, I APOLOGIZE. MY CLOSING REMARKS TO DAVE FOLLOW:]
I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t supply you with “nobler” views of the human animal, but I can’t. I used to think as you do, but all I’ve got now is reality. Too much is explainable by the facts I have at my disposal. I imagine it disturbs you to imagine the world that I live in. If there is anything more revealing about the “relativity of truth” it should be the two entirely different worlds you and I live in. You get your truths by reference to a fortune telling book while I get mine from seeing the undeniable evidence which the scientific method at work has given us to tame rivers, fly to the stars, explore the brain, go to the bottom of the ocean, understand the atom, explore the physiology of the human body, to create thinking machines, to understand how the continents drift like ships on the surface of the planet, how to slingshot a space ship into orbit. The list of the achievements of the scientific method is endless.
Dave, I wish I could be shorter, but you ask serious questions which trigger serious answers. I keep giving you lists of scientific books written for lay people, like you and me, where you can read about these discoveries and discussions without having to debate someone like me.
Take care and all the time you need to answer.
Geo
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"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." —Galileo Galilei (One of those people shut down by the fundamentalists of his own time. Though he believed in a hypothetical superbeing, he suffered from a fundamental lack of information on this subject.)
Sunday, October 10, 2004
DEATH HAS NO STING FOR THE ATHEIST
Lately, I’m 66, I’ve been thinking about my own death, and my thoughts have definitely matured. When I was younger, I’d shiver with the thought of my body buried under the ground in a coffin. I was very attached to my body at that time for why else would I think of myself alive down there in the ground dead? An impossible situation, yet one that caused me great fear. I suppose it was a very literal feeling of being dead and buried for eternity while still being aware of my predicament.
This morning, I don’t know why, I realized with great clarity another scenario for my death. I’ll just lose consciousness, I might even go to Oregon to do it, if I think the quality of my life is no longer worth maintaining. Death no longer has a sting for me. It’ll be just like getting a needle and going to sleep for an operation. Nothing to it. Only this time, as I fall almost immediately to sleep, I won’t wake up, but more importantly, I will no longer care. I’m asleep forever and no nightmares this time.
MY FIRST ATHEIST
I was just a young kid, 22, recently out of the Navy, and I got a job with the American Optical Company, the company that partnered with Michael Todd to develop the Todd/AO optical system for wide screen movies used in “Around The World In Eighty Days”. Todd was one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, remember? He was reputed to be a larger than life financial genius. Their yacht once pulled into the harbor of Nantucket when I was stationed there in 1958. Crowds gathered in the street outside the restaurant they were supposedly eating in. I never got a glimpse of them, but I may have glimpsed Sterling Hayden on a beach during my first summer on the island.
Eventually, I became a delivery driver for the AO branch in Dayton, Ohio. I delivered lenses and frames all around Dayton and small outlying towns, drove their red Nash American. It was much like a VW, like an upside down bathtub in shape, but it was economical, and I never delivered anything big.
My last delivery of each day was west of Dayton, in Eaton Ohio, to a Dr. Spitler. He was doctor and optometrist for that small town. He worked out of a huge white building with several outbuildings, and, not only was he a practicing physician, he ran his own medical school. Young students would be there, learning to sew stitches in a side of bacon, practicing giving shots to an orange. I’m serious, a one man medical school!
White haired, goateed Dr. Spitler was accompanied in his business by a trim, very attractive, gray haired nurse, and I heard about their affair which the whole town knew of, I guess. His office, where I delivered the goods was huge, old, carpeted, with tall windows around a bay letting in lots of light. Bookcases and cabinets lined the walls and stacks of books and magazines covered every free surface. Stacks of books bloomed from the carpet all around his desk and desk chair too.
Eventually, the good doctor learned I was leaving American Optical to go to the University of Dayton. That’s when, one day, when I was idling around listening to him talk, he handed me an old, hardcover book, open to a page with pictures. That’s the first time, ever, that I saw a picture of one of those fat round earth goddess figures from the ancient past. He spoke to me about them, and I recall nothing of the moment but the book and the picture inside. He was, I’m sure, trying to tell me things about atheism and mythology, wanting me to get a good, scientific start toward my education, but I wasn’t even close to being ready to hear him. I was going every Sunday to the Lutheran Church with my wife and child. I was blind, deaf and dumb to science. True knowledge would come much later.
To this day, I try to recall how naive I was, even at 22, whenever I’m dealing with a blind, deaf fundamentalist in a discussion of evolution. You are either ready for the truth or you are not. The average mind must develop a lot of wrinkles before it’s ready to understand the obvious and to cast off the mysterious.
_________________________________________________
"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!" (No! It ain't the Bushman. It's...
—Samuel Goldwyn, a Yogi Berra in his own right
Lately, I’m 66, I’ve been thinking about my own death, and my thoughts have definitely matured. When I was younger, I’d shiver with the thought of my body buried under the ground in a coffin. I was very attached to my body at that time for why else would I think of myself alive down there in the ground dead? An impossible situation, yet one that caused me great fear. I suppose it was a very literal feeling of being dead and buried for eternity while still being aware of my predicament.
This morning, I don’t know why, I realized with great clarity another scenario for my death. I’ll just lose consciousness, I might even go to Oregon to do it, if I think the quality of my life is no longer worth maintaining. Death no longer has a sting for me. It’ll be just like getting a needle and going to sleep for an operation. Nothing to it. Only this time, as I fall almost immediately to sleep, I won’t wake up, but more importantly, I will no longer care. I’m asleep forever and no nightmares this time.
MY FIRST ATHEIST
I was just a young kid, 22, recently out of the Navy, and I got a job with the American Optical Company, the company that partnered with Michael Todd to develop the Todd/AO optical system for wide screen movies used in “Around The World In Eighty Days”. Todd was one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, remember? He was reputed to be a larger than life financial genius. Their yacht once pulled into the harbor of Nantucket when I was stationed there in 1958. Crowds gathered in the street outside the restaurant they were supposedly eating in. I never got a glimpse of them, but I may have glimpsed Sterling Hayden on a beach during my first summer on the island.
Eventually, I became a delivery driver for the AO branch in Dayton, Ohio. I delivered lenses and frames all around Dayton and small outlying towns, drove their red Nash American. It was much like a VW, like an upside down bathtub in shape, but it was economical, and I never delivered anything big.
My last delivery of each day was west of Dayton, in Eaton Ohio, to a Dr. Spitler. He was doctor and optometrist for that small town. He worked out of a huge white building with several outbuildings, and, not only was he a practicing physician, he ran his own medical school. Young students would be there, learning to sew stitches in a side of bacon, practicing giving shots to an orange. I’m serious, a one man medical school!
White haired, goateed Dr. Spitler was accompanied in his business by a trim, very attractive, gray haired nurse, and I heard about their affair which the whole town knew of, I guess. His office, where I delivered the goods was huge, old, carpeted, with tall windows around a bay letting in lots of light. Bookcases and cabinets lined the walls and stacks of books and magazines covered every free surface. Stacks of books bloomed from the carpet all around his desk and desk chair too.
Eventually, the good doctor learned I was leaving American Optical to go to the University of Dayton. That’s when, one day, when I was idling around listening to him talk, he handed me an old, hardcover book, open to a page with pictures. That’s the first time, ever, that I saw a picture of one of those fat round earth goddess figures from the ancient past. He spoke to me about them, and I recall nothing of the moment but the book and the picture inside. He was, I’m sure, trying to tell me things about atheism and mythology, wanting me to get a good, scientific start toward my education, but I wasn’t even close to being ready to hear him. I was going every Sunday to the Lutheran Church with my wife and child. I was blind, deaf and dumb to science. True knowledge would come much later.
To this day, I try to recall how naive I was, even at 22, whenever I’m dealing with a blind, deaf fundamentalist in a discussion of evolution. You are either ready for the truth or you are not. The average mind must develop a lot of wrinkles before it’s ready to understand the obvious and to cast off the mysterious.
_________________________________________________
"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!" (No! It ain't the Bushman. It's...
—Samuel Goldwyn, a Yogi Berra in his own right
Friday, October 08, 2004
PRICEY DRUGS AND NOT ENOUGH OF THEM
Jane Bryant Quinn in Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 31) in discussing the use of Canadian drugs by Americans notes that Americans are prescribed the latest drugs while Canadians get by on older drugs, then she notes the obvious: drugs cost 50-80 percent less in Canada than in America. So, if Americans are prescribed the best drugs but fewer and fewer Americans can afford health care, “Who is all this splendid medicine for? Should our health care system continue its drive toward the best of the best, even though rising numbers of patients can’t afford it? Or should we direct our wealth toward letting everyone in on today’s level of care?”
And, more importantly, why are we letting drug companies do all the research? Why isn’t America funding a lot more research for drugs? Then the drug companies would lose their rationale for charging so much for their drugs, i.e. to recover their research costs. But that’s so anti-capitalistic, right? Or perhaps, it’s accepting that society has some pretty pressing needs which just don’t fit well into the scheme of profit taking corporations. Perhaps “big” government does have a place in the scheme of things, after all.
Listen. . . today I spent 3 and a half hours, standing in two lines at two locations before I could get my flu shot because Republicans think that the private sector is the best avenue to meet all of America's needs. Not so, if there's not enough profit in it, and that's why we're going to see so many older Americans die with flu this season.
FOR THE FOURTH TIME: TOLD YOU SO
It was bound to happen: the Iraqi government, sponsored by America, would become just like Hussein’s government in the way they treat resistance to its authority. Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 34) reports the following:
“During the application process, new [Iraqi police] recruits are asked, ‘If you see a group of innocent people on the side of the road and your commander asks you to fire on them, would you?’”
Well, if you understand evolution as science does (see Steven Pinker’s, The Blank Slate) you already guessed it; of course they would. Like most soldiers, trained by tyrannous authority to obey rather than debate, Iraqi’s troopers would fire first and ask questions later; they would fob off the decision onto their officer’s shoulders. Why do you think only one American soldier among so many at Abu Ghraib found the courage to resist the atrocities that many of his comrades accepted without question?
Iraqi Sabah Khadim, an adviser at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, explains further: “This is a national emergency, and all methods will be used. There really is an ‘Iraqi way’ of doing things. We will be vilified, but this is not the time to preach democracy.”
King George III’s representatives in America couldn’t have spoken more to the purpose when it came to his rebellious colonists.
LENNY BRUCE AND THE FCC
Well, I really ain’t got nothing to say about Lenny and his battle against censorship in public debate and the arts. When secretive conservatives are in command, you can bet the battle never ends and never will. When conservatives are busy doing undercover things undemocratic which will effect the long term well being of the average man, you damn well betcha they don’t want word to get out. Of course, these religious supporters of George Bush really don’t much care about liberty as they have no example of a democracy in their holy book. You could probably tell them George II was suspending the Constitution and they’d go along.
What this posting bit is about is Bill Maher who got bit by the conservative “anti-freedom of expression” bullet when it let fly because Maher was courageous enough to point out that a man flying a plane into a building and facing certain death by doing so was at least as courageous as our president loosing a long range missile or cannon shell into a distant spot in a city neighborhood. Which, of course, is exactly what Bush is ordering in the recent attacks on “suspected” terrorist safe houses. How else can we explain so many civilian casualties in this war?
Anyhow, Bill Maher complimented Lenny recently: “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade,” Maher [told] Newsweek. “He’s definitely the guy who planted the trees.”
________________________________________
“The facts roll off a Bushman’s back like rain off a shark skin coat.” —author anonymous
Jane Bryant Quinn in Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 31) in discussing the use of Canadian drugs by Americans notes that Americans are prescribed the latest drugs while Canadians get by on older drugs, then she notes the obvious: drugs cost 50-80 percent less in Canada than in America. So, if Americans are prescribed the best drugs but fewer and fewer Americans can afford health care, “Who is all this splendid medicine for? Should our health care system continue its drive toward the best of the best, even though rising numbers of patients can’t afford it? Or should we direct our wealth toward letting everyone in on today’s level of care?”
And, more importantly, why are we letting drug companies do all the research? Why isn’t America funding a lot more research for drugs? Then the drug companies would lose their rationale for charging so much for their drugs, i.e. to recover their research costs. But that’s so anti-capitalistic, right? Or perhaps, it’s accepting that society has some pretty pressing needs which just don’t fit well into the scheme of profit taking corporations. Perhaps “big” government does have a place in the scheme of things, after all.
Listen. . . today I spent 3 and a half hours, standing in two lines at two locations before I could get my flu shot because Republicans think that the private sector is the best avenue to meet all of America's needs. Not so, if there's not enough profit in it, and that's why we're going to see so many older Americans die with flu this season.
FOR THE FOURTH TIME: TOLD YOU SO
It was bound to happen: the Iraqi government, sponsored by America, would become just like Hussein’s government in the way they treat resistance to its authority. Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 34) reports the following:
“During the application process, new [Iraqi police] recruits are asked, ‘If you see a group of innocent people on the side of the road and your commander asks you to fire on them, would you?’”
Well, if you understand evolution as science does (see Steven Pinker’s, The Blank Slate) you already guessed it; of course they would. Like most soldiers, trained by tyrannous authority to obey rather than debate, Iraqi’s troopers would fire first and ask questions later; they would fob off the decision onto their officer’s shoulders. Why do you think only one American soldier among so many at Abu Ghraib found the courage to resist the atrocities that many of his comrades accepted without question?
Iraqi Sabah Khadim, an adviser at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, explains further: “This is a national emergency, and all methods will be used. There really is an ‘Iraqi way’ of doing things. We will be vilified, but this is not the time to preach democracy.”
King George III’s representatives in America couldn’t have spoken more to the purpose when it came to his rebellious colonists.
LENNY BRUCE AND THE FCC
Well, I really ain’t got nothing to say about Lenny and his battle against censorship in public debate and the arts. When secretive conservatives are in command, you can bet the battle never ends and never will. When conservatives are busy doing undercover things undemocratic which will effect the long term well being of the average man, you damn well betcha they don’t want word to get out. Of course, these religious supporters of George Bush really don’t much care about liberty as they have no example of a democracy in their holy book. You could probably tell them George II was suspending the Constitution and they’d go along.
What this posting bit is about is Bill Maher who got bit by the conservative “anti-freedom of expression” bullet when it let fly because Maher was courageous enough to point out that a man flying a plane into a building and facing certain death by doing so was at least as courageous as our president loosing a long range missile or cannon shell into a distant spot in a city neighborhood. Which, of course, is exactly what Bush is ordering in the recent attacks on “suspected” terrorist safe houses. How else can we explain so many civilian casualties in this war?
Anyhow, Bill Maher complimented Lenny recently: “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade,” Maher [told] Newsweek. “He’s definitely the guy who planted the trees.”
________________________________________
“The facts roll off a Bushman’s back like rain off a shark skin coat.” —author anonymous
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
KNOWLEDGE AND GOD STUFF
The other day, I was wondering why my taste for fictional literature has eased in my older age. I came to the conclusion that, nowadays, I seem to crave knowledge of myself and the material reality my fleshy body swims through. Science books interest me more than religious books, though I keep coming across the Buddhist concept of “mindfulness”, even in Newsweek this week, and that idea seems to fit with science as well as with healing the psyche. To become ever more conscious is what Jung thought a human being ought to be about. I like it.
THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IS LOSING OUT
The other day I was exchanging e-mail with a fundamentalist Christian, and he expressed in passing that “the church” is under attack. Well, yes, I suppose it might seem like that to him.
For example, most modern Christians find themselves in, accept and live in a world created by science. They depend on it for their medical needs, to get to and from work, to light their nights and heat their winters. They know their solar system and of the existence of distant galaxies and suns through the predictive methods of science. They no longer believe that the heavens are a sort of Sistine Chapel of the World with stars painted onto the roof for their amusement and enjoyment. Yet, when it comes to evolution, they balk. Look, folks, either science has got it all correctly so far or nothing works as we think it does.
Joseph Campbell taught me so much when he pointed out that every religion which has come along at first represented the latest “scientific” view of the universe. So in the past we had a hierarchical system of kingdoms to rule under a hierarchical heaven. The seasons of harvests and plantings were firmly represented by rituals followed out by kings and shamans. Religions must die when they no longer fulfill the knowledge which the age gives us. We’re slowly sliding from beneath the view that Kings rule by divine right, yet the Christians hang on to the outdated symbolism of kings and princes.
In short, a religious world view which ignores the facts cannot stand forever. Ironically, Christians must embrace a modern world’s knowledge or its spirit will inevitably fade.
For example, is the human animal the toy of a puppet master Christians and Moslems call “god” or a semi-free being, just beginning to emerge from the domination of his animal instincts?
MOVE OVER, MAN, THE ANIMAL’S HERE
In A Mind So Rare, Donald states the case for determinism, even though his book will argue against that conclusion: “it [findings about the nature of consciousness] would suggest that we are. . . preposterous illusory creatures who inhabit the cognitive underground along with the rest of creation while harboring delusions of intellectual grandeur.”
If consciousness is as fleeting as research shows it to be, then what control do we have over our thoughts and actions? That’s the case Donald hopes to state. Don’t you love these theories that belittle man’s vaunted intellect? According to some researcher writers, we are barely more conscious and in control of our instinctual life than the dog and cat.
I recall John Houston's Freud movie with Montgomery Clift in the role of Freud. Houston himself does the voiceover which introduces the movie. He points out how science has progressively dethroned mankind from being the king of creation to just being another animal. He mentions Ptolemy and Galileo, Darwin and Freud, each making man less and less special. Now evolutionary psychology is making us out to be hardly more than animals when it comes to our actions. Don’t you just love it? I do! How can there even be an unconscious when, perhaps, we’re hardly more than unconscious every day in every way.
_____________________________________________________________
"Egotist: A person . . . more interested in himself than in me." —Ambrose Bierce
The other day, I was wondering why my taste for fictional literature has eased in my older age. I came to the conclusion that, nowadays, I seem to crave knowledge of myself and the material reality my fleshy body swims through. Science books interest me more than religious books, though I keep coming across the Buddhist concept of “mindfulness”, even in Newsweek this week, and that idea seems to fit with science as well as with healing the psyche. To become ever more conscious is what Jung thought a human being ought to be about. I like it.
THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IS LOSING OUT
The other day I was exchanging e-mail with a fundamentalist Christian, and he expressed in passing that “the church” is under attack. Well, yes, I suppose it might seem like that to him.
For example, most modern Christians find themselves in, accept and live in a world created by science. They depend on it for their medical needs, to get to and from work, to light their nights and heat their winters. They know their solar system and of the existence of distant galaxies and suns through the predictive methods of science. They no longer believe that the heavens are a sort of Sistine Chapel of the World with stars painted onto the roof for their amusement and enjoyment. Yet, when it comes to evolution, they balk. Look, folks, either science has got it all correctly so far or nothing works as we think it does.
Joseph Campbell taught me so much when he pointed out that every religion which has come along at first represented the latest “scientific” view of the universe. So in the past we had a hierarchical system of kingdoms to rule under a hierarchical heaven. The seasons of harvests and plantings were firmly represented by rituals followed out by kings and shamans. Religions must die when they no longer fulfill the knowledge which the age gives us. We’re slowly sliding from beneath the view that Kings rule by divine right, yet the Christians hang on to the outdated symbolism of kings and princes.
In short, a religious world view which ignores the facts cannot stand forever. Ironically, Christians must embrace a modern world’s knowledge or its spirit will inevitably fade.
For example, is the human animal the toy of a puppet master Christians and Moslems call “god” or a semi-free being, just beginning to emerge from the domination of his animal instincts?
MOVE OVER, MAN, THE ANIMAL’S HERE
In A Mind So Rare, Donald states the case for determinism, even though his book will argue against that conclusion: “it [findings about the nature of consciousness] would suggest that we are. . . preposterous illusory creatures who inhabit the cognitive underground along with the rest of creation while harboring delusions of intellectual grandeur.”
If consciousness is as fleeting as research shows it to be, then what control do we have over our thoughts and actions? That’s the case Donald hopes to state. Don’t you love these theories that belittle man’s vaunted intellect? According to some researcher writers, we are barely more conscious and in control of our instinctual life than the dog and cat.
I recall John Houston's Freud movie with Montgomery Clift in the role of Freud. Houston himself does the voiceover which introduces the movie. He points out how science has progressively dethroned mankind from being the king of creation to just being another animal. He mentions Ptolemy and Galileo, Darwin and Freud, each making man less and less special. Now evolutionary psychology is making us out to be hardly more than animals when it comes to our actions. Don’t you just love it? I do! How can there even be an unconscious when, perhaps, we’re hardly more than unconscious every day in every way.
_____________________________________________________________
"Egotist: A person . . . more interested in himself than in me." —Ambrose Bierce
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
HELLO KATHY FROM ENGLAND
Today, at the Spike coffee house, I met and talked with a women who is currently living in America (Hi, Kathy) with her husband who was transferred from England by his company when they moved to America. What? An influx of jobs from overseas to here?
We talked of many things. At one point we were talking about the greatness of America, and she noted, without malice, that America is the only major industrialized country in the world without nation health care. Yes, the only one!
Another moment came when she noted how much American stuff comes from China. As an interesting example, she told of bringing her father from England here to visit, and they passed an army recruiting station downtown. He, being a WWII Englishman, wanted to stop in to check out the American soldiers doing the recruiting. They came away with a gift key fob that read, An Army Of One. When he opened it up or turned it over, he noted that it was stamped, Made In China.
We talked about Thatcher’s closing of the coal mines and the hardships that caused. I mentioned "Brassed Off "and "Billy Eliot", both of which movies dealt with the troubles Margaret Thatcher brought to working men and women when she shut down nationalized industries. We talked about many things. She said the gas in England is about $6.00 American bucks a gallon and couldn’t understand what our bitch was. We discussed the large size of most American homes, and she mentioned that even in England there are some pockets of rundown houses, but she noted that she’s seen some shacks in America that no Englishman, no matter how poor, would be forced to live in. Local councils in England supply good housing and maintain it while the poor pay as much rent as they can for that housing. Since the councils maintain the property, no neighborhoods get run down just because the poor live in them. It seems to me that we’d have less fear of living among the poor if we also knew that our neighborhoods wouldn’t decline if the poor moved in beside us.
Yep, we talked about many things—language, money, Australia, accents, automobiles, transportation. . . .
NOW IT’S FANNIE MAE
Do you recall years back when the model for government was to be business. Run government like a business, the conservatives said. Well, would we really want to be overcharged for our government like Halliburton overcharges us for what they do for us? What about the dishonesty of Enron and WorldCom? Then we hear that it “appears” at Fanny Mae “that accounting for expenses was put off to a future reporting period in order to meet [earnings] targets that brought bonuses for executives.”
Look, how many ways do I gotta say it: it’s corporations which have corrupted American government. If we just turn the whole shebang over to them, what can we expect but more rape, pillage and economic plunder? That’s the corporate way—to get ahead at all cost. They were never designed to put the needs of their employees ahead of the bottom line. They were never designed to run a democracy.
NOW I’M READING “A MIND SO RARE”
Merlin Donald who refers to the Bible a lot will try to counter the evolutionary “Hard-liners”, those who are most deterministic when it comes to freedom of the will in my current reading. Admitting the truth of some of the findings of science, he writes, “No matter how wise or learned we become, in terms of the knowledge we have stored away, the video editor of our conscious experience will not let us stop, even for a moment, to reflect.”
Donald gets at what we could realize about the moments of our daily lives if we’d only stop to think about them. Think how the thoughts and observations fly into us, through a small window of consciousness only to disappear as the next things seizes our consciousness. When you try to stop and think about it, a bit of fear arises at the speed of life whizzing through us, but, even then, we don’t have time to linger on the insight before the next thing seizes the conscious window.
Walking back to my car after I began reading the new book, an apt phrase about how I used to feel when feelings overcame me, arose in me. “When feelings would tip me over. . . ,” I thought.
When I was younger the very process of looking about myself and letting the visual images bore into me filled me with intense feelings, some almost unbearably intense. I’d rise and soar on wings of feeling. Those day are over. I wonder if the sensory machine is wearing down or have I compromised myself in some way so as not to be in perpetual pain? I'm fairly content these days.
Now, of course, the way I keep something in my conscious is by repeating some phrase over and over or some image until I can sit down and put it on paper. Then other thoughts rush around it and a whole series of thoughts gets put down on paper, and only on paper, does conscious achieve length and duration. The process of writing things down seems to be the cultural invention that allows consciousness to seem to be more than fleeting. The length of an essay or a book allows us to imagine that consciousness is a continuous, seamless process rather than a series of fragmented sensory impressions.
_________________________________________________________
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." —Oscar Wilde
Today, at the Spike coffee house, I met and talked with a women who is currently living in America (Hi, Kathy) with her husband who was transferred from England by his company when they moved to America. What? An influx of jobs from overseas to here?
We talked of many things. At one point we were talking about the greatness of America, and she noted, without malice, that America is the only major industrialized country in the world without nation health care. Yes, the only one!
Another moment came when she noted how much American stuff comes from China. As an interesting example, she told of bringing her father from England here to visit, and they passed an army recruiting station downtown. He, being a WWII Englishman, wanted to stop in to check out the American soldiers doing the recruiting. They came away with a gift key fob that read, An Army Of One. When he opened it up or turned it over, he noted that it was stamped, Made In China.
We talked about Thatcher’s closing of the coal mines and the hardships that caused. I mentioned "Brassed Off "and "Billy Eliot", both of which movies dealt with the troubles Margaret Thatcher brought to working men and women when she shut down nationalized industries. We talked about many things. She said the gas in England is about $6.00 American bucks a gallon and couldn’t understand what our bitch was. We discussed the large size of most American homes, and she mentioned that even in England there are some pockets of rundown houses, but she noted that she’s seen some shacks in America that no Englishman, no matter how poor, would be forced to live in. Local councils in England supply good housing and maintain it while the poor pay as much rent as they can for that housing. Since the councils maintain the property, no neighborhoods get run down just because the poor live in them. It seems to me that we’d have less fear of living among the poor if we also knew that our neighborhoods wouldn’t decline if the poor moved in beside us.
Yep, we talked about many things—language, money, Australia, accents, automobiles, transportation. . . .
NOW IT’S FANNIE MAE
Do you recall years back when the model for government was to be business. Run government like a business, the conservatives said. Well, would we really want to be overcharged for our government like Halliburton overcharges us for what they do for us? What about the dishonesty of Enron and WorldCom? Then we hear that it “appears” at Fanny Mae “that accounting for expenses was put off to a future reporting period in order to meet [earnings] targets that brought bonuses for executives.”
Look, how many ways do I gotta say it: it’s corporations which have corrupted American government. If we just turn the whole shebang over to them, what can we expect but more rape, pillage and economic plunder? That’s the corporate way—to get ahead at all cost. They were never designed to put the needs of their employees ahead of the bottom line. They were never designed to run a democracy.
NOW I’M READING “A MIND SO RARE”
Merlin Donald who refers to the Bible a lot will try to counter the evolutionary “Hard-liners”, those who are most deterministic when it comes to freedom of the will in my current reading. Admitting the truth of some of the findings of science, he writes, “No matter how wise or learned we become, in terms of the knowledge we have stored away, the video editor of our conscious experience will not let us stop, even for a moment, to reflect.”
Donald gets at what we could realize about the moments of our daily lives if we’d only stop to think about them. Think how the thoughts and observations fly into us, through a small window of consciousness only to disappear as the next things seizes our consciousness. When you try to stop and think about it, a bit of fear arises at the speed of life whizzing through us, but, even then, we don’t have time to linger on the insight before the next thing seizes the conscious window.
Walking back to my car after I began reading the new book, an apt phrase about how I used to feel when feelings overcame me, arose in me. “When feelings would tip me over. . . ,” I thought.
When I was younger the very process of looking about myself and letting the visual images bore into me filled me with intense feelings, some almost unbearably intense. I’d rise and soar on wings of feeling. Those day are over. I wonder if the sensory machine is wearing down or have I compromised myself in some way so as not to be in perpetual pain? I'm fairly content these days.
Now, of course, the way I keep something in my conscious is by repeating some phrase over and over or some image until I can sit down and put it on paper. Then other thoughts rush around it and a whole series of thoughts gets put down on paper, and only on paper, does conscious achieve length and duration. The process of writing things down seems to be the cultural invention that allows consciousness to seem to be more than fleeting. The length of an essay or a book allows us to imagine that consciousness is a continuous, seamless process rather than a series of fragmented sensory impressions.
_________________________________________________________
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." —Oscar Wilde
Monday, October 04, 2004
I BOUGHT A CAR THE OTHER DAY, and
. . this is a tale of coincidence. For a couple of months now, I’ve been stopping on the spur of the moment to drive 2005 compact cars. I’ve been unhappy with the dent in my Ford Aspire door created when another driver pulled in beside me in a parking space and hit my opening door. I’d driven a Chevy Aveo and a Suzuki Swift and was thinking about trying a Focus, plus a month or so ago, I drove a Honda Scion.
Finally, I make an instantaneous decision to drive out to the Spokane Kia place in Liberty Lake outside of Spokane to drive a Rio. It’s a long drive, but it was a cloudy day, and I felt like moving around rather than reading which is what I usually do. So I pull smack up in front of the Kia front door, turn the ignition off and break the key off in the ignition. Strike one!
The salesman exits the door and we talk about me getting a locksmith to come to the Kia place. Then I tell him how much I like my Aspire, still getting 30 mpg and purring along pretty nicely with no major repairs for years now, but he responds that I’m driving a Kia and shows me the vehicle ID number which shows that the Aspire was made by Kia all those many years ago. Strike two.
Then I tell him, I can’t buy right then because my wife has the checkbook and she’s clear out in Airway Heights, but he says I can drive the Rio out there and get the checkbook but, I inform him that she works in a prison, and I can’t go out there and get in very easily. O, he says, and his smile shrinks. I go out in the car to get something from the glove compartment. I’m looking to see if I have the registration, and, what do I find? but the box of checks I’d picked up three weeks before and forgotten. I take the box in to the salesman, hold it up and say, I give up. I’m buying. Strike three!
MORE BERGMAN ON BERGMAN
To us poor unenlightened, Bergman seems such an intellectual film maker, but over and over, he claims differently. Look at how he talks about his characters: “The people in my films are exactly like myself— creatures of instinct, of rather poor intellectual capacity, who at best only think while they’re talking. Mostly they’re body with a little hollow for the soul.” (p. 190) Of course, from what psychological researchers are learning about all of us when we talk, none of us have much control over our language. Language just flows, the choices being made beyond control of our conscious processes.
When his interviewers ask him about his agnosticism, he says, “Nothing, absolutely nothing at all has emerged out of all these ideas of faith and skepticism. . . . For many of my fellow human beings, on the other hand, I’m aware that these problems still exist and exist as a terrible reality. I hope this generation will be the last to live under the scourge of religious anxiety.” (p. 195)
NEWSWEEK’S R. SAMUELSON SAYS. . . .
In a recent report, Samuelson whose work I usually admire demonstrates why the president, whoever he is, has little ability to control the current wage decline, but, my point recently has been that the president can see it coming and get busy shoring up the safety net and arranging society in better ways to take a little from the rich and give to the poor.
ALL WE MUST RESIST
When I was younger, I recall essays and discussions in the popular press about the aggressive instinct in humankind. To curb aggressiveness was one of the impulses to create non-competitive games and group activities. The "Ungame" came out of those times, but most people thought that we could do little about human aggressiveness. I still don't know that we can alter human aggressiveness, unless some of us are evolving along cultural lines rather than physiological line. Some light might be at the end of the tunnel.
However, E.O. Wilson in "The Future of Life" (p. 40) still posits mankind as a being which remains rooted in ancient physical rather the intellectual realities: "The human brain. . . evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen and two or three generations into the future." In "The Blank Slate" Steven Pinker concludes some of the same things about the limited extent of human altruism. Our animal nature just naturally holds us back from being altruistic to too many of our fellows. It's written into our genes that we place our own progeny ahead of othess, but altruism is also a survival tactic. For if we can all get along, then no one's progeny stands to go extinct. We're back to the Golden Rule, an almost universal human value.
___________________________________________________________
"Thanks to the miles of superhighways under construction, America will soon be a wonderful place to drive—if you dont want to stop." —Fletcher Knebel
. . this is a tale of coincidence. For a couple of months now, I’ve been stopping on the spur of the moment to drive 2005 compact cars. I’ve been unhappy with the dent in my Ford Aspire door created when another driver pulled in beside me in a parking space and hit my opening door. I’d driven a Chevy Aveo and a Suzuki Swift and was thinking about trying a Focus, plus a month or so ago, I drove a Honda Scion.
Finally, I make an instantaneous decision to drive out to the Spokane Kia place in Liberty Lake outside of Spokane to drive a Rio. It’s a long drive, but it was a cloudy day, and I felt like moving around rather than reading which is what I usually do. So I pull smack up in front of the Kia front door, turn the ignition off and break the key off in the ignition. Strike one!
The salesman exits the door and we talk about me getting a locksmith to come to the Kia place. Then I tell him how much I like my Aspire, still getting 30 mpg and purring along pretty nicely with no major repairs for years now, but he responds that I’m driving a Kia and shows me the vehicle ID number which shows that the Aspire was made by Kia all those many years ago. Strike two.
Then I tell him, I can’t buy right then because my wife has the checkbook and she’s clear out in Airway Heights, but he says I can drive the Rio out there and get the checkbook but, I inform him that she works in a prison, and I can’t go out there and get in very easily. O, he says, and his smile shrinks. I go out in the car to get something from the glove compartment. I’m looking to see if I have the registration, and, what do I find? but the box of checks I’d picked up three weeks before and forgotten. I take the box in to the salesman, hold it up and say, I give up. I’m buying. Strike three!
MORE BERGMAN ON BERGMAN
To us poor unenlightened, Bergman seems such an intellectual film maker, but over and over, he claims differently. Look at how he talks about his characters: “The people in my films are exactly like myself— creatures of instinct, of rather poor intellectual capacity, who at best only think while they’re talking. Mostly they’re body with a little hollow for the soul.” (p. 190) Of course, from what psychological researchers are learning about all of us when we talk, none of us have much control over our language. Language just flows, the choices being made beyond control of our conscious processes.
When his interviewers ask him about his agnosticism, he says, “Nothing, absolutely nothing at all has emerged out of all these ideas of faith and skepticism. . . . For many of my fellow human beings, on the other hand, I’m aware that these problems still exist and exist as a terrible reality. I hope this generation will be the last to live under the scourge of religious anxiety.” (p. 195)
NEWSWEEK’S R. SAMUELSON SAYS. . . .
In a recent report, Samuelson whose work I usually admire demonstrates why the president, whoever he is, has little ability to control the current wage decline, but, my point recently has been that the president can see it coming and get busy shoring up the safety net and arranging society in better ways to take a little from the rich and give to the poor.
ALL WE MUST RESIST
When I was younger, I recall essays and discussions in the popular press about the aggressive instinct in humankind. To curb aggressiveness was one of the impulses to create non-competitive games and group activities. The "Ungame" came out of those times, but most people thought that we could do little about human aggressiveness. I still don't know that we can alter human aggressiveness, unless some of us are evolving along cultural lines rather than physiological line. Some light might be at the end of the tunnel.
However, E.O. Wilson in "The Future of Life" (p. 40) still posits mankind as a being which remains rooted in ancient physical rather the intellectual realities: "The human brain. . . evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen and two or three generations into the future." In "The Blank Slate" Steven Pinker concludes some of the same things about the limited extent of human altruism. Our animal nature just naturally holds us back from being altruistic to too many of our fellows. It's written into our genes that we place our own progeny ahead of othess, but altruism is also a survival tactic. For if we can all get along, then no one's progeny stands to go extinct. We're back to the Golden Rule, an almost universal human value.
___________________________________________________________
"Thanks to the miles of superhighways under construction, America will soon be a wonderful place to drive—if you dont want to stop." —Fletcher Knebel
Saturday, October 02, 2004
AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE
It’s sad to say that too many Americans are scientifically ignorant. You've read my recent exchange with someone in Hayden Lake, Idaho who professes to have a scientific education but who, nevertheless, became a Bible literalist right down to the imagining that the world is only a few thousand years old. He was kind enough to invite me to his adult Bible class on Genesis at Hayden Lake Bible Church or something like that.
Here’s what’s discouraging about the exchange. I realized immediately that his arguments against evolution are without merit, superficial and easily refutable by anyone with a smattering of scientific sense. Many of his arguments are so general that they can be turned against supposed Bible truths, yet, I do believe an average American with little real knowledge of how science works would be easy prey for such simplistic arguments. When I think of all the naive minds who will be impressed by this man’s claims to a scientific education even though he has not a whit of the scientific method in his presentation and mental processes, I sorrow for American reality. More later about our exchange. . . .
BUSH’S OWNERSHIP SOCIETY. A NICE PHRASE, BUT?
Allan Sloan in the September 13, 2004 Newsweek does a nice analysis of Bush’s plan. He doesn’t see how it’ll work without further impoverishing the economy. But what always gets me about conservative plans for America is how they hammer the poor, leaving us with little means in the way of helping the poor and, in fact, shutting them out of a chance at the American dream. Hard work at minimum wage jobs just won’t allow them to participate in Bush’s world.
Writing on Bush's proposed “retirement savings accounts” and “lifetime savings accounts”, Allan Sloan points out, “They would be great for people who already have plenty to invest, but not helpful for people who don’t already own plenty of capital. It’s all part of a long-term plan to turn the income tax into a wage tax, make inheritances and income from investments tax-free and fill the budget gap with national sales tax [the least fair tax for impoverished working people] or value added tax.”
Until we secure a fair wage with extras for investment for any job in America, we need to make sure the horses of privilege don’t run off without the wagons full of everyone in America who isn’t rich. On the surface, I don’t see how Bush’s plan won’t widen the gap between rich and poor, shrink the numbers in the middle class and enrich the fat cats who are already fat cats. Social upheaval is a long term possibility with his plan.
________________________________________________
"The affair between Margaret Asquith and Margaret Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature." —Dorothy Parker (from a book review she "performed" on a book by Margaret Asquith)
It’s sad to say that too many Americans are scientifically ignorant. You've read my recent exchange with someone in Hayden Lake, Idaho who professes to have a scientific education but who, nevertheless, became a Bible literalist right down to the imagining that the world is only a few thousand years old. He was kind enough to invite me to his adult Bible class on Genesis at Hayden Lake Bible Church or something like that.
Here’s what’s discouraging about the exchange. I realized immediately that his arguments against evolution are without merit, superficial and easily refutable by anyone with a smattering of scientific sense. Many of his arguments are so general that they can be turned against supposed Bible truths, yet, I do believe an average American with little real knowledge of how science works would be easy prey for such simplistic arguments. When I think of all the naive minds who will be impressed by this man’s claims to a scientific education even though he has not a whit of the scientific method in his presentation and mental processes, I sorrow for American reality. More later about our exchange. . . .
BUSH’S OWNERSHIP SOCIETY. A NICE PHRASE, BUT?
Allan Sloan in the September 13, 2004 Newsweek does a nice analysis of Bush’s plan. He doesn’t see how it’ll work without further impoverishing the economy. But what always gets me about conservative plans for America is how they hammer the poor, leaving us with little means in the way of helping the poor and, in fact, shutting them out of a chance at the American dream. Hard work at minimum wage jobs just won’t allow them to participate in Bush’s world.
Writing on Bush's proposed “retirement savings accounts” and “lifetime savings accounts”, Allan Sloan points out, “They would be great for people who already have plenty to invest, but not helpful for people who don’t already own plenty of capital. It’s all part of a long-term plan to turn the income tax into a wage tax, make inheritances and income from investments tax-free and fill the budget gap with national sales tax [the least fair tax for impoverished working people] or value added tax.”
Until we secure a fair wage with extras for investment for any job in America, we need to make sure the horses of privilege don’t run off without the wagons full of everyone in America who isn’t rich. On the surface, I don’t see how Bush’s plan won’t widen the gap between rich and poor, shrink the numbers in the middle class and enrich the fat cats who are already fat cats. Social upheaval is a long term possibility with his plan.
________________________________________________
"The affair between Margaret Asquith and Margaret Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature." —Dorothy Parker (from a book review she "performed" on a book by Margaret Asquith)
Friday, October 01, 2004
THIRD STRAIGHT EXCHANCE WITH A FUNDAMENTALIST
> From: "H_____ K____"
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:21:48 -0700
> To: geothomas
> Subject: RE: Your reply of 9/21/2004
>
> Dear George,
>
> You seem to be reading my letters for the sole purpose of finding something
> in which you can prove me wrong, or prove yourself intellectually superior.
> I did not enter into this discussion to enjoy a battle of wits.
> I write to you as one beggar who has found some food to another.
> I write to you as one who has found peace with God and is not afraid to die.
> I write to you as one who loved science while denying the existence of God,
> and now loves science even more while embracing God.
>
> Please read my reply of 9/21/04 again, and this time respond by summarizing
> in your own words what I said.
> After that, I would be glad to hear any additional comments you might have.
>
> Howard
_________________________________________________________________
Dear Howard,
This is how I summarize your two first letters to me.
As a child you were indoctrinated into the Christian Church, but you didn't much think about the import of the Book words which were given you as an explanation of why people die.
You grew up and went to college and took science where you learned the objective and predictive methods of science. Neither did they take.
Then some "nerdy" guy talked to you about your death which you'd been ducking for awhile and told you that your fear of death could be overcome by believing there was an eternal life if you just held the right words in your head as an explanation for reality. So you gave up the scientific method of approaching the truth and went back to subjective methods: i.e. "literary interpretation" or "exegesis" of the Bible, "hearsay evidence" as recorded in the Bible and "appeals to the authority" of the Bible. I must note that none of these are in the least objective or scientific. To give up the methods of science for the subjective tools of religion does not show a respect or love for science because the methods of science are all that's important about science, not the results which from time to time can be wrongly interpreted. Which is why I say you don't love the scientific methods which answer nearly all your initial list of doubts to me. Instead you go to myth and literature for you answers. Have you read Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker?
To return to summary. Currently you hold the words in your head that you are saved from your own death by believing that a Prince named Jesus died in your place for his father's sins, and you take seriously your roll to witness to the heathens like myself, because if you don't do that, then you will have no justification in condemning me to death in your head. That would make you feel guilty. So, since we are social animals, and you'd like me to be part of your herd, before you condemn me to be outcast, you take this one effort to bring me into your fold. And, if I refuse the word of your book as the truth, then I deserve what comes my way, eternal separation from the "in" crowd. It will be for me like an eternal junior high where all the insiders get all the privileges while us outsiders "rot in hell" as the ever popular saying goes.
Is that a correct summary of your historical background?
Now to summarize your literary interpretations from the collections of writings that the Roman Empire selected from thousands of documents to be the "correct words" for the insiders to heed.
The King of Heaven gave his peasant a command, and since the peasant didn't know that it was wrong to disobey the King, he did what the King told him not to do, and the King, in his pride and pomp of power (a thoroughly human mind he has, eh?) condemned the peasant to death and all his progeny too. Then (again slipping into his human and imperfect mind once more) the King felt sorrow that he'd done such a stupid thing and, so, to make himself feel better, he created a Princely son who he then crucified in place of himself for the King's own wrongdoing.
Now, according to your lights, I, a human in a democracy no longer subject to Kings and their whims, way along in the line of Adam, am supposed to like this Kingly fellow who murders his son for his own Kingly wrongdoing when I know that any responsible Child Protective Services officer would quickly remove a child from the home of such a Kingly child murderer. I'm to believe that, somehow, my believing in this murderous King and his plan for me, I will not have to die like all the other animals around me and sleep an eternal sleep? No wonder Martin Luther said we must be irrational to believe the Bible, for only someone without reason can believe it.
Now, here's my take on this fiction—pretending for a moment, it were true. Since my Dad Adam was innocent when he was punished, I'm not going to accept this King's unjust and crazy rule. I'll choose to give sway to my anger at this God/King fellow, for if I accept his side of the story, I betray Adam, my dear and loving dad, and bow myself to this tyrannous King's insanity. By continuing to obey the King, I perpetuate his rule and his wrong doings as the King. I become an accomplice in the death of my own dear daddy. Even if I must die, my courageous rebellion is better than to perpetuate this nasty and insane King's rule over the land. After all, I've discovered democracy and freedom, I'm done with Kings and Princes, so with courage and right on my side, I lift my fist against the King and, by doing that, end his unjust reign in my heart and over the land of the suffering humans who are still burdened by his authority.
Is that a summary of the King's plan for me to have eternal life? How do you like my rebellion? And by the way, I just created for the first time in my life, a true metaphorical tale for why we ought all to reject this King stuff in the modern world of democracies. Won't you lift up your yoke under the King's irrational might, and facing death with courage, overthrow his unfair and irrational rule?
Unfortunately, the experience of history tells us that many of the King's subjects, afraid of death and lacking courage, have often done the King's dirty work for him. They kill and otherwise silence anyone who dares oppose their King. Better to live in slavery, they say, then to face death and oppose tyranny.
From one man with the scientific spirit to another man who used to have the keys and tools of freedom but who gave them away to return to the Kingdom of Crazy King,
Geo
> From: "H_____ K____"
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 21:21:48 -0700
> To: geothomas
> Subject: RE: Your reply of 9/21/2004
>
> Dear George,
>
> You seem to be reading my letters for the sole purpose of finding something
> in which you can prove me wrong, or prove yourself intellectually superior.
> I did not enter into this discussion to enjoy a battle of wits.
> I write to you as one beggar who has found some food to another.
> I write to you as one who has found peace with God and is not afraid to die.
> I write to you as one who loved science while denying the existence of God,
> and now loves science even more while embracing God.
>
> Please read my reply of 9/21/04 again, and this time respond by summarizing
> in your own words what I said.
> After that, I would be glad to hear any additional comments you might have.
>
> Howard
_________________________________________________________________
Dear Howard,
This is how I summarize your two first letters to me.
As a child you were indoctrinated into the Christian Church, but you didn't much think about the import of the Book words which were given you as an explanation of why people die.
You grew up and went to college and took science where you learned the objective and predictive methods of science. Neither did they take.
Then some "nerdy" guy talked to you about your death which you'd been ducking for awhile and told you that your fear of death could be overcome by believing there was an eternal life if you just held the right words in your head as an explanation for reality. So you gave up the scientific method of approaching the truth and went back to subjective methods: i.e. "literary interpretation" or "exegesis" of the Bible, "hearsay evidence" as recorded in the Bible and "appeals to the authority" of the Bible. I must note that none of these are in the least objective or scientific. To give up the methods of science for the subjective tools of religion does not show a respect or love for science because the methods of science are all that's important about science, not the results which from time to time can be wrongly interpreted. Which is why I say you don't love the scientific methods which answer nearly all your initial list of doubts to me. Instead you go to myth and literature for you answers. Have you read Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker?
To return to summary. Currently you hold the words in your head that you are saved from your own death by believing that a Prince named Jesus died in your place for his father's sins, and you take seriously your roll to witness to the heathens like myself, because if you don't do that, then you will have no justification in condemning me to death in your head. That would make you feel guilty. So, since we are social animals, and you'd like me to be part of your herd, before you condemn me to be outcast, you take this one effort to bring me into your fold. And, if I refuse the word of your book as the truth, then I deserve what comes my way, eternal separation from the "in" crowd. It will be for me like an eternal junior high where all the insiders get all the privileges while us outsiders "rot in hell" as the ever popular saying goes.
Is that a correct summary of your historical background?
Now to summarize your literary interpretations from the collections of writings that the Roman Empire selected from thousands of documents to be the "correct words" for the insiders to heed.
The King of Heaven gave his peasant a command, and since the peasant didn't know that it was wrong to disobey the King, he did what the King told him not to do, and the King, in his pride and pomp of power (a thoroughly human mind he has, eh?) condemned the peasant to death and all his progeny too. Then (again slipping into his human and imperfect mind once more) the King felt sorrow that he'd done such a stupid thing and, so, to make himself feel better, he created a Princely son who he then crucified in place of himself for the King's own wrongdoing.
Now, according to your lights, I, a human in a democracy no longer subject to Kings and their whims, way along in the line of Adam, am supposed to like this Kingly fellow who murders his son for his own Kingly wrongdoing when I know that any responsible Child Protective Services officer would quickly remove a child from the home of such a Kingly child murderer. I'm to believe that, somehow, my believing in this murderous King and his plan for me, I will not have to die like all the other animals around me and sleep an eternal sleep? No wonder Martin Luther said we must be irrational to believe the Bible, for only someone without reason can believe it.
Now, here's my take on this fiction—pretending for a moment, it were true. Since my Dad Adam was innocent when he was punished, I'm not going to accept this King's unjust and crazy rule. I'll choose to give sway to my anger at this God/King fellow, for if I accept his side of the story, I betray Adam, my dear and loving dad, and bow myself to this tyrannous King's insanity. By continuing to obey the King, I perpetuate his rule and his wrong doings as the King. I become an accomplice in the death of my own dear daddy. Even if I must die, my courageous rebellion is better than to perpetuate this nasty and insane King's rule over the land. After all, I've discovered democracy and freedom, I'm done with Kings and Princes, so with courage and right on my side, I lift my fist against the King and, by doing that, end his unjust reign in my heart and over the land of the suffering humans who are still burdened by his authority.
Is that a summary of the King's plan for me to have eternal life? How do you like my rebellion? And by the way, I just created for the first time in my life, a true metaphorical tale for why we ought all to reject this King stuff in the modern world of democracies. Won't you lift up your yoke under the King's irrational might, and facing death with courage, overthrow his unfair and irrational rule?
Unfortunately, the experience of history tells us that many of the King's subjects, afraid of death and lacking courage, have often done the King's dirty work for him. They kill and otherwise silence anyone who dares oppose their King. Better to live in slavery, they say, then to face death and oppose tyranny.
From one man with the scientific spirit to another man who used to have the keys and tools of freedom but who gave them away to return to the Kingdom of Crazy King,
Geo
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