Orthodox Or Heterodox?

 In response to the effort of American Catholic bishops to ban Biden from communion, a move which is not supported by the Pope:

Over the centuries the Catholic Church has always had its dissenters.  Many of them were loyal church members who just had a different spin on things. The Franciscans are a fine example. It’s not that they wanted to attack the authority of the Pope, it’s just that they communed with God more directly, which the papacy (not inaccurately) interpreted as a threat to its own authority.  Pope Honorius III brought the Franciscans under control (a bit, anyway) by recognizing them as an order of the church and thus putting them under his authority.

To this day they remain inclined toward mysticism and direct contact with God, a religious approach no longer highly regarded within the Roman Catholic Church, although profoundly important in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Abelard was even worse from the Church point of view. He replaced Anselm as the great philosophic leader of Church thought. The problem was that in his position as a professor at the University of Paris he taught his students that they should study natural philosophy because by finding out the way the world actually worked in an objective, empirical manner; they would see how God had designed the world. He believed, and taught, that this would inevitably lead them to conclude that the Catholic Church was right about God. 

The Church wanted none of it. They wanted everyone to simply believe what they were told to believe.  After all, the true teachings of the church WERE the truth. They saw natural philosophy, an early form of science, as sometimes contradicting Church teachings (nailed it!), and in such a case, the church teachings were right and anything that disagreed with them was wrong. In fact, that was true in any and every case. Yet they couldn’t condemn him for it. First, he was very popular and famous throughout Christendom so a lot of attention would be drawn to muzzling him, generating controversy and debate which might weaken Church authority. Worse, all they could say against him was that he said that the actual objective, empirical world reflected God’s will (kind of obvious when you think about it) and if they said no it doesn’t, then they sounded like they were being very foolish. So they had to let him teach. That meant he remained a highly regarded member of the Catholic Church even though his doctrines were not in full alignment with Church orthodoxy.

No recent schisms have occurred. However, the Church does contain a wide variety of beliefs and opinions. Orthodox Catholics are orthodox. They toe the line, and it is a very straight line indeed.

Not all Catholics, however, are orthodox.

We might regard America’s bishops as the ultra orthodox within the Church  They want to go back a few centuries. They want to restore the monarchal authority of the Church.  The current Pope sees that as a way to simply speed up the process of the erosion of Church membership.

History seems to indicate that he is correct. The more fundamentalist and orthodox churches become, the more rapidly they bleed out membership. This has been displayed over the past half century in America. It’s long been the reality in Europe.

The ancient Christian desire for purity, once very attractive (and still attractive to some) is proving to be such a bad taste in contemporary spiritual mouths that it is driving many away.

Those in favor of purity argue, what use is a church if it doesn’t follow its own doctrine?  The more liberal argue, what use is a church if it has no members?

Whatever resolution is worked out for this particular moment in time, the struggle has gone on for as long as there have been Christians, long before there was a Catholic church, and it will continue for the foreseeable future.

It is interesting that polytheistic religions don’t generally have this problem. Different Greek cities were not only different nations but they often had their own mythological stories about a given set of gods. Was Helios the sun god? Or was it Apollo Helios? For that matter, wasn’t Osiris just Dionysus in a different form?  The answer is that it could be both, or neither, depending on where you lived.

This proved to be a very stable system for thousands of years, in various forms, during pre-monotheist history.  Tolerance is not an aspect of faith generally associated with monotheism.

It occurs to me that one could take a lighter look at all this and sing a song! The song could be, what do you do with the problem like Saint Anselm? I don’t think the answer would be turning him into a nanny for some adorable kids who sing catchy little songs.

On third thought, shouldn’t the song be, what do you do with a problem like Joe Biden? I don’t know. I think I’m overthinking this and it’s time to end this post. Also, I just heated up some pizza in the air fryer. And I’m hungry.

The Butler And The Book

I have been thinking about how to effectively explain the difference between the way that professional creationists approach reality and the way that the same is approached by a rationalist. Having a certain taste for BBC murder mysteries, I think the best way would be to look at the careers of two chief inspectors.

Let us begin with Chief Inspector Creationist.  On his first day in his new position, the sergeant assigned to assist him enters and declares, “Here’s our first case, sir. A man has been found murdered.  Forensics has just arrived at the scene. We can be there in a few minutes to gather evidence.”

Chief  Inspector Creationist: No need. It’s obvious who committed the crime.

Sergeant: Excuse me me sir?  You don’t even know the victim’s name. How could you possibly solve the crime?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: There is only one possible answer, Sergeant. The butler did it.

Sergeant: But we don’t even know if there is a butler, sir!

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Of course there is. The butler always commits the murder.

Sergeant:  How could you know that sir?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: The Book, Sergeant. Haven’t you ever read the Book? It has all the answers to everything.

Sergeant:  Don’t you think we should at least go take a look at the scene?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: (Exasperated) If you must, do so. But I shall not waste my time, for the crime has been solved...by the Book.

Later that day the sergeant returns. The conversation resumes.

Sergeant:  Well, sir, it’s quite an interesting case. We do know however, that the butler could not possibly have committed the crime because there was no butler.

Chief  Inspector Creationist:  Don’t be foolish, man!  If there was no butler, he cannot have committed the crime.

Sergeant: Well, yes. That’s exactly my point. The family was on the dole. They were quite poor. They live in a very small flat. They could not possibly afford a part time cleaning lady, much less a butler! 

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Sergeant, I really wonder how you possibly could have attained your rank. Simply ignoring the facts is no way to conduct an investigation!

Sergeant: But these are the facts, sir.

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Is it really necessary for me to repeat myself? The Book says the butler did it. Therefore the butler did it. The Book is infallible, inerrant, and literal. 

The only possible conclusion is that there was a butler and that he is the guilty party.

Which leads to another question. How could a poor family afford a butler? Obviously, they couldn’t. Therefore they were somehow forcing the man to be their servant. And now we have a motive!

Sergeant:  Sir?

Chief  Inspector Creationist: Don’t you see it, man? The only way they could force a butler to serve them without pay is blackmail. They were blackmailing the butler to be their servant.  Finally fed up with it, he turned to murder in order to gain his freedom and revenge.

Sergeant: However, sir, the wife has already admitted that she couldn’t stand the victim’s snoring and smothered him to death in his sleep.

Chief  Inspector Creationist: So she’s covering for the butler. Perhaps he’s blackmailing her. Unless she is his lover...

As the investigation proceeds, Chief  Inspector Creationist closes all ports of entry and sets officers watching every bus station, train station, and other method of transportation searching for the butler.  When the murdering manservant is still not captured, he issues an international alert to Interpol. The butler must be found!

Years later, at his retirement party,  Chief  Inspector Creationist bemoans the fact that he spent his entire career hunting for that wicked man and never found him. In fact, he never took another case, having devoted all his efforts to solving the first and only crime ever presented for his investigation.  But he does not feel that he has failed in his duty, after all, he did defend the Book.

As for Chief Inspector Rationalist; on his first case, he went to the crime scene. He examined the forensic reports. He checked out the alibis and motives of every suspect.  He developed numerous hypotheses as to who was in fact guilty, discarding them when the evidence contradicted his conclusions.. In the end, a suspect confessed in the face of overwhelming evidence. Chief Inspector Rationalist and his sergeant moved on to solve many cases.

(A few of them even involved a butler.)

The Stuff Of Life

 Posted by my granddaughter:  A speculative piece on what I believe defines personality and whether personality persists in total isolation without external sources to react to.

https://soulleak.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/what-defines-personality/

An interesting article. Here is an excerpt: >But if a man was raised in a white, empty room without ever having human contact and assuming he does not need to be fed and has basic knowledge enough to be civilized and not like an animal, would he have personality? (In this example, he need not be fed for the sake of not having food to interact with). Without any faculties to react to, would he have intangible attributes of character?<

My response:  Interesting. Of course the problem with the thought experiment is raise a human being that way and they will simply die. Small children, especially babies, who don’t have sufficient human contact fail to thrive and die. Children adopted by Americans from highly neglectful orphanages have profound personality disorders that simply cannot be corrected. Look to Maslow‘s experiments with infant monkeys. Quite cruel, and today probably would not be permitted. However, quite informative.

Jun 20, 2018

PsychologicalScience.org

...the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact — many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

 https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/us-experiment-on-infants-withholding-affection/13213

 > In the United States, 1944, an experiment was conducted on 40 newborn infants to determine whether individuals could thrive alone on basic physiological needs without affection. Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, none of the babies becoming ill. 

The experiment was halted after four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died at that point. At least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more natural familial environment. There was no physiological cause for the babies' deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage with their caregivers, generally stop moving, nor cry or even change expression; death would follow shortly. The babies who had "given up" before being rescued, died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions. 

The conclusion was that nurturing is actually a very vital need in humans. Whilst this was taking place, in a separate facility, the second group of twenty newborn infants were raised with all their basic physiological needs provided and the addition of affection from the caregivers. This time however, the outcome was as expected, no deaths encountered.<

We are social animals.  Without society, without socialization, we do not survive. The followers of Ayn Rand, so much of today’s conservative movement, ignores the basic nature of human beings. Their philosophy, if you want to call it that, makes as much sense as breatharianism. Yeah, there actually is such a thing. People who claim that you don’t need to eat food or even drink water, all you need to do is breathe.

Our need for human contact, for human touch, for human affection runs deep. So deep that it defines the very nature of what it means to be a living human being.  To expand on my granddaughter’s question, at what point do we cease to even care about our own survival?. Are these poor abused monkeys really monkeys? Where those poor abused babies really human?

One thing is clear, they did not even value their own survival in the absence of the affection of their own species.

To withdraw love and affection from those who love you and need you is one of the cruelest of all acts.  Whether you are a biblical literalist or an objective rationalist, it is clear that we are, as human beings, one great family.  Every stranger is a distant relative. We must care about each other and for each other or we will fail to thrive.

Herd Mentality

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livemint.com/news/india/donald-trump-in-india-live-updates-namaste-donald-trump-melania-ivanka-trump-narendra-modi-news/amp-11582522512237.html

> To my great friend Prime Minister Modi - Thank you for this wonderful visit," wrote Trump and signed the message. <

Who is Trump’s  great friend?

He’s the head of a political party which, when it was founded, declared openly that  it greatly admired Adolf Hitler for his efforts to promote racial purity.  Of course the purity they meant is the Hindu ethnic, religious, and racial purity of India.

Currently his administration is refusing to knowledge the citizenship of anyone who is a Muslim. It doesn’t matter how long their families have lived in India, even if it’s been for hundreds of years.  If they’re Muslim they are not recognized to be Indian and therefore are assumed to be illegal aliens who may be immediately arrested and eventually deported.

Business insider reports that:

• This month, India passed a sweeping law that creates a path for citizenship for religious minorities - except for Muslims.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party are experiencing a backlash beyond what they expected. Weekslong mass protests have led to 21 deaths in clashes with the police so far.
• Analysts say India is tiring of Modi's autocratic style and failed economic policies.

No wonder Trump loves Modi so much. Modi seeks racial purity, spreads dissent throughout his nation, encourages violence which leaves his own citizens dead in the streets, is an autocrat, has failed economic policies, and seeks to strip citizenship from and imprison Muslims. Does any of this sound familiar?

American Horror Story

I was planning a rather lengthy post for this particular topic but I’m unable to actually create it. The reason is explained at the very end of this truncated version. It all started with a Facebook conversation.

A friend who has fallen down the rabbit hole into the very deep depths of Trumpsterism posted an advertisement for actors to aid in a disaster simulation. This is a perfectly normal event which happens in various places around the country on a regular basis. Later on in the conversation, I pointed this out to someone who was refusing to believe that the advertisement was anything but a recruitment for people to fake a mass shooting at the Virginia gun rally so that the government could once again blame poor, pitiful and totally nice gun owners who were actually innocent.  The specific point I made was that we had drills of this type once a year at my school. It was to train first responders, our staff, yes and even the children, to be ready in case a disaster actually did occur.  It also tested our response systems and allowed for us to improve them.

Another poster commented with a montage composed of actual mass shootings with Sandy Hook right in the center. The point was that these were all faked by some evil cabal of who knows what?

I responded by declaring that those who attacked murdered children and their grieving parents, that is, people like her, were so morally disgusting,so repugnant, that she literally made me sick to my stomach.

Several hours later I decided that I would make this into a post in the manner in which I usually do. That is, I would simply copy everyone’s comments and post them with my own additional commentary. As always, I would protect both the innocent and the guilty by using only a single initial to identify them.

However, when I tried to look at the post, I could see only the beginning of her comment, “And you can crawl…”

This was followed by the declaration:

The comment may have expired or it may only be visible to an audience you’re not in. 

I would like to have seen what comment she made. I’m curious as ro exactly where she wants me to crawl. Unfortunately I have no access to the post, not even other parts of it.  In fact, I did crawl into bed shortly after I made my post. That’s because I wasn’t joking. She literally made me sick. I’m so upset at these moral degenerates who insist that mass shootings are all somehow staged events, including the horrors at Sandy Hook, that my blood pressure shot up high enough to trigger a vertigo attack. Thankfully, I was able to sleep for three hours and feel a bit better now. Naturally, that’s not the end of it. Once I have an actual serious vertigo attack,  I remain extra sensitive to them for a week thereafter. So I need to be careful and not deal with the most despicable of the conspiracy theorists for that time period. I suppose that means it’s a good thing I got blocked.

I also suppose it would give her a lot of satisfaction to know that her hateful attack on murdered children and their grieving parents actually succeeded in making me sick. Then again, the fact that it was my moral revulsion at her which sent my blood pressure soaring might have given her pause. No. I seriously doubt that she would stop her self degradation at any level.

In conclusion let me say, 🤮

Restore Factory Settings?

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/opioids-pot-criminal-justice-reform-helped-undermine-decade-s-war-ncna1108231

An interesting article, but it doesn’t seem to clearly make the point that the war on drugs was a guaranteed failure from the very moment it was conceived. (With the exception of its suppression of racial minorities elements, which I will not address here.) Quite a number of us knew this at the time and asked, isn’t this just Prohibition all over again? Didn’t that do no good at all but in fact made the mafia great and powerful? Won’t this just do the same? And it did. Obviously.

The biggest question is, why do we do such stupid self-destructive things?

Isn’t it possible that we human beings could actually do things that are rational and sensible instead of things that are hysterical and self-destructive? It’s possible. But we rarely seem to do it...or at least all too often we go for the hysterical and self destructive.

Why?

Because our emotional default setting, our factory setting, is emotionalism. It’s clear why emotions evolved. They allow us to act without thinking. They guarantee behaviors that might rationally be rejected in favor of evolutionary preferments. For example, an individual might logically choose to save himself at the expense of his children. Emotions will direct him to save the children, which saves the passing on of his genes. It might be argued that you can always have more children, but that may not be true. Furthermore, how many children would survive childhood if we didn’t feel an emotional need to protect them and care for them? Ignoring the issue of a life-and-death situation, we all know the horror stories of children who have been killed by their parents either Through neglect or physical abuse and that’s even with emotions working in the child’s favor.

To repeat one of my favorite default phrases, we are facultative rational beings but we are obligate emotional beings. That is to say, we can think rationally, but we must feel emotionally. This is not a condemnation. This is simply an acknowledgment of reality. If you discover that you have a tendency toward alcoholism, this does not mean you may as well give up and become a drunk. It means that you must spend the rest of your life being very careful not to fall into that trap. The same applies for tendencies toward cancer, Alzheimer’s, or any number of other debilitating diseases. It follows that if we humans have a tendency to be emotional to the point of self-destructiveness, we must struggle very hard to develop protections against that fate. We must learn to think rationally. We must learn to think objectively. We must simply learn to think.

It is important to note again that we should not give up on emotions. They are essential to our existence. A non-emotional being is a psychopath, if it can even manage to survive. Rather than eliminating emotions, we must learn to control them and to direct them.

This is easy to say; and very, very difficult to accomplish. Yet, in a world in which we are more and more capable of inflicting mass destruction upon ourselves, we must learn to do this. It is a matter of our survival.

Which is an excellent emotional reason to learn to think effectively and clearly.

Bicycles And The Junior Anti-sex League

From a Facebook post. Short, but important enough to re-post here.

https://quillette.com/2019/09/10/in-praise-of-renoirs-male-gaze/

Me: It has come to this? A female scholar must defend Renoir against the anti-sex, anti-male attacks of radical feminism. How sad.

B: Quillette is a magazine I've come to really appreciate right now. They've become the center of cultural controversy: they are routinely castigated as a fascist mag. It's bizarre. The CEO is Claire Lehmann; she's a smart thinker who seems to love jumping into the vitriolic fray of social commentary.

Me: They do tend to have too much of a conservative slant for me to enthusiastically support them, but they often make excellent points. I do notice that if you disagree with them on even minor matters it’s common for you to be instantly labeled a Marxist. Not all the contributors practice this unusual ritual, but too many of them do.

For any of you out there asking, the Junior Anti-sex League??? I include The following link and quote.

> The Junior Anti-Sex League in 1984 is a group that advocates "complete celibacy for both sexes." They are pushing the agenda of the Party, the group that rules the country. According to the Junior Anti-Sex League, children should not be conceived through sexual intercourse. <

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-junior-anti-sex-league-1089836

Or, put another way, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Oh sorry, that’s not an accurate quote. Let me correct that, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a mate.”

The Religious FreedomTo Persecute

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/mississippi-wedding-venue-refuses-to-rent-to-engaged-interracial-couple-because-the-owners-say-its-against-our-christian-beliefs-to-do-mixed-race-and-gay-weddings/ar-AAGEPUL

ME:  We knew this was coming. Conservative Christianity is an now an excuse to break the law and deny people their human rights. Thank you Republican Party.  Back when Ronald Reagan was president I referred to Republican Party as the New World Hezbollah, the American Party of God.

     I was predicting the future more than describing the current reality at that time. And I was right.

S:  Uh oh. Shades of Hitler.  Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis.

ME:  We must remember that from the very beginning many have pointed out it’s not make America great again, it’s make America white again.

S:  True, true, true.

S:  Another consequence of Hitler’s ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others whom the Nazis labeled “undesirables” and “enemies of the state.” The mere denunciation of a man as “homosexual” could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military.

ME:  Auschwitz was started as a camp for political prisoners, including journalists, who, of course, were enemies of the people.

S:  Could it happen here?

ME:  Not by that incompetent dolt, Trump. 

     Just as back in the days of Ronald Reagan I was seeing where the Republican Party was headed and was deeply worried about it, I can see that as Reagan laid the groundwork for what’s happening today, what Trump is doing today is laying the groundwork for what could very well be the turning of the United States into a fascist-theocratic dictatorship.  Back then I was saying the danger was of these fundamentalists turning America into a Third World country, just as they did to China, just as they did to the great Islamic empire. These once technological and cultural leaders of the world degenerated once they turned inward and began believing in their own superiority and purity and the fundamentalist beliefs of their religions.  Science is not at war with religion, with the exception of a few fundamentalist evangelical atheists. Neither is religion at war with science, except for a few fundamentalist evangelical Christians.  

     In spite of the minority status,they are a very powerful group in the United States.  Courts are being packed all across the country up to the Supreme Court with ultra conservative judges who believe in their theology. Elections are being rigged in favor of the ultra conservative and religious fanatics. And behind it all, of course, are the ultra wealthy. Those who wish to turn us into Mexico — a tiny ruling class of the Dons  and all the rest of us their peons, barely more than an other herd of cattle or sheep for them to exploit.

     I knew then that I was regarded back then by many as being foolish and extreme in making this prediction, but time has borne me out.

     There are times you really don’t want to be right. Even when you are certain that you are.

On Abiogenisis And Creationism

Philosophers comprise a group in which I feel I belong. Having said that, It should be noted that I think that not all philosophers were terribly wise. In fact, I must conclude that a great many were willfully, and quite deliberately, self-deluded. One can only conclude that they are, after all, merely human.

For example:

"Let's say you're walking around and you find a watch on the ground. As you examine it, you marvel at the intricately complex interweaving of its parts, a means to an end. Surely you wouldn't think this marvel would have come about by itself. The watch must have a maker. Just as the watch has such complex means to an end, so does nature to a much greater extent. Just look at the complexity of the human eye. Thus we must conclude that nature has a maker too."

So declared William Paley in one of the most famous procreationist arguments in all of human history.  These words are used again and again today, indeed, ad nauseam,as an acid test, an undeniable proof that abiogenesis and evolution could not possibly be correct, that science itself must be merely a religion -- and a foolish one at that.

But it should be noted that Mr. Paley missed a few points. This is what he should have said:

"If you're walking along and see a watch, you know it must have had a creator. Looking how complicated it is! See how it has exactingly machined parts...it had to be carefully manufactured. This is especially confirmed when you see the watch having sex with a female watch. Then, when she has a litter of little baby watches, you see how they are preyed upon by…Grandfather clocks? Only a few of them survive…Oh, that's right. Living things are very, very different from watches."

 How odd that  Mr. Paley never noticed these details.

William Paley was an idiot.

After thoughts on creationism.

I know I can be quite sharp, even acerbic, in my criticisms of creationists, but it should be noted that what I am primarily opposing is the hypocrisy, intellectual deceit, and spiritual failures of so many in that community.

Again and again one is presented with an endless series of individuals who first proclaim that the one and only test of truth is the Bible. Then they proceed to torture, chop up, and superglue together a hideous Frankenstein Monster of “evidence” and “facts” to support their positions.  The resulting creation is so pitiful that it cannot even be brought to life. It can only lie there and rot.

I've listed three points that I find particularly offensive; hypocrisy, intellectual deceit, and spiritual failure. I will take a look at each one of these individually.

Hypocrisy.  

We are presented time and again with a declaration that the only the test of truth which is acceptable is absolute faith in the Bible. Blind, unquestioning faith in the Bible. Then the individual attempts to create a whole network of physical evidence to support their supposedly faith based position.  

Epistemology is a philosophic term which relates to the nature of human knowledge. That is to say, what can we humans know, and how can we know it? If your epistemology is faith, then it is faith which is relevant to any discussion. The facts are irrelevant.  Either your faith is complete and sufficient or it isn’t.  This both begins and ends any and all discussions. You have declared that the truth has been revealed to you by a higher authority, that you accept that, and that is all there is to say.  

To add a series of complicated and deeply flawed arguments regarding objective reality to this argument is to say that you lied, and were in fact being profoundly hypocritical, when you said that faith was all that mattered.

Intellectual deceit.

The supposed facts and evidences which are presented are ludicrous, when they are or are not outright lies and deliberate falsehoods.  Endless ridiculous exaggerations and other distortions of what scientists and students of science actually believe constitute a mainstay of creationist apologists.  One particular extreme individual reported on his website that Darwin thought that men and women lived side-by-side as separate species for millions of years before they finally evolved sex. He declared “Darwinists” thought that men and women prior to that reproduced by fission.  When this error was pointed out to him in no uncertain  terms by a critic, he pulled that statement off his website and then posted another one declaring “Darwinists” believe that elephant males and females had lived for millions of years… Etc. etc.

Maliciously and deliberately misstating your opponents’ positions in order to make your opponent sound ridiculous is intellectual dishonesty in its most blatant form.  There are many more examples of deliberate lies and deceit spread by these individuals, but I don’t care to go into them in great length at this point. If you are interested go to YouTube, type in creationists and debunkers, and you will find an amazing list which is stunning in its breadth.

Spiritual failure.

This may sound identical to the first point, but it differs in that hypocrisy is to be found in your relationship to others (“I say this, but do that.“) while spiritual failure is deeply personal.  The individual claims that faith is all that matters to him, yet feels he must desperately thrash about to create some mishmash supposedly empirical evidence to shore up his shaky position.  He does this because he knows his own position is not believable—not even to himself.  Having loudly declared himself to be a man of faith, he then demonstrates that he has no real faith at all.

I will never agree with creationism. I think it’s silly superstition. I think it’s a serious misinterpretation of the meaning and purpose of the Bible and religion in general. Nevertheless, I will respect the moral, intellectual, and spiritual honesty of an individual that says faith is what I have, faith is all I need, that is the end of the discussion.

As I have been watching creationists on YouTube I did see one for whom I have this respect. He said flatly that he knows all the evidence shows that he is wrong.   He then went on to say that he believed in creationism because the Bible said so and his test of truth was faith in the Bible.

I think he is terribly wrong and very misguided, but I am compelled respect his honesty.

Self-destruction: An Overview

From The Atlantic.  This article appears in the July 2019 print edition with the headline “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning.”

I hope people will find the bits I have quoted from this article sufficiently intriguing and provoking to go to the source and read it in its entirety.   It is well worth the time for both right and left wingers.   

Unlike the author of this article, I loved 1984 much more than Brave New World from the beginning.  I have always realized that the answer to the question, “How did he know?” lies in an error in the question itself. It’s not how did he know what would happen in politics, it’s how did he know the nature of human beings.   There is so much that is so very obvious if you step outside of your culture and your society for even a moment or two. But doing so is profoundly difficult for the vast majority of people.  >“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell wrote.<

Today it doesn’t take much to make either the right or the left surrender their freedom and even their intelligence.  Rationality is not a valued commodity under any circumstances and in today’s fetid atmosphere of passions it has almost entirely vanished from public discourse. >Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.<

>Orwell didn’t foresee “that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.”<

While the right wing’s abandonment of sanity is based almost entirely on fear and the resultant rage and so is easy to understand, the left wing’s movement in this direction is rooted in the desire for a perfect utopian justice. >Progressive doublethink—which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind—creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice—a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.

For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance—even its subject matter—is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value.<

The articles author points out that today >...intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police<

Finally,  I must agree with his conclusion that >Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. ...Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.

Again, I suggest you read the original article, Conservative or Liberal, it is well worth your time.  As for me, to quote an old and rather silly parody song about the days of the Troubles in Ireland, “Me, being strictly neutral, I bashed everyone in sight.”

Note: my apologies for the poor proofreading. My health is really not good at the moment and I’m just not up to the effort.

Idle Thoughts -- Pro What?

Give an account of the most prominent pro-life and pro-chioce arguments. In your view, which is the strongest argument on each side? Why ?

The pro-life movement is different internationally from the pro-life movement in America. The pro-life movement in America focuses almost exclusively upon abortion and occasionally upon assisted suicide. These two items are included in the international definition, but it also extends to quality of life for the severely disabled, the death penalty, and an anti war position.

And now we enter into the strange contradiction of those who say that they are pro-life. They are opposed to abortion and to assisted suicide in the strongest emotional terms. Yet, here in the United States, most of these people are also deeply wedded to the death penalty. They also attended the strongest supporters of military actions which resulted in many deaths.

This is particularly strange because the pro-life movement in other countries, as exemplified by the positions of the Catholic Church, are in favor of all life. That is to say, they are as against the death penalty and wars as they are against abortion

This logical contradiction is easily explained. In American politics the emotional issues are utilized as a substitute for logical thought. Thus, an American who says he is pro-life but believes in the death penalty and in frequent foreign military interventions which result in many deaths sees no contradiction between these two positions because one feels right while the other feels wrong. Logic is not an issue in this case.

Many feel this is a totally irrational position, and they certainly have a point. However, to those were holding these positions there's no hypocrisy or contradiction involved. As far as they are concerned, they are trusting their guts. That is to say, they are trusting that their emotions will give them a more accurate picture of what is right and wrong, of what is moral, than will rational thought. In fact, many of them are offended at the idea that rational thought could yield morality. After all, they believe that atheists must be immoral since in their belief system all morality flows from God and it is clear that that which makes you feel good is that which God approves while that which makes you feel bad is that which God disapproves.

The obvious problem with this is much of what we feel is right or wrong is dependent upon societal prejudices, our parents' beliefs, the way we were raised, and many other factors which are highly subjective.

Now back to the American focus, which is on abortion. In so far as the pro-life movement denies people personal choice it would be called conservative. This is in cases such as assisted suicide and abortion. In cases where this pro-life ethic would conflict with government control as in the case of death penalty or war it becomes liberal.

This explains why in America these items are regarded as isolated from each other. The international movement tends not not care whether these issue is conservative or liberal, it tends to judge each situation upon its own moral values. In America, however, it becomes very important to be a part of a strict and rigid group.

So, American conservatives do not wish to support any liberal positions, therefore they exclude war and the death penalty from their position. American liberals tend to be more accepting of the international view, so tend to keep all points united.

The pro-choice movement insists upon several points which must remain legal:

1. Contraception use must remain available to any sexually active individual regardless of his or her age or the parents' beliefs.

2. Emergency contraception use, which can be regarded as a separate issue from one, because it is possible that an emergency contraceptive utilization might prevent a fertilized egg from implantation, must be available. Many pro-life members consider this to be an act of abortion, and therefore, a form of murder.

3. Abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy must be available, safe, and legal.

4. Parenthood for loving couples is a right, regardless of sexual orientation.

The American pro-life movement insists upon the following points:

1. Contraception use is acceptable to some, but not all, pro-lifers under certain circumstances. Some condemn contraceptive use in general. Others believe that contraceptives may be used but only if certain conditions are met. If an individual is a minor, his or her parents must approve the contraceptive use or it must be denied to the children under any circumstances.

2. Individuals who religiously object to the use of contraceptives should not be required to provide them even to their employees through health insurance.

3. No contraceptives should be used which prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. Once a human egg has been fertilized it is a full human being and has all the rights of any other human being. This includes the right not to be killed via abortion.

4. Abortion is murder and both doctors and patients engaging in the act should be arrested and punished for the crime.

5. Children should not be taught about contraceptive methodologies except by their parents. This includes sexually active teenagers. The only truly acceptable method of birth control is absence.

6. Parenthood should be allowed only for loving heterosexual couples in a legally and religiously sanctioned marriage.

7. The government must enforce these rules.

And having given that background, to return to the question about the strengths of the arguments:

Let's take the items one by one...pro-choice.

1. The best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and all the health problems that result, including abortion, is effective contraception. This is a solution which both sides should be able to approve. It simply makes sense.

2. Preventing a fertilized egg from implanting is a very minor thing. A fertilized egg is simply one single cell. To say that one single cell is the same thing as a baby or an adult human being is absolutely absurd. Millions of fertilized eggs are lost to pregnant women around the world every year, and no one even notices. The argument that it could become a human being, that it has the potential to become a human being, is silly. Any nucleated cell in your body has that potential with the correct scientific advances.

3. The reason for having abortions remaining safe, available, and legal is simple. The idea of the pro-life movement that by banning something legally you can make it go away is nonsense. Through out human history there have been abortions and attempts at abortion. They often involve toxic substances and physical violence to the body. They often result in the death of both mother and child. The idea that you are saving a life by killing both the baby and the mother is patently nonsense. Personally, I find abortion repulsive and wrong. But I find illegal abortion even more repulsive and more wrong. Abortion is not a good thing, but it is a necessary evil which protects young women from harming themselves.

4. Study after study has shown that children raised in a stable marriage between two parents, regardless of the sexual orientation of those parents, are very well-adjusted and live good lives. There is no moral reason to ban same-sex couples from adopting.

Again, the issues one by one… pro life.

1. Parents normally do, and should, have great control over their children's lives. Issues such as contraception certainly are issues in which parents should have a voice. How can the government take away a parent's right to guide his or her children's moral and ethical behavior?

(And my counter argument: However, this control does weaken as the child becomes older and becomes more and more able to make his or her own choices. Furthermore, the government does not allow parents to deny suffering children basic medical care. A balance is required here. Parents are not absolute dictators. They do not own their children. The children also have rights.)

2. The government should not force people to do things which are against their religious beliefs. Employers who are against contraceptives should not be required to provide them through medical insurance.

(My counter argument: public employers who are providing insurance are engaged in public activities. While churches should not be required provide such insurance, people who engage in a secular business should be governed by secular, not religious rules. Also, there are people who religiously believe that other races, usually Blacks, are inferior and should not be granted medical care. If you accept this argument it means that those people, due to their sincere religious belief, should not be required to get insurance to their Black employees, only their White ones. )

3. Once a human egg has been fertilized it has all the potential to become a full human being. Therefore, it is a full human being. We must treat fertilized eggs exactly as we treat other human beings. They have all the rights every human being has.

(My counter argument: Already described above. Simply because the cell has the potential become a full human being means only that it is a single cell that has that potential. Are we to bury our fingernail clippings? When I clip off the bit of skin on my hangnail should we give that a full funeral?  Also, remember my point about a person has a chance to save a refrigerator full of frozen fertilized eggs, perhaps hundreds of individuals, or a single live baby. Anyone who would not choose the baby is some kind of monster. Clearly a baby is much more than any number of fertilized eggs. The argument is ludicrous.)

4. Any fetus at any stage of development, even a simply fertilized egg, is a full human being because it has the potential to grow and become a human being. Therefore it is murder to kill this group of cells. No society can survive which tolerates murder. The government must enforce this law.

(My counterargument: The same as the counterargument above. However, I add the more developed a fetus is the more clearly more closely comes to being human. This is why abortion should be regulated.)

5. Abstinence solves all problems. If teens and adults are abstinent no one gets pregnant early, there's no need for abortion, there are no sexual transmitted diseases, and the world is much healthier place.

(My counterargument: Yes, in an ideal world this would be true. But in this world, the idea that abstinence will solve all problems is either a very bad joke or an absolute refusal to face reality. Sex will happen. Even the Puritans faced this problem, with many marriages occurring because a woman became pregnant. Pretending there is a magic solution to a real problem does not solve the problem.)

6. God intended men and women to marry. This is obvious because only a man and woman can make a new life. Same-sex couples are unnatural and must be banned by any moral society. This is especially true if they are raising children. Immoral people should not be allowed to raise children.

(My counter argument: Homosexual relationships have been observed in nature in hundreds of different species. If you define natural as that which happens in nature, homosexuality is entirely natural.)

7. Governments must have laws or society will fail. Since pro life positions are moral, approved by God and follow natural law, they must be enforced.

(My counter argument: Pro life positions on abortion and contraceptives are not moral, except by the standards of a fanatical minority. Most Americans believe in safe, legally regulated, limited abortions.  The minority must not be allowed to dictate to the majority.)

Best arguments both sides.

Pro-life

Abortion is destroying a potential human life. The bigger the fetus grows, the more complex it becomes, the closer it is to being fully human. Our instinctive revulsion at abortion does have a solid basis.

Pro-choice

Reality is real. Sometimes it is harsh, even brutal. Nevertheless, it is real. Governments must make reasonable adaptations to reality. We do not live in an idealized fantasy world but one that must contain within it many compromises. What we must do, what our governments must do, is the best we can under difficult circumstances.

Idle Thoughts -- the Lion, the Witch, and the Bertrand Russell

There are many subcultures in America. One of them which is very strange to me is the absolutist belief system of the fundamentalist evangelical Christian culture. I do deeply believe in God, if fact, I'm fond of saying that I do not believe in God, I know him. I know my brother, so I don't need to believe in him. I don't know the Easter Bunny, so I need to believe or not believe in him.

But having said that, I do not believe that God is giving me detailed directions on how to live my everyday life. The sense that there is a set of absolute directions from a spiritual king must be obeyed his if I were his serf is very strange to me. This message is exemplified in a series of children's books which are very popular even among adults, especially adult evangelical Christians. The first book of the series is The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis.

Three English children in the World War II era find themselves transported into a magic land, Narnia. The land is been taken over by the White Which was changed everything into an eternal winter. Three of the children come into the land peacefully, and befriend the talking animals who live there, but their brother meets the White Witch when he arrives and eats some of her poisonous magic food, transforming him into her servant.

The other children don't realize this and accept the traitor among them. The four of them go out to rescue the land from the witch and return it to the control of Aslan the Lion, who is a Christ figure.

The story plays out as a children's retelling of man's fall and Christ's redemptive sacrifice. While the story seems to be just about a magic land, it is in fact the whole story of man's fall, original sin, and the redemptive nature of suffering.


The children learned that to do good in an evil world requires suffering, sacrifice, and a spirit willing to fight for that which is right. Philosophically this goes back to the City of God by St. Augustine. Man is evil and inherits Original Sin simply by existing, only the blood of Christ can wash us free of those sins. This frames the subplot in which Edmond, brother who became loyal to the witchby surrendering himself to her service in order to become a king, loses the true kingship he deserved anyway. The lesson here is if you make a bargain with evil whatever you gain will be what you would've had anyway but it is now perverted. You're always better sticking with good. The rewards of doing evil are always bad, perverted and even poisonous to you, no matter how nice they seem to be, while the rewards of doing good, for all the suffering they may cause, are always are healthy and good for you in the long run.

Making a bargain with evil is always a mistake. Making a bargain with what is good is inappropriate. If you are wise, don't make any bargains, you just do what's good. Of course this assumes an absolute state in which everything is either good or evil.There are no moral question or doubts. Everything is simple. Everything is clear. The state is unlikely to occur in real life, but the author may be excused for over simplifying. It is a children's book.

All of this is easily applied to everyday life. The book was written with the thought in mind that most of the readers would be members of a nation in which most people were Christian, and would readily recognize the symbols. In everyday life we constantly make choices. It is easy to make the choice that looks like it will benefit us in the material world without regard to right and wrong, but this is always a mistake. Even though the right way is longer and harder and more difficult in appearance, the road that follows such a course is actually more rewarding and even less harsh than the alternative. Living as a believing Christian and actually acting on Christian principles isn't just the best choice, it's the only choice that makes any sense.

So far so good. Unfortunately, this theme is carried to an extreme which is not acceptable. Ultimately, the individual's choice, as presented, is not to carefully think things through and make the correct decision. Instead, one is expected to blindly obey the righteous king. The assumption is that since he is truly righteous therefore he is always right. This is not just an artifact of this being a children's book. The same attitude is reflected in many Christians today. Christ is the king and must be blindly and totally and absolutely obeyed. End of statement.

The difficulty is obvious to to those who not take such an absolutist positions. What if you misunderstand what the King has ordered? What if the king is wrong in this particular case? Of course, such questions make no sense to the true believers. They are certain that the king can never be wrong and you can never mistake the meaning of his messages to you because after all he is sending them and he can make no mistakes, like sending a confusing message. If you misunderstand it, that suggests he has failed somehow. Since that is impossible, it simply cannot happen.


The difficulty is that in the real world absolute certainty is rarely correct. As Bertrand Russell said, "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." I find this statement to be excessive. It isn't really a question of intelligence or lack thereof. The real issue is overconfidence and a willingness to stop thinking about things, not a fundamental inability to think. Nevertheless, the fundamental point is accurate. People who have no doubts whatsoever are generally those who are the least likely to be factually accurate. If you assume that God has directed you to do something, there is no need to think about it. God cannot possibly be wrong and in fact it could even be regarded as an insult to Him to take the time to consider the moral implications of the act. Who is willing to insult God?

This is the attitude that led to both of the Inquisition and the Protestant Discipline. These two brutal efforts to purify the church led to many atrocities. Of course those practicing those atrocities never had any doubts. After all, they were obeying the instructions of the King.

Let me make clear again that I truly love this series of books. It's simply that they should be taken as what they are, simple parables intended for children. All too many individuals apply these lessons literally as adults to their real lives. That is a mistake.

Adult life is complicated and difficult. Oversimplifying it only leads to error.