Saturday, June 20, 2020

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom - Debs In Canton




Debs In Canton' is an original radioplay written by Elizabeth Schwartz & Yale Strom, starring Phil Proctor and featuring Robert Fass, PJ Ochlan, LJ Ganser, Melinda Peterson, Doug Shapiro, Anne Bobby and Micah Gellert

Produced & Directed by Sue Zizza with music by Yale Strom.


American labor leader Eugene V. Debs gave a speech in June of 1918 to a movement rally in which he condemned US involvement in the First World War. Debs was jailed for sedition and went on to run for president from his cell. This historical fiction by Schwartz and Strom explores what Debs' life might have been in the months leading up to this seminal moment of American history.

On principle I should not be posting this play because it uses real people and real events in a drama.   That can be done well but it seldom is done both well and responsibly.  Though I will admit, I enjoyed listening to it. 

This play shows how dishonest and dangerous it is to refuse to distinguish between allowing people to tell the truth and allowing people to lie with impunity, especially with a political and power purpose.   It also proves the futility of unrealistic politics and retaining myths and affection for former idealism that has turned out to not work.  This period has produced some of the best as well as some of the worst of futile leftism that quickly turned into a game of lazy idiots who didn't care if nothing happened, largely because they were already affluent.  I am of two minds as to whether or not this play is good in a political sense, though it is worth listening to, especially if you think critically about it and read the actual history that it references.  

Continuing With The Really Hard Problems

Can we say therefore;  not eros, but agape?  not amour, but caritas?  It is not as simple as that. Both words mean "love."  It is true that theologians have been at great pains to distinguish between eros - love as desire in the Greek sense - and agape - love that gives, in Jesus' sense.  In this regard they were able to conclude from the quite remarkable lexical evidence that the noun agape scarcely appears in Greek secular literature and that the verb agapan ("to love") only marginally.  On the other hand, the word eros does not appear at all in the New Testament and only twice in the Greek Old Testament - in a negative sense, in the Book of Proverbs.  Evidently the word had been compromised in Greek usage with morbid eroticism and purely instinctive sexuality, manifested also in the pagan cults. 

Obviously there is a distinction between desirous love, seeking only its own and self-giving love, seeking the advantage of the other;  the distinction, that is, between selfish love and the true love which Jesus had in mind.  Nevertheless, the distinction between selfish love and true love is not identical with the distinction between "eros" and "agape"'; as if only agape and not also eros could be true love.  Could not someone desire another person and yet be able at the same time to give himself?  And, on the other hand, is not a person who gives himself also permitted to desire the other?  Is there to be nothing loveable, nothing worth loving, in either lover or beloved?  Does not the God of the Old Testament - for instance - desire his people Israel passionately,  "jealously" as the prophets say, like a man who loves his faithless wife?  Is not God's covenant with his people thus represented in symbols of eros as marriage and the people's desertion as adultery?  Was not the song of Songs, a collection of sensual love songs, admitted to the Old Testament canon?  And has not God's love in the New Testament very human features/ the love of a father who wants his prodigal son back?  

Hans Kung:  On Being Christian continued

I'm going to take some time with this issue because it is extremely difficult to make distinctions and the problems of consistently avoiding the negative aspects of sexual or obsessively possessive love as you are involved with sexual love is as complex as avoiding the pathological rejection of people and even hating them while disapproving of their sexuality or their performance of sex.  It's not simply a matter of finding moderation or balance, though those are certainly involved with it.  For a gay man in modern America, with the prescribed character of gay sex that is, in fact, heavily associated with some of the most negative aspects of sex as desire.  That is a view of gay sex held by, I dare say,  most straight people, those who approve of equality and those who oppose it.   It is also a view of gay sex which is common among gay men, though there are probably a higher percentage of gay men who are more aware of the problematic nature of that view of their lives than the general population is.  I will not speak for Lesbians, bisexuals or transexuals on that count except to say that I think, from my experience, Lesbians seem to have a better conception of the issues.  

I think that the problem of that distinction has grown, enormously, in the period in which the internet has made pornography and the inevitable advocacy for the most selfish and pathological aspects of sex far more influential in peoples' thinking and their lives.  It does what Kung suspected the sex cults and temple prostitution did to the concept in ancient Greece, it is today's "morbid eroticism and purely instinctive sexuality."  Though I think it's more cultivated than instinctual. Pornography inevitably has that effect, I also dare to say, encouraging bad and then worse behavior, not only that destructive of the one who is inevitably used by the dominant party but of the one who dominates.   That is not only a thematic feature of pornography, it is, when living people are involved, a medical and biological fact.  

But it is certainly also true that there is LGBTQ sex which is selfless, which is responsible and caring and restorative and which is a model of human relationships in line with the Golden Rule, with the relevant parables and sayings, the prophesies and laws, just as much so as straight sex can be.  But not if it copies the empty selfishness of movies and TV shows and pornography.  I don't think even so-called "erotic fiction" is very helpful for that.  Most of what I saw, even when it was responsible and not a mode for transmitting permission to be selfish. 

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Imagine How Bad I'd Be

Finally got enough sleep to continue with Kung.

In the final antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus expressly corrects the Old Testament commandment, "You shall love your neighbor" and the Qumran precept, "You shall hate your enemy."  Instead, he declares: "But I say to you, 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.'  According to Luke, this holds also for those who are hated, cursed, insulted;  "Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,  pray for those who treat you with contempt."  Isn't all this too exaggerated, isn't it taking things too far for the average man? Why does Jesus talk like this?  Is it perhaps on account of our common human nature?  Is ti the result of philanthropy, which finds something divine even in misery?  Perhaps it expresses a universal compassion for all sufferers and serves to eas a conscience troubled y the infinite suffering of the world.  Or is it expounding an ideal of a universal moral perfection?

As anyone who has read my engagement with my enemies here, I've certainly not achieved a lot in this hardest of the many hard teachings of Jesus, no more than the radicalism of his commandments to give past the point where it hurts, the commandment to give up everything and to give the proceeds to those who won't pay it back.  You'd have to be a saint to have achieved this in this life, though I don't see what would be wrong to keep it in mind as an ideal.  I'm tempted to blame the provocation that naturally leads away from this supernatural way of life on Earth but I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind.  

Jesus has a different motive:  the perfect imitation of God.  God can be rightly understood only as the Father who makes no distinction between friend and foe, who lets the sun shine and the rain fall on good and bad, who bestows his love even on the unworthy (and who is not unworthy?).  Through love human beings are to prove themselves sons and daughters of the Father and become brothers and sisters after being enemies.  God's love for all men is for me then the reason for loving the person whom he sends to me, for loving just this neighbor.  God's love of enemies is itself therefore the reason for man's loving of enemies.

It may therefore be asked on the other hand; is not the nature of true love made clear in face only of an opponent?  True love does not speculate on its requital,  does not balance one deed against another, does not expect a reward.  It is free from calculation and concealed self-seeking.  It is not egoistic, but completely open to other persons

That last observation is something that it seems to me we can know experientially, how love opens us up past ourselves in a way that doesn't otherwise happen.  It doesn't happen by knowledge without emotional engagement.  You cannot escape being trapped inside your own ego any other way.  Some of the smartest, most intellectually accomplished among us are fixated on the narrowest of things, themselves, as well as many of the stupidest and least interested in ideas.  Our present political pageant stars both in such gaudy exhibition. 

Some of those farthest from this ideal are well versed in religious law, Cannon law, the Scriptures, the entire history of Christianity with civil and political power is strewn with people who certainly knew these passages and long theological engagement with the meaning of them - though that kind of religious figure is generally a lot more fixated on what other people get up to sexually so they can persecute them, hate them, treat them with contempt than they are with the hardest of the incredibly radical commandments of the Rabbi, Jesus.  And if you don't think I'm sorely tempted to name names, right now, you don't know me.   

That's the easy road  to pie in the sky piety and sanctity that has turned into one of the more potent weapons used against Christianity as the following of these hard teachings would earn Christians universal praise and belief. 

As I said, I share in that guilt,though I will say in my defense that I am tempted more by the fun of it than a meaner motive, half of the time, at least.   

Imagine how bad I'd be if I wasn't at least thinking of trying to do better. 

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

William Bolcom - Piano Quartet

1. Bacarolle/Ketjak


2.  Largo fantastico (Nachtstuck)


3. Intermezzo


4. Marcia risoluto



Jerome Jelinck, cello
Charles Avsharian, violin
David Ireland, viola
Joseph Gurt, piano

This piece seemed prophetic to me of the disaster America was headed in when it was written in the same year as the equally prophetic Piano Concerto, the bicentennial year of 1976,  I heard it as a warning of the catastrophe that 44 years later is coming ever clearer. 

Here is an arrangement of the Concerto for two pianos and percussion I had not known of before.


This arrangement for two pianos and percussion was performed for the composer at the University of Michigan on May 17, 2019.

Melissa Coppola, piano I
Liz Ames, piano II
Danielle Gonzalez, percussion

 "My own ambivalence about my native city, coupled with a general feeling many had that our bicentennial celebration was somewhat spoiled by our recent national troubles, provided the cli­mate out of which the Concerto was to emerge. Thus it is a mixture of irony, humor, and despair.” In the premiere performance of the concerto, he referred to it in the program notes as “one of the bitterest pieces” that he had ever written.
The first movement, Andante spianato - Allegro, refers in form and style more to the piano­-and-orchestra fantasies of the nineteenth century (which eventually led to the Gershwin works in that genre).  Beginning with a contemplative piano solo, the movement leads to a jazzy second theme and quasi­-hallucinatory section in which musical images whiz by. A new slow theme from the piano leads to a ragtime/stride section, culminating in the first piano theme taken up by the full orchestra, and a terse, tragic coda. Regrets, the less tonal second movement, begins with a distant parody of the opening clarinet choir of the Gershwin Concerto in F slow movement, growing toward a piano recitative and an agitated orchestral climax. The opening theme returns, bringing us to an orchestral blues passage, suffused with languor and regret. The Finale is a “quodlibet of national tunes” and an original, pseudo-patriotic theme introduced by the piano, creating a musical montage of American imagery, positive and otherwise. Bolcom writes in the liner notes of the Hyperion recording of the piece, “like the cowboy riding the atomic bomb to his (and the world's) death in the film Dr. Strangelove, the impact of the movement is ridiculous and terrifying at the same time.”

 With our current political climate, I feel similarly conflicted about patriotism, and with the recent SMTD scandals that have made headlines this year, at times I feel similarly conflicted about academia - which you may hear in the cadenza of the third movement. I am honored to have collaborated this year with Liz Ames and Danielle Gonzalez on this work to create an arrangement that I believe stands as a convincing and unique representation of the solo piano-orchestra work.

"Freshman Philosophy Bull Shit" - Hate Mail

It doesn't matter in the slightest that the fact I pointed out is extremely inconvenient for the classical claim of scientists that their experiments demonstrate what would happen without conscious intention intervening as the classical materialists claim is the case, any experiment done by any human being, one done badly or one done well cannot demonstrate that what they did can happen without divine intent.  

Their observations of nature, itself, cannot demonstrate that because according to the monotheistic assertion that God not only created the heavens and the earth but that God created them at all levels of magnification and in all of its movements and governing all of its events.  The "regular processes of nature" are certainly more than merely covered by that assertion, so would those which the scientists routinely throw out as "outliers" in their data so as to not have to deal with such inconvenient deviations from their observations and to make their tabulation and number crunching easier and tidier for publication.  I've wondered how scientists really explain how their often quite attenuated claims about revealing the regular workings of nature comports with the fact that they sometimes throw out quite a bit of data on that basis.  I wonder how big that percentage of the disused data is allowed to get before they start to figure that they're throwing quite a bit of the actual "processes of nature" on to that scrap heap of intellectual convenience, not to be mentioned or admitted to.  I mean, if it is actually what happened once, that it doesn't fit into their planned scheme doesn't make it go away. 

Literally nothing that science can do can demonstrate that God's intention is absent from nature on the basis of an absence of conscious intent in their evaluation of it because no matter what they do, they cannot escape the role that their own conscious intent impinges on their misnamed "objective" conclusions.  As A. S. Eddington pointed out, modern science leaving out the issue of the mind of God is not much more than an accountant leaving it out of their book keeping columns.  It's a human convenience - I'd add a reflection on our inability to keep things straight if they get too complex.  

I do think that Rupert Sheldrake was on to something important when he noted that British scientists are philosophically ignorant as compared to many of those on the European continent, perhaps elsewhere, as well.  I think that British bad habit is shared by quite a lot of Americans, especially after the pseudo-skeptics - it would be more accurate to call them what they are, atheist ideologues - started asserting themselves in the post-war period.   It was something that was noted in the criticism of the American physicists by Paul Feyerabend

The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach, and so on.  But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth.

But that's not true of all English speaking scientists,  

Horgan: Krauss, Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson have been bashing philosophy as a waste of time. Do you agree?

Ellis: If they really believe this they should stop indulging in low-grade philosophy in their own writings. You cannot do physics or cosmology without an assumed philosophical basis. You can choose not to think about that basis: it will still be there as an unexamined foundation of what you do. The fact you are unwilling to examine the philosophical foundations of what you do does not mean those foundations are not there; it just means they are unexamined.

Actually philosophical speculations have led to a great deal of good science. Einstein’s musings on Mach’s principle played a key role in developing general relativity. Einstein’s debate with Bohr and the EPR paper have led to a great of deal of good physics testing the foundations of quantum physics. My own examination of the Copernican principle in cosmology has led to exploration of some great observational tests of spatial homogeneity that have turned an untested philosophical assumption into a testable – and indeed tested - scientific hypothesis. That’s good science.

Note:  I put up the comments again the night, before last keeping them off a couple of days seems to have gotten rid of the spam bot filling up the pending comments box.  Hate mail comes in and most of it goes right to the spam file.  I don't feel any need to post it here but that doesn't mean I won't use what gets thrown at me. 

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

You Can't Filter It Out With Any Filter No Matter How Advantageous That Is For Your Benighted Effort

I had a really terrible night last night so I wasn't going to write anything today.  I did earlier, but not for here.  

Filtering in is a complaint that I pointed out that every experiment done by scientists in order to "prove" that life could have arisen by random chance physical events alone is rather stupendously self-defeating BECAUSE IT IS INEVITABLE THAT A SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT HAPPENS ONLY AS A RESULT OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN (philosophical ineptitude in having that intent doesn't negate the intelligent design of the action) and that there is absolutely no way to filter out that intelligent design from what resulted.  An experiment, successful or not, cannot demonstrate that what it did can happen without the intelligence that designed and carried out, evaluated, wrote up and published the paper on it.   IT INEVITABLY DEMONSTRATES THAT AT LEAST IN SO FAR AS CAN BE DISCERNED THROUGH SCIENCE, INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS REQUIRED TO PRODUCE THAT RESULT.  

And if that's the case, that such philosophically inept, ideologically fevered merely human intelligence can produce the results it does, in all of our limitation and pathetic inability, the infinite intelligence of God would find anything any ideologically campaigning atheist scientist can do ever so much easier than we can conceive of.  

It's not strictly relevant to this topic but I loved this fairly recent lecture given by the always reasonable, always honest, always open-minded scientist,  Rupert Sheldrake.  I especially liked learning about analogue hydraulic computers, which I'd never heard of before and how he used his knowledge of that to come up with a model of the difference in seed formation in annual and perennial plants.  I've got to find out what these pigeon peas he is always talking about are like.  I wonder if they'd grow here.  I wonder if the damned bean beetles would devour them. 

Dynamic Patterns In Water As Analogue Models 



Monday, June 15, 2020

Does The Estimable One Read Me? I Doubt It But . . .

I have gotten out of the habit of reading the estimable Charles Pierce because I can't afford the subscription that Esquire now, entirely understandably, requires for unlimited access to the national treasure of his writing.  So I didn't know till following up on a link to what he wrote about the Bolton book (which I will not buy, either)  that the day after I mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes who are believed to have stashed them away, specifically the infamous War Scroll in regard to the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness with an overarching motive of its relation to modern American politics, including acritique of our modern day whited sepulchers in the churches, the Estimable One posted this:

Vigano is a notorious crackpot, but I didn’t know he was quite as much of an Essene in his theology as he apparently is. The famous War Scroll discovered at Qumran near the Dead Sea goes on and on about the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. I guess the ancient scribes didn’t have the imagination of the folks at OAN because they didn’t come up with The Deep State. Nonetheless, it’s unnerving to hear an archbishop shouting out wingnut talking points at a president* of the United States. 

I wrote about the War Scroll that day because it just happened to be mentioned in the part of Hans Kung's great book,  On Being a Christian in the part I got to that day.  While I'd be enormously flattered and gratified to find out that Mr. Pierce even knew about some guy in the, unfortunately no longer so wilds of Maine who has a blog, I think it was a coincidence.  Of course, if I were one of the guys at the Baby Blue Blog, I'd grasp onto that coincidence to claim he was a fan boy.  But I doubt it.  I think he just was reacting to what a fascist asshole Vigano was, something else I've written about here a number of times. 

But, hey, Pierce, if you are reading me, how about a shout out.  It might motivate me to try harder.  

Pre-Summer Thought

Oh, I should mention, having brought up their connection with the Science Blogs, it's surpassingly coincidental that the pedophile criminal-funder of so many atheists and their media, a figure in the intersection of elite-university based science, new-atheist propaganda and sex trafficking of young girls, who escaped being tried extensively for his crimes that involved so many of the rich, famous and POWERFUL in the world through "suicide" has a fugitive accomplice, his pimpess - funder of Science Blogs, Ghislaine Maxwell, whose right-wing media baron, criminal, fraudster, pension rip-off artist daddy, Robert Maxwell as well escaped answering for his crimes through a "suicide" or "accident" or "heart attack".   Only, his rich, famous and so POWERFUL associates eulogized him.  

You wonder who might have gotten the idea from the daddy snuffing it in such a timely way that it could happen to the boyfriend in the nick of time, too. 

Certainly Not The Last Time I'm Going To Talk About This

Anyone who has read this blog over the years will know how many times I've taken up the issue of the origin of life on Earth, a topic about which none of us really knows how it happened because the one and only source of that information is as of now and, as any rationally coherent and honest guess, will forever remain will be entirely unknown to us.   So we never will know how life arose in the actual and only way it did on Earth.  

But that doesn't mean that you can't have fun with it.  I don't mean the kind of fun that abiogenesists and others do, those who endlessly lie with science that they are getting closer to knowing how life arose on the Early Earth more than 3.5+ billion (or so we have some reason to believe) years ago.   I mean the fun that can be poked at those guys whose primary motivation, in most cases, seems to have little to do with actually finding out how that happened, something which any rational person who honestly thinks about the problem they feign to be addressing will know they aren't doing,  their motive isn't to find the origin of life, their motive is getting rid of God, the Creator of life. Something which, while they might dupe dopes and other dishonest people they've done, they can't rationally use science to do.  For a start, one thing I've repeatedly enjoyed pointing out, any experiments they do to "create life" will have only proven that intelligent intent, agency, DESIGN was necessary for them to do what they did, thus defeating their intention to prove that life didn't require intelligent design. 

I'm addressing this again because among those last spams, before I turned off comments altogether, was the typical whining because I said "intelligent design" while not able to be confirmed through science was more supported by the evidence available than the materialist-atheist-scientistic claims about life coming into being by random chance.  I say that for any number of reasons, not least of which is to have fun thinking about how stupid their claims are. 

The jillions of universes invented, with stupendous  and entirely ironic shortsightedness  by atheists scared by the gargantuan improbability of our unverse their colleagues were asserting ARE IN NO WAY IN EVIDENCE.   They are not demonstrated, they are not observed, they are not reliably testable. So that entire realm of atheist dodge is no more than wishful thinking to their ends.

It's short sighted because it doesn't get rid of the possibility or even the "necessity" of a Creator, an infinite Creator could choose to create an infinity of universes the necessity of which would no more need to be known to us than the purpose of the vast stretches of our own universe, the existence of which was one of the old atheist chestnuts my dear old Latin teacher tried to pull on me once.   He didn't try it after I answered him.  The fact is that the Bible, itself, says that we are not going to understand the mind of God, any atheist assertion that is based in claiming that God couldn't possibly have a reason for doing something we don't understand fails on that basis.  The fact is the universe science describes at any moment of time could be a universe God created, the reason for which we should not only expect to not understand, we cannot possibly understand the mind of God.  

“My thoughts,” says the Lord, “are not like yours,
    and my ways are different from yours.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,

    so high are my ways and thoughts above yours.

Isaiah 55:89

In the known limits of time and estimated probabilities of all of the many, complex events:

1. materials coming together and joining into very complex structures,

2. unprecedented events which would have had to have happened in a theorized first organism.

a.  metabolism, bodily regulation, absorption or gathering of nutrients, solar energy (or other energy), etc. 

b. generation of complex molecules within the organism to maintain its own metabolism, bodily regulation, absorption or gathering of nutrients, solar or other energy, etc. and,

c. leading to the totally unprecedented and, according to atheist desideratum, entirely purposeless reproduction without there being any teleological motivation.

 1. the requisite numbers of such complex molecular structures as made the first organisms, at least twice as many as needed to make one of them, the unprecedented biology of that first organism forming and accumulating those.

2. That accumulation of materials, somehow, starting the process that would, continually, lead to who knows how many discrete actions that would.  And let's understand one thing that is so often unstated about the matter of reproduction, reproduction of even the simplest living organisms is not a single event but a series of continuous events which happen in a specific order, ALL OF WHICH HAVE TO HAPPEN THE RIGHT WAY OR IT DOESN'T HAPPEN. 

3. result in the splitting (presumably) of the original organism into two living, viable organisms, something that couldn't have happened by trial and error and which must have happened successfully THE FIRST TIME in order for it to leave, not only one living organism, but two, which would have (presumably) had the same extraordinarily complex molecular chemistry and structures which would allow everything from metabolism, regulation of body chemistry, and reproduction present in the two organisms. 

4. had some mechanism to allow the mutant versions of that organism to, as well, live and reproduce its kind in a string of evolution that eventually led to the stupendous diversity of life that is known to have similar biological traits - all of those species which are known to us today and in the lost past. 

5.  And I haven't even brought into it things like my favorite problem of the containing membrane in which all of this would almost certainly have had to happen forming by random chance events, just right, for ALL OF THESE MANY THINGS it to happen perfectly the very first time. 

The atheists ask us to believe all of that happened by random chance - not only in the 4 or so billion years of life on Earth but during the estimated life of the Earth, maybe not even a billion years into it, at the time that life first appeared on Earth.  Or, if you want to push it, in the 13.77 ± 0.059 billion years (apparently the latest estimate pushed by U.S. governmental agencies), something which I doubt could have happened by chance within a plausible realm of probability, at least none which anyone who was honest and informed would believe. 

I have to admit I do find thinking about this problem is a pleasure for me because every single time I've been led by atheist objections to something I've said about it, THE MORE OBVIOUS IT IS THAT THE TYPICAL ATHEIST-MATERIALIST-SCIENTISTIC ASSERTIONS ABOUT IT ARE BLATANT AND COMPLETELY OBVIOUS BULLSHIT.  Starting with the first time I got into it at a Jeffrey Epstein - Ghislaine Maxwell funded Science Blog, one of a Harvard Anthropologist dolt who didn't like what I'd said at Sean Carroll's blog,  every single time I've looked at their claims the more obviously dishonest, transparently ideological and anti-scientific their claims are. 

It's short sighted because it doesn't get rid of the possibility or even the "necessity" of a Creator, an infinite Creator could choose to create an infinity of universes the necessity of which would no more need to be known to us than the purpose of the vast stretches of our own universe, the existence of which was one of the old atheist chestnuts my dear old Latin teacher tried to pull on me once.   He didn't try it after I answered him.  The fact is that the Bible, itself, says that we are not going to understand the mind of God, any atheist assertion that is based in claiming that God couldn't possibly have a reason for doing something we don't understand fails on that basis.  The fact is the universe science describes at any moment of time could be a universe God created, the reason for which we should not only expect to not understand, we cannot possibly understand the mind of God.  

“My thoughts,” says the Lord, “are not like yours,
and my ways are different from yours.

As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways and thoughts above yours.


Isaiah 55:89

Like it or not, that is an absolute barrier to using anything science can honestly tell us about the universe from being a successful argument against God having done exactly what scientists have claimed they have found in the universe.  It might persuade the ignorant, the naive, those prone to ideological dishonesty and their ilk, those predisposed to that point of view.  It can't impress those who are rigorous in their thinking. 

How Dangerously Out Of Date Is the 18th Century US Constitution? Facial Recognition: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver


Update: Watching this again, just how many ways has this Hoan Ton-That jerk found to be a jerk in his one life?   Privacy thief?  Check. Burning man?  Check.  Rock musician?  Check.  Retro John-Lennon hair?  Check.  Scumbag internet identity thief- enthusiastic-profiteering enabler of oppressive regimes, both governmental and entrepreneurial not to mention random degenerate stalker types?  Check.  Phony transparently insincere "don't be evil" internet scumbag huckster?  Check.

And I wouldn't be so comfortable in claiming that the First Amendment doesn't mean what his company lawyers are so disgustingly claiming it does.  Not after the science-illiterate arrogant Republican-fascist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court rules on it.  I'd expect they will be salivating on the chance to use this to impose the total cyber-based control that their rotted fascist hearts desire on America.  The horrific mis-identification of People of Color by it will be a plus with them, probably most of all Clarence Thomas. 

I'm going to send this to all of those idiots in my family who take pictures at family events and put them online telling them I told you so.  I've been telling them to cut it out ever since that other massive internet a-hole Zuckerberg started Facebook, probably doing more to break up families and relationships than any other man in history. 

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Arthur Berger - Serenade Concertante



Brandeis Festival Orchestra
Izler Solomon, conductor

I loved Arthur Berger very much and love his music, all of which is of the highest quality, always his own, no matter whether in what got misleadingly called "neo-classical" or 12-tone.   This piece, especially in this recording has one of the most Bergeresque qualities, of excited engagement also another, of humor and a third of being always beautiful.  Arthur Berger had a knack he shared with a few other composers of always finding the right sonority for the moment in his piece.  This piece uses music that he had written for piano, the Suite, though the context is different in both works, it works so well.  

No One Could Time Terrible Acts On So Many Terrible Anniversaries By Chance, The Timing Of This Was Clearly Meant To Offend

or to appeal to the worst in the worst of us.

Trump’s Transgender Healthcare Rule Means ‘Our Humanity Is Not Equal’


Jesus' concrete practical universalism

It is typical of Jesus not to recognize the ingrained frontier and engagement between those of one's own group and those outside it.  It is true, as we have said, that he restricted his mission to the Jews otherwise there would not have been such bitter controversy about the mission to the Gentiles in the primitive community.  But Jesus shows an openness which in fact bursts through the immovable frontiers between members of different nations and religions.  For him, it is not the fellow national or the co-religionist who counts, but the neighbor who can confront us in any human being;  even in a political or religious opponent, rival, antagonist, adversary, enemy.  This is Jesus' concrete practical universalism.  It is an openness not only for members of one's own social group, one's own stock, one's own nation, race, class, party, Church, to the exclusion of others but unlimited openness and overcoming of demarcation lines wherever they are drawn.  The practical breaking down of existing frontiers between Jews and non-Jews, those who are near and those who are far away, good and bad, Pharisees and tax-collectors - and not merely isolated achievements, charitable works, "Samaitan deeds," is the object of the story of the Good Samaritan.  After showing the failure of the priest and the Levite, the Jewish ruling class, it sets up as an example, not - as Jesus' hearers might have expected - the Jewish layman, but the hated Samaritan, the national enemy, half-breed and heretic.  Jews and Samaritans cursed each other publicly in religious services and would not accept assistance from one another

Hans Kung:  On Being A Christian: Man's Cause, Action

It is one of the most important stories in the Christian Scriptures and I would bet that even those, perhaps, minority of professed Christians who could accurately recount it would not understand the background and so implications that Jesus would certainly have known would be fully known in the context of him telling it.  I heard the story for years, read it, too, without really understanding that in any depth.   And I should have, it was right there on the page in front of me.  Maybe that's the downside of telling  a truth through a striking story, you tend to dwell on the action and forget the context.i Especially if you grow up in a milieu in which that context seems to not be familiar. 

From the Good News translation, Luke 10 25:37

A teacher of the Law came up and tried to trap Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?”

Jesus answered him, “What do the Scriptures say? How do you interpret them?”

The man answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’”

“You are right,” Jesus replied; “do this and you will live.”

But the teacher of the Law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered, “There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead.  It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by on the other side.  In the same way a Levite also came there, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by on the other side.  But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity.  He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.  The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he told the innkeeper, ‘and when I come back this way, I will pay you whatever else you spend on him.’”

 And Jesus concluded, “In your opinion, which one of these three acted like a neighbor toward the man attacked by the robbers?”

The teacher of the Law answered, “The one who was kind to him.”

Jesus replied, “You go, then, and do the same.”

I suppose I should meditate on that in the Lectio Divinia way by imagining my mortal enemy as the Good Samaritan, the one who fell among thieves me or my loved one.  And maybe I'll do that this week.  It would be better than answering hate mail.  Jesus was answering a question about the Mosaic Law with an extremely radical interpretation of it. 

Speaking of mortal enemies.  One of the best commentaries on this story I've read in recent years wasn't commenting directly on Luke, it was Marilynne Robinson commenting on The God Delusion:

Dawkins says, “I need to call attention to one particularly unpalatable aspect of its [the Bible’s] ethical teaching. Christians seldom realize that much of the moral consideration for others which is apparently promoted by both the Old and New Testaments was originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. ‘Love thy neighbor’ didn’t mean what we now think it means. It meant only ‘Love another Jew.” As for the New Testament interpretation of the text, “Hartung puts it more bluntly than I dare: ‘Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.” Pigs being, of course, gentiles.


There are two major objections to be made to this reading. First, the verse quoted here, Leviticus 19:18, does indeed begin, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,” language that allows a narrow interpretation of the commandment. But Leviticus 19:33—34 says “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. . . . You shall love the alien as yourself.” In light of these verses, it is wrong by Dawkins’s own standards to argue that the ethos of the law does not imply moral consideration for others. (It would be interesting to see the response to a proposal to display this Mosaic law in our courthouses.) Second, Jesus provided a gloss on 19:18, the famous Parable of the Good Samaritan. With specific reference to this verse, a lawyer asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells a story that moves the lawyer to answer that the merciful Samaritan—a non-Jew— embodies the word “neighbor.” That the question would be posed to Jesus, or by Luke, is evidence that the meaning of the law was not obvious or settled in antiquity. In general, Dawkins’s air of genteel familiarity with Scripture, though becoming in one aware as he is of its contributions to the arts, dissipates under the slightest scrutiny.

I'll point out that not only does Robinson correct the enemy of Christianity and all religion but she throws in a mention of our own self-appointed Super Christians (as any informed person would understand) who wants to put Bible passages - third rate abbreviations of it, really - into court houses for political purposes, not because they have any intention of following them.  At that time it Roy Moore's history of child molestation and rape wasn't yet known to the public.  It's not just the university based atheists who are ignorant of the Bible, it's lots of fundamentalists, readers of it as well as just those who use it as a political prop.  
I've turned off comments completely for now.  This blog has apparently been targeted by an especially clueless spam bot.  At least it's not trying to sell me "male enhancement".   As if.