Saturday Night Radio Drama - Adapted by George Lefferts from the story by Ray Bradbury - The Veldt

 The Veldt 

I'm not big on science fiction but Ray Bradbury's science fiction was deeper than most.  In a lot of ways he got the dangers of people surrendering their children to TV and technology.  It's a production from 1955, a little out of the ordinary from what I usually post.  Other than Our Miss Brooks and a few others I prefer more recent productions.  It's a prediction of the kind of insidiousness that those evil Amazon cylinders are, the insidiousness being part of us.  

Don't buy from sweatshop wage slave plantations. 

More Hate On A Different Subject

"THOUGHT CRIMINAL" means what it says, but within the context of my chosen theme.  The reason I got into this about fifteen years ago was to investigate why the American "left" was mired in a period in the political wilderness longer than that which Exodus had the Children of Israel wandering in for forty years.  Along the way I've learned a lot, including that a lot of that "left" were, in fact, one of the problems, either not being nearly egalitarian enough or really concerned with the people who had to be the primary beneficiaries of any genuine "leftist" politics, the least among us. 

I gradually saw that one of the biggest reasons for the failure of the "left" was due to hijacking of the left by ideologues of various stripe, most of the most damaging ones college-credentialed snobs, atheist ideologues, those who were really more interested in looking down on parts of the underclass, maintaining a class system every bit as much as the right is, just defining it differently, a hole host of various -isms and cults and sects and other ideologues were to blame for that.  Some of the worst were the "civil libertarians" whose notion of equality started and ended at the courthouse door and who really didn't care at all about the actual physical, material and spiritual equality of anyone.  The "leftist" media were among the worst in all of those categories, I had learned from reading the media to not trust them well before I started this, well before the Media Whores Online of fond memory started, then finished posting criticism of the media whores online.  

Because of what I concluded by looking hard into the failure of the American left - and other "lefts" - I was constantly told that I was thinking forbidden thoughts and saying forbidden things.  I still am.  But the allowed ideas weren't getting us out of the wilderness. 

So when I can see a problem some theory or far fetched program for the actual pursuit of effective equality such as I wrote about yesterday, something far more likely to generate an effective and fatally damaging backlash against equality, I don't care what academic who has staked his career on it or some scribbler who, likewise sees supporting it as a good career move or those who sign on to it as an issue they will support if I think it is not going to produce real equality for real people in real life.

I have always been a supporter of egalitarian democracy, though the history of the word "democracy" starting in a patriarchal, slave society of radical exclusion, classical Athens and extending into racist, exclusive modern life, modern usage makes that word dangerously imprecise.   I have come to the conclusion that even above notions of "freedom" and even more so what is called "liberty" the foundational principle of any good government must be equality.

AND I DON'T MEAN THE "EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY" THAT IS THE REPULSIVE SLOGAN OF THE CIVIL LIBERTIES INDUSTRY MANNED BY IVY LEAGUE EQUIVALENT HACKS IMPRESSED WITH THEIR OWN CLEVERNESS, THOSE WHO ALREADY HAD THEIR OPPORTUNITIES,  BUT EQUALITY OF RESULTS IN REAL LIVES, FOR THE "DESERVING" AND THE "UNDESERVING" THE SMART AND THE NOT SO SMART.  God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on all, why should our goal be any less generous?

In that I am in total agreement with the supporters of reparations, that is the goal, equality of results, real lives lived on the basis of equality, real government determined by and with the goal of maintaining and protecting that equality and an equally decent life for everyone, to the extent that is humanly possible.   My problem with the supporters of reparations is not the goal, it is that their means of obtaining that, based on some kind of imaginary repair of lives long ago blighted by long ago dead people is to be accomplished today by people who are not to blame for that is simply never going to happen.  It is a pipe dream of the kind that so many of the past -isms and ideologues and academics and scribblers and those they convinced smoked and died even as their dreams never had a chance of happening.  I'm interested in what's real, not in what is imagined by clever, articulate people.

Distracting Hate Mail Dealt With While Making No Claim Of Permanent Knowedge About Any Of It

Kuhn's view of scientific progress would leave us with a mystery: Why does anyone bother? If one scientific theory is only better than another in its ability to solve the problems that happen to be on our minds today, then why not save ourselves a lot of trouble by putting these problems out of our minds? We don't study elementary particles because they are intrinsically interesting, like people. They are not--if you have seen one electron, you've seen them all. What drives us onward in the work of science is precisely the sense that there are truths out there to be discovered, truths that once discovered will form a permanent part of human knowledge.

Steve Weinberg: New York Review of Books, Vol XLV, Number 15 (1998)

The first question about that is how Steve Weinberg figures he knows that electrons have that level of uniformity about them since current science still holds that scientists hardly know everything about any particular electron, that what they do know about electrons is due to their study of specific aspects of electrons such as have interested scientists enough to look into those and whether or not anything like a representative sample of electrons have been observed for a sufficient length of time to determine their uniformity over time and in context, considering that different electrons are found in quite different contexts. There are a hell of a lot of atoms and they are believed to persist for a lot longer than science has had to observe them. Much of what is held to be knowledge about them, held perhaps by Weinberg and certainly by many of the rest of us, rests firmly in the realm of the theoretical and not in physical observation of actual electrons. I question the extent to which what is believed to be known about that isn't, in fact, the product of which ever theory or temporary human paradigm rules the person believing they know it. Just another of those problems with the idea.

Those are just questions about the permanence of the knowledge he and his colleagues believe they have recovered will be in the context in which he made that claim, I have no insight into the validity of what he said, just into the possibility that it is short-sighted, as, in fact, all of all human thinking about everything is short sighted, limited by our limits at any given time and because of the limits of human ability as a species. Not even the collective activity of a number of very clever people will expand past their limits and the limits of what they can devise to extend their reach.

I'd point out something I've pointed out before, the greatest success in finding durable, perhaps permanent knowledge has been among things which are only known to be imaginary in the realm of mathematics and in physics and chemistry dealing with very simple things such as molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. Though the means of producing durable knowledge through mathematical analysis of observation, science,* quickly falls in potency even on the level of molecules and the more that the behavior of systems over time becomes more complex. The assumption that subatomic particles behave in some automatic fashion in ways that are entirely knowable (perhaps believed to be almost entirely known, among some of the more arrogant and less reflective true believers in materialism) and that that assumed character extends to every aspect of reality, including consciousness in living beings and the societies they live in is totally unfounded because that can't be known to be true of any entity in physical reality. That assumption might be tolerable and even useful in dealing with inorganic molecules of relative simplicity and in the smaller objects that modern physics deals in but it quickly becomes dangerous when dealing with living beings and the systems we depend on. We are certainly dependent on the science attempted and sometimes successful when dealing with living beings, especially human bodies, a lesson we are all either learning or not in the scientific management of the Covid-19 pandemic as with the campaigns against Small Pox (the only current success in the eradication of a terrible human disease - if the samples retained for scientific curiosity remain out of the human population) and the still not totally successful polio vaccines. But I'm not sure you can honestly consider that as the same kind of thing that Steve Weinberg does. A good part of the scientific management of the pandemic MUST take into account the reality that living beings do not behave like Weinberg assumes electrons should. That alone should demonstrate the very practical problem of trying to extend the materialist model of reality to everything. 

 

The confidence of physicists, cosmologists, etc. today in the completeness of their knowledge is certainly matched by the confidence of their predecessors in periods that are now known to have not had anything like complete knowledge. I don't think there's any reason to believe that what they're saying today is anything like the last word or even close to it. That modern physics builds on what was previously known doesn't change that anymore than it's all dependent on the facts of arithmetic and the construction of the numbers system from time immemorial. I would like to know more about the impossibility of exactly calculating or coming up with a working representation of non-terminating value for pi and what that means for that number ever having an actual representation in physical reality. But I'd like to know lots of things I never will and which I doubt anyone ever will.  One of the things I read about that claimed that, eventually, there would have to be a repeating pattern in the now seeming infinitely non-repeating decimal places so far calculated. I wonder if that's a matter of faith just as what Weinberg says or if there is some actually validated proof of it. My question is how would they know that.

 

* The relationship between physical objects and mathematics is as mysterious as the relationship between our minds (perhaps the only place where mathematics exists) and our physical bodies in classical dualism, one of the atheists' favorite things to point out. Anyone who wants to claim that that is understood, please show me where that is explained because I doubt it would stand up for long as knowledge.  

"It's a matter of principle"

WHEN YOU HEAR someone say "it's the principle of the thing" be on the look out for bullshit because easily 7 out of 10 times the "principle" is not going to be anything that benefits anyone because it will never happen.  And often it's not a matter of principle but of hot air.

NO, IT'S A MATTER OF WHAT'S POSSIBLE AND, MORE SO, WHAT WILL GET US ALL THE EQUAL JUSTICE WE ALL NEED AND NOT FIFTY MORE YEARS OF REPUBLICAN-FASCIST GANGSTERISM. 

"The principle of the thing" is a tool of those who are looking for some personal, temporary and often imaginary advantage, what will get everyone what they need is generally at odds with that.  That's a true for asserted "justice" that will never be had as it is for idiotic and counter-productive bullshit that is the stuff of so much of the professional atheist legal jockeying of the last seventy or so years.  They might have gotten the idiot Supreme Court to go with them but it cost the cause of equal justice infinitely more than it got in imaginary justice for them. 

 

Update:  In the end, so also at the beginning, the ONLY reason to support any political or legal or social policy is to make real lives better in reality and anything that can't be brought to that end is worse than a waste of time, especially if it has the opposite effect from making lives better.   I don't care about any theoretical goodness or rightness of anything unless it has that result in reality, if it can't get done and it can't be sustained it may as well not have happened, if in reality it leads to the enemies of equality and democracy, the common good for everyone, gaining power then it is worse than useless, it is bad. 

My problem, however is not going to have the slightest effect on what the issue means, and, most importantly, the ultimate effect it will have on reality instead of in academic, intellectual or even legalistic imagining.

ANYONE WHO READS much of what I write here would know that in recent weeks I've been reading the independent Catholic magazine, the National Catholic Reporter a lot lately. You may have noticed I'm especially impressed with the writing and thinking of Michael Sean Winters, even though I disagree with him about as much as I do some of the other writers I admire and respect enough to disagree with.

He has a troubling, disturbing, unsettling, enlightening and still unsettling article up about the questions of reparations for the descendants of those who were enslaved in the United States, an issue I immediately have problems with white men taking the lead on, just as I have a problem with men taking any kind of leading role in discussing the issue of abortion.   My problem, however is not going to have the slightest effect on what the issue means, and, most importantly, the ultimate effect it will have on reality instead of in academic, intellectual or even legalistic imagining.

My problem with the concept isn't one of justice. If it were possible to make those whose families benefited and still prosper from the many steps up enslaving people gave their families pay those whose families are still paying for being enslaved, the justice of that is obvious.* That isn't possible, you can't, for reasons also gone into in the article, limit who pays for that in any specificity. And that leads to problems that are not only external to the cause of economic justice that reparations would be supposed to address, the issue of reparations turns, immediately into a tool of Republican-fascist, generally right-wing and often racist politics and judicial activism. It is a problem that is addressed in this paragraph.

How, then, do you erect a reparations program for slavery of the kind the activists and academics noted above advocate? The short answer is: You don't. The descendants of Russian serfs, who belonged not to a person but to the land, or of Italian messadri, poor sharecroppers, or Mexican campesinos, bear no personal responsibility for chattel slavery in the American South. Expecting those descendants to pay for a reparations program with their tax dollars would not only be unjust, it would be a political disaster.

Why should the descendants of those who didn't benefit from slavery have to pay people for it?  What about those white people whose ancestors not only didn't hold slaves but who fought against it, whose ancestors fought a civil war to abolish slavery?   What about those who had no ancestors here until well after slavery was abolished?    And why just the descendants of those held in de jure slavery?   Why not demand reparations to the descendants of the original inhabitants of North America which those whose ancestors were enslaved would, then, have to pay? Why not require the taxes paid by Black Men be used to pay reparations for the as uncompensated work of and legal dis-empowerment of Women, including White Women?

Those are all questions but the ultimate problem with making reparations an issue that the American Left, American liberals in the traditional meaning of that word, including those who reject all inequality will stand fast on the issue and slogans of "reparation" and go down to defeat by Republican-fascists, white supremacists, racists, billionaire-gangsters and the media they use to sway the gullible, the susceptible and the just plain stupid into putting them into power is not a question, it is a certainty.

The question of reparations is, I'm afraid, an issue that will become popular on the fringiest of the American left, a typical  a cause celebre, which like so many of those of the past will end up being more useful to the fascists than those who care about equality and economic justice. It is certainly one more important than so many of those in the past, manger scenes on public property, mentions of God at public events at public high schools, etc. It is important for the very reason that pushing it, something which is almost certainly never going to happen, will prevent happening, the expansion of equality to cover everyone, the erasing of inequality and discrimination here and now for The People who are alive here and now.

No one who is the victim of injustice in their life was ever benefited by the insistence on doing what was not possible because if it isn't possible to do, it's never going to happen to benefit them. That is, I'm almost certain, what the campaign for the kind of reparations as popularly imagined by the supporters of reparations is, something that is never going to happen. There is not the political will to do it now, there will always be problems that even when the blessed day that America is not a white majority country comes because the question of why Native Americans or Latin Americans or the descendants of European or Asian peasants should pay for the sins of the white Anglo-Saxon-Celtic-etc. slave owners of the past, of the beneficiaries of the de facto slavery that persisted - along with the wage slave system - with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War Amendments to the constitution in place is also an issue. 

 

Will there be some kind of mixture of family-history-DNA testing required to make sure that someone is not, as well, descended from slave-holders before they can receive reparations? That might sound absurd but I guarantee you that someone will raise it as an issue if any kind of reparations law is passed.

 

IF THERE IS ONE THING I WANT TO IMPRESS ON YOU IN THIS IT IS NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE ABILITY OF LAWYERS, LEGAL SCHOLARS, JUDGES AND JUSTICES TO TURN ALL QUESTIONS THAT SEEM ABSURD INTO SOME KIND OF LEGAL ISSUE AND, IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME, SUPREME COURT MADE LAW. 

The way to get justice for those who are alive today is such an important issue that it should only ever be considered in the most practical of terms, starting with what will get you that justice and not get you the kind of backlash that has been the history of Republican-fascist ascendancy in the period after the great Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts have been. It would be useful to know which issues growing out of the great Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-1970 got people some justice and which helped the opponents of justice because both were a feature of the talking and writing of that time. I am absolutely convinced that the advocacy for reparations is one of the things that didn't help, it hasn't happened except, as Winters points out, in a few, very modest, very limited and very targeted examples which will probably stand out as hardly relevant outliers for the majority of those who need justice and, especially, economic justice now and in the near future. 

 

The way to get justice for real people living real lives is by doing what is possible and not doing what is not only impossible but which allows a delusion of justice which will never be had into the tools of the enemies of justice.  AND ALL OF JUSTICE IS INTRINSICALLY AND TOTALLY BOUND UP WITH THE PURSUIT OF EQUALITY IN RESULTS AS THAT CAN BE MADE TO HAPPEN. 

* Though an easier and more just framing of that would be to make the billionaires and millionaires to be leveled, benfitting first the least among us then those just above them, would be a far more just means of addressing inequality.

 

My problem with those white families and individuals whose ancestors kept slaves but whose families fell into everything from poverty to destitution is that they don't have the money to pay reparations.   What they'll do is get scared by those billionaires and their hired media whores into voting for the Republican-fascists by this issue being raised, mostly by affluent academics and media figures and those who hope to ride it to fame and fortune or influence.  

 

I'd rather that we get somewhere we can get than get a ticket to another half-century of Republican-fascism. 

I'll Bet All Of These Guys and Gals Are Francis Haters

This article exposing rich and or prominent Catholics who are funding and deeply involved with the neo-Jim Crow voter suppression efforts of Republican fascism is necessary reading and a good thing to keep a copy of.

The anti-choice involvement in the racist, voter suppression campaign should alert everyone as to the real nature of that smoke screen.  It should discredit it.   People who really think it's wrong to have an abortion encourage people to practice birth control, they don't try to take away their rights to either self-determination or to vote.  

Thursday of Easter Week - Believing Things Held To Be Unbelievable

The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way,
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.

While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.

He said to them,
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And he said to them,
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”

Luke 24:35-48

This is another of the descriptions of the friends and followers of Jesus encountering him after he died, it reports that he wasn't a ghost, that he had a body but it also says he just appeared in the midst of them, so his body was not like their bodies, which makes sense, his body now was in the world after he died.

It's become fashionable among a lot of scholars these days to try to fit a conception of what it says in the Gospels into a modern, materialistic, "enlightenment" limit set on the behavior of what science studies.  I've tried to point out that since those rules are set to limit things anything possible outside of those limits would be invisible to science.   Science is a means of determining the typical behavior of things and to use that knowledge to do things we want,  it's probably safest to consider it in terms of that utility and not deserving any higher repute or respect than the worthiness of those goals, but that's not going to happen.  
 

As I've read more and more of those who hanker after the kind of repute that you get from holding strictly to the limits of materialism or, as they'd probably prefer these days, "naturalism" the more I find them both annoying and hypocritical.   It's one thing to question the descriptions in the scriptures which should be done - not to mention the outlandish claims that are allowed to be called religion for legal purposes - but it's another thing to start out rejecting the possibility that these people were actually telling what they or those they knew and held to be reliable experienced.   I've never seen anything like that but I've never seen a Higgs boson, either nor most of the elements in their elemental form,  I've certainly never seen natural selection happen - something which, by the way, no one else has ever seen, either, it doesn't happen within the possibility of human witness.   And in the case of natural selection, I find its clear class-based, ideological motivation to be discrediting. 

I am often challenged as to whether I believe in the Virgin Birth or the various miracles or the Resurrection and depending on how the challenge is made, I generally give different answers but always include that I don't really know what those things are.   I do believe in the Resurrection because of what came after it and for the multiple attestations of those who said they witnessed Jesus risen, also because what is claimed was not something that would have been expected by religiously inclined Jews - almost if not everyone recorded as witnessing the risen Jesus were Jews.  Also the character of what is claimed is another of those things which would be a lot easier to take if they'd said it a different way.   People who want to gull people say things that make it easier to convince people, not harder.   I have said that I found the descriptions of Jesus, after a period of him not being recognized, being known through the breaking of the bread oddly convincing because it is of a piece with my understanding of his teaching based on sharing the stuff of life.  I find that more convincing than just about any of the rest of it, though I do have to say him unexpectedly appearing first to Women, another hurdle for belief in a culture where the testimony of Women was discounted or dismissed, isn't something I'd expect if they wanted to make things easier for 1st century people in the Roman Empire to have accepted.

It is long past time to put high-speed rail tracks down the median of I-95 and have real high-speed rail along the entire Northeast Corridor — and beyond. - Hate Mail

THIS ONE'S too easy. I didn't make up that some people are calling Biden's economic policy "Catholic social doctrine in action," in fact, just this morning this was posted.

President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill follows in the footsteps of his American Rescue Plan. It is an example of Catholic social doctrine in action. Taken together, they represent not only a repudiation of Reaganomics, but the introduction of a new kind of social policy we could and should call Fratelli Tutti economics!

Infrastructure projects are, almost by definition, oriented towards the common good — a major theme in Fratelli Tutti. The $115 billion for roads, bridges and highways will not only put tens of thousands of people to work, but will result in a long overdue improvement in our crumbling transportation system, a system we all use. Even if you do not own a car, you need good roads and bridges for the trucks that bring the produce to your grocery store.

An estimated $85 billion is dedicated to public transport and another $80 billion to freight and passenger rail. Anyone who has traveled abroad knows that our mass transit systems are pathetic when compared to those found in other industrialized nations. As often as not, the situation we face is the result of decisions made in the 19th century. Consider the case of high-speed rail. Amtrak trains could run much faster than they do now. It is the tracks, not the trains, that need updating.

The tracks are owned by the rail companies, not by the state, because in the 19th century, before the advent of the federal income tax, the rail companies had the money. It is long past time to put high-speed rail tracks down the median of I-95 and have real high-speed rail along the entire Northeast Corridor — and beyond. Amtrak is envisioning high-speed connections between Nashville and Atlanta, Phoenix and Southern California, and Louisville and Nashville.

It is one of the too little known curiosities of current life that even the most reactionary of recent Popes have been to the left of Bernie Sanders on economic policy, as can be read in their encyclicals. That JPII and his chosen successor, Benedict XVI put Republican-fascists in virtually every office they appointed doesn't alter that even they haven't dared, in most cases, to contradict the radicalism of Catholic social doctrine even as they worked hand-in-red-velvet glove to thwart it.

Joe Biden's economics are probably not conceived of by him or the other Catholics in his administration who are calling for it as "Catholic social doctrine" because a. they are also good economics, b. egalitarian economics, c. small-d democratic as well as Democratic economics. If Joe Biden gets it done and it has the effect that it should, it would transform the United States in ways that Democrats haven't dreamed of doing since 1968. Expect the Republican-fascists in the media and on the courts and, especially, the Catholic-fascist dominated Supreme Court to fight it with everything they've got. 

 

And while we're at it, in the ecumenical spirit of the late Hans Kung, it's also good Christian, good Jewish and good Islamic, etc. social policy.   

Hans Küng Has Passed

THE GREAT SWISS THEOLOGIAN Hans Küng has died at the age of 93. His death isn't anything like a shock, he has been seriously ill for years with Parkinson's disease and 93 must be like living under an imminent order of execution no matter how good you're feeling. Anyone who reads my blog knows that over the past six or so years I've been more and more influenced by his writing and with what he's said in interviews. It's a bit of a coincidence that I mentioned Elizabeth A. Johnson this morning because it was through a footnote in one of her books that I started reading the enormous trilogy of his work, Does God Exist, which she rightly said was the best response to that question, a very rigorous answer to the kind of contemporary atheism that is advocated out of serious thinking instead of pop-kulcha dreck. I found the other two books often put with it, On Being A Christian and Eternal Life equally rigorously argued, always fair in presenting opposing points of view and considering them respectfully, the kind of intellectual work that is so rare outside of serious theology, these days. 

 

His controversial investigation of the doctrine of papal infallibility is something I looked into a lot earlier and, oddly, as time went on, it helped me come to terms with the Catholic tradition that, through its long, long history of bad and good, terrible and very good is too valuable to entirely reject.  It's despite what, especially, the Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and way too many priests have done that I find any of it credible, none of whom are convincing as infallible, even within the limits that make that terribly constructed doctrine a far rarer thing than most people, including most Catholics believe it to be.  

 
Here is the end of the article I read about his death in.

Those privileged to see Küng say Mass — as this reporter was in Greenwich Village where he preached on the Sonship of God in the late 1980s — saw a man of deep faith who gave as much attention to the words and symbols of the liturgy as he did to composing his books and lectures.

For years he had presided at the 11 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Johannes Kirche (St. John's Church) in the center of the Tubingen campus. Küng had proposed the Mass for professors.

"I have a real aversion to bad liturgy," he said. "I think it is essential that people feel immediately that the man presiding believes what he says, is committed to this cause, is addressing them and not just performing prayers. The nicest liturgical words and the highest praise of Christ — unless backed by Scripture and understood by the people — are just not useful," he said in Tubingen.

Years later in a final seminar on "Eternal Life" delivered to 20 students and 20 auditing professors at the University of Michigan, Küng focused on the Last Supper. "We see a man facing his death. It's very simple. It's a ceremony in a traditional Jewish context. He takes bread, gives his blessing, breaks it, passes it out," Küng said, extending his arms to those close to him. "He knows it's his last time with them. He says: 'Take. My body. Remember me. This night'."

Students exchanged glances. Person to person. Catholics and Hindus. Moist eyes and silence. A sense of communion filled the seminar room.

"Pascal's Wager" - My Enemies Use Words Like Ivanka Trump Uses Words

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE,  what I said has nothing to do with Pascal's wager,  I am not a great fan of Pascal's religious thinking - though unlike you he did think about it.   For someone to make that accusation of me in the same week I slammed the Catholic heresy of Jansenism (Pascal was a Jansenist) only proves they don't know what they're talking about as they reassemble phrases picked up from neo-atheist websites and talk shows like refrigerator "poetry" magnets.  

You also do that while pushing something even stupider than the pop-kulcha "understanding" of Pascal's wager, believing to get you into heaven, believing in materialist-atheist-scientism which not only gets you nothing, literally, nothing, it reduces EVERYTHING TO INSIGNIFICANCE INCLUDING OUR MINDS AND THE PRODUCTS OF THE MIND, INCLUDING SCIENCE AND WHATEVER SCIENCE CAN TELL YOU ABOUT ANYTHING, INCLUDING EVERY SINGLE CLAIM MADE IN SUPPORT OF MATERIALISM, ATHEISM AND SCIENTISM.   Materialism in all its nihilistic destruction of the significance of human minds, human experience and human knowledge, is the one ideology I know of which can only be true if it is false because if it is true NOTHING CAN BE TRUE.  To tie science to it only proves that when professional science was divorced from rigorous philosophical reflection that its quality was bound to suffer, especially in any aspect in which the issues of human consciousness directly impinged on what was being studied, as, indeed, happened directly in modern physics - not so much with chemistry due to what topics chemists studied.  Nietzsche, a jerk and a moral degenerate though he was, had a better training in philosophy than a lot of scientists of his day did so he understood more fully what accepting materialism held as consequences for everything including science and how everything in human affairs would then become a mere exercise of power, its concentration, its accumulation, the necessity of ever increasing levels of depravity for the powerful to do those things, science maybe becoming a tool of that regime of depravity, one which, in post-Christian, post-religious world, become ever clearer in their willingness to do anything.

As to your claim that I reject science because I indicate I don't trust cosmologists to believe they won't suddenly in the near or far future to change their mind about anything AND, SO EVERYTHING, that's not my fault, it's theirs.  They do that so often and, as can be seen in the influence of Fred Hoyle, the former editor of Nature, John Maddox, etc. they can insert their ideological preferences directly into that branch of what is perhaps unwisely considered physics and dominate things even well after their claims have been undermined.  

Update:  Aren't you the one who mocked me for using a computer - which you take as a product of materialist-atheist-scientism - because of your contention that atheists own science, man, and therefore me using it to argue against atheist-materialistic-scientism was somehow illegitimate?

Introducing your conception of "science" into this as an argument for atheism turns that into a wager, a rather stupid one but I'll let that go for now, you using science on the basis of its utility, as a produce of desireable things and products and tools, etc. in exactly the same way that Pascal is sometimes asserted to have used the possibility of eternal bliss in heaven as a thing to be desired and, so, something you could put a bet of getting on based on the finite amount you'd bet to get an infinite payoff.   

And loads of scientists, including the one who set off modern science, Copernicus, have been fully religious believers.  

What you're saying boils down to. starting with what you incorrectly claim I'm saying:

Pascal:  You bet on a life of sacrificing what you might want (though not everything you might want) in order to get the big payoff (heaven) so - God.

Atheists:  You bet on sacrificing everything to materialist ideology for the smug satisfaction of ownin' the God botherers and for that you get ultimate meaninglessness and a finite end in which your corpse rots in the ground and whatever meaning you had for those who knew you or knew about you eventually evaporates, sometimes a hell of a lot faster than the atheist bet on but a lot sooner than infinity.  So- no god.  

Some pay-day.  

You don't seem to understand that I believe in God, not as a mathematical operation or axiom or a term in a mathematical or logical equation but as the loving Creator who wishes that all will be saved - my all really means all in what I believe.  God as I conceive of God incompletely, is too big to do math with, too big to fit into the confines of a logical argument, too big to fit into any person's experience.  I believe in God who, when Moses asked who he should say had sent him said "I am", tell them I am sent you.  Pascal's imagination seems to have been attached too tightly to his brilliance in manipulating mathematics.   I think that's something that happens a lot more often than not. 

Portrait Of The Young "Genius" As A Retired Hack

THIS MORNING I read that Little Benny Shapiro, age 37, bills himself as this on his twitter account  

 

Ben Shapiro

@benshapiro

Editor Emeritus, http://DailyWire.com, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show,” NYT bestsellers "The Right Side of History" and "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps"

 

"Emeritus"  really!  He really calls himself that!

 

If you are one of the possibly three people who read either of those "NYT bestsellers"  - NYT bestsellers being a distinction almost as meaningless as holding one of the many self-awarded awards of the scribblling industry (it's probably harder to get hold of Mardi Gras Doubloons than one of those) - . . . If you'd read one of them,  I'd be surprised.

 

To me Little Benny will always be the twisted little semi-pro virgin who made a career out of that and being an obviously twisted, nasty little motor-mouth who gets by on flapping his trap instead of knowing what he's talking about.  Apparently his fans are impressed by that, but, then, they're likely impressed with Trump and the various other right-wing media pundits, too. Apparently there's a story going around that he expressed his outrage at having to share cupcakes when a pre-pubsecent neo-con brat. Apparently he denies it but, really, it's what he does now that tells you all you need to know about him.  He'll always be a selfish, obnoxious little brat.

Giving Mary Magalene Her Due On Holy Tuesday

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.

And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb

and saw two angels in white sitting there,

one at the head and one at the feet

where the Body of Jesus had been.

And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,

and I don’t know where they laid him.”

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you looking for?”

She thought it was the gardener and said to him,

“Sir, if you carried him away,

tell me where you laid him,

and I will take him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”

which means Teacher.

Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,

for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and tell them,

‘I am going to my Father and your Father,

to my God and your God.’”

Mary went and announced to the disciples,

“I have seen the Lord,”

and then reported what he had told her.

 

John 20:11-18 

Elizabeth A. Johnson has pointed out that the Catholic lectionary would seem to be rigged to keep the majority of Catholics from hearing this account which gives Mary Magdalene not only the honor of being the first witness to the risen Christ but also makes her the first preacher of the Resurrection, being commissioned directly by Jesus who sends her out to preach it to the male apostles and disciples, something that you can understand would lead future generations of men to want to suppress as they turned her into a reformed prostitute, all the better to marginalize her and the better to suppress the right of Women to leadership in the Church. And that's all a valid point, its proof being right there in the very texts that are considered authoritative. The modern lectionary does that by putting this text on the Tuesday of Holy Week, not on Sunday when more people would hear it and, you can bet, notice this point.

I find every time I look at these passages that I notice things I never noticed before, things that are full of meaning. In this one this year, this part jumps out at me,

Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,

for I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and tell them,

‘I am going to my Father and your Father,

to my God and your God.’”

I've read people who point out that in the John Gospel, the point of view that Jesus shared in the divinity of God the Father was either downplayed or not present. The status of Jesus in relation to God in this passage "my Father and your Father" seems to me to imply that Jesus had the same relationship to God that we do. You have to wonder what that means for our relationship to God in relation to that of Jesus. If you think I'm implying I have some insight into that, well, I don't, I have questions not answers.

It is clear in this passage that Jesus is giving Mary a status as a preacher, an evangelist AS A WOMAN (he addresses her as "Woman") that gives her an authority or at least whatever status that priority as a bringer of news and first-hand experience, specifically to men (telling her to tell "my brothers") that he didn't choose to give to presumably Peter and John and the rest of what would soon be the central leadership of the Church, including, I'd guess James the brother of Jesus, perhaps the first leader of the Jerusalem church as described in Acts, the ones who Paul acknowledged along with Peter as the leaders of the Church there. 

 

I would also point out that John clearly identifies by implication that Mary Magdalene is Jewish, with a comment for the gentiles who didn't know Hebrew and wouldn't get that. 

 

She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”

which means Teacher.

 

Just another problem for the theory that the author of John was what would be called an "antisemite" today. The problem of the Gospel of John is that he didn't use enough adjectives and adverbs when he talked about different groups of Jews, which, for a nation led to stupidity at least in part by the influence of an over-rated writer promoting his over-rated writing teacher at Cornell University , should be a lesson as to how dangerous it is to leave out those parts of speech in search of some idiotically deemed "elegance" of style. Elegance of style can apparently get people killed in the fullness of time.   I imagine some 1st century Greek "Elements of Style" being responsible for that.

Hate Mail

"If you're right the end is as final and dismal for you as it will be for me."

I'll have the staisfaction [sic] of knowing I was right and you were wrong.   

A. How long into your annihilation and the total negation of your significance even as you negated that of everyone and everything else by your ideological holding do you anticipate feeling smug about it?  You imagine that's going to go on for a while, do you?

B. Do you really think that I'm going to be thinking about you at the point of my death and whether or not I got suckered by choosing to believe in the possibility of better and that I had a moral obligation to treat other living beings better than mere assemblies of "particles and forces?"  Even if it was a delusional happiness during my life time, it's better than the gloom and nastiness of your chosen delusion.  I say delusion because . . .

C.  By your own ideological holdings being "right" or being "wrong" are equivalent in their declared insignificance and ephemeral existence.  You can suck on that right here and now, if you want something to suck on while you're waiting for obliteration.   

Answer To A Taunt

IT DID UPSET ME that Pope Francis went along with the public insult issued by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to married LGBTQ people when they banned the "blessing " of same-sex marriages. It upset me that Good, though not perfect, Pope Francis signed off on it though it didn't surprise me. He is the Pope of the Catholic Church, he's not going to stop being the Pope and it is widely believed one of his foremost concerns is not splitting the church. 

 

There are many dissenters from it among the Catholic Church, The People and those who add to that distinction academic credentials in theology and other academic subjects, Women religious, Male religious, Priests (Women and Men) etc. I am sure that there will be many unofficial "blessings" given by ordained clergy, Women as well as Men, Religious, there will be continuing dissent by doing.

The real blessing of a marriage is made real only through the faithful life together of the two spouses, their faithfulness to each other, to their children, to their families and communities. Considering how many faithless, hate filled, angry, dishonest and otherwise fraudulent marriages have the full "blessing" of clergy, of hierarchies and of the church communities, why would anyone feel any great desire to have it? Considering the number of bitter divorces, of those which even go through the legal process of the Catholic Church and are officially annulled (the official, Catholic Church blessing having been bestowed on something thereby declared not to have really existed) you'd think they'd concentrate a lot more on the crisis in blessing straight marriages that are an illusion.

If you want your marriage blessed, it's in your hands, it's between you as a couple, your children, your family, in decreasing centrality and, most of all, to God. Why would you feel like you need anything else in that area? You should value your fidelity and love more than any priest or church or piece of paper that claims you're "really" married.

The Best And Most Credible Easter Piece I've Yet Read Today

THE FIRST THING TO KNOW about this is the biography at the end of it:

Mary Catherine Redmond is a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She has ministered in various aspects of health care and is presently serving as chief physician assistant in hospital emergency medicine, serving the underserved of New York City.

 

Or, as I'd say, she's got the credibility to address what Easter means this year that I lack. Here's the link to the whole piece that starts this way:

 

I found myself a couple of weeks ago in a small group of women religious reflecting on the gift of religious life to our world at this time. "We believe in the paschal mystery," I said. "That is our gift to this time. We believe in transformation, life from death and the presence of a loving God," I shared — and felt deeply what I was saying.

I do not know where that statement came from. I was surprised I said it. However, I do know that I believe it deep down in my heart and have felt it in prayer this past year. A year fraught with fear, death, isolation, loss and feelings too numerous to name. I am sure you have some other feelings you can add. As a global pandemic was gripping our world last year, we were in the midst of Lent. A Lent that has lasted much longer than 40 days.

During this past year, I have felt a continued connection with the Agony in the Garden — "if this cup could just pass" — and the deafening silence of Holy Saturday, waiting for word to spring forth that Jesus had risen. Even though our liturgical calendar celebrated Easter last April, there was little joy and very somber alleluias as we waded through the height of an unknown disease and a day that was a date on the calendar but far from lived reality. A day that saw some of our highest death tolls in New York City.

What does it mean that I believe in the paschal mystery? How can my belief be a witness to hope, transformation and life in our world?

 

How's that for a cliff-hanger?

 

There was an anniversary a while back, the fourth anniversary of the death of a first responder who I didn't know but whose death impinged on my life in a way that has moved and haunted me ever since, the kind of death while in service, laying down his life for someone he didn't know, that has led to me considering that my life has been misspent up till now. In listening to people who knew him, well and only casually, I think that though he didn't spend his time reading things erudite authors wrote about things, the sciences, the arts, philosophy, theology, etc. he got a lot farther than I have taking that route instead of the one he took. I'm tempted to say listen to the ones who do, think about what they do and give this up as I go and volunteer someplace. I don't know if any place would want me at my age but I just might see if they need floors washed or things cleaned.