True radicalism
In equating God's cause and man's cause, God's will and man's well-being, service of God and service of man, and in the resultant relativizing of law and cult, of sacred traditions, institutions, hierarchs, it becomes clear where Jesus stands within the quadrilaterial of establishment, revolution, emigration and compromise. It becomes clear why he cannot be classified either with the ruling classes or with the political rebel, either with the moralizers or those who have opted for silence and solitude. He belongs either to right nor left, nor does he simply mediate between them. He really rises above them; above all alternatives, all of which he plucks up from the roots. This is his radicalism; the radicalism of love which, in its blunt realism, is fundamentally different from the radicalism of ideology.
It would be completely false to connect this love only with great deeds and great sacrifices; for example, in particular cases, a necessary break with relatives, renunciation of possessions in particular circumstances, even perhaps a call to martyrdom. In the first place and for the most part it is a question of behavior in ordinary life; who is first to greet the other, what place we are to seek at a feast, whether we are quick to condemn or judge compassionately, whether we strive for absolute truthfulness. Just how far love goes particularly in ordinary life can be seen under three headings which serve to define this radical love in a very concrete way, as it exists between individuals or between social groups, nations, races, classes parties, Churches.
a. Love means forgiving; reconciliation with one's brother comes before worship of God. There is no reconciliation with God without reconciliation with one's brother. Hence the petition of the Our Father; forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us [That's the Catholic translation from the Greek, the general translation is "forgive us our debts . . ." if I'm not mistaken. though I doubt we are supposed to interpret that in strictly economic terms.] This does not mean that God expects special efforts from man to obtain forgiveness. It is sufficient for man to turn confidently to God, to believe and accept the consequences for his belief. Fir if he himself is dependent on forgiveness and has received it, he should be a witness of this forgiveness by passing it on. He cannot receive God's abundant forgiveness and for his own part refuse a slight forgiveness to his fellow man, as the parable of the magnanimous king and his unmerciful servant clearly explains.
It is typical of Jesus that readiness to forgive has no limits; not seven times, but seventy-seven times, that is, constantly, endlessly. And it is for everyone, without exception. In this context likewise the prohibition on judging is typical of Jesus, again in contrast to the general Jewish theory and practice. The other person is not subject to my judgment. All are subject to God's judgment.
Jesus' requirement that we should forgive is not to be interpreted judicially. Jesus does not mean that there is a law requiring us to forgive seventy-seven times but not the seventy-eighth time. It is an appeal to man's love; to forgive from the beginning and constantly anew.
I got banned from a Youtube comment stream on the pirated posting of the Rachel Maddow show last night when in response to some totally off topic atheist anti-Christian blather by some typical "Freedom from Religion" barroom atheist types. I said something like, "Do to others what you want to be done to you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, heal the sick, etc. What's not to love about that?" before speculating that they were Putin style trolls who were trying to gin-up one of the things that makes "the left" so unpopular to the loss of "the left" in American politics. What they push is proven ballot-box poison. I think the moderator was confused, so may of them are suckers for the ideology of the play-left instead of real thinkers about reality.
As Hans Kung says, the radicalism of Jesus is true radicalism, not just a recasting of the vulgar materialism of the wealth and power establishment with a little blather about a future worker's paradise to gull the susceptible and to get them onside. Sort of like how the wealthy slave-owners, rich merchants and lawyers talked about All men are created equal and endowed with certain rights to get poor men to fight their revolutionary war before they pulled back on those egalitarian notions in so far as they dared to pull them back. It was by no means certain that the poor men who had just thrown off British rule would not realize that they could impose full equality on the wealthy class at that time. I think that accounts for any reason that the notions of God-given equality and rights in the Declaration of Independence, the foremost document in the consciousness of Americans, as Americans, at that point, are retained at all in the Constitution. And most of that notion is steeped in the common assumptions contained in the Mosaic Law and the Gospel of Jesus. Deism may have been all the rage in the late 18th century wealthy, educated elite*(though I think that is exaggerated enormously by later anti-Christian propaganda) but it's clear that Christianity was a stronger force in the more general population.
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Constant and universal forgiveness, I told you the Gospel becomes ever more radically a program the more you really listen to the words of Jesus and those who listened to him, it is almost impossible to imagine actually being able to carry out that commandment in the terms it obviously was meant to be taken, as a real obligation to do that in daily, human life. Though it is clear that the rain falls on the bad as well as on the good (contrary to what many contemporary people unassociated with agrarian life might read that as, the rain was a good thing, I note as I am praying for enough of it on my garden, right now) that God doesn't withdraw the breath of life from those who are engaged in evil, not even as they do so, in most cases. The radicalism of Jesus seems to me to be the ultimate radicalism that no ideological construction can approach. It is too radical, not a rejection or failure of radicalism. It may be too radical to be put in terms of human governments - "my kingdom is not of the Earth" - but if you reject it you are cutting egalitarian democracy, any political ideology that aspires to be good, to produce a decent life for all, off from not only its most potent source, the thing that can really power it, in view of the impressive failure of other framings of reality from even producing much in the way of that good, I think it's quite probably it is the only place we're ever going to get it from.
And we've got two more of Kung's headings of how far this radical love taught by Jesus goes.
* Getting shut of the requirement to provide for the least among them certainly among the strongest motives for them to get rid of Christianity, then as, no doubt,in the generally affluent modern atheists who found my question on Youtube unacceptable. Though the nominally "Christian" establishment has always been at pains to distract or cover up those far more obviously made requirements on their wealth, probably since the time when Constantine co-oped the radical Jesus movement.
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Monday, June 22, 2020
Persistent Atheist Hate Mailer Says What?
The "Christianity" of such "traditionalists" as are found in the Trump majority of white evangelicals (Black and Latino evangelicals, not so much), the conservative Catholics, etc. is not based in the teachings and doings of Jesus anymore than the "patriotism" of the American Republican-fascist, Hollywood and TV informed Trumpian right has anything to do with the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address and other expressions of egalitarian democracy, remarkably rare and in legally impotent forms in the literature of American political discourse.
I'm no more advocating that pseudo-Christian religion than I would the costume and make up Disney-celluloid "western and pioneer" view of "democracy", which is distinctly a non-egalitarian democracy and the phony cinematic "American tradition". It is no accident that that is set, in the cultivated imagination of susceptible Americans, in the period before women voted and before any effective campaign of equality or even fair wages happened. Most of it, indeed, is set in the period before slavery was made legally forbidden - though it certainly continues. In the United States, even in the bizarre melding of that movie-TV based patrieroticism (ironically, enough, steeped in adoration of the treason of the original and neo-Confederacies) and such stuff as Euro-fascist "Catholic" integralism by the likes of Cardinal Dolan, Tim Busch and William Barr, that stuff is an expression of the Antichrist right there to be seen.
I think one of the problems of the United States is that the Republicanism of the Founders clearly was at odds with the egalitarian democracy that was desired by, at least at most times, most of the American People. It think the country imagined by most of the Founders, perhaps all of them, saw an unequal country in which the rich, white males of property would rule, it was an eqality only among them as governors, not The People. And they are the ones who set the form of our government. It was not conceived of as a government of, by and for The People, certainly not if you included the majority of The People, Women, People of Color, not the slaves or the native inhabitants of the land who they were clearly intent on displacing, killing them as needed or desired. And that doesn't get to poor white men who were hardly immediately enfranchised by the adoption of the Constitution. It was, perhaps, the Founders mistake that they expressed their desire to be free from England to do that in terms of the equality of all people and rights of all people because that's what the majority heard. Though the first recourse of the slaves in expounding their right to freedom was Exodus and not Jefferson, the hypocrisy of his most famous sentences was noted by them quite often. In the most stirring part of our history, it was people going with that unintentional and atypical expression of universalism that has been responsible for any reason that the United States has had anything admirable in its history, the things unadmirable about us, uniformly an expression of inequality.
No, Gospel equality is the most potent potential source material out of which to make an egalitarian democracy, the attempt to do that through Marxism has flopped everywhere it was installed. No one who had any experience of it wants it back once they've gotten shut of it.
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I'm not sure what I'm going to do when Blogger changes later this month, I might keep on, working around whatever they do or I might change hosting or I might stop doing this in this form. I will NOT go to Facebook, I will certainly not do Twitter - as if what I write about could be done on in tweets. We will see what I do, me included in that waiting.
Update: I'm putting this here at the top because it is true, the overseers at Amazon warehouses, using computers and those "algorithms" so beloved of the smart set and other maximizers of "efficency" (you can read profitability) have absolutely no regard for the human needs or dignity or health or well-being of those who work there.
Working at an Amazon warehouse in the U.K., James Bloodworth came across a bottle of straw-colored liquid on a shelf. It looked like pee.
How could he be sure? “I smelt it,” said the 35-year-old British journalist and author, talking about his new book “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain.” It was definitely pee, he said.
As he tells it, urinating into a bottle is the kind of desperation Amazon forces its warehouse workers into as they try to avoid accusations of “idling” and failing to meet impossibly high productivity targets — ones they are continually measured against by Big Brother-ish type surveillance.
It didn’t help that the nearest bathroom to where he worked was four flights of stairs below.
and more
Bloodworth said he spent several weeks at Amazon in early 2016 working the requisite 10-hour shifts, four days a week, at a warehouse in the West Midlands countryside. Seeking to write about the plight of the working class, he also worked at a call center, as an Uber driver, on a building site and as a home aide caring for the elderly.
“Amazon was the worst employer, easily,” the author said by phone.
When he took a day off sick, he received a “point.” Earn six and you’re fired, he said.
Bloodworth said he heard of one person getting a point because she had to leave early to see her child in the hospital, and he talked to another who got a point for failing to hit her rate.
At the warehouse where he worked, Amazon monitored everbody’s rate through a handheld device — tracking “our every move as if we were convicts out on house arrest,” he writes.
The device carried messages to workers and recorded how quickly they were picking or packing goods. “Your rates are down this hour, please speed up,” a message might say, according to Bloodworth.
It's clear from the way Amazon has behaved during this pandemic that any improvement in the wage-slave conditions that allow for it to operate as it does is done on a piecemeal basis and, I suspect, temporarily done for PR purposes.
I won't buy from them, they are a manifestation of modern-day minimum-wage slavery.
I'm no more advocating that pseudo-Christian religion than I would the costume and make up Disney-celluloid "western and pioneer" view of "democracy", which is distinctly a non-egalitarian democracy and the phony cinematic "American tradition". It is no accident that that is set, in the cultivated imagination of susceptible Americans, in the period before women voted and before any effective campaign of equality or even fair wages happened. Most of it, indeed, is set in the period before slavery was made legally forbidden - though it certainly continues. In the United States, even in the bizarre melding of that movie-TV based patrieroticism (ironically, enough, steeped in adoration of the treason of the original and neo-Confederacies) and such stuff as Euro-fascist "Catholic" integralism by the likes of Cardinal Dolan, Tim Busch and William Barr, that stuff is an expression of the Antichrist right there to be seen.
I think one of the problems of the United States is that the Republicanism of the Founders clearly was at odds with the egalitarian democracy that was desired by, at least at most times, most of the American People. It think the country imagined by most of the Founders, perhaps all of them, saw an unequal country in which the rich, white males of property would rule, it was an eqality only among them as governors, not The People. And they are the ones who set the form of our government. It was not conceived of as a government of, by and for The People, certainly not if you included the majority of The People, Women, People of Color, not the slaves or the native inhabitants of the land who they were clearly intent on displacing, killing them as needed or desired. And that doesn't get to poor white men who were hardly immediately enfranchised by the adoption of the Constitution. It was, perhaps, the Founders mistake that they expressed their desire to be free from England to do that in terms of the equality of all people and rights of all people because that's what the majority heard. Though the first recourse of the slaves in expounding their right to freedom was Exodus and not Jefferson, the hypocrisy of his most famous sentences was noted by them quite often. In the most stirring part of our history, it was people going with that unintentional and atypical expression of universalism that has been responsible for any reason that the United States has had anything admirable in its history, the things unadmirable about us, uniformly an expression of inequality.
No, Gospel equality is the most potent potential source material out of which to make an egalitarian democracy, the attempt to do that through Marxism has flopped everywhere it was installed. No one who had any experience of it wants it back once they've gotten shut of it.
------------
I'm not sure what I'm going to do when Blogger changes later this month, I might keep on, working around whatever they do or I might change hosting or I might stop doing this in this form. I will NOT go to Facebook, I will certainly not do Twitter - as if what I write about could be done on in tweets. We will see what I do, me included in that waiting.
Update: I'm putting this here at the top because it is true, the overseers at Amazon warehouses, using computers and those "algorithms" so beloved of the smart set and other maximizers of "efficency" (you can read profitability) have absolutely no regard for the human needs or dignity or health or well-being of those who work there.
Working at an Amazon warehouse in the U.K., James Bloodworth came across a bottle of straw-colored liquid on a shelf. It looked like pee.
How could he be sure? “I smelt it,” said the 35-year-old British journalist and author, talking about his new book “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain.” It was definitely pee, he said.
As he tells it, urinating into a bottle is the kind of desperation Amazon forces its warehouse workers into as they try to avoid accusations of “idling” and failing to meet impossibly high productivity targets — ones they are continually measured against by Big Brother-ish type surveillance.
It didn’t help that the nearest bathroom to where he worked was four flights of stairs below.
and more
Bloodworth said he spent several weeks at Amazon in early 2016 working the requisite 10-hour shifts, four days a week, at a warehouse in the West Midlands countryside. Seeking to write about the plight of the working class, he also worked at a call center, as an Uber driver, on a building site and as a home aide caring for the elderly.
“Amazon was the worst employer, easily,” the author said by phone.
When he took a day off sick, he received a “point.” Earn six and you’re fired, he said.
Bloodworth said he heard of one person getting a point because she had to leave early to see her child in the hospital, and he talked to another who got a point for failing to hit her rate.
At the warehouse where he worked, Amazon monitored everbody’s rate through a handheld device — tracking “our every move as if we were convicts out on house arrest,” he writes.
The device carried messages to workers and recorded how quickly they were picking or packing goods. “Your rates are down this hour, please speed up,” a message might say, according to Bloodworth.
It's clear from the way Amazon has behaved during this pandemic that any improvement in the wage-slave conditions that allow for it to operate as it does is done on a piecemeal basis and, I suspect, temporarily done for PR purposes.
I won't buy from them, they are a manifestation of modern-day minimum-wage slavery.
not to possession but to giving
It is striking that the Greek Old Testament speaks quite naturally of a husband's agapan for his wire and of husband and wife for their children. And Jesus, according to the Greek New Testament, uses the same verb for the love of friends and the love of enemies. Jesus in the Gospels appears as wholly and entirely human., cuddling children, allowing women to anoint him, aware of a bond of "love" between himself and Lazarus and his sisters, evidently this "love" does not exclude eros. Jesus calls his disciples, "friends." Obviously neither the Old nor the New Testament is interested in the distinction between a "heavenly" and an "earthly "love. God's love is described in a pleasantly human way and elemental human love is in no way denigrated. Genuinely human love of husband and wife, father, mother, child, is not opposed to love of God but set within the context of that love. But when eros and agapan are regarded not only as distinct, but as mutually exclusive, this is at the expense of both eros and agape.
Then eros is devalued and condemned. Passionate love desiring the other for oneself is restricted to sex and thus both eroticism and sexuality are depricated. Eros is then regarded with suspicion even when it appears not simply as uncanny, overpowering, blind, sensual passion, but - as for instance in Plato's Symposium - as a drive toward the beautiful and as creative force, which becomes a pointer to the supreme, divine Good (in Plotinus a longing for reunion with the One). Education hostile to eros and more especially religious attitudes opposed to eros and sexuality have caused an enormous amount of harm. But why should loving desire and loving service, the game of love and the fidelity of love, be mutually exclusive?
When eros is depreciated, however, agape is overvalued and dehumanized. It is desensualized and spritualized (then falsely called "Platonic love"). Vitality, emotion, affectivity are forcibly excluded, leaving a love that its totally unattractive. When love is merely a decision of the will and not also a venture of the heart, it lacks genuine humanity. It lacks depth, warmth, intimacy, tenderness, cordiality. Christian charity often makes little impression just because it had so little humanity.
Should not all that is human be echoed in all love of man, love of neighbor and even love of enemies? This sort of love does not become selfish, seeking only its own, but strong, truly human, seeking with body and soul, word and deed, what is for the good of the other. In true love all desire turns, not to possession but to giving.
I will give a little preview of here this is going by pointing out that in the distinction between political and social good and evil, probably a majority of that distinction is based in the difference between possession and giving. In the most extreme forms of that there is the complete difference between the possession of other human beings, generally by a man or a woman of property and wealth over slaves, wage-slaves*, children - especially daughters - wives and the practice of egalitarianism - which I would assert is an expression of love or it is merely an optional legalism which can easily be withdrawn without cost to the one withdrawing it - and the actual distribution of material goods. In the most extreme difference can be seen such things as Jeff Bezos making 24 million dollars during the current pandemic as the wage-slaves in his warehouses are not only worked more sedulously than field-slaves, but their lives endangered as Amazon takes back the measly 2 dollars in "hazard pay" they announced for PR purposes. Or as can be seen in just the most recently "honor killing" to make the international news as well as the myriad of others that don't.
This is one of the ways in which the teachings of Jesus are as radical as can be as seen in one of the most fraught areas of human life, one which is far more complex and difficult in our conduct of our lives than it is in even this kind of in depth expression of it. The difference between wanting or expressing possession of the life of another person and loving them in a way that rejects that kind of possession is in no way an easy thing to even put into words, practicing it is far more complex than that. I am tempted to go into, for example, the complication that sexual infidelity among those in a committed relationship plays into this, that complex that plays off notions of possession and permission to break promises of support, the irresponsibility of the possible production of a pregnancy and child outside of a stable family, the dangers of contracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases, the abandonment of a wife and children or a husband and children, etc. are in every way related to not only the giving or withdrawal of material support but also of emotional support and guidance that parents owe to their children.
This is the crux of why The Law, the Prophets, the Gospel and the apostolic teachings were and are so despised, because they all come down with a preference for giving instead of possession, of moral responsibility instead of selfishness - no matter how imperfectly expressed in such legalisms as The Law's dealing with adultery, so decisively interpreted against tradition in John's Gospel.
I think the spectacle of the Trump regime is, if not the perfect, quite an adequate view of the antithesis of the Gospel to be getting on with. And the impotence of the atheist-materialist-secular "left" in opposing it is clear, too. To the extent that that "left" adopts the components of the depravity of which Trump is merely a developed example, to that extent they participate in elevating it to power. Even in their opposition to it, they have had such a tendency to aid it in the past century, as, indeed, so many in the "Christian" churches. Jesus is too radical for such "Christianity" so they don't much talk about what he said.
In this the absolute radicalism of the sayings and doings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, as taught by Paul and James and the others and how subsequent accommodation of Christian authorities with worldly power was a distortion and rejection of that radicalism becomes clearer.
Then eros is devalued and condemned. Passionate love desiring the other for oneself is restricted to sex and thus both eroticism and sexuality are depricated. Eros is then regarded with suspicion even when it appears not simply as uncanny, overpowering, blind, sensual passion, but - as for instance in Plato's Symposium - as a drive toward the beautiful and as creative force, which becomes a pointer to the supreme, divine Good (in Plotinus a longing for reunion with the One). Education hostile to eros and more especially religious attitudes opposed to eros and sexuality have caused an enormous amount of harm. But why should loving desire and loving service, the game of love and the fidelity of love, be mutually exclusive?
When eros is depreciated, however, agape is overvalued and dehumanized. It is desensualized and spritualized (then falsely called "Platonic love"). Vitality, emotion, affectivity are forcibly excluded, leaving a love that its totally unattractive. When love is merely a decision of the will and not also a venture of the heart, it lacks genuine humanity. It lacks depth, warmth, intimacy, tenderness, cordiality. Christian charity often makes little impression just because it had so little humanity.
Should not all that is human be echoed in all love of man, love of neighbor and even love of enemies? This sort of love does not become selfish, seeking only its own, but strong, truly human, seeking with body and soul, word and deed, what is for the good of the other. In true love all desire turns, not to possession but to giving.
I will give a little preview of here this is going by pointing out that in the distinction between political and social good and evil, probably a majority of that distinction is based in the difference between possession and giving. In the most extreme forms of that there is the complete difference between the possession of other human beings, generally by a man or a woman of property and wealth over slaves, wage-slaves*, children - especially daughters - wives and the practice of egalitarianism - which I would assert is an expression of love or it is merely an optional legalism which can easily be withdrawn without cost to the one withdrawing it - and the actual distribution of material goods. In the most extreme difference can be seen such things as Jeff Bezos making 24 million dollars during the current pandemic as the wage-slaves in his warehouses are not only worked more sedulously than field-slaves, but their lives endangered as Amazon takes back the measly 2 dollars in "hazard pay" they announced for PR purposes. Or as can be seen in just the most recently "honor killing" to make the international news as well as the myriad of others that don't.
This is one of the ways in which the teachings of Jesus are as radical as can be as seen in one of the most fraught areas of human life, one which is far more complex and difficult in our conduct of our lives than it is in even this kind of in depth expression of it. The difference between wanting or expressing possession of the life of another person and loving them in a way that rejects that kind of possession is in no way an easy thing to even put into words, practicing it is far more complex than that. I am tempted to go into, for example, the complication that sexual infidelity among those in a committed relationship plays into this, that complex that plays off notions of possession and permission to break promises of support, the irresponsibility of the possible production of a pregnancy and child outside of a stable family, the dangers of contracting and passing on sexually transmitted diseases, the abandonment of a wife and children or a husband and children, etc. are in every way related to not only the giving or withdrawal of material support but also of emotional support and guidance that parents owe to their children.
This is the crux of why The Law, the Prophets, the Gospel and the apostolic teachings were and are so despised, because they all come down with a preference for giving instead of possession, of moral responsibility instead of selfishness - no matter how imperfectly expressed in such legalisms as The Law's dealing with adultery, so decisively interpreted against tradition in John's Gospel.
I think the spectacle of the Trump regime is, if not the perfect, quite an adequate view of the antithesis of the Gospel to be getting on with. And the impotence of the atheist-materialist-secular "left" in opposing it is clear, too. To the extent that that "left" adopts the components of the depravity of which Trump is merely a developed example, to that extent they participate in elevating it to power. Even in their opposition to it, they have had such a tendency to aid it in the past century, as, indeed, so many in the "Christian" churches. Jesus is too radical for such "Christianity" so they don't much talk about what he said.
In this the absolute radicalism of the sayings and doings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, as taught by Paul and James and the others and how subsequent accommodation of Christian authorities with worldly power was a distortion and rejection of that radicalism becomes clearer.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Stevie Wonder - I Was Made To Love Her
Great song from a great artist. I just felt like listening to it and share it. That's all.
"Illiterate Goat-herders"
Geesh! Will you guys come up with a new line? I have, I'll bet unlike any of you comment thread atheists, known "goat-herders" you aren't smart enough to do their job.
Now that that issue has been taken care of, the idea that those who composed the texts of the Bible were illiterate only makes their texts more impressive, not less impressive. That is especially true of the often made speculation that someone like Paul was illiterate and that he dictated his epistles to a scribe who wrote them down - though I could say that the place in Romans that might indicate it could, as easily, have been a person who was making a copy of it, at least in my reading of a number of the English and other translations from the Greek.
Romans is an extremely complex document full to the brim of literary, Scriptural references, closely and intricately detailed arguments that, I'd think, would anticipate a literate readership and with astonishing insights into a number of issues. There are atheists and non-Christians who have been impressed with it, there is one fairly recent commentary on that one letter that took some very careful scholars twelve years to conclude and that commentary is only one of a myriad of commentaries on it.
If Paul was illiterate, unable to write, perhaps to read, as well, THAT MAKES HIS INTELLECTUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT ALMOST UNIMAGINABLY MORE IMPRESSIVE IN COMPOSING ROMANS. I'm sure I couldn't do it and I can't think of many academics of today who could. Romans is a far more impressive intellectual document than the works of the legendarily blind Homer or the known to be blind Milton who I strongly suspect would put himself behind Paul in terms such as those I've addressed here. There is not a single one of the heroes of pop-atheism who could begin to hold a candle to him in terms of intellectual achievement and depth, if human history continues, in several hundred years commentaries on Paul will still be being written, still taking serious, careful scholars years to write and compile when Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, the Keystone-CSICOPs and their allies and the Britatheists are a sideline of minor academic curiosity about an intellectually degenerate epoch in the history of insular "Western thought." I would guess that the antisemtic motives of that movement will figure highly into it by that time.
And I'm sure Paul would never stop reminding his admirers that he is merely setting out and elucidating the teachings, the understanding of The Law and much more than that of Jesus. The more I go into the actual teachings of Jesus, the more profound it is clear that they are. Intellectually, yes, in terms of insight into human character and human history and the nature of reality, yes, but ever more than that.
Now that that issue has been taken care of, the idea that those who composed the texts of the Bible were illiterate only makes their texts more impressive, not less impressive. That is especially true of the often made speculation that someone like Paul was illiterate and that he dictated his epistles to a scribe who wrote them down - though I could say that the place in Romans that might indicate it could, as easily, have been a person who was making a copy of it, at least in my reading of a number of the English and other translations from the Greek.
Romans is an extremely complex document full to the brim of literary, Scriptural references, closely and intricately detailed arguments that, I'd think, would anticipate a literate readership and with astonishing insights into a number of issues. There are atheists and non-Christians who have been impressed with it, there is one fairly recent commentary on that one letter that took some very careful scholars twelve years to conclude and that commentary is only one of a myriad of commentaries on it.
If Paul was illiterate, unable to write, perhaps to read, as well, THAT MAKES HIS INTELLECTUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT ALMOST UNIMAGINABLY MORE IMPRESSIVE IN COMPOSING ROMANS. I'm sure I couldn't do it and I can't think of many academics of today who could. Romans is a far more impressive intellectual document than the works of the legendarily blind Homer or the known to be blind Milton who I strongly suspect would put himself behind Paul in terms such as those I've addressed here. There is not a single one of the heroes of pop-atheism who could begin to hold a candle to him in terms of intellectual achievement and depth, if human history continues, in several hundred years commentaries on Paul will still be being written, still taking serious, careful scholars years to write and compile when Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, the Keystone-CSICOPs and their allies and the Britatheists are a sideline of minor academic curiosity about an intellectually degenerate epoch in the history of insular "Western thought." I would guess that the antisemtic motives of that movement will figure highly into it by that time.
And I'm sure Paul would never stop reminding his admirers that he is merely setting out and elucidating the teachings, the understanding of The Law and much more than that of Jesus. The more I go into the actual teachings of Jesus, the more profound it is clear that they are. Intellectually, yes, in terms of insight into human character and human history and the nature of reality, yes, but ever more than that.
"Christianity is propaganda to make people passive"
Like the appeals to hatred and thrilling violence have worked so well for the left. Somehow I have a feeling that most such encouragement online comes from people who are well insulated from actual danger of violence in their personal lives, those at the front of that line as they encourage others to go to a far different front.
It's not a distraction from the resistance to the Republican-fascists, Trump, FOX-Sinclair-hate-talk-media to present the antithesis of their content and method. It's an act of resistance and since it is resistance through the actual teachings of Jesus, what are the only legitimate bases to the Christianity that that Anti-Christ has hijacked it strikes me as particularly subversive, undermining them from at least two directions.
So, yeah, I am going to continue. If it drives down readership, that's out of my control. Maybe if I keep appealing to what's potentially best in people, they'll hesitate before taking the encouragement to the worst in them.
If you want to see distraction, go look at the past programs of the Left Forum,the archives of the various radical magazines, generally penned by the trust-fund class left.
And, oh, yeah, pornography for the most part is the promotion of fascistic depravity as sex to sell itself. It is no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch's fascist media was floated on soft porn images of women and that he is a smut merchant as well as one of the most effective destroyers of democracy in the history of the world. The two are more than just intimately related, they are the same thing.
It's not a distraction from the resistance to the Republican-fascists, Trump, FOX-Sinclair-hate-talk-media to present the antithesis of their content and method. It's an act of resistance and since it is resistance through the actual teachings of Jesus, what are the only legitimate bases to the Christianity that that Anti-Christ has hijacked it strikes me as particularly subversive, undermining them from at least two directions.
So, yeah, I am going to continue. If it drives down readership, that's out of my control. Maybe if I keep appealing to what's potentially best in people, they'll hesitate before taking the encouragement to the worst in them.
If you want to see distraction, go look at the past programs of the Left Forum,the archives of the various radical magazines, generally penned by the trust-fund class left.
And, oh, yeah, pornography for the most part is the promotion of fascistic depravity as sex to sell itself. It is no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch's fascist media was floated on soft porn images of women and that he is a smut merchant as well as one of the most effective destroyers of democracy in the history of the world. The two are more than just intimately related, they are the same thing.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom - Debs In Canton
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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’
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.
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.
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