Of course I was talking about Peter Singer but not only Peter Singer, that kind of making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who's snuffable or nice is all the rage in "ethics" and has been under the influence of Darwin and, before him, that even earlier Brit-atheist ersatz replacement for morality, utilitarianism. And there is absolutely no question that Singer's primary authority is Darwin, in his highly selective and so absurdly distorted version of the post-war St. Darwin.
I think, though, at least in Singer and the current crop of death-listers their prime directive has nothing to do with much of anything other than what will get another book published, another book tour and another lecture invite. Getting attention for themselves and promoting their career is the primary focus of their "ethics." I have nothing but contempt for them, especially Singer.
Monday, December 23, 2019
The Monday after Advent 4
I look forward to Mondays because Monday is often the day when the fine sermon giver, Fr. Dan Donovan is on the Daily TV Mass, Fr. Jack Lynch on some Saturdays is another of my favorites.
Today's is so good I'm giving you a link to listen to it, Walter Brueggemann not having a listing for the weekdays in the weekdays after the fourth Sunday of Advent.
And here is a link to the Scripture passages for today in the current cycle of the Catholic calendar.
And here is a link to RMJ's post with the Gospel reading for today along with a poem by the only one of the beats I think is worth reading and a good song. RMJ always does good Advent posts.
Today's is so good I'm giving you a link to listen to it, Walter Brueggemann not having a listing for the weekdays in the weekdays after the fourth Sunday of Advent.
And here is a link to the Scripture passages for today in the current cycle of the Catholic calendar.
And here is a link to RMJ's post with the Gospel reading for today along with a poem by the only one of the beats I think is worth reading and a good song. RMJ always does good Advent posts.
Study In A Highly Cultivated Lie And The Uses of Repute And Respectability
I have said it before and I'll say it again because it's the truth, it is in no way a mark of honor for the upholders of science that in this matter they are the ones who have lied as their opponents in anti-evolution, in "fundamentalism" have told the truth about Charles Darwin and his disciples. And the smarties who so disdained the anti-evolutionists and "fundamentalists" were really stupid because their effort was always bound to fail in the end. The absolutely obvious and fully documented fact that Darwinism, natural selection was the foundation of the Nazi genocides was denied by post-World War Two academic and scientific culture but was something they never denied before the war that I have found. In the post-war period it was was covered- up by them and exposed by those who hated Darwinism because it was the enforced, officially required framing of evolution in the post-war period. That lie depended not on reading the record, but by lying about what it said, the lie to be believed by people who refused or failed to look at the primary documents.
In so far as the relationship of Darwin with eugenics and eugenics with the Nazi genocides, "fundamentalists in their post-war polemics weren't the ones who were required to lie, continually, about that, they found much of what I had to discover for myself by doing what hardly any of Darwin's champions ever do READING WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE CITED AS SCIENCE, reading what was said by self-proclaimed Darwinists who were scientifically and academically accepted as such, who were accepted as such by conventional science and academia right up through the end of the Nazi era.
Checking the many, explicit links between Nazi eugenics-genocide and English language eugenics, those primary documents are so numerous, so obvious in their meaning, often found right in the heart of the scientific literature - Baur, Fischer, Lenz, the writings of Alfred Ploetz, and those in English by their colleagues such as Karl Pearson, Charles Davenport, etc. - WHICH WERE ENTIRELY ACCEPTED AS SCIENCE by scientific departments of major, esteemed universities, by institutions, and in academic and reputable culture of the time. Their eugenics were taught in university science departments and in high school science classes.
That is the pre-war scientific record which the post-war cover-up always had hanging over it, which it could fight off only by lying about its existence, its status as accepted science with all of the powerful repute that carried was always going to be there. And with peer-pressure coercion.
I doubt I'd have looked at much of it if it hadn't been easily available to me in electronic form, especially when it is in a form which is easily accessed through computer search. That is the reality we live in now, even someone who was as totally duped by the post-war cover-up as I was, if they are willing to do what they should have done all along, fact check it against the primary documentary record, honestly reading it for what it is cannot have that long-told lie of St. Charles Darwin, promoted by the British government, by academic institutions and the media, presented by the BBC-PBS bullshit factory - the primary source for so much of what current college-credentialed people believe they know about such stuff - still stand. I have said as soon as I read The Descent of Man, as soon as I read Charles Darwin's letter to his cousin Francis Galton effusively praising the first major work of Eugenics, Hereditary Genius, my naive faith in the eugenics-free St. Charles Darwin did just that, it crumbled. And the fragments turned to dust as I continued to check the primary source material over the next years.
I know of two such fictitious constructs in current required, aggressively enforced academic-college-credentialed culture. This one is important, the other is merely of artistic interest. Darwinism is the one that got millions killed and still, today, in the form of what in secular-materialistic-atheistic culture goes by the name of "ethics" has 21st century academics drawing up lists of those who it's OK, if not good, if not "humane" to kill, getting on the BBC and PBS and NPR to push their erudition and Lord knows where else in much the same way that eugenicists were covered in the popular media of its heyday. Even by those who claim a family history of victims of the Shoah. That is how bad it is.
For those who are puzzled as to how we are seeing a resurgence of neo-fascism, neo-Nazism and its indigenous American forms in neo-Confederate racism, how could that be a shock when polite society was never disabused of its basis in biologically asserted inequality? That is the very basis of natural selection.
I will say that when, several weeks back, I read the quote by the radical doctor and public health advocate, Sr. Teresa Forcades noting that modernism, when it made knowledge the sine qua non of esteem, it pushed inequality to the forefront and very center of culture. She noted that the alternative to that which makes sanctity the foremost goal of life was inherently egalitarian because it is something that anyone can strive for. I have only started to consider that idea but I'm finding that it explains a lot more than I may have thought when I first read it.
I will note that one of the things I found that was most enlightening was reading the undelivered closing statement of William Jennings Bryan in the actual Scopes trial, which was not the yahoo, ignorant ranting that those two asses who wrote Inherit The Wind, as a part of the post-war cover-up put in his mouth. Or rather what so many believe is his mouth. It was also one of the greatest shocks of going online to learn that many, PhD holding college-credentialed people - the two I learned it from were credentialed in science - believed that play was, as the saying goes, "based on history" when it was, start to finish, a falsification of the Scopes trial.
Here's part of the end of what Bryan intended to say, kept from saying it only by the design of Clarence Darrow who knew he had provided Bryan with what he needed to discredit the defender of Darwin in his own closing statement in the Leopold and Lobe trial.
Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane--the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings, alone, can solve the problems that vex heart and perplex the world....
If you consider how the next fifteen years history in Germany and elsewhere would prove his case, it's especially disgusting the use which was made of him in the post-war lie. Whatever he may have gotten wrong about evolution and geology, he more than made up for by getting the results of believing in natural selection right, proved in the next two decades in the form of millions of murders and deaths in a war more terrible than the ones he was talking about. He had his faults, he was highly imperfect, though far less so than St. Darwin proves when you read him and look at what he supported and what came of his theory. Reading history, reading such scholars as Habermas and Kloppenberg, I think he got pretty much all of that right.
In so far as the relationship of Darwin with eugenics and eugenics with the Nazi genocides, "fundamentalists in their post-war polemics weren't the ones who were required to lie, continually, about that, they found much of what I had to discover for myself by doing what hardly any of Darwin's champions ever do READING WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE CITED AS SCIENCE, reading what was said by self-proclaimed Darwinists who were scientifically and academically accepted as such, who were accepted as such by conventional science and academia right up through the end of the Nazi era.
Checking the many, explicit links between Nazi eugenics-genocide and English language eugenics, those primary documents are so numerous, so obvious in their meaning, often found right in the heart of the scientific literature - Baur, Fischer, Lenz, the writings of Alfred Ploetz, and those in English by their colleagues such as Karl Pearson, Charles Davenport, etc. - WHICH WERE ENTIRELY ACCEPTED AS SCIENCE by scientific departments of major, esteemed universities, by institutions, and in academic and reputable culture of the time. Their eugenics were taught in university science departments and in high school science classes.
That is the pre-war scientific record which the post-war cover-up always had hanging over it, which it could fight off only by lying about its existence, its status as accepted science with all of the powerful repute that carried was always going to be there. And with peer-pressure coercion.
I doubt I'd have looked at much of it if it hadn't been easily available to me in electronic form, especially when it is in a form which is easily accessed through computer search. That is the reality we live in now, even someone who was as totally duped by the post-war cover-up as I was, if they are willing to do what they should have done all along, fact check it against the primary documentary record, honestly reading it for what it is cannot have that long-told lie of St. Charles Darwin, promoted by the British government, by academic institutions and the media, presented by the BBC-PBS bullshit factory - the primary source for so much of what current college-credentialed people believe they know about such stuff - still stand. I have said as soon as I read The Descent of Man, as soon as I read Charles Darwin's letter to his cousin Francis Galton effusively praising the first major work of Eugenics, Hereditary Genius, my naive faith in the eugenics-free St. Charles Darwin did just that, it crumbled. And the fragments turned to dust as I continued to check the primary source material over the next years.
I know of two such fictitious constructs in current required, aggressively enforced academic-college-credentialed culture. This one is important, the other is merely of artistic interest. Darwinism is the one that got millions killed and still, today, in the form of what in secular-materialistic-atheistic culture goes by the name of "ethics" has 21st century academics drawing up lists of those who it's OK, if not good, if not "humane" to kill, getting on the BBC and PBS and NPR to push their erudition and Lord knows where else in much the same way that eugenicists were covered in the popular media of its heyday. Even by those who claim a family history of victims of the Shoah. That is how bad it is.
For those who are puzzled as to how we are seeing a resurgence of neo-fascism, neo-Nazism and its indigenous American forms in neo-Confederate racism, how could that be a shock when polite society was never disabused of its basis in biologically asserted inequality? That is the very basis of natural selection.
I will say that when, several weeks back, I read the quote by the radical doctor and public health advocate, Sr. Teresa Forcades noting that modernism, when it made knowledge the sine qua non of esteem, it pushed inequality to the forefront and very center of culture. She noted that the alternative to that which makes sanctity the foremost goal of life was inherently egalitarian because it is something that anyone can strive for. I have only started to consider that idea but I'm finding that it explains a lot more than I may have thought when I first read it.
I will note that one of the things I found that was most enlightening was reading the undelivered closing statement of William Jennings Bryan in the actual Scopes trial, which was not the yahoo, ignorant ranting that those two asses who wrote Inherit The Wind, as a part of the post-war cover-up put in his mouth. Or rather what so many believe is his mouth. It was also one of the greatest shocks of going online to learn that many, PhD holding college-credentialed people - the two I learned it from were credentialed in science - believed that play was, as the saying goes, "based on history" when it was, start to finish, a falsification of the Scopes trial.
Here's part of the end of what Bryan intended to say, kept from saying it only by the design of Clarence Darrow who knew he had provided Bryan with what he needed to discredit the defender of Darwin in his own closing statement in the Leopold and Lobe trial.
Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane--the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings, alone, can solve the problems that vex heart and perplex the world....
If you consider how the next fifteen years history in Germany and elsewhere would prove his case, it's especially disgusting the use which was made of him in the post-war lie. Whatever he may have gotten wrong about evolution and geology, he more than made up for by getting the results of believing in natural selection right, proved in the next two decades in the form of millions of murders and deaths in a war more terrible than the ones he was talking about. He had his faults, he was highly imperfect, though far less so than St. Darwin proves when you read him and look at what he supported and what came of his theory. Reading history, reading such scholars as Habermas and Kloppenberg, I think he got pretty much all of that right.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
OK, One Last Thing Since I Found This This Morning
A righteous man regards the life of his animal, the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel
Proverbs 12:10 (NKJV)
It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man
In her great and effectively suppressed book, Mother Country, Marilynne Robinson provided a description that anyone who wades into the cross currents of double-speak of elite, authorized, respectable British social thought should know. She presents it as a party among the wealthy, powerful and respected in the sort of great house as presented in BBC-PBS costume drama. It is so spot on that I'd suggest you read the whole thing - that passage, which I posted here, before and the entire essay if you're lucky enough to find a copy of it. The two parts of the description that are most relevant to my point here are set in blue,
. . . The evenings would perhaps have begun to weigh, if someone had not suggested a game called Philanthropy. The rules of the game are very simple. One must justify things as they are by attacking things as they are. It is a philosophic game, perfectly suited to showing off a fine wit. It has even the thrill of risk, since it invites subversive ideas. But the point is always, of course, to achieve a resolution that will bring the argument right back where it began.
This is only to say that their reflections on the subject accumulate rather than develop, in the manner characteristic of rationalizations. Their disputations produce a welter of harmonious contradiction, the sort of thing that happens when any argument is welcome that will prop a valued conclusion. So the centuries pass.
I would recommend keeping that in mind whenever you read British social thought, whether philosophical or scientific, or social-scientific, or socialist. When it's the Brits, make that especially when it calls itself "socialism".
So, having given that warning, I'll give you a link to a fascinating piece I found after I wrote the first piece this morning, in which the eminent American philosopher C. S. Pierce made a critique of The Grammar of Science, a book by Karl Pearson, published in Popular Science Monthly, January 1901. One can only think wistfully of a time when Popular Science was informed by someone such as C. S. Pierce instead of the dumbed down philosophizing of the likes of Sagan and his successors and their even more degraded pop-culture fellow ersatz authorities, such as who pass as natural philosophers in the age of TV and social media.
A long series of posts could be made just on the problems with Pearson's presentation of science that Pierce presents, about how much of what Pearson said, and which is commonly said by scientists, and could as well be said about those who popularize science and, in my understanding of it, could pretty well apply to at least half of the presentation of the theory of natural selection, especially that which Darwin and his successors claimed about its applicability to the human species.
Cutting to the chase, the American philosopher noted that Pearson started out by contradicting the very structure of scientific theory in just that way and I would say that natural selection - as the invention of Charles Darwin and as universally adopted - has that contradiction built into its identification of whatever allows the survival and reproduction of individuals who become the parents of new species, what, despite the sometimes made denials, it inevitably presents that as a "good". In fact, the overall theory presents survival as a good, not merely as a truth.
An introductory chapter of ethical content sounds the dominant note of the book. The author opens with the declaration that our conduct ought to be regulated by the Darwinian theory. Since that theory is an attempt to show how natural causes tend to impart to stocks of animals and plants characters which, in the long run, promote reproduction and thus insure the continuance of those stocks, it would seem that making Darwinism the guide of conduct ought to mean that the continuance of the race is to be taken as the summum bonum, and 'Multiplicamini' as the epitome of the moral law. Professor Pearson, however, understands the matter a little differently, expressing himself thus: "The sole reason [for encouraging] any form of human activity . . . lies in this: [its] existence tends to promote the welfare of human society, to increase social happiness, or to strengthen social stability. In the spirit of the age we are bound to question the value of science; to ask in what way it increases the happiness of mankind or promotes social efficiency."
The second of these two statements omits the phrase, 'the welfare of human society,' which conveys no definite meaning; and we may, therefore, regard it as a mere diluent, adding nothing to the essence of what is laid down. Strict adhesion to Darwinian principles would preclude the admission of the 'happiness of mankind' as an ultimate aim. For on those principles everything is directed to the continuance of the stock, and the individual is utterly of no account, except in so far as he is an agent of reproduction. Now there is no other happiness of mankind than the happiness of individual men. We must, therefore, regard this clause as logically deleterious to the purity of the doctrine. As to 'social stability,' we all know very well what ideas this phrase is intended to convey to English apprehensions; and it must be admitted that Darwinism, generalized in due measure, may apply to English society the same principles that Darwin applied to breeds. A family in which the standards of that society are not traditional will go under and die out, and thus 'social stability' tends to be maintained.
But against the doctrine that social stability is the sole justification of scientific research, whether this doctrine be adulterated or not with the utilitarian clause, I have to object, first, that it is historically false, in that it does not accord with the predominant sentiment of scientific men; second, that it is bad ethics; and, third, that its propagation would retard the progress of science.
Professor Pearson does not, indeed, pretend that that which effectually animates the labors of scientific men is any desire 'to strengthen social stability.' Such a proposition would be too grotesque. Yet if it was his business, in treating of the grammar of science, to set forth the legitimate motive to research—as he has deemed it to be—it was certainly also his business, especially in view of the splendid successes of science, to show what has, in fact, moved such men. They have, at all events, not been inspired by a wish either to 'support social stability' or, in the main, to increase the sum of men's pleasures. The man of science has received a deep impression of the majesty of truth, as that to which, sooner or later, every knee must bow. He has further found that his own mind is sufficiently akin to that truth, to enable him, on condition of submissive observation, to interpret it in some measure. As he gradually becomes better and better acquainted with the character of cosmical truth, and learns that human reason is its issue and can be brought step by step into accord with it, he conceives a passion for its fuller revelation. He is keenly aware of his own ignorance, and knows that personally he can make but small steps in discovery. Yet, small as they are, he deems them precious; and he hopes that by conscientiously pursuing the methods of science he may erect a foundation upon which his successors may climb higher. This, for him, is what makes life worth living and what makes the human race worth perpetuation. The very being of law, general truth, reason—call it what you will—consists in its expressing itself in a cosmos and in intellects which reflect it, and in doing this progressively; and that which makes progressive creation worth doing—so the researcher comes to feel—is precisely the reason, the law, the general truth for the sake of which it takes place.
Such, I believe, as a matter of fact, is the motive which effectually works in the man of science. That granted, we have next to inquire which motive is the more rational, the one just described or that which Professor Pearson recommends. The ethical text-books offer us classifications of human motives. But for our present purpose it will suffice to pass in rapid review some of the more prominent ethical classes of motives.
I would point out that it is clear that Pearson's idea of the "welfare of human society" included the antisemtic exclusion of Russian and Polish Jews, assigning them everything from inferior intelligence to "dirtiness", it led him to consider the survival of infants and mothers through Caeserian section a biological evil, it led to him, agreeing with the later-to-be Nazi Alfred Ploetz, that the deaths of many infants in their first year would be a boon to the surviving infants of two and three years old - something that is not only irrational but an absurdly but repeatedly made power attributed to natural selection. It was the kind of double-speak, two-step that the proposed application of natural selection in social, political, legal, military, eugenic and genocidal policy starts and finishes in. And that started with Darwin, himself.
Those who prescribe the deaths of those they consider "unfit" because they pose a biological danger to the "fit" seem to like to talk themselves out of facing the nature of what they are doing, from the scientist who will never get their hands dirty to Darwinian mass murderers such as SS-Mann Heinrich Hesse
One of the Jewish people killed by me was a Jewish woman aged between twenty and thirty, I cannot remember exactly. She was a beautiful woman. I was glad to be able to shoot her so that she did not fall into the hands of the Untersturmführer. But please don’t take that to mean that I enjoyed it. I said to the Jewess when I brought her from the cellar that the Untersturmführer wanted to speak to her, or something to that effect. My only thought was that if I had to do something I should cause the person as little pain as possible. I did not want the Jewess to suffer fear of death. I then made her come out of the cellar. She went in front of me. On the way to the grave or graves, which had already been dug, I suddenly shot her from behind.
But I'm just giving this to you for the links so you can read Robinson and Pierce.
As to the accusation that I'm "being provocative," oh, mercy me, lands sake! a political blogger being provocative, what is the world coming to?
I will note that my question that led to me finding this, what Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. took from his reading of Popular Science, would not seem to include the points that C. S. Pierce made here but we can't know which side of this he'd have claimed to believe.
Update: I find it hard to let go of the trail once I'm on it, I'm finding that one of the sources of Oliver Wendell Holmes jr.'s eugenics must have been none other than his own father, the 2nd tier, 19th century American poet and man of letters, Oliver Wendell Holmes sr. who was very taken with Darwin, Huxley and, especially, Galton. As would be expected of a man of an American family that could claim the kind of distinction that traditional wealth claims for itself that Galton and Darwin claimed for theirs, he loved the idea of not only inherited genius but the idea that getting rid of the other sort was worth considering. No, make that more than just considering. And, if you didn't know it, Jr. was not shy about letting people know he thought his daddy was an old, romantic softie.
Update 2: What an asshole!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.—A.B. 1829, M.D. ’36, LL.D. ’80, dean of Harvard Medical School, acclaimed writer, and father of the future Supreme Court justice—was one of the first American intellectuals to espouse eugenics. Holmes, whose ancestors had been at Harvard since John Oliver entered with the class of 1680, had been writing about human breeding even before Galton. He had coined the phrase “Boston Brahmin” in an 1861 book in which he described his social class as a physical and mental elite, identifiable by its noble “physiognomy” and “aptitude for learning,” which he insisted were “congenital and hereditary.”
I'll break in, having lived in New England my entire life, not that far North of Boston, I've seen more of the Boston Brahmin types, a lot of them are plug ugly and not a few of them were friggin' idiots of the kind that even Charles Darwin - in a passage asserting their biological innocuousness as compared to the poor - called "useless drones."
Holmes believed eugenic principles could be used to address the nation’s social problems. In an 1875 article in The Atlantic Monthly, he gave Galton an early embrace, and argued that his ideas could help to explain the roots of criminal behavior. “If genius and talent are inherited, as Mr. Galton has so conclusively shown,” Holmes wrote, “why should not deep-rooted moral defects…show themselves…in the descendants of moral monsters?”
Update 3: I'm wading through a long article by Holmes sr. who I have to say, is the most tedious writer I've read since I waded through many numbers of the Anthropological Review in search of an article as part of my research. This is going to take a while.
Proverbs 12:10 (NKJV)
It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man
In her great and effectively suppressed book, Mother Country, Marilynne Robinson provided a description that anyone who wades into the cross currents of double-speak of elite, authorized, respectable British social thought should know. She presents it as a party among the wealthy, powerful and respected in the sort of great house as presented in BBC-PBS costume drama. It is so spot on that I'd suggest you read the whole thing - that passage, which I posted here, before and the entire essay if you're lucky enough to find a copy of it. The two parts of the description that are most relevant to my point here are set in blue,
. . . The evenings would perhaps have begun to weigh, if someone had not suggested a game called Philanthropy. The rules of the game are very simple. One must justify things as they are by attacking things as they are. It is a philosophic game, perfectly suited to showing off a fine wit. It has even the thrill of risk, since it invites subversive ideas. But the point is always, of course, to achieve a resolution that will bring the argument right back where it began.
This is only to say that their reflections on the subject accumulate rather than develop, in the manner characteristic of rationalizations. Their disputations produce a welter of harmonious contradiction, the sort of thing that happens when any argument is welcome that will prop a valued conclusion. So the centuries pass.
I would recommend keeping that in mind whenever you read British social thought, whether philosophical or scientific, or social-scientific, or socialist. When it's the Brits, make that especially when it calls itself "socialism".
So, having given that warning, I'll give you a link to a fascinating piece I found after I wrote the first piece this morning, in which the eminent American philosopher C. S. Pierce made a critique of The Grammar of Science, a book by Karl Pearson, published in Popular Science Monthly, January 1901. One can only think wistfully of a time when Popular Science was informed by someone such as C. S. Pierce instead of the dumbed down philosophizing of the likes of Sagan and his successors and their even more degraded pop-culture fellow ersatz authorities, such as who pass as natural philosophers in the age of TV and social media.
A long series of posts could be made just on the problems with Pearson's presentation of science that Pierce presents, about how much of what Pearson said, and which is commonly said by scientists, and could as well be said about those who popularize science and, in my understanding of it, could pretty well apply to at least half of the presentation of the theory of natural selection, especially that which Darwin and his successors claimed about its applicability to the human species.
Cutting to the chase, the American philosopher noted that Pearson started out by contradicting the very structure of scientific theory in just that way and I would say that natural selection - as the invention of Charles Darwin and as universally adopted - has that contradiction built into its identification of whatever allows the survival and reproduction of individuals who become the parents of new species, what, despite the sometimes made denials, it inevitably presents that as a "good". In fact, the overall theory presents survival as a good, not merely as a truth.
An introductory chapter of ethical content sounds the dominant note of the book. The author opens with the declaration that our conduct ought to be regulated by the Darwinian theory. Since that theory is an attempt to show how natural causes tend to impart to stocks of animals and plants characters which, in the long run, promote reproduction and thus insure the continuance of those stocks, it would seem that making Darwinism the guide of conduct ought to mean that the continuance of the race is to be taken as the summum bonum, and 'Multiplicamini' as the epitome of the moral law. Professor Pearson, however, understands the matter a little differently, expressing himself thus: "The sole reason [for encouraging] any form of human activity . . . lies in this: [its] existence tends to promote the welfare of human society, to increase social happiness, or to strengthen social stability. In the spirit of the age we are bound to question the value of science; to ask in what way it increases the happiness of mankind or promotes social efficiency."
The second of these two statements omits the phrase, 'the welfare of human society,' which conveys no definite meaning; and we may, therefore, regard it as a mere diluent, adding nothing to the essence of what is laid down. Strict adhesion to Darwinian principles would preclude the admission of the 'happiness of mankind' as an ultimate aim. For on those principles everything is directed to the continuance of the stock, and the individual is utterly of no account, except in so far as he is an agent of reproduction. Now there is no other happiness of mankind than the happiness of individual men. We must, therefore, regard this clause as logically deleterious to the purity of the doctrine. As to 'social stability,' we all know very well what ideas this phrase is intended to convey to English apprehensions; and it must be admitted that Darwinism, generalized in due measure, may apply to English society the same principles that Darwin applied to breeds. A family in which the standards of that society are not traditional will go under and die out, and thus 'social stability' tends to be maintained.
But against the doctrine that social stability is the sole justification of scientific research, whether this doctrine be adulterated or not with the utilitarian clause, I have to object, first, that it is historically false, in that it does not accord with the predominant sentiment of scientific men; second, that it is bad ethics; and, third, that its propagation would retard the progress of science.
Professor Pearson does not, indeed, pretend that that which effectually animates the labors of scientific men is any desire 'to strengthen social stability.' Such a proposition would be too grotesque. Yet if it was his business, in treating of the grammar of science, to set forth the legitimate motive to research—as he has deemed it to be—it was certainly also his business, especially in view of the splendid successes of science, to show what has, in fact, moved such men. They have, at all events, not been inspired by a wish either to 'support social stability' or, in the main, to increase the sum of men's pleasures. The man of science has received a deep impression of the majesty of truth, as that to which, sooner or later, every knee must bow. He has further found that his own mind is sufficiently akin to that truth, to enable him, on condition of submissive observation, to interpret it in some measure. As he gradually becomes better and better acquainted with the character of cosmical truth, and learns that human reason is its issue and can be brought step by step into accord with it, he conceives a passion for its fuller revelation. He is keenly aware of his own ignorance, and knows that personally he can make but small steps in discovery. Yet, small as they are, he deems them precious; and he hopes that by conscientiously pursuing the methods of science he may erect a foundation upon which his successors may climb higher. This, for him, is what makes life worth living and what makes the human race worth perpetuation. The very being of law, general truth, reason—call it what you will—consists in its expressing itself in a cosmos and in intellects which reflect it, and in doing this progressively; and that which makes progressive creation worth doing—so the researcher comes to feel—is precisely the reason, the law, the general truth for the sake of which it takes place.
Such, I believe, as a matter of fact, is the motive which effectually works in the man of science. That granted, we have next to inquire which motive is the more rational, the one just described or that which Professor Pearson recommends. The ethical text-books offer us classifications of human motives. But for our present purpose it will suffice to pass in rapid review some of the more prominent ethical classes of motives.
I would point out that it is clear that Pearson's idea of the "welfare of human society" included the antisemtic exclusion of Russian and Polish Jews, assigning them everything from inferior intelligence to "dirtiness", it led him to consider the survival of infants and mothers through Caeserian section a biological evil, it led to him, agreeing with the later-to-be Nazi Alfred Ploetz, that the deaths of many infants in their first year would be a boon to the surviving infants of two and three years old - something that is not only irrational but an absurdly but repeatedly made power attributed to natural selection. It was the kind of double-speak, two-step that the proposed application of natural selection in social, political, legal, military, eugenic and genocidal policy starts and finishes in. And that started with Darwin, himself.
Those who prescribe the deaths of those they consider "unfit" because they pose a biological danger to the "fit" seem to like to talk themselves out of facing the nature of what they are doing, from the scientist who will never get their hands dirty to Darwinian mass murderers such as SS-Mann Heinrich Hesse
One of the Jewish people killed by me was a Jewish woman aged between twenty and thirty, I cannot remember exactly. She was a beautiful woman. I was glad to be able to shoot her so that she did not fall into the hands of the Untersturmführer. But please don’t take that to mean that I enjoyed it. I said to the Jewess when I brought her from the cellar that the Untersturmführer wanted to speak to her, or something to that effect. My only thought was that if I had to do something I should cause the person as little pain as possible. I did not want the Jewess to suffer fear of death. I then made her come out of the cellar. She went in front of me. On the way to the grave or graves, which had already been dug, I suddenly shot her from behind.
But I'm just giving this to you for the links so you can read Robinson and Pierce.
As to the accusation that I'm "being provocative," oh, mercy me, lands sake! a political blogger being provocative, what is the world coming to?
I will note that my question that led to me finding this, what Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. took from his reading of Popular Science, would not seem to include the points that C. S. Pierce made here but we can't know which side of this he'd have claimed to believe.
Update: I find it hard to let go of the trail once I'm on it, I'm finding that one of the sources of Oliver Wendell Holmes jr.'s eugenics must have been none other than his own father, the 2nd tier, 19th century American poet and man of letters, Oliver Wendell Holmes sr. who was very taken with Darwin, Huxley and, especially, Galton. As would be expected of a man of an American family that could claim the kind of distinction that traditional wealth claims for itself that Galton and Darwin claimed for theirs, he loved the idea of not only inherited genius but the idea that getting rid of the other sort was worth considering. No, make that more than just considering. And, if you didn't know it, Jr. was not shy about letting people know he thought his daddy was an old, romantic softie.
Update 2: What an asshole!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.—A.B. 1829, M.D. ’36, LL.D. ’80, dean of Harvard Medical School, acclaimed writer, and father of the future Supreme Court justice—was one of the first American intellectuals to espouse eugenics. Holmes, whose ancestors had been at Harvard since John Oliver entered with the class of 1680, had been writing about human breeding even before Galton. He had coined the phrase “Boston Brahmin” in an 1861 book in which he described his social class as a physical and mental elite, identifiable by its noble “physiognomy” and “aptitude for learning,” which he insisted were “congenital and hereditary.”
I'll break in, having lived in New England my entire life, not that far North of Boston, I've seen more of the Boston Brahmin types, a lot of them are plug ugly and not a few of them were friggin' idiots of the kind that even Charles Darwin - in a passage asserting their biological innocuousness as compared to the poor - called "useless drones."
Holmes believed eugenic principles could be used to address the nation’s social problems. In an 1875 article in The Atlantic Monthly, he gave Galton an early embrace, and argued that his ideas could help to explain the roots of criminal behavior. “If genius and talent are inherited, as Mr. Galton has so conclusively shown,” Holmes wrote, “why should not deep-rooted moral defects…show themselves…in the descendants of moral monsters?”
Update 3: I'm wading through a long article by Holmes sr. who I have to say, is the most tedious writer I've read since I waded through many numbers of the Anthropological Review in search of an article as part of my research. This is going to take a while.
Fourth Sunday of Advent - we now live in an empire of violent greed that practices fearful predation against every child and every vulnerable person
God of light and love and generosity, we are drawn to your light; yet we love the darkness. Give us freedom to redecide. In his name. Amen
Psalm 24
Genesis 3:8-15
Revelation 12:1-10
John 3:16-21
The reading from Revelation narrates the great drama of Christmas and the life of Jesus in highly imaginative language. At the outset there is a woman who is about to give birth. This vulnerable woman brings forth a male child.
The drama is escalated when opposition to the male child is reported. We know that Jesus encountered determined opposition at every turn. King Herod, in his fearfulness, tried to kill him. The religious leadership (Pharisees and scribes) early on conspired against him. In this text the opposition is said to be cosmic: the "great dragon," "that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan"; rich imagery is utilized to characterize the violent opposition of the empire of Rome i its defense of the kingdom of Caesar. But the male child is kept safe. The child is "taken to God''; the angels join the unequal cosmic struggle to protect the vulnerable child who embodies "the salvation and the power and the kingdom of God."
The enemy of the gospel is not named explicitly, but in context it is the empire of Rome. Let us imagine that we now live in an empire of violent greed that practices fearful predation against every child and every vulnerable person. That empire takes the form of an unjust political economy backed by a scarcely restrained military. In the face of it comes this vulnerable child who performs mercy and compassion and justice. We are left to find our location in the midst of the drama that is quite local and at the same time of cosmic scale. It is the mystery of faith that this child is well protected beyond all the ostility that can be mounted to defeat him.
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and task
Walter Brueggemann's book Gift and Task, was written for the liturgical year that started in Advent 2017. Christmas came on Monday that year so there were no readings for the weekdays after the Fourth Sunday of Advent. I'll try to fill in the two days left but I'm no Breuggemann.
Psalm 24
Genesis 3:8-15
Revelation 12:1-10
John 3:16-21
The reading from Revelation narrates the great drama of Christmas and the life of Jesus in highly imaginative language. At the outset there is a woman who is about to give birth. This vulnerable woman brings forth a male child.
The drama is escalated when opposition to the male child is reported. We know that Jesus encountered determined opposition at every turn. King Herod, in his fearfulness, tried to kill him. The religious leadership (Pharisees and scribes) early on conspired against him. In this text the opposition is said to be cosmic: the "great dragon," "that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan"; rich imagery is utilized to characterize the violent opposition of the empire of Rome i its defense of the kingdom of Caesar. But the male child is kept safe. The child is "taken to God''; the angels join the unequal cosmic struggle to protect the vulnerable child who embodies "the salvation and the power and the kingdom of God."
The enemy of the gospel is not named explicitly, but in context it is the empire of Rome. Let us imagine that we now live in an empire of violent greed that practices fearful predation against every child and every vulnerable person. That empire takes the form of an unjust political economy backed by a scarcely restrained military. In the face of it comes this vulnerable child who performs mercy and compassion and justice. We are left to find our location in the midst of the drama that is quite local and at the same time of cosmic scale. It is the mystery of faith that this child is well protected beyond all the ostility that can be mounted to defeat him.
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and task
Walter Brueggemann's book Gift and Task, was written for the liturgical year that started in Advent 2017. Christmas came on Monday that year so there were no readings for the weekdays after the Fourth Sunday of Advent. I'll try to fill in the two days left but I'm no Breuggemann.
Last Hate Mail Till After Christmas - Calling A Nazi Collaborator A Nazi Collaborator Even When They Speak English
I am entirely justified in calling the English speaking scientists Karl Pearson and Margaret Moul as well as the eugenicists Paul Popenoe and Leonard Darwin collaborators with Nazi science because that's exactly what they were because it is what they did, they collaborated with Nazis in the production of their science, explicitly in the cases of such Nazi party members as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, etc. who not only cited their scientific claims, with their knowledge, to make their claims which were the foundation of Nazi eugenics-genocide, in many cases we have documents produced by the scientists that verify their approval of that, as in the case of people like Popenoe and Leonard Darwin and in the strongest possible form when that approval comes in the form of a scientist like Pearson inserting Nazi science into their own work, crediting Nazi scientists - or soon to be Nazis - as having produced reliable claims in exactly these areas relevant to this, reliable enough to become science.
There is a very long list of such people in English language science and, beyond any doubt, among the eminent scientists of other countries. Many times the same people who could be put on that list with complete justification were also those who advised and promoted the eugenic, immigration, etc. policies of their own governments, they certainly did in the United States and other countries which adopted eugenic laws and policies. I wish I had time to pour over the papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes to see what if any trace he left of his reading on the subjects which informed is infamous Buck v Bell decision, one thing we do know is that he read a lot of the then current popular science, including whatever was included in the magazine of that name. We know, from his own declarations and the testimony of his very close friend and associate, his one time personal secretary, the eminent lawyer and judge Francis Biddle that his thinking was permeated with the writings of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and others in Darwin's inner circle. I would imagine that if he kept reading in that line he would certainly have read Karl Pearson or at least be aware of what he was saying as well as what other eugenicists were claiming in that first decade of the formal existence of the Nazi Party. I am certain that he would be aware of the Darwinian claims of such major figures of American science as Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, working out of a major institution of American science, The Cold Spring Harbor Labs and collaborators with Nazi science even right up to the American entry into World War Two, shortly before the Wansee conference, if memory serves, even as the Einsatzgruppen were slaughtering people in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.
One of the things I've noticed in this argument is that everyone pretends that the men and, to a lesser extent, women who created Nazi eugenics-genocide, had no minds or lives before 1919, including the scientists. ESPECIALLY THE SCIENTISTS. We are just beginning to get over that with an awareness and understanding that the German death camps in the first decade of the 20th century had the most intimate of relationships with the death camps of the 1930s and 40s, and that in important instances, the very same people were involved with both. We focus on what Hitler was ranting out in 1923 as if that was the sole source of the Nazi genocides when Hitler as a Nazi was, himself, formed by what he read, what he heard.
I will note that that odd habit of thinking about this would seem to only cover science, which is odd because pretty much all of the claims of the Nazis as to why they were doing what they did was made in terms of science, biology, of what was presented as the supreme force in evolutionary science, natural selection. We are to pretend that they did what they did because of religion when they didn't, themselves, make their claims out of medieval antisemtic heresy - often heresy invented by medieval princes and monarchs so they could dispossess Jews and use them as scape goats in pretty much the way Trumpian fascism uses Latin Americans and Muslims.
The study of that phenomenon of the post World War Two cover-up of the biological nature of the Darwinist character of the Nazis crimes against humanity used that tactic of shifting the blame entirely to religion even as those within religion, in many cases, were profoundly penitent of whatever role they may have played in it. Addressing that was a major focus of Vatican II and subsequent changes in the Catholic Church and many other Christian churches have, as well, been profoundly changed by the examination of conscience that came with the revelation of the Nazi genocides. But science, scientists are not in the habit of saying they're sorry in the same way as science, by human invention and artificial convention, exclude questions of morality from science and what is demanded of scientists.
I cannot believe that their use of this has not had, as has the scientific literature of Darwinism from at least the time of Huxley and Haeckel, an overtly anti-religious motivation as well. It is rather noticeable how often these men of science turned natural selection into a tool to discredit not only Christian religion but also the moral teachings of Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, and Paul, especially relevant in this argument when it led to them drawing up lists of people whose deaths would be desirable in terms of biological and, rather shockingly explicitly, in economic utility. Charles Darwin founded natural selection on exactly that aspect of Malthus's economic pronouncements, so that use of natural selection is absolutely not surprising, what would be shocking if that use of it had never been made.
We do know that a lot of it also came through the cultural intervention in the west of Soviet propaganda, often filtered through playwrights and other creators of fiction that so many, even college-credentialed people take as history. I have to say that my study of this has led me to think that the use of real history by those in show biz and the writing of fiction is both dangerous and unfortunate because entertainment is so much more potent than careful scholarship. If scientists don't take moral responsibility, show business and entertainment are entirely worse. But that is also a very complex thing and it is external to my addressing the challenge that was made to me to prove that the fingerprints of Darwinists were all over the Shoah, the Nazi genocidal murder of at least six-million Jews. And I've done that.
There is a very long list of such people in English language science and, beyond any doubt, among the eminent scientists of other countries. Many times the same people who could be put on that list with complete justification were also those who advised and promoted the eugenic, immigration, etc. policies of their own governments, they certainly did in the United States and other countries which adopted eugenic laws and policies. I wish I had time to pour over the papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes to see what if any trace he left of his reading on the subjects which informed is infamous Buck v Bell decision, one thing we do know is that he read a lot of the then current popular science, including whatever was included in the magazine of that name. We know, from his own declarations and the testimony of his very close friend and associate, his one time personal secretary, the eminent lawyer and judge Francis Biddle that his thinking was permeated with the writings of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and others in Darwin's inner circle. I would imagine that if he kept reading in that line he would certainly have read Karl Pearson or at least be aware of what he was saying as well as what other eugenicists were claiming in that first decade of the formal existence of the Nazi Party. I am certain that he would be aware of the Darwinian claims of such major figures of American science as Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, working out of a major institution of American science, The Cold Spring Harbor Labs and collaborators with Nazi science even right up to the American entry into World War Two, shortly before the Wansee conference, if memory serves, even as the Einsatzgruppen were slaughtering people in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.
One of the things I've noticed in this argument is that everyone pretends that the men and, to a lesser extent, women who created Nazi eugenics-genocide, had no minds or lives before 1919, including the scientists. ESPECIALLY THE SCIENTISTS. We are just beginning to get over that with an awareness and understanding that the German death camps in the first decade of the 20th century had the most intimate of relationships with the death camps of the 1930s and 40s, and that in important instances, the very same people were involved with both. We focus on what Hitler was ranting out in 1923 as if that was the sole source of the Nazi genocides when Hitler as a Nazi was, himself, formed by what he read, what he heard.
I will note that that odd habit of thinking about this would seem to only cover science, which is odd because pretty much all of the claims of the Nazis as to why they were doing what they did was made in terms of science, biology, of what was presented as the supreme force in evolutionary science, natural selection. We are to pretend that they did what they did because of religion when they didn't, themselves, make their claims out of medieval antisemtic heresy - often heresy invented by medieval princes and monarchs so they could dispossess Jews and use them as scape goats in pretty much the way Trumpian fascism uses Latin Americans and Muslims.
The study of that phenomenon of the post World War Two cover-up of the biological nature of the Darwinist character of the Nazis crimes against humanity used that tactic of shifting the blame entirely to religion even as those within religion, in many cases, were profoundly penitent of whatever role they may have played in it. Addressing that was a major focus of Vatican II and subsequent changes in the Catholic Church and many other Christian churches have, as well, been profoundly changed by the examination of conscience that came with the revelation of the Nazi genocides. But science, scientists are not in the habit of saying they're sorry in the same way as science, by human invention and artificial convention, exclude questions of morality from science and what is demanded of scientists.
I cannot believe that their use of this has not had, as has the scientific literature of Darwinism from at least the time of Huxley and Haeckel, an overtly anti-religious motivation as well. It is rather noticeable how often these men of science turned natural selection into a tool to discredit not only Christian religion but also the moral teachings of Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, and Paul, especially relevant in this argument when it led to them drawing up lists of people whose deaths would be desirable in terms of biological and, rather shockingly explicitly, in economic utility. Charles Darwin founded natural selection on exactly that aspect of Malthus's economic pronouncements, so that use of natural selection is absolutely not surprising, what would be shocking if that use of it had never been made.
We do know that a lot of it also came through the cultural intervention in the west of Soviet propaganda, often filtered through playwrights and other creators of fiction that so many, even college-credentialed people take as history. I have to say that my study of this has led me to think that the use of real history by those in show biz and the writing of fiction is both dangerous and unfortunate because entertainment is so much more potent than careful scholarship. If scientists don't take moral responsibility, show business and entertainment are entirely worse. But that is also a very complex thing and it is external to my addressing the challenge that was made to me to prove that the fingerprints of Darwinists were all over the Shoah, the Nazi genocidal murder of at least six-million Jews. And I've done that.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Alf Silver - The Fast Food Franchise Bank -
Two seasonal oldies but goodies that I've posted before. I'll depend on the announcer to give you the credits this week, I've got a book case to straighten out before I can get Christmas visits.
Saturday after Advent 3
God of our future, forgive our yearning for cheap grace. Let us recognize your mighty promise and your stark expectation. In his name. Amen
Psalm 55
Zechariah 8:9-17
Revelation 6:1-17
Matthew 25:31-46
We have largely been narcotized in the church to expect that Jesus is unconditional love for us all. That shallow assurance is reinforced at Christmastime with an easy, casual disregard of the hard realities of the world and the hard realities of the gospel that meet the world. We should know better, because it is right there in front of us in one of the most familiar of Jesus' parables. We readily appeal to his parable when we want to champion social justice and compassion toward the needy. In doing so, however we do not recognize that the list of ministries to the "least" in the parable is not an imperative that commands action. Rather it is an occasion for judgment that reviews past action. The judgment is severe toward those who have not practiced a neighborly ethic. The hard part is that the coming one, the Son of Man, conducts a trial and implements a judicial sentence.
The teaching is, of course, only a parable, not to be heard literally. It is a declaration by Jesus that the rule of God operates with stark expectations that are uncompromising and come with severe sanctions. The disregard of this expectation issues in ominous prospects for the future, ominous even if and when we are protected by our narcotized illusions.
The parable has behind it a thick prophetic tradition. Zechariah anticipates a new well-being, a "sowing of peace," a "blessing," "good to Jerusalem." That good promise, however, requires truth speaking and judgments that make for peace. These are not heroic actions for an emergency. They are rather a new norm for which the Lamb was slain. They are, in the parable, the price of "eternal life."
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and Task
I am going to give the Gospel reading because it is one of the most important passages to me, it's what I read at my mother's funeral, at her suggestion. This is the Good News translation.
The Final Judgment
31 “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, 32 and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left. 34 Then the King will say to the people on his right, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world. 35 I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, 36 naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.’ 37 The righteous will then answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we ever see you a stranger and welcome you in our homes, or naked and clothe you? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ 40 The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels! 42 I was hungry but you would not feed me, thirsty but you would not give me a drink; 43 I was a stranger but you would not welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in prison but you would not take care of me.’ 44 Then they will answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and we would not help you?’ 45 The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.’ 46 These, then, will be sent off to eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life.”
I will note that, from what Greek scholars I've read say, they say the word "eternal" as in "eternal flame" is mistranslated from the Greek which doesn't imply that the punishment would be eternal. They say the word was mistranslated because the Latin that was used in the Western Church and, so, persisted in Western culture, didn't have a word that expressed the same thing. I don't know, I'm not a Greek scholar - having wasted my time for the classical languages on Latin instead of Greek and Hebrew. I have read Gregory of Nyssa and am convinced that as much as it might disappoint me when I think of such people as Hitler and Trump and Putin and Stalin, even the punishments they so richly deserve don't deserve to be eternal.
Psalm 55
Zechariah 8:9-17
Revelation 6:1-17
Matthew 25:31-46
We have largely been narcotized in the church to expect that Jesus is unconditional love for us all. That shallow assurance is reinforced at Christmastime with an easy, casual disregard of the hard realities of the world and the hard realities of the gospel that meet the world. We should know better, because it is right there in front of us in one of the most familiar of Jesus' parables. We readily appeal to his parable when we want to champion social justice and compassion toward the needy. In doing so, however we do not recognize that the list of ministries to the "least" in the parable is not an imperative that commands action. Rather it is an occasion for judgment that reviews past action. The judgment is severe toward those who have not practiced a neighborly ethic. The hard part is that the coming one, the Son of Man, conducts a trial and implements a judicial sentence.
The teaching is, of course, only a parable, not to be heard literally. It is a declaration by Jesus that the rule of God operates with stark expectations that are uncompromising and come with severe sanctions. The disregard of this expectation issues in ominous prospects for the future, ominous even if and when we are protected by our narcotized illusions.
The parable has behind it a thick prophetic tradition. Zechariah anticipates a new well-being, a "sowing of peace," a "blessing," "good to Jerusalem." That good promise, however, requires truth speaking and judgments that make for peace. These are not heroic actions for an emergency. They are rather a new norm for which the Lamb was slain. They are, in the parable, the price of "eternal life."
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and Task
I am going to give the Gospel reading because it is one of the most important passages to me, it's what I read at my mother's funeral, at her suggestion. This is the Good News translation.
The Final Judgment
31 “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, 32 and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left. 34 Then the King will say to the people on his right, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world. 35 I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, 36 naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.’ 37 The righteous will then answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we ever see you a stranger and welcome you in our homes, or naked and clothe you? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ 40 The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels! 42 I was hungry but you would not feed me, thirsty but you would not give me a drink; 43 I was a stranger but you would not welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in prison but you would not take care of me.’ 44 Then they will answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and we would not help you?’ 45 The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.’ 46 These, then, will be sent off to eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life.”
I will note that, from what Greek scholars I've read say, they say the word "eternal" as in "eternal flame" is mistranslated from the Greek which doesn't imply that the punishment would be eternal. They say the word was mistranslated because the Latin that was used in the Western Church and, so, persisted in Western culture, didn't have a word that expressed the same thing. I don't know, I'm not a Greek scholar - having wasted my time for the classical languages on Latin instead of Greek and Hebrew. I have read Gregory of Nyssa and am convinced that as much as it might disappoint me when I think of such people as Hitler and Trump and Putin and Stalin, even the punishments they so richly deserve don't deserve to be eternal.
Stupid Hate Mail
Not now. I'm listening to the Polka Party Christmas Program, as I do my housework. I consider listening to the Polka Party an act of anti-Nazism, the Poles being, as well, marked for genocide by the Nazi trio, Baur, Fischer, Lenz and by Hitler in 1939.
Update: Hey, all of the disc jockeys at WUNH are volunteers, it's a shoe-string operation. If someone wanted to do a good Klezmer show, I can't say how thrilled I'd be to listen to it, as well. I'm sure they'd love to host one. I often keep the radio on for Aegean Connection, right after Gary's show. It's when it goes to commercial pop that I turn it off. I also don't listen to the guy before Polka Party, his taste in music isn't mine. I am a supporter of WUNH, I'd never support an NPR affiliate, ever again.
Update 2: OK, I'll admit that I mentioned it to piss him off, he hates Polish people as he disrespects the Roma, that's how it all started, him telling a racist joke against the Roma. It pissed him off when I pointed out Hitler ordered his thugs to murder all of the Poles.
Update: Hey, all of the disc jockeys at WUNH are volunteers, it's a shoe-string operation. If someone wanted to do a good Klezmer show, I can't say how thrilled I'd be to listen to it, as well. I'm sure they'd love to host one. I often keep the radio on for Aegean Connection, right after Gary's show. It's when it goes to commercial pop that I turn it off. I also don't listen to the guy before Polka Party, his taste in music isn't mine. I am a supporter of WUNH, I'd never support an NPR affiliate, ever again.
Update 2: OK, I'll admit that I mentioned it to piss him off, he hates Polish people as he disrespects the Roma, that's how it all started, him telling a racist joke against the Roma. It pissed him off when I pointed out Hitler ordered his thugs to murder all of the Poles.
A Summary Of The Evidence - I may take a few days off before Christmas
Since I took up the challenge to "prove" that the Nazi's murder of about six-million Jews was a crime with the fingerprints of the Darwinists all over it, I have established, in primary documentation a number of things. A partial listing of which are:
- It is known that as Hitler and other Nazi leaders such as Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice, as they were in Landsberg Prison, were provided with an influential, two-volume work of three eminent German biologists, Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz - a book, the title of which is translated in a number of ways into English and which, here, I will call by the often used nickname, "Baur, Fischer, Lenz".
- It is known that what Hitler, and it can be assumed, in so far as I've read the primary literature, Rudolf Hess were greatly influenced by what Baur, Fischer and Lenz wrote in that book which, during the entire period after its publication and through the Nazi period was the foremost German language scientific authority on the topics most relevant to the Nazi's eugenic and genocide policies. I have not been able to check the assertions I've read in the secondary literature that many of the things Hitler said in Mein Kampf and in subsequent documents either appropriate or closely paraphrase passages in the book. I am not familiar enough with whatever words or other traces Emil Maurice may have left to know the extent to which he may have been influenced by the book.
- I have established that Fritz Lenz, in a passage of the book he wrote, said that the biological framing of the work was that of natural selection, with which they interpreted genetic and other claims made in the book. He also, explicitly, named the scientific orientation they used in their book as Darwinism, explicitly tying their book and its claims to the foremost theory of Charles Darwin. I will note that Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer were the two members of the trio who officially joined the Nazi Party and enjoyed great scientific advancement and benefits from that, both directly participated in Nazi eugenics in both its scientific theory and political application, Fritz Lenz saying things, such as, " As important as the external features for their evaluation is the lineage of individuals, a blond Jew is also a Jew. Yes, there are Jews who have most of the external features of the Nordic race, but who nevertheless display Jewish mental tendencies. The legislation of the National Socialist state therefore properly defines a Jew not by external race characteristics, but by descent." which by his own scientific declaration must be taken to be a claim made out of his belief in natural selection.
I could come up with page after page of such statements made by him and the other two which would be of a similar nature and orientation that would show, in no uncertain terms, what flowed from their Darwism. I will later translate the one I've already given in German, now that I've broken my own rule against translating, I may as well give you that, too.
- I have established that among other things in the book taken from people who have, as well, in their own words, identified their biological framing as that of natural selection and, in most cases identifying natural selection by its other name, Darwinism, that one of the most explicitly relevant to proving my case was a 1925 paper by the eminent second-generation Darwinist, Karl Pearson and Margaret Moul (about whom I know very little) which is explicitly a work of scientific antisemitism. The Problem of Alien Immigration Into Great Britain, Illustrated By An Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children. I have given the passage in which Baur,Fischer, Lenz used that paper by Pearson and Moul to explicitly claim that "eastern" Jews were flowing into Germany and posing the same kind of "danger" to Germans and Germany and that it was a "now burning" - which might be also translated "most burning" - danger to the German people.
- I have, as well, in his own words proven that Karl Pearson said that his framing of biology was the same as that of Baur, Fischer, Lenz, natural selection which he, as well, explicitly identified with the person of Charles Darwin. I could and will, give example after example of that and the truly depraved and Nazi like assertions it led the British, English speaking gentleman Pearson, to make scientific claims that sound like the coldest, cruelest of Hollywood stock villain depraved Nazi, only he said it in the sterile language of Brit science, with a veneer of numbers so the superficial won't understand that that's what he's saying. No doubt, it sounded more anodyne to German speakers who could read Baur, Fischer, Lenz in the months and years before the Nazis cut to the meat of the matter and, with the help of, at least, Fischer and Lenz, made it as real as can be in military and genocidal terms.
I have proven my case, the scientific basis of the Nazi eugenics that rapidly turned to Nazi genocide was, in their own words, the product of their belief in natural selection, which they, in their own words, called what a belief in natural selection is, Darwinism. I have in numerous posts over the last seven or so years, established that such thinking permeates the writing of Charles Darwin and those scientific authorities he approved and cited positively in his scientific writing, especially Ernst Haeckel and the teacher of Karl Pearson, Francis Galton, including claims of the beneficial effects to the killers and their families and societies of genocide, the extermination of entire human populations as well as the internal "dangers" of allowing poor people and the disabled to live long enough to have children. What the Nazis found there had been there since, at least, the 1860s.
And about those numbers, in that Cavendish lecture that Pearson gave, the kind of stuff he used as "data" to make up his numbers is of the typical kind of dodgy observation that Darwin, himself, based his science in. Pearson relies on such things as police reports and police records of servant girls who were insufficiently docile and obedient to please their Victorian-Edwardian era masters and mistresses and what they got up to when not working to base his hard, scientific seeming science in. As I've made this long study which is now closing in on two decades, I have to say the standards of such crap being called and treated as hard science has been rather a shocking eye-opener. While I know that effort to turn what might be more honestly considered idle gossip as found through the framing of the mostly men, often quite conservative or reactionary gossipers into "data" in the way Karl Pearson and those who would make behavior the object of scientific study, it is no better than the source of such junk science. But as it is credentialed, published scientists who make those claims, it is seldom treated with the level of critical skepticism that such men of science pretend they always apply.
I will close by saying that the guy who made the challenge, a play-lefty American, college-credentialed and member of a self-styled "brain - trust" is about as open to the evidence as the House Republican caucus has been in the Impeachment of Donald Trump. As I have said, one of my greatest shocks since going online and interacting with what I once mistook as my fellow lefties of the college-credentialed type was how much so many of them had in common with the crudest, vilest, most reactionary right-wingers. And I don't just mean the blog-rat variety of "leftists" I mean some of those who have careers in journalism and in whatever you want to call online podcasting and Youtubing. I think, in the end, it comes down to the same thing, whether or not you value the truth as opposed to convenient, congenial lies. In the end, it's not even a question of information, it's a question of moral choice.
In a related though separate exchange I had with a blog-comment level racist this week, after I'd provided the "proof" he demanded, he parried by saying, "It's like my mother used to say, you can't fix stupid," to which I said I was certain he'd given his mother many an occasion to say that to him.
Update: Re-reading this, I see that, in the event that some defender of Darwin notes that the paper of Pearson comes two years after Hitler read the first edition of the book, that the book and, as I proved, its authors were of continuing influence on Nazi policy, the edition of the book I took that citation from was 1932, before the Nazis took power and before the man who wrote it, Fritz Lenz was helping to shape Nazi policy against the Jews, up to and including the earliest part of their genocide, the 1935 eugnics laws Lenz gave his scientific approval. As can be seen in the careers of Fischer and Lenz, after the Nazis took power, they relied on their science informed by the science of such people as Pearson, the explicitly Darwinist eugenics of Paul Popenoe and Leonard Darwin (both, as well, have numerous citations in" B.F.L") to make Nazi policy as enacted. When arguing with the champions of Darwin, it's essential to anticipate which of the several dodges they will use to distort or deny the evidence that proves the case.
- It is known that as Hitler and other Nazi leaders such as Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice, as they were in Landsberg Prison, were provided with an influential, two-volume work of three eminent German biologists, Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz - a book, the title of which is translated in a number of ways into English and which, here, I will call by the often used nickname, "Baur, Fischer, Lenz".
- It is known that what Hitler, and it can be assumed, in so far as I've read the primary literature, Rudolf Hess were greatly influenced by what Baur, Fischer and Lenz wrote in that book which, during the entire period after its publication and through the Nazi period was the foremost German language scientific authority on the topics most relevant to the Nazi's eugenic and genocide policies. I have not been able to check the assertions I've read in the secondary literature that many of the things Hitler said in Mein Kampf and in subsequent documents either appropriate or closely paraphrase passages in the book. I am not familiar enough with whatever words or other traces Emil Maurice may have left to know the extent to which he may have been influenced by the book.
- I have established that Fritz Lenz, in a passage of the book he wrote, said that the biological framing of the work was that of natural selection, with which they interpreted genetic and other claims made in the book. He also, explicitly, named the scientific orientation they used in their book as Darwinism, explicitly tying their book and its claims to the foremost theory of Charles Darwin. I will note that Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer were the two members of the trio who officially joined the Nazi Party and enjoyed great scientific advancement and benefits from that, both directly participated in Nazi eugenics in both its scientific theory and political application, Fritz Lenz saying things, such as, " As important as the external features for their evaluation is the lineage of individuals, a blond Jew is also a Jew. Yes, there are Jews who have most of the external features of the Nordic race, but who nevertheless display Jewish mental tendencies. The legislation of the National Socialist state therefore properly defines a Jew not by external race characteristics, but by descent." which by his own scientific declaration must be taken to be a claim made out of his belief in natural selection.
I could come up with page after page of such statements made by him and the other two which would be of a similar nature and orientation that would show, in no uncertain terms, what flowed from their Darwism. I will later translate the one I've already given in German, now that I've broken my own rule against translating, I may as well give you that, too.
- I have established that among other things in the book taken from people who have, as well, in their own words, identified their biological framing as that of natural selection and, in most cases identifying natural selection by its other name, Darwinism, that one of the most explicitly relevant to proving my case was a 1925 paper by the eminent second-generation Darwinist, Karl Pearson and Margaret Moul (about whom I know very little) which is explicitly a work of scientific antisemitism. The Problem of Alien Immigration Into Great Britain, Illustrated By An Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children. I have given the passage in which Baur,Fischer, Lenz used that paper by Pearson and Moul to explicitly claim that "eastern" Jews were flowing into Germany and posing the same kind of "danger" to Germans and Germany and that it was a "now burning" - which might be also translated "most burning" - danger to the German people.
- I have, as well, in his own words proven that Karl Pearson said that his framing of biology was the same as that of Baur, Fischer, Lenz, natural selection which he, as well, explicitly identified with the person of Charles Darwin. I could and will, give example after example of that and the truly depraved and Nazi like assertions it led the British, English speaking gentleman Pearson, to make scientific claims that sound like the coldest, cruelest of Hollywood stock villain depraved Nazi, only he said it in the sterile language of Brit science, with a veneer of numbers so the superficial won't understand that that's what he's saying. No doubt, it sounded more anodyne to German speakers who could read Baur, Fischer, Lenz in the months and years before the Nazis cut to the meat of the matter and, with the help of, at least, Fischer and Lenz, made it as real as can be in military and genocidal terms.
I have proven my case, the scientific basis of the Nazi eugenics that rapidly turned to Nazi genocide was, in their own words, the product of their belief in natural selection, which they, in their own words, called what a belief in natural selection is, Darwinism. I have in numerous posts over the last seven or so years, established that such thinking permeates the writing of Charles Darwin and those scientific authorities he approved and cited positively in his scientific writing, especially Ernst Haeckel and the teacher of Karl Pearson, Francis Galton, including claims of the beneficial effects to the killers and their families and societies of genocide, the extermination of entire human populations as well as the internal "dangers" of allowing poor people and the disabled to live long enough to have children. What the Nazis found there had been there since, at least, the 1860s.
And about those numbers, in that Cavendish lecture that Pearson gave, the kind of stuff he used as "data" to make up his numbers is of the typical kind of dodgy observation that Darwin, himself, based his science in. Pearson relies on such things as police reports and police records of servant girls who were insufficiently docile and obedient to please their Victorian-Edwardian era masters and mistresses and what they got up to when not working to base his hard, scientific seeming science in. As I've made this long study which is now closing in on two decades, I have to say the standards of such crap being called and treated as hard science has been rather a shocking eye-opener. While I know that effort to turn what might be more honestly considered idle gossip as found through the framing of the mostly men, often quite conservative or reactionary gossipers into "data" in the way Karl Pearson and those who would make behavior the object of scientific study, it is no better than the source of such junk science. But as it is credentialed, published scientists who make those claims, it is seldom treated with the level of critical skepticism that such men of science pretend they always apply.
I will close by saying that the guy who made the challenge, a play-lefty American, college-credentialed and member of a self-styled "brain - trust" is about as open to the evidence as the House Republican caucus has been in the Impeachment of Donald Trump. As I have said, one of my greatest shocks since going online and interacting with what I once mistook as my fellow lefties of the college-credentialed type was how much so many of them had in common with the crudest, vilest, most reactionary right-wingers. And I don't just mean the blog-rat variety of "leftists" I mean some of those who have careers in journalism and in whatever you want to call online podcasting and Youtubing. I think, in the end, it comes down to the same thing, whether or not you value the truth as opposed to convenient, congenial lies. In the end, it's not even a question of information, it's a question of moral choice.
In a related though separate exchange I had with a blog-comment level racist this week, after I'd provided the "proof" he demanded, he parried by saying, "It's like my mother used to say, you can't fix stupid," to which I said I was certain he'd given his mother many an occasion to say that to him.
Update: Re-reading this, I see that, in the event that some defender of Darwin notes that the paper of Pearson comes two years after Hitler read the first edition of the book, that the book and, as I proved, its authors were of continuing influence on Nazi policy, the edition of the book I took that citation from was 1932, before the Nazis took power and before the man who wrote it, Fritz Lenz was helping to shape Nazi policy against the Jews, up to and including the earliest part of their genocide, the 1935 eugnics laws Lenz gave his scientific approval. As can be seen in the careers of Fischer and Lenz, after the Nazis took power, they relied on their science informed by the science of such people as Pearson, the explicitly Darwinist eugenics of Paul Popenoe and Leonard Darwin (both, as well, have numerous citations in" B.F.L") to make Nazi policy as enacted. When arguing with the champions of Darwin, it's essential to anticipate which of the several dodges they will use to distort or deny the evidence that proves the case.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Idle Gossip
I don't know, Shit-For-Brains hasn't said anything about these posts my guess is that he realizes that even his lying can't deny what those things mean and, believe me, there are lots more where those came from. I answered the challenge and it is indisputable, right from the Nazi scientists, themselves and their conventional and undeniably Darwinist collaborators in the English speaking peoples.
As to the thing you sent me, I couldn't possibly care less what DWD says about me. I did him a favor and read one of his pieces of fiction once. It wasn't even unimpressive. He's the kind of would-be writer who mistakes dyspepsia and the presentation of the world as unremittingly awful for profundity. It's what an English language writer does when he's got absolutely nothing to say. I don't know but it could be a habit they got from the Swedes.
What SFB says is even less interesting.
As to the thing you sent me, I couldn't possibly care less what DWD says about me. I did him a favor and read one of his pieces of fiction once. It wasn't even unimpressive. He's the kind of would-be writer who mistakes dyspepsia and the presentation of the world as unremittingly awful for profundity. It's what an English language writer does when he's got absolutely nothing to say. I don't know but it could be a habit they got from the Swedes.
What SFB says is even less interesting.
Friday after Advent 3
Lord Jesus who risked all for the future of the world, let us be your good disciples. In your name, Amen
Psalm 40
Zecharaiah 7
Revelation 5:6-14
Matthew 25:14-30
The oracle of Zechariah recites the "normative" history of ancient Israel in two familiar stages. First, Israel failed to obey the prophetic ethic of justice for the vulnerable. The result was a scattering in exile and displacement. But second, because of God's passionate love for Israel and for Jerusalem, there will be wondrous, joyous restoration of well-being in Jerusalem.
In the reading from Revelation, this "normative" narrative of ancient Israel is seen to be reperformed in the life of Jesus. It is Jesus who was slain, by whose death every "tribe and language and people and nation" is saved. That "slaughtered" Lamb is now "worthy" to receive power, wealth, wisdom, ight, honor, glory, and blessing; the words pile up in a doxological surplus of well-being and joy. This rhetoric of "slain" and "worthy" bespeaks crucifixion and resurrection that is a reperformance of Israel's exile and restoration. It is no wonder that all the saints praise the one who opens the scroll and enacts the future.
So what about our future? Shall we play it safe and hunker down in the status quo? The parable of Jesus is a celebration of risk in obedience to the master who risked his life for the future of the world. The parable is not about managing money or calculation of income or interest. It is about life risks that reperform the risk of our own life that Jesus has willingly undertaken. If risk is the order of the day, then Advent consists of breaking out of business as usual in order to receive God's future. The prophetic norm of mercy for the vulnerable (widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor) continues to be a starting point for the risk of glad obedience.
Psalm 40
Zecharaiah 7
Revelation 5:6-14
Matthew 25:14-30
The oracle of Zechariah recites the "normative" history of ancient Israel in two familiar stages. First, Israel failed to obey the prophetic ethic of justice for the vulnerable. The result was a scattering in exile and displacement. But second, because of God's passionate love for Israel and for Jerusalem, there will be wondrous, joyous restoration of well-being in Jerusalem.
In the reading from Revelation, this "normative" narrative of ancient Israel is seen to be reperformed in the life of Jesus. It is Jesus who was slain, by whose death every "tribe and language and people and nation" is saved. That "slaughtered" Lamb is now "worthy" to receive power, wealth, wisdom, ight, honor, glory, and blessing; the words pile up in a doxological surplus of well-being and joy. This rhetoric of "slain" and "worthy" bespeaks crucifixion and resurrection that is a reperformance of Israel's exile and restoration. It is no wonder that all the saints praise the one who opens the scroll and enacts the future.
So what about our future? Shall we play it safe and hunker down in the status quo? The parable of Jesus is a celebration of risk in obedience to the master who risked his life for the future of the world. The parable is not about managing money or calculation of income or interest. It is about life risks that reperform the risk of our own life that Jesus has willingly undertaken. If risk is the order of the day, then Advent consists of breaking out of business as usual in order to receive God's future. The prophetic norm of mercy for the vulnerable (widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor) continues to be a starting point for the risk of glad obedience.
Dave Holland Quintet - Looking up
Saxophone: Chris Potter
Trombone: Robin Eubanks
Vibraphone: Steve Nelson
Bass: Dave Holland
Drums: Billy Kilson
Hate Mail - There Are So Many Ways For A Dishonest Person To Republican-like Lie About What's Right There In Front Of Them
I cannot find an English translation of "Baur, Fischer, Lenz" online so I'm going to do something I've always been reluctant to do, first because I'm not a great translator and, second, because Darwin's champions quibbling over translations is one of their more often resorted to means of obfuscation. I'm going to translate a passage, from page 5-6 of Volume II, from the section Selection In Human Beings, The Concept and Form of Selection
From the facts established by modern biology it follows by logical necessity that natural selection also plays a decisive role in species arising. The leading geneticists of our time, Morgan, Baur and many others have been unequivocal in this matter. If there are nevertheless certain scholars who believe that they must reject "Darwinism", this only shows how the consideration of certain "foresight" leads to confusion. The socialist social-hygienist Grotjahn accused me and other racial hygienists of deducing our theories from the teachings of "Darwinism.
Now we hold that Darwin's natural selection theory is completely assured by the biological facts; but even if Darwin had never lived, the immediate experience gained from humans is still the most important way in which the meaning of natural selection is revealed. Compared to that objection raised by Grotjahn I am compelled to emphasize that the explanations in this book are directly found in the experience of human populations. Only those who ignore tangible facts or the most elementary laws of logic can fail to recognize that natural selection has an unmittigated influence on the character of the species.
I would note, in light of what I wrote about the discovery of epigenetic inheritance and genetic drift and chance and contingency any claims of the kind made by Darwinists from the start are logically incoherent. All of those factors and others which I'd bet you anything must be there, some of which Richard Lewontin has noted are the product of indeterminacy "on the level of quantum indetermincy" (if my memory is accurate) undermines the entire claim.
As an aside, I would like to know how indeterminacy can be a "force" of the kind these other mechanisms of evolutionary change are, how can something of indeterminate character and strength or frequency constitute a "force" though I am more than ready to believe it has a decisive role in leading to the forms of individuals and to the matter of the evolution of species. I don't think there is any way to do science around such indeterminate factors. Maybe as a theoretical problem of statistics. But who knows, they being indeterminate, if they've determined enough about them to assign numbers to them?
However, that's not my foremost purpose here, which is to demonstrate that the book which we know, beyond any dispute, Hitler and his Nazi colleagues were informed by* as they developed their racist, antisemtic eugenics and, then, genocide, was, by the declaration of the three eminent biologists who wrote it, a thoroughly Darwinist text.
That passage is from a part of the book authored by Fritz Lenz (as noted earlier today, someone Karl Pearson worked with and cited). You don't have to take my word for who he was, here's what it says at the Holocaust Museum about him.
Dr. Fritz Lenz
A medically trained geneticist, after 1933 Lenz headed the Department of Racial Hygiene at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and sat on the “Committee of Experts for Population and Racial Policy,” which endorsed Nazi eugenic laws. As early as 1917, Lenz had envisioned Germany’s future in expanded eastern territories. Viewing Slavs as an undesirable, racial element that threatened to “overrun the superior [German] Volk,” Lenz advised the SS in 1940: “The resettlement of the eastern zone is… the most consequential task of racial policy. It will determine the racial character of the population living there for centuries to come.”
[POSTWAR CAREER] From 1946 to1957, Lenz was Director of the Institute for Human Genetics, University of Göttingen. He continued to publish into the 1970s. Lenz died in 1976.
* Hitler read this book [Baur, Fischer, Lenz] while imprisoned in 1923 [where he composed Mein Kampf] and referred to it occasionally in his own publications and lectures on "racial purity." In 1933, Hitler appointed [Eugen] Fischer rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin (now Humbolt University). His theories about miscegenation influenced not only the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 but also the attitude of the Nazis toward "non-Aryans" in general.
Ingred L. Anderson, Ethics and Suffereing since the Holocaust: Making Ethics "First Philsopy" in Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein
Here's what the Holocaust Museum site says about Fischer:
Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics from 1927 to 1942, Fischer authored a 1913 study of the Mischlinge (racially mixed) children of Dutch men and Hottentot women in German southwest Africa. Fischer opposed “racial mixing,” arguing that “Negro blood” was of “lesser value” and that mixing it with “white blood” would bring about the demise of European culture. After 1933, Fischer adapted his institute’s activities to serve Nazi antisemitic policies. He taught courses for SS doctors, served as a judge on Berlin’s Hereditary Health Court, and provided hundreds of opinions on the paternity and “racial purity” of individuals, including the Mischlinge offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish German couples.
[POSTWAR CAREER] Fischer retired in 1942 as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. After the war he worked to secure university teaching positions for many of his former students (including Otmar von Verschuer). As professor emeritus at the university of Freiburg, Fischer continued to lecture and publish articles in anthropological journals. He died in 1967.
I haven't found anything to indicate that science ever imposed any sanction on him for his part in the Nazi genocides.
From the facts established by modern biology it follows by logical necessity that natural selection also plays a decisive role in species arising. The leading geneticists of our time, Morgan, Baur and many others have been unequivocal in this matter. If there are nevertheless certain scholars who believe that they must reject "Darwinism", this only shows how the consideration of certain "foresight" leads to confusion. The socialist social-hygienist Grotjahn accused me and other racial hygienists of deducing our theories from the teachings of "Darwinism.
Now we hold that Darwin's natural selection theory is completely assured by the biological facts; but even if Darwin had never lived, the immediate experience gained from humans is still the most important way in which the meaning of natural selection is revealed. Compared to that objection raised by Grotjahn I am compelled to emphasize that the explanations in this book are directly found in the experience of human populations. Only those who ignore tangible facts or the most elementary laws of logic can fail to recognize that natural selection has an unmittigated influence on the character of the species.
I would note, in light of what I wrote about the discovery of epigenetic inheritance and genetic drift and chance and contingency any claims of the kind made by Darwinists from the start are logically incoherent. All of those factors and others which I'd bet you anything must be there, some of which Richard Lewontin has noted are the product of indeterminacy "on the level of quantum indetermincy" (if my memory is accurate) undermines the entire claim.
As an aside, I would like to know how indeterminacy can be a "force" of the kind these other mechanisms of evolutionary change are, how can something of indeterminate character and strength or frequency constitute a "force" though I am more than ready to believe it has a decisive role in leading to the forms of individuals and to the matter of the evolution of species. I don't think there is any way to do science around such indeterminate factors. Maybe as a theoretical problem of statistics. But who knows, they being indeterminate, if they've determined enough about them to assign numbers to them?
However, that's not my foremost purpose here, which is to demonstrate that the book which we know, beyond any dispute, Hitler and his Nazi colleagues were informed by* as they developed their racist, antisemtic eugenics and, then, genocide, was, by the declaration of the three eminent biologists who wrote it, a thoroughly Darwinist text.
That passage is from a part of the book authored by Fritz Lenz (as noted earlier today, someone Karl Pearson worked with and cited). You don't have to take my word for who he was, here's what it says at the Holocaust Museum about him.
Dr. Fritz Lenz
A medically trained geneticist, after 1933 Lenz headed the Department of Racial Hygiene at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and sat on the “Committee of Experts for Population and Racial Policy,” which endorsed Nazi eugenic laws. As early as 1917, Lenz had envisioned Germany’s future in expanded eastern territories. Viewing Slavs as an undesirable, racial element that threatened to “overrun the superior [German] Volk,” Lenz advised the SS in 1940: “The resettlement of the eastern zone is… the most consequential task of racial policy. It will determine the racial character of the population living there for centuries to come.”
[POSTWAR CAREER] From 1946 to1957, Lenz was Director of the Institute for Human Genetics, University of Göttingen. He continued to publish into the 1970s. Lenz died in 1976.
Ingred L. Anderson, Ethics and Suffereing since the Holocaust: Making Ethics "First Philsopy" in Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein
Here's what the Holocaust Museum site says about Fischer:
Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics from 1927 to 1942, Fischer authored a 1913 study of the Mischlinge (racially mixed) children of Dutch men and Hottentot women in German southwest Africa. Fischer opposed “racial mixing,” arguing that “Negro blood” was of “lesser value” and that mixing it with “white blood” would bring about the demise of European culture. After 1933, Fischer adapted his institute’s activities to serve Nazi antisemitic policies. He taught courses for SS doctors, served as a judge on Berlin’s Hereditary Health Court, and provided hundreds of opinions on the paternity and “racial purity” of individuals, including the Mischlinge offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish German couples.
[POSTWAR CAREER] Fischer retired in 1942 as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. After the war he worked to secure university teaching positions for many of his former students (including Otmar von Verschuer). As professor emeritus at the university of Freiburg, Fischer continued to lecture and publish articles in anthropological journals. He died in 1967.
I haven't found anything to indicate that science ever imposed any sanction on him for his part in the Nazi genocides.
No, There's No Honestly Denying That Karl Pearson Was Darwinism Personified In All His Antisemtic, Nazi-Collaborating Scientific Self
Several days ago, in response to an objection, I pointed out that every single time I'd guessed where I would find a connection between Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and eugenics, from deceptively anodyne to massively genocidal, I'd found it in the form of primary documentation. That is absolutely not surprising. Eugenics is a rather simple and logical conclusion to be drawn from the claims of Darwin, founded as they are, in turn, in the claims of Malthus, founded in turn, on the British class system. Eugenics, from the start, as soon as Francis Galton read On the Origin of Species- by his own declaration his inspiration in inventing eugenics* generated the idea that the existence of "inferior" people, individuals - the disabled, the poor and in groups - whichever group of whichever minority the always either affluent or aspiring to affluence and, in the beginning, always White early adopters of Darwinism held to be inferior to, inevitably, their own, was a danger to the "superior." I have never found a Darwinist express themselves on the biological inferiority of whatever group they believed themselves to be a member of. Odd, that.
When I took up the challenge made to me to "prove that there was a link between Charles Darwin and the Nazi genocide of the Jews" I knew where to look because I knew Hitler had used the infamous book that goes by the nickname "Baur, Fischer, Lenz" mentioned here the past two days, as his major source of scientific information. And I knew that it being, in its time, a "modern" book of science, that it was certain to stress the "latest findings" over older sources, though it is certain that the theory that Baur, Fischer and Lenz promulgated in that book was derived from the theory of natural selection.
I also knew about Pearson and Moul's antisemitic scientific paper of 1925 which, when I read it read like a more orderly presentation of the very ideas that Hitler and the other Nazis asserted in regard to Jews and, especially the biological, economic and national dangers that the British scientists Pearson and Moul claimed, as science, with numbers and with Eugen Fischer's contribution to their work. I knew that that paper must have been known to them in the later editions of the infamous book which continued to inform the Nazis as they were going from eugenics to genocide.
I also know the dishonest tactics of the champions of St. Charles Darwin, they will deny the most obvious and glaring facts in primary documentation, the words of Darwin, the words of those he cites such as Ernst Haeckel (a proto-Nazi of the most obvious kind) and Francis Galton - indisputably the inventor of Eugenics, and the likes of Thomas Huxley whose racist, gleefully genocidal predictions in his 1865 article written for popular consumption, Emancipation Black and White is so infamous that even the Darwinist hack Richard Dawkins has had to address its vileness in contemporary polite society.
So I anticipated it being denied that Karl Pearson was one of the foremost Darwinists of the second generation of Darwinists, the student of Francis Galton, a man whose eugenics writing Charles Darwin confirmed as science in his citations in The Descent of Man and by the glowing, effusively praising letter he sent his cousin on having his wife reading Hereditary Genius to him as he was too unwell to read it for himself. Darwin being such a great example of enhanced "fitness" that he spent much of his adulthood as a valetudinarian - some suspect he had a raging case of lactose intolerance that the man of science doesn't seem to have noticed the cause of even as he gorged himself on milk products. As someone who developed lactose intolerance in middle-age, you'd have to be especially dull to not notice what was making you sick in that way. In terms of his own claim to fame, his theory, it certainly didn't occur to him to voluntarily limit the number of offspring he'd pass his frequent ill health on to. Curbs on reproduction, that was for the poor and the officially disabled, not someone like him. Anyway, his cousin Galton had scientifically bestowed superiority on their shared family so that let him off the hook for practicing sexual continence. Odd, that.
Anyway, Karl Pearson certainly was considered to be an eminent Darwinist, as I noted yesterday, he was the fourth recipient of the Darwin Medal given by the Royal Society, a medal given to, among others, Francis Darwin, another of Darwin's eugenicist sons. We also know that in the period that Darwinism's many problems led to a slump in its accptance by scientists, Pearson saw himself as a keeper of the flame. Here from his truly putrid 1912 Cavendish lecture, Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics:
. . . But there is undoubtedly a fly in the amber, and if the alliance between eugenics and medicine, as a whole, is to be a real one, we cannot for a moment overlook a possible source of divergence between them.
I belong to a school which still believes that Darwin taught us the truth. I think it is rather the fashion nowadays to dismiss its views, not by meeting its arguments, but by describing it as "mid-Victorian." When in literature, science, and statemanship this twentieth century has produced minds which out-top the " mid- Victorians," then it will be time enough to reply to a mere nick- name. Let me, even at the risk of talking about the familiar, sketch for you the broad outlines of Darwin's theory of evolutionary progress. The individual better fitted to its environment lived longer than its fellows, had more offspring, and these, inheriting its better fitness, raised the type of the race. The environment against which the individual had to struggle here was not only formed by the other members of its species, not only by its physical surroundings, but by the germs of disease of all types. According to Darwin — and some of us still believe him to be right — the ascent of man, physical and mental, was brought about by this survival of the fitter. Now, if you are going lo take Darwinism as your theory of life and apply it to human problems, you must not only believe it to be true, but you must set to, and demonstrate that it actually applies.
If you are puzzled by the first sentence I excerpted, the "possible source of divergence" between, you should first read the definition of what he means by "eugenics".
Examine with me for a moment the definition of my science : " National eugenics is the study of those agencies under social control, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally."
That is what eugenics proposes to do, to control aspects of human socieity to make up for what Francis Galton and, agreeing with him, Charles Darwin held was the impediment of natural selection killing off the unfit by civilization, human morality and striving for well being. If you doubt that, read The Descent of Man where he says exactly that and read his citations, particularly the many he made of Galton and Haeckel.
What kinds of problems created by medical treatment does Karl Pearson see needed to be addressed because it kept people alive and healthy and able to have children. I think I'm going to write a few posts on this lecture by Pearson because it is such an exposition of the proto-Nazi thinking that was current in British science (not to mention American and other English language science) in such obvous depravity before the Nazis cited Pearson and other English language sources in the very scientific publications that the Nazis read and used as the basis of their genocidal policies. Not only did Nazis read them but when there was a Nazi party to join, so many eminent scientists joined up and contributed their science to the Nazi cause. It was certainly one of the main motives in the creation of the post-war coverup of the relationship of natural selection, Darwinism to Nazism to pretend that there were not English speaking scientists who were thinking the same things and providing them with the ideas they mixed with their own to produce the genocides and wars of the Nazi era. Pearson's lecture is also important to this matter in that it proves not only was he collaborating with the founders of Nazi eugenic theory, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, he seems, when given the chance between taking a British researcher whose results disconfirms Darwin's theoretical claims to prefer the developing Nazi eugenics of the likes of Alfred Ploetz. But that's for later.
I will also note that I am still in the same habit I described governed my reading of Darwin, The Descent of Man and looking up citations, in this the citations of Pearson and Leonard Darwin, Paul Popenoe, and others in the book that taught biology to Hitler as he dictated Mein Kampf and its later editions that instructed the Nazis' genocide program, "Baur, Fischer, Lenz," It's rather hair raising, even to someone like me who isn't surprised at what I'm finding.
*Wilhelm Schallmeyer, often called the man who established eugenics in Germany, also credited his reading of On the Origin of Species as the source of his eugenics independent of Galton, as noted by Leonard Darwin in April 1939.
When I took up the challenge made to me to "prove that there was a link between Charles Darwin and the Nazi genocide of the Jews" I knew where to look because I knew Hitler had used the infamous book that goes by the nickname "Baur, Fischer, Lenz" mentioned here the past two days, as his major source of scientific information. And I knew that it being, in its time, a "modern" book of science, that it was certain to stress the "latest findings" over older sources, though it is certain that the theory that Baur, Fischer and Lenz promulgated in that book was derived from the theory of natural selection.
I also knew about Pearson and Moul's antisemitic scientific paper of 1925 which, when I read it read like a more orderly presentation of the very ideas that Hitler and the other Nazis asserted in regard to Jews and, especially the biological, economic and national dangers that the British scientists Pearson and Moul claimed, as science, with numbers and with Eugen Fischer's contribution to their work. I knew that that paper must have been known to them in the later editions of the infamous book which continued to inform the Nazis as they were going from eugenics to genocide.
I also know the dishonest tactics of the champions of St. Charles Darwin, they will deny the most obvious and glaring facts in primary documentation, the words of Darwin, the words of those he cites such as Ernst Haeckel (a proto-Nazi of the most obvious kind) and Francis Galton - indisputably the inventor of Eugenics, and the likes of Thomas Huxley whose racist, gleefully genocidal predictions in his 1865 article written for popular consumption, Emancipation Black and White is so infamous that even the Darwinist hack Richard Dawkins has had to address its vileness in contemporary polite society.
So I anticipated it being denied that Karl Pearson was one of the foremost Darwinists of the second generation of Darwinists, the student of Francis Galton, a man whose eugenics writing Charles Darwin confirmed as science in his citations in The Descent of Man and by the glowing, effusively praising letter he sent his cousin on having his wife reading Hereditary Genius to him as he was too unwell to read it for himself. Darwin being such a great example of enhanced "fitness" that he spent much of his adulthood as a valetudinarian - some suspect he had a raging case of lactose intolerance that the man of science doesn't seem to have noticed the cause of even as he gorged himself on milk products. As someone who developed lactose intolerance in middle-age, you'd have to be especially dull to not notice what was making you sick in that way. In terms of his own claim to fame, his theory, it certainly didn't occur to him to voluntarily limit the number of offspring he'd pass his frequent ill health on to. Curbs on reproduction, that was for the poor and the officially disabled, not someone like him. Anyway, his cousin Galton had scientifically bestowed superiority on their shared family so that let him off the hook for practicing sexual continence. Odd, that.
Anyway, Karl Pearson certainly was considered to be an eminent Darwinist, as I noted yesterday, he was the fourth recipient of the Darwin Medal given by the Royal Society, a medal given to, among others, Francis Darwin, another of Darwin's eugenicist sons. We also know that in the period that Darwinism's many problems led to a slump in its accptance by scientists, Pearson saw himself as a keeper of the flame. Here from his truly putrid 1912 Cavendish lecture, Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics:
. . . But there is undoubtedly a fly in the amber, and if the alliance between eugenics and medicine, as a whole, is to be a real one, we cannot for a moment overlook a possible source of divergence between them.
I belong to a school which still believes that Darwin taught us the truth. I think it is rather the fashion nowadays to dismiss its views, not by meeting its arguments, but by describing it as "mid-Victorian." When in literature, science, and statemanship this twentieth century has produced minds which out-top the " mid- Victorians," then it will be time enough to reply to a mere nick- name. Let me, even at the risk of talking about the familiar, sketch for you the broad outlines of Darwin's theory of evolutionary progress. The individual better fitted to its environment lived longer than its fellows, had more offspring, and these, inheriting its better fitness, raised the type of the race. The environment against which the individual had to struggle here was not only formed by the other members of its species, not only by its physical surroundings, but by the germs of disease of all types. According to Darwin — and some of us still believe him to be right — the ascent of man, physical and mental, was brought about by this survival of the fitter. Now, if you are going lo take Darwinism as your theory of life and apply it to human problems, you must not only believe it to be true, but you must set to, and demonstrate that it actually applies.
If you are puzzled by the first sentence I excerpted, the "possible source of divergence" between, you should first read the definition of what he means by "eugenics".
Examine with me for a moment the definition of my science : " National eugenics is the study of those agencies under social control, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally."
That is what eugenics proposes to do, to control aspects of human socieity to make up for what Francis Galton and, agreeing with him, Charles Darwin held was the impediment of natural selection killing off the unfit by civilization, human morality and striving for well being. If you doubt that, read The Descent of Man where he says exactly that and read his citations, particularly the many he made of Galton and Haeckel.
What kinds of problems created by medical treatment does Karl Pearson see needed to be addressed because it kept people alive and healthy and able to have children. I think I'm going to write a few posts on this lecture by Pearson because it is such an exposition of the proto-Nazi thinking that was current in British science (not to mention American and other English language science) in such obvous depravity before the Nazis cited Pearson and other English language sources in the very scientific publications that the Nazis read and used as the basis of their genocidal policies. Not only did Nazis read them but when there was a Nazi party to join, so many eminent scientists joined up and contributed their science to the Nazi cause. It was certainly one of the main motives in the creation of the post-war coverup of the relationship of natural selection, Darwinism to Nazism to pretend that there were not English speaking scientists who were thinking the same things and providing them with the ideas they mixed with their own to produce the genocides and wars of the Nazi era. Pearson's lecture is also important to this matter in that it proves not only was he collaborating with the founders of Nazi eugenic theory, Fritz Lenz, Alfred Ploetz, he seems, when given the chance between taking a British researcher whose results disconfirms Darwin's theoretical claims to prefer the developing Nazi eugenics of the likes of Alfred Ploetz. But that's for later.
I will also note that I am still in the same habit I described governed my reading of Darwin, The Descent of Man and looking up citations, in this the citations of Pearson and Leonard Darwin, Paul Popenoe, and others in the book that taught biology to Hitler as he dictated Mein Kampf and its later editions that instructed the Nazis' genocide program, "Baur, Fischer, Lenz," It's rather hair raising, even to someone like me who isn't surprised at what I'm finding.
*Wilhelm Schallmeyer, often called the man who established eugenics in Germany, also credited his reading of On the Origin of Species as the source of his eugenics independent of Galton, as noted by Leonard Darwin in April 1939.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Thursday after Advent 3
God of our future, forgive our foolish lack of preparation for your newness. Let us be prepared for your future that undoes all the present tense. In his name, Amen.
Psalm 50
Zechariah 4:1-14
Revelation 4
Matthew 25:1-13
In these readings, God's future is hidden and unavailable. The oracle in Zechariah reflects a particular moment in the history of ancient Israel in the midst of exile. With the collapse of royal governance in Jerusalem, the small colony of Judah was jointly administered by a governor (Zerubbabel) and a priest (Joshua). It was "the day of small things," when historical possibility was modest indeed for God's people. But the two anointed (governor and priest) were nonetheless the carriers of God's possibility. The governor, moreover, was aliened to the house of David, thus keeping royal expectations alive.
That royal expectation, in Christian tradition, was assigned to Jesus, said to be of "the house of David." The reading in Revelation offers another vision of the divine throne room that is permeated with doxology. The Holy One, in this particular rhetoric, holds a scroll that is the clue to God's future in the world. And the croll can be opened only by "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," that is an heir to David, that is, Jesus. Only Jesus knows the clue to the future that God will surely enact. It is implicit in Christian confession that Jesus, as clue to our future, finds that future in obedience to crucifixion and in surprise in resurrection. That is the access point to the future that only the Lion (become the Lamb) knows.
The Gospel reading concerns readiness for the future that the "bridegroom" (Jesus) will disclose and perform. These lessons remind us that God's future is not a future of wealth, power or security. It is rather a future of costly obedience and inexplicable surprise. Without attentiveness to the "bridegroom" we are likely to be foolish and unprepared.
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and Task
Psalm 50
Zechariah 4:1-14
Revelation 4
Matthew 25:1-13
In these readings, God's future is hidden and unavailable. The oracle in Zechariah reflects a particular moment in the history of ancient Israel in the midst of exile. With the collapse of royal governance in Jerusalem, the small colony of Judah was jointly administered by a governor (Zerubbabel) and a priest (Joshua). It was "the day of small things," when historical possibility was modest indeed for God's people. But the two anointed (governor and priest) were nonetheless the carriers of God's possibility. The governor, moreover, was aliened to the house of David, thus keeping royal expectations alive.
That royal expectation, in Christian tradition, was assigned to Jesus, said to be of "the house of David." The reading in Revelation offers another vision of the divine throne room that is permeated with doxology. The Holy One, in this particular rhetoric, holds a scroll that is the clue to God's future in the world. And the croll can be opened only by "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," that is an heir to David, that is, Jesus. Only Jesus knows the clue to the future that God will surely enact. It is implicit in Christian confession that Jesus, as clue to our future, finds that future in obedience to crucifixion and in surprise in resurrection. That is the access point to the future that only the Lion (become the Lamb) knows.
The Gospel reading concerns readiness for the future that the "bridegroom" (Jesus) will disclose and perform. These lessons remind us that God's future is not a future of wealth, power or security. It is rather a future of costly obedience and inexplicable surprise. Without attentiveness to the "bridegroom" we are likely to be foolish and unprepared.
Walter Brueggemann: Gift and Task
George Mason Foresaw A Treasonous President Collaborating With A Corrupt Senate Of His Party
Nancy Pelosi is a brilliant politician, the greatest Speaker of the House during my lifetime and that goes back to back to Sam Rayburn, so she can be forgiven for not knowing in her weekly press briefing there was one of the founders who foresaw a corrupt president working fist and glove with a corrupt Senate as we see with Trump and the Senate Republicans, George Mason.
Mason had other objections to the Constitution. He disliked the commerce power, the treaty-making provisions, the continuation of the African slave trade for at least twenty years, and the power of the president to grant pardons especially "to those whom he had secretly instigated to commit" crimes and "thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt." These complaints about the Constitution were magnified by the lack of a Bill of Rights. Mason feared that the Senate and the President would combine "to accomplish what usurpations they pleased upon the rights and liberties of the people," while the federal judiciary would absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several states."
Paul Finkelman: James Madison and the Bill of Rights: A Reluctant Paternity
Professor Finkelman wrote that a long time before Trump-McConnell came to power, anyone who read it must have it come to mind at least several times a week, now.
Mason had other objections to the Constitution. He disliked the commerce power, the treaty-making provisions, the continuation of the African slave trade for at least twenty years, and the power of the president to grant pardons especially "to those whom he had secretly instigated to commit" crimes and "thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt." These complaints about the Constitution were magnified by the lack of a Bill of Rights. Mason feared that the Senate and the President would combine "to accomplish what usurpations they pleased upon the rights and liberties of the people," while the federal judiciary would absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several states."
Paul Finkelman: James Madison and the Bill of Rights: A Reluctant Paternity
Professor Finkelman wrote that a long time before Trump-McConnell came to power, anyone who read it must have it come to mind at least several times a week, now.
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