Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • Everlasting Life: A Bore? Part 1 and 2

    Part 1: When they asked physicist Robert Jastrow about living forever—would it be a blessing or a curse?—he said ‘it all depends.’ “It would be a blessing to those who have curious minds and an endless appetite for learning. The thought that they have forever to absorb knowledge would be very comforting for them. But for others who feel they have learned all there is to learn and whose minds are closed, it would be a dreadful curse. They’d have no way to fill their time.” If you’re a know-it-all, what is left to learn? What a bore endless life would be. But our appetite for learning can also be endless, unless we have closed down shop ourselves. Of course, Dr. Jastrow is an egghead—a thinker—and so he focused on learning. But other things are probably boundless, too, like our capacity to create and to love.

    In recent years, however, pop culture has been selling death as though it were a benefit. It is probably those atheists. There are more and more of them and buying into their thinking means settling for a final death sentence perhaps not too many years away.

    Pay attention, and you’ll see the ‘Death is Beautiful’ notion a lot. For example, it surfaced in a Dr Who episode entitled: ‘The Lazarus Experiment.’ Now, Dr Who, for a time, was the only show that I deliberately worked into my routine. A British import, it was science fiction with a quirky protagonist, clever writing, travel in a space ship that looks like a phone booth—“it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside!”—and it featured endless visits from aliens, most of whom were up to no good. It just so happened that the show fit perfectly into some weekly down time in my schedule—I might never have discovered it otherwise. But having done so, I tried not to miss it. “Yeah, you just watch it on account of that cute blonde!” accused a workmate. But it was not true; the cute blonde was written out of the script (she was stranded on a parallel universe—sometimes things like that happen), yet the show continued to hold its appeal.

    The episode name itself is a giveaway, since Lazarus is the biblical character whom Jesus resurrected. But this television Lazarus has invented a machine that makes him young again—he steps in aged and steps out a young man—to the amazement of all the high-brow folk invited to his gala bash. But Dr. Who (was he invited?) smells something amiss. He follows the newly minted youngster, and sure enough, the machine has malfunctioned and has doomed Lazarus to transforming back and forth from human to monster! See, in setting back his DNA, the machine has selected ancient mutations long-ago rejected by evolution. (Hmmm—yes—indeed, plausible, nod all the atheists watching the show—whereas if you mentioned anything about God, they’d throw up.)

    The Time Lord doctor lectures Lazarus on what a curse everlasting life really is, and what a dumb, greedy thing it was for him to seek it. For when life drags on forever and ever and ever, you will get so tired of it. You will have been everywhere, done everything. Living will have become an endless, pointless trek to nowhere. You will long for it to end, but—fool that you were for choosing everlasting life—it will not end, but it will go on and on and on. Oh, the monotony! See, without death, it is impossible to savor life—and so forth.

    Please. Spare me (and Dr. Jastrow). It is almost as though the ‘Death is Beautiful’ mantra is atheists striving to come to terms with the new “god” they have chosen to serve. All depends upon whether you see life as futile or not. If you do, then sure—you would want it to end. But as Jastrow stated, life is only futile if you have made it so. Of course, one ought readily concede that baked into this system of things are various ingredients to encourage that dismal view—for example, old age and frailty—but imagine were they to be vanquished.

    Part 2: The George Eastman house in Rochester N.Y is listed on the top ten list of things to do in that city. Therefore, when my wife and I were in that town, we paid it a visit. Mr. Eastman, who brought photography to the masses and who founded Kodak, turned philanthropist once he had made his fortune and built half the city. His mansion just outside downtown showcases his life, his inventions, his contributions to society, and serves as the nucleus for all things photographic right up to the present. But snoop thoroughly and you will discover that he shot himself in the head at age 78. In the throes of old age, his health failing, one by one he saw his friends passing, going senile, bedridden or wheelchair-bound. He left behind a note: “To my friends – My work is done. Why wait?”

    Q: Why did George Eastman take his life?

    A.) His work was done. Why wait?

    B.) He longed for the blessed release of death to finally end a futile life that had dragged on and on for much too long.

    C.) His health was failing and he (a lifelong bachelor) dreaded the indignities of old age -with its dependence upon others.

    Does anyone honestly think that, with health and youth, he would not have found more work in which to engross himself? Or would he have longed, nonetheless, for life to end? In this, Mr. Eastman is much like Leonardo DaVinci, the artist behind the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Leonardo made his mark not only as an artist. He also contributed hugely in areas as diverse as geometry, anatomy, astronomy, architecture, and flight. Some of his sketches have been used as blueprints for devices in use today. He was a renaissance man; perhaps he even originates the term. Yet toward the end of life, he reportedly sought God’s forgiveness for “not using all the resources of his spirit and art.”

    Eastman and DaVinci—two fellows who typify Dr. Jastrow’s statement. And they would be joined by most everyone else, were we not sucked into a morass of drudgery, duty, debt, injustice and hardship. Sure—you might well long for death if you can only envision more of that. Ditto for the frailness that comes with old age. I recently attended a funeral of someone who had been happy, content, and productive throughout life. Nonetheless, death was not unwelcome, his relatives assured me, since he’d grown “so tired of being sick.”

    That’s why the Bible’ promise of everlasting life on a paradise earth is so appealing. It’s Robert Jastrow’s dream come true—unlimited time to grow, minus the very real liabilities that eventually cause most of us to tire of life. Perfect health is promised, and an economic system will be in place so that people do not feel they are “toiling for nothing.” Note how Isaiah 65:21-23 describes life as God’s purpose is realized:

    “And they will certainly build houses and have occupancy; and they will certainly plant vineyards and eat [their] fruitage. They will not build and someone else have occupancy; they will not plant and someone else do the eating. For like the days of a tree will the days of my people be; and the work of their own hands my chosen ones will use to the full. They will not toil for nothing, nor will they bring to birth for disturbance; because they are the offspring made up of the blessed ones of Jehovah, and their descendants with them.”

    There’s a lot of things I’d like to do. I’ve done a few of them. But for the most part, I’ve just scratched the surface. And I’ve spent a fair amount of time shoveling aside the nonsense the present life throws at one. No, everlasting life, should I find myself there, will not be a bad thing. Not at all. (March 2009)

    ******  The bookstore

  • Conscience, the July 19 2026 Watchtower Study, and Child Sexual Abuse

    Prior to the meeting, I met up with the Watchtower Study conductor in the parking lot. He told me of the Jiminy Cricket tune from 1940, Always Let Your Conscience be Your Guide. He had somehow run across it as something that fit in well with the Study to come: Your Conscience—Use Bible Principles to Train It. During the Study, he might just show snippets of that Pinocchio movie in which the song appeared, he quipped, adding that if he did it would be the last thing he ever did. It is, at the Kingdom Hall, “instructed by Jehovah,” after all, not Walt Disney. But, it would have fit well. “A conscience is that still small voice that people won’t listen to,” Cricket says to Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy but doesn’t quite know how to pull off the stunt. “Now you see the world is full of temptations,” Cricket says. “They’re the wrong things that seem right at the time but… even though the right things may seem wrong sometimes, sometimes the wrong things may be right at the wrong time or… visa versa. Ahem. Understand?” Of course. Who wouldn’t?

    The Watchtower Study fleshed out conscience, naturally, but the point is that it used to be common sense, so that it would even be taught to children in a (ground-breaking at the time) Disney movie. The Study article explored how that internal guide could be molded for the better. Explored also was how it could be damaged, even ruined. One brother commented of sort secret fraternity of which he had spoken to a member. The fellow had been literally branded in the shoulder—all prospects were. Didn’t that hurt? Our friend asked. Oh, it hurt like hell, was the answer, but only for a moment, after which the nerve ending were destroyed so that they never felt anything again. Conscience is like that, too. It’s an internal guide. You don’t want to make a habit of ignoring it—a theme explored quite well in that Pinocchio movie.

    I would never claim that Witnesses are the only ones who recognize our God-given conscience, but they doubtless are among the ones who discuss it most thoroughly, That’s because they cart to the curb, mostly unread, the competing rubbish of evolutionary psychology which holds that it all evolved. In that collection of emotions we call conscience (it is not a term they use) each came about separately and over the eons fused together because, in some way, each enabled the clan evolving it to beat out the competing clan that had not yet got around to it. Though it masquerades as science, the stuff will strike any person of common sense as pure fantasy guesswork, consistently conflating correlation with causation (whereas, if you did that, you would be promptly told how stupid you were).

    “Everything is ex-post reasoning: we can run fast, detect cheating, kill our stepchildren, because…and here you simply insert anything from the days of being a member of a small, close-knit endangered tribe to justify this. With this one can explain almost everything without actually ever bothering to prove anything,” complained a letter to the Economist (Jan 24th, 2009). The field—how can it be other than pseudoscience?—is born of inadequate tools for the job coupled with a refusal to let a divine foot in the door. It is convincing only to true believers. The Watchtower will have none of it.

    Participation was lively, as it almost always is. Two topics were specifically spotlighted in which conscience might be brought to bear (smoking and wedding celebrations) then a booklet was referred to which I had forgotten existed: Scriptures for Christian Living. Time was there was no way you could forget. They were introduced with much fanfare at the convention, then you had to queue up in long lines to get one from an attendant with many boxes of the item. But now they are released more or less like Steve Jobs used to introduce an Apple product: ‘Oh, and one more thing . . . “ You can sort of lose track of them.

    There are about 100 topics in that brochure, or whatever it is—now that I do everything digitally it can be hard to tell. They are all areas in which conscience can be refined by Bible passages, after which to sharpen up that guide even if those passages are forgotten. You can take any one them and construct your own series of daily texts over it to better get a handle on the quality.

    Let us extend the list a bit, beyond that specific Watchtower Study. What about when a sleazy situation comes up that would blow Jiminy Cricket out of the water and there are no mentors around, no scriptures around, no protectors around? Say that something is child sexual abuse. It existed in Jiminy’s day, no doubt, but it was never mentioned and he would not believe it were someone to tell him. However, the times they are a’changing. Every sort of wickedness is on full display these days. Jiminy must be brought up to speed.

    A Watchtower video entitled Protect Your Children, released in 2016, spotlights conscience as the prime defense when no protector is around. It is an episode of the Caleb and Sophia cartoon series that Witness children know well. The series is incorporated by most Witness families in training their children. They sure are being trained in that video, as parents tell the children that Jehovah gave them a conscience, after which they follow up with asking what would they do if someone tried to touch them somewhere that made them uncomfortable?

    Protect Your Children captures the imagination of the child and depicts sexual abuse as a monster, for it is monstrous, and any child knows that monsters are malevolent creatures from which to flee. It vaporizes the moment the children tell it: “No. Stop doing that! I’m telling on you!” However, to ensure that no child misses the point, the mother urges: “Even if it is someone you know and trust!” and papa adds that they should right away “tell daddy or mommy,” who, in the video, take the news most seriously.

    However, mostly because she didn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses, someone told me our video was garbage. She presented another from a certain child protective agency as the example to follow. This one, as though trained in the ways of evolutionary science, made no mention of conscience at all. Specific areas of the body that no one should touch are circled on a child’s body, apparently with the assumption that a child does not know its ass from its elbow.

    Look, it gets the job done, and so pernicious is the evil that there is room for both videos and many more. But the agency video struck me as a classic example of why so many children don’t like school. I remember when they would roll into the classroom the tall TV console for some “educational television.” I remember getting all excited about the change of pace but then let down at the dullness of the presentation. Who wants to be always instructed? One almost envisions in the agency video a child who is touched mentally consulting the chart he has memorized in order to determine if he should feel bad about it or not. No. Caleb’s dad is right. Jehovah gave humans a conscience. If you have not scratched it all to pieces updating it with the enlightened moral thinking of today’s overall world, it works pretty well.

    The Watchtower video has the added bonus, completely lacking in that of the agency’s, of instructing parents in how to teach their children and encouraging them to do so. It is thus family-friendly. It is a force for family cohesion. In the end, it is family that will protect a child better than any network of outside agencies, who so often drop the ball. Whereas, the agency video goes on the supposition that everybody—don’t even overlook the parents—are on the list of possible suspects.

    The Watchtower video steers clear of the possibility that the parents might be the villains. To be sure, that situation has happened, generally with step-parents. How to put that in a video? Do you really want to suggest to all children that their parents might be pedophiles? Even so, Protect Your Children clearly directs the children to let no one touch them inappropriately—no one at all. The agency video, on the other hand, specifically says it is okay for a doctor to touch private areas. Oh, sure! as a representative of modern science, how could that one possibly be anything other than trustworthy? Yield completely to that high priest of medical science. No need for even the slightest caution.

    It didn’t turn out to be good advice In 2016. That year, the U.S. Olympic team doctor was sentenced to 175 years in prison for molesting the teens in his charge over the course of three Olympics. 150 of his victims testified at the trial. Had they been asked which video do they think would have safeguarded them more, what do you imagine would have been their reply? The agency video of modern evolutionary science was probably that deviant’s dream come true.

    Save for that one very serious demerit, it’s not a bad video. Overall, it is very good. It can be recommended. But it has nothing on that of the Watchtower’s, which spotlights conscience as the first line of defense.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Endless Grad Students to Propel Evolution

    Endless graduate students propelled by endless grant dollars explore every vestage of evolution theory. No nook is too obscure for someone to make a doctorate out of. All are programmed in the purely material Few thing to break from the mold. All are proclaiming their quest for truth. All equate their decisions to chemical reactions and somehow imagine such chemical reactions can discern “truth.” Not all, I know—that is hyperbolic. But it is the overwhelming trend. Better to hold up a stop sign to a tsunami than to attempt its reversal.

    Whereas, my people, as soon as you hop onboard, they will send you out knocking on doors on the basis that we are in the last days. So I won’t find much evolution commentary in-house. The pickings will be exceedingly lean. I’ll have to track it elsewhere.

    Thing is, if we really are in the last days—and one can easily make a case for it since every day reveals a greater trainwreck of human self-rule than the day before—then knocking on doors is just the ticket. The end is indeed “just around the corner,” even if it has proved to be one heckuva corner. No matter. When the court case is at last closed, the verdict pronounced that human rule aport from God is a disaster, when the books are finally closed on the experiment and it recedes in memory—a thousand plus years from now, will humans once again get it in their heads that self-rule is the way to go? Hopefully, Mark Twain’s words will apply, that a cat which sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again. In fact, it won’t sit on a cold one either. Why? Because they all look hot.

    Meanwhile, it’s not entirely unlike when, during the Vietnam War era, I sent my buddy in college a faux form letter as though from the government: “This country has enough” followed by a long list of professions requiring a college degree, of which I put a check mark by the one he had chosen. “What we need now is soldiers! Enlist now, Kevin!” So it is that the Bible think tank, though there be many things to do in life, facilites the door-to-door ministry.

    Though representing a Western field that maintains nothing is more important than “spreading one’s seed,” after which evolution doesn’t give a hoot whether you keep living or not, they have collectively neglected that task to such a degree that their world threatens to collapse. You would think they would focus on why THAT is true. Why has the Western world effectively chosen collective suicide? Isn’t it Nero fiddling while Rome burns to be pretending that their chemically-determined choices have any meaning, much less that they uncover “truth,” when the very society they live in dissipates through lack of child-bearing?

    One might prefer the model of Genesis: Jehovah made the attraction between the sexes very very strong. He did not want to come along one or two thousand years later to a barren planet only to hear Adam say, ‘Oh….yeah….You did say that didn’t you? Sorry. I guess we just plumb forgot. So it is that for thousands of years parents would warn their offspring about premature sex, not always successfully. The young person would creep ever so closer to this tantalizing new force of sexual attraction, as though a spacepod approaching a black hole. Closer and closer they creep. It is so enticing. What is all this fuss from the old people, anyway? Suddenly he is caught in its grip and pulled into a two-mile long strand of spaghetti.

    It’s not the model that prevails these days in the West, at least insofar as bearing children is concerned. Western society ignores the most basic instinct in the world, as though pulling the plug on itself is the noblest aspiration one could attain. It’s not because they don’t understand quantum mechanics that would make them do this, nor why the universe accelerates as it expands, as though having the good sense to stay away from us.

    Only the monied and comfortable atheists can occupy oneself with the ‘how’ questions of evolution, undistracted by Rome burning. Only they, in their own world, can fail to see that it is burning, as they fascinate themselves with a worldview of chance their “evidence” points them to. Only they can be oblivious to how it cuts them off from the hopes and dreams that have historically driven humanity. Long ago (1920), H.G. Wells, who turned atheist over time, observed: “The Darwinian movement took formal Christianity unawares, suddenly. . . . The new biological science was bringing nothing constructive as yet to replace the old moral stand-bys. A real de-moralization ensued.” Then, connecting that attitude with an increased appetite for war manifested in WWI and soon-to-come WWII: “Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding. . . . Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog . . . so it seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.” [Outline of History]

    They concluded that God was dead. They didn’t disagree with their own conclusion, but they were saddened by it. They knew they had lost a lot. Not so atheist’s next generation! They gleefully saw off the branch upon which they sit, in return for the ecstasy of no one telling them what to do! Our 70-80 years, with nothingness looming beyond, seems to them a great bargain. No matter if it ends in the nursing home with someone (ideally) changing their Depends three times a day! In his time, Ronald Reagan was, arguably, the world’s most influential person. Ten years later, in the throes of Alzheimer’s, he didn’t know who he was. Does this faze the next generation? It doesn’t seem to. For the first time in human history, relative comfort and ease is possible for most of us, provided we play our cards right and aren’t terribly unlucky and live in privileged nations. We can have fine homes, fine cars, cool technology. And that’s good enough for them! What could God possibly add to that?

    Sean Carroll waxes ecstatic over the notion of chance being the driver of our lives, with no sense at all at being cut off adrift. It’s another of his books, a more recent (2020) offering than The Making of the Fittest. This one is entitled A Series of Fortunate Events, the subtitle reading Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You. “Fascinating and exhilarating!” someone chimes in on the cover. Readable though the book is, that won’t be my chime. Mine will be more along the lines of the guillotine joke. For greater sadistic effect, the executioner one day had decided that candidates ought be placed on their backs looking up at the fearsome blade. Twice the machine had inexplicably failed. Twice the prisoners had consequently been released. But as the third candidate was fastened in place, looking up, he exclaimed, “Hey! I think I see what is wrong with the thing!”

    ******  The bookstore

  • You Get to Comment at Witness Meetings

    You get to comment at Witness meetings. You can prepare for them. This is a very unusual norm for a religious gathering, where there is usually no point in preparing, nor anything to prepare for: they are just in-the-moment experiences.

    Not so with the Witnesses. One can comment. So, in connection with this week’s Bible reading (Jeremiah 16-17), I made a comment on 17:10:

    “I, Jehovah, am searching the heart, Examining the innermost thoughts, To give to each one according to his ways, According to the fruitage of his works.”

    My remark: The heart makes a grab for what it wants then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This lends the impression that the head is calling the shots but it is the heart all along

    The final chapter of the Bible Stories books was reached, culminating in Revelation. ‘What Bible character would you like to meet in the resurrection?’ was a final question. I observed that the line would be pretty long for the main characters, so I would drop down to second tier, such as Elihu. He was the fellow who stuck up for Job when the other three louts were feeding him to the shredder. At the same time, though, he gave Job correction, for the latter had gone too far in pushing back on these jerks. (I remarked in Workman’s Theodicy, ‘Who hasn’t been there? Going to where you would never otherwise go but for responding to the goads and taunts of others?’)

    Revelation 12:9 was included in that final chapter. I remarked on how it helps us get our heads on straight. Witnesses may hear that they are misled, that they are ‘brainwashed,’ even that they are of a cult. Revelation 12:9 points out that it is exactly the opposite, that it is Satan misleading the “entire inhabited earth.” For the most part, cult accusations come from those who want the greater world to dictate one’s terms, not any Bible-based agency that may set different goals.

    There were the questions posed young people—what might you do should this or that situation arise? Say—this was one of the questions—you want to give full-time service a shot but someone is leaning on you for college. How to respond? I’ve nothing against college, assuming one knows why one is going. Just because schools push that way is not a good answer. I observed that demanding immediate action is a fine tell for sniffing out a scam. ‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ followed by ‘No! You should do it now!’ It’s a sign of a scam.

    It may have changed, but I recall guidance counselors in high school alarmed at the suggestion that I might take a year or so off before pressing on to college. ‘No, you should do it now!’ they insisted, lest you lose the momentum. Mark of a scam, as far as I can see. I didn’t get much out of college, though I graduated, and never did a thing with it afterwards. My fault, not theirs. Not anyone’s fault, really, or if anyone’s fault, it was the guidance counselors who could not imagine anything but shoving kids into college whether they be ready or not.

    For the opening talk, Jeremiah-centered, “It Matters Whom You Trust,” the speaker mentioned the U.S currency that reads “In God We Trust.” I have heard this so many times over the years, but there was a new twist last night. Coins have said it since the Civil War. But paper bills did not say it until 1955. In the midst of the Cold War, it was a direct kick-back at the Russians. ‘Godless, atheistic Russia’ was then the object of Western fear, so America put slogans right on the dollar bill to show that their people were not that way.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Science without Religion is Lame. Religion without Science is Blind

    Science without Religion is Lame. Religion without Science is Blind

    Albert Einstein wrote: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Science provides the how of the universe, but religion provides the why, along with the morals and purpose.

    Given a choice of unknowns, most people will choose the why questions over the how questions—unless you include such questions as ‘How do I keep my head above water in an inherently unjust world?’ But that is really just a subset of a greater why: “Why is the world inherently unjust?” Moreover, one has to be comfortable and monied to be preoccupied with the how. Those with any significant struggling in their lives will more readily fixate on the whys. Each day will have its own anxiety, said Jesus. For the average person, there is precious little reward in fixating on the how. If your specialty of how persuades you that it is permanent curtains in but a few decades, where’s the reward in that? Bragging rights, maybe, strutting around to tell others how smart you are. One thinks of Jesus’ words regarding those doing acts of piety to be seen by men; they were “having their reward in full.” One also thinks of the Sherlock episode in which (per John’s blog) the public learned that Sherlock didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun. Far from being embarrassed, he shot back with ‘What difference does it make?’ How could such knowledge conceivably help in the day-to-day of life? Yes, I know, Sherlock is fiction, but his observation was not. That’s not to say the search for the how is bad. It is greatly welcomed so long as it stays in its lane. When it supposes it owns the entire road, that is another matter.

    It is a fine thing to be interested in reality, but it’s overrated. Define the benefits of being interested in reality when you’re only around a few dozen years to enjoy it. The entire field of poetry and art is stocked with people who are “interested in reality” only to a limited degree. Ought we them to knock it off and get real? At any rate, upon contemplating the very tiny and the very large, being obsessed with finding reality through science leads to results impossible to visualize.

    The goal here is to see how much of a bridge can be built between Genesis and evolution theory and to what degree (if any) they need be mutually exclusive. To that extent, one must be willing to sacrifice undue literalism on one end and undue extrapolation into ideas more speculative than proven on the other. One might contemplate that when we hear science accounts for only 5% of what is out there—that the 95% that is dark matter or dark energy we don’t know what it is and that they primarily are stipulated just to keep our present 5% knowledge intact, well, maybe even that 5% is not as sure as we think it is.

    It may just boil down to a difference in filling in the gaps. One side fills them in with God. The other side fills them in with mathematics impossible to visualize. At the tiny end, it is Feynman saying he thinks it safe to state that nobody understands quantum physics. At the massive end, it is dark matter and dark energy comprising 95% of what is said to be out there, and which James Peebles called “placeholders for our ignorance.”

    As to sacrificing undue literalism, that shouldn’t be too hard when we reflect that God doesn’t really have eyes, ears, a hand, an arm. The anthropomorphizing of God, used throughout the Bible, is clearly a poetic devise. We all know enough not to demand evidence of the bush when someone says we must not beat around it. Most Bible verses used to support the trinity teaching would, if they were seen in any other context, be instantly dismissed as figures of speech. Really, if you were going to employ a human analogy to suggest equality, would you not suggest one of brothers rather than that of father and son?

    Poetic devices all. The Bible is full of them. The beauty of poetry is that it doesn’t unduly hem you in. When something is written in “poetic symbolism,” who can say how far that symbolism goes? How much of it can be allowed in our road to reconcile Genesis with evolution? One might be reminded of a scene from Up the Down Staircase, a novel set in an urban high school. A student is given a grade of F for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protests, supporting his interpretation with the reasons for it. The grade stands. It even stands when he locates the poet himself, brings the fellow to school, and the poet says, “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.” But for the school it is ‘Once an F, always an F.’ The only satisfaction the student finds is in knowing he has changed school policy. From that time on, only dead poets are assigned for interpretation.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Retrieving the Ruined Belt

    Retrieving the Ruined Belt

    If Jeremiah shows deep emotion in the book bearing his name, so also does God, who says:

    “And if you refuse to listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride. I will shed many tears, and my eyes will stream with tears.” (Jeremiah 13:17)

    Why would one choose a course of revolt against God? Occasionally, yes—we are flawed and/or fall into bad company. But to choose it as a permanent course? Can it be anything other than pride? and he weeps over that.

    The “great Mississippi of falsehood,” de Tocqueville said about the human construct that we call history. Is the Euphrates the great river of human wisdom? Consistently, God likens water to wisdom—at Jeremiah 2:13, for instance: “Because my people have done two bad things: They have abandoned me, the source of living water, And dug for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns, that cannot hold water.”

    Human reasoning is great stuff. Pour me a double shot of it. But it can be used for both good and for ill. It can be used to fortify one’s relationship with God or to justify abandoning it. The heart makes a grab for what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale in justification. This gives the impression that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along.

    Bury the belt by the Euphrates, Jeremiah is told. (vs 4) It is a long ways to travel. Go get it again, he is told days later. Nothering left of it. What does the belt represent? What is the overall message?

    “‘For just as a belt clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me,’ declares Jehovah, ‘to become to me a people, a name, a praise, and something beautiful.” (vs 11)

    “But they did not obey,” the verse adds.

    Next is what we might call a big ‘Duh’: “And you must also give this message to them, ‘This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says: “Every large jar should be filled with wine.”’ And they will reply to you, ‘Do we not already know that every large jar should be filled with wine?’ [Duh!] (13;12) it is not as though they’re treating the prophet as an honored sage.

    Jehovah then likens the rebellious nation itself to one of large wine-filled jars, filled with wine to point of roaring drunkenness. (vs 13) Let us call it drunk on human wisdom, the crud from the Euphrates. If they are going to be that way, “I will smash them against each other, fathers and sons alike,” declares Jehovah. “I will not show compassion or feel any sorrow or have any mercy on them; nothing will stop me from bringing them to ruin.” I mean, running the show by human wisdom does that anyway, causing people to “smash against each other.” Just step it up a little and save time, appears to be what Jehovah is saying.

    This stuff resonates with me, though it will not with everyone. It serves as a good heads-up to get one’s act together, though not all with take it that way. I never want to be cocky in the face of God, though some don’t hesitate to do so. Things can usually be taken more ways than one, so that it becomes a matter of heart which one you will choose. Sort of like at Bob Wegman’s funeral how the story was told of a certain brusque vendor complaining to him, “Why do people instantly dislike me?” Well, it saves time, Bob replied.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Darwin’s Bulldog

    This book I have in mind, attempting to reconcile Genesis with evolution, will not be anti-science. But it will be taken that way by mainstream science because of its ever increasing “my way or the highway” attitude. “Can’t we all just get along?” I will plead like Rodney King. No, will be the answer. We can’t. ‘All or nothing’ thinking, it is called.

    It is not really the evolutionists, per se. Darwin himself wasn’t that way. He saw no inherent conflict between his theory and belief in a First Cause. It is the atheists who have hijacked that field. Perhaps, it starts with his contemporary, Thomas Huxley, who was nicknamed “Darwin’s bulldog.” You might well be apprehensive running across a gentleman with a bulldog. It recalls my own father-in-law, a gentle soul if ever there was one, calling out to his newly arrived campsite neighbors who were alarmed at his galloping pit bull come to greet them, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” Turns out he was, but not so Darwin’s bulldog.

    With these new modern atheists, if you express reservations, any at all, against evolution accomplishing all by itself the job of life, you are anti-science. I have called such people, not scientists, not even evolutionists, both of whom can be broad minded, but scientism-philosopher-atheist-cheerleaders (SPACs), who ram their anti-God dogma down everyone’s throat as the be-all and end-all. They are the epitome of narrow-minded. Bititish satirist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote that science “could be as dogmatic as any Church, and with less justification, and its devotees as bigoted as any country clergyman.” He was speaking of the scientism-philosopher-atheist-cheerleaders.

    Most recently, that “my way or the highway” attitude has been showcased in connection with vaccines, thrust to the fore during the Covid 19 pandemic. Were you to express any reservations about them, any at all, you were summararily labeled “anti-vax.” I hesitate to go there too much, hoping not to be drawn there against my will, because it is yet all in the blender of history-making. Instead, I’ll try to confine myself to examples of intractibilty that have long emerged from the blender and are considered settled.

    One such example is that of Ignatz Semmelweis. In the mid 1800’s, the Hungarian medical doctor got it into his head that fever and death following doctor-assisted childbirth could be curtailed by washing hands and equipment frequently. Doctors back then would deliver a baby, having just emerged from an autopsy, only wiping their hands on their smocks! There were some sort of tiny “particles” contaminating the women, Semmelweis proposed. Doctors howled with laughter at such nonsense. Isaac Asimov’s ‘Guide to Biology’ vividly portrays Semmelweis’ presenting his ideas at seminars, with his esteemed audience mocking him, hurling catcalls! Doctors argued that, even if Semmeweis’ findings were correct, washing one’s hands each time before treating a pregnant woman would be too much work.

    Semmelweis enforced strict antiseptic practices at the hospital under his supervision, cutting deaths to under 1%, and it made no difference in their attitude! Colleagues ridiculed him his entire life, he suffered a nervous breakdown, says Asimov, and died in an insane asylum tormented by memories of women screaming in their death-agonies following hospital-acquired infections. With Semmelweis out of the way, his own hospital went back to familiar practices and the mortality rate climbed to 35%. You can read the bare facts in many places, but Asimov’s account is the most vivid I have come across, remarkable in a book that purports only to be an outline, a “guide.”

    Yet, it is not vivid enough. It gets worse. From Asimov, I took it that he suffered a nervous breakdown over the “cognitive dissonance” of knowing he could save countless women who died in agony if only the establishment would listen to him. Reality was much more sinister than that. Not only did his colleagues not listen to him, but they are the ones who consigned him to an insane asylum when he started to get too in-their-face about saving lives. It wasn’t any nervous breakdown at all! It was punishment such totalitarian regimes are known to practice, sending dissidents to psychiatric institutions! Whenever those atheists start prattling on about how scientists graciously change their views at the first hint they may be off-base, whereas it’s only the pig-headed religionists who “stay the course” come hell or high water, I play the ‘Semmelweis’ card.

    ******  The bookstore

  • If You Get Tired Running with Footmen, How Will You Run a Race Against Horses? (Jeremiah 12:5)

    So here Jeremiah is complaining about wickedness—why is there so much of it? why do the perpetrators do just fine?—and suddenly he goes full-on harsh: 

    “Single them out like sheep for slaughtering! And set them apart for the day of killing!” (Jeremiah 12:3)

    No turning the other cheek here!—that teacher wouldn’t come along for hundreds of years. Of course, the WERE trying to kill him, and those religious powers-that-be would later try and do with the same with Jesus. The chapter before paints the prophet as “a docile lamb being brought to the slaughter.” (11:19) Now, he wants to turn the tables on them. Sure. I can get my head around that. 

    His answer from God is not what one might expect:

    “If you get tired running with footmen, How can you run a race against horses?” (12:5)

    Translation: Suck it up. It’s not going to get any easier.

    Jeremiah here follows the tradition of Job, of Habakkuk, of Asaph, all of whom complained about evil proliferating and the perpetrators prospering, Job, at 21:7-15 of the book bearing his name, Habakkuk, at 1:2-4 at his respective book, and Asaph at Psalms 73: 2-13. 

    Preaching God’s purpose before those attempting to thwart it earned Jeremiah death threats. He gets fed up at one point and tries to quit:

    “You have fooled me, O Jehovah, and I was fooled. You used your strength against me, and you prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; Everyone ridicules me.  . . . So I said: “I am not going to make mention of him, And I will speak no more in his name.” (Jeremiah 20:7-9)

    It was short-lived: “But in my heart it became like a burning fire shut up in my bones, And I was tired of holding it in; I could no longer endure it.” (vs 9)

    In today’s vernacular, he’d been in the cult too long and could no longer escape. Mercifully, such verbiage was not in vogue at the time.

    He’s a pretty good model for speaking freely before God, not holding back, not fearful that God will misunderstand him. He knows that won’t happen. Immediately before wishing those enemies to the slaughter (same verse), it is: “But you know me well, O Jehovah, you see me; You have examined my heart and found it in union with you.” (12:3) He presents a good model for prayer.

    Jeremiah is blunt with God earlier, too, leveling an accusation, unconcerned with making him mad, unconcerned that his angst will be misconstrued: 

    “Alas, O Sovereign Lord Jehovah! Truly you have utterly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘You will have peace,’ when the sword is at our throats.” (4:10)

    Where does that come from? Why does God do that—“utterly deceive people?” What is the basis for this charge?

    The answer comes a chapter later. It is in God’s words: “Something appalling and horrible has occurred in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, And the priests dominate by their own authority.  And my own people love it that way.” (5:31-32)

    Why does God allow the prophets to prophesy lies? Because his own people “love it that way.” He’s giving them what they want, as payback, as what he says just the verse before: “Should I not call them to account for these things?” declares Jehovah. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation?” (5:29)

    Thus, a model we hear all the time—it is advanced frequently in agnostic or atheistic circles—is, “if God would just but answer our sincere questions to our satisfaction, then we would come around.” Alas, he doesn’t oblige them. He allows a devious system to remain in place because they “love it that way.”

    Doubtless, they do not love it that way should they find themselves on the losing end, but so long as they maneuver to avoid that spot, they do love it, and can continue to support solutions for fixing the world that don’t work. Though there be agencies aplenty for addressing social problems, the reality remains as Jesus stated in three of the four gospels: “You always have the poor among you.” The agencies of human governments do not so much want their respective problems solved (if they were solved, they would go out of business) as they do want them funded, which is a big difference. It is the same as how the armaments makers don’t want lasting peace, nor the drug-makers lasting health, for in both cases, where would they be in that event? The model they love is one of chipping away at the problem, often fueling it at the same time through misguided assumptions and contradictory policies. “And my own people have loved it that way.”

    The betrayal, from God’s point of view, and from the point of view of those who love Him, is laid out at Jeremiah 2:13: “Because my people have done two bad things: They have abandoned me, the source of living water, And dug for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns, that cannot hold water.” The theme resurfaces throughout the book: “The wise have been put to shame. . . . They have rejected the word of Jehovah, And what wisdom do they have?” (8:9) “Not much,” says one type of person. “Plenty!” says another, “Get a load of this technology!” Avoid the losing end, and “they love it that way.”

    This “permitting deception because they love it that way” rationale is not too different from a more fiery one that appears in the New Testament. The latter one is that “the lawless one’s presence is by the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders and every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth in order that they might be saved. That is why God lets a deceptive influence mislead them so that they may come to believe the lie.” (2 Thessalonians 2: 9-11) 

    He allows that “deceptive influence” to “mislead them” Why? “Because they did not accept the love of the truth,” declares Thessalonians. Because they “love it that way,” declares Jeremiah, “it” being a system of things designed around the mistruth that human rulership can end injustice and bring peace.

    Thus, appealing as the idea may sound, God does not cater to those indifferent asking their sincere questions as to his existence. Apparently, he sees through their “sincerity.” Instead, he says: “A bull well knows its buyer, And a donkey the manger of its owner.” (Isaiah 1:3)

    You’re just supposed to know it. Maybe it is deep down so you have to dig around a bit, for there is much to distract, but in the final analysis, you’re just supposed to know it. It may be a question of where do you put your pride—in coming to know God (Jeremiah 9:24) or in human accomplishment? 

    Examination of the evidence takes second place to what appeals to the heart. When God passes by Moses’ face, it is not to declare, “Examine the evidence.” It is to declare himself “a God merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in loyal love and truth, showing loyal love to thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin, but he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7) If these qualities resonate, evidence becomes superfluous. If they don’t, evidence will not satisfy. 

    That is probably why Paul advises, at Romans, to “prove to yourselves the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2) You don’t have to prove it to others. You prove it to yourself. Thereafter, you may proclaim it to others but whether they accept it or not will not be due to your “proof.” It will be due to how the qualities of the above Exodus passage resonates. It will be upon that basis that Jesus is said to draw people. Having been so drawn, a person will identify with the first portion of that 12:2, to “stop being molded by this system of things.” He or she will not fall for that phony portrayal of himself as being molded, much less “controlled,” or “brainwashed.” He will know that it is the other way around.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Sean Carroll and the Den Yers – Mystery Solved After 15 Years: Part 2

    (See Part 1)

    After 15 years I solved the problem of why Sean Carroll again and again calls those who deny evolution “denyers.” I did it, not the science way of devising hypotheses and then testing them. I did it the religious way, by awaiting new light from a higher authority. In this case, the higher authority is AI.

    15 years after the dilemma appeared, 15 years after devising hypotheses which were all lame, I asked newly developed AI why Carroll said “denyers” throughout his book. AI’s answer was that he didn’t.

    I was not prepared for such an outright denyal. I pressed it. It pressed back. Maybe he said it once or twice for some quirky reason, it said, but in general, he didn’t. I told it to get off its fat transistors and do a little digging. Whereupon, it said:

    “I checked available sources, including excerpts from the book. A widely circulated PDF version of The Making of the Fittest (from around the original 2006/2007 Norton publication) explicitly uses phrases like:

    • “denyers of evolution today”
    • “evolution’s denyers”
    • “The principal means for evolution’s denyers to circumvent…”

    This matches what you’re describing—it appears repeatedly in discussions of anti-evolution arguments, tactics of denialism, and contrasts with DNA evidence.” (The source AI cited was pdfcoffee*com)

    I believe this is called a vindication. Can any lessons be learned?

    To a people who are accustomed to pulling lessons out of anything, the answer is yes. First, note that the answer was almost lost to history, Inaccurate PDFs have a way of being taken down in time. Had I made my inquiry just a few years later, maybe AI’s answer would have been ‘He never sad it! What have you been smoking?’

    Moreover, though I had been asking questions—was it an offbeat Scrabble variant? a British spelling? a mutation itself? a taunt on those he considers dummies, as though putting words in their mouth—I had not asked the right question. The right question was, ‘Am I actually reading a true copy of his book?’ I mean, it was a “widely circulated PDF version of The Making of the Fittest.” Who would have imagined it would be wrong? I’ve produced PDF versions of my books. They faithfully reproduce every word. So even this AI answer 15 years later is a little squirrelly, but I guess I will accept it as what actually happened.

    The problem wasn’t what I thought it was at all. The problem was the medium. Maybe there are other areas in which the problem is the medium. Maybe there are other areas in which the correct questions have not yet been asked, and the hazy questions that have been asked produce nonsense. Over the past 100 years, the gaps of science from which the credulous, it is charged, create a “god of the gaps,” is not shrinking. It is growing. Or perhaps it is shrinking, but only if you accept seeming nonsense as the proper fill of those gaps.

    ..to be continued.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Sean Carroll and the Den Yers: Mystery Solved After 15 Years: Part 1

    It took me 15 years to solve this mystery! 15 years of constant toil and nighttime tossing and turning! 15 years trying to solve the conundrum of the ages. At long last, i have solved it. Sometimes you find yourself asking the wrong questions. Sometimes you must wait for new light.

    The vexing question unfolded thus, in my post of 2011:

    He’s a smart fellow, Sean Carroll is, author of The Making of the Fittest. Nobody here is saying otherwise. I’ve said kind things about his  book, for the most part, and may in time say more. But—hang it all—how come he can’t spell deniers? He takes aim in the latter portion  of his book at those who deny evolution, and again and again he misspells the word.

    It’s not d-e-n-y-e-r-s!

    It’s d-e-n-i-e-r-s!

    Any schoolboy knows this. Why doesn’t he? 

    Check it in your shelf dictionary. Check an on-line dictionary. Check a Scrabble dictionary: if anyone can stretch a word for acceptable spelling variations, it will be a Scrabble player. Google the odd spelling, if you like. It doesn’t matter where you check. One who denies something is a denier, not a denyer! Let’s be honest. You can’t read that word without thinking…… “den’-yer? ‘What the heck is that?”

    Well, maybe denyer is the British spelling of the term (notwithstanding that Carroll hails from Wisconsin) – I admit I’m grasping at straws. We all know Brits can’t spell properly, just as they can’t pronounce properly. Or maybe, in that rarefied scientific world Sean inhabits, they have dispensed with plebian spellings, in favor of lofty revisions more appropriate to their scientific status. Or maybe it’s a deliberate misspelling, his attempt at tweaking the idiots, those, in his view, who do deny evolution. But that seems a bit mean-spirited, and I don’t think he’s that kind of guy. Plus, it seems an inside joke that even most insiders would miss. Or—you don’t suppose that Carroll’s quirky spelling is just an application of his own theory? Has the ‘i’ mutated into a ‘y’?

    None of these hypotheses make much sense. They’re all lame. And don’t misunderstand.  It’s just spelling. It’s not that big of a deal. It really isn’t. But—blast it all—IT IS! It’s like the pebble in my shoe that doesn’t seem big at first, but drives me crazy (is that the purpose?) the more I walk on it. Sean Carroll’s been to college. And grad school. And doctorate school. How come he doesn’t know to spell? And what about his editors? What good are they if they can’t catch something so blatant? The Ministry School guidebook counsel keeps nagging at me: if you are incorrect in some detail, no matter how obscure or irrelevant, invariably someone will pick up on it and say “Huh! He doesn’t know that?” And from there it’s just a tiny hop to “Maybe he doesn’t know anything else, either.”

    When I go to his web page, I see he introduces himself with the same Michael Ruse snippet with which I introduced him: “Of all the scientists in the world today, there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll.” The first thing Charles Darwin would do is tell him what a donkey he is for not spelling the word right! Evolution books like his written post-genome-mapping advance their case in a powerful way. Why mess it up with a spelling blunder that any orangutan would get right? This makes no sense at all.

    Ah well, Harley, get over it. Figure it’s a mystery. Like the Trinity. Just accept it.

    Okay, I will. Enough said.

    But it’s HARD to just get over it because he repeats the error so many times! Carroll likens his book to a full course meal, served in courses (just like Jehovah’s Witnesses are wont to describe their meetings as “spiritual meals,” their assemblies as “spiritual feasts!”). His after-dinner dessert conversation, it turns out, consists of a strategy session on how to counter the denyers, some of whom (gasp!) are to be found within his own ranks: “There are some individuals with scientific credentials who doubt or deny certain elements of evolutionary science that are widely accepted by the scientific community; some may even doubt the entire theory,” he observes. “But getting a doctoral degree and making negative arguments are relatively easy – making new, verifiable discoveries is an altogether different matter. The denyers specialize is rhetoric and the mining of quotes, not in laboratory research. (pg 218)

    I’m not so sure I agree with his premise. Note how not going along with the crowd is portrayed as traitorous. Anyone else can be dismissed as suffering from Dunning-Kruger—just call them stupid and be done with it—but one with “scientific credentials” must be dealt with separately. Even if making “negative arguments” really is “relatively easy,” that does not mean those arguments are not useful. Must everyone be out turning over rocks and growing stuff in petri dishes? Is there not a place for someone to review the conclusions of the discoverers, much as attorneys review evidence collected by the police? They don’t just accept police conclusions. Frankly, whenever folks are running herd-like in any discipline, the arguments of those who oppose are always worth looking at closely. You don’t just sneer at them because they are the minority.

    I’ll bet he’s taking aim primarily at Michael Behe, king of all the denyers with scientific background, who was even interviewed by Awake! magazine back in September 2006. Behe certainly has “scientific credentials,” and he “doubt[s] or deny[s] certain elements of evolutionary science that are widely accepted by the scientific community.” Behe doesn’t doubt that the mechanics of evolution took place, and are taking place still. He has no problem with mutation and gene duplication and fossilized genes. It’s hard to have a problem with these since scientists today can grow goo and slime and algae, life forms which reproduce very quickly, and can track each and every gene. They can spot which ones reproduced faithfully, and which ones did not. They can spot which ones build with successive generations, and which ones do not. They can then compare with the genomes of prior life forms and try to piece together how evolution has progressed through generations.

    Michael Behe endorses all of this. He simply maintains it doesn’t add up to what Carroll and most others say it adds up to, that there’s an edge, the “Edge of Evolution,” per the title of his 2007 book, beyond which pure Darwinian randomness cannot carry developing life. And—man!—is he ever castigated for not holding the party line! His book, critics rail, is a blatant attempt to bypass scientific peer review! He takes his case directly to the unwashed masses, unlearned dolts who are in no way qualified to render an opinion! No such objection is made to Carroll’s own books, since his represents the majority view.

    Now, you know I’m going to be sympathetic to Behe’s position, since it is much like Jesus’ position. Jesus didn’t first present his case to religious leaders of his day to secure their prior approval, since he knew their only interest would be to shoot it down. He went over their heads, directly to the common people. And did he ever catch heat from those leaders! Listen to them grouse (and note their contempt for the regular folk):

    “Not one of the rulers or of the Pharisees [us] has put faith in him [Jesus], has he? But this crowd that does not know the Law are accursed people.”

    Look what happens when one of their number—a first-century Behe counterpart?—breaks ranks:

    Nicodemus, …..who was one of them, said to them: “Our law does not judge a man unless first it has heard from him and come to know what he is doing, does it?” In answer they said to him: “You are not also out of Galilee, are you? [a big-city Jerusalem slur against the stupid bumpkins from the rural hills of Galilee]  John 7:48-52

    Now—15 years later—I have solved the mystery. What is it? Please forward me 100 dollars and I’ll tell you. Or stay tuned till tomorrow.

    ******  The bookstore