Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • 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

  • The Reproach of Child Sexual Abuse Falls on the Abuser

    In Jehovah’s Witness congregations, victims, parents, or anyone else, have always been free to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police. The troubling reality is that many chose not to do it. They alerted congregation elders and went no further. Why? Because they thought that by so doing, they might be bringing reproach on God’s name and the Christian congregation.

    That situation was resolved in 2019. The May study edition of the Watchtower for that year, reviewed via Q & A participation at all congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses—it would escape nobody—addressed it specifically: 

    “But what if the report is about someone who is a part of the congregation and the matter then becomes known in the community? Should the Christian who reported it feel that he has brought reproach on God’s name? No. The abuser is the one who brings reproach on God’s name,” stated the magazine.*

    The problem is solved. Can one bring reproach on God or the Christian congregation by reporting child sexual abuse to police? No. The abuser has already brought the reproach. There would be many who had long ago come to that conclusion, but now, unambiguously, in writing, for elders and members alike, here it is spelled out.

    From the beginning, child sexual abuse controversies as related to Jehovah’s Witnesses have been markedly different from those of nearly anywhere else. Incidents have mostly been within the ranks of the general membership, come to light because the Witness organization takes seriously passages as Romans 2:21-22, and investigates wrongdoing within its midst so as to “keep the congregation clean” in God’s eyes, something that they think He demands:

    “Do you, however, the one teaching someone else, not teach yourself? You, the one preaching “Do not steal,” do you steal?  You, the one saying “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:21-22)

    Elsewhere it is the leaders being looked at exclusively. Usually, no mechanism at all exists that the wrongdoing of religious members comes to light. When the police nab John Q. Parishioner, it is as much news to the church minister as it is to the public. When was the last time you read of an abuser identified by religious affiliation unless it was a person in position of leadership?

    As I write this [2019], it now appears that the time has come for Southern Baptists to take their turn in the hot seat. Just eight days prior to this writing, a Houston Chronicle headline (February 10, 2019) announces: “Abuse of Faith – 20 years, 700 victims: Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms.”

    Who are the victims? Entirely those who were abused by leaders. The latter “were pastors. ministers. youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. deacons. And church volunteers.” Were any of them just regular church members abused by other regular church members? No. There is no apparatus for that to ever come to light. The church preaches to them on Sunday but otherwise apparently takes little interest in whether they actually apply the faith or not. Doubtless they hope for the best, but it is no more than hope. Only a handful of faiths make any effort to ensure that members live up to what they profess.

    It has always been apples vs oranges. That is what has long frustrated Jehovah’s Witnesses. With most groups, if you want to find a bumper crop of pedophile abusers, you need look no farther than the leaders. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, if you “hope” for the same catch, you must broaden your nets to include, not just leaders, but everybody. It is rare for a Witness leader to be an abuser, though there have been notable exceptions. It is more common elsewhere. A recent Witness legal case, involving a lawsuit in Montana, involves abuse entirely within a member’s step-family that did not reach the ears of the police, which the court decided was through leadership culpability. The verdict was reversed by a higher court.

    To account for this marked difference in personal conduct from leaders, this writer submits a reason. Those who lead among Jehovah’s Witnesses are selected from rank and file members on the basis of moral qualifications highlighted in the Bible itself, for example, at Titus 1:6-9.  In short, they are those who have distinguished themselves in living their religion. Leaders of many denominations have distinguished themselves in knowing their religion, having graduated from divinity schools of higher education. They may live the religion—ideally, they do, but this is by no means assured—the emphasis is on academic knowledge.

    Add to the mix that Jehovah’s Witness elders preside without pay, and thus their true motive is revealed. Most religious leaders do it for pay, and thus present conflicting motives. One could even call them “mercenary ministers.” Are they untainted in their desire to do the Lord’s work or not? One hopes for the best but can never be sure.

    Confounding irreligious humanists who would frame the child sexual abuse issue as an exclusive of religious institutions, two days after the Southern Baptist exposé, there appeared one of the United Nations. On February 12, 2019 the Sun (thesun*co*uk) reported that “thousands more ‘predatory’ sex abusers specifically target aid charity jobs to get close to vulnerable women and children.”

    “There are tens of thousands of aid workers around the world with paedophile tendencies, but if you wear a UNICEF T-shirt nobody will ask what you’re up to. You have the impunity to do whatever you want,” Andrew Macleod, a former UN high official stated, adding that “there has been an ‘endemic’ cover-up of the sickening crimes for two decades, with those who attempt to blow the whistle just getting fired.” Sharing his data with The Sun, Mr. Macleod “warned that the spiralling abuse scandal was on the same scale as the Catholic Church’s.”

    All things must be put into perspective. Child sexual abuse is not an issue of any single religion, much less a tiny one where otherwise upright leaders are perceived to have bungled reporting to police. It occurs in any setting in which people interact with one another. The legal system being what it is, one can prosecute child sexual abuse wherever it is encountered. The tort system being what it is, one prosecutes primarily where there are deep pockets. Arguably, the child sexual abuse issues of the Southern Baptists have taken so long coming to light is because that denomination is decentralized in organization, with a scarcity of deep pockets.

    With the May 2019 Watchtower mentioned above, finally the reporting issues of Jehovah’s Witnesses are fixed. Anyone who knows of abuse allegations may bring those to the attention of the police, and regardless of how “insular” or “no part of the world” Witnesses may be, they need not have the slightest misgivings about bringing reproach on the congregation. Both goals can proceed—that of societal justice and that of congregation justice—and neither interferes with the other.

    Witness opposers were not at all gracious about this change, that I could see. Many continued to harp on the “two witness” rule of verifying abuse, for example. It becomes entirely irrelevant now. Were it a “40-witness” or a “half-witness” rule, it wouldn’t matter. It is a standard that guides congregation judicial proceedings and has absolutely no bearing on secular justice.

    “Well, it only took a landslide of legal threats around the world to force their hand on this,” opposers grumbled, as they went on to claim credit. Why not give them the credit? Likely the is something to it. Everything in life is action/reaction and it would be foolish to deny the substance of this. Organizations of every stripe have increased vigilance due to troubling cases coming to light. Once ones leave the faith, people within lose track of them. It is easy to say: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and opponents did not allow this to happen. They should seriously congratulate themselves. Many have publicly stated that their opposition is only so that Jehovah’s Witnesses will fix their “broken policies.” Now that they have been fixed, one wonders if their opposition will stop.

    With a major “reform” making clear that there is absolutely no reproach in reporting vile things to the authorities, some of the most virulent of Witness critics lose something huge to them. One wonders what they will do next. A few face withering away like old Roger Chillingsworth of the Scarlet Letter, who, when Arthur Dimmesdale finally changed his policy, “knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which life seemed to have departed. ‘Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than once. ‘Thou has escaped me!’

    This will not be the journalists, of course. Nor will it be the legal people. Nor will it even be Witness critics in the main. But for some of the latter, former members who are vested in tearing down what they once embraced, it will not be an easy transition. They almost have no choice but to find some far-fetched scenario involving “rogue elders” that could conceivably allow something bad to yet happen and obsess on that. There are always going to be ‘What ifs.’ At some point one must have some confidence in the power of parents to be concerned for their children, and for community to handle occasional lapses, particularly since governmental solutions have hardly proven immune to abuse and miscarriages of justice themselves. It is not easy to get between a mama bear and her cub.

    *This point is not absolutely new, but it has been made more prominent by being included in the weekly Watchtower Study meeting. A similar point is made in the Appendix of ‘Keep Yourselves in God’s Love,’ a 2008 book, which formed the basis of study in the Congregation Book Study format, and is presently one of two books studies by each person in the course of presenting themselves for baptism:

    On page 223, the book reads: “In rare instances, one Christian might commit a serious crime against another–such as rape, assault, murder, or major theft. In such cases, it would not be unchristian to report the matter to the authorities, even though doing so might resort in a court case or a similar trial.”

    (February 2023)

    ***

    Out of nowhere a scholar has appeared who talks dispassionate sense on the subject of child sexual abuse as it relates to Jehovah’s Witnesses and is unswayed by secular jingoism. Are/were you a Jehovah’s Witness who was abused as a child? That is very bad, Holly Folk agrees, but she cautions that such ones must be on guard against not being abused a second time, at the hands of those who mostly feign interest in their trauma so as to enlist them in their greater goal of taking down a religion they dislike. “All I ask is that you consider, for a moment, that you might be being used again, by people who care little about achieving justice for victims,” she says. 

    “Both official reports and media often confuse ‘institutional’ abuse in religious settings and abuse happening in families that happen to be religious.” It is a statement as pithy yet complete as I have ever made.

    She pinpoints the flaw of the ARC’s Case Study 29, which I also attempted, but did not put it so concisely. Every other case was an investigation of institutional abuse within an agency, sometimes religious, sometimes secular. Case Study 29 was the only investigation of a religion itself. It is unique. It was rammed into the ARC agenda mostly at the behest of ex-Witnesses who hounded them relentlessly until they overrode their normal judgment. It plainly doesn’t fit into the overall program. JWs have no institutional settings, as did all the other agencies on the hot seat. Next move will be to hold Walmart responsible for abuse that has occurred among its shoppers

    It’s why you don’t sign on to a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of institutional abuse that you don’t have. You wait for a redress scheme tailor-made for situations of abuse that occur among Walmart’s customers. That you can sign onto, if you like, as a reasonable parallel.

    In a second article of a four-part series she criticizes the studies of the Netherlands and Belgium. I hadn’t gone there, assuming they would be no more than a rehash of the ARC. They were all that and less, she writes, so slipshod and lacking in any sound methodology of social science that it will be a scandal if they are relied upon for policy. Yet they might be, she opines, goaded on by the sheer noise that comes from Witness detractors, mostly ex-Witnesses settling the score, and given false credibility by the prestige of the Atlantic journal.

    As a dispassionate outsider, not a Witness herself, she can do what is very difficult for any Witness to do, self included. She can bypass the reputation of a religion as something immaterial and focus on the greater affront to fight child sexual abuse. It is all diluted, she charges, when ex-members redirect rage against child sexual abuse to a target that is essentially a non-factor. The Witness religion overall does pretty well at fighting the perversion, she writes. I mean, who else [my contribution, not hers] gathers every member in the world (at the 2017 Regional Conventions) to consider detailed scenarios in which child sexual abuse might occur so that parents, obviously the first line of defense, can be on their guard? If there are sleepovers, if there are tickling sessions, if there are unsupervised trips to the restroom, if anyone displays unusual interest in your child—all these things were identified as potential red flags, not conclusive in themselves, but things to keep you eye on.

    Witnesses will find her tack hard to copy. Their first response will be violent indignation at these patent efforts to undermine the religious organization they hold in high regard, and in the process, they are likely to come across as tone-deaf to the suffering of victims. But Ms. Folk has no skin in the game, so she can focus directly to how this vendetta of ex-JWs undermines efforts to fight child sexual abuse. She can express dismay that those with an anti-religious agenda squander resources that could be far better employed elsewhere.

    Holly Folk also carries the “advantage” of being a survivor herself. “How would you know what it feels like to be abused?” people can (and have) said to me. I don’t. But she does. It gives her a freeness of speech that no non-victim will possess.

    The closest I ever came to abuse was when I was walking up and down auto dealer row prior to my 16th birthday, anticipating the used car I might buy once I had my license. A certain slimeball approached and tried to befriend me. “They keep the really good cars in back,” he told me, eager to go there. Even as I evaded him, it was not due to my street smarts or lack of naïveté. I was as sheltered a lad as ever existed, with no specific knowledge of even what a child abuser was. It was an ignorance common at the time. I just knew that you don’t put the really good cars in the back—you put them up front where people can see them.

    They are very thorough articles that Holly writes. Press on the links:

    Part 1

    Part 2

    Part 3

    Part 4

    I like it also that Holly Folk does not fear to take on the “money tree” that is lawyers. This doesn’t speak for or against victims in itself, of course, just the inherent possibility for abuse of such as system. In my community, there are no less than 7 accident injury firms that constantly advertise. Not to mention about twice that number that advertise over various carcinogens, medical treatments, devices, and of course, sexual abuse claims. Almost always the Catholic Church is targeted, and the Boy Scouts. Sometimes I hear a catch-all of any abuse in any religious setting.

    I get it that injured people seek redress. Still, the sheer cacaphony of legal noise will strike most as overkill—a massive societal transfer of funds with lawyers netting a third. Don’t think the profit motive is absent with the Witness situation, Ms. Folk says, just like it is not in any other. It is no different than defense companies cooking up scenarios of peril so as to sell their goods, or pharmaceutical companies overplaying threats to our health for the same reason, or for that matter, any merchandiser doing whatever it must to expand the market for its goods or services. 

    She speaks at a conference, recorded here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E26NT72LZ6g&feature=youtu.be 

    ******  The bookstore

  • We Must Not Make a God of the Gaps

    We Must Not Make a God of the Gaps

    “It was a dicey proposition introducing a monotheistic God in a polytheistic world. Could it be that the early Hebrew writers softened the blow by telling their tale in terms of already existing accounts? If so, this would be exactly what the apostle Paul did at the Areopagus in Athens, as related in Acts chapter 17. There, he too embarked on introducing a monotheistic God to a polytheistic people, which was also dicey and possibly illegal. He did it in terms of referring to a certain statue in their midst dedicated “to an unknown god”—they had gods for everything and didn’t want to miss one. ‘This is the god I am here to tell you about,’ he said. It was such an adroit approach that by the time his audience figured out that they didn’t like it, some of them did, even if it did imply changes to their way of life.

    “We need not second the explanation above, but perhaps we can roll with it if need be. It would explain some Genesis similarities to the legends and histories of other peoples. Borrow from their language, dress it up a little, update this or that, and you are good to go. Is that what happened? Maybe. On the other hand, academic opinion can turn rapidly. Maybe everything is just as written. One must always be ready for the next headline proclaiming, ‘Everything you thought you knew about such-and-such is wrong!’ But, for now, the time has long passed for scholars to take ancient Bible history literally. Instead, they regard it as though a product of an ancient Mark Twain turned deist: religious men telling tall tales. Can they be accommodated?” (From: A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen)

    In the same speculative vein, let us suppose, just for the sake of argument—you don’t have to believe it, we’re just playing here—that with God it is not the Michelangelo painting of Him stretching out to touch Adam’s finger, thus imparting life. Say instead it is like Tom Cruise lighting the fuse that sparks Mission Impossible, the mission in this case to establish life in all the earth. Say it unfolds the way the evolutionists insists it does, like one of those books featuring a 3D pop-up diorama. A lot of work goes into those books so that when you slowly open the page you behold the layered scenes sequentially unfolding, rising, and coming raging at you. Say life came about like that.

    Then, at a certain point, God says of the seeds he planted long ago, ‘Okay, how did that garden turn out? Hmm. Here’s one I can work with”—at which point he elevates, enhances, upgrades—call it what you will—a certain Adam, and loads him up with all the additional accoutrements to decisively separate him from the animals and enable him to respond to more intense cultivation.

    Any evidence for this? None. But then, people are enthralled with the Space Odyssey movie these days in which beneficent aliens did the same, so we cannot treat this speculation with less open-mindedness. One of the theories taken seriously today to account for the infinitesimally small likelihood that the universe would have developed to be amenable to life is that we are living in but one of a virtually infinitesimal number: a “multiverse” I mean, if this crock of insight is taken seriously, there is no reason that mine should be laughed off the table. “Can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King pleaded to the LA rioters before their continued actions indicated they couldn’t. That’s all I’m trying to do here. Besides, maybe my suggestion will soften out with context the brother at the Kingdom Hall razzing his Esau-like counterpart behind the now-phased out literature counter: “George, George, we try so hard to teach our kids that we didn’t descend from the apes, we read scriptures, we explain the pictures. We works so hard and we just about have them convinced—and then they look at you and they’re not too sure.”

    Still, as farfetched as the multiverse theory may seem, it is an attempt to come to grips with the crazy odds that would favor nothingness over the present universe. Even if it represents a solution more crazy, it is still attempt to solve a problem. You don’t want to be like the guy before the firing squad of 100 crack riflemen, all of whom miss, and you never stop to think that circumstance a little odd. With many scientists, that’s exactly what they have done. “Ah, well,” they say, “if they didn’t all miss, I wouldn’t be here. Let’s just leave it at that.” It is a remarkably incurious attitude from those who are supposed to have boundless curiosity. It is as though they take an original miracle for granted, then endeavor to explain everything from that point on.

    So then, at a certain point, per my musings, Jehovah injects some leaven into the top results of his evolution experiment, the hominids, and infuses all the additives to make the Adam and Eve scenario hold up. Work it through. Do what the mathematicians do in proving the square root of 2 is an irrational number. They start by assuming just the opposite!—that it is rational. Then they work it through to see if contradictions arise. One does. So they conclude the opposite of their initial assumption must be the answer. So work this revised Adam and Ever scenario out, too. Do contradictions arise? No. Does it leave plenty of gaps? Oh, yeah!—you can drive a truck through some of them. But gaps are perfectly permissible in science. You are not allowed to make a god out of them. Very well. Neither can they make a god out of ours.*

    *”the god of the gaps”—what a stupid expression! It doesn’t occur to these characters who employ it that one can turn it on its head and apply it the opposite way. Or insert it in a totally different context. Let’s say you are trying to prove your case in court but it is overruled because it has significant gaps in it. Trust me on this: it will not advance your cause if you ridicule the judge for making a god of those gaps.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Who Needs a Trillion Dollars?

    Days ago. (June 2026) Elon Musk touched trillionaire status, the first one ever to do so. This inspired on social media the observation (even if with shakey math) that if he gave a billion to every person alive, he would still be a billionaire. I couldn’t believe that he was so selfish so as not to do that—I could use a billion.

    Others wished him well. Here he is creating the technological companies that will save the planet, if anything can save it. Humanists one and all once hailed him as a hero, even a savior. Then he began to weigh in on politics contrary to what many expected, so it became necessary to recast him as the Devil. 

    I’ve heard him likened to Nimrod, which I don’t think is fair. Nimrod was mean. Elon is nice—unless you work for him and don’t put out 200%. In that case, he will fire you in a heartbeat. But he won’t push you off the mountain like Nimrod did. I was explicit with my cover designer that the depicted Tower of Babel for ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction’ feature a small figure pushing another off the tower to his death in the exact place that the ‘My Book of Bible Stories’ picture about Nimrod (Genesis chapter 11) does the same.

    Moreover, Nimrod is described as “a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.” Musk is not that. He said nice things about our Lord and the Bible when he was interviewed by the Babylon Bee host who asked him to do [From: ‘In the Last of the Last Days’]: a “‘quick solid and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior . . . Personal Lord and Savior. It’s a quick prayer.’ You have to admire them for it—even as you reflect that absolutely no groundwork has been laid. Just how does the richest man in the world  deal with that one? It’s a complete non sequitur from anything they have been talking about in a one-hour interview. . . . Musk is a great guy and all—don’t get me wrong—but he plainly has no background to commit. And he knows it. You can’t just dive into something knowing nothing about it. . . . He pauses. Upon processing the request, he allows how he ‘agree[s] with the principles that Jesus advocated, there’s some great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus, and I agree with those teachings.’ He mentions a few. ‘But hey,’ he adds, ‘if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I won’t stand in his way. Sure, I’ll be saved. Why not?’ Close enough, the host seems to feel. It’s not an out-and-out bullseye, but it satisfied him.”

    See? So he’s “not in opposition to Jehovah at all.” Frankly, I’d like to get him on our side. After all, there will be a need to get things up and running quickly in the new system and he might be just the ticket. Yeah. Get him onboard—though I admit, I can’t quite see him sitting quietly as Oscar Oxgoad is stumbling his way through the meeting for field service, let alone taking part in it. It would be like Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was raised a Witness) holding aloft the Watchtower and Awake magazines in front of the White House, their covers emblazoned with ‘Can Politicians Bring Peace?’

    Say, you don’t think he got that idea of sleeping on the center factory floor under a tent from Moses doing the same in front of the tabernacle, do you? (If he demands 200%, it is not as though he doesn’t give the same.) Could he be sued for copyright infringement? I mean, Moses did it first.

    Nonetheless, he IS running six cutting edge companies, all for the direct benefit of humanity, all of which could be likened to building a tower in the heavens—with some exaggeration, doing what no man has done before, encroaching on the territory of the gods. It IS a lot in that respect like Nimrod building his tower to the heavens.

    Watchtower publications seldom name names. Again, with some exaggeration (but not much), Elon Musk will be reduced to “one American businessman,” Donald Trump to “one American politician,” Vladimir Putin to “one Russian politician.” It used to frustrate me until I discerned the reason. It is the play they are watching. You don’t have to know the actors to follow the play. It can even be a distraction if you do. Moreover, naming the actors creates the illusion that taking out a hero or a villain would change the narrative. Instead, another actor who knows all the lines steps into the role and the play goes on. 

    Of course, another reason they don’t name names is that they don’t know them very well, that they follow names to an astonishingly small degree. Indeed, the one who likened Musk to Nimrod, though very perceptive, is outside the U.S in a developing country, fully engaged in the Christian disciple-making activity there. She will not be one to follow personalities closely.

    So the actors are not the ones followed. But man-oh-man! are they ever larger than life today. Both the heroes and the villains (it will ever be in the eye of the beholder who is who) jump off the page today, perhaps in itself a commentary of where we are in the stream of time. 

    As for trillionaire Musk? A trillion’s small potatoes to him. He just posted:  “In the future, a trillion times a trillion dollars will be spent on making antimatter to travel to other star systems.” Yep. big spending ahead, if the future goes his way. You’re not going to the stars on impulse engines, anymore than the forces that enable micro evolution to reach target are going to do the same for macro.

    ******  The bookstore