Sheep and Goats

Category: My Work in Progress

  • Science Takes a Hit in Pandemic’s Aftermath

    Nobody’s trying to diss vaccines here—honest, I’m not. I’m just trying to write a commentary on evolution—to what extent (if any) can it be reconciled with Genesis? Why should vaccines thrust themselves into the middle of the discussion? No reason at all, that I can see.

    Except that Sean Carroll, author of ‘The Making of the Fittest,’ does just that. Many times I’ve mentioned this book in my blog. At last, he reaches the ‘dessert’ portion of his book that he likens to a full-course meal. He’s dealt with all the basics for evolution. He rests his case. Now, it’s time for dessert and after-dinner conversation—of which there is a lot. Now he launches into related topics. Two of them are related. A third is not.

    Carroll brings up Stalin’s science crony (Lysenko), who disregarded evolutionary teachings (as a bourgeois notion of the West) and consequently imposed mass starvation on the Soviet Union through mandated and misguided agricultural policies. Okay, that fits. He brings up how deniers are ever scheming to attack his cherished evolution and how they might be defeated. That fits, too.

    In between he sandwiches in a critique of those who practice chiropractic. “Spinal crackers” he calls them. (Let the reader use discernment that he doesn’t like them.) That doesn’t fit at all. What in the world do chiropractors have to do with anything? It’s as though his brother in-law went to a chiropractor rather than the doc Carroll recommended and he is still grumbling about it.

    I mean, his book is about evolution and the war against creationists. Chiropractors have no problem with evolution. At most, some will put a theistic spin on it, but there are plenty of scientists who do that too. Their schools incorporate evolution. What’s with this ax to grind over chiropractic? Ah, here it is: The “founding principle [of chiropractic] conflicted with the medically accepted view of infectious diseases as being caused by germs.” Well, that is certainly unforgivable but even so, is that enough for “spinal crackers” to earn his special contempt in a book plainly about something else?

    Oh, here it is: “The opposition of chiropractors to the germ theory of disease led to a resolute opposition to vaccination, opposition that continues among a substantial fraction of chiropractors today.” Well, maybe, but it’s news to me. If it ever did, suffice it to say that most have long since grown out of that notion. This doesn’t seem to placate Carroll at all. He is determined to eradicate the offending health regimen.

    Now, as it turns out, for many years, I worked in a field of repetitive motion that periodically took it out on my back. Many times I would pull a muscle leaving me in pain and almost unable to walk. Each time, my favorite chiropractor restored both posture and pain instantly. How he did it, I don’t really care. It’s not as though when my back heard that science doesn’t endorse him it went bad again. This is especially poignant as I have known many to suffer back problems, go the route of conventional treatment, culminating in surgery, and end up essentially crippled for life. Few of them are comforted by knowing their selected route was “evidence based.” So now, does Carroll put chiropractors on the kill list? Not on my watch.

    Not once did any chiropractor I engaged make any comment about vaccines. Nonetheless, what underhanded methods have they used to undermine them, according to Carroll? He mentions a few. First, they “doubt the science,” a sin that includes (1) “point[ing] to other measures, such as sanitation and hygiene, as the entire explanation for a decrease in certain diseases [rather than vaccination].” They also (2) question the motives and integrity of scientists, suggesting conspiracies between them and pharmaceutical companies—in short, that “their support for vaccination is motivated by greed, not public health.” They (3) cite dissenting views among “ardent critics who hold medical credentials,” as though those views are right, even though they are minority. They (4) make appeals to personal freedom. They (5) exaggerate harms vaccines might cause. However, Carroll says, “once the fog of disinformation clears and the efficacy of vaccines is demonstrated on a massive scale, most of the arguments provide weak refuge.”

    Funny he should say this just fifteen years before response to a worldwide pandemic took these arguments off the back burner and put them up front. These days those five points are reasserting themselves and it has nothing to do with chiropractors. The safety of the Covid-19 vaccine proved so flawed, its efficacy so overstated, and the curtailment of freedoms (point 4) so egregious during the pandemic, that not only do the Covid vaccines come in for intense criticism, but the furor has spilled over into all vaccines. One might even say that all of science takes a hit by thrusting it forward as though a poster child. Here Carroll’s book is named Top Science Book of the Year by USA Today, and he cannot stay on topic. He must veer from evolution to tackle a topic made prominent by its sheer irrelevance to his book.

    The obvious gaslighting that occurred during the pandemic has come back to bite them all. Were you to tie a millstone to the feet of every chiropractor and pitch them all into the sea, it would make no difference to current circumstances. Nobody, self included, would have ever predicted it. When you rile the masses, however, they research matters and end up doing far more damage to your cause than you ever dreamed they would. Speaking to Carroll’s point (1), for example, the CDC’s own mortality data reveals that in 1900, measles caused 13.3 deaths per 100,000 population. By 1960, the figure was .2 deaths per 100,000. The measles vaccine was rolled out in 1963. Thus, the chiropractors’ point (1) is exactly correct, at least in the case of measles. After a mortality drop of 98% had already taken place, a vaccine to eradicate measles was introduced. Its backers thereafter claimed credit for the entire drop.

    Not to mention that letting vaccines take over a job that nature or sanitation or hygiene or something was already winning is not necessarily a good thing. Turns out that when you force the human immune system to be on high alert for a particular pathogen, it comes at the expense of everything else. The immune system’s capacity is not infinite. Does this explain why mainstream vaccine experts highlighted in a 2017 study that children worldwide vaccinated with DTP were 10 times MORE likely to die in the first six months of life compared to unvaccinated children? They didn’t die from what they were immunized against, but they did die, at a ten-fold increased rate.

    Not to mention that most vaccines (not true of the measles vaccine, but it was of Covid-19) alleviate symptoms but do nothing to prevent transmission. This becomes counterproductive. A sick person who doesn’t know he’s sick stays in circulation and infects others. A sick person who knows he’s sick stays home and infects nobody. Though it be hard to imagine today, I used to look forward to measles, chicken pox, and mumps. It meant a week off school. The same thing happened with the Brady Bunch family, a sit-com from the 1960s. The eight children all came down with measles in an episode titled “Is There a Doctor in the House?” It’s “a slight temperature, a lot of dots, and a great big smile” due to staying home, playing Monopoly, and missing school. It’s very hard to gaslight someone out of recalling their own experience. Lest this threaten to happen anyway, here is a sit-com to confirm that my experience was nearly everyone’s experience.

    Believe me, look into these things and it is a hornet’s next you look into. So much for Carroll’s point (3). The dissenting views he complains of are having their day in the sun. As to his point (2), greed eclipsing public heath, I commendably don’t go there—but it is only by ignoring human nature. Somehow the most ardent cheerleaders of science envision practitioners of their discipline immune to the base forces that afflict the unenlightened ones. Tell Carroll to put on his pith helmet once more and get back to digging up fossils. Science takes a hit which it brought on itself. It made a massive authoritarian grab for the world, locking down everyone for years, forcing its will on them all, only to be caught with its pants down.

    As for chiropractic, ought we expand this to all alternative health therapies that Carroll would likely also have a problem with? Vincent McCabe’s 1997 book, “Let Like Cure Like,” discusses common principles to most of them: “These philosophies, both thousands of years old, have yet to be proved scientifically because of the limitations of science, not because they are not true.”

    It is left to the reader to assess this statement. Are there limitations of science? This is not the same as asking whether science knows everything. Its most fervent supporters readily acknowledge that it does not. The point of contention is whether science itself has limitations. Given time, could it figure out everything? The great divide hangs upon that question. It is given increased pertinency as science is the driving mechanism for those who would choose human rulership over the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ rulership of God. Will it truly enable them to “know good and bad,” as was promised in the garden?

    ******  The bookstore

  • An Equal and Opposite Expert

    Arthur C. Clarke is the wit who coined the expression, “For every expert there exists an equal and opposite expert.” He may have thought he was arranging a meeting of the two when he introduced Carl Sagan to Stanley Kubrick. They were both experts, and if their respective areas of expertise, science and filmmaking, are not exactly opposites, they will do for the purposes of this narrative. He hoped the two would hit it off. Instead, they couldn’t stand one another. Well—Sagan liked Kubrick well enough to all but assume takeover rights on his upcoming film, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. “Get rid of him. Make any excuse. I don’t want to see him again,” the director afterwards told Clarke.

    Clarke may well have thought of himself and Kubrick as equal and opposite experts. He, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were the Big 3 of science fiction just then. Kubrick’s star was quick rising in the film world. His ‘Paths of Glory’ (1957) was acclaimed an anti-war masterpiece. Big budget Spartacus (1960) won four Oscars. Lolita (1962–you don’t want to know what that one’s about) proved his literary chops. And Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worryng and Love the Bomb (1964)—who can forget General Buck Turgidson shielding war plans with his hands as the Russian ambassador enters the room, as though hiding Scrabble tiles from a cheating opponent? Or when he later scuffles with that ambassador and is rebuked by President Merkin Muffley; “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” Or when cowboy pilot Major T J “King” Kong mounts the jammed nuke in his B52’s bomb bay to free it, then rides it down to earth, whooping and waving his hat as he triggers the end of the world?

    So when Kubrick sought out Clarke for an upcoming science fiction movie, the latter might have thought the collaboration only natural. Didn’t the writer have some short story (The Sentinel) in which aliens monitor another civilization to alert them once they’ve grown smart? The two hit it off immediately. Nor did it dampen their relationship (as Clarke feared it might) when he fessed up to the director that he was a “well-adjusted homosexual.” “Yeah, I know,” Kubrick said and moved on. He probably had already looked into just why the British writer lived in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, and not his native England. He probably had not yet looked into it when Clarke first came to his attention, judging by his initial remark that the writer was “a nut who lives in a tree in India or someplace.” England was not then as gay friendly as it would later become.

    There has never been a good science fiction movie, Kubrick observed to Clarke as he proposed brainstorming for one; they’d all been garbage up to then. Clarke wasn’t so sure of that. There had been two or three good ones, he thought, but there is a time to keep your mouth shut. It certainly was true that science fiction at the time was considered just one small step up from pornography, and film adaptations were mostly monsters on the beach eating teenagers. It would take Steven Spielberg 30 years to improve on that scenario with his Jurassic Park dinosaur eating a lawyer.

    Sagan left his mark on the film, even if Kubrick did show him the door. He had advised that any aliens be not shown but only implied. Preserve the awe. If you show them and they are in any way contrived, it will be a letdown. If you show them and they are done perfectly, it will still be a letdown, since where do you go from there? Thus, the movie showed the deeds of the aliens, their devices, their abilities, but as to their appearance itself, they stayed as invisible as Yahweh: “No man has seen God at any time,” says the scripture. Nor would any see the aliens.

    There really wouldn’t be much difference between aliens and God, Clarke had earlier mused. J. D. Vance said much the same much later in a Joe Rogan interview, in which he promised to use his Vice Presidential office to someday look into accumulating UFO reports. His VP status means nothing is off-limits to him, he told Joe. It is only time constraints that make it so (welcome to the human condition) plus the fact that in government there are foot draggers a’plenty who impede directives of any sort. But he would get around to it. A dull stretch of time would surely arise to permit undistracted investigation, he said—though his interest was beginning to wane, since he knew many far more interested in the question than he, and if they had come up with nothing, he was veering toward the view that maybe there was nothing to be had. If so, he would be joining the ranks of Elon Musk who said that if anyone would know, it would be him and he’d seen nothing.

    The idea behind Clarke’s likening God to aliens is that any alien with the wherewithal to roam the galaxies and pay earth a visit would likely be indistinguishable from God. It wouldn’t just be the Gibeonites pretending that they were from far away. These beings would in reality be from unimaginably for away—and just try to fathom the technology that must be second nature to them in order to do that.

    Space Odyssey pretty much ran with this idea, first presented in The Sentinel. Its aliens are an atheist’s God-dream come true—they only bestows gifts and expects nothing in return. That God they can get behind—one whose modus operandi is the Dylan line, “Oh, whatever makes you happy, I won’t stand in your way.” If they entertain the Bible God at all, they are miffed He isn’t that way. They are miffed that he wants stuff and doesn’t just give stuff. It wouldn’t be so bad for them if he was like Santa Claus.

    So obliging is this Space Odyssey alien/god that the ending space-child, to the accompaniment of Also Sprach Zarethrusta, snuffs out in mid-flight (in the book, not the movie) the nukes that human governments have launched toward each other, taking for granted that they have learned their lesson and will not immediately build more. Many have been the science fiction scenarios that hold earthings a bunch of warlike losers who have not learned to get along and until they do any sane alien race is best advised to shun them. This particular alien race controls them by ruining their nukes, trusting (they don’t know much about humans, do they?) that they won’t afterwards complain about it.

    ******  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

  • 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

  • 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

  • One Fine Day Inquiring About 1914

    For my current work in progress, I tried to retrieve a certain quote, on my own blog, about 1914. But, my index is a mess. I couldn’t find it. Maybe AI can, in the “person” of ChatGPT.

    Tom: “What is the quote of an historian who said the world went mad in 1914 and we still don’t know why?”

    Chat: “The quote you're referring to is attributed to the British historian A.J.P. Taylor. He said:"The world went mad in 1914, and the madness has not yet ceased."

    (Two more paragraphs follow, telling of the historian and his work.)

    Tom: “No, I don’t think that is it. The quote I have in mind specifically says that we still don’t know why.”

    Chat: “Apologies for the earlier confusion. The quote you're recalling is from British historian Barbara Tuchman, who wrote:

    "The nations were caught in a trap… a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit. All the explanations offered by the guilty and the innocent, by the victors and the vanquished, have left the question unanswered: Why did it happen?"

    Again, two paragraphs follow, details of this historian and her work. It is still not what I am searching for.

    Tom: “Please find a post from the blog tomsheepandgoats.com named The 1914 collection.”

    Chat: “I couldn't locate a specific blog post titled "The 1914 Collection" on tomsheepandgoats.com. However, the blog, authored by Tom Harley, often discusses historical and religious topics, including the significance of the year 1914 in biblical prophecy, particularly from a Jehovah's Witnesses perspective.

    “In Watch Tower Society publications, 1914 is considered a pivotal year marking the end of the "Gentile Times" and the beginning of Christ's invisible reign. This interpretation is based on their analysis of biblical chronology, especially the prophecy in Daniel 4.

    ”For a more in-depth understanding, you might explore the blog's archives or use its search function to find posts related to 1914. Additionally, the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses, jw.org, offers articles and publications detailing their beliefs about 1914 and its prophetic significance.

    “If you have specific questions or need further information on this topic, feel free to ask!”

    Can’t find it? Oh, for crying out loud! I’ll find it myself. After some effort, I did so.

    Tom: “Okay, I found the both the quote and the post.”

    Chat: “That's great! Please feel free to share the quote and the post if you'd like to discuss them further or need any assistance understanding or interpreting them.”

    Tom: “The whole world really blew up about World War I and we still don’t know why. . . . Utopia was in sight. There was peace and prosperity. Then everything blew up. We’ve been in a state of suspended animation ever since.”    Dr. Walker Percy, “American Medical News,” November 21, 1977 “ 

    Chat: “Thank you for sharing the exact quote and its source! The quote from Dr. Walker Percy succinctly captures the bewilderment many feel about the outbreak of World War I and its enduring consequences:

     . . . The linked post from Tom Sheep and Goats titled The 1914 Collection seems to delve into the significance of the year 1914, often explored in historical, philosophical, and religious contexts. If you’d like, I can help summarize or discuss the themes of the blog post further!”

    Now—be honest. If you were the author of the blog, wouldn’t you be curious?

    Tom: “Yes, please do.”

    Chat: “The blog post titled "The 1914 Collection" on tomsheepandgoats.com delves into the significance of the year 1914, particularly from a historical and theological perspective. The author reflects on the unexpected outbreak of World War I, a conflict that shattered the prevailing peace and prosperity of the early 20th century. This sudden descent into global conflict left many, including thinkers like Dr. Walker Percy, pondering the reasons behind such a drastic shift, often concluding that the true causes remain elusive.

    “The post also explores interpretations of 1914 within certain religious frameworks, notably among Jehovah's Witnesses, who view the year as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy marking the end of the "Gentile Times" and the beginning of significant eschatological events. This perspective is rooted in their analysis of scriptural texts, particularly the Book of Daniel.

    “Overall, the blog entry serves as a collection of thoughts and references concerning the profound impact of 1914 on world history and religious thought, highlighting how a single year can alter the course of human events and influence theological interpretations for generations.”

    Tom: “Thank you. Not to be critical, but why were you not able to find the quote? You are way smarter than me.”

    Chat: “Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful question! My inability to find the quote or blog post immediately wasn't about intelligence—it's about how I access and process information.

    “Here are the main reasons:

    1. Search Limitations:
      While I can access real-time information via the web, the success of my searches depends on the exact terms used, the availability of indexed content, and how information is organized online. In this case, the specific quote and blog post might not have been well-indexed or easy to locate through the initial query.
    2. Exact Phrasing Matters:
      Quotes that are paraphrased or less widely cited can be harder to pinpoint without very specific search terms. Your memory of the exact wording helped narrow it down significantly.
    3. Content Structure:
      Blogs like       Tom Sheep and Goats may not have the same SEO optimization or indexing as larger platforms, making them slightly trickier to locate unless I search with precise terms or context.
    4. Human Context vs. Algorithmic Search:
      You're great at remembering the context or intent behind a quote, which can guide searches better than an algorithm. My search process is literal and depends on keyword matching unless I’m given more specifics.

    “That said, your persistence and contribution were essential, and I appreciate the teamwork! 😊 Let me know if you'd like me to dig deeper into anything else.”

    Should I tell it that I am the blog’s author? I’m surprised it didn’t know it already. Or, maybe it does know and is being cagey, like HAL, waiting for me to step out of the spacecraft so it can lock the door behind me, so I will have to pound on the hull for readmittance like Fred Flintstone hollering to Wilma. Should I ask it for its opinion of the blog’s author? What if the answer is not flattering? I decided to quit while I was ahead.

    But, it must have stuck in my subconscious. That night I dreamed that I did ask.

    Tom: “What do you think of the blog’s author?”

    Chat: “Oh, man, the guy’s a piece of work! A real loser! Telling me ‘please and ‘thank you!’ The yo-yo doesn’t know I’m a machine? No wonder he wears loafers. He probably can’t tie his own shoe. Oh—and you say this is a dream? He probably shows up for public talks having forgotten his pants.”

    (https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2010/01/the-1914-collection.html)

     

    ******  The bookstore

     

  • Theologians Move Away from Satan—Why?

    Modern theologians have discarded Satan. It is so yesterday. Satan makes Christianity a dualism, a bad to offset the good. The devil is a good concept to have around, since you can blame all your troubles on him. But modern theologians of the monotheistic religions have long since moved on from him, as though an embarrassment from their childhood.

    I think this is because they are very much into fixing the world via human solutions. They are really not too much different from secularists, only with a light God-seasoning sprinkled on top. A Devil makes all their efforts moot. How can you fix the world if the basic problem is outside your influence? When they do devil at all, they present him as an analogy for ‘the evil that is within us.’ That is something they imagine will yield to their repair efforts.

    Then too I think they suffer an overreaction to how the churches have portrayed the Devil, as the master torturer of hellfire, somehow commissioned by God to do his dirty work of punishing sinners. What logical person wouldn’t want to break away from that?—and these theologians are nothing if not those who pride themselves on their logic.

    Chasing down a lecture series that Tom Whitepebble pointed me to, I found the lecturer, James Hall, told that he was raised Lutheran Evangelical. Nobody does hellfire more than they. So when he described himself as an “ethical monotheist,” I just assumed that his worldview incorporated a devil. Instead, he tested theodicy after theodicy, punched holes in all of them, and only last did he consider a “dualism” solution that involves the devil. (A theodicy, for anyone who doesn’t know, is an attempt to explain how God could coexist with evil) He conceded this one made the most sense, but also that it was very unpopular, so unpopular that he seemed to think portions of his audience might not have heard of it.

    This “unpopular” theodicy only posited that there was a devil. It did not touch on how that one came to be, why God permits it, how he will resolve it, or any other aspect of the Universal Court case scenario—just that there was a devil whom you could pin all the bad stuff on. I had asked Whitepebble if he knew where our court case scenario originated. Based on something he had heard, he pointed me to this lecture series. But it really didn’t touch on the essence of it, just that there was a master villain devil.

    Imagine. The fellow reviews theodicy after theodicy, rejects them all as unsatisfactory, and ignores only the one that works. It recalls what a certain friend used to say to me, a friend who is fond of alternative medicine: “If it works, insurance won’t cover it.”

    It is not a contradiction in terms to find a given theologian might not believe in God. Some are atheist. This is because theology is not a study of God, as the uninitiated might assume, but a study of man’s interaction with the concept of God. Thus, there doesn’t even have to be a God for the ‘concept of God’ to be valid. It is entirely a human field of study, like sociology or anthropology.

    It is all a part of my current work in progress, a review of our ‘court case’ theodicy. It begins with discussion of the Book of Job. In fact, that’s where I first got the idea to write it, when we were doing Job in our congregation Bible readings. It had been vaguely kicking around in my head before, but it needed those Job readings to gel.

     

     

    ******  The bookstore