Today being Remembrance Day, we tend to focus on the service personnel who didn't come home - lest we forget .
Anyone in a war could have been killed - and then forever after remembered as 'dying to set us free'.
Thankfully most of the time most of them don't get that honour.
After all, they were never hired to meekly die to set humanity free , as Jesus meekly accepted death.
They weren't even hired to merely suggest the hint of force, if laws are broken, as policemen generally are hired : to daily carry a gun but generally never actually use that weapon during an entire career.
The wartime soldier were hired instead explicitly to use their guns, to kill other people (and hopefully come back alive) and thus win a war.
In WWII, in Canada, for example - 95% of these 'trained killers' came back alive.
Most of the people at home, during any war, get paid wages in a real sense to grow food for k-rations for tank crews, to built their tanks and tank shells and to pump up the oil that fuel those tanks .
Comparatively few earn their living building medical kits that one day might patch up ally and enemy tank crews alike.
So the Home Front too is called upon to kill others - albeit via indirect means.
Killing - not dying - is the whole point of war.
War is War and Jesus is Jesus : so let us not try too hard to intertwine the two ....
Showing posts with label jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jesus. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Restoring the small , to a monoculture of the Big, 1939-1945
As a moral argument it was very old , with lots of powerful support still.
Maybe not an argument as old as Methuselah, but surely as old as Jesus.
But as a scientific argument it was quite new, without any influential scientific supporters.
It argued that there was no hierarchy of worth in biology based on bigger size or greater physical complexity : big and small were but equal variations on Life, each cast to better fit particular niches.
And it said that that, strictly speaking, the small were much more successful than the big in terms of sheer survival --- the only criteria that biology, rather than ethics or theology , could legitimately measure .
They been around much, much longer, had vastly greater numbers of individual members, inhabited more niches and had survived all the worst disasters that Nature had thrown life on Earth, unlike the Big.
The biological sense of the survival of the fittest for each particular niche had morphed , by the 1930s, into the belief that it was the survival of the fit ( one size to fit all niches), with fit being code for big and powerful.
The small, human and non human , were becoming seen as losers and a waste of space - life unworthy of life.
Henry Dawson joined many many others in opposing this idea on moral grounds.
But he was basically all alone in contesting it scientifically, based on what he had discovered in his small lab.
He was far too cautious a personality to be successful contesting the opposing vision by mere words.
But his is a biography of deeds --- against all odds, he succeeded in fatally shattering that vision.
He did so by simply embarking on an attempt to save the lives of just ten people, over the opposition of his own colleagues, his own wartime Allied government and his own failing body.
But thanks to the quixotic effort that Dawson began in 1940, ten billion of us, so far, have had our lives immensely improved : Bread cast Upon Waters, indeed !
Maybe not an argument as old as Methuselah, but surely as old as Jesus.
But as a scientific argument it was quite new, without any influential scientific supporters.
It argued that there was no hierarchy of worth in biology based on bigger size or greater physical complexity : big and small were but equal variations on Life, each cast to better fit particular niches.
And it said that that, strictly speaking, the small were much more successful than the big in terms of sheer survival --- the only criteria that biology, rather than ethics or theology , could legitimately measure .
They been around much, much longer, had vastly greater numbers of individual members, inhabited more niches and had survived all the worst disasters that Nature had thrown life on Earth, unlike the Big.
The biological sense of the survival of the fittest for each particular niche had morphed , by the 1930s, into the belief that it was the survival of the fit ( one size to fit all niches), with fit being code for big and powerful.
The small, human and non human , were becoming seen as losers and a waste of space - life unworthy of life.
Henry Dawson joined many many others in opposing this idea on moral grounds.
But he was basically all alone in contesting it scientifically, based on what he had discovered in his small lab.
He was far too cautious a personality to be successful contesting the opposing vision by mere words.
But his is a biography of deeds --- against all odds, he succeeded in fatally shattering that vision.
He did so by simply embarking on an attempt to save the lives of just ten people, over the opposition of his own colleagues, his own wartime Allied government and his own failing body.
But thanks to the quixotic effort that Dawson began in 1940, ten billion of us, so far, have had our lives immensely improved : Bread cast Upon Waters, indeed !
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Militant atheists object not to Jesus's EXISTENCE, but to his ETHICS
Is God really dead...... or just really annoying ?
I think for most modern militant atheists (aka the ones without the gutteral accent and the thick mustache ) it is the ethics of Christianity that they find most offensive.
The shock troops of atheism, the sociobiologists, are still hard at their seek and destroy mission against the mutant genes causing altruism and compassion.
But as a lazy Christian, but christian none the less, I am perfectly willing to discover on Judgement Day a God who built a Universe like a clockworks, left behind the recovery manual for when we screw it up ( Jesus's 12 ethical steps) and then crawled behind a rock somewhere to contently die of old age.
However Christianity came across their insights, I think history better reflects their accurate assessment of the human inborn tendency to hubris than anything the collected wisdom of atheists have ever come up with....
I think for most modern militant atheists (aka the ones without the gutteral accent and the thick mustache ) it is the ethics of Christianity that they find most offensive.
The shock troops of atheism, the sociobiologists, are still hard at their seek and destroy mission against the mutant genes causing altruism and compassion.
But as a lazy Christian, but christian none the less, I am perfectly willing to discover on Judgement Day a God who built a Universe like a clockworks, left behind the recovery manual for when we screw it up ( Jesus's 12 ethical steps) and then crawled behind a rock somewhere to contently die of old age.
However Christianity came across their insights, I think history better reflects their accurate assessment of the human inborn tendency to hubris than anything the collected wisdom of atheists have ever come up with....
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The elevator pitch for "By stubborn, Stars we steer"
Some people call it the takeaway sentence while others call it the elevator pitch : that line that tags a movie's every radio/TV spot and poster, the same line that got the movie green-lighted (financed) in the first place.
Ten seconds long ; one longish sentence .
My takeaway line , as you leave the elevator where you have been helplessly trapped with me as as I relentlessly tell you about Henry Dawson's own personal Manhattan Project :
Ten seconds long ; one longish sentence .
My takeaway line , as you leave the elevator where you have been helplessly trapped with me as as I relentlessly tell you about Henry Dawson's own personal Manhattan Project :
"Its a parable about Jesus and the Devil arm-wrestling over the soul of a pedestrian 'everyman' called John L Smith, who also happens to be the real life wartime head of Pfizer Drugs......"
Monday, April 30, 2012
DENIERS are liberals, DOOMERS are conservative, n'est ce pas ?
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Totally wrong : this oddball idea that DENIERS are conservatives.
Only the Liberal mind holds that reality is totally knowable and totally perfectible with the application of enough human willpower.
So we hear the Liberal mind at work when we hear the Denier proclaim: "If there is too much carbon pollution in the atmosphere, we will find the technology to sequester it back into the ground, cheaply, easily and safely."
And : "Let us not impede the ever upward pace of progress by all these alarmist doubts and fears."
By contrast, it is the Conservative mind that doubts that humanity is perfectible, it is the conservative who, in a theological sense, believes that all of us are sinners.
If they further believe that Jesus - strictly according to the Bible, seems to have liked having sinners at His dining table - then they end up at one with GCR :
If all are sinners, and sinners end up at the big table, then we all dine at the big table : global commensality in a nutshell.
Doomers doubt that perfect solutions exist to safely allow ever-increasing HCP (human carbon pollution) of the atmosphere - or that they are easily and cheaply obtained .
They worry the actions of a few excessive-carbon diners will spoil the dinners of all, carbon-diners or not - a highly conservative viewpoint, by any standard.
Funny old world, ain't it ?
Totally wrong : this oddball idea that DENIERS are conservatives.
Only the Liberal mind holds that reality is totally knowable and totally perfectible with the application of enough human willpower.
So we hear the Liberal mind at work when we hear the Denier proclaim: "If there is too much carbon pollution in the atmosphere, we will find the technology to sequester it back into the ground, cheaply, easily and safely."
And : "Let us not impede the ever upward pace of progress by all these alarmist doubts and fears."
By contrast, it is the Conservative mind that doubts that humanity is perfectible, it is the conservative who, in a theological sense, believes that all of us are sinners.
If they further believe that Jesus - strictly according to the Bible, seems to have liked having sinners at His dining table - then they end up at one with GCR :
If all are sinners, and sinners end up at the big table, then we all dine at the big table : global commensality in a nutshell.
Doomers doubt that perfect solutions exist to safely allow ever-increasing HCP (human carbon pollution) of the atmosphere - or that they are easily and cheaply obtained .
They worry the actions of a few excessive-carbon diners will spoil the dinners of all, carbon-diners or not - a highly conservative viewpoint, by any standard.
Funny old world, ain't it ?
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Etymologically, are BIOLOGISTS 'stupid' or 'thick' or what ??!!!
If you and I shared a meal together at a cafe, would any outsider automatically assume, a priori ,that one of us must have enjoyed the meal while the other of us must have been left indifferent?
Only biologists - or idiots - would.
(Or am I being redundant?)
Yes, I am hot under the collar, and with good reason.
The importance of just who is seated at the meal table (and how) has been noted as fundamental in all human cultures and over the entire course of recorded human history.
The term used to describe this crucial human ritual (in many societies the crucial ritual) is commensality.
It means simply the act of 'dining at a common table', end of story.
All at that table eat and get benefit from the food they eat - without denying some may eat more and get more benefit and vice versa.
It does NOT assume ,in advance, that some diners get no impact from the food they ate, good or bad; that's an impossible trick to pull off in human nutrition and I await the first scientist who proves me wrong.
It does, however, leave open a wealth of ways that commensality - that dining at a common table - can be arranged.
Let us consider just four variants to mix and match.
It is closed - only some can attend. It is open - all can attend.
It is hierarchical - whether or not all or only some can attend - some get the best seats and the most food.
It is egalitarian - perhaps only a few can attend, but within that group, all share seating choice and food amounts equally.
A few well know examples - in this case, from the Bible.
Jesus broke strict taboos to invite the poor, the sinner and the sick to dine with Himself and the rich and pious.
But some later Christian groups invited only those they judged 'saved' ( as we'd say today in Alabama) to their feasts, but at the feast all the 'saved' were judged equal participants.
Endless variety, in other words, lies within the simple meaning of commensality.
Some one hundred years ago some scientists -biologists - totally deranged the meaning of commensality for their own wicked, debased, ends and in the 'honor among thieves' fashion of scientists, almost all other scientists follow the biologists in lock step and use their warped definition.
Except (thanks be to God !) those social scientists actually researching real world commensal activities.
I would never deny that the biologists too are also studying a real world activity and that it too deserves a name that accurately and etymologically describes its key characteristic.
But commensality definitely isn't that word .
When I say we are living in the new AGE OF COMMENSALITY
since 1945, I simply mean that we are more and more realizing that humanity is within Nature, not above it.
So we exist within a highly complicated intertwining supra-dependency : all life on earth 'dines at a common table' of interconnected and inter-dependent resource and energy flows.
This is "global commensality" : all life on Earth is invited to a table the size of the entire Earth (and Solar System).
In plain English, if the Sun were to noticeably reduce its output for 80 years, even those bacteria deep in the mud at the very depths of the deepest basins of the ocean would eventually notice it.
They are not part of our Food Chain but they are part of our Air Chain and our Temperature Chain.
We dine together - on conventional food as well as air,water and heat - but we don't dine in harmony.
No, all us life forms squabble amongst ourselves over what is our proper share.
This is not a sort of mutalistic 'hearts and roses' commensality - but it is commensality.
Hopeful human rationality - so often debased for evil ends - will this time let us see that we must learn to share the Earth with these various Golden Gooses and restrain our endless appetite, if we want to share some of their golden eggs far into the future.....
Only biologists - or idiots - would.
(Or am I being redundant?)
Yes, I am hot under the collar, and with good reason.
The importance of just who is seated at the meal table (and how) has been noted as fundamental in all human cultures and over the entire course of recorded human history.
The term used to describe this crucial human ritual (in many societies the crucial ritual) is commensality.
It means simply the act of 'dining at a common table', end of story.
All at that table eat and get benefit from the food they eat - without denying some may eat more and get more benefit and vice versa.
It does NOT assume ,in advance, that some diners get no impact from the food they ate, good or bad; that's an impossible trick to pull off in human nutrition and I await the first scientist who proves me wrong.
It does, however, leave open a wealth of ways that commensality - that dining at a common table - can be arranged.
Let us consider just four variants to mix and match.
It is closed - only some can attend. It is open - all can attend.
It is hierarchical - whether or not all or only some can attend - some get the best seats and the most food.
It is egalitarian - perhaps only a few can attend, but within that group, all share seating choice and food amounts equally.
A few well know examples - in this case, from the Bible.
Jesus broke strict taboos to invite the poor, the sinner and the sick to dine with Himself and the rich and pious.
But some later Christian groups invited only those they judged 'saved' ( as we'd say today in Alabama) to their feasts, but at the feast all the 'saved' were judged equal participants.
Endless variety, in other words, lies within the simple meaning of commensality.
Some one hundred years ago some scientists -biologists - totally deranged the meaning of commensality for their own wicked, debased, ends and in the 'honor among thieves' fashion of scientists, almost all other scientists follow the biologists in lock step and use their warped definition.
Except (thanks be to God !) those social scientists actually researching real world commensal activities.
I would never deny that the biologists too are also studying a real world activity and that it too deserves a name that accurately and etymologically describes its key characteristic.
But commensality definitely isn't that word .
When I say we are living in the new AGE OF COMMENSALITY
since 1945, I simply mean that we are more and more realizing that humanity is within Nature, not above it.
So we exist within a highly complicated intertwining supra-dependency : all life on earth 'dines at a common table' of interconnected and inter-dependent resource and energy flows.
This is "global commensality" : all life on Earth is invited to a table the size of the entire Earth (and Solar System).
In plain English, if the Sun were to noticeably reduce its output for 80 years, even those bacteria deep in the mud at the very depths of the deepest basins of the ocean would eventually notice it.
They are not part of our Food Chain but they are part of our Air Chain and our Temperature Chain.
We dine together - on conventional food as well as air,water and heat - but we don't dine in harmony.
No, all us life forms squabble amongst ourselves over what is our proper share.
This is not a sort of mutalistic 'hearts and roses' commensality - but it is commensality.
Hopeful human rationality - so often debased for evil ends - will this time let us see that we must learn to share the Earth with these various Golden Gooses and restrain our endless appetite, if we want to share some of their golden eggs far into the future.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)