THE HYPOCHRIST

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of strange vagina, I shall fear no evil
For my Rod and my Staff are comforted…”

Thus Mark Sanford prayed in earnest for guidance from the Lord, and the Lord answeredeth him with a painful priapic episode that could only have been divinely inspired, even if it might have been Viagra induced. It was true love, as true as the love of Capulet for Montague, if that involved hot latin titties in the moonlight, too.

And thus Mark Sanford enteredeth into the realm of the Hypochrist. For to be unfaithful is perhaps a sin, but one I wouldn’t normally care about that much in an elected official, it being their private business…
…unless of course the person involved was actively promoting his own flawless Christian morality all his life, used it to get elected, and even had gone so far as to speak out against the very idea of homosexual marriage, as a threat to traditional marriages…
Traditional heterosexual marriages like that of say, Mark Sanford.

He publically flayed his wife, virtually assassinated her in front of the entire world (nice job, that) and probably destroyed his children in the process as well. But at least he’s not a homo. After all, they’re yucky and sinful in the sight of God. Whereas philandering self-righteous bloviating hypocrites who cheat on their opposite-sex traditional wife are obviously okay with the Lord, and no harm to the family unit either, unless you consider publically nuking your entire family unit harmful to it.

Ted Haggard is a similar sad story of a man rising to power by speaking out against the very things that he practiced in his private life. So of course is Larry Craig. It’s a type, and unfortunately a fairly common one.

There is a special brand of hypocrite about in the world nowadays. Oh, they’ve been around for millennia, but their star has been on the ascendant lately. Their voices have been more strident. More frantic. The voices to which I refer are those of the Hypochrists, our modern-day Pharisees.

Pontificating on their ‘superior’ morality which they supposedly derive from God rather than common sense, they fail and fail and fail again to actually demonstrate any of it, thus proving it illusory. They are always the ones attacking the morality of others while they fail miserably to be even remotely moral themselves. They call themselves Christians while they consistently act in a diametrically opposed manner to anything that Jesus would have done or even would have remotely approved of. And they inform people of other faiths or of none at all how inferior and wrong they are, while they demonstrate not only inferiority and wrongness themselves, but even bring it to the point of a psychosis.

And they can’t even understand why we non-Christians would be so angry at their hypocrisy, their condemnation of others for that which they do themselves. They don’t see it at all. They can’t see the sheer humor in the Larry Craig saga, or the sad ridiculousness of Mark Sanford. This isn’t just stupidity; it’s *phenomenal* stupidity! Comedians can’t even improve on it for the sheer humor factor, it’s that stupid.

These are people who have made a deal with the devil of ignorance. They’ve chosen to believe rather than to think. And they are taught that those who choose otherwise are to be reviled. Their entire belief system is all about making them feel good about being ignorant and attacking knowledge whenever possible. They bond with each other in the foxholes of the war against logic and reason. (No atheists in those foxholes, that’s one thing they’re right about)

Their belief system serves not to help them grow spiritually as one might think, but instead to inflate their egos to the point where they feel absolutely certain of their superiority over others, any others, all others not so conditioned, all others that believe or think differently. And thus it retards whatever spiritual growth might have been possible, for in order to grow spiritually you can’t be an egotist. You can’t just ‘know’ that you’re right all the time, or what room for growth can there be?

They are like trained monkeys, most of them. Triggered by keywords that their masters have programmed into them. No thought, no analysis is required of them; merely their condemnation of whatever they’re trained to condemn, and of course their voting for whomever they’re trained to vote for. And they obediently oblige, since to them hate is love and right is wrong, black is white and God is Satan.

(Or Santa. One of the two. I get them mixed up. But whoever they’re worshipping, it’s no God of goodness and Light, that’s for sure.)

They share the common bond of being hateful, small, and petty. Their senses of humor reflect this, usually involving slurring people or ideas in a manner reminiscent of mean-spirited spoiled semi-literate children. Lately we hear them ranting against little Malia Obama, for wearing a peace-symbol shirt. Calling her and her family thugs and saying that her mother likes to make monkey noises to her and such. Unbelievable.

It’s very hard not to hate them.

Not hating them has occupied a lot of my time lately.

Because they’re practically asking to be hated.

And yet, if I hate them, it lessens me and not them. It doesn’t faze them at all. It pollutes me and they learn nothing. In fact, they would only interpret my hatred as proof of their rectitude, of their righteousness, of their 'superiority' to me and others like me.

They love to hate. It’s their hobby, their comfort, their favorite pastime. The more they hate and demonize others, the better they feel about their own sorry sad shallow selves in comparison.

I don’t want to fall into the trap of hating them. It’s too easy. And yet perhaps I already have.

How can one not hate such ignorance, ignorance raised to the level of a mental disease? An ignorance founded in a long tradition of ignorance, made unassailable by sheer repetition in our society… How not to despise the utterly despicable? How not to hate people who have made braying hateful asses out of themselves for God, and believe that they themselves are without flaw or sin?

And yet, by far my biggest motivation for *not* hating them, for trying to somehow love them too, in whatever way is possible, is that by hating them I will become more like them. This is an intolerable option to me.

Any suggestions?

The Additional Benefits of Reading

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”
-Anne Rice, The Witching Hour

“The ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
-Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1964

“The connection between reading speed and comprehension; a film is made up of still images flashed in rapid succession to simulate movement. Slow down the film, and the movement and meaning slows and the film's impact is diminished. Viewers won't learn as much about the film as if it were shown at normal speed. With reading the same thing can happen. When a person reads word by word, like frame by frame, they are not reading on the level of ideas. You need to read on some level that's more conversational and allows things to coalesce into ideas themselves.”
-Doug Evans, Institute of Reading Development

“So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
- Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

***

When I was a child I had a lot of excess energy. I was very inquisitive. I wanted to learn about the world as fast as possible. However my (very loving) family into which I was adopted was nothing like me in that regard. Wonderful people, but with all the curiosity and imagination of complacent basset hounds. They loved me very much and gave me a great childhood; however I was so different from them that I almost think sometimes that they thought of me as more of a curiosity than a child. Something to be wheeled out at dinner parties to recite religious-based poetry verbatim at the age of six. “Oooh, he’s so smart…” Well, compared to them, I guess I was.

“Dearest Loving Jesus, please help me to be good,
And do the things and say the things that all good children should…”

(It’s burned indelibly into my memory. I wish I could forget that shit.)

Fortunately they did one thing right. Almost as if they realized that they had little to offer me in the way of satisfying the black hole of curiosity that burned within me, they did the one thing that they could have in that pre-Internet age to set me on a path whereby I could do so myself. They taught me how to read. More than that though, and an important distinction, they taught me how to *love* to read. It was a big thing with my mom that I should both be able to read, and should love to read, even though she herself did not. I have to give her a lot of credit for getting that one right.

I remember that it was in the fourth grade though, that I really got hooked on reading. Like a pathetic junkie, I mean.

After that I remember spending days with the Hardy Boys. My standard rate was five of them in eight hours. Not bad for a twelve-year-old.

Once when I was about thirteen I actually threatened my dad that if he didn’t buy me a certain book that I had been waiting to read which was “just out in stores” that I would have to steal it. Like as if it would be his fault, so he'd better buy me the damned book or start me on a life of crime or something. To his credit, I didn’t get the book, and did get spoken to very sternly about my self-centeredness. Good job there, dad.

And then in conjunction with all of this, the Wonders of Science Fiction were revealed unto me by a used car salesman that worked for my uncle’s AMC dealership, where I would frequently spend time as a child due to the fact that my dad was the General Manager. I am forever indebted to Bill the car salesman who gave me his discarded pulp mags, and later some appropriately silly novels of Alien Invasion and other standard fare SF of the day that caught my interest. When I discovered Larry Niven (a four-book set given to me by my aunt at Christmas) I was hooked for life. And of course on television there was Star Trek to further fuel my imagination and oddly enough I think even shape my future morality to some extent. That was when I managed to convince my parents to let me watch it instead of them watching Lawrence Welk. Ahh, back in the day of one TV per family...

(As an aside, I have to recommend Star Trek to anyone as an excellent thing to park your kids in front of regardless of how bad that sounds. It’s like imagination gasoline with a positive message.)

Sometimes I think that if I hadn't found reading, I'd have long ago gone insane, or at the very least clinically depressed. It was everything to me as a child.

I have come to believe that developing a true love of reading is much more important that we realize. If you do not like to read, you do not develop your visual imagination anywhere near to its potential. With your visual imagination, in tandem with your logical ability (which we all have been trained to think is the more important by far) we have essentially two huge tools with which to accurately judge what we perceive in this world, rather than only one.

Visual imagery adds dramatic depth to the level of our understanding of what we are judging with our logical abilities, and thus how we perceive reality.

With a well-developed reading ability, when you are examining a logical problem you can better understand what the logical words you are saying to yourself in your head actually mean in relation to the “world out there” due to the fact that there is also a very detailed illustration in your mind that you are automatically manipulating to match the word descriptions of various things which occur to you in relation to your train of thought. This ability is like being in possession of a futuristic 3-D viewer in your mind that can show anything you desire it to, automatically, no effort involved. You do not have to think “I wish to visualize this sequence of events that I am now thinking of in verbal form” when you are a practiced reader, because you automatically access visual imagery when you think of verbal information. When you think of a verbal series of events, you automatically have the accompanying visualization of it to 'look' at as you do so. You’ve learned to visualize what you read in a book; this is automatically transferred to what you “read” out loud to your self in word form when you think logically about anything whatsoever. It's not that non-avid-readers cannot do this; just that they cannot do it nearly as well. By becoming an avid reader you have installed a bridge in your mind between verbal thought flow and visual imagery, and have subsequently strengthened that bridge with every new book that you have read.

People who have no great reading skills do not develop them because they do not read stories and novels and adventures and mysteries, cannot 'get into' such stories, because they were never coaxed to go beyond the tipping point where one starts to visualize what one is reading, and so it is my belief that they also automatically have a real handicap in being able to visualize day-to-day problems well enough to solve them optimally.

Often times when I cannot "see eye-to-eye" with someone, I feel that the problem lies in their inability to visualize what I am talking about as well as I am visualizing what they're talking about. Sometimes it even seems to me that they aren't capable of adequately visualizing what they themselves are talking about.

(I must always consider the possibility that I am the one in error of course, but still, even after that...)

Visual imagination is also a key to empathy since you must be able to first truly imagine the travails of another person in order to develop empathy in the first place, and you can’t do so without being able to accurately visualize what their day-to-day life is like, their situations, their dilemmas. Words alone, or even words coupled with the increasingly-normal-now sub-par power to visualize, just aren’t enough to really do that. With a well-developed visual imagination one almost automatically puts one's self into the other's place and imagines seeing out of their eyes for a bit. And once one does that, one is automatically empathetic to their lives and can better relate to them as fellow humans.

So teach your children to read, and then go that one step further and teach them to love to read. It’s one of the biggest gifts that you can give to them. Oh, and it won't be easy. There are a lot more distractions out there now than in my day. Do it anyhow.

-StBtG

WHAT A RUSH!

I’m writing this right after having watched the Rush Limbaugh speech at the C.P.A.C. on CNN.

It was amazing. It needs to be standard classroom material in Abnormal Psych class.

I’ve never seen so much projection in all my life. And I was an usher at Showcase. Apparently most of what is wrong with the Democrat (sic) party and Liberals in general is exactly, precisely, amazingly, and completely coincidentally what we Liberals think is wrong with Conservatives. Of course their side is right in all of this, because they base their entire lives on their immutable beliefs, so naturally they trump mere facts whenever they meet them.

Rush’s message to conservatives here seemed to me, basically, that it’s not only okay, but desirable to never change anything about yourselves, never be nice to your political “enemies,” not to seek real bipartisanship, that egotism is a virtue instead of the ultimate cause of all evil, that Barack Obama is out to destroy America and that you all need to wish him to fail too, that it’s optimal to not care if others dislike you, and to me most salient given my past conversations about it, that *belief* is far more important that *thought.* To Rush, beliefs are sacred, to be clung to at all costs, or you are a deficient human being.

(Update to above paragraph: The reader should know that this is not mere conjecture on my part; he either directly said or strongly implied all that I stated above.)

And he did all of this, and so much more, while being very eloquent and humorous. Lotsa of one-liners and good old-fashioned (read: 1820) zingers. Granted that the appalling insensitivity and distastefulness of his humor renders it very unfunny to me. However, he really *reached* his audience, no doubt about it. He literally lit a fire in their shorts.

Most of which audience is of course in the double-digits, IQ wise… And the ones that weren’t have no souls. Just like Rush.

He was so consistently and frequently wrong, and very often *diametrically* wrong, about everything, and so pompous and proud about all of that, that I was usually in the middle of yelling at the television about how incredibly stupid and even nauseatingly disgusting his last statement was when I would realize that he was now already on to something even more ignorant and reprehensible.

The combination of eloquence, disinformation, hatred, and sheer verbal fire reminded me of Hitler. No really. Not a hyperbole this time. If the country were still stultified enough to fall for it, he’d be dangerous not only to us, but to the entire world, because the right wing would elect him President on the basis of his communications skills and ability to creatively insult Liberals alone. Then he’d go for Poland. Morgen der welt. He’s a skilled manipulator of belief with no real morality whatsoever, and he’s incredibly (considering how evil he is) popular and thus a potential serious danger to us all.

And perhaps he reminded me, ironically enough, of the Antichrist as well. I’m talking about the fundamentalist’s description of him here.

Now I’m sounding like him, I know, but that’s his skill. To precisely reverse things so it seems to his mentally-limited audience that we fellow Americans who are Liberals, are trying to do to them precisely what, in reality, their Conservative leaders (now including Rush apparently) have always in the REAL WORLD been trying to do to us.

Fomenting paranoia, xenophobia, racism and hatred that effectively is a real skill, and Rush has a tenth-degree black belt in it, I must admit.

Plus, the right wing Christians actually seem now to believe that the antichrist will be a liberal atheist. What a joke. As if. Their very description of him fits a Christian far-right-wing conservative best (Father of Lies, The Deceiver, etc.) and we already “know” that he’ll believe in God. After all, it says so in the Bible. (Now be properly awed and believe it or go to hell. Makes no nevermind to us.)

Now here’s what I see as the Silver Lining to this atrocity that the media is nice enough to merely call a speech:

I think I want Rush to succeed. Oh, not in his wishes for the country, not ever that. I want him to successfully convince the most self-righteous right wing side of the right wing to NEVER CHANGE THEIR WAYS. I seriously doubt that he’ll be convincing anyone else but those people, so there’s not very much real danger and a lot of potential for backlash.

I want them to all start now having the confidence to parrot everything that Rush said today, to everyone with a brain. Because we’re now in the MAJORITY, those of us who came equipped with one. And if the Conservatives were paying attention to reality instead of living in their usual state of allowing belief to trump all thought, they’d have long ago realized that there is actual change in the wind here. A change to a more intelligent country.

(Egad, the Conservative Anathema! Nobody will just believe shit anymore!)

We’ve started to open our eyes. It’s no less than that. And I don’t think I’m being too hopeful here. More and more people are spurning the hatred now, and as the eyes open, they can see the old ways for just what they are. They just weren’t paying attention before. But now it’s in their face. And it’s about to be kicked up three notches.

The CPAC attendees literally sucked it up. This is what they knew that they needed to hear! That they were all right after all, that they have *always* been right, and will always *be* right in spite of losing the election and being so unpopular. To create a good idea all you have to do is believe in it, and thus insist that it's a good idea, and is one, no matter what. To counter all objections to it, you merely turn up the Belief Volume and insist more convincingly.

In fact, Rush has now programmed his dittoheads (now including all in attendance at the C.P.A.C.) to specifically *not care* if *anybody* complains or disagrees with them, and never let it bother you or even touch you in any way if anyone is offended by what you’re saying. So I literally can’t wait to start to see the Now Revitalized Core of the Conservative Movement start to shred their credibility *en masse* now that all restrictions have been removed, even their humanity.

I think that many of the real die-hard right-wingnuts with the tinfoil hats will now be coming out of the woodwork and really showing their true colors as never before. They will have new resolve, inspired by His Pomposity’s certainty and rhetoric and inflammatory comments to believe in themselves now as never before. Now they’ve been programmed by the Master Programmer Himself to be totally honest about themselves and their bigoted, stultifying, changeless beliefs regardless of what others think or say about them. They will have heretofore unheard-of vigor and renewed *faith* in their cause, and a new, deeper commitment to their *beliefs,* for the simple reason that they have now been so totally and effectively sold on them themselves. The Bloviating Bovine has convinced them beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re absolutely correct about everything, regardless of such silliness as facts, and they’ve been now told that if they just insist on that with no fear, no caring who they insult, no caring what the Hated Evil Liberal Media says since they’re evil anyhow, that they will somehow regain popularity. So declareth the Rush. So believeth the sheeple. Amen.

Really???

They have a better chance with the armed revolution that is suggested on Hannity’s site. (No, really, he has a poll about which kind of revolution the real Americans want now that it’s obviously time for one what with the black guy in the White House)

More on this as it occurs.

I can’t even find a link to his speech yet. You all really need to see it, if you haven’t already. Its evil raised to the level of an artform. The more emotionally perceptive you are, the more it fucks you up. If you can watch it and not scream, you’re a better man than I.

I want all readers to eventually relate back to me on this blog what you thought the most horrifying statement was.

There were so many, I think Keith Olbermann will do a whole week on it at least. And Rachel Maddow will just snap like a dry twig. She’s probably dead already, poor girl.

***
UPDATE: Here's part one of the speech.

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Part six

Part seven

Part eight

Part nine

Part ten

Ron Christie defends the valorous Rush

DESPERATION OBFUSCATION

By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man.
-Immanuel Kant

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time unless they are religious.
-Saint Brian the Godless

***

I’ve been having an email argument with a Christian biblical literalist, on and off for the last few days.

It’s been fascinating… And a lot of laughs. But this one was the best.

We were arguing about the supposed inerrancy of the Holy Bible.

And then he sent me this gem:

DO RABBITS CHEW THE CUD?
Leonard R. Brand
Chairman, Department of Biology
Loma Linda University

Origins 4(2):102-104 (1977).
Related page — | IN A FEW WORDS | Leviticus 11:6 is sometimes used as an example of an error in the Bible; it states that hares chew the cud. Hares are not usually known as cud-chewing, or ruminating, animals. Is this really an error in the Bible, or did Moses know what he was talking about?
When a cow swallows a mouthful of grass, it goes first of all to one compartment of the stomach referred to as the rumen. The culture of microorganisms that exists in the rumen digests the grass and converts much of it into nutrients which the cow can utilize. Then the cow brings the microorganisms and leftover grass back to her mouth, one mouthful at a time. She chews it and sends it on through the rest of her digestive tract. Thus the cow really doesn't subsist directly on grass alone, but also on the protozoa and bacteria that she breeds in her rumen (Carles 1977).

The process of digestion of grass by microorganisms is referred to as fermentation, and it occurs in many other animals besides the cloven-hoofed ruminating animals. Special forestomachs for fermentation are also found in kangaroos, whales, dugongs, hippopotamus, sloths, and colobid monkeys (McBee 1971). Other modifications of the stomach or some part of the intestines to provide a fermentation chamber are found in rodents, rabbits and hares, gallinaceous birds, horses, hyrax (McBee 1971), and in mallards (Miller 1976).

Some herbivorous animals consume part of their own feces, thus recovering fermentation products that have passed through the digestive tract. This process of reingestion of feces occurs in many rodents (Thacker and Brandt 1955) and in all genera of hares and rabbits (Carles 1977; Hamilton 1955; Kirkpatrick 1956; Lechleitner 1957; McBee 1971; Myers 1955; Southern 1940; Watson 1954; Watson and Taylor 1955). Reingestion of feces is an especially well-developed practice in Lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) and is important for their adequate nutrition.

Lagomorphs produce two kinds of fecal pellets which are produced at different times during the day. When the animals are active and feeding they produce the familiar hard pellets. When they cease their activity and retire to their burrows or resting areas, they begin producing soft pellets which they eat as soon as they are passed (Myers 1955). Rabbits reingest 54-82% of their feces (Eden 1940), which they apparently swallow whole, without chewing (Watson 1954). The soft pellets are composed of material from the fermentation chamber, which in the Lagomorphs is located in the cecum, a blind pouch at the beginning of the large intestine (McBee 1971). The soft pellets are composed mainly of bacteria, mixed with some plant material, and each pellet is enclosed in a proteinaceous membrane secreted posterior to the colon. These tough membranes remain intact for at least six hours after reingestion. When swallowed they pass to the fundus portion of the stomach, where they remain for several hours (Griffiths and Davies 1963). Other food that is swallowed moves past the accumulation of soft pellets and goes on through the digestive tract. The membranes around the pellets and a buffering solution in the pellets control the pH, so that fermentation continues in the pellets even though the rest of the stomach is acid (Griffiths and Davies 1963).

The process of cecal fermentation and reingestion helps the rabbit in several ways. Amino acids and proteins are synthesized by the bacteria in the cecum, using nonprotein nitrogen (perhaps urea). Amino acids are absorbed directly through the walls of the cecum and provide 4.4-21.8% of the animal's daily energy requirement (McBee 1971). Proteins synthesized in the cecum are carried to the stomach in the soft pellets. This protein is important to the nutrition of the rabbit. Experiments have shown that "nitrogen balance in the rabbit was reduced 50% if soft feces were not eaten" (McBee 1971). Fermentation and reingestion also improve utilization of sodium and potassium and provide 83% more niacin, 100% more riboflavin, 165% more pantothenic acid, and 42% more vitamin B12 than would be available if soft feces were not consumed (McBee 1971; Myers 1955).
Is this special digestive process analogous to the rumination, or cud-chewing, in cows? There are both similarities and differences between the two processes. The rabbits are different in that they do not have a four-part stomach with a rumen, and the material that reaches their fermentation chamber has already been chewed and partially digested. Cows and rabbits are similar in that they both have a fermentation chamber with microorganisms that digest otherwise indigestible plant material and convert it to nutrients. Some of the rabbit microorganisms are different from those in cows, but many of them are the same or similar (McBee 1971). Both cows and rabbits also have a mechanism to pass the contents of their fermentation chamber back to the mouth and then on through the digestive tract.
Madsen (1939) wrote an article entitled "Does the Rabbit Chew the Cud?" Southern (1940) concluded that reingestion has an advantage to the rabbit "equivalent to 'chewing the cud'." Griffiths and Davies (1963) concluded that "we consider that the fundus of the rabbit stomach, loaded with soft pellets, is analogous to the rumens of sheep and cattle."

Carles (1977) compared cows and rabbits and reached the conclusion that rumination should not be defined from an anatomical point of view (the presence of a four-part stomach), but rather on presence of an adaptation for breeding bacteria to improve food. On this basis he stated that "it is difficult to deny that rabbits are ruminants."

What is the correct explanation for Leviticus 11:6 — is it an error in the Bible, or is it evidence that Moses had a source of information far ahead of his time? Since rabbits and hares have a process that is so similar to cow rumination that it becomes a question of the technicalities of one's definition of rumination, it would be difficult to justify interpreting Leviticus 11:6 as an error in the Bible.

***
Salient part of above article: "The rabbits are different in that they do not have a four-part stomach with a rumen..."

WHAT?

So, because a rabbit eats its own shit, it’s a ruminant! Voila!

It HAS to be a ruminant.

Because the Bible says so.

Whenever belief comes into conflict with cold, hard facts, belief wins every time.

So what if the scientific classification of a ruminant is very clear? So what? All one has to do is look for the one or two scientists that disagree with convention and have their own agendas, being Christians themselves… And quote them as if they were a part of the mainstream. As if one uncorroborated source is equivalent in value to established, peer-reviewed, generally accepted science.

I find this particular Desperation Obfuscation uniquely entertaining. Because it would seem that ingesting fecal pellets is not the sole province of the lagomorpha. Many Christians do it too. And apparently they also think that regurgitation is the equivalent of defecation, and so it often is, for them. When they regurgitate scripture and dogma, it’s all crap to me.

Further note on above article:
The rabbit doesn't even chew the fecal pellet. It swallows it whole. So no cud chewing of any kind. Even if you define "cud" as their own poop.

PHARISEEING IS BELIEVING

For among Judeans there are three forms of philosophy.
Now Pharisees are one sect, Sadducees another,
But in fact the third, called Essenes, seems to be the most reverential discipline.
- Josephus, Jewish War 2.119

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
-Charlotte Bronte

***

PHARISEEING IS BELIEVING

Jesus warned people of Pharisees in the Bible, often speaking of them in a negative light. But what was it about them specifically that He found so offensive? He was actually quite clear on the matter:

***

Luke 18 (King James Version)
1And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
2Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:
3And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
4And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
5Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
6And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
7And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
8I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
9And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
10Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
11The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
12I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
13And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

***

Luke 11:37-54 (King James Version)
37And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.
38And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner.
39And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness
40Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?
41But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.
42But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
43Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.
44Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.

***

Matthew 23 (King James Version)
1Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
2Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:
3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
4For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
5But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
6And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
7And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.
8But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.
9And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
10Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
11But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
13But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
17Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
18And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.
19Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
20Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.
21And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.
22And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
23Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
32Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
34Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
35That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
36Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
37O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
38Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
39For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

***

So while the actual term “Pharisee” merely refers to a Jewish sect, when Jesus spoke of that sect in a negative light what part of being a Pharisee was he talking about? What common discerning features of the Pharisees seemed to really annoy Jesus?

In the first story it is plain that Jesus is pointing out how the Pharisee was too proud and thought himself superior to the lowly Publican. This is made especially clear in the last line: “for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

In the second story Jesus openly rants against Pharisee *hypocrisy.* He even uses the exact word, calling them “hypocrites!” with an exclamation point. He also speaks of their egotism throughout.

In the third similar example from Matthew again we see the phrase “12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” But we also have “13But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” And many additional cries of “hypocrites!” to be found throughout.

I’m sorry that my “Luke’s” are out of order. I hope it’s not a sin or anything.

So what are our common denominators here? What is it about the Pharisees of His day that Jesus found so personally repellant?

Going by the Bible, the only source available, we would have to conclude that it’s a mixture of hypocrisy, egotism, and pride.

Now, I’ve spoken of the evils of Pride before. How subtle a sin it is. How the proud are never aware that they are the proud, and think of themselves as the humble. They’re even proud of being humble, ironically enough. And excessive pride naturally begets hypocrisy. So they do go rather hand-in-hand, is the point.

In order to really excel at being a modern Pharisee one has only to be proud of their religion, and how righteous belonging to it makes them, how much less sinful than those *other* people they are.

Speaking incessantly (and proudly) of Jesus and His path of love and inclusion and yet living the opposite one of pride and exclusion is in my opinion the defining hypocrisy of the modern Pharisee.

Judging others when you yourself are lacking is another distinctive feature.

To call one’s self a Christian requires nothing. But to actually be a Christian, you have to follow the path of Jesus Christ. And that path is the narrow path of love. Of loving all others, no matter how different they are, no matter what you think of their way of life, no matter how sinful they look to you.

Because it’s not our place to judge.

I’ve never been against the path of Jesus Christ. It’s a good path. One of the very best, in fact. There’s nothing better than all-inclusive love. Jesus is more than just all right by me.

It would seem however that the path of the Pharisee is much more popular nowadays.

The wide, easy path. The one that goes in a spiritual circle.

People are weak. The path of Christ is the difficult path, so it’s no wonder that so few Christians are capable of following it.

I wish they’d at least realize that they’ve strayed from it, but the pride keeps them blind to that forever.

For the ignorant are always ignorant enough not to be able to see that they’re ignorant, and the proud are always proud enough not to be able to see that they’re proud.

Such is the nature of human folly.

So to any Christians reading this: If you’re a proud Christian that feels that people of other faiths (or none at all) are somehow inferior…

Congratulations! You just might be a Pharisee!

THE FUNNIEST VIDEO CLIP CONTEST

Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like.

Multiple entries allowed. Post the link(s) and we'll all get to vote on them. (No voting for your own)

I am not counting this as one of my regular posts. I just thought it might be fun, and we all need to laugh more, I think. Myself included.

So please post links to whatever video or film clips that you think are just too funny to remain continent while watching. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's funny. Any type of video, a section of a commercial, a home-made video, anything. I want to have to use a Depends here.

The best ones, let's say the top five for sure, will go into my photo gallery at right permanently. Lost forever in the plethora of well over a hundred confusing images where no-one ever goes. Because they're all afraid of the one hidden rickroll perhaps.

Hey, it's the best prize that I can come up with without spending money, and that's out.

I will not be posting any of the videos, by the way. All of my favorites are already hidden away safely in that aforementioned vertical Sargasso Sea of picture links on the right. I will be voting on yours, though. And keeping track of it all.

Oh, and while we're at it, what the hell...
If anybody has actually taken the time or feels like doing so now, please vote for your favorite photo link in my gallery. In most cases I've tried not only to find a funny (or interesting) video or picture or site, but also to select a picture that is not directly representative of it but relates to it in a humorous fashion.

If you've got a lot of time to kill, well, I've just solved your problem there......

***

Oh, and PS:
Let's not get too much into discussions of religion or atheism or spirituality or politics on this one. I just posted one yesterday for that, and there's still the Big Brain Blog at top right to post to... This one's really just for fun.

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO

“As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”
-Voltaire

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
-Joseph Conrad

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”
-Robert F. Kennedy


Does Evil Exist?

Ask a Christian and the answer will be “of course it does.” And if you tell them that you're an atheist, they'll be happy to define you as part of it.

However the religious Christian defines evil as a metaphysical reality. Evil is like one of the two teams that we can choose to be on. And evil and good are in a constant struggle, the two teams being led by God and Satan respectively. Or is that Satan and God? Yes, that’s it. I get them mixed up sometimes.

Not being a Christian one might think that therefore I’d be likely to say that evil does not exist. And if one were talking about the above metaphysical variety as understood by Christians, you’d be correct. I don’t believe in God or Satan or the conflict between the two, so how could I believe in that definition of evil? To me that definition of evil is itself evil!

(Because it vastly oversimplifies the idea so that those who follow it and believe in it are likely to make errors of judgment that hurt others.)

I use the term evil often in my writings. However not as a metaphysical concept. I use it because it’s a useful word to describe what I would define as human behavior patterns that are harmful or deleterious to other people or to one’s self. These types of behavior patterns are the result (I think) of the person having a basic imbalance within themselves, within their psyche.

So I relate the idea of evil to an internal imbalance.

Now, how do I mean that?

Well, if a person is not properly balanced between their logical/rational side and their emotional/intuitive side, then their behavior will reflect that. Too much or not enough of either side, and the person is incapable of correctly judging reality, and by misjudging it can thereby easily make decisions that others would consider “evil.” But of course it’s not quite that simple. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Everyone has an emotional side and a rational side. But the rational side must be developed (and constantly updated as well) in order to be accurate, and the emotional side also must be developed *beyond the point of self-centeredness* in order to be intuitive or to have access to the higher modalities of emotional function such as agape-type love of others. Mere underdeveloped (self-focused) emotionality with insufficient logic to moderate it is almost always both powerful and very counterproductive, and all logic with no higher emotion to regulate it is either stagnant or tends toward the pursuit of personal power, since where else would such a person derive their motivations from with no higher emotional desires?

As a person matures and hopefully starts to integrate their two sides and seek a balance, both of their “sides” start to come into tune with each other, and cause each other to develop in unison by mutual interaction. Higher feelings such as true selflessness, empathy, and agape-style love do not happen in the person that has not gone through such a process of self-rectification between all elements of the two polarities of the psyche.

Through such an *integration.*

An integration of the Yang and the Yin.
Of Masculine and Feminine sides of one’s own personality.
Of Logic and Intuition
Reason and Emotion
Descrimination and Loving Kindness
Thoughts and Beliefs
And so on, basically forever…

Here’s a very old alchemical maxim that relates to this process and the hoped-for results:

“VITRIOL”

The word, which used to refer to certain solvent acids and is usually used today only to refer to verbal (acerbic) anger, was used long ago as an acronym and mnemonic by the medieval alchemists for the very process of attaining enlightenment itself.

Thus in Latin, we have Visita Interiore Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. V.I.T.R.I.O.L.

In English this reads, “Visit the Interior of the Earth, There, by *rectification* you will find the Hidden Stone.” In modern English without the symbolic frills this means “Go within yourself, and by making things “right” and balancing (rectifying) what is there within yourself, you will attain enlightenment.”

So if Ultimate Balance leads to the light, perhaps then Ultimate Imbalance leads to the darkness.

We are, let’s recall, discussing Evil and not Enlightenment here.

The person that does evil never realizes that they are doing evil. They just think of it in some other way, since if it were evil *to them* they wouldn’t do it in the first place. Most if not all of them believe that they’re doing good and not evil.

Do you think Hitler knew that he was evil?

Of course not. Hitler thought that he was doing the highest good, even possibly that he was doing God’s work for Him…

How could Hitler lie to himself like that?

No internal balance whatsoever. Everything skewed toward the logical/rational side, since his higher emotional/intuitive side was underdeveloped, stunted even. Most of us have at least some development of our higher emotional side, but Hitler didn’t seem to. Powerful primitive emotions like anger and hatred and fear were all there, but not their higher counterparts such as empathy and love.

Such a person can’t even tell when they’re lying to themselves. And there would be no check to his ego; nothing to stand against his logical side when it informed his emotional/desire side, which only desired to “better mankind,” that it “had a plan…”

There was nothing within him to feel the horror and revulsion that he should have felt. It had either never developed, or had been excised. So all his emotional side could answer was “Why not?”

Now the interesting thing is, we all are motivated by our emotional side. Really, all motivation comes from there, no matter how logical we think that we are. We are creatures of emotion, even those of us who deny that to ourselves. That part of our brain, the emotional part, is much older than the rational part. Many of us make the decision to trust our logical sides more than our emotional sides, but even that is ultimately based in emotional desire, the desire to not be wrong all the time. The logical side is a newer acquisition, much more recent evolutionarily speaking. It’s so “new” that it’s almost like a tool that we can choose to use or not to, and not “really” as much a part of our very identity as our emotional side is, and therefore many of us choose to not use it to its best advantage, thinking perhaps that it’s less important, since we don’t really “feel” it. We should try to recall in such instances that after all, it is what differentiates us from the “lower orders.” For properly used, the logical side can shape and mold the emotional side so that it evolves to the point where it can feel the higher, selfless emotions, just as in the process the emotional side in return provides a constant flow of desire to attain a more balanced state and so regulates the logical side so that it conforms to the emotional side’s ever-changing (evolving) desired ideals... all while the logical side in turn is still shaping the emotional side and helping to direct it’s evolution, and so on. It’s a mutual process that is simultaneous and any one part of it is hard to even define without also describing at the same time all of the actions of the other parts. I think of it like a pendulum, or an oscillation back and forth between the two sides, each constantly checking the other.

***

So this is how I think of evil. A psychological imbalance, and perhaps also a spiritual one as well. Nothing to do with religion, however.

So what of Biblical Evil then? What of Satan, the Adversary? The Eternal Struggle?

I cannot begin to believe in some dark deity and a whole system of demons and subordinate demons and various mechanisms that was put in place to tempt us all to stray from the path of righteousness, all decreed somehow by a supposedly loving God. To me, that is by far more nonsensical than anything from the Brothers Grimm.

I’m afraid that I can see this Biblical Evil thing as no more than an elaborate story that was concocted for the poor, ignorant people so as to make them properly fearful and to assure that they forever remain properly ignorant, and thus obedient. I can see that this story of Satan and the Horrors of Hell and Damnation was carefully constructed so as to be the stick in a system of so-called carrot-and-stick conditioning that has sucessfully warped the minds of the multitudes. Warped their minds so as to believe that all the world’s problems are due to this deep dark fearful tangible external EVIL that is some orchestrated metaphysical reality decreed by God and executed by Satan so as to both test and tempt us while we’re alive and to punish us eternally after we die, so we’d all better be really faithful in God and not think of the details too much.

Evil exists, yes. But not the external openly horrific evil of some demonic Satan who wishes to torment us with his hell full of fire and eternal pain. That’s an evil mirage constructed by evil people so as to lead the good astray into their evil fear-based belief system. I see real evil in the internal imbalance of one’s own mind, thereby causing it to misjudge both itself and the outside world enough to do real harm, all the while honestly believing that it is doing the exact opposite.

The Pastor Warren Dilemma

“A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial, we miss the most important.”
-François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio."
(Nothing is so odious to knowledge as too much shrewdness)
-Seneca (Quotation best known from its use by Poe in "The Purloined Letter."


Much is being made about Barack Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church to speak at his Inauguration. Pastor Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book perhaps best known for defusing a deadly hostage situation (along with some methamphetamine of course) will be delivering the invocation.

(Incidentally, another copy of the book was found in Scott Peterson’s car…)

Pastor Warren is a vocal opponent of gay marriage, you see.

So the far left is up in arms that Obama would give such a closed-minded buffoon a podium at such an important event, and the far right is angry at Pastor Warren for even being seen as willing to stand up in the same room with Obama.

Both are good signs. Because Pastor Warren is the balanced choice. It makes sense that the balanced choice pisses off both extremes.

Obama needs to unite the majority of this country in order to get even a quarter of his agenda done, considering how ambitious that agenda it. This includes recalcitrant Christians that as of this moment are thinking of him as somewhere in between Osama Bin Obama, and Satan.

Pastor Warren, while having the common Christian myopia about gays, and having even publicly equated homosexuality to pedophilia and incest, is still a much more logical thinker than most of his Evangelical brethren, and far less hypocritical. And his church is enormous.

So he is the perfect bridge.

If Obama were to (for instance) speak to Pastor Warren about actually reducing the number of abortions drastically without making it illegal, I think that common ground can be found. And once the administration has Pastor Warren’s “blessing” as it were, a large percentage of Evangelicals will have something to think about. And they just might, too. Also, I do not see Obama ceding any ground to Pastor Warren’s side as regards the issue of Gay rights. He’s already made his move to the center on that issue by not technically backing Gay marriage while supporting Gay civil union with all of the equivalent perks.

Obama is as advertised, we are now seeing. He wishes to be a uniting force. We are not used to seeing anyone like this in American politics. We’re used to hearing people *talk* as if they were like this. Huge difference. The pundits are befuddled. Some of them seem angry and are apparently feeling betrayed. This will pass. He is not even the president yet, and already the country is straining at the bit for him to take over this leaking ship and steer it toward safer harbor. Or more like dry dock. Sometimes I think that some of the talking heads of the news business would like to see the President-Elect storm the oval office and physically decapitate Bush and proclaim himself President now, for the sake of the country of course.

(And oddly enough, looking at all the *horrific* “midnight regulations” that Bush & Co. is passing in their final days of power, they may be right; not that Obama really should behead Bush, but that, if he did, that we would be far better off, and that far more lives and treasure would be saved in the long run.)

If Obama were to alienate the evangelical community as the far left would have him do, perhaps justifiably, they can do a lot of harm to him. As it is, the RNC is already commencing its new life mission, to block whatever they can block, regardless of cost to the country, so as to try to “win” something, anything. They’re in the middle of one hell of an identity crisis, and they are desperate to gain back even a shred of their self-respect. (Perhaps if they acted respectably they wouldn’t lose it so easily) The Evangelical community would work with them against the common foe, as they often have in the past. Soulless people like Tony Perkins would come out of the woodwork and pronounce what is and is not moral to *us God-fearing folk* and would have no compunction in demonizing even a good man if it is in their political best interests. Florid-faced angry Caucasians would be on every television station casting aspersions on the very humanness of the man, spraying spittle sporadically as they splutter their specious spleen.

Pastor Warren is not of that ilk, which is why Obama chose him. He cares about the poor, or actually seems to. He seems genuinely to wish to live a Christ-like life, unlike so many who with debatable accuracy also call themselves Christians. He is reasonable on many issues, and is not an uncompassionate man, from what I can tell.

Now, I do not see Obama’s choice of the man in any way as an indication that he is moving toward the right. I see it as a validation that he will rule from the center-left, which is a far batter place to rule from than we’ve had in a very long time. He will accomplish this by not only creating a spirit of fairness and inclusiveness but also at the same time by, to paraphrase LBJ, having those who would stand outside his tent and piss in, stand instead inside and piss out.

I didn’t see it this way at first glance. It seemed an extreme choice. Pastor Warren after all, from the viewpoint of a gay American, is an espouser of hatred and ignorance. Indeed, his attitudes are appallingly closed-minded in many areas, in spite of his openness in some others. But at least he has his areas of openness. They’re hard to find in the Evangelical community. And it’s the very fact that he does represent or is at least related to by many people that hold hatred in their hearts for Gays and even for Liberals, that makes him such a valuable person to have “on the team.”

If he plays this right, both extremes will come around eventually, at least in part. And the middle will never have a qualm in the first place. So it would produce the maximum best-case-scenario result. Balance.

Obama knows that he cannot please all of the people all of the time. But then again, now that he’s been elected, he no longer has to. This is one tough, balanced, smart person that we’re dealing with here. Get used to it.

The "Big Brain" Speculations

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe

"In my head I know I'm me; no one else in here to see. But what if my head is just in my head, and everything else, living or dead, is just a dream that we all share? Could you believe or even care, that we're all one, and you are me and we're also all that we can see? Could you believe it, just a bit, that it's all in the head, but the head is it?"
-Saint Brian the Godless

"What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet."
-Woody Allen


***

“The Big Brain”

Part 1: The Simplest Explanation for Everything:

What would be the simplest explanation for this universe that would account for the maximum number of observations that we've made of it? I used to ask myself this all the time. I felt strongly that the truth of it couldn't be something that we'd thought of before, since all of those theories have huge holes in them, even science’s theories in a way, though science is the best single way to look at the material world of all so far. But still science sees infinities in time and distance, and quantum paradoxes galore, along with things like the wave-particle duality and entanglement, which are hard to explain. So I thought about it obsessively for years and studied a lot of different sources, and this is what I finally came to think about our universe.

To me it seems that its all a vast mind, or very similar to one. A “Big Brain” with no body required. Or if you prefer, a kind of dream, only not like a “normal” sleeping dream. Now I know that's a hard thing for a Christian, or most anybody, to ever believe. But give me a chance to explain. If you’re unfamiliar with this sort of concept it will certainly appear eminently dismissible, but please bear with me.

Imagine it as if we're all complex thought patterns in a vast mind of some sort. We think of ourselves as matter, and the universe as matter and energy and space and time, but if it were all more like a mind, it negates the problems of the infinite. The universe would be as large as we think it is, and as old as we think it is... The more we looked, the more we'd find, but in a mind this is all interplay of consciousness and not the real traversing of space, so infinity is not a problem... We feel as solid matter and a rock feels hard and heavy, but they're consciousness or thoughts too, but since *we* are as well, the rock feels heavy and we feel solid to ourselves. As we've developed over the years we've formed this vast mind by our subconscious expectations of it, since it *is* us, and all other things as well. Thus it conforms to our expectations of it, follows logical rules, etc. We are individuals, yes, but only at the conscious and near-conscious levels. At the deep subconscious level we all share the same identity, as does everything else, since we're all made of the one thing, mind, in a world of the same. So, the person looking out of your eyes and calling yourself "me" is, at the deepest level, *identical* with the person that looks out of *my* eyes and says the same. God, or the universe, is One, and we're all a part of it, connected at every point. There's only *one* "sense-of-identity" in the universe. That's what that means. We just all have it and each of us thinks it is unique to us as individuals, but it's not. Now if in this vast mind or “dream” you manage to convince yourself that it's all due to an anthropomorphic God up in some nebulous heaven, this reality/mind will accommodate you and give you "signs" that you're on the right track, *even if you are not!* It will give you exactly what you expect it to in your deep subconscious.

(Or perhaps better to say, “our” deep subconscious...)

So this "dream" can be rather deceptive.

If I meditate strongly enough, I get the same types of signs, and I'm not a believer in any God whatsoever.. Strange coincidences, synchronicities, and actual events taking place that related to my meditation... Even at times, wish-fulfillment... You can produce this with prayers, if you *really* believe deeply. It won't matter that what you really believe in isn't true, either. You can pray to a big Shoe in the sky, and if you have enough belief, real-world phenomena can and will occur that seem to be an answer to your "prayers" with no God needed other than this universe, which in it's entirety, can be called God but more accurately is just the mind that we all call home. It's not a human mind, but it's composed of all human and non-human minds and all other things as well.

This seems simple enough to at least visualize if you have an imagination. Now tell me why it can't be true. You can't. Much like God, there’s no way to prove it wrong. However unlike God, there are actual scientific research results that point to it *possibly* being true, that seem to at least indicate that it’s not as unlikely as it seems on the surface. And it explains everything in the world. Not one thing left out. It's the only theory that can even come close to doing that. All scientific problems, the mind-body problem, the placebo effect, miracles, faith-healings, synchronicities, deja-vu, "signs," ESP, clairvoyance, all psychic phenomena including hauntings, and even your faith in your God.

It can’t be proven yet, but it looks like it might be provable in the near future, if it’s true, of course. The beginnings of proof are already there. Look at the quantum realm, with all its strangeness and problems, which vanish if we assume that the universe is all consciousness. But as of right now, it can’t be proven. Not yet. Neither can your God, or anyone else’s, but since it explains not only your God but all others, and science, and scientific fallacies and paradoxes, and indeed all unsolved “mysteries,” and actually even has hopes of being proven in time by science, it’s far superior to any other faith or religion. And it’s simple, when you understand it. By Occam’s Razor, it is most likely to be the correct theory, if you detach yourself from your habitual view of reality and just think of the probabilities from an un-reality-biased perspective.

For me, I was the agnostic almost-atheist that loved science and the scientific method, was completely skeptical of anything that even smacked of the paranormal, then at about age 36 started to get 'signs' or more accurately perhaps jungian type synchronicities in my day-to-day life, synchronicities that I soon realized always related to thoughts expressed when I was in an emotionally excited state, such as when I was joking around with friends. Oh, and since the friends involved saw them too and thought that they were creepy, I know that it wasn't just a delusion. All of this worldview of mine that I have expressed above came about in my mind as a *result* of my having these experiences and then investigating them with various thought experiments as my tools, all subjective of course, but compelling nonetheless. Very compelling indeed.

Part 2: The Design and the Designer:

We're the designer. All of us, together, designed this place, by our very attempts to observe and understand it, from time immemorial. We created the dream-reality within which we now find ourselves. It's not solid, dead matter and energy like we think it is; it's all just consciousness. All that exists is consciousness, a vast sea of consciousness in which we are patterns of consciousness within the larger whole.

The world's far from perfect because the designers are far from perfect.

There's no plan, other than seeking for it to make sense. That's why it makes sense. Because we need it to. That's why it looks designed. And the closer we look at reality, the finer detail we provide for us to see. The more powerful our telescopes become, the larger the universe gets. It's all in our expectations and we fix it in place with our logic and science.

That's where creation happens. In our observations and expectations. In our minds. It's all in our minds, but our minds are all one at the deepest level anyhow, so it all agrees. It has to. We're all one.

I know, I need to take my meds, etc... except that, it is not as crazy as it sounds.

What is this universe, if indeed God does not exist in an anthropomorphic sense and there is no personified creator, and if science has only part of the answer? I mean, weird things sometimes seem to happen that nothing can really explain. Psychic events. Healing through prayer. ESP. Ghosts. Out-of-body experiences. Sightings of the Blessed Mother. Or the devil. Stigmata. Personal "miracles" and occasional contacts with divinity or consciousness or spirit or SOMETHING that leaves us confused or exultant or suicidal.

What is this place? What is the most logical conclusion, when even science seems suspect, at least in explaining some phenomena?

I think that they most likely answer to that it that the entire universe is made of consciousness and not matter as we think of it. Like a vast mind of some kind. Or like a dream, if you will. Not a normal dream, but similar. More realistic, of course, for one thing. More consistent. More painful. More pleasurable.

But a "dream" in whose head? Who is dreaming it?

The only possible answer to that is that we are! In fact, it's a dream without a specific dreamer required, since to think one is required is missing the point of it *all* being a dream, including us. We *all* dream it together. We are the dreamer and the dream. It’s all “One.”

We are “reality-biased” knowing nothing else other than this “consensual” reality/dream, so we “naturally assume” that a body is necessary for a brain, and that a brain is necessary for a mind, because that seems to be how it works here in our reality, but if our reality is a mind or a dream and not a place, then the rest becomes superfluous.

We dream that we are bodies, and so of course we are bodies in our dream.

And since we're the most advanced life form participating in this particular dream, we're the best of the dreamers, the most able to construct a complicated dream like this, one that seems so “tailored” to us. No God required. We did it; as we looked at it, looked *for* it, it all became real, because that’s how reality works. We looked for something, and we dreamt it up as we looked, just in time to see it and think that we had nothing to do with it. The closer we looked, the finer the detail that we created. The farther away in space that our telescopes can see the more of the dream becomes real, the larger the universe becomes. We find new stars, but were they there before we had the telescope to look? What I’m saying is, incredibly enough, perhaps not.

And it's easy to see why some people think that God is real and claim to receive signs and communications to that effect, since if they believe it hard enough, reality will give them false evidence of it being true due to their preoccupation with the subject warping their vision of reality.

>>>UPDATE APRIL 25TH 2009 UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:

Another way of thinking about the so-called "Big Brain" is to think of ourselves as dreamers by nature, pure and simple, nothing else to us really but that.

I read somewhere the Buddhists have this thing they call "Maya." It's a word that sort-of means the reality that we perceive that is a representation of what is real. The connotation that I got out of it is that all reality is a symbolic illusion, a story if you will. Or a dream; but not like sleeping dreams.

Perhaps we all are dreamer-beings by nature, and we all get to share in one dream and have as many others as we want to for ourselves. We have many dreams but we only have one common "interface" dream that we've all agreed upon is real. In the dream in which we all share and which we all agree is not a dream because it is not like our other dreams, rules have sprung up, because different dreamers had to reconcile and "average out" in order for there to be a consensus on "reality." So what we think of as reality is an illusion, another kind of a dream, but it is the only thing we've got, the only reality that we've ever had, and so we might as well think of it as real. It's as real as anything ever gets.

Oh, and one really important thing about Maya that I remember. The Buddhists have a saying about it.

"Maya seeks to deceive..."

I take from it to mean that since one's expectations can actually to an extent shape the dream as long as no serious conflicts arise, if one allows their expectations to dominate their thought, their expectations will be mirrored by Maya to some visible extent and thought to be proof of truth. Verification. So the religious man has the religious vision, but the vision was provided by Maya and not God, just giving the man what he's obsessed by... I've never expected the answer to the ultimate question to be the Christian God, not since I was a child. It became actually a silly concept in my mind. So Maya gave me a nice, generic, nonsectarian paradigm shift. If it is indeed for the better, then it will be growth. I have hopes. And even some pretty good subjective evidence.

(The only kind possible for something like this)

IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?

"It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it."
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."
-John F. Kennedy

"Science has promised us truth. It has never promised us either peace or happiness."
-Gustave Le Bon

IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?

(-Star Trek Original Series, season three episode title)


Today’s discussion is based on a simple question: What is Truth itself?

You have thirty seconds. No pressure.

…

Well, it certainly sounded simple, didn’t it?

This is indeed a complex issue, and so I hope you’ll forgive me if I ramble a bit. I will strive to not be too “disconnectedy.”

They say (whoever “they” are) that one man’s truth is another man’s folly. This seems to have a grain of “truth” in it, to me. The idea being that the Truth is a subjective thing. Or at least it is so in effect.

(Tangential conundrum, also derived from an old Star Trek episode: “This statement is absolutely true: everything I say is a lie…”)

(Don’t fry your brain over it)

At its most basic level, in the make-believe world of black-and-white, the truth is one of two choices, the other being falsity. Right and Wrong. Simple. Unfortunately the real world that we all live in is far from black-and-white.

In the world of mathematics, one plus one is always two. This then can be said to be a mathematical “truth.” However it is only so easily defined as such because mathematics is a “closed system” in that it is a ‘world’ that is in its entirety rigidly defined and explained by logical rules and axioms. It is implicit that the truths of mathematics are all within the contexts of mathematics. One cannot for instance, quantify love.

The real world is more complex by far than the mathematical one. One has to take the human variable into account along with a myriad of other factors. In many (if not most) situations, there is no black and white, there are only shades of gray to choose from.

How to choose? Therein seems to lie the difficulty.

The Truth can be defined as such only within the contexts of the question or statement involved. For instance, if I were to ask “Is your name John?” the context of the question is easily understood, as is the only true answer. Your name is either John, or it isn’t. If your name is not John, then it is not true that your name is John. And you can easily tell that your name is not John if it isn’t John. You would be in an excellent position to know what your own name is. In fact, you are the definitive authority on your own name. So if I were instead to make the statement, “Your name is definitely John” and your name is in reality Fred, then you can know that my statement is untrue. (But if you have amnesia...)

However if I were to state (for instance) that “I am certain that there is a God, and that He is Jesus Christ,” the definition of ‘Truth’ becomes more problematic.

If I am certain that it is true, then I can hardly be said to be lying as I maintain it to be true. But if it were to happen not to be true, then I am unknowingly telling, or at least repeating, a lie. And let’s face it; there either is or isn’t a God, and if there is one, then it either is or isn’t the Christian God. We may not be in a position to know yet, but these are the choices on the table, and all of them can’t be true. The possibility exists that there is no God whatsoever, and thus that all religions are wrong. If I cannot acknowledge this, then I cannot acknowledge reality itself.

If I try to investigate this question of God’s existence and even His divine identity using logic and science, agnosticism is the only rational result. Even complete atheism is assuming too much. There is just no way to tell, so there is just no way to tell, period. Anything more is, alas, wishful thinking. All indications may point to ‘no God or Gods,’ but in the end, there’s no real way to tell. So to claim such knowledge one way or the other is to be rather silly.

However the only real way to investigate the truth or falsity of anything, including the deity, is still by the application of logic and reason, and of course their avatar on earth, science. If these things fail, substituting faith is never a viable option. It may be an attractive option, but never a viable one.

The man of faith claims that he knows that his God is “true,” because of that very faith. In essence this is saying “I know it, because I know it.” This may sound fine to another believer, but to the unbiased it’s a complete absurdity.

One cannot claim the strength of one’s belief or faith as proof of that very belief or faith. This is a completely circular argument. It is less than senseless. It is ridiculous. If one believes something to be true, it’s still only a belief, and will not approach the strength of a truth until it is subjected to rigorous testing, and by that I mean logical testing and not religious. The believer certainly cannot point to scriptures as proof of their belief either, for the same reason. Scripture is a statement of faith, is designed to strengthen faith, and as such is hardly unbiased. The Bible is no more an unbiased view of Christianity than the Koran is of Islam. All religious texts are biased toward the religion that they represent, for what should be obvious reasons.

And I need unbiased, yes I do.

John Keats said in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” And yet, the truth is often ugly, or so it seems. And the beautiful is often a lie. The Easter Bunny is “beautiful” in that it brings eggs to little children and has a cute nose. Alas, it’s a lie. Bot flies are the Truth, and they lay eggs in little children's noses. Not much beauty there.

Perhaps the Truth is in reality always beautiful, but is perceived as ugliness by those of us that are incapable of understanding it. (Some can see beauty in even bot flies…) Or perhaps it is simply that while all Beauty may be Truth, the set of all Truth additionally includes much that is not Beauty. Maybe old Keats was saying that we should just ignore the ugly truths and concentrate on the beautiful ones in order to be happy. Perhaps even that we should concentrate on some beautiful “truths,” in spite of the fact that they may only be true in our minds.

Unfortunately if this is so, I’m one of those annoying people that can’t ever be happy with a pretty lie when I just know that the ugly truth is out there somewhere.

I think that in many real-life situations there is no precise formula to apply so as to always arrive at the absolute truth. To my mind it is usually a process of considering all possible options, of thinking laterally as much as you can, and choosing the best, “most true” option.

When confronted with a deep question with no clear resolution, to me finding the “truth” is and must be finding the best available option that works optimally in the given context, in our consensual reality. Note that I say “our” reality, meaning the reality agreed upon by the maximum number of unbiased observers. Note that I say “unbiased” meaning not followers of any particular belief system, as this would skew results.

(To those that would say that logic, reason, and science are also a belief system, my reply is “Yes, they’re the only one that gets real-world results, which is why I chose them over yours in the first place.”)

Getting back to religion as an example, if I were to choose a particular faith instead of my agnosticism and claim it to be true to the world and to myself, then I would be invalidating all the other many faiths by my choice of that one. I’d be saying that not only is my God true, but that all the other Gods are false. Yet, I can find no justification for doing this that doesn’t also work in the opposite direction, if I for example happened to be a believer in one of the other faiths instead of the one that I chose. This therefore to me seems a very bigoted and inherently flawed method of finding the truth. It seems mere wishful thinking, when you really look at it. The simpler and I think more “true” choice for someone like me in this situation is by default to reject all religions as highly unlikely, since there is not one that stands out as any “truer” than any other one, and to look back to consensual reality again for my answers. After all, none of the world’s religions are “necessarily” true, and indeed none of them have any real-world evidence of being true, except to someone that is already a believer in one of them and is therefore willing to accept the word of other heavily-biased believers or the evidence of their own biased feelings as their “proof” in lieu of actual verifiable evidence.

So what is Truth? To me the Truth is a word whose meaning is particular to the situation and context, because it is an indicator of the “least false option of all available options” and not some metaphysical absolute. Telling the truth as you know it may still not be telling the Truth. There is more responsibility to it than that. One must educate one’s self adequately in the given contextual paradigm in order to select the truest option, and if you haven’t done that, ignorance is no excuse. And one must doubt in all things, especially in one’s self, for the truth to eventually be revealed to you.

You have to learn to see the truth before you can tell it.

And to some people, that’s the hardest thing in the world.