Table of Contents to this Blog

Sections may have more than one post:

Thoughts and Things: Essay on Owen Barfield (2007)
Recovery of Honor: A long essay or a short book (1996)
Conversion: several posts on being received into the Catholic Church (2005)
Intelligent Design --- several posts (2006)
Miscellaneous--- Aliens: Mothers and Others (2005)
Atheism Lite (Dec 10, 2006) -- Dawkins, Dalrymple et al
New World Order (2006) -- John McMurtry's "Value Wars," casino gambling, economy, etc.
~~The New Sabbatarianism, Parts I and II
Desert Fathers, Philokalia-- Nov. 26, 2006
Catholicism and Islam
~~Regensburg vs. Hagia Sophia Oct. 25, 2006
~~The Last Katechon Oct. 28, 2006
~~The Last Katechon, Part II Nov. 4, 2006
~~Return of the Republic Nov. 11, 2006
~~Gadflies and Angry Hornets Nov. 19, 2006

Autobiographical - Oct. 22, 2006

Peak Oil
~~This Week's Must-Read Article Oct. 15, 2006
~~Angles through Peak Oil aug. 19, 2006

Natural Law
~~Annual Scarpa Conference Sept 15, 2006

Geocentrism -- electric universe, big bang, physical theory, Dirac's equation, etc.
~~The Case for Geocentrism Sept 10, 2006
~~Geocentrism Two: The Big Bang is a Big Bust Sept 22, 2006
~~Recovering the Moral Law through Physics (Parts I-IV)

Zionism --- several posts, Summer, 2006

Toynbee
~~The Universal State Jan 13, 2007
~~Universal Churches
~~Etherealization Jan. 21, 2007
~~Dissing Toynbee Feb. 8, 2007
~~Para-doxa Mar 4, 2007
~~The Tears of Things Mar 10, 2007

Anthroposophy and Versalvere
~~Hanging Man July 2006
~~Challenging Materialistic Science Oct 11, 2006

Versalvere (Essay-retrospective on poetic inspiration and spiritual science) June, 2006

One of these days I'll try to figure out how to make links.

Owen Barfield

Thoughts and Things – Reviving Liber Naturalis
http://mindbodypolitic.com/?p=562
Posted November 15, 2007


Owen Barfield is remembered today mainly as the friend of C.S. Lewis – who called him ‘the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.’ Barfield’s own contributions to the understanding of the history of Western thought have not been as widely recognized. A solicitor by profession, Owen Barfield was a sometime member of the ‘Inklings,’ along with others including J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. Lewis, Tolkien and Williams all labored in the vineyard of the Christianized imagination. For Charles Williams, only those who possess imagination can really grip the action in the drama of life. In viewing imagination as a form of ‘Power’ or ‘Realization,’ Williams’ esoteric-occult novels veer into a moral ambiguity which is contained in the exalted tension of his amorous and subtle Christianity. But the idea of ‘justification by imagination’ has forcibly entered our cultural nexus without this Christian tension, where, as a purely secularized theory of art – or even nowadays, of government – it has been destructive.

Barfield’s work in the imagination was of more philosophical kind. As he once put it – “Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good.” The truths he quested for in language, philosophy, philology, history, and science were framed in short, dense argumentative books of philosophical meditation. His first, Poetic Diction, published in 1928, was dedicated to Lewis with the motto ‘Opposition is true friendship.’ The two friends argued at length over the role of the imagination, which Barfield believed could lead to truth, but Lewis said should be viewed as a way of meaning.

Barfield’s preoccupations with the imagination arose out of his experience with poetry which, he says, can lead to ‘a felt change of consciousness’ and to ‘the making of meaning which makes true knowledge possible.’ The most detailed part of Poetic Diction comprises the historical study of the uses of particular words by particular poets. “Today,” he remarks, “a man cannot utter a dozen words without wielding the creations of a hundred named and nameless poets.” The emphasis on historical study attracted the attention of the historian John Lukacs, who called Barfield “the most important philosopher of the 20th century” and whose concept of historical consciousness is consonant with Barfield’s historical-evolutionary perspective.

Barfield’s most important book is Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, which appeared in the US in 1965. Whereas previously he had before devoted his attention to the historical study of language and of poetry, in Saving the Appearances he argues on the basis of the historical study of science. But once again he was met the fate of being overshadowed, this time because of Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which had taken the intellectual world by storm in 1962. This book made an important contribution to the historical study of science by addressing the role of the larger community in fostering or providing hospitality to certain ideas. Unfortunately it was adopted by people who wanted to dethrone the idea of the objectivity of standards of truth. Adherents of cultural studies and social constructivism used this first shoot of the participatory idea as a battering-ram against science and scholarship. As James Franklin put it in the New Criterion (2000) “… the worst effect of Kuhn … has been the frivolous discarding of the way things are as a constraint on the theory about the way things are.”

I doubt there are many thinkers in the history of this world whose followers have all been beyond reproach. There are an infinite number of ways in which ideas may be misused. Liberals err when they downgrade standards in favor of participation, and conservatives likewise err when they exalt objectivity in order to deride participation. In such a situation one is apt to echo the biblical saying – the very stones cry out! What can reconcile objectivity and participation? Has anyone tried? If so, who? And how is it to be done? And why is it important?

The term ‘saving the appearances’ has its historical genesis in astronomy. The ‘appearances’ of classical astronomy accounted for the celestial movements; the question of whether these theories or conjectures were literally true was not so much at issue. This question had to wait for the Scientific Revolution – indeed it was that revolution, and much of Barfield’s exposition is devoted to the explication of the mental background both before and after this salient “transposition of the mind.”

Saving the Appearances examines the development of science primarily as the story of man’s changing relationship to Nature, especially with respect to man’s awareness of participation. Which is to say, Barfield is an evolutionist but not a Darwinian, and his view of evolution is closer to what some might call “religion,” although it is very far in certain respects from what most people think about when they think about religion. Barfield’s evolutionary change-agent is the Logos, which has an “objective” side (the phenomena) and an interior or subjective one (consciousness) with both sides correlative one to the other.

Science emphasizes the fact that the world it investigates – the atomic physical structure of matter – is not the same as the familiar world we are accustomed to. In fact this investigated world is radically other. “It depends upon what ‘is’ is,” said our former President Clinton, in one epigrammatic mouthful summarizing the gulf that has widened between the received world and the investigated world. This widening gulf has brought the whole area of predication into question—of saying that something ‘is.’ For if the real world is only energy or matter in motion, all that appears in the received or commonly experienced world is chance, happenstance, disconnected spectacle or the result of force. It doesn’t have any necessary logic to it. It’s not inherent to the circumstances nor necessary to the outcome. Nothing participates in anything else; nothing participates in Being. Thus to make the statement, “A horse is an animal,” is suspect. For how can a horse participate in animal-hood, indeed what is animal-hood but a mental construction or imposition of ours?

On the other hand, modern philosophy since Kant has attempted to come to the rescue of the realness of the world by stressing the participation of human beings in the creation, or rather evocation, of the phenomena. It is a way of saying that what we think is there is not really there, but we can do nothing otherwise than suppose it to be there. It’s a big supposition, and our cultural heritage was not built upon so fragile a basis. Nor may it be able to persist with such meager provender for long. As Barfield once observed, “In the long run, we shall not be able to save souls without saving the appearances, and it is an error fraught with the most terrible consequences to imagine that we shall.”

Barfield states that his purpose in writing Saving the Appearances was to draw attention to the consequences arising from “the hastily expanded sciences” of the 19th and 20th centuries. The more we go back into the past, the more human utterance and testimony about the world has a mythological character. We believe that the received world is not real; our ancestors believed in the super-reality of the received. Nevertheless, it is obvious with our ancestors no less than with us that people everywhere engage with and participate in transforming sensations into ‘things,’ and this transforming activity is taught, imitated, and passed on through language and culture in a multitude of ways, whether as mythology, storytelling, science, or philosophy, etc.

This is the participatory premise, and it is basically the common sense theory of perception. But it raises problems. There are several options for an honest dealing with these problems – the multitude of way for dishonest dealing with it we will not explore at the moment. Let us review some of these options:

(1) We can acknowledge that the relation between man and nature has undergone vast changes, and that what ancient people testified about the world was indeed true, not just of their perception and thought, but what they perceived and thought about, that is, of the world itself. Therefore, what they say in regards to the creation of the world by God and the actions of angels and spiritual beings in the world, etc., should be seriously taken into account. In order to gain a true picture of the world, the modern picture of evolution would have to be counterbalanced by the testimony of the ancients regarding Creation. That is to say, we would have to take not only their words but also their phenomena into account when embarking on any description of the world prior to the entrance on the scene of ‘our’ phenomena, that is, circa the 1600’s. This is the fullest accounting, and it would demand a radical revisioning of our view of human history and of almost all of our ordinary opinions.

(2) We can deny that there has been any change in the relation of man and world, or consciousness and phenomena, and that things have always been more or less what they are today. It follows, therefore, that our way of viewing things is the only right way. However, denial at this highly conscious level (it happens all the time subconsciously and dishonestly) would be pretty strenuous, since it would involve throwing out almost our entire culture heritage, or at least certainly any deeper relation to it or participation in it (e.g. religious worship.) This is the de facto position taken by Richard Dawkins and others popularizers of atheism. This strategy basically says that our ancestors were crazy. Thus Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, who wrote that “the gods were amalgams of admonitory experiences, made of meldings of whatever commands had been given to the individual.” In other words, the ancients were possessed – insane!

(3) Maybe it is we ourselves – post-Scientific Revolution, post-Cartesian men – who are crazy. (And which of us has never had this thought?) But this is also difficult, for it would involve dispensing with the real gains of modern science. No many people would volunteer for this option, and it has never really been an option in the Modern Age.

(4) If we acknowledge the reality of our phenomena, and deny that either we or our ancestors are insane, how did our perceptions arise? Did they evolve out of the perceptions of earlier human beings or were they just invented? This whole area of differing cultural perceptions and value judgments (or not) has become a huge area of contemporary discourse, and it certainly relates to the issues in the evolution of consciousness pioneered by Barfield.

Thus we find questions and riddles at whatever end we try to grab the stick, and somehow we get the feeling that the stick is shaking us—and that we are in its grip, not the reverse.

Modern physics tells us that the normal, familiar world that we take for granted is comprised of atoms, particles, waves, or just ‘energy.’ To be sure, even these words are cumbersome; they are just ways we have of trying to picture something that cannot be pictured. They comprise the ‘unrepresented’ background of our perceptions. But, if this ‘unrepresented’ background is all that is believed to exist independently of our perceptions, what is the foreground, what is the ‘represented’ or the ‘appearances’ of the world? Trees, houses, cars, faces of people, the singing of birds, this paper – in other words, the received or familiar world. If the phenomena of the world are ‘energetic’ in essence, but this essence is nonpicturable and nonrepresentational, then the world we picture, live in, talk about is, in fact, what he calls “a system of collective representations.” These ‘collective representations’ are the result of our activity, however far back in the past the process may have gotten started and however long the time involved in the transmission of learning about these things is that we call society or culture.

Barfield uses the term figuration to mean the activity that converts sensations into things, that is, as the work of the percipient mind in constructing the world of recognizable and nameable objects, the ‘familiar world.’ It should be said at the outset that Barfield is not going with this where the post-modernists have been going with it – e.g. that “The world is a huge collection of communally-evolved customs of interpretation” (Don Cupitt) or like President Clinton’s statement about the ‘is,’ quoted earlier. Such views are symptomatic of the fact that, for people today, the first glimmerings of participation are apt to be accompanied by confused thinking. Indeed, Barfield comments, “It is characteristic of our phenomena… that our participation in them, and therefore their representational nature, is excluded from our immediate awareness.”
When we gain the first dawning awareness of participation, we are apt to forget our long learning and mutual living with them. It was through the labor of being – our own, and theirs. Our own awareness of them is the testament to their real existence, as their existence is the testament of ours. The world is more than communally-evolved customs because we are dependent upon it for our very being. It is easy to forget the water of life when you are not thirsty. Forgetfulness slides over into habits, habits into taking for granted, taking for granted into not noticing how perceptions and thoughts arise, and sooner or later you end up with real epistemological consequences.

Some years ago I stumbled across a quote which perfectly expresses the alienated character of our appearances, and of how much has been forgotten of the “labor of being.” From Memory’s Ghost by Philip J. Hilts, the passage is a quote from the psychologist Robert Ornstein:

"...There is no color in nature, no sounds, no tastes. It is a
cold, quiet, colorless affair outside us…It is we who transform molecules… these
things are dimensions of human experience, not dimensions of the world
outside…We don’t actually experience the outside world—we grab at only a very
refined portion of it, a portion selected for the purposes of
survival...."

To preface this remarkable passage with the words “There is…” for the purpose of declaring a magisterial “There is not…” to everything we experience in the world is certainly an act of philosophic contortionism. It does not follow that because I am aware that the human contribution to that trilling sound I hear tells me bird — which by the way is only a way of saying this is its name — that this ‘bird’ is merely a “dimension of human experience.” This is a picture of joyless and unbridgeable subjectivism. It is further remarkable for a psychologist to have written it. Apparently he accepts the existence of a self without argument while omitting to mention that learning the names of things and experiencing them is how we acquire a self in the first place.

It is probably true that we do not pay attention to our figuration, which most of the time has receded into mere habit. And for that matter even a molecule is the result of an historical development, and is therefore ‘participated’ to some extent, so that calling a bird a molecule just postpones the reckoning with participation and only adds a whole new layer of obfuscation. But this is a very silly example of the tricks that are resorted to in the name of a science that has not decided whether its mission is to eliminate participation or to understand the natural world. That we have reached such a point of absurdity is in large part the purpose of Saving the Appearances to show and, if possible, begin to disentangle.

Barfield emphasizes that the major difference between our phenomena and those of our forebears was that primitive or ancient man was aware of participation, whereas we are not aware of it – or at least, if we are aware of it we tend to disown it – just as in the example above. It is characteristic of our phenomena that they are seen as being wholly independent of us, wholly extrinsic – “clothed with the independence and extrinsicality of the unrepresented itself. But a representation, which is collectively mistaken for an ultimate—ought not to be called a representation. It is an idol. Thus the phenomena themselves are idols, when they are imagined as enjoying that independence of human perception which can in fact only pertain to the unrepresented.”

These are strong words, but they are not too strong when you recollect the nature of the modern landscape that we have created in America and are in the process of creating all over the world. Especially is this the case over the suburbanized landscape which more and more resembles a hideous excrescence of disjoint parts strung out into an extensionless void. If we do not cultivate the sustainable quality of care in our thinking, how can we expect to see it in our buildings and landscapes? The degradation of the modern landscape is the witness of the degraded quality of our inner lives and the alienated and ‘extrinsic’ character of our appearances.

Darwinistic evolutionary science arose in the 19th century, when the older medieval participatory consciousness had faded. It took for granted the purely extrinsic nature of the appearances and then attempted to treat these appearances much as astronomy treated the celestial objects, thus giving birth to a mechanistic picture of evolution. Barfield remarks that had such a science developed earlier, or even perhaps later, after 20th century physics did much to undermine materialism, we might have had a science of evolution worthy of the name –”man might have read there the story of his coming into being… of his world and his own consciousness.”

Participation is whatever in perception that is more than just sensation — ‘the extra-sensory link between man and the phenomena.’ The participatory element is supplied by our thinking and figuration and whatever elements of cultural and individual memory, language, imagination and symbolical faculty comprise our passage through the world. Many errors and much silliness might be avoided if we were to consider thinking in relation to some other of these elements, particularly two of its close etymological relatives: thanking and ‘thinging.’ Thanking, thinking, and ‘thinging’ (the making of ‘things, i.e., what Barfield calls figuration) derive from a common root. Let us look at each of these:

Under THANKS we have religion, the concept and action of grace. The heritage of thanking, gratitude, appreciation, the saying of grace, the murmur of prayer, form the foundations of the soul and build the act of thinking, and indeed, make it even possible. Before there is thinking there is a catechism, and a catechism is the art of building a structure for the soul so as to enable an opening. Thanking presupposes a structure; one has to learn how to become open. For no one can think who does open himself, and the paradigm of the opening is the communion made possible between God and man through religion. This is the sacred heritage of humanity, and precedes the appearance of individualized, and later abstract thought by many generations – by thousands of years, in fact.

It may be asked, and many are asking now, whether religion is still needed today. Who has need of a paradigm of opening when the modern world, its science, its art, its media, is so obviously self-sufficient, so obviously advanced in technique, so brilliant in its aspirations and achievements, and there is so much money to be made? Maybe a paradigm of opening would be a retarding force… religion as opiate of the masses, the consolation of weak intellects, the sleeping-pill of the feel-goods and the do-goods and the pretend-to-be-goods. Criticism of religion is often made and is sometimes justified, but on the other hand secular modernity has not reached the end of its lease, and there are peculiar signs of historical stagnation, of spiritual barrenness or intellectual decadence, behind all the glitter of our civilization. So perhaps the paradigm of the opening is not so antiquated after all. It may perhaps be related to a mysterious faculty for creativity in history.

Under THINKING there is no need to repeat the history of philosophy, poetry, and culture. Everyone has his or her own story, his or her own way of connecting to it, adding on to it, or escaping from it. But it cannot be an abstract story, not if it is to have any life in it, and that life is the THINGING, the realm of the phenomena, the ‘things’ that we say that are. Our thinking, ultimately and eventually, becomes thinging – the circumstances, the look and feel of things, the history. Yet we do not really perceive the entire picture, because it happens over a long period of time. Our thinking is a sort of vacuuming — roaring around the world re-ordering, classifying, using, calculating, strategizing, building, conquering… Maybe our thinking is actually this noise, and we are not really very much aware of the THANKS feeding it or the THINGS issuing from it – or of the ‘thanks’ and the ‘things’ feeding and issuing from past and previous interchanges with thinking over a long period of history, with which we are also in a perpetual exchange.

So from the hysterical rants of the modern atheists to the unreal mathematized abstractions of economists and cosmologists, our modern cognition has become the counter-image of ancient participation. Whereas the ancient gesture was the opening, the modern gesture is the clenched fist, the frown, the circumscribed problem – carefully defined, carefully delineated so that extraneous considerations need not apply. It lacks grace but makes up in accuracy. Only there is something wrong with the way this equation is stated, for grace and accuracy belong to the world equally – the true living world, the human world, the given world of mankind and living nature as well as to the divine world.

So that perhaps the phrase “a gain in accuracy” is not quite the right formulation. But there has been an increase of individual self-consciousness, as well as of social power and control, that has come about through the gradual usurpation of Logos and its degradation into mere “intellectualism.” To the extent that this development in time of self-consciousness – which Barfield terms the “evolution of consciousness” — is to the good, it has supported attainment of greater freedom, more independence and self-knowledge. Everything has its place, purpose and power. But the other hand, where this decline of Logos to intellect and depletion of participation to selfhood has issued into a glorification of power for its own sake, then there is something that may be judged, there is something that must be warned against. It can be called an occult transgression, or wrong use of a natural development. It steals from Nature unlawfully – it steals and it does not sustain or restore or reintegrate. This stealing or “theft of Logos” is the great sinful secret of the Modern Age, and lies at the root of almost all its manifestations. As, for example, Simone Weil once put it, the idea of the dignity of labor is the only idea we have not borrowed from the ancient Greeks. But it is from such an idea that we can begin again to construct a notion of the labor of being and of a new form of participation.

But in the meantime, it is only the sheer weight of the so-called masses that provides the countervailing force against the giddy spin of this occult transgression of the mental elites. Whether the masses will in time gain the ability to think, and I mean along the lines that I am suggesting – thinking accompanied with thanking and ‘thinging’ — a new whole and fully participated thinking – on that the future of the world depends.

And this kind of thinking is a participated thinking, concerning which Barfield remarks: “The plain fact is, that all the unity and coherence of nature depends on participation of one kind or another. If therefore man succeeds in eliminating all original participation, without substituting any other, he will have done nothing less than to eliminate all meaning and coherence from the cosmos.” So it is quite right to speak of the world’s future in the context of the development of human thought. Knowledge of this correlation of consciousness and phenomena, the mutual coexistence of thoughts and things, is an urgently needed course-correction for today. We urgently need a new “saving the appearances” – not for the heavens but for the earth.

Conversion

Reflections on my journey to Rome


In medias res

October 9 -2005
The holy tears . . . Today at Mass at St. Colman's. I had attended Quaker Meeting at 10 AM at Radnor and then went to the 12 Noon Mass at St. Colman's. My feelings about the Quakers are complicated, but it is now certain that while their intentions are pure, and I appreciate their anti-militarism, these virtues alone are not sufficient. This protestantized world seems so sad, with people lacking access to the Holy Ritual to take them out of themselves. Thank God no one mentioned the Catholic Scandals in today's Meeting: I don't think I could have stood it. I have avoided going to the Meeting ever since the Scandals broke, and the newspaper has been full of it. Today a few people shared good feelings - I mean, one mentioned that it was the time of Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah, and the recent earthquake which killed 20,000 people in Kashmir... and then another woman mentioned a recent religious event where a priest, a rabbi and an imam had all gotten together and affirmed that they all worshipped the One God, and how inspiring that was for her. I was reminded of a passage I had underlined in Georges Bernanos' book, The Diary of a Country Priest---
"Comforting truths, they call it! Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards. Besides, you've no right to call that sort of thing comfort. Might as well talk about condolences! The Word of God is a red-hot iron..."
The speaker, the Curé of Torcy, describes the kind of priest who preaches the "comforting truths" -- "who descends from his pulpit...with a mouth like a hen's vent, a little hot but pleased with himself, he's not been preaching: at best he's been purring like a tabby-cat." Most of the Quaker witness I have heard this past year have been little more than the purrings of a tabby-cat. Is it any wonder that I have sought the Catholics?

Radnor Meeting is a beautiful old meeting house in the suburban green land, with a hillside full of graves behind it and well-tended trees. St. Colman's, by contrast, is in Ardmore - a beautiful old church, to be sure, but with no green around it, only pavement and parking lot, and across the street a string of automobile sales yards, the new and used cars sporting American flags. Certainly this is no beautiful setting. But to enter this Church and attend this Mass is to be in another order of reality altogether. It felt to be not only in a different world from the Quakers, but on a different planet. And yet this is not true, for the Quaker Meeting and the Catholic Mass exist or rather co-exist in this world and in this same city.

Two weeks ago, when the Grand Jury report was put out and the Philadelphia Inquirer leapt at the opportunity it provided to -- once again -- take up the cudgels against the Catholic Faith, Father Tadeusz Pacholoczyk conducted the Mass. He gave a long homily, first apologizing --"for I have much to share with you today." His talk was pew-gripping intelligent -- not glossing over the problems of the sexual abuse scandals, but not omitting mention either of the anti- Catholic sentiments fomented in the way the press handled them. He managed to weave a good bit of history and theology into his remarks; I felt I was witness of a long and ongoing drama, of a story that had been told before, confronted before, atoned before. "Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church..." The Catholic Church has always known itself to be the Church of sinners: it has always clasped this knowledge of human negation, so to speak, to itself. It was something the Jews refused to grasp, and the Protestants negated. Protestantism is thus, in a manner of speaking, a kind of double negation. It is primarily a negation of Catholicism, and, being in effect a form of negation, it let slip the firewalls which Catholicism had erected concerning the knowledge of sin -- the original negation. A double negative is thus not a positive; it is only a contortion. I think this explains many of our woes today, from the abuse of our land to the abuses of our politics. More on these matters in time.

I was, in fact, overwhelmed, by Father Tad's homily; and afterwards, when we were streaming out, I gripped his hand and practically shouted in his face: "Wonderful, wonderful! I felt like clapping!" He was at first taken aback but then he smiled when he understood my import, and gave me his blessing.

Indeed this young priest -- he is perhaps 35 or 40 -- is a star -- or so I feel the term is not amiss when describing the presence of a spiritualized intelligence. Father Tad, Ph.D. is on the staff of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and lives, when in Philadelphia, at the St. Colman's Rectory. Indeed, St. Colman's is richly blessed in its priests. Father Sherwood is often present at the RCIA sessions which I attend, conducted by Deacon Shaeffer and his wife. There is in addition Father Wright, who is retired, but still conducts Masses; and a Father Maloney who assists on weekends. All of these priests, as well as the Deacon and his wife, as well as the women lay readers during the services, impress me with their devotion and faithfulness. No one has ever struck a false note or said a false thing. Every Mass I have attended has been conducted with beauty, truthful simplicity and honor.

In short, I have found a faithful Catholic parish two miles from my home. I am utterly thankful for this miracle.


Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity -- an important book in my conversion stages. Some quotes:

... The most fundamental feature of Christian faith ...is,namely, its personal character. Christian faith is more than the option in favor of a spiritual ground to the world; its central formula is not 'I believe in something,' but 'I believe in you.'

...Christianity... put itself resolutely on the side of truth and turned its back on a conception of religion satisfied to be mere outward ceremonial that in the end can be interpreted to mean anything one fancies... what can go on existing only through interpretation has in reality ceased to exist... The logos of the whole world, the creative original thought, is at the same time love; in fact this thought is creative because, as thought, it is love, and, as love, it is thought. It becomes apparent that truth and love are originally identical; that where they are completely realized they are not two parallel or even opposing realities but one, the one and only absolute... To this extent one could very well describe Christianity as a philosophy of freedom... the Christian option for the logos means an option for the personal, creative meaning [and] ... at the same time an option for the primacy of the particular as against the universal. . . But if the logos of all being, the being that upholds and encompasses everything, is consciousness, freedom, and love, then it follows... that the supreme factor in the world is not cosmic necessity but freedom. The implications of this are very extensive. For this leads to the conclusion that freedom is evidently the necessary structure of the world... and this again means that one can only comprehend the world as incomprehensible...For if the supreme point in the world's design is a freedom that upholds, wills, knows, and loves... then this means that together with freedom the incalculability implicit in it is an essential part of the world.. With the boldness and greatness of a world defined by the structure of freedom there comes also the somber mystery of the demonic, which emerges from it to meet us...As the arena of love [the world] is also the playground of freedom and also incurs the risk of evil. It accepts the mystery of darkness for the sake of the greater light constituted by freedom and love . . .

... The doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God.... it developed out of the effort to digest historical experience. ..God stands above singular and plural. he bursts both categories... To him who believes in God as tri-une, the highest unity is not the unity of inflexible monotony...... When it becomes clear that the being of Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a being 'from' and 'toward,' which nowhere clings to itself and nowhere stands on its own, then it is also clear at the same time that this being is pure relation (not substantiality) and, as pure relation, pure unity..... The 'I' is simultaneously what I have completely and what least of all belongs to me...

...to understand him as the Christ means to be convinced that he has put himself into his word... he has identified himself so closely with his word that 'I' and word are indistinguishable; he is word. In the same way, his work is nothing else than the unreserved way in which he merges himself into this very work; he performs himself and gives himself; his work is the giving of himself...


... From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the most profound sense to himself, not through what he does, but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift. It cannot be 'made' on own's own, without anyone else; one must wait for it, let it be given to one. And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved...If he declines to let himself be presented with this gift, then he destroys himself.Activity that makes itself into an absolute, that aims at achieving humanity by its own efforts alone, is in contradiction with man's being... The primacy of acceptance is not meant to condemn man to passivity... On the contrary, it alone makes it possible to do the things of this world in a spirit of responsibility, yet at the same time in an uncramped, cheerful, free way, and to put them at the service of redemptive love.

The disinterested character of simple adoration is man's highest possibility; it alone forms his true and final liberation.


Cor ad cor loquitur


October, 2005

"Heart unto heart speaketh . . ." This is how to call a posting about the Jews. Only the deepest to the deepest, truth to truth.

Last summer I had a short-term employment as an editor in a college publications office. On my first day L. showed me around campus. We got to talking about city life. He was concerned about the education of his children, so he and his wife and family had moved to the suburbs, although they preferred living in the city. "You wouldn't consider a Catholic school?" I murmured. He seemed to start inwardly, "No... we are Jewish," he remarked, as if to say that being Jewish meant that the idea of sending one's kids to a Catholic school was simply unthinkable, beyond any bounds of possibility.

My position, although temporary, turned out to be even more temporary than I had thought. I was hired for four weeks and fired after two weeks. My boss, a Swiss woman living in the U.S., went seemingly overnight from an encouraging and friendly colleague to a venomous and heartless tyrant. To this day I still have no idea what I did to displease her so. At the final meeting, L. was in the room, and I recall whispering half-aloud - while this woman boss was sitting across from me, lashing me for my mistakes and saying how she didn't have the time for me -- "It is God's will." I don't know why I said it but I felt, rather than saw, L., sitting to my left, make an inward shudder, a gesture of recognition, of hearing, of assent. I felt a deep bond with him - a bond I have so often felt with truly faithful Jews.

These two reactions are very charcteristic. In the first, L. could not conceive of his Jewishness other than as a form of ethnicity. In the second case, he experienced the reality of the God in whom both Christians and Jews believe. The first case was ideological, a kind of programmed ethnicity; the second case was real and experiential. It had burst the bounds of the program to touch his deepest heart. It was real life, heart speaking to heart.

These two experiences describe for me the paradoxical nature of the Jews. Perhaps the Jewish heaviness is indeed, being divided between these two alternatives, and being unable to find the true third way, the mediating way - of being true to oneself without becoming frozen into the mold of ethnicity. Zionism has exploited this sad contradiction and irresolution of Jews to declare who they are. Lack of clarity and spiritual purpose always leaves one open to the invasion of demonic beings, and in this case the invading being is perhaps one of the worst, perhaps the worst. Zionism is the worst of both worlds -- the secularized Jew who does not want to be set-aside in an ethnic ghetto, and a religious Jew who has been unable to find the true religion and has been fashioning a religion of himself, his race, his nation, his people, complete with historical footnotes, victimology, suffering.

Once the Jew ceased to universalize his God and share him with all people, this God went inside and turned into Satan. The Jew suffers from a periodic, recurrent, historic inability to be true to himself. But when they do waken to themselves and are faithful, they can be counted among the very greatest of souls.


Whole and part


Catholics tell me that Catholicism is the 'fullness' of Christian truth, the 'fullness' of the faith. I was pondering this as I sat today in a weekday Mass. If you take a drop of water or a grain of salt and split the water-drop or slice through the grain, the molecular structure remains intact, and it is not true to say that half the water-drop or a fragment of salt is less than water or less than salt. This is the nature of matter or of material substance.

But the same is not true of spiritual truth - and the echo of this can be heard in the oath that is sworn in a court of law, "the truth, the whole truth, so help me God." It is not possible to take away anything from truth and have it maintain its character as truth. To remove the slightest bit of it, to twist a word from a plain meaning to an obscure one, to add something to it which does not belong to it, to shade the context with diverting or irrelevant details or aspersions of bad faith, covert motives, interests not subjected to open inquiry -- all these things undermine the possibility of truth. And actually truth remains in a mysterious ether, an atmosphere or aura of good faith between men - or at least the possibility of this good faith. Ultimately spiritual truth is bathed in this aura of Mystery - and even the truth, the whole truth, the truth of the material witness, the truth of the material world - depends upon it.

Men think that by stripping away to the very roots of the material world they will arrive at the truth they seek. Our culture has been consecrated, so to speak, to this task. But it is actually an anti-consecration, a kind of cursing of matter, a condemnation of matter to material disintegration. What this act of anti-consecration means is that modern men have lost the flexibility of thought to move from the material to the immaterial realm. Thinking is a spiritual act, and they have the spiritual means of thinking but they have lost all knowledge of the guidance of a spiritual force. So a spiritual force not guided by spiritual principles becomes anti-spiritual. It becomes demonic.

Before the splitting of the atom in 1945, I believe that the material world lay under a kind of protection, so that the despiritualization of human thinking did not penetrate to the roots of life. But now we are in the midst of this despiritualization. The havoc lies all around us, in our culture, our landscape, our politics, our lack of loyalty to anything. There are times when I come close to a great despair in humanity. It's not that no one cares. They care, but they cannot listen. They don't know how. The instrument of thinking has to be attuned to the ether in order for listening to become possible - somewhere, deep within man, this instrument has to vibrate with the whole truth. This is not to say that the 'whole truth' can be known. But somehow it must be felt, or believed, in a living core of incorruptible faith. But this living core has been squelched for modern man. Perhaps this is the real meaning of Modernity - that the core of faith should be shut up in a dank basement labelled the 'Unconscious,' full of unclean spirits that feed off of it in the darkness.

It is not by unburying the Unconscious that we reclaim the whole of ourselves but by the restoration of the fullness at the core of faith.




"The renunciation of truth does not heal man."--Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance

"...The teachers of the Church unfold the classic view...of the fact that man was not shut out from the Tree of Life until after he had maneuvered himself into a position that was not appropriate by eating from the Tree of Knowledge... for man to be immortal in this condition would indeed be perdition... There are indeed final boundaries we cannot cross without turning into agents of the destruction of creation itself." God and the World

"...when Christianity is taken away, archaic powers of evil that had been banished by Christianity suddenly break loose again." Salt of the Earth (1996)

Santayana on the Spirit: "...the Nicene Creed tells us the Son was begotten not made, that is to say, came through an inner impulse, without plan or foresight, from the substance of the Father... ... the novel fact of human existence is passion of the spirit. "This passion would certainly not have overcome the spirit in heaven, where the harmony between powers and form is perfect, and life is ever at its topmost, ecstasy - as in the God of Aristotle. But that is sheer myth; and as matter can exist only in some form , so Spirit can exist only incarnate in the flux of matter and form... Passion is therefore inseparable from Spirit in its actual existence, and exposes it to perpetual obscuration and suffering."

Its degradation: "Obscuration and suffering bring temptations with them, and spirit is tempted... to love evil and be content with lies... to deny matter; to despise form; and to pose itself the only power... and arbiter of truth...But this is itself the greatest of lies and the sin of the spirit against its own vocation. Spirit proceeds, and is always proceeding, from the Father and the Son . . . It was not the Holy ghost that denied his dependence on the Father and the Son; it was Lucifer. and Lucifer merely lost his brightness and became Satan..."


Salvation

Vere dignum et justum est, æquum et salutáre
-"It is truly meet and just, right and for our salvation"

- What is salvation?-- October 15, 2005


Salvation! What a load of history this word bears for Western man - as though salvation or the desire for it were the very engine of our history itself. True, the horizon of salvation, or rather the thirst for salvation, has been gradually disappearing in modern times. Modernity is the desire for salvation and history to coincide, which is to say, modernity is the ambition to do away with the supernatural horizon of salvation, or to empty salvation of its supernatural content. The traditional anchors of this supernatural content, Hell, Heaven, and Limbo, have been pushed beneath the frontiers of consciousness. They no longer correspond to any real sense of place in the cosmos, but they do continue to eke out a small living in the moral sphere, like the Salvation Army.

It is an interesting question, and one asked by far better minds than my own, whether history can continue to exist unless it can coexist with a concept of salvation which is beyond history, outside of history. That is to say, can man continue to exist as man unless he also coexists? This seems to be the battle arena of our time. As Pope Benedict XVI once wrote, "Even Adorno said that there can be justice only if there is a resurrection of the dead, so that past wrongs can be settled retroactively, as it were. There must, in other words, somewhere, somehow, be a settling of injustices, the victory of justice." [From his conversation with Peter Seewald, in Salt of the Earth,1996.]

Putting the same thing more boldly and dramatically, George Bernanos once commented that "the thirst for justice will lay waste the world." That is because man's thirst for justice refers to the coexisting supernatural in him. Take away the supernatural coexistent and all that frustrated energy pours into the heart and soul of man, creating rancorous reverberations and resonances at every turn.

We live in such society now,which George Orwell depicted as the "Two-Minute Hate" of the totalitarian tyranny of 1984. We see the "Two-Minute Hate" principle applied to Catholics as a matter of course, and other targets and groups as needed. We have in this world a media, television and newspapers, which can disseminate these rancorous messages all day every day - although they are not called rancorous messages but "news." This is old hat. But it is always good to get reminders, such as Simone Weil's "The whole intellectual climate of our age favors the growth and multiplication of vacuous entities," or her comment on the intellectual decadence of our civilization: we are "almost incapable of applying elementary principles of rational thought -- e.g. loss of use of the elements of intelligence: ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends."

The loss of the idea of salvation has often been correlated with the rise of ideological this-world salvational movements --e.g. "Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God it becomes, not divine, but demonic." [Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance] But too few people correlate the loss of the supernatural with the decline of thinking. This is because the people who do the thinking in society have no interest in such pursuits. For "... the intellectuals, especially academics, are fascinated by power," Paul Johnson reminds us, in his book Intellectuals(1988).

Intellectual man is the heir of religious man. But he would rather not be an heir but a ruler in his own right, dispelling all secrets [cf. Johnson: "It is one of the characteristics of the intellectual to believe that secrets, especially in sexual matters, are harmful."] with the exception of the shameful -- to him - secret of his own origin.

Declaration and Commemoration

November 20, 2005.

Today at Radnor Friends Meeting I made my announcement or declaration that I was taking steps to become a member of the Roman Catholic Faith. While sitting in the silent meeting meditating about what I would say, or whether indeed I would get up to say anything, I felt some fear and uncertainty. I knew that there was some anti-Catholic sentiment in at least a few of the Friends, though more as a subcurrent or mood than as a conscious or principled decision. Indeed, anti-Catholicism is the subcurrent mood of Protestant or ex-Protestant society in general; the general tenor was established in the 1550's and only increased in the revolutionary events of the 1600's and the so-called Enlightenment. It seemed to be the craze to subtract from God or from all the things that had heretofore carried society, as if by a process of subtraction and denigration, an addition and heightening of mankind would mysteriously turn up on the other side of the equation.

One has to ask: was it necessary, in the development of rationality and science, for this absurd balance-sheet attitude toward the relation of God and man to have gotten started? For the experiment is still going on, although it has entered a self-contradictory and even suicidal phase. Perhaps in essence that is what 'rationality' is: it is that in us which always sails perilously close to fixation, and it is only through a conversion experience of some kind that we escape shipwreck.

Still, I need not have worried about speaking. Afterwards a number of people came up to me and said how much they appreciated my sharing my religious journey. "That's what it's about - sharing the journey, walking the talk." The Quakers proved themselves most worthy of their name -Friends.

I should not fail to mention also that after I had spoken, another Friend got up to add on to what I had said. I had never seen this lady before; apparently, she was a visitor. She spoke most intelligently and appropriately about how the outlawing of Catholic churches in England in the 1500's had created a number of people who felt a loss, who felt that they missed the old services, and that George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, had perhaps appealed to these lost former Catholics in his message and preaching. This made complete sense to me; in fact, I wondered that I had not thought of it before. It seemed providential in a way that this lady had visited the Radnor congregation today - she was from Ithaca, New York. How do you explain that my message of conversion to Catholicism was received with all cordiality of spirit amongst these people, and that in fact it found an answering chord in this visitor who just happened to be present on this day?

I learned in Meeting today that our Radnor Friend, and my personal friend, Louis Hepburn, had died. There is to be a memorial service for him this afternoon. Louis was a warm presence in that meeting and a welcoming person to me. I had looked for him when I came in this morning.



Invasion of the Ultra-Subtle
October 25 - 2005


One purpose of cultivating true religion is to teach instincts how to function as protections, so that souls may turn the invasions of the ultra-subtle to learning moments rather than occasions for hapless subjection. The ultra-subtle rains continually into human life like cosmic dust, and for the most part these invasions are absorbed without conscious awareness. This arena of spiritual battle has been tucked away out of sight nowadays -- we call it the "Unconscious," and thus feel we have earned the right to ignore it. Or we pay Psychology and the Scalpels of Science explore it. Thus we relinquish our knightly task - the part of us that needs to be awake, the part that needs to fight and oppose -- the part that needs to keep the sword ever sharp and at the ready. Thus we abandon huge areas of our human experience and leave them open to the forces of devastation.

I wish to describe an infinitely small incident yesterday that took place in the question and answer session following a talk on the "ghostly tales" of Russell Kirk. An academic scholar read a long paper, lasting an hour, about Russell Kirk's literary side, and he used the term "experiments" to describe Kirk's ventures into supernatural fiction. This academic paper, competent and detailed though it was, seemed long. The mood lightened considerably when Dr. Kirk's widow spoke, telling stories and filling in some of the human background of her life with Russell Kirk, and some of the characters in his stories.

During the questions, I raised my hand and indicated that I was directing my comment to the scholar. I mentioned that I had read Kirk's Lord of the Hollow Dark, a novel of supernaturalism inspired by T.,S. Eliot's poem, The Wasteland, also Watchers of the Strait Gate, a collection of short stories. I recalled having read Dr. Kirk's introduction to said stories, in which he made the point that such fictions were "experiential." That was to say or to affirm that the encounters with mystery and supernatural were, for Russell Kirk, real experiences -- not mere "experiments."

A kind of icy shudder held for a split second, while the professor appeared to wrestle with my comment as with an invisible opponent, finally throwing it down upon the ground in a gesture of spurning rejection. I don't know if was anything that he said, or indeed if he said anything. I attest to feeling a sense of panic, fear, or rejection emanating from him. For if what I said was true, then all the professor's careful delimitation of Kirk's supernaturalism could not be true. For how can a "ghostly tale" be a mere experiment, given what Kirk himself had written, and given the premise of his tales? This premise was well stated by T.S. Eliot when he wrote something to the effect that that the authentication of religion lies in the fact that, for mankind, spiritual reality is a discovery, not an invention. An "experiment" is an invention; an experience is a discovery. The whole intellectual world stands or falls on this distinction, that is, whether or not the intellectual life is is authentic and valid. I think that the professor knew this -- "subliminally," not consciously -- and that he was profoundly chagrined that my question had "exposed" him. My question forced him for a moment to war with himself.

Mrs. Kirk, true to her Catholic upbringing and gracious sense, decisively saved the moment soon after by remarking, "That is a good point," and a palpable sigh of relief seemed to move through the room like a lifting shadow. She took the professor's own muteness from him, and rode the reproach of his unsaid words to joyous victory.

More and more I am convinced that our ultimate human fate will depend on whether or not we succeed in wresting the intellectual life from the professoriate. I believe that in this little tiny incident, Satan, or one of his minions, had come to call -- that he left us his calling card in that momentary ice, that hushed uncertainty and fearful anticipation. The moment called for a decision, and the execution of such decision is only possible for someone with trained instincts. The human and gracious religiously-cultivated goodwill of Mrs. Annette Kirk was able to cut through the fog of the soul of a man dangling in the pride of Satan - which is to say, a man unwilling to renounce his pride.

Above all Satan wants to gird the wall of intellectualism round about the experience of the spiritual world, so that there will be no intercommunion, no two-way traffic.

Much today depends upon whether the Catholics, trained in the Holy Obedience, can win through to the Holy Initiative - and whether they are truly attuned to the invasions of the ultra-subtle even in their own midst.


My 1989 and 1993 reviews of Russell Kirk's Watchers at the Strait Gate and Lord of the Hollow Dark, have been posted to the Sword in the Mouth website.

Intelligent Design

On Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design is the growing point for a new post-Darwinian science. This website contains fragmentary writings and odd postings on the subject, and occasional satirical pieces against Darwinian fundamentalism.

Intelligent Design challenges Darwinian theory at the macro-evolutionary level. As Michael Denton writes in Evolution; A Theory in Crisis – "… it does not necessarily follow that, because a certain degree of evolution has been shown to occur, therefore any degree of evolution is possible. There is obviously an enormous difference between the evolution of a color change in a moth’s wing and the evolution of an organ like the human brain, and the differences among fruit flies of Hawaii, for example, are utterly trivial compared with the differences between a mouse and an elephant, or an octopus and a bee... ."

Along with the question of scale or degree there is the question of time. Scientists are realizing that the complexity of life’s molecular structures could not have come about through trial-and-error (random chance or natural selection) as Darwin postulated.

Another major problem with Darwinian macro-evolutionary theory is that the fossil record does not confirm the existence of intermediate species, one of the pillars of the Darwinian idea that evolution comes about through small incremental changes. Macroevolution is in effect speciation, or transpecific evolution. "Species simply appear at a given point in geologic time, persist largely unchanged for a few million years and then disappear. There are very few examples – some say none – of one species gradually shading gradually into another." (New York Times Report on evolution, Nov. 5, 1980)

Another compelling dissent from the Darwinian general theory was published in the Dec. 28, 2005, issue of The American Spectator, an article that just came to my attention today. Written by mathematician Granville Sewell, "Evolution’s Thermodynamic Failure." Sewell writes: "A National Geographic article from November, 2004, proclaims that the evidence is ‘overwhelming’ that Darwin was right about evolution. Since there is no proof that natural selection has ever done anything more spectacular than cause bacteria to develop drug-resistant strains, where is the overwhelming evidence that justifies assigning to it an ability we do not attribute to any other natural force in the universe: the ability to create order out of disorder?"

These are just a few of the dissents gathering on the horizon of biological studies. I hope to post news and reflections on this site.



A Witty Mathematician

Quotes from an interview with David Berlinski, a mathematician living in Paris and supporter of Intelligent Design. Posted on a website by Jonathan Witt: www.idthefuture.com

See also: "Darwinian Doubts," by David Berlinski, Wichita Eagle, 9 March 2005: A few choice bits: "The suggestion that Darwin's theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences-- quantum electrodynamics, say -- is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen unyielding decimal places. Darwin's theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all."
"A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors and depart for Valhalla leaving no obvious descendants."

Also his "The Deniable Darwin," Commentary, 1 June 1996. (Available on www.discovery.org)
Also his review of Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable, which begins in this wise: "The theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, almost entirely useless, and the object of superstitious awe." Berlinski says of Dawkins' book: "The science throughout is primitive. Difficulties are resolved by sleight-of-hand." That Dawkins holds a Chair at Oxford is a telling reminder of the decline of Western thought.

In the following passages Berlinksi captures the vanishing quality of modern intellectual life with silken nets of wit. I am impressed with how he understands that atheism, moral relativism, and materialism basically are a form of "sentimentalism" -- see below. I think that is a deep insight.

Quotes…………
There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….

But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time.

Look, for thousands of intellectuals, becoming a Marxist was an experience of disturbing intensity. The decision having been made, the world became simpler, brighter, cleaner, clearer. A number of contemporary intellectuals react in the same way when it comes to the Old Boy – Darwin, I mean. Having renounced Freud and all his wiles, the literary critic Frederick Crews – a man of some taste and sophistication – has recently reported seeing in random variations and natural selection the same light he once saw in castration anxiety or penis envy. He has accordingly immersed himself in the emollient of his own enthusiasm. Every now and then he contributes an essay to The New York Review of Books revealing that his ignorance of any conceivable scientific issue has not been an impediment to his satisfaction...

Another example – I’ve got hundreds. Daniel Dennett has in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea written about natural selection as the single greatest idea in human intellectual history. Anyone reading Dennett understands, of course, that his acquaintance with great ideas has been remarkably fastidious.

The real mark of an ideological system is its presumptuousness.

A congeries of sentimental attitudes are at work in the humanities – atheism, moral relativism, materialism. They are incarnated locally in the United States by Richard Rorty, a philosopher, I must say, who while espousing irony as an antidote to anomie (and anything else that ails you) seems to me, at least, to exhibit an almost elephantine earnestness in everything he writes. The man could paralyze an infantry battalion just by beginning a lecture.

Naturalism is sometimes taken to mean that there is only one body of human knowledge, and that is contemporary science; at other times, it is taken to mean that there is only one method by which knowledge can be acquired, and that is the scientific method. This is a little like arguing that cabbage is the only food and that prayer is the only way to get it.

Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.

[Questioner] What is the connection between Darwinism and naturalism? …

DB: There is none – at least if by a connection, you mean a logical connection. There is, however, a sentimental connection. A commitment to naturalism, however defined, very often makes Darwin’s theory seem more plausible than it otherwise might be. Naturalism is sentimentally a sufficient condition for Darwinism. By the same token, Darwinism is sentimentally a necessary condition for naturalism. ...

The Conformity Postulate; or,

Unintelligent, Ill-Designed, and On Purpose


The huge applause that greeted Judge John E. Jones III’s decision in the Dec. 20 ruling Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board illustrates how the strength of conformity exists in inverse relation to the power of thought. The Conformity Postulate correlates with an evolutionary process which is posited to be totally mindless and random. Thus the Conformity Postulate conforms with Darwinian theory, which also perfectly corresponds with itself. No other methodology of correlation is feasible, since by definition only that which is in conformity with Darwinism can be considered science, and science is that which is only in conformity with Darwinism. Thus, mindless conformity is not only the rule but also conforms to the ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board.


The conformity postulate is thus perfectly self-serving, and unlike paleontology, geology, or other frustrating sciences like biochemistry, it leaves no gaps in the record. Why should anyone be confused by sciences that claim the existence of ‘jumps’ or fissures, through which alarming alternative interpretations might trickle? No, Judge Jones rightly decided to view the entire series of mutations of incoherence as a trail of droppings left by one fossilized thinker after the next. Thus no "turd" left behind as an awkward suggestion of an "irreducibly complex" process of digestion! Thus the entire sequence, from mastication to digestion, may be considered as a "taste test" problem of the "prebiotic soup," which was much too cold by the time nobody appeared on the scene not to eat it anyway. Thankfully, Judge Jones’ ruling tosses out this culinary catastrophe from the province of legitimate science.


Postulating the conformity postulate has many other advantages as well. It would allow us to agree with newspaper writers who called Judge Jones’s opinion in the Dover case ‘erudite.’ For example, a Miss A.W. of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article about how handsome Judge Jones was, or is, and that apparently he is "the toast of the globe for his erudite opinion in the intelligent design trial." The Inquirer thoughtfully provided a picture (unfortunately small, and unfortunately the judge was clothed) of a beaming Judge to accompany Miss W.’s gushy paean to the male beauteousness of his person.


Concerning ‘toast of the globe,’ the writer might have added a modest disclaimer, to the effect, "the toast of the globe… among people like us," but who cares for accuracy when celebrity journalism descends upon our meager little lives in all the glitter of its unblushing nakedness? It goes without saying that people who think like us are the only people on the globe who count, so obviously, it follows that "we," therefore, are "the globe."


As for ‘erudite,’ whether Miss W. even understands the meaning of the word is highly debatable. Judge Jones has ridden hard into the camp of the Intelligent Designers on his white steed, breathing the fire of righteous scientism regarding peer-reviewed scientific articles (he said that the partisans of Intelligent Design don’t have any, which is blatantly untrue) and belching platitudes about the nature of science which, apparently, he has never studied. Judge Jones took upon himself the heroic task of deciding what science is, and he declared that Intelligent Design is not science… well, because evolutionists do not agree that it is. Evolutionists only agree that evolution cannot be intelligent except when they are the ones doing it, in which case it is very intelligent, although some admit to a distressing absence of empirical corroboration for it, an absence which they interpret as proof for unintelligent, ill-designed and purposeless evolution, though not for a lack of intelligence.

This is science?

Yes, said Judge Jones, citing the ACLU as his incontrovertible authority for saying what science is. The ACLU made up its mind long ago that Intelligent Design is Creationism and Planned Parenthood objected to it because it feared if people believed in it they might start having fewer abortions. This substitution of the ACLU for "the government" (i.e. as represented by the Dover School Board) was considered to be a great victory for American freedom, liberty, Constitutionalism, progress, and sliced bread. The day after the robed and beauteous judge unveiled his decision, the Philadelphia Inquirer gushed that, "What shines forth today is the strength and clarity of the Constitution, how easily it exposed this attempt to swap sound science for one group's creed. How beautiful this document is, which allows all Americans to worship or not, believe or not, see intelligent design in the cosmos or not… By derailing the abuse of liberty, Jones’ decision affirmed the liberty of all Americans."


The Conformity Postulate now makes it possible to take cloying cant like this as the work of grown-ups, and not, as one may have thought, that the Philadelphia Inquirer is really Peter Pan in disguise. The only slightly worrisome thing is the possible effect of the Conformity Postulate upon people, i.e. it might cause them to become extinct, and soon. It has been found that the total convergence of the human mind with cant cannot yield further scope for adaptation in the struggle for existence, i.e. the need to think. Aside from this problem, the Conformity Postulate leads to the certainty of empirical evolutionism in the attainment of extinction through perfectly-achieved self-satisfaction, an outcome that is consistent with the total absence of intelligence in the Dover decision.


January 9, 2006

Letter to Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist John Grogan


Dear Mr. Grogan –

I too was very disappointed by the column you first wrote on the ID issue which you referenced today, for I have found your columns in general to be of a higher standard than is common with the Philadelphia Inquirer.


While I certainly agree with you in thinking that disagreement on the issue of ID will continue for a long time, I don’t think this conclusion is adequate from the point of view of the "bully pulpit" you enjoy as a newspaper writer. While few people can be expected to understand the complex biochemical events to which the ID’ers refer, a newspaper writer ought to draw careful distinctions and do the best he can to steer readers away from making automatic reactions and premature conclusions.


The Philadelphia Inquirer (with the notable exception of DeWolf and Wagner’s "Anti-ID stance is good old intolerance again, " 10/18/2005) has in my view certainly failed in this regard. It was embarrassing to see how the Inquirer jumped on the bandwagon of fundamentalist Darwinism, acclaiming Judge Jones as the best thing since liberty, the Constitution, and sliced bread ("Intelligent design ruling dashed in Dover," Dec. 21, 2005 editorial).


There has been no attempt on the part of the Inquirer or its writers to point out the egregious flaws in Jones’s reasoning, to correct his defamatory statement that ID proponents have not published in peer-reviewed journals, or even to nuance his assertion that all of science is based upon "methodological naturalism." The existence of Big Bang theory and Newton’s law of gravity should be sufficient to refute this notion – although it is true that both of these theories had to win acceptance over initial skepticism that they propounded a type of supernaturalism or occultism. The idea of "irreducible complexity" is no more or less "supernatural" than Big Bang or gravity. All it means is that the findings of molecular biology reveal that the complexity of life’s structures cannot have arisen in the time-constraints we know to apply to the evolution of life on earth, or according to the mechanism of natural selection (i.e. trial-and-error) postulated by Darwin.


These findings have been known for some time. According to a New York Times Report on evolution (Nov. 5, 1980) : "Biology’s understanding of how evolution works, which has long postulated a gradual process of Darwinian natural selection acting on genetic mutations, is undergoing its broadest and deepest revolution in nearly 50 years. At the heart of the revolution is something that might seem a paradox. Recent discoveries have only strengthened Darwin’s epochal conclusion that all forms of life evolved from a common ancestor. Genetic analysis, for example, has shown that every organism is governed by the same genetic code controlling the same biochemical processes. At the same time, however, many studies suggest that the origin of species was not the way Darwin suggested…Exactly how evolution happened is now a matter of great controversy among biologists."


For the Philadelphia Inquirer not to at least mention that the ID issue deals with macro-evolution (evolution in the large picture, as distinguished from the Darwinian micro-evolutionary aspect, which few people dispute) and that criticisms of this sort have been in existence ever since Darwin propounded his theory (and in fact they were criticisms of which Darwin himself acknowledged) does a real disservice to Philadelphia. It is embarrassing to find the Philadelphia Inquirer so completely abandoning its journalistic standards to endorse the delusions of grandeur of a district court judge whose reflections on science were as shallow as his manifest ignorance of the argument of Intelligent Design was profound.


Another problem raised by the attempt to stifle debate on Intelligent Design leads to the issue of progress in science. Are the findings of molecular biology, to which Darwin had no access, to be disregarded because they conflict with the presuppositions of Darwinian materialist-fundamentalism?


Let me give an example. One of the most powerful passages in the book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by medical doctor and molecular biologist Dr. Michael Denton (lucid and informative, by the way – I highly recommend it) discussed the difference in the perception of the cell made possible by increased powers of magnification. In Darwin’s time, a cell could be magnified some several hundred times, leading to the view of the living cell as " a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces, are continually tossed haphazardly in all directions."


By contrast, modern microscopic methods allow for magnification by a thousand million times… leading to the view "of an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design…" A long description follows, from which I only quote the following snippet: "We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would wonder even more… particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine – that is one single functional protein molecule – would be completely beyond our capacity at present and will probably not be achieved until at least the beginning of the next century. Yet the life of the cell depends upon the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules." (p. 328-9)


Dr. Denton’s book was published in 1986, and I am sure there has been a vast increase in knowledge of the cell since then. (Indeed, it would be interesting to follow up on this concerning the designing of a functioning protein molecule.)


In any case, may I recommend that you read Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box and other books like Dr. Denton’s, which will one day be seen as classics of the Intelligent Design movement. It is certainly very difficult for people to part with an old paradigm that has served them well. The history of science is littered with examples. But it is also a very exciting time, when old paradigms are challenged by more refined understandings. Neither Judge Jones nor the Philadelphia Inquirer has managed to catch a whiff of this excitement, and instead goads its readers and the public to new lows of reactionary conformism.


I urge you to distinguish yourself from the pack and strike out on your own to explore what is emerging as an exciting and thrilling new adventure.


Sincerely,


Music and Genetics



The following article appeared in the Birmingham News, Tuesday, January 26, 1988: "Music, genetics show same pattern, scientist says:"


Duarte, Calif.(AP)--It seems that genes not only carry the blueprint for life, they also carry a tune, according to one scientist's research.

Bored with tedious mathematical equations, Susumu Ohno decided to convert chemical formulas for living cells into musical notes, to make patterns easier to study.

The result, which some experts say has no practical application, is a system for converting chemical formulas into melodies similar to classical music of the baroque and romantic eras, sometimes with an uncanny resemblance to the works of great composers, said the award-winning researcher at the Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, part of the City of Hope Medical Center.

Take for instance, Ohno's "Mouse Waltz."

Translated into sheet music and performed on the piano, a portion of mouse ribonucleic acid -- a complex genetic messenger substance -- sounds like a lively waltz, and parts sound like a faster tempo version of Frederic Chopin's Nocturne, Opus 55, No. 1, Ohno found.

"This is not surprising," Ohno said. "Nature follows certain physical laws -- the universe obeys them, as does the process of life. Music follows the same patterns as well."

The idea of converting genes to music came to him three or four years ago. He was searching for simpler patterns repeated within the complex structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, which is in every living cell and contains the genetic code which governs heredity.

Ohno said he invented a system to convert repetitious parts of the genetic equation into musical compositions.

"First we identity the repeating units. Then we try to find the appropriate melody for this unit. That's how we start. We find the sound combination that is melodious."

Genes are composed of four basic nucleic acids -- adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine. In Ohno's system, each is assigned two consecutive musical notes, which are strung together as they occur in the gene's chemical formula.

Ohno said he doesn't use all sound combination within the structure because some just aren't melodious. He adds a secondary harmony loosely based on the same genetic patterns, and sets the tempo to fit the feeling of the melody, which is played on piano or violin.

"I think it's cute but I don't think it's profound," Leroy E. Hood, biology chairman at the California Institute of Technology, said recently.

Ohno, 59, holds the title of distinguished scientist at the Beckman Research Institute.

He moved from Topkyo in 1953 to join the institute, where his work on occasion gained national attention, including the Emory Prize in 1981 from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work in reproductive genetics.

Ohno has converted to music the genes from a chicken's eye, from a rainbow trout, from slime mold, brewer's yeast and the human brain.

The musical score within a cancer-causing oncogene sounds somber, while the gene that bestows transparency to the lens of the eye is filled with trills and flourishes-- airy and light, he said.

Reversing the process -- converting music to chemistry -- works as well: When Ohno translated a funeral march by Chopin from notes to chemical equations, entire passages appeared identical to a cancer gene found in humans, he said.





(Attempted) Dialogue with a Darwinian


The correspondent, Dan Bednarz, published an excellent article on www.EnergyBulletin.net
on "Public Health in a Post-Petroleum World." It is lamentable that he was not able to engage in a discussion about Intelligent Design.


----- Original Message ----- From: Caryl Johnston To: D.B. Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 11:41 AM Subject: Re: Public Health in a Post-Petroleum World
Dear Dr. B-----,
I enjoyed your article on Public Health and Petroleum, posted on today's Energy Bulletin net.
I live in Philadelphia and I have a website that might interest you, devoted mainly to Peak Oil but also related issues - at http://mysite.verizon.net/vze495hz/-- there's an article on "Fossil Fuels and Modern Medicine," another on Jay Hanson, and other various topics. I will need to print out your article to read it with more concentration. A quick reading this morning only brought forth from me an objection to a related issue, not the main topic of your paper, relating to Darwinism and Creationism. I have lately become very interested in the Intelligent Design issue, and certainly the idea that intelligence is embedded in natural processes, and that it takes intelligence to understand them, is fundamental to Western science and philosophy. I believe that Darwinism, whatever validity it may have as science (and I think it does have some validity in terms of micro-evolutionary processes) has basically become a type of secular ideology that supports the complacency and dumbing-down that seems nearly universal in America. I have no other explanation for the almost total refusal on the part of American people and their leaders to face the consequences of fossil-fuel depletion. A Darwinian explanation for life, that is one of random or mindless process, and so easily corrupted into the "rule of the strong" would seem to suit our present "Might makes right' crowd to a T. As I see it, therefore, Darwinism has basically ceased to be an issue of science and has become instead a matter of ideology and the justification of power (and self-serving blindness). This is just an aside, and perhaps not highly relevant, to your excellent article. I look forward to a closer and more detailed reading of it.
Sincerely,
Caryl Johnston


Caryl,

Thanks for your reply and comments. I stand by what I said, but let me not be so dogmatic. If given a few days I can assmeble for you a list of authors who totally expose ID as nothing more than religion, a termination of science not an exercise in it. Let me know if you want this list. Essentailly, every persumed "inexplicable" of natural selection has been explained --minus a few details. If it's important to believe some Intelligence made us, fine, believe that; but you'll never develop a vaccine from that belief; for that you've got to turn to Darwin, a man who struggled mightily with religion and wound up an agnostic.

also, at some risk to insulting you --but please take this as a gentle confrontation only-- the notion that Darwinism is "might makes right" is erroneous. Darwin has many interpreters from Gould to Dawkins and many more. I'm not an expert but know enough to categorially say that life exists in exhange with other forms of life --see Gaia hypothesis. Ther's a striving for balance that is never really achieved. But there is nothing in Darwin about the strong eliminating the weak. That's a misunderstanding by those who want to feel good about doing this. In fact, if the environment changes the so-called weak may become the most advantageous to survive --so are they then the "strongest"?

I will look at your website. Also I am building a nationwide newtork/consortium around publis health & peak oil. This is one area where citizens stil have a chance to be effective --and maybe save some lives when things get bad.

Please keep in touch on this; it's going to become critical in the next few years as weslide down Hubbert's peak.

D......

From: Caryl Johnston To: D.B. Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 12:36 PM Subject: Re: Public Health in a Post-Petroleum World

Hi D.....

Many thanks for your kind and detailled reply. I certainly would be interested in reading your list of anti-ID sources. Although I have to wonder, have you read Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" or Michael Denton's "Evolution, A theory in crisis"? It seems only fair that you should also be cognizant of the pro-ID side. Concerning Darwin's agnosticism: there is much more nuance here than is apparent in some of his followers. I do not deny the Darwinian effects in microevolution and in the development of vaccines. Darwinian principles can certainly be discerned in matters such as antibiotic resistance, etc.

I only question certain Darwinian principles in macroevolution - something that many Darwinian biologists have also questioned. Apparently, there is little evidence that one species can 'change" into another.

You are right, I was overly simplistic about the "Might makes right" argument-- which is why I noted that it was "easily corrupted." Nevertheless, it has to be said that Darwinism has spawned a number of morally corrupt ideas. Charles Darwin himself would have probably been horrified - he was known to be a most scruplous and honorable man, a real gentleman in every particular, and very devoted to his wife, who was a sincere Christian.

Best,

Caryl


REPLY from D.B.:


Caryl,

i come from a religious background and am familiar with Behe and the evolution in crisis notion. They are simply wrong, even worse they are frauds preomoting ignorance that is, in this day and age in a complex society dangerous. Their "arguments" are just refried Creationism. You are a well educated person so let me guess that you have a metaphysical attraction to ID. I just don't see it; have you read Gould's Mismeasure of Man? or gone to the Skeptics society webpage? I'll send along the notes as promised next week.

It does come down to what one will count as proof. If you insist that every single lacune in the Darwinian understanding is an indication of "God in the gaps", then that's what it is. But think of what Copernicus faced.

TWO DAYS LATER:


Caryl:
As promised, some lesser known but, to me, persuasive explanations of ID.
Best,

D.............

1. Why intelligent design fails [electronic resource] : a scientific critique of the new creationism / edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis.

2. The cosmic landscape : string theory and the illusion of intelligent design / Leonard Susskind

3. Creationism's Trojan horse : the wedge of intelligent design / by Barbara Forrest & Paul R. Gross.

4. (Teleology) God, the devil, and Darwin : a critique of intelligent design theory / Niall Shanks.

ALSO: Spirit in the Gene, by Reg Morrison.


CARYL’S REPLY:


From: Caryl Johnston To: D.B. Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 5:40 PM Subject: Re: ID

Hi D.......
Thanks for remembering to send this. I will have to say that I am surprised by these sources - by how few they are and frankly also by their very dubious quality. Barbara Forrest testified at the Dover trial and she is known to engage in totally ad hominen attack. She is not a scientist but has a pronounced and biased anti-Christian agenda. I read and reviewed Greg Morrison's "Spirit in the Gene," but later removed my review of this book from my website. Perhaps if I dig up a digital copy of my review I could send it to you. I was not impressed by the quality of his arguments, which veered from certain positive aspects of the Gaia hypothesis into what seemed to me wild and unwarranted conclusions.

Nevertheless, time permitting, I will certainly investigate the other sources and will post responses to my Intelligent Design sub-website - again, time permitting. I do thank you for sending me these sources.

Cordially,

Caryl Johnston

PS. You might find my article, "Concerning Jay Hanson and dieoff.com" of interest - posted on my website.


D.'S REPLY, JANUARY 30TH:
Caryl,
If you think these are dubious sources and you keep raising the Chirstian card --which has nothing to do with science-- then you're a confirmed anti-scientist --and probably a conflicted Bible-thumper at heart. So Praise the lord but don't pretend you're concerned about science. You're up to your eyeballs in religious fervor and Ignorant Denial.
Sorry, but that's how I deal with people who insist the sky is green.

D..........

Miscellaneous (Aliens, Dragons, Quarrels, Collisions, etc.)

May 8, 2005
Mothers – and Others

Dr. David Jacobs, a history professor at Temple University, gave a talk yesterday at the Free Library about his research into UFO’s and the “Alien Agenda.” Dr. Jacobs is the world’s leading authority on the UFO-abduction phenomenon, and teaches a college course in it – the only one in the USA.

There’s a sort of melancholy appropriateness in opening this subject on Mother’s Day, because activities involving reproduction and genetic manipulation apparently figure prominently in the alien agenda. Dr. Jacobs’ interest in the subject began with a focus on UFO sightings and developed to a more thoroughgoing exploration of what people were saying happened to them during their abductions. He has led over 700 abduction investigations using hypnosis, and found reference to egg-taking procedures (150 times); physical examinations (400 times); Mindscan (staring) procedures (375 times) and baby and toddler contact (180 times). In his book, The Threat: Revealing the Secret of the Alien Agenda, he carefully describes his procedures and distinguishes his practice from the kinds of therapeutic interventions that have led to false-memory or sexual-abuse charges.

Dr. Jacobs is no kook, and in fact his presentation, speaking style and prose can be characterized as sincere intelligence infused with moral alarm. The testimonies of abductees, he said, “have led us to where we do not want to go” – that is, to the possibility of the conquest and replacement of the human race through penetration and manipulation of its genetics. I would not have given much countenance to this sort of thing if I had not been following the recent postings of Jeff Wells and Joseph Caldwell – about which more in a moment. Given the state of humanity today, and especially the incredible array of problems lurking just behind the corporate façade of USA, Inc. today – worries about an alien agenda seemed to me in the highest case improbable. Why look for more trouble, when anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can perceive so much trouble of our own making already in place for some kind of catastrophic implosion? Yet in a strange way the “alien agenda” is like a distorting mirror of our current predicament, bringing certain aspects of our situation into sharper focus. It is these I want to comment on today – three in particular: (1) environmental; (2) nurturance and emotionality; and (3) religious value.

(1) The Environmental Argument

In “The Alien Invasion of Earth: Strategy for Planetary Conquest,” Joseph George Caldwell writes that

“…The current hominid race of the planet, Homo sapiens, is in the process of destroying the biosphere. Large human numbers and industrial activity are causing the extinction of an estimated 30,000 species per year, and contributing to a greenhouse-gas warming of the planet that may dramatically alter the biosphere….

“…At the present time, the alien invaders are in a life-and-death struggle with the current hominid soul-group, Homo sapiens … for the control of Earth. They have abducted a large number of H. sapiens and genetically modified them so that future generations of physical human bodies will be better matched to their souls than to H. sapiens souls, and they will incarnate on Earth in increasing numbers. Unfortunately for them, however, they are in serious danger of achieving a Pyrrhic victory. H. sapiens is destroying the biosphere at an incredible rate, and there will soon be no planet left for the invaders to occupy – at least not a “Garden of Eden” biosphere like H. sapiens inherited and proceeded to destroy. The process of abducting H. sapiens and then reincarnating in place of an H. sapiens soul takes years to accomplish, and by that time there will be nothing left for the conquerors but a ruined, species-desolate planet…”

:… The current race of Earth’s human beings has committed a grievous sin against Earth’s biosphere, to the other species of Earth, and to itself – it is destroying its very home. This incredibly foolish, suicidal act of self-destruction can have only one end – the loss to the H. sapiens soul group of its physical planet…”

Caldwell’s essay is posted on his website: http://www.foundationwebsite.org/AlienInvasionStrategy.htm

Caldwell’s argument falls partially into Jacobs’ “Positives” category. The “Positives” argue that the Aliens represent a higher form of spirituality and that their intentions are benign. Treating the Alien phenomenon in this fashion harmonizes with New Age teachings about spiritual transformation and the development of higher consciousness. Concerning the environmental aspect, Jacobs quotes from one abductee who reported a conversation with an Alien, who told her that “humans did not understand that their actions had effects beyond themselves.” The abductee said that the Alien was talking almost “like he has a love affair with the Earth.” When Jacobs asked her to clarify what she meant, she reported that the Alien had said, “That’s it’s one of the most beautiful places he’s seen…. [The thought seemed to be --] Do you think we would invest our time [with someone or something that] would not make a difference?” The idea seems to be that the Aliens covet the earth for themselves, and that is why they are devoting enormous intelligence, energy and organization to the task of altering the reproductive organism of human beings.

But Jacobs finds this implausible, noting that “the strategem of environmental concern developed well after the Breeding Program was in place.” However, the missing key that Caldwell’s interpretation supplies is that the breeding program exists for the purpose of enabling the incarnation of Alien (or hybrid) souls on the earth. It is not environmental destruction per se that motivates them. Rather, it is assuring for themselves a future planetary home. Given the increasing pace of environmental degradation, the escalating number of reports of abductee stories become truly alarming. Maybe the Aliens know something we don’t? According to Caldwell, the peak of world oil resources – which some geologists think may be happening this decade, if not this year or next – will create end-game wars for control of resources. The question for the Aliens is whether sufficient numbers of humans will be destroyed in order to tip the demographic balance in favor of the genetically altered alien-human hybrids.

Whatever is it, neither Jacobs’ view nor Caldwell’s view is likely to generate much comfort. If anything, Caldwell’s view is even more pessimistic, in that he includes the scenario of the human race engaging in a suicidal war.

(2) Nurturance and emotionality

Some of the most poignant passages in Jacob’s book deal with the robotic aliens’s envy of human emotionality and free will. Abductees reported being asked by Aliens to hold and nurture babies. One alien took an abductee into a room called an “incubatorium,” which contained hundreds of containers of fetuses, and asked her to hold a baby. “she’s telling me .. that the babies need to be held, otherwise they can’t grow right… What we need to teach them is emotions, feelings, that they cannot do. She’s explaining to me that they can feed and clothe the babies, they can grow physically, but they cannot give these babies emotional development, that they need me to help them do that…”

According to numbers of abductee reports, the hybrids (Alien-human merged beings) “have no memories of parents, siblings, family life, nurturing, or other emotionally important events that bond humans to each other.” A hybrid once explained to an abductee that he has no memories, only “files” – “we were just told who [our parents were] and they‘re on files.” The hybrid denied being a robot, but said “the meaning was the same” – “That a robot has no bonding. It just does what it’s programmed to do,” and “Even if I had those emotions, what good are they because nothing will happen?”

(3) Meaning and religious values

On one level David Jacob’s The Threat can be read as a picture about the kind of human society that we seem to be developing. The emphasis that the Aliens give to bonding and emotionality is in glaring contrast to the selfish and money-driven values of modernity so highly touted by the feminists. Caldwell in his piece quotes the Biblical phrase that “Those who destroy the earth will themselves be destroyed.” The same sober lesson could be applied to the heartless and brutal regime of abortion – that those who destroy their own children in the name of freedom will be subjected to the tyranny of an alien race that, whatever its status of morality or culture, places a high value upon reproduction.

The irony – if there is an ‘irony’ here – is that despite the great progress made in human genetics and reproduction, there yet remains an aura of the mysterious about it, such that one may rightly distinguish reproduction from conception. In the generational life of human beings it is proper to speak of procreation and conception rather than reproduction and manipulation of genes. But in the genetic science of today we are losing the sense for the metaphysical dimensions of humanity. The irony is that our scientists are becoming more and more like the aliens that Jacobs describes in this book. It is quite possible that genetic science will lead to the manufacture of purely ‘physicalized’ human beings, if indeed it has not already done so. In achieving this, we will have achieved a “concubinage with matter” that will effectively spell the end of human spiritual evolution. If this is where things are going, the picture put forth by the abduction stories is a symbolic representation of what is going on in science today. It is in the nature of a parable or warning.

Whatever the nature of the threat, David Jacobs confesses at the conclusion of his book that “I am persuaded that the abduction phenomenon is real. And as a result, the intellectual safety net with which I operated for so many years is now gone. I am as vulnerable as the abductees themselves. I should ‘know better,’ but I embrace as real a scenario that is both embarrassing and difficult to defend..”

Maybe it’s all fantasy. But after reading Jacobs, I’m not so sure. If nothing else, the picture of the Aliens resembles nothing so much as the horrifying imagery of the uncontrolled human intellect which seeks to control nature but forgets to control itself. Such a fantastic horror has grown up in a modern society which has progressively and insidiously alienated moral feeling and value from scientific research and even from personal action. Wherever the truth of the abductee phenomenon may lie, David Jacobs appeared to me as a man not alienated from himself. In that sense Dr. Jacobs’s research tells not so much what aliens are doing to us but what we are doing to ourselves – and in that sense I share his alarm.

Note: Jeff Wells in his blog,
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/
has lately been exploring the abductee phenomenon mainly from the point of view of programming, mind control, and sexual abuse.

The Dragon (Repost from February 26, 2004)

"In China there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. His deep affection for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. It is said he died of fright. He was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing."
The above passage is from Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo - a book I found lying in the trash on Locust Street in Philadelphia. The passage seems to me to express something perfectly true about human nature. And not only is it perfectly true, it also expresses it perfectly. Our expression, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it," expresses something of the same idea, but without the elegance or pictorial element.In reading this book, or rather, reading such of its pages as survived someone's frenzied slashing of the first ten pages or so, not to mention its disposal in the dump, I am introduced to a mode of life and consciousness utterly unlike our own. The chief virtue of the Samurai was loyalty, even unto death. Selfless loyalty is the human ideal.A very different ethos rules our period. The American age is the age in which self-indulgence is to be tried and experienced in all its forms. We shall go to the very end of self-indulgence, we shall drink the cup of self-indulgence to its bitter dregs. And still we will be forced to drink from it, for we have concluded that there is nothing greater than ourselves. So we will keep drinking of our own power until the dragon finally appears at our window - which, in this American age, is actually a mirror.
Labels: self-indulgence
posted by Caryl at 11:58 AM 1 comments

Sunday, August 06, 2006
Collision Specialist

While biking home from Mass today I passed an autobody repair shop by name of “Collision Specialist,” and it occurred to me that’s what I am – in the realm of letters. I have quite a history of sending them, and several are (or were) posted on my “Sword in the Mouth” website –--Re: Church Scandals in Philadelphia (letter to Philadelphia Inquirer)--Re: Feminism and ‘Conquest of the Universe-When Queens Collide,’ – to the president of Bryn Mawr College on pornographic anti-Christian play performed at the College