Question for Conservative Christians: Jesus or Trump?

Posted on 18 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

It’s fascinating to see the huge numbers of conservative Christians who are supporting Donald Trump. But as I’ve noted before, there isn’t much left of American Christianity other other than being anti-choice, anti-LGBT rights, and having a “special feeling” that God is their personal friend. This last one really bugs me because it is a heretical view that would have got then burned at the stake in centuries past. They’ve turned Jesus into little more than a child’s imaginary friend.

But not all conservative Christians are supporting Donald Trump. It’s just the vast majority of them. Last Friday, the National Religious Broadcasters held a debate between pro- and anti-Trump conservative Christians. Peter Montgomery reported on it for Right Wing Watch, Conservative Evangelicals Debate Whether Christians Should Support Trump. It’s a fascinating read.

Erick Erickson Makes Sense

Most interesting was seeing Erick Erickson making some sense on the issue of Trump and sounding like what conservative Christians always claim to be. He said that Trump didn’t share conservative Christian values. He noted that Trump “bragged in his books about multiple affairs, including with married women, has cheated widows and single moms and the elderly out of money through Trump University, has stiffed the low-income worker on his buildings, telling them if they want to collect everything they’re owed they need to sue.”

In response, Janet Parshall quoted polling data. In other words: conservative Christians should support Donald Trump because conservative Christians support Donald Trump. I think this all comes down to the Christian persecution complex. They know that in an ever diversifying nation, democracy isn’t going to get them the One True Religion™ designation that they so want. So they turn to an authoritarian. And it doesn’t really matter what he believes as long as he will give them that seal of approval.

God’s Not Dead?

Yesterday, I read a review of the film God’s Not Dead 2. It was written by a Christian, Mary Pezzulo. She noted that the film is an advertisement, which is fine. But it isn’t an advertisement for Jesus or Christianity. It is an advertisement for America. And not just any America, but the America on display when football fans refuse to watch the 49ers because Colin Kaepernick places American ideals above American symbols.

God’s Not Dead 2 seems to be very much in line with the conservative Christians who support Trump. They aren’t interested in what one normally thinks of as Christianity. Their interest is in pushing a particular idea of America. So it isn’t surprising that these people would support Trump. It’s really just about the politics. And that’s fine in a general sense, because Jesus was interested in politics. But he didn’t seem to be interested in the politics that would make one support Donald Trump.

My Question for Conservative Christians

So here’s my question for Donald Trump Christians: how do they know they follow Jesus and not Satan? Because they “feel” Jesus’ love? Couldn’t that be Satan making them feel that way? Trump preaches exactly the opposite of the Sermon on the Mount. Here is how Matthew 5 starts:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God…

Or as Donald Trump would put it, “Blessed are the losers.”

I want to know if conservative Christians see Matthew 5-7 as nothing more than some beautiful poetry to be shoved aside when an authoritarian comes to town and claims he’ll make good on all your prejudices?

I’m not a Christian, so I don’t believe in Jesus or Satan or any of that. But in the context of Christianity, it seems to me that these Trump supporting Christians have picked the wrong side. As Jesus said later in the Sermon, “You will know them by their fruits.”

Image cropped from And Jesus Wept by Terry Alexander. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Why We Think Nothing Is More Natural Than Something

Posted on 07 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

I am going to follow up on my last post about ontology, Atheists Need to Understand Theology. In that article, I argued that most atheists didn’t understand the concept of God well enough to claim to be against it. They are more areligious, because their real interest is in looking at silly religious beliefs and mocking them. Along with this is a total disregard for ontology: the nature of existence and why this is something rather than nothing. Well, maybe it is time that I discuss what I think about such matters.

I’ve long been fascinated by the question of why anything exists at all. This question has a long and distinguished pedigree. But it annoys me that people think it is a question that can be answered by science. This is because it is the ultimate question. It’s very nature is an infinite regression. The most simple form of it can be found in this short dialog:

Child: why does the universe exist?
Adult: because God created it.
Child: what created God?
Adult: uh…

On a more substantial level, we have Lawrence Krauss playing “Adult” in that dialog in his book, A Universe From Nothing. In that book, he claims the reason that there is something rather than nothing is because, “Nothing is unstable.” What makes that a particularly silly explanation for existence is that he really seems to think he’s got it all figured out. When theologians point out that it’s a mighty special kind of nothing that has all these properties, he really doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about. (This is not my opinion; he says this explicitly in the book.)

People normally make the mistake of thinking that science is designed to answer questions. It is not. It is designed to create questions.

Just in case there is anyone as brilliant as Krauss reading, let me explain. If something has a property, it isn’t nothing. It doesn’t have to be matter. An idea is something. A physical law is something. So if “nothing” has the property of being unstable and occasionally spitting out universes, then it is “something.” This may seem like a semantic game, but it isn’t. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine a “nothing” that does not spit out universes. Thus, why do we happen to have this particular kind of “nothing” that does.

Does “Nothing” Even Make Sense?

More and more, I find myself with Henri-Louis Bergson and other philosophers who find the question of existence absurd. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do you think that nothing is more natural than something? And I believe the reason that it feels like there should be nothing is because of the nature of our existence. At one time, we didn’t exist; now we do. So it seems as though the natural state of things is to not exist because that was our own natural state.

But how could there be nothing? It seems to me that ideas exist without having to be thought. That is to say that we discover ideas rather than invent them. But I’m hardly certain of that. However, it is clear that the problem is internal and not external. That is: it isn’t the fault of “something” that it isn’t nothing. I’m the one at fault because I can’t get past thinking about my existence and existence itself as the same thing.

Brute Facts and Better Questions

This all makes me land in the company of Bertrand Russell, “I should say that the universe is just there, and that is all.” But I don’t like being in this company because it feels too dismissive. To claim that existence is a brute fact is unsatisfying. And the truth is that I don’t share this way of looking at ontology. Because existence is still mystical.

People normally make the mistake of thinking that science is designed to answer questions. It is not. It is designed to create questions. The scientific revolution has greatly expanded the number of questions we have not answered. This is because every answer creates a multitude of new questions. But that doesn’t mean that science is bad. Hardly! Science allows us to ask better and better questions.

The Journey Continues

Existence is not a puzzle where we are moving to the point where the last piece is fitted and all is known. It is more like a Jackson Pollock painting that just gets more complex and lovely with each splash of paint. But unlike a painting, this goes on and on. Knowledge is a work in progress and it will be for humans right up to the point that we go extinct.

And so I will continue to think about the nature of existence until I go extinct. Of course, I’m not entirely sure I will go extinct, because I have some curious thoughts about time too. But we will have to leave that for another day.

Jackson Pollock, White Light, 1954 by Sharon Mollerus, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Atheists Respond to Unwelcome Science Just Like Theists

Posted on 04 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Those at the other ideological extreme [atheists] gnashed their teeth — Marxists in particular. Quite aside from its religious aura, the new theory contradicted their belief in the infinity and eternity of matter, which was one of the axioms of Lenin’s dialectical materialism. Accordingly, the theory was dismissed as “idealistic.” The Marxisant physicist David Bohm rebuked the developers of the theory as “scientists who effectively turn traitor to science, and discard scientific facts to reach conclusions that are convenient to the Catholic Church.” Atheists of a non-Marxist stripe were also recalcitrant. “Some younger scientists were so upset by these theological trends that they resolved simply to block their cosmological sources,” commented the German astronomer Otto Heckmann, a prominent investigator of cosmic expansion. The dean of the profession, Sir Arthur Eddington, wrote that “the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me… I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang… the expanding universe is preposterous… incredible… it leaves me cold.”

—Jim Holt
Why Does the World Exist?

Image of book cover taken from Amazon, licensed under Fair Use.

What Is Worship? Herman Melville Has an Idea

Posted on 22 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

Herman Melville - I Would Prefer Not To I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth — pagans and all included — can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship? — to do the will of God — that is worship. And what is the will of God? — to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me — that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.

—Herman Melville
Moby Dick

Image of Herman Melville is in the public domain.

PZ Myers on the Great Nothing of New Atheism

Posted on 15 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

PZ Myers Reason is not enough. Reason can show you the best way to achieve a goal, but if your goal is mass murder, or denigration of women, or the perpetuation of an oppressive hierarchy, it’ll help you do that, too. We need purpose and value and meaning as well, and if a prominent Leader of atheism is saying that atheism doesn’t do that, that’s a declaration that atheism is bankrupt, and has failed totally. It has become a Great Nothing.

That’s not my atheism, though. I argue that the absence of gods gives greater prominence to the interdependence of the human community, and adds greater weight and urgency to the importance of empathy and equality and all those human values — but if atheism is now a label that allows us to nonchalantly disavow responsibility for the actions of those within our own group, perhaps it’s time to disband the whole idea of an atheist community.

But then it’s also clear that my vision of what atheism ought to be is a minority view. The majority are doing their damnedest to confirm the poor opinion the believers have of us.

—PZ Myers
Is Atheism Bankrupt?

Image of PZ Myers by Alf Melin, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Atheists Need to Understand Theology

Posted on 08 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

I joined Facebook recently. I did it in a moment of panic because I saw that FranklyCurious was available. So if you are on Facebook, you might friend or like or whatever the hell it is one does on the damnable thing. Here’s my account: FranklyCurious.

A guy named Steve Hall posted the image above. It’s quite well done. At the same time, it made me bristle. The quote is from Stephen Hawking and it reads, “What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?” It appears to have been said during a talk at Cal Tech three years ago. And I’m sure he said many smart things during that talk. But these two sentences are stupid.

Fundamentalists’ Frame

Although amusing, this kind of statement puts the discussion in the fundamentalists’ frame. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas well understood that such a conception of God was both facile and heretical to the Catholic Church. This is a good example of why I find myself a very lonely atheist. How can I be part of the atheist community when the vast majority of people in it think about God and religion with as limited a frame as the most backward fundamentalist? If atheists can’t address eight century old thought, what good are they?

“What was God doing?”!

Really?! That’s what Hawking thinks the nature of religious belief is? Would he ever ask the similarly silly question, “What was the universe doing before it sprang into existence?”?! Yet he seems to have taken spiritual guidance from people who know even less about theology than Pat Robertson.

Negative Theology

The only kind of theology that I’ve ever been able to get my head around is negative theology. This is a form of theology where people try to understand God by determining what God cannot be. And the most basic idea in negative theology is that God cannot be a thing in the sense that the Sun is a thing or even the multiverse is a thing. Such a conception of God denigrates the concept. God is simply something powerful. “I am God to my pet rat,” for example.

This is also why atheist proofs are so silly. “Could God create something so heavy he couldn’t lift it?” Such paradoxes are based upon the conception of God as we see it in cartoons: a white bearded man on a throne in the clouds. I understand: this is indeed the way most theists look at God. One of the biggest problems with religion today is that most believers would not see a problem with the question, “What was God doing before divine creation?” But that is their problem, not mine. I am no more interested in arguing with them about such theological caricatures as I am in discussing Bigfoot.

Atheists Need to Learn

But here is a very big problem with the atheist movement. They’ve been pretty good at converting fundamentalists to atheists. But I don’t consider these new “atheists” as believing anything but that their former religious beliefs were silly. What happens when they get a clue? What happens when they learn that there is more to religion that the dogma of a controlling and power hungry church?

One day, atheists will have to sit down with serious theists. As for now, they mostly ignore them. And when they don’t, the atheists are so ignorant of theology that they can’t even understand what the theologians are talking about. And the atheists — with great hubris — take this to mean that the theologians must be wrong. It’s pathetic.

One can’t be an atheist without knowing what it is to be a theist. And most atheists don’t seem to even know what God is supposed to be. What they seem to be against is ignorant people with childish beliefs. If that’s the case, we should call such people areligious. They don’t know or care enough to have an opinion about God, and thus don’t deserve to be called atheists.

Image taken from Facebook and licensed under Fair Use.

Creation as a Spiritual Act

Posted on 25 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

Pillars of Creation - NASA After some wait, I got Carmine Rocco Linsalata’s Smollett’s Hoax. It it an academic treatise from the 1950s by a professor at Stanford. And it is about — What else?! — something that most people would think incredibly minor: an 18th century translation of Don Quixote, which was actually just a rewrite of an earlier translation. But I’m not here to discuss the book. (That will come later!) I’m here to talk about creation for its own sake.

As I was reading through the book, I was taken by a sidetrack that Linsalata made into The Works of Alexander Pope. It was related to what he was writing about, but a minor point. And in that capacity, he had read a 600 page book. He must have read many other such books that he never found a use for. And I find that so inspiring. Why am I reading all that Pope? Oh, it’s just part of my work. Now go away!

Slowing Down

I’ve always seen myself as the human equivalent of a terrier: smart and hyper. But as I’ve gotten older, how I long for the leisure of working slowly — just letting the thoughts accumulate — taking whatever course is necessary for the creation process. What a glorious luxury that is in this time where we always know what we are going to produce: a commodity.

If Linsalata were working today, his book would likely have been quite different. The story he has to tell is quite sensational. But he would have written it rather differently. He would not have assumed, as he did in 1956, that his readers would be fluent in English, French, and Spanish. And I haven’t finished the book; he’ll probably get to Latin and Greek soon enough. Clearly, he was writing only for intimates — and total freaks like me who will take the time to work out the other languages. (Thank Google!) But mostly, he was just writing for himself — for the pure pleasure of the creation itself.

A Forgotten Act of Creation

It’s interesting because a couple of days ago, I moved my office/living-quarters/life. And I came upon a play I had written, “MP3.” I had no memory of writing it. I remember thinking about doing it. The basic idea is that a dog is angry at his owner for using MP3s. You see, a big part of MP3 compression is the removal of stuff humans can’t hear. But dogs hear well. So MP3s would sound terrible to them. I had thought of it as a 5 minute play to be part of a collection of plays. But no, there it was, all neatly typed — about a half hour running time.

As I read through it, I was struck by how idiosyncratic it was. It made me laugh, of course. (I find myself hilarious. Really!) It is clearly something I wrote just for myself, however. Creation for creation’s sake.

In it, the dog recites a poem he wrote. The owner doesn’t understand it. The dog replies:

I thought it was very clear, but maybe you have to be a dog. I sent it to those pricks at Exquisite Corpse. Laura Rosenthal gave me a No Mas! And if I ever run into that pretentious Romanian no-talent Andrei Codrescu, I’m gonna bite him in a place he probably has nothing to bite.

My Bizarre Mind

So let’s see: a puppet ranting about getting turned down from an old poetry magazine, with reference to two little-known poets and a dick joke thrown in. But if that isn’t bad enough, it gets more and more crazy throughout. There’s a sequence on the wooing of women with a Shakespeare parody. Then, there is a mini rock concert. Then, the chorus begins a technical interview with Dr Knowitall — son of Mr Knowitall. (“My first name is ‘Doctor,’ just as my father’s first name was ‘Mister’.”) But the actors are informed that he is actually doing the wrong character — it should be Dr Whoopee (son of Mr Whoopee). A long discussion of cartoons follows, but eventually, Dr Knowitall (who turns out only to have read a Wikipedia page on MP3s that he didn’t understand) interviews the chorus who explains MP3s.

I can’t imagine that an audience would know what to make of it. It is utter chaos. The material jumps from high culture to science to low culture and back. The only thing that would be clear is the Abbott and Costello style word play throughout it. But why shouldn’t I write something just for me — creation for the pure pleasure of it? It is ultimately a spiritual question. After we pay the rent and buy the groceries, what are we to do? It is creation or spiritual death. And that may explain why I find such a religious country as the US to be so lacking in spirituality.

Ann Coulter Christians and Easy Salvation

Posted on 10 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

Ann Coulter Christians Almost ten years ago, Ann Coulter was on The Big Idea and she got into trouble for saying, “We just want Jews to be perfected.” In that sentence, “we” means Christians. It is a bigoted thing to say and so entirely typical of Ann Coulter’s pointedly offensive and submental act that you may wonder why I’m bringing it up. Well, it’s what she said afterwards that really struck me. And the fact that she was not burned in effigy by Christians says a lot of really bad things about American Christians.

To justify her statement (which doesn’t really mean anything — so whatever), she added, “That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners…” She gets to clarify her remark later and then just makes matters worse. What she was getting at was that in the old testament, God was always angry at the Jews because they kept screwing up. But then God came up with this one weird trick that made it all better! This is what I call Christianity on the cheap. And those who practice it should rightly be called Ann Coulter Christians.

The Great Pumpkin and the Ann Coulter Christians

It’s funny that Charles M Schulz was raised Christian and maintained his faith far into adulthood. You see this quite clearly in A Charlie Brown Christmas. But less than a year later, he created the perfect parody of American Christianity in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. In that show, Linus is like all the Ann Coulter Christians. If only he believes sincerely in this mythical being, he will be rewarded. His pumpkin patch has to be sincere and so does he. But nothing else is required.

Ann Coulter — and the millions of Christians just like her — believes she can commit adultery, bear false witness, actively encourage murder. It doesn’t matter! She knows that one weird trick. Just believe! God will reward her just because she believes the fables she was told as a child. I am personally offended for the hundreds of millions of Christians over the centuries who actually took their religion seriously.

There is an aspect of Christianty of allowing Jesus into your heart. But this was not meant to be the whole deal. And certainly the loony morphing of this into a “personal relationship” with God has effectively destroyed the religion for millions. It is the height of hubris. God as pal?! Whatever.

Is Jesus in Ann Coulter’s Heart?!

But could anyone mistake Ann Coulter as someone who had allowed Jesus into her heart? If you slapped her on the right cheek, who she offer her left to you? Of course not! She’d take one of her bony hands and smash you in the face. And I’m fine with that. But then, I don’t pretend to be a Christian.

It’s funny, because I was listening to a lecture by Terry Eagleton yesterday. It wasn’t about Christianity, but it touched on it. Whenever he talks about Christianity, I find it appealing. That’s generally true when I hear serious people discuss the religion. The problem is that there are so few of them. When I see Ann Coulter Christians, it just makes me sad.

I’ve been strongly effected by this quote from a Muslim scholar in the middle ages:

If one could combine Arabic faith and Jewish intelligence, with an Iraqi education, Christian conduct, Greek knowledge, Indian mysticism, and a Sufi way of life, this would be the perfection of humanity.

Yes, Christian conduct. Because, I assume, the religion meant something to them. Instead, I’m inundated with with the Ann Coulter Christians who think that just to believe in Jesus gives them license to be some of the worst people on the Earth.

Image of Ann Coulter by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia.

God the Deal Maker

Posted on 06 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

Corey Robin The Talmud tells a story: the reason God covenanted with the Jews was that they were the only ones who were willing to take the deal.

According to a commentary on Deuteronomy, “When God revealed Himself to give the Torah to Israel, He revealed Himself not only to Israel but to all the nations.” First God goes to the children of Esau, asking them if they will accept the Torah. They ask him what it contains, God says, “Though shalt not murder,” they say, no thanks.

God goes to the Ammonites and Moabites. Same response, only for them the prohibition against adultery is the deal-breaker. He goes to the Ishmaelites, to all the peoples of the earth. Each time, they turn him down. They can’t accept some portion of the Torah’s instructions and injunctions.

Then God comes to the Jews. They don’t ask questions. They simply “accepted the Torah, with all of its explanations and details.” So God “surrendered them [the Torah and all of its details] to Israel.”

You almost get a sense, reading the midrash, of God’s weariness. The Jews aren’t his first choice, but they’ll take the deal. God’s exhausted, history is made.

—Corey Robin
From the Talmud to Judith Butler

I’m not quite sure where I got this image of Corey Robin. I do know it comes from a much larger image. I’m licensing it under Fair Use.

David Perdue’s Little Joke Show’s He’s No Christian

Posted on 13 Jun 2016 by Frank Moraes

I don’t really want to write about politics right now, but I feel I have no choice. Roll Call reported, Come to Obama Picnic, Leave Bible Verse Behind. It’s a perfect intersection of politics and religion: Republican Methodist David Perdue.

Senator Perdue from Georgia spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on Friday. And he was yucking it up. He said that everyone should pray for the president. In particular, they should pray Psalm 109. He apparently quoted, “Let his days be few, and let another have his office.” Now, the reports claim that he said they should pray Psalm 109:8. That’s the exact passage that he read.

There are just a few problems with it. One, that isn’t a prayer; that’s just part of one. The other is that I doubt anyone would be so specific, “Psalm 109:8.” No, I think it was just Psalm 109, and the whole thing is pretty vile. Pastor Bob Deffinbaugh calls it A Prayer for the Punishment of the Wicked. He notes that while other psalms have nasty phrases, Psalm 109 is nothing but. He (and he is not at all alone in this) thinks that the psalm should not be used by Christians because it so conflicts with the message of Jesus.

The Bible Has Great Political Rhetoric

Of course, it works great as political rhetoric. The psalm does not just call for the trial and execution of our president, it goes onto say, “Let his children be fatherless; And his wife a widow; Let his children wander about and beg.” Just charming stuff. And I suppose the conservative movement has gone so far off the rails as to require that I mention that traditionally we have not believed in holding the children accountable for the acts of their parents.

But what David Perdue’s little joke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference really shows is that religion means very little to the conservative Christian. It is all just tribalism. And I’ll admit, this does goes right along with the Old Testament, which is about nothing so much as getting God on your your side so that he would kill and torture your enemies. But if this is the case, then why don’t these Christians just end the pretense. Because they clearly don’t accept Jesus Christ’s message.

In modern America, Christianity is little more than a tribal excuse for hating the people you already don’t like. And with this ridiculous notion of having a personal relationship with God, what can’t be justified?! Think about the hubris of that: a personal relationship with God! It doesn’t need to be this way, because it didn’t used to be this way.

David Perdue Is a Modern Christian

In Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization, Michael Wood quots a Muslim scholar:

In those long ago days, Christians were known for their excellent conduct, which I assume means morality. But here we have David Perdue calling for the death of the president. And it isn’t for anything the president has done except to disagree on policy and be a member of a different political party.

The nicest thing you can say about David Perdue is that he doesn’t mean anything he says. He’s just following along with his tribe. It is just that his tribe stands for nothing good — just that whatever the tribe does is good. This isn’t religion; it is tribalism; and it is sacrilege.

Anniversary Post: Rastafari Holy Day

Posted on 21 Apr 2016 by Frank Moraes

Rastafari Savior Haile Selassie Today is Grounation Day. It is a Rastafari holy day. And it commemorates the day when Haile Selassie visited Jamaica. Now why is this a big deal? Well, he was yet another son of God — or so the Rastafari believe. He was also the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 when he was overthrown in a coup d’état. This all came as a surprise to me. I did not realize that the Rastafari religion was an Abrahamic religion.

Most people know the religion as being all about smoking cannabis, and the religion does indeed use it in a sacramental way. Most religions do use mind altering substances. There are people who naturally have mystical experiences. Others need help. I see nothing wrong with that. And certainly cannabis has been used in this way since before history. The only reason the Rastafari stick out is because the west decided a century ago that cannabis is an evil drug. It’s us and not the Rastafari who are messed up — at least on this issue.

Other than cannabis, the Rastafari are very much Abrahamic in the sense of “no fun.” According to Wikipedia, the religion rejects what it calls, “Babylon” — by which it means materialism and sensual pleasures. I always have a problem with powerful groups and people telling the rest of us that we really ought to knock off all those things that make life worth living.

Apparently, Bob Marley’s wife became a Rastafari when Haile Selassie visited, believing that she saw a stigma on his hand. These are wounds and deformities that correspond to Jesus’ wounds from the crucifiction and getting stabbed with the Spear of Destiny. It always makes me think of the REM song “Losing My Religion” because the video features this. So why not?

An old physics professor of mine got to meet Selassie when he worked in the Peace Corps. He thought very highly of him and as far as I can tell, Haile Selassie was a good leader of the country. The Rastafari could have chosen much worse.

Democracy and Humanum Genus (Anniversary)

Posted on 20 Apr 2016 by Frank Moraes

Pope Leo XIII - Humanum Genus I know I’m recycling a lot of stuff these days, but you should give me a break. First, I’m overworked and really tired pretty much all the time. Second, much of my old work is really good! Like this article. Humanum Genus is important stuff!

On this day in 1884, Pope Leo XIII released the papal encyclical, Humanum genus. Oh, that Catholic Church! It is always angry about something. And at that time, it was angry about, well, democracy. Or more precisely, it was not keen on popular sovereignty — the idea that government has the right to rule because of a mandate by the people and not because God decided it. Or as Dennis puts it in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!” Pope Leo begged to differ.

It also isn’t keen on separation of church and state. So basically, the whole damned thing was very un-American. The funny thing is that now a good 35% of the country — almost exclusively protestants — would totally agree with Leo the Pope. Among conservatives, democracy itself is out of favor. And most of these ninnies think the Constitution itself — you know, that document that rather pointedly doesn’t mention God — is divinely inspired. I really do wonder what kind of American history these people learned. Or is it just anything to justify getting what they want?

Anyway, back to the Humanum Genus, most of it was presented as an attack on the Freemasons. That makes sense, because they were a secular force. And they were of what is fast becoming my favorite American religious group: those who just don’t care enough to have much of an opinion about God. They are much more sensible than atheists like me who spend a lot of time on it. I mean, I would save a lot of time if I just became a Catholic and went to Mass each Sunday.

The Pope was also concerned about public education. Basically, the Pope was concerned that the people would be self-reliant and not dependent upon the hierarchy that God himself set up. In other words, Pope Leo was the same as the power elite at any time: he was just complaining about trends that were threatening his power. I think people should give Pope Francis a little slack in that regard. But it’s a different time. At least in America, it isn’t the pope who is oppressing us. It is the corporate state. And just like the many Catholics in 1884 who loved the oppression of Humanum genus, so there are many today who love their modern subsistence wage economy.

Happy anniversary Humanum genus!

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