I Support the Palestinian "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" Movement

I SUPPORT THE PALESTINIAN "BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS" MOVEMENT
by Frank Newton
Thursday, March 21st to Friday March 22nd, 2024

 

Yesterday morning a negative comment about the "BDS movement" wandered onto my computer screen.  Since I had never heard of this movement, I looked it up on the worldwide web.  I found its website at https://bdsmovement.net/.  This website (on its opening web page) stated that "The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law." 

I support the Palestinian "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" movement for five short reasons and one long reason.

Five Short Reasons

(1) Any opinion which is anti-Muslim is anti-Semitic.  When the interests of Muslims and the interests of Jews collide, it is a corruption of thought to use the word "anti-Semitic" to mean "anti-Jewish."  People who dismiss this statement as "frivolous" are themselves frivolous.

(2) The Jews are not the only people who have a right to exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  Our vision is that anyone who lives there has the right to live there.

(3) Anyone who lives in a refugee camp between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has a right to have a government which has provided a series of steps to move all refugees out of refugee camps into houses of the sort which are built by Habitat for Humanity.

(4) Moreover, there is no obligation for anyone who was frightened by soldiers into abandoning a house they previously owned, to contribute by sweat equity or in any other way to the building of a new house for them.  The government which raised and paid the army which frightened the refugees into abandoning houses they previously owned is responsible for providing new houses to those refugees, houses which are not located in refugee camps, free of charge to the refugees.  The houses should be built on the principle of canvas for canvas, wood for wood, stone for stone, well for well, and sheep for sheep.  If the previous habitation was of canvas, then "Thy tents shall be thy home" applies.  But wood for wood, stone for stone, well for well, and sheep for sheep also applies.

(5) The Bible -- the Hebrew Bible -- contains statements contradicting the vision given above in reason #2 that anyone who lives between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there has the right to live there.  Those statements in the Hebrew Bible contradicting the vision are false, null, and void, because the higher law they purport to come from is con­tra­dicted by every respectable higher law known to the wise people among us.

The statements in the Hebrew Bible which claim exceptions to that vision will be listed in part, quoted as listed, and discussed in part below, in the section called One Long Reason, and the part called Five Quotations.

One Long Reason

You will find the false, null, and void statements in the Hebrew Bible denying the right of certain persons, tribes, and ethnic groups to exist between the Jordan River and the Medi­ter­ranean Sea, and in the neighboring lands, in these Bible verses and others:

Deuteronomy 3:1-11, condemning the Amorites and Bashan.

Deuteronomy 20:16-18, condemning Canaan because they do not worship Yahweh.

Deuteronomy 25:17-19, commanding the Israelites to blot out the memory of the Amalekites under heaven, because the Amalekites attacked the Israelites when the Israelites were marching to Canaan.

Joshua 6:16-21, condemning Jericho.

First Samuel 15: verses 1-33, condemning Amalek, and con­demning King Saul of the Israelites because Saul refused to kill King Agag of the Amalekites.

Alas for these verses in the Hebrew Bible, commanding the slaughter of the people of Canaan between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, and in the neighboring lands!  What Holy God can stomach these commandments to slaughter people?

Who can comment on such troublesome verses?  But then, who has even read all of the fat holy books of the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims, from their first letter to their last?  Who has read all the fat com­mentaries on these fat holy books?  Who can comment on all these fat commentaries?  It is more than any sinful generation of the twenty-first cen­tury after Jesus can handle!  And yet -- we have to try.

Depriving people of their right to exist and live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was wrong in Bible times.  And it is wrong today.  And the fact that the claimed exceptions in Bible times were built into the wall of the Holy Bible gives no condonement to deprive Palestinians of the right to live, freely and in enjoyment of houses, wells, and sheep, today.

Distributed Wickedness

There is no all wicked nation.  Some of Pharaoh's Egyptians were wicked, some of the Canaanites were wicked, some of the Israelites were wicked, some of the Babylonians were wicked, some of the Romans were wicked, some of the Americans are wicked, some of the modern Israelis are wicked, all of the Nazis were and are wicked -- the Nazis are a political party, not a nation -- some of the Germans were and are wicked.  It is that way with every human nation.

And going past the nations, to the holy books -- there are holy books which are profound, very deep, filled with the presence of God, and useful for salvation; but there is no perfect holy book.

Conclusion Concerning the Long Reason

John Kay, a rock and roll bandleader, wrote in his song "Spiritual Fantasy": "The wise men came together in the hope to free mankind of the rubbish that had gathered in God's name."

This is the challenge to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians (we listed them accord­ing to the antiquity of their religions): to work their way through their holy books to abolish and deny all holy writings stating that some people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea have no right to exist or to live there; and to abolish and deny all holy writings commanding massacre.

Frank Newton

Five Quotations from the Holy Book of the Scriptures of the Jews

[I have chosen to quote these Bible passages from an English translation of the Bible which is out of copyright, the King James Version, called by some older generations of Episco­palians and librarians the Authorized Version. From an edition which shows English speak­ers how to pronounce the vowels in names, by marks over them. -- Frank Newton]

1. Deuteronomy 3:1-11 -- Then we turned, and went up the way to Bă´shăn: and Ŏg the king of
Bă´shăn came out against us, he and all his people, at Ĕd´re-ī,  2  And the LORD said unto me, Fear him not; for I will deliver him, and all his people, and his land, into thy hand; and thou shalt do unto him as thou didst unto Sī´hŏn king of the Ăm´ôr-ītes, which dwelt in Hĕsh´bŏn.  3  So the LORD our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bă´shăn, and all his people; and we smote him until none was left to him remaining.  4  And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of Är´gŏb, the kingdom of Og in Bă´shăn.  5  All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, beside unwalled towns a great many.  6  And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sī´hŏn king of Hĕsh´bŏn, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.  7  But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to ourselves.  8  And we took at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Ăm´ôr-ītes the land that was on this side Jôr´dan, from the river of Är´nŏn unto mount Hẽr´mon;  9  (Which Hẽr´mon the
Sĭ-d ō´nĭ-ans call Sĭr´i-ŏn, and the Ăm´ôr-ītes call it Shē´nir;)  10  All the cities of the plain, and all
Gĭl´e-ăd, and all Bă´shăn, unto Săl´chah and Ĕd´re-ī, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bă´shăn,  11  For only Og king of Bă´shăn remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Răb´bath of the children of Ăm´mŏn? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. 

2. Deuteronomy 20:16-18 -- But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:  17  But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hĭt´tītes, and the Ăm´ôr-ītes, the Cā´năan-ītes, and the Pĕr´ĭz-zītes, the Hī´vītes, and the
Jēb´u-sītes; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;  18  That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. 

3. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 -- Remember what Ăm´a-lĕk did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt;  18  How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary, and he feared not God.  19  Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD the God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Ăm´a-lĕk from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.

4. Joshua 6:16-21 -- And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Jŏsh´u-ȧ said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city.  17  And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD; only Rā´hăb the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.  18  And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed,when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.  19  But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD; they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.  20  So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets; and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city;  21  And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

5. First Samuel 15: verses 1-9, 13-15, 17-21, portions of 22-23, 24, and 32-33 -- Săm'u-el also said unto Sa̤ul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel; now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD.  2  Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Ăm´a-lĕk did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.  3  Now go and smite Ăm´a-lĕk, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.  4  And Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Tĕl´a-īm, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of
Jū´dah.  5  And Saul came to a city of Ăm´a-lĕk, and laid wait in the valley.  6  And Saul said unto the Kĕn´ītes, Go, depart, get you down from among the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes, lest I destroy you with them; for ye shewed kindness to all the children of Israel, when they came up out of Egypt.  So the Kĕn´ītes departed from among the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes.  7  And Saul smote the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes from Hăv´i-lah until thou comest to Shûr, that is over against Egypt.  8  And he took Ā´găg the king of the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.  9  But Saul and the people spared Ā´găg, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.  . . .  13  And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD.  14  And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?  15  And Saul said, They have brought them from the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed.  . . .  17  And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king over Israel?  18  And the LORD sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes, and fight against them until they be utterly consumed,  19  Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the LORD?  20  And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me, and have brought Ā´găg the king of Ăm´a-lĕk, and have utterly destroyed the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes.  21  But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Ḡĭl´găl.  22  And Samuel said . . .  23  . . .  Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.  24  And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words; because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.  . . .  32  Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me Ā´găg the king of the Ăm´a-lĕk-ītes.  And Ā´găg came unto him delicately.  And Ā´găg said, surely the bitterness of death is past.  33  And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.  And Samuel hewed Ā´găg in pieces before the LORD in Ḡĭl´găl. 

[Please let me know, if I have copied any letters of the King James Bible verses wrongly. -- Newton]

Relowering Your Consciousness

RELOWERING YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
Thursday March 21st, 2024

 

As a conservat-iberal, I have been wrestling with the concept of relowering my conscious­ness.

I have come up with a whimsical example of relowering your consciousness, and I thought I would share it.  It's based on a scenario -- here we go! 

Suppose you are a Latin scholar, and you have discovered that the literal meaning of "to inculcate" is "to use your heel to force some experiential knowledge, or a piece of inform­ation, into your student's brain."  That is because of its etymology: inculcate is from Latin in (= English in) + calx (heel), yielding *calcā-re (to heel), which must have changed to *-culc-ā-re by a certain tendency for AL followed by a consonant to change to UL in Latin, when the AL is no longer in the first syllable of the word.  (For the change of AL to UL, compare English result, from Latin re-sultā-re (to spring back, to rebound) from Latin  re- (back or again) plus saltā-re (to jump)  -- so "to result" meant originally "to ricochet.") -- So inculcate means, etymo­logically, "to kick or stomp some information or knowledge into a student's brain." -- So our use of "inculcate" meaning "teach" is based on an ancient Roman witticism, more or less two thousand years old.

So, after you absorb this etymology, should you, can you, still use the word "inculcate" to describe any kind of teaching?

Sure you can, if you re-lower your consciousness.  Here's how.  Ask yourself, is it ever appropriate -- is it ever right -- for a sergeant to kick a recruit who is lying down?  You might answer, mightn't you, that it is right for a sergeant to kick a recruit if the recruit fell down because of failing to heed a principle of balance or bodily comportment previously taught by the sergeant.

Voilà!  You have relowered your consciousness.  You can now use the verb to inculcate (meaning to teach a behavior or a belief) as if no one had ever explained its etymology to you.

Frank Newton

Foretaste (Prophecy)

FORETASTE (PROPHECY)
Sun. November 12th, 2023

 

The hymnwriter Fanny Crosby wrote "O what a foretaste of glory divine."  And that is my favorite part of her hymn Blessed Assurance.

And this is the blessing which I lay upon you: that you will have foretastes of glory divine.

For me: the video of a nave of undivided Methodists singing "And Can It Be That I Should Gain an Interest in the Saviour's Blood?" -- another hymn -- by the founder of Methodism Charles Wesley -- which I heard on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQeIGbKqiw8 .

A nave full of lawyers and librarians singing a hymn of tricky words with flawless articulation -- with the holy gusto of people who feel Solomon's temple around them.

Of all the mansions in Jesus's father's house, that is the mansion where I will be; a mansion of lawyers and librarians.  And I will visit you in your mansion.

I will visit you in the mansion of the dyslexic, the mansion of the grownups who have trouble pronouncing words.

I will visit you in the mansion of the people who do not like themselves.

I will visit you in the mansion of the soldiers who fight for their country and fight all the flawed wars.

I will visit you in the mansion of the people who are given a great bag of money and are unable to keep it within their grasp.

I will visit the mansion of the animals who help other animals; and the mansion of the animals who give their lives fighting to protect their young from predators.

Oh I will visit the mansion of the holy innocents, the holiest mansion, where Jesus spends most of his time!  The mansion of the babies of Jericho; the crack babies; the babies of the Holocaust; the babies of Gaza; the baby birds abandoned by their parents when the lake dries up.  Of all the angels, they sing the profoundest!  They sing not from gusto, not from earthly excitement -- they sing with the immense ball and chain of this soiled world transmuted into majesty.

Your heavenly mansion will find you.  But nevertheless I pray that you will search for it with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

Frank Newton

"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" Is Theologically Unsound

"THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA" IS THEOLOGICALLY UNSOUND
Thurs. Sept. 7th, 2023

 

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

This morning as I was in my car, the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" came on the radio, and I thought again about how theologically unsound that song is.  The song was recorded by the Charlie Daniels Band and released in 1979, and began its career as a radio song at that time.

Wikipedia credits the songwriting to Charlie Daniels and five others, the members of his band at the time.  But Wikipedia adds that the melody is from an earlier song by Vassar Clements called "Lonesome Fiddle Blues."  So if it were classical music, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" would be described as a theme and variations based on "Lonesome Fiddle Blues," with a new text.

But it's the words to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" that are theologically unsound.  The song describes how a cocky young man from Georgia beat the Devil at a fiddle-playing contest.   The Devil challenges Johnny (the cocky young man) to a fiddle-playing contest: "I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul  'cause I think I'm better than you."  After both have had their turn playing their fiddles, "The devil bowed his head because he knew that he'd been beat, And he laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet."

Problems with the Text

1. The Devil will never admit he's been beaten, to anyone other than God.  The Devil is a cheater, but he is also a maker of false claims, and he sticks to his false claims come hell or high water.  He will insist loudly until long after you are dead that if people clapped louder for your fiddle-playing, the fiddle-playing contest was stolen.

2. The Devil is musically portrayed in the song as a lousy fiddler.  Also theologically unsound!  Theology and history teach us that the Devil is a Wagnerian musician who can make Valkyries ride, and besides, he doesn't have to "have" talent -- he can suck the talent out of human musicians -- for however long he needs to suck it out -- and make our talent sound like it came from him.

3. The Devil can make your violin strings snap any time during your demon-stration of how good a fiddle player you are.

Georgia Exceptionalism

Your neck of the woods can no more produce a fiddle-player who can out-fiddle the devil than anybody else's neck of the woods.

The Devil for Atheists (a Plot Summary)

In essence, the Devil is the spirit or clan mascot (totem) of making bad choices -- and not just bad choices, but disastrous choices -- choices that make you lose both your tangible possessions and your good name.  Choices that limit your options for the rest of your life.

Whether the spirit of making bad choices is an independent power in the world -- an opponent of God, as Christians usually see it -- is simply not relevant.  Temptation is a distinctive and important feature of our world, regardless of whether a spirit stands behind it.

"Give the devil his due" means "Do not underestimate temptation as a force for evil in the world we live in."

On Cockiness

Isaiah 30:15 says in part "in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."  Bragging to someone more powerful than you are that you can play fiddle better than they can ("I'm the best there's ever been" says Johnny to the Devil) will lead to disaster.

In conclusion, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is not just a tall tale -- it is not a story about men wearing umbrellas on their feet because a young and inexperienced cloud got wedged in a cave underground, and is raining upwards out of frustration.  It is a song which dishes out lousy advice.

Frank Newton

Charlie Brown's Shirt and Dagwood's Pajamas

 

CHARLIE BROWN'S SHIRT AND DAGWOOD'S PAJAMAS
Mon. Aug.  28th, 2023

 

This is a short essay on my favorite men's shirt in a comic strip, and my favorite men's pajamas in a comic strip.  Let's start with the pajamas, because yesterday's comics brought them to my attention.

Part One

Yesterday Sunday Aug. 27th, my favorite comic strip was Blondie, because Dagwood was wearing white pajamas with red doughnuts on them.  At least, the doughnuts looked red to me.  Searching on the web, I decided that the doughnuts on his pajamas are usually orange.

This picture of Dagwood's pajamas is copied from the "Editor’s Dispatch: Overlooked Valentines" by Countess Tea (Feb. 10th, 2014) on the Comics Kingdom website

(https://comicskingdom.com/trending/blog/2014/02/10/editor-s-dispatch-overlooked-valentines), viewed Aug. 28th, 2023:

 

These are the most stylish men's pajamas I have ever seen.  Dagwood works for a businessman, but we know he sings Italian (Neapolitan) songs in the bathtub.  The artistic tendencies in Dagwood's personality are undeniable.

(To wander away from the topic, Daisy the dog looks like she is trying to imitate Pluto, the dog of a different cartoonist.  Daisy, you can run rings around Pluto.)

Speaking of the doughnuts on Dagwood's pajamas, I think the cartoonist gets to leave instructions or requests for the person who adds the colors to a comic strip.  The current cartoonists for Blondie are Dean Young and John Marshall (the strip was founded by Dean's father Chic Young in 1930).  I would assume that Young and Marshall have creative control over the colors of Dagwood's pajamas; although the color scheme could have been inherit­ed from Young's father.

Part Two

Every reader of the Sunday comics, which are in color, knows that in Charles Schulz's strip Peanuts, Charlie Brown has two shirts in his wardrobe, a red short-sleeved shirt with a black zigzag stripe across the belly, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt with a black zigzag stripe across the belly.

Well, but the truth is more complicated, as explained at https://collectpeanuts.com/2016/03/21/what-color-is-charlie-browns-shirt/  

("What Color is Charlie Brown’s Shirt? – Collecting 101"; March 21st, 2016).  This web page (which seems to be anonymous) says "The classic black zig-zag has been set against red, orange, green, blue and yellow. [But] Red and yellow seem to be the most prominent shirt color through the years."

So we'll focus on the red and yellow.  Here again are two snippings from the WorldWide Web showing Charles Schulz's hero in his coolest attire.

 

What we have here is the go-to shirt of a world-class philosopher and do-gooder who seems to have flunked Life 101 more often than any of the rest of us.  Of course, philoso­phers choose their shirts very carefully, and this one's a winner.

(Although he is a philosopher, we do not mean to imply that Charlie Brown is the resident intellectual in Peanuts.  That would be Linus.)

That's all!  This concludes our essay on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing in the comic strips.  (We used to call them the funny papers in my family, but that name, sadly, has slipped out of use.)

Frank Newton

Hamlet and Yorick

HAMLET AND YORICK
Wed. May 31st, 2023

 

In Act Five of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Prince Hamlet comes across two gravediggers on the palace grounds, cheerfully digging a new grave.  It turns out the grave is for Hamlet's girlfriend Ophelia, who has committed suicide.  It seems that it is only during this scene that Hamlet finds out that Ophelia is dead.

In Shakespeare's day, a person who killed themselves could not be buried in a Christian graveyard, nor have a proper funeral.  But since Ophelia was of a noble family, she is afforded a semi-Christian burial, with a priest saying a curtailed mass; but she is not, it seems, to be buried in a regular graveyard with a tombstone.

As they dig, the grave diggers keep unearthing skulls and bones.  Now that I've grown up, that suggests to me that the palace servants did not receive a churchyard burial even if they had not committed suicide.  If the palace servants were buried in unmarked graves on the palace grounds, and Ophelia is to be buried in an unmarked grave even though in the presence of a priest,  then the grave diggers are doubtless digging in an area of the palace grounds where they have dug before, and they are unsurprised when they turn up the bones of earlier burials.  But one skull the first grave digger recognizes as the skull of Yorick -- the court jester to the late King of Denmark, the king that was Hamlet's father.  By this time Hamlet has joined the grave diggers' conversation.  The first grave digger passes Yorick's skull to Hamlet, and Hamlet proceeds to reminisce about Yorick the jester.  "He has bore me on his back a thousand times," Hamlet says, to indicate the rides Yorick gave him when Hamlet was a little boy (as pictured by the Spanish-English painter Philip Calderon, reproduced in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorick#/media/File:The_Young_Lord_Hamlet.jpg).

So when I woke up this morning, it struck me, perhaps an element of this complex stagecraft -- a layer undreamt of by the few commentators I was exposed to -- was that Shakespeare had seen to it that the plaster cast of a skull to be waved in the air when the play of Hamlet was being acted, might be crafted to bear an uncanny resemblance to Shakespeare's own skull -- still residing inside Shakespeare's head when Hamlet was first acted -- but then what a dome Shakespeare had!  Look at the engraving of Shakespeare published in the first folio of his plays -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portraits_of_Shakespeare#/media/File:Shakespeare_Droeshout_1623.jpg -- Shakespeare was most literally an egghead, his cranium giving ample space for a palatial, brainier-than-average brain.  The plaster skull, then, might have been a surplus joke riding the crest of the wave of the grave diggers' wit, beating against the level sand of Prince Hamlet's turgid and Poe-shaped morbidity, so that the audience was howling with laughter while the thoughtful heads among them were stunned by Prince Hamlet's phantasmagoric melancholy.

For the epitaph on his own tombstone Shakespeare had written "Good friend , for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here . . . and cursed be he that moves my bones."  Perhaps Shakespeare wrote the grave diggers' scene in "Hamlet" from life, having witnessed and marvelled at the ability of a real and living grave digger to identify a skull of his own earlier burying, the while exchanging jokes with the second digger and treating the earlier bones unearthed while digging a spot for a newly-dead body with a cavalier disrespect.  Perhaps a younger Shakespeare had shuddered to witness such a scene, and resolved to do what he could to forestall grave diggers after his own death from tossing around his own bones in so jolly and unholy a manner.

Frank Newton

Women Priests and Hum and Screech

WOMEN PRIESTS AND HUM AND SCREECH
Wed. June 7th, 2023

 

My priest and I have been talking a little about the amplification of the voice of women priests in church, especially during their sermons, but also for the rest of the worship service.  It is totally theoretical, because I have no relevant knowledge.  I only have hunches.

I wrote on Facebook recently,  "If a woman comes to a woman priest and says 'I'd like to become a priest,'  I hope the woman priest will say "That's great, but we also need women sound engineers.  Part of the reason some men priests don't have to talk that loud but their voices get picked up really well is because all the sound engineers were men."  That is the way I see it. -- So now I have one more thing to add.  But first, an anecdote.  My friend Martin in Durham told me his father was a professor in divinity school, and he taught a course that the professors called "Homiletics and Speech."  But the students called it Hum and Screech (Hum and Screech 101).  Well the point -- the way I take it -- is that diction and elocution are part of the curriculum in schools of divinity.  That's a really good thing!  It's a little-known fact (among atheists) that Christians like to be able to hear what their preacher is saying. -- So therefore, I think part of the solution to creating an environment where women priests can really sock it to their congregation, is for the hum and screech professors to put their minds on the following question: What is the most effective way to teach hum and screech to the women candidates for the priesthood?  I happen to believe that is a doable project.

My priest is a little bit gloomy about the prospects.  I am somewhat optimistic.  Not optimistic in the sense that the issues can be solved in the next year.  But optimistic in the sense that the issues can be solved in the next ten years.  We all need to work together on this.

Frank Newton

Ideologies

IDEOLOGIES
Wed. May 17th, 2023

Religions as the Largest and Longest-Lived Category of Ideologies

For the first three thousand years after writing was invented, all ideologies were religions, or working parts of religions (for example, the ideology that kings were the shepherds of their people was a working part of the religion of the ancient Israelites).

 

Ideologies and the Invention of Writing

After writing was invented, we can study ideologies by studying texts -- by reading things which have been written, ancient and modern.  People almost certainly had ideologies before writing was invented, but studying those ideologies today is much much harder.  We have to deduce what we can from studying what articles people wanted their surviving relatives to bury with them after they died -- articles that could survive (or at least leave traces) in the earth in the vicinity of the skeleton of the dead person, so that we can study them -- "grave goods" -- thousands of years later.  But for the period after writing was invented, we have whole books we can study, filled with ancient ideas -- and ideas are the stuff of ideologies.

 

The Great Ideologies

Colleges teach courses on the great religions of the world.  Perhaps in the future there will be college courses on the great ideologies of the world.  These could be of two kinds -- good courses on the great ideologies, and bad courses on the great ideologies.  The bad courses on the great ideologies will omit religions entirely, based on the false assumption that religions are not ideologies.  The good courses on the great ideologies will include religions -- while also including Karl Marx and Ayn Rand.

In other words, if religion and political science are two different college subjects -- two different disciplines -- then the good courses on the great ideologies are going to be inter­disciplinary.

 

Why Do People Have Ideologies?

Ideologies are not a disease of the human brain.  They provide a system for integrating knowledge of the world with beliefs about desirable behavior.  Most people want an organizing system which does that kind of integrating.

There can be, I think, a small number of people who organize their knowledge and beliefs without an ideology.  Trying to do without an ideology is like organizing your knowledge and beliefs using Library of Congress Subject Headings.  Subject headings were a system invented by librarians -- including a lot in the United States -- for finding books on a  particular topic in large libraries -- a system that achieved its highest level of success and sophistication in the last years before computer catalogs for libraries were invented and reached a certain level of competence -- after which subject headings gradually faded out of the picture as a way to help people find books on a topic in libraries.

Basically, a large set of subject headings, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, provide a way to put topics in alphabetical order in a catalog, with cross-references leading back and forth between related ideas and/or different names for the same idea.

Something like a system of subject headings could, in theory, function as an alternative to an ideology as a way to organize knowledge and beliefs in a person's brain .  Not so much the alphabetical order, but the cross-references.

            Oppression.  See also Discrimination.
            Hate.  See also Oppression.
            Discrimination, Types of.  See, for example, Racial discrimination.

If any one of us could have neural pathways in our brain connecting different but related topics like that -- to assist us in the storage and retrieval of relevant memories, and relevant ideas that we have learned from reading and from hearing the talk of wiser heads like our parents and teachers -- then -- well -- wow.

But an ideology is simpler than having hundreds or thousands of home-made cross-ref­erences in our brain.  In fact, buying into an ideology is a lot like inheriting a set of cross-references from our ancestors.  Or to make another metaphor, specifically for people who read, buying into an ideology is sort of like purchasing a set of great books, to organize the less fun-oriented part of your reading. 

If looked at from a point of view like that, ideologies do not seem like a dumb idea.

 

But Ideologies Do Start Wars

But ideologies do start wars.  For many centuries in our history, those wars are labeled the "wars of religion."

But for the twentieth century, one can call those wars the "economic theory wars."  In the twentieth century, the ideological wars  were the shooting wars that were fought between two competing economic theories, capitalism and communism.

In the future, there will be other ideologies, and those ideologies will be competing with each other, and will give rise to new categories of ideological wars.  By wars, we mean people killing each other because of their differing beliefs -- usually people pre-organized into nations.

Really, being starry-eyed about the future of human history is just a dumb idea.  Ideological wars are a bad thing, but how can we stop people from fighting them -- it isn't any different from asking how can we stop people from murdering other people.  Do you really believe that we will get noticeably closer to an ideal universe in the next ten generations?

 

The Future and the Past

In our day and time, people are enamored of the future.  People say that the future is where we will live the rest of our lives.  But our ideas cannot come from the future.  Our ideas can only come from an organized knowledge of our experience -- which is our past.

What we carry with us into the future is our experience of human nature, and our experi­ence of the natures of the other beings and creatures we live with on our planet.

DO NOT underestimate the importance of our past as a resource for planning for our future.  HE WHO ignores our experience of human nature is a fool.

 

Wars and Self-Sacrifice

Wars are the main part of human life where people sacrifice their lives for a cause.

Wars are fought between nations, but different nations often make different choices between competing ideologies.  Then a war is not only fought between two nations -- or many nations lined up on two sides -- but it is also fought between two ideologies.

But to restate the previous point, wars are an arena where sacrifices take place -- specifically, an arena where people sacrifice their lives for a greater good or cause.

The word "arena" is both literal and metaphorical.  In the literal sense, the ancient Colos­seum in Rome was built around an arena where Christians sacrificed their lives for an ideology, namely their religious beliefs.

But while we are talking about the Colosseum, we should also mention that people sacrificed their lives for other causes in that Roman circle of bleachers for shows.  Gladiators also sacrificed their lives according to the principle that one man is killed, and the other man is fed at the public expense; while crowds of people of average and below-average virtue came to watch.

 

Animal Sacrifice

The idea of sacrifice is very ancient in the human mind.  Animals were sacrificed.  But animal sacrifices were, in their origin, a performance of a ritual before eating meat.  The ritual included the killing of the animal -- which is necessary before eating it.  When the ritual is removed -- as it is in modern times , aside from the saying of grace -- the animal still has to be killed to be eaten.  But in modern technologically advanced societies, the animal is killed out of sight of most of the eaters.  It would actually make sense to say that in the United States today, and many other parts of the world, most of the eaters of the meat are paying NOT to have to watch the killing of the animal.

 

Self-Sacrifice

We can assume that the idea of self-sacrifice is also ancient.  Wars are an ancient human behavior, and when one side wins a war, the survivors can say that the dead sacrificed their lives for the sake of their group, their tribe, their village, their kingdom.

Usually one side loses a war, and then other words are used; the winning side may use the words "dying in vain."  But the group, the tribe, the village, the kingdom that lost the war can still say that the dead sacrificed their lives for the group.  They can still honor their dead.

People remote from the experience of war can say that the idea of sacrifice is "a fancy" or "a fantasy" or a "tendentious interpretation."  But if we inquire carefully into people's emo­tions and behavior, we find that many people are sincere in honoring their country's dead.  Ultimately, the gratitude and its sincerity, if present, is the longest surviving memory of the war by its survivors (as opposed to its historians).

 

Another Form of Sacrifice

Then there is a form of sacrifice where human beings sacrifice human beings other than themselves.  We call this human sacrifice.  It is ancient too.  It needs to be mentioned, because if we do not mention it, our classification of types of sacrifice will be a failure.  But for this essay, we do not need to dwell on it.  It was also accompanied by ritual.

 

Ideology and Its Sacrifices

The types of sacrifice which we have described are major forms of sacrifice.  Major forms of sacrifice are always tied in with ideologies.  Part of the function of ideologies is to justify and honor sacrifices.

Sacrifices are an important theme in the Bible.  In the book of Genesis, Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac based on words which Abraham heard his God say.  At the last minute, Isaac's life was spared when an angel provided an animal -- a ram -- for Abraham to sacrifice instead. 

Long ago, some silly ancient fool tacked on a moral to that story, that Abraham was rewarded -- he received the reward of not having to kill his son, and a blessing along with it -- because Abraham was prepared to obey the command which he heard from his God.

But a human being -- one who can fight their way free of the ideological clutter which is the overstock of every single human brain -- can easily see that that is not the moral of the story of Abraham, and Isaac, and the knife, and the bundle of firewood.  The moral of the story is that it is better to sacrifice an animal in worshipping God, than it is to sacrifice a human being in worshipping God.  God set up the situation so that this point sank in unforgettably with Abraham, and unforgettably with Abraham's descendants in perpetuity.

And some fool sneaked into the story the idea that it is a story about obedience.  But the truth is that if Abraham had said to God "Lord, I will not sacrifice my son on your altar" then God would have said to Abraham "Blessed are you, Abraham, and blessed will be your descendants forever, because you knew that I your God will never lay human sacrifice upon you as a duty."  Hear, O Israel:  hear, O United States:  hear, all ye followers of the Abraham­ic religions: The belaying of the order to kill Isaac was God's plan from the beginning!  God made an impression on Abraham his worshipper, and the impression remains with all of Abraham's children unto this day.  That is the real moral of this story in the Bible.

This story shows that our ideas about sacrifice are regulated by our ideologies.  And sometimes, when some ancient anonymous fool has tacked on a false moral to a story about sacrifice, we can still fight our way free to appreciating the real moral of the story in our hearts -- even if we cannot find the words to get the real moral across our tongues.

Sacrifices may also be an important theme in the sacred books of other religions.  But the current writer is without any knowledge on that topic or question.

But the fool's moral does advance the ideology of war.  Men like Abraham do expose their sons to the danger of losing their lives for the sake of their country.  And obedience is the key to understanding the sacrifices people make in wars.  But when that happens, it is a self-sacrifice by Isaac.  Abraham returns thanks to God for the bravery and obedience of his son.  But when a son goes to war, his father does not carry the knife.  His father does not order his son to carry firewood as part of a plan that the father will tie up his son and kill him and burn him on an altar.  The knowledge of these things is an unstated but implicit but very, very deep part of the ideology of the Abrahamic religions.

 

A New and Despicable Ideology, Not Yet Named, in My Country

There is a new ideology walking up and down and going hither and yon in my country, as yet unnamed.  It is the ideology that says all politicians are crooked and corrupt.  We could call it the ideology of distrust or mistrust.

This ideology is worthless and immature.  If you have a low opinion of the honesty of your leaders, it can only be because you have a low opinion of your own honesty.  Every honest person knows that some leaders are honest, and other leaders are to various degrees dishonest.  Honest citizens have a special sense of smell which helps them determine which of their leaders are honest.

The ideology of distrust can only lead to one outcome, namely the replacement of our democracy and republic -- the political ideology we have inherited from the writers of our constitution -- with a dictatorship.  With a dictatorship comes a Hobson's choice of no voting or only pretend voting, in which the votes are not honestly counted.

 

A Sort of Conclusion

Joni Mitchell wrote a song about trying to look at things from both sides.  In this essay, we tried to look at ideologies from several different sides.  We tried to talk about the good side of ideologies, and the bad side of ideologies.  We suggested that human ideologies are closely connected with war -- war as an activity which human beings take part in -- and closely connected with every major kind of sacrifice. 

At the end of this essay, we can only ask people to think about their ideologies.  We can only ask people not to approach ide­ologies as a mere object of loathing.  But then we can also only ask people -- especially survivors -- to examine their ideology with re­spect, but also with every ounce of intelli­gence which they can muster.

Frank Newton

Animals on Facebook

ANIMALS ON FACEBOOK
Written Wed. Aug. 17, 2022; posted Wed. May 3rd, 2023

Facebook is a great place to see animal videos!  Animal videos on Facebook are a genre which can be subdivided into many subgenres.  I'm particularly attracted to six subgenres of animal videos: (1) animals being cute, (2) animals being stylish, (3) animals being intelligent, (4) animals helping other animals, (5) animals helping people, and (6) animals asking people for help. 

Videos of animals being cute and animals being stylish are mood stabilizers.  Or you could say they are cheerer-uppers.  Most people feel happier right after they have watched a video of an animal being cute or stylish.  Videos like that are a powerful reminder that the world we live in is not one hundred percent messed up.

Videos of animals being intelligent are encouraging.  If dogs and cats can be that smart -- even some of the time -- surely there is some hope for the human race.

But the subgenres that impress me the most are the last three: (4) animals helping other animals, (5) animals helping people, and (6) animals asking people for help.  I think these videos are very deep in a way that most people understand at the gut level.  Videos like that suggest to me that, if we believe Darwin's theory of evolution (which I do), then  goodness was in our gene pool from the beginning.  There was goodness in our world before the first human being walked the earth -- back when God had not yet created anything smarter than the chimpanzee.

That should be encouraging both for atheists and for Christian Darwinists like me.  I am en­couraged by the idea that there was goodness in the world already before the first human being came into the world.

As a Christian, that suggests to me that religions did not invent the concept of goodness.  Instead, religions codified goodness and came up with lists of ways that one can be good, classifications of different forms of goodness, hierarchies of forms of goodness ("it is more blessed to do such-and-such than to do so-and-so").  Religions increased our vocabulary for talking about goodness, and began the project of keeping records about remarkable good people.

Did you notice that I didn't use the word "merely"?  I did not say "religions merely codified goodness" etc.  See, to my way of thinking, those are enormous achievements which the higher religions of the world can take credit for.

(Higher religions here means religions that do not believe in gods that are powerful but capricious.  Higher religions believe that the god or gods care about the fate of individual people, love the human race, and want the human race to make moral progress, regardless of how slow it is.)

I guess that's all for now.  One of the reasons I like being on Facebook is so I can see the animal videos.

Frank Newton

The International Criminal Court

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
Sat. March 18th, 2023

by Frank Newton, Boiling Springs, North Carolina

 

After I heard that the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, had issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin because of his immoral -- or unethical, if you like that word better -- behavior in deporting Ukrainian children from conquered parts of the Ukraine into Russia, I skimmed the Wikipedia article on the International Criminal Court.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT -- POINTS I FOUND MOST INTERESTING

I gleaned these points from the Wikipedia article in English on the International Criminal Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court) (I have quoted them out of order):

-- The International Criminal Court was established by treaty adopted at a conference of nations in 1998, at which the treaty "was adopted by a vote of 120 to seven, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S., and Yemen.^[15]"

Wikipedia footnote 15: "Scharf, Michael P. (August 1998). "Results of the Rome Conference for an International Criminal Court" Archived 15 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine. American Society of International Law. Retrieved 4 December 2006."

-- "As of November 2019, 123 [nations]^[52]  are parties to the Statute of the Court, including all the countries of South America, nearly all of Europe, most of Oceania and roughly half of Africa.^[53][54]

Footnote 52: "The sum of (a) states parties, (b) signatories and (c) non-signatory United Nations member states is 195. This number is two more than the number of United Nations member states (193) due to the State of Palestine and Cook Islands being states parties but not United Nations member states." [commentary by Frank Newton: this information is not very exciting, but it suggests that the authors of the Wikipedia article have done pretty much homework.]

Footnote 53:  "United Nations Treaty Database entry regarding the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court". United Nations Treaty Collection. Archived from the original on 18 January 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2010.

Footnote 54: [Same source as footnote 53; but perhaps the link is to a different section in the source.]

 -- "In March 2023, Dmitry Peskov announced the Russian federation doesn't recognize the Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for War crimes.^[49] "

Footnote 49: Patil, Anushka (27 March 2023). "International Criminal Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Putin". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2023.

 -- "The Court issued its first judgment in 2012 when it found Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty of war crimes related to using child soldiers.^[23]"

Footnote 23:  " "ICC finds Congo warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty". BBC News. 14 March 2012. Archived from the original on 15 October 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014."

 -- "The United States Department of State argues that there are 'insufficient checks and balances on the authority of the ICC prosecutor and judges' and 'insufficient protection against politicized prosecutions or other abuses'."^[79]

Footnote 79: US Department of State, 30 July 2003. "Frequently Asked Questions About the U.S. Government's Policy Regarding the International Criminal Court (ICC)". Retrieved 1 January 2007.. Retrieved 31 December 2006.

 -- "The ICC has been accused of bias and as being a tool of Western imperialism, only punishing leaders from small, weak states while ignoring crimes committed by richer and more powerful states.[^{317] [318] [319] [320]} This sentiment has been expressed particularly by African leaders due to an alleged disproportionate focus of the Court on Africa, while it claims to have a global mandate; until January 2016, all nine situations which the ICC had been investigating were in African countries.^{[321] [322] [323]} "

[The things which are said in this paragraph are based on seven sources which are listed in seven footnotes, but we are only going to quote the first footnote here. -- Newton]

Footnote 317: " "ICC and Africa – International Criminal Court and African Sovereignty". 11 October 2012. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 5 May 2016.

 -- "During the 1970s and 1980s, international human rights and humanitarian Nongovernmental Organizations (or NGOs) began to proliferate at exponential rates. Concurrently, the quest to find a way to punish international crimes shifted from being the exclusive responsibility of legal experts to being shared with international human rights activism." [quoted from the section of the article called "Nongovernmental organizations"]

 -- The President of the International Criminal Court from 2009 to 2015 was a judge from Korea named Song Sang-hyun.  The current President of the Court is Piotr Hofmański from Poland.

[The source for this is the section of the Wikipedia article called "Presidency."  It includes a picture of former President Song.]

 -- Wikipedia states that the International Criminal Court is different from the International Court of Justice.  Wikipedia's article on this other court (the Internation Court of Justice) says "The International Court of Justice (ICJ . . .), sometimes known as the World Court,^[1] is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN).^[2] It settles disputes between states in accordance with international law and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues. The ICJ is the only international court that adjudicates general disputes between countries, with its rulings and opinions serving as primary sources of international law (subject to Article 59 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice)."

Wikipedia footnote 1 in the article on the ICJ: "Nations, United. "International Court of Justice". United Nations. Archived from the original on 26 November 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2020."

[commentary by Frank Newton: This footnote should have begun "United Nations."  Not "Nations, United."  Names of people who are authors are inverted in bibliographies, so that the last name comes first.  But names of organizations are not inverted in bibliographies.]

 "Unlike the International Court of Justice, the ICC is legally independent from the United Nations."

[This quotation begins the section entitled "Relationships" within the Wikipedia article on the ICC.]

DISCUSSION AND OPINION BY FRANK NEWTON

 Reading between the lines of the Wikipedia article, I believe the International Criminal Court has no officers of enforcement.

It seems to me that the ICC is trying to operate as a conscience for the nations.  I support that endeavor.

The hymn "Christ is the World's True Light" with words by George Wallace Briggs ends with the words "The world has waited long, has travailed long in pain; To heal its ancient wrong, come, Prince of Peace, and reign."  I believe that God calls persons to help push forward His goals on the planet Earth, even though our species is a notoriously fragile vessel for carrying out the will of God.  For healing wrongs both ancient and modern, I believe that worshippers of God and atheists alike have God's permission to try and move the world to a higher level of justice, while we wait for the coming again of the Prince of Peace.  That is why I support the goals and ideals of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC is not equal to the ICJ.  They are two different courts.  It appears that the ICJ hears cases against nations, while the ICC hears cases against individual persons of violating the human rights of other people.  Neither court's verdicts are enforceable, as far as I can tell.  And both courts are headquartered in The Hague in the Netherlands, as it appears (which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing to me, but an acceptable thing).  But I support the work of both courts.  The world cannot make any progress at all except by starting with baby steps.  These two courts are baby steps in the right direction, in my eyes.  Justice is to be preferred to injustice, and abiding by the law is to be preferred to criminal behavior.

CONCLUSION: WHAT IS TRUTH?

I am a huge admirer of Wikipedia.  As a child, I loved the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  As a white-haired man, I love Wikipedia. 

We live in a world where information is very fragile.  Information doesn't travel very well from one household to another.  A lot of times, when someone tries to transfer information from one household to another, it is spoiled, and smells bad, when it arrives.

Some people do not find Wikipedia credible.  I am proud to be on Wikipedia's side.  I believe Wikipedia makes a determined effort to get at the truth, and to report the truth carefully, and to explain the nuances of the truth (the complexities of the world we live in) as plainly as anyone is able to explain them.

Our goal when we talk to people of the opposite political party should be to avoid sarcasm and to try to understand what the other side holds as their core beliefs and why they hold those beliefs to be self-evident.  The first step is avoiding sarcasm.  Avoiding sarcasm when talking to people of the opposite political party is the all-important first baby step on the road to restrengthening the United States of America.

The "truth that will set you free" (those words are almost a quotation from Jesus in the Gospel of John, chapter 8 verse 32) includes religious truth, BUT, in the opinion of Frank Newton, it also includes the truth about what crimes have been committed and who committed them, and it also includes the truth about how we can nudge our whole planet towards a more perfect union.  God has not equipped us with infallible truth sensors, but we have to use our truth sensors to the best of our ability.

by Frank Newton, Boiling Springs, North Carolina