POTUS Meets Otis–As It Really Happened

Dumber Than a Box Of Rocks

Chris Matthews asked Trent Franks onto his show to discuss the flap over Brewer’s treatment of the president.  Matthews began by asking whether private conversations between politicians weren’t traditionally privileged.  Franks obviously didn’t or couldn’t make the connection to Brewer’s tell-all book, wherein she reveals the contents of such a conversation between herself and the prex back in 2010, because he said something like:  “I thought I was here to talk about Governor Brewer–what does your question have to do with that?”

Duh.

And then he had  the chutzpah, the very balls, to say, at the end of the interview, that “Governor Brewer is  universally loved in Arizona.”

It’s not often that one sees a liar lying right in front of one’s face.  If Franks bothered even to read the Arizona Republic (or have it read to him if he is not able to handle this on his own), he would know that not even that conservative rag has much love for Brewer.

Where do the rethugs dig up these clueless simpletons?  Goddess help Arizona.

Just Sayin’

Apparently, reporters who cover the Arizona statehouse refer to the governor as “Otis.”

Oh My Stars and Garters!

My title recalls the phrase my mother used when she was shocked by someone’s uncivil behavior.  Way to go, Brewer–if Obama were not the person he is, your wagging finger would cut Arizona out of any federal largesse that might be coming Arizona’s way for the foreseeable future.

Our governor is a ditz.  And a fool.

Christianity, Inc.

                   Codices from the discoveries at Nag-Hammadi

Things I learned while reading L. Michael White’s From Jesus to Christianity:  no ancient sources are available from Jesus’ time that concern him or his teachings;   furthermore, there are no contemporary court records or even casual reports about Jesus or his teaching with the single exception of a brief remark by the Roman historian Tacitus.  White concludes:  “Jesus himself wrote nothing and left no direct archeological evidence on the landscape of Judea.  It is as if no one really cared to keep a record at the time, but later, after the movement had stated to take off, people began to reflect on Jesus’s life, what happened to him, and why” (96).

Later on in the first century, the stories originally told by Jesus’ comrades began to coalesce under the powerful tutelage of teachers such as Paul (in the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire) and Jesus’ brother James (who led the Jewish branch of the movement in Jerusalem).  White resumes:  “the ‘why’ [of Jesus' life and teaching] was increasingly the object of apologetic interest and theological interpretation.”  Sources composed during the first century (thirty to seventy years after Jesus lived), including the present gospels, “reflect ideas and issues that were not at work in Jesus’s own day or at the time of his death.”  Furthermore, study of the relevant ancient documents demonstrates that they have been “tampered with,” in White’s words, in order to reflect “certain ideas” (97).

In other words, when Jesus was no longer alive (or active, if you believe those who think he didn’t actually die on the cross), his ministry was taken over by people who relied on their memories of him and his instruction.  As the Jesus movement gained adherents, the apostles couldn’t be everywhere, so their memories were repeated second- and third-hand (which probably accounts for the stuff about miracles).

At the same time, believers gathered to hear these stories in someone’s home (perhaps some of them were people addressed by name in Paul’s epistles), and before long, these homes were converted to something like churches, no longer occupied by their owners but now the home base of a group’s leader.  These leaders were called “bishops” (from Greek episkopos, overseer).  Usually there was one bishop in the smaller towns, but in the larger cities more than one church and one bishop emerged.  All the while more and different stories proliferated (archeologists have discovered at least a dozen gospels from the early second century, among them the large cache at Nag-Hammadi).

Soon enough a few of the movement’s followers (now called “Christians” (from Greek “Christos” or a corruption of Hebrew “Messiah” meaning roughly “savior”) realized that it wouldn’t do for there to be two, or three, or sixteen, different narratives about Jesus’ life floating around.  So the concept of heresy emerged (ironically, from a Greek word meaning “choice”).  As early as the late second century, bishops had acquired sufficient authority to pronounce which gospels were to be believed, and so they began to find heresy (in the sense now of “departure from the truth”) everywhere.  During the third century, they excommunicated so-called heretics, who were, after all, only continuing the composing habits that had created the so-called “authoritative” gospels in the first place.  It took a few more centuries before bishops felt sure enough of their authority to burn heretics alive.

And that’s how the church became a corporation during late second and into the third centuries.  The tendency to insist on a single version of the Jesus stories and their associated theology was exacerbated in the fourth century when Constantine finally granted state support to Christianity, and when a bishop of Rome named Damasus succeeded in getting himself recognized as the successor to Peter (you know, the “on this rock” stuff) even though there is no evidence whatever that Jesus intended anything of the kind.  The tendency toward centralization of authority culminated, at last, in the nineteenth century when Pius IX managed to coerce the college of cardinals into voting for his infallibility.

These are rather shocking conclusions to someone who was raised on the Baltimore Catechism.  When I was very young, the New Testament was taught to me as though the truths it asserted had–well–biblical status.  And now that I am advanced in age, well past the point when it might have been helpful to me to know that the gospels were not the work of anybody who actually knew Jesus, I learn that they were instead written to fill a quasi-corporate need.  I could have done, for example, without all that bushwa about the female sex being the source of all evil, etc.

White’s revelations were so unsettling, in fact, that my scholarly training kicked in while I was reading his book.  I looked up his background to ascertain whether he has the bona fides to make such assertions.  Sure enough:  he holds degrees from Yale and Yale Divinity, has done research in Palestine, has lots of scholarly publications in early Christian history, edits or sits on the editorial boards of journals in biblical archaeology, and has held teaching posts at a number of respected universities.  Plus, the narrative he spins lines up very well with those of other historians of the period whose work I have read so far.

One must ask, then:  if Jesus didn’t bother to write anything down, what was it about his life and teaching that attracted a sufficient number of people so that some later adherents would go to the trouble of composing a gospel?  (This is probably roughly equivalent to asking “how did Justin Bieber become more famous than X”?  The answer probably is:  “he had better agents.”)  Did any other Jewish teacher attract this sort of attention?  (The answer here is “yes.”  Again, though, the difference probably is that other teachers didn’t attract the likes of the former Saul of Tarsus, who was apparently an extremely charismatic preacher).

My preferred answer is that Jesus’ message of love was extremely attractive to people who were ground down every day by ancient cultural practices–primarily women and slaves.  If we can trust biblical accounts of his ministry, what Jesus had to say about love was startingly new.  There is nothing like it in the Old Testament or in ancient classical philosophy.  Which renders even sadder the facts about what happened to his message when it was taken up by men who saw how it could be used to bring them a level of power enjoyed, until the church emerged, only by emperors and kings.

Payback Is A Mother

According the talking heads I listen to, the so-called “Republican establishment” (Karl Rove?) is/are tearing their hair over the possibility that Newt might become their candidate.  They should be worried:  Newt’s unfavorable ratings are sky-high, and he has a 100% recognition rating.  That is to say, statistically speaking, all Americans know who he is, and some 60% of them view him unfavorably.

This makes me smile.  I had some worries that Mitt might give Obama a run because of the sorry state of the economy, for which Obama can unfairly be blamed by low-information voters.  But now it looks as though the remaining rethug candidates will tear one another to shreds prior to the convention, so that Obama can simply use a whiskbroom to tidy up the bloody chunks that remain.

And the rethug powerbrokers who are shocked! shocked! by the nastiness of Newt’s rhetoric make me wish that Dana Carvey was still doing Church Lady–he could do justice to their tight-assed distaste for the monster they created when they took Lee Atwater’s advice to keep shouting “nigger!” oh those many years ago.

But, as Waylon taught us, what goes around comes around.  The rethugs have spent years playing to racism, resentment, and anger among conservative voters, while Faux News has made an art form out of rendering them ignorant of reality.  So now, it’s a little too late for their intellectual class to weep crocodile tears when they hear ignorance, anger, and racism from Newt and conservative audiences cheering him on.

They know that undecided voters who watch Newt at work in a debate will likely be repelled by most everything he says, because he delivers everything with a sneer.  But there’s not a damn thing they can do about it because the election is now in the hands of the delegates and the voters they’ve turned into rampaging numbskulls.

A most satisfactory state of affairs.

Castles in the Air

Clouds, putting their best sides forward the last few mornings before later commencing to  rain and snow a bit, with a nice invigorating wind, bringing moisture and sustenance to the land despite being maligned and accused of bad intentions.

Look Out! Cat Crossing!

What I’ve remembered about young cats since Inky came to live in my house:

Watch where I walk, because he will be right underfoot, risking mashed toes (his, not mine).

Watch which doors are open, so he won’t get caught inside a room or, heaven forfend, outside.

For the same reason, don’t open windows any further than the width of his head.

Don’t let anything drop to the floor–food, string, Q-tips.  This holds especially for things you might want later, like pens, paper clips, or the little thingies you put in electric sockets to avert accidents.  Let things like that drop to the floor, or leave them on a table, and they are just gone.

Don’t leave your laptop sitting anywhere with the lid up.  Same goes for toilets.

Young cats like to climb on high objects:  bookcases, DVD cases, kitchen cabinets, armoires, pot shelves.

Young cats, in fact, like to climb everywhere.  Like behind my pedestal teevee, which scares the crap out of me.

Speaking of crap, young cats dump a lot, and often.  Eww.

Young cats need to be shut in a room or a closet when food is being prepared–mine or his.

Young cats don’t just play with toys–they emasculate toys.  And they don’t do this quietly, particularly in the middle of the night.

Why Christians Don’t Think

I invite my readers to contrast the two passages which follow:

1.  “Blessed is he who learns how to engage in inquiry, with no impulse to harm his countrymen or to pursue wrongful actions, but perceives the order of immortal and ageless nature, how it is structured.”  (Euripides, fifth century BCE)

2.  “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger.  This is the disease of curiosity . . .It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”  (Augustine, late fourth century CE)

Charles Freeman juxtaposes these two passages on the first pages of his wonderful book entitled The Closing of the Western Mind.  Freeman shows that by the time that Augustine was creating Christian theology, some 900 years after the beginning of the classical period (you know–Pericles, Socrates, Herodotus, Gorgias–those guys) the notion of faith has subsumed the practice of reason as a means of determining truth.  In other words, the Christian refusal to be persuaded by facts goes all the way back to Augustine, at least, and is probably older than that.

To make a very long story short, early members of the Jesus movement (who did not yet call themselves “Christians”) were confident that Jesus would soon return to take them all into heaven.  After all, Jesus promised he would return.  When he didn’t reappear by the time the original generation began to die off (that is, the generation of the apostles, Paul, and their converts) only a few rationales were possible:  either Jesus wasn’t coming back, or there had been some terrible mistake (perhaps the Apostles misheard him?).  So how do you hang onto your belief in Jesus and all of his teachings as the years pass with no second coming?   You have faith, that’s how.

Everyone has faith, of course.  I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on.  I also have faith that Trep will usually know more about history than I do.  But this faith is based on empirical evidence, in the first case, or my long experience of talks with Trep, in the second.  I also accept that evolution has and is occuring, although I will never understand the process completely.  I accept evolution because I’m willing to take the word of scientists who do understand it, and because what I do know makes theoretical, that is consistent, sense to me.

I have faith in these arguments because I accept the authority of those who make them (my faith is them is strengthened not a little by the fact that scientists all over the world try their damnedest to disprove new scientific claims, and when they fail, they accept the new claims until some better explanation comes along).  Now arguments about religious belief are a little harder to ground in anything other than authority.  If you are arguing about the nature of god, for instance, where do you go for first principles?  for physical evidence?

Christian claims about Jesus’ second coming are, henceforth, arguments from authority.  The relevant authorities are Christians who read the very old texts on which their claims about Jesus and his teachings are based.  But the more I learn about the history of Christianity, the more I realize that the texts that now make up the Christian testaments are there because they survived a highly interested process of selection, a process that served the political interests of those who made the choices.  (I know I don’t have to say this here, but I will:  scientists who study fossils of birds and dinosaurs do not have the same sort of interest;   that is to say, they are not trying to further some political agenda when they publish their findings).

Rhetoricians say that the argument from authority is relatively weaker than arguments based on  physical evidence or a chain of reasoning that proceeds from an agreed-upon first premise.  They are weaker because those who participate in the argument are required to accept the authority of the authority being cited.  (Yep–it’s circular, and its scope is limited by its location in special or distinct communities of belief as well).

This need to rely on authoritative arguments was a serious problem for the early church, because after the passings of those who knew Jesus personally, nobody knew who was an authority, exactly.  Which may explain why the history of the early church is rife with competing arguments.  The most notorious example concerned Jesus’ nature:  was he a man or a god?  was he god become man temporarily?  was he god’s son?  and if so, what did this say about god’s supposed perfection?  and  on and on.  There were Arians, and Pelagians, and Montanists, and Docetists, and tens of other groups who argued this question.  The argument was eventually settled by the guy who had the most power–the emperor Constantine (although even he couldn’t make it stay settled).

All this squabbling was embarrassing.  It also got people killed.  So it behooved the so-called Church Fathers to invent a new kind of faith, one that no longer worked alongside reason, but was better than reason.  This process took some time because Christianity was created in the Roman empire, where most educated people were fully versed in sophisticated Greek thought about reason.  So in the second century, Origen can do away with reasoning by claiming that it is just too hard for simple folks to do:  “As this matter of faith is so much talked of,  I have to reply that we accept it as useful for the multitude, and that we admittedly teach those who cannot abandon everything and pursue a study of rational argument to believe without thinking out their reasons.”  By the time Augustine came along about a hundred years later, he can go so far as to claim (presumably with a straight face) that curiosity is a sin, that good Christians should simply believe what they are told.

I understand why Christians hate and fear reason and investigation.  I was a skeptic about Christian belief before I undertook a study of its ancient history.  Now that I have plowed my way through several thick books and papers, I’ve become a thoroughgoing skeptic.  Perhaps even an angry one, when I think of all the lovely thinking that was lost when, in the fourth century, the church began to burn the work of authors they considered pagan.  The only ancient physician whose work we have is Galen, for example, and while Galen was a genius, and was right about a lot of things, he was also wrong about a lot of things (like the theory of the humors).  But because the church suppressed the work of doctors and astronomers and historians and philosophers, and yes, rhetoricians, the western world lost a thousand and more years of progress, years buried instead in ignorance and brutality.

And  they’re still at it.  Way to go, Christians.

Meet Inky