Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 13 (The unlucky Installment)
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry. (A reader recently noted that the Loon has done little offending of late. Please, give the Loon another chance. Let the Loon see if he can’t improve on that dismal record. You want “edge”? The Loon’ll give you “edge”…..read on.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Christopher Hitchens, a man who infuriates half the people, and so, is rightly numbered among the Loon’s heroes.
2. Michael Crichton, another Loon hero, one who advocates hard science over fuzzy consensus. Well, there goes the other half.
3. Loon’s (offensive) Micro-Book report of an offensive book.
4. Loon’s Hemi-Micro-Book Report on another offensive book
5. Notable Quotes.
6. Previews of coming attractions.
7. Postscript.
1, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
It has been offered that Hitch is our Galileo, but let’s please agree to prefer that he should be our H.L Mencken.(1880-1956), may his irreverency rest peacefully, Mencken’s, that is. One of the kindest but most untrue verbal assaults ever on Mencken was that he was a buffoon. The Loon looked it up, and Mencken ain’t one. Def. #1 is “One who amuses others by tricks, jokes, odd gestures and postures. #2. “One given to coarse or undignified joking.”
Let me offer a brief paean to Mencken using his own words:
“The virulence of the national (U.S.) appetite for bogus revelation.”
“The public…demands certainties….But there are no certainties.”
”The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”
“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”
“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste) of the American people.”
“The difference between a moral man and an honorable one is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”
Mencken savaged the American bourgeoisie; he called them “the booboise”. It is easy to pick on the powerful, but to make fun of the middle class made Mencken an elitist. He might wear the epithet proudly. However, Menken’s spears flew everywhere; he was after everyone. He generously spread his spite around. He was part of America’s precious national conscience during the first half of the 20th century. Mencken, as does his spiritual son, Christopher Hitchens, took plenty many names, and kicked plenty much ass.
But, times have changed and the middle-class must now be protected from predations by elitists, because? You see, a certain inalienable primal truth resides collectively in the middle-class. That’s bunkum, and the Loon, who was born, raised and stays firmly ensconced in the middle class, can say that without (much) fear of reprisal. The Loon likes it in the middle class because it is eternally interesting there. If he were in the lower class, he would be bored, and if he were in the upper class, he would really be bored.
But, let’s return to, our national savior, Hitchens. Religion used to be taboo, but since 9/11, much attention has been focused on religion(s). Many books have been sold. Many TV Sabbath GasBags have engaged in bloviating during Intellectual food-fights using religion as a subject. Much worthy and unworthy celebrity has been gained, by both those defending religion and those condemning it. Hitchens is an atheist, and, to some, worse, as he is an antitheist—yep he’s against all religions. He wrote “Mormonism: A Racket that Became a Religion”. And he cannot understand why the United States did not defend our ally Denmark when she was beset by Muslims who wanted the entire country held accountable for the drawings of one cartoonist. Hitch is hell on irrationality, hell on pomposity, and reserves special venom for those who use their religious position to spout bigotry and nonsense. He said, “you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if will just get yourself called Reverend.” When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, Hitch wrote a scathing malediction of the man. The waves in the journalism pond are still tearing at the shores of gentile writing (Blogs too). Today’s Mpls Star and Tribune Op/Ed page carried Hitch’s more inflammatory comments about Falwell, and the paper even featured a photograph of Hitch (GASP!) taking a drag on a cigarette.
This is unthinkable, even ghastly, as MN is currently undergoing a soul-searching inquiry prior to limiting smoking in the State to the deep forests of the Boundary Waters—Whoops! That’s no good, as the deep forests of the Boundary Waters are now being incinerated by a sonnovabitchin’ big fire. Further Minnesota subtle forces for behavioral guidance and management do not want children to witness fashionable cultured people smoking in movies. Anyway, I think Hitch would be against curtailing the rights of smokers (He’s against most everything—one of his most beguiling characteristics is dogmatic uniformity of purpose). I doubt he cares if smokers give non-smokers lung cancer with second-hand smoke. And while the Loon is on a mini-crusade to annoy people, the Loon’s background in scientific dose–effect as it relates to a cause of cancer informs him that for anyone to get lung cancer from second-hand smoke, would certainly doom almost every smoker to die of lung cancer and quickly too. The Loon believes the scientific data will support him, but we are now out of the realm of science in that regard, and deeply into the realm of faith, AND telling any non-smoker that smoking is okay is like telling them that their dog is ugly. (Note: the Loon doesn’t smoke….now) And, while I am on the subject, have there been any studies on the effects of third-hand smoke? Say, like the hideous toxic effect of a mother carrying her husband’s cigar smoke in her own miasmic breath into the nursery of an infant. What about the sinless innocents—who will speak for them?
Hitch is a reformed Trotskyite and an iconoclast of the first order. He’s anti (let me count the other ways) socialism (now), fascism, monarchism, and Mother Teresa. His heroes are George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson, and he is a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason, and he didn’t think Ronald Reagan was very smart. He accused Bill Clinton of being a rapist and serial liar. He believes that the world is caught in a war between secular democracy and theocratic fascism. He wrote the book,”God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” Talk about catching hell afterwards, but his hell-wether courage has encouraged a flood tide of similar books. Hitch has recently ripped Cindy Sheehan as a person on his bad persons-list. Meanwhile, Hitch’s one time colleague and friend Alexander Cockburn, claims Hitch drinks too much, and says about Hitch, he is “a truly disgusting sack of shit.” What is there about a skeptic which warrants that kind of vitriol? Hitch admits to drinking heavily. In 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough to “kill or stun the average mule.” Hitch was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. long ago, but only recently became a citizen. His grandmother just recently informed him that he is Jewish. He often goes to the podium in blue jeans. Does this give you a well rounded feel for the fellow?
2. MICHAEL CRICHTON
Here is another in the latter-day pantheon of Loon heroes, albeit a lesser one. While he lacks the intellectual gravitas of Hitch, he WAS invited to give a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, which means he is not exactly intellectual chopped liver. It was there Crichton savaged the current flavor of environmentalism. Look, let us make us a comparison. If Christian faith provides a fount of moral guidance*, what then does modern environmentalism provide?
* This is a concept under review—see below for the Loon’s offensive book report on an offensive book. Hey! The Loon told you he was going on a rip to try to win your disaffection.
Crich (doncha just love the Loon’s terms of familiarity?) is 6 feet 9 inches tall, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, graduated from Harvard Medical School, became a Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University in England, did a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California and was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meanwhile he was scribbling out 13 Sci-Fi thriller novels, and dabbling in movies and TV programming. What a guy!
His thesis de jour is that the floodtide of environmental consensus is log-rolling our citizens (and scientists), and the fact book is not closed on the human-induced global warming crisis (with the skeptical emphasis on “crisis”). In no particular order, his grumpiness is being caused by: 1. People who think they can predict future weather with any accuracy. 2. The belief that consensus constitutes truth. 3. His observation that environmentalism has abandoned science, and has instead been adorned with all the dogmatic trappings of religion. 4. He is pissed at the magazine “Scientific American” because it attacked Bjorn Lomborg’s book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. (Note: It may be sour grapes, but the Loon, who used to be a subscriber to SA, ain’t gonna read it no more, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the Loon never understood anything written on pages 3 through X for any article in the magazine, a confession of inadequacy the Loon will freely make.) Anyway, Crich and the Loon seem to have come to some common ground in the belief that skepticism is a useful human characteristic, and some skeptics have served us well by being strong in the face of fierce consensus. Care for some examples?
e.g., Galileo (the earth really does go around the sun—and always has. Whoa! This did not make bossy church leaders happy, as it undermined faith-fact that earth was the center of the Universe), Drs Gordon, Holmes and Sammelwiess (Childbed fever can be cured by simple sanitation—it took 50 years, and the lives of thousands of mothers, for the consensus to come to its senses), Dr. Joseph Goldberger (Pellagra is caused by a vitamin deficiency, while the consensus roared on for 20 more years, and wasted the lives of thousands of poor people, because the consensus was unable to accept the politically incorrect fact that people in the southern United States were mal-nourished.)
Once was that science was both a boon and much admired; the nadir probably occurred in the 19th century—and it has been all downhill from there. Nowadays our relativistic society views science as just another opinion among many, and just another source of power, and, in a sense of fairness, science gets no advantage, and must try to hold its own in a nation awash in magical mysticisms, and powerful consenses, wonky and otherwise.
All praise the skeptics for they are occasionally correct, and so, while Al Gore may be correct, I am constitutionally incapable of trusting anyone who writes a book which implies that the author knows the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Crich’s current crusade might be entitled, “An Inconvenient Doubt”.
Disclaimer: while not altogether abandoning Crich, (he is a brother skeptic), the Loon was dismayed after reading all 25 pages of the transcript of a one hour conversation between Crichton and Charlie Rose, one in which Crichton seldom said anything important, while he mostly just backed and filled away from criticism. Does he have Feet of Clay? Well….perhaps dusty toes.
In conclusion, can we make a distinction between a skeptic and a cynic? A skeptic is a valuable, even precious, member of our society because he or she continues to ask the important but unpopular questions that other dear hearts are loath to ask. A cynic is a low-down, no-count, dirty, misinformed, opinionated piece of crap. That said, our modern society is relentlessly pushing our precious skeptics toward the abyss of cynicism. Can I please hear a long and rousing round of applause for skepticism, which is an essential asset so necessary for dealing with used car salesmen, and is also of much value in the wider world? Or, you are free to tell the Loon that he is FOS.
3. LOON’S MICRO-BOOK REPORT
The book is “The God Delusion”, by Richard Dawkins, and the report is micro, because the less written the better. See, Dawkins tries to prove that God doesn’t exist, and show that those who believe that he/she/it/them do(es) exist are deluded. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, but, be that as it may, he is engaged in folly, as 95% of Americans profess to being religious, and, in this country, that usually means the belief in an omnipotent all-knowing higher power, who goes by the name of God. Dawkins is an atheist. Atheists don’t need to read the book. Almost all people who have a firm belief in God won’t read the book. This leaves only the precious few agnostic fence-riders for Dawkins to sway.
The book is well written; but so heavy with content, that I could only do it justice by reading it in the middle of the night. You know, at those times after midnight but before dawn when you awake and start thinking about matters you really don’t want to think about. In the quiet of night with no chores pressing, (and no mental multi-tasking) I was able to crawl slowly through this book, with the serendipitous benefit that the dense text soon put me back into sound sleep. But, I persevered…because I bought the book, it wasn’t cheap and it did have its lighter moments. E.g.,
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.” This was written by Robert M, Persig, author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Are you offended yet? Well, read on.
“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
NOMA, is the invention of Stephan Jay Gould (may his intelligent restless deluded soul rest in peace), NOMA stands for “non overlapping magisteria” which means that the magisteria of science which covers the empirical realm, does not overlap nor cut any ice with the magisteria of religion which is confined to questions of ultimate meaning and moral values, and vica versa. So…that isn’t so light. So…sorry.
Biologist E.O. Wilson disagreed and wrote tersely, “the real war is between rationalism and superstition.”
Filed under “all things are relative” Imagine a barefoot Dark Age peasant in sack cloth just met you dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit and Gucci shoes while you were carrying a cell phone and a laptop. Would you not be a living God to him?
Fred Hoyle wrote or said, “…the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrap yard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.” Divine intervention or dumb luck, take your pick. Talk about long odds and luck. Think about this. If any of your thousand and thousands of progenitors had died before procreating, you would not exist. If just one had died as an infant, you would not be here. Further, before you were conceived, you did not exist—yep! All your initial atoms were scattered hither thither and yon, and after you are gone the same thing applies. Mark twain said” I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” However, we are constantly replenishing our living stuff with recycled stuff. If you drink a glass of water, for sure, you will have just ingested some molecules of water which went through William Shakespeare’s bladder. Do the arithmetic. Want some more luck? Archeo-anthropologists estimate that ancient man was limited by harsh environment to a group of perhaps 50,000, and pressed hard against the eastern shore of Africa by drought and famine. Fifty thousand may seems like a lot, but that was a tight squeeze for man, and had the 50,000 all perished, I can guarantee you that humans would not have come this way again…..ever.
Dawkins wrote, “One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” It didn’t help that last night I watched the film “Inherit the Wind” which was the Hollywood version of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee. Fairly or unfairly, this film casts a bad light on fundamental Christian religion.
One of the best parts of the book was the author’s discussion of the ubiquity of religion and possibilities of how and from whence they arose. If there is but one God, he sure has offered us a Chinese Menu of religious belief, and new religions pop up like mushrooms in the springtime. And then, there is the almost universal belief by man that there is a mystical higher power.
Of course Dawkins is hell on the Bible. E.g., The Old Testament God was not a nice guy, as he spared only Noah and his family, and then drowns everyone else on earth. Hey! God, if there ever was over-kill, that was it. Of course, Dawkins challenges the notion that moral conduct accrues from religion.
Dawkins takes issue with parents who indoctrinate their children into the parent’s religion while the kids are young. Here we are awash in a floodtide of western relativism where much is personal and relative, and thus a wide spectrum of behavior and belief is acceptable, yet it is difficult to find Christian, Muslim or Jewish parents who are willing let their children defer a decision and grow up free of church dogma so they may be able to pick their own religion once they are able to make an independent informed decision. I read in the paper the other day about a mother who called the cops on some men who came into a public park to talk to children about religion. Maybe the men had a better religion than the mother Who will ever know? The cops ran them off.
Dawkins writes, “Even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God’s existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotion well-being, even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst – none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true.” So there you have it, Dawkins’ thesis, but he is not a mean man, and he does agree that religion is perhaps the great and universal source of solace and comfort for man.
Sorry…it wasn’t nearly so micro as I thought it would be. The report just got away from me.
4. LOON’S HEMI-MICRO-BOOK REPORT
The book report is Bill O’Reilly’s “Culture Warrior”. See I thought I needed some balance from all the atheism, and so, I started this book. But, I only got in 25 pages before I had to quit (hence the” Hemi” we will have to wait to see if the “micro” also applies). I know, 25 pages hardly warrants a “hemi” but the book got badly reiterative in the first 25 pages, so what could I do? O’Reilly’s thesis is that the United States, and indeed the Western world, is in a war between traditional values (whatever they are, but they are all good) and secular progressive values (which are all bad, real bad, real real bad). End of report. Please don’t jump on my case for a lack of balance—See, I am plumb wrote out right now. And besides, I have been catching flack for loooooong “Fruits o’ the Loon”.
If anyone wants either or both of the two reviewed books, just ask—first one who asks gets ‘em.
5. NOTABLE QUOTES
“People in the Middle East have Irish Alzheimer’s. That is when a person forgets everything but their grudges.” Charlie Munger
6. PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
A blessed return to Crazy Al’s News Digest.
7. POSTSCRIPT
Okay, it’s a given; this FotL is way over the top, but please don’t send a mob with a rope and flaming torches to string up the crazy irreverent Loon. THINK! Hey! the Loon might return to a state of sanity, benevolence and grace—no one is beyond redemption, or so we are led to believe.
Allen Hall, The LO—oddle oddle--ON
May 26, 2007 on sylvan Lake Sylvia
’07 Installment # 13 (The unlucky Installment)
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry. (A reader recently noted that the Loon has done little offending of late. Please, give the Loon another chance. Let the Loon see if he can’t improve on that dismal record. You want “edge”? The Loon’ll give you “edge”…..read on.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Christopher Hitchens, a man who infuriates half the people, and so, is rightly numbered among the Loon’s heroes.
2. Michael Crichton, another Loon hero, one who advocates hard science over fuzzy consensus. Well, there goes the other half.
3. Loon’s (offensive) Micro-Book report of an offensive book.
4. Loon’s Hemi-Micro-Book Report on another offensive book
5. Notable Quotes.
6. Previews of coming attractions.
7. Postscript.
1, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
It has been offered that Hitch is our Galileo, but let’s please agree to prefer that he should be our H.L Mencken.(1880-1956), may his irreverency rest peacefully, Mencken’s, that is. One of the kindest but most untrue verbal assaults ever on Mencken was that he was a buffoon. The Loon looked it up, and Mencken ain’t one. Def. #1 is “One who amuses others by tricks, jokes, odd gestures and postures. #2. “One given to coarse or undignified joking.”
Let me offer a brief paean to Mencken using his own words:
“The virulence of the national (U.S.) appetite for bogus revelation.”
“The public…demands certainties….But there are no certainties.”
”The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”
“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”
“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste) of the American people.”
“The difference between a moral man and an honorable one is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”
Mencken savaged the American bourgeoisie; he called them “the booboise”. It is easy to pick on the powerful, but to make fun of the middle class made Mencken an elitist. He might wear the epithet proudly. However, Menken’s spears flew everywhere; he was after everyone. He generously spread his spite around. He was part of America’s precious national conscience during the first half of the 20th century. Mencken, as does his spiritual son, Christopher Hitchens, took plenty many names, and kicked plenty much ass.
But, times have changed and the middle-class must now be protected from predations by elitists, because? You see, a certain inalienable primal truth resides collectively in the middle-class. That’s bunkum, and the Loon, who was born, raised and stays firmly ensconced in the middle class, can say that without (much) fear of reprisal. The Loon likes it in the middle class because it is eternally interesting there. If he were in the lower class, he would be bored, and if he were in the upper class, he would really be bored.
But, let’s return to, our national savior, Hitchens. Religion used to be taboo, but since 9/11, much attention has been focused on religion(s). Many books have been sold. Many TV Sabbath GasBags have engaged in bloviating during Intellectual food-fights using religion as a subject. Much worthy and unworthy celebrity has been gained, by both those defending religion and those condemning it. Hitchens is an atheist, and, to some, worse, as he is an antitheist—yep he’s against all religions. He wrote “Mormonism: A Racket that Became a Religion”. And he cannot understand why the United States did not defend our ally Denmark when she was beset by Muslims who wanted the entire country held accountable for the drawings of one cartoonist. Hitch is hell on irrationality, hell on pomposity, and reserves special venom for those who use their religious position to spout bigotry and nonsense. He said, “you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if will just get yourself called Reverend.” When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, Hitch wrote a scathing malediction of the man. The waves in the journalism pond are still tearing at the shores of gentile writing (Blogs too). Today’s Mpls Star and Tribune Op/Ed page carried Hitch’s more inflammatory comments about Falwell, and the paper even featured a photograph of Hitch (GASP!) taking a drag on a cigarette.
This is unthinkable, even ghastly, as MN is currently undergoing a soul-searching inquiry prior to limiting smoking in the State to the deep forests of the Boundary Waters—Whoops! That’s no good, as the deep forests of the Boundary Waters are now being incinerated by a sonnovabitchin’ big fire. Further Minnesota subtle forces for behavioral guidance and management do not want children to witness fashionable cultured people smoking in movies. Anyway, I think Hitch would be against curtailing the rights of smokers (He’s against most everything—one of his most beguiling characteristics is dogmatic uniformity of purpose). I doubt he cares if smokers give non-smokers lung cancer with second-hand smoke. And while the Loon is on a mini-crusade to annoy people, the Loon’s background in scientific dose–effect as it relates to a cause of cancer informs him that for anyone to get lung cancer from second-hand smoke, would certainly doom almost every smoker to die of lung cancer and quickly too. The Loon believes the scientific data will support him, but we are now out of the realm of science in that regard, and deeply into the realm of faith, AND telling any non-smoker that smoking is okay is like telling them that their dog is ugly. (Note: the Loon doesn’t smoke….now) And, while I am on the subject, have there been any studies on the effects of third-hand smoke? Say, like the hideous toxic effect of a mother carrying her husband’s cigar smoke in her own miasmic breath into the nursery of an infant. What about the sinless innocents—who will speak for them?
Hitch is a reformed Trotskyite and an iconoclast of the first order. He’s anti (let me count the other ways) socialism (now), fascism, monarchism, and Mother Teresa. His heroes are George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson, and he is a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason, and he didn’t think Ronald Reagan was very smart. He accused Bill Clinton of being a rapist and serial liar. He believes that the world is caught in a war between secular democracy and theocratic fascism. He wrote the book,”God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” Talk about catching hell afterwards, but his hell-wether courage has encouraged a flood tide of similar books. Hitch has recently ripped Cindy Sheehan as a person on his bad persons-list. Meanwhile, Hitch’s one time colleague and friend Alexander Cockburn, claims Hitch drinks too much, and says about Hitch, he is “a truly disgusting sack of shit.” What is there about a skeptic which warrants that kind of vitriol? Hitch admits to drinking heavily. In 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough to “kill or stun the average mule.” Hitch was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. long ago, but only recently became a citizen. His grandmother just recently informed him that he is Jewish. He often goes to the podium in blue jeans. Does this give you a well rounded feel for the fellow?
2. MICHAEL CRICHTON
Here is another in the latter-day pantheon of Loon heroes, albeit a lesser one. While he lacks the intellectual gravitas of Hitch, he WAS invited to give a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, which means he is not exactly intellectual chopped liver. It was there Crichton savaged the current flavor of environmentalism. Look, let us make us a comparison. If Christian faith provides a fount of moral guidance*, what then does modern environmentalism provide?
* This is a concept under review—see below for the Loon’s offensive book report on an offensive book. Hey! The Loon told you he was going on a rip to try to win your disaffection.
Crich (doncha just love the Loon’s terms of familiarity?) is 6 feet 9 inches tall, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, graduated from Harvard Medical School, became a Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University in England, did a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California and was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meanwhile he was scribbling out 13 Sci-Fi thriller novels, and dabbling in movies and TV programming. What a guy!
His thesis de jour is that the floodtide of environmental consensus is log-rolling our citizens (and scientists), and the fact book is not closed on the human-induced global warming crisis (with the skeptical emphasis on “crisis”). In no particular order, his grumpiness is being caused by: 1. People who think they can predict future weather with any accuracy. 2. The belief that consensus constitutes truth. 3. His observation that environmentalism has abandoned science, and has instead been adorned with all the dogmatic trappings of religion. 4. He is pissed at the magazine “Scientific American” because it attacked Bjorn Lomborg’s book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. (Note: It may be sour grapes, but the Loon, who used to be a subscriber to SA, ain’t gonna read it no more, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the Loon never understood anything written on pages 3 through X for any article in the magazine, a confession of inadequacy the Loon will freely make.) Anyway, Crich and the Loon seem to have come to some common ground in the belief that skepticism is a useful human characteristic, and some skeptics have served us well by being strong in the face of fierce consensus. Care for some examples?
e.g., Galileo (the earth really does go around the sun—and always has. Whoa! This did not make bossy church leaders happy, as it undermined faith-fact that earth was the center of the Universe), Drs Gordon, Holmes and Sammelwiess (Childbed fever can be cured by simple sanitation—it took 50 years, and the lives of thousands of mothers, for the consensus to come to its senses), Dr. Joseph Goldberger (Pellagra is caused by a vitamin deficiency, while the consensus roared on for 20 more years, and wasted the lives of thousands of poor people, because the consensus was unable to accept the politically incorrect fact that people in the southern United States were mal-nourished.)
Once was that science was both a boon and much admired; the nadir probably occurred in the 19th century—and it has been all downhill from there. Nowadays our relativistic society views science as just another opinion among many, and just another source of power, and, in a sense of fairness, science gets no advantage, and must try to hold its own in a nation awash in magical mysticisms, and powerful consenses, wonky and otherwise.
All praise the skeptics for they are occasionally correct, and so, while Al Gore may be correct, I am constitutionally incapable of trusting anyone who writes a book which implies that the author knows the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Crich’s current crusade might be entitled, “An Inconvenient Doubt”.
Disclaimer: while not altogether abandoning Crich, (he is a brother skeptic), the Loon was dismayed after reading all 25 pages of the transcript of a one hour conversation between Crichton and Charlie Rose, one in which Crichton seldom said anything important, while he mostly just backed and filled away from criticism. Does he have Feet of Clay? Well….perhaps dusty toes.
In conclusion, can we make a distinction between a skeptic and a cynic? A skeptic is a valuable, even precious, member of our society because he or she continues to ask the important but unpopular questions that other dear hearts are loath to ask. A cynic is a low-down, no-count, dirty, misinformed, opinionated piece of crap. That said, our modern society is relentlessly pushing our precious skeptics toward the abyss of cynicism. Can I please hear a long and rousing round of applause for skepticism, which is an essential asset so necessary for dealing with used car salesmen, and is also of much value in the wider world? Or, you are free to tell the Loon that he is FOS.
3. LOON’S MICRO-BOOK REPORT
The book is “The God Delusion”, by Richard Dawkins, and the report is micro, because the less written the better. See, Dawkins tries to prove that God doesn’t exist, and show that those who believe that he/she/it/them do(es) exist are deluded. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, but, be that as it may, he is engaged in folly, as 95% of Americans profess to being religious, and, in this country, that usually means the belief in an omnipotent all-knowing higher power, who goes by the name of God. Dawkins is an atheist. Atheists don’t need to read the book. Almost all people who have a firm belief in God won’t read the book. This leaves only the precious few agnostic fence-riders for Dawkins to sway.
The book is well written; but so heavy with content, that I could only do it justice by reading it in the middle of the night. You know, at those times after midnight but before dawn when you awake and start thinking about matters you really don’t want to think about. In the quiet of night with no chores pressing, (and no mental multi-tasking) I was able to crawl slowly through this book, with the serendipitous benefit that the dense text soon put me back into sound sleep. But, I persevered…because I bought the book, it wasn’t cheap and it did have its lighter moments. E.g.,
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.” This was written by Robert M, Persig, author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Are you offended yet? Well, read on.
“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
NOMA, is the invention of Stephan Jay Gould (may his intelligent restless deluded soul rest in peace), NOMA stands for “non overlapping magisteria” which means that the magisteria of science which covers the empirical realm, does not overlap nor cut any ice with the magisteria of religion which is confined to questions of ultimate meaning and moral values, and vica versa. So…that isn’t so light. So…sorry.
Biologist E.O. Wilson disagreed and wrote tersely, “the real war is between rationalism and superstition.”
Filed under “all things are relative” Imagine a barefoot Dark Age peasant in sack cloth just met you dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit and Gucci shoes while you were carrying a cell phone and a laptop. Would you not be a living God to him?
Fred Hoyle wrote or said, “…the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrap yard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.” Divine intervention or dumb luck, take your pick. Talk about long odds and luck. Think about this. If any of your thousand and thousands of progenitors had died before procreating, you would not exist. If just one had died as an infant, you would not be here. Further, before you were conceived, you did not exist—yep! All your initial atoms were scattered hither thither and yon, and after you are gone the same thing applies. Mark twain said” I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” However, we are constantly replenishing our living stuff with recycled stuff. If you drink a glass of water, for sure, you will have just ingested some molecules of water which went through William Shakespeare’s bladder. Do the arithmetic. Want some more luck? Archeo-anthropologists estimate that ancient man was limited by harsh environment to a group of perhaps 50,000, and pressed hard against the eastern shore of Africa by drought and famine. Fifty thousand may seems like a lot, but that was a tight squeeze for man, and had the 50,000 all perished, I can guarantee you that humans would not have come this way again…..ever.
Dawkins wrote, “One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” It didn’t help that last night I watched the film “Inherit the Wind” which was the Hollywood version of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee. Fairly or unfairly, this film casts a bad light on fundamental Christian religion.
One of the best parts of the book was the author’s discussion of the ubiquity of religion and possibilities of how and from whence they arose. If there is but one God, he sure has offered us a Chinese Menu of religious belief, and new religions pop up like mushrooms in the springtime. And then, there is the almost universal belief by man that there is a mystical higher power.
Of course Dawkins is hell on the Bible. E.g., The Old Testament God was not a nice guy, as he spared only Noah and his family, and then drowns everyone else on earth. Hey! God, if there ever was over-kill, that was it. Of course, Dawkins challenges the notion that moral conduct accrues from religion.
Dawkins takes issue with parents who indoctrinate their children into the parent’s religion while the kids are young. Here we are awash in a floodtide of western relativism where much is personal and relative, and thus a wide spectrum of behavior and belief is acceptable, yet it is difficult to find Christian, Muslim or Jewish parents who are willing let their children defer a decision and grow up free of church dogma so they may be able to pick their own religion once they are able to make an independent informed decision. I read in the paper the other day about a mother who called the cops on some men who came into a public park to talk to children about religion. Maybe the men had a better religion than the mother Who will ever know? The cops ran them off.
Dawkins writes, “Even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God’s existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotion well-being, even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst – none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true.” So there you have it, Dawkins’ thesis, but he is not a mean man, and he does agree that religion is perhaps the great and universal source of solace and comfort for man.
Sorry…it wasn’t nearly so micro as I thought it would be. The report just got away from me.
4. LOON’S HEMI-MICRO-BOOK REPORT
The book report is Bill O’Reilly’s “Culture Warrior”. See I thought I needed some balance from all the atheism, and so, I started this book. But, I only got in 25 pages before I had to quit (hence the” Hemi” we will have to wait to see if the “micro” also applies). I know, 25 pages hardly warrants a “hemi” but the book got badly reiterative in the first 25 pages, so what could I do? O’Reilly’s thesis is that the United States, and indeed the Western world, is in a war between traditional values (whatever they are, but they are all good) and secular progressive values (which are all bad, real bad, real real bad). End of report. Please don’t jump on my case for a lack of balance—See, I am plumb wrote out right now. And besides, I have been catching flack for loooooong “Fruits o’ the Loon”.
If anyone wants either or both of the two reviewed books, just ask—first one who asks gets ‘em.
5. NOTABLE QUOTES
“People in the Middle East have Irish Alzheimer’s. That is when a person forgets everything but their grudges.” Charlie Munger
6. PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS
A blessed return to Crazy Al’s News Digest.
7. POSTSCRIPT
Okay, it’s a given; this FotL is way over the top, but please don’t send a mob with a rope and flaming torches to string up the crazy irreverent Loon. THINK! Hey! the Loon might return to a state of sanity, benevolence and grace—no one is beyond redemption, or so we are led to believe.
Allen Hall, The LO—oddle oddle--ON
May 26, 2007 on sylvan Lake Sylvia
posted by Allen Hall at 3:31 PM
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