The Little Red Blog

Sunday Sermon: "Blowin' in the Wind"

Blowin’ in the Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

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Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

Blowin' In The Wind lyrics © Special Rider Music, Universal Tunes

Take your pick:

Live from the Rolling Thunder Revue: Joan Baez & Bob Dylan - Blowing In The Wind (youtube.com)

Protest has never sounded so pretty:  Blowin' In The Wind (Bob Dylan Cover) by Jessica Rhaye and the Ramshackle Parade (youtube.com)

Trust me, this is unbelievable: ♫ Bee Gees ♥ Blowin' In The Wind ♫ (youtube.com)

Bringing it all back home: Johnny Cash - Blowin' in the Wind [1993] (youtube.com)

Saturday Lecture: Whom Should We Thank?

Robert G. Ingersoll, from “A Thanksgiving Sermon” (1897):

Many ages ago our fathers were living in dens and caves. Their bodies, their low foreheads, were covered with hair. They were eating berries, roots, bark and vermin. They were fond of snakes and raw fish. They discovered fire and, probably by accident, learned how to cause it by friction. They found how to warm themselves—to fight the frost and storm. They fashioned clubs and rude weapons of stone with which they killed the larger beasts and now and then each other. Slowly, painfully, almost imperceptibly they advanced. They crawled and stumbled, staggered and struggled toward the light. To them the world was unknown. On every hand was the mysterious, the sinister, the hurtful. The forests were filled with monsters, and the darkness was crowded with ghosts, devils, and fiendish gods.

These poor wretches were the slaves of fear, the sport of dreams.

Looking back over the long and devious roads that lie between the barbarism of the past and the civilization of to-day, thinking of the centuries that rolled like waves between these distant shores, we can form some idea of what our fathers suffered—of the mistakes they made—some idea of their ignorance, their stupidity—and some idea of their sense, their goodness, their heroism.

It is a long road from the savage to the scientist—from a den to a mansion—from a few hieroglyphics on the skins of beasts—on bricks of clay—to a printing press, to a library—a long distance from the messenger, traveling on foot, to the electric spark—a long distance from revenge to law—from the club to the Legislature—from slavery to freedom—from appearance to fact—from fear to reason.

And yet the distance has been traveled by the human race. Countless obstructions have been overcome—numberless enemies have been conquered—thousands and thousands of victories have been won for the right, and millions have lived, labored and died for their fellow-men.

For the blessings we enjoy—for the happiness that is ours, we ought to be grateful. Our hearts should blossom with thankfulness. Whom, what, should we thank?

Standing here at the close of the 19th century—amid the trophies of thought—the triumphs of genius—here under the flag of the Great Republic—knowing something of the history of man—here on this day that has been set apart for thanksgiving, I most reverently thank the good men, the good women of the past, I thank the kind fathers, the loving mothers of the savage days. I thank the father who spoke the first gentle word, the mother who first smiled upon her babe. I thank the first true friend. I thank the savages who hunted and fished that they and their babes might live. I thank those who cultivated the ground and changed the forests into farms—those who built rude homes and watched the faces of their happy children in the glow of fireside flames—those who domesticated horses, cattle and sheep—those who invented wheels and looms and taught us to spin and weave—those who by cultivation changed wild grasses into wheat and corn, changed bitter things to fruit, and worthless weeds to flowers, that sowed within our souls the seeds of art. I thank the poets of the dawn—the tellers of legends—the makers of myths—the singers of joy and grief, of hope and love. I thank the artists who chiseled forms in stone and wrought with light and shade the face of man. I thank the philosophers, the thinkers, who taught us how to use our minds in the great search for truth. I thank the astronomers who explored the heavens, told us the secrets of the stars, the glories of the constellations—the geologists who found the story of the world in fossil forms, in memoranda kept in ancient rocks, in lines written by waves, by frost and fire—the anatomists who sought in muscle, nerve and bone for all the mysteries of life—the chemists who unraveled Nature's work that they might learn her art—the physicians and the surgeons who have defeated Nature's self and forced her to preserve the lives of those she labored to destroy.

I thank the great inventors—the inventors of engines, of the great ships, of the railways, the cables and telegraphs. I thank the great mechanics, the workers in iron and steel, in wood and stone. I thank the inventors and makers of the numberless things of use and luxury. I thank the industrious men, the loving mothers, the useful women. They are the benefactors of our race.

I thank the honest men and women who have expressed their sincere thoughts, who have been true to themselves and have preserved the veracity of their souls. I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear—the dethroners of savage gods—the extinguishers of hate's eternal fire—the heroes, the breakers of chains—the founders of free states—the makers of just laws—the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields—the heroes whose dungeons became shrines—the heroes whose blood made scaffolds sacred—the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the soldiers of freedom—the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled the world with light.

With all my heart I thank them all.

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I have condensed this essay considerably, primarily for length but also to set aside Ingersoll’s polemic against religion.

Robert G. Ingersoll - Wikipedia

America's Most Famous Non-Theist

Count Me Out

{This is not a review of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book, ‘Stolen Honor’; I have not read the book, nor do I intend to do so. Ms. Hochschild means well, bless her heart, but until she writes about the toxicity of the American Right without blaming it on the American Left, I’m just not interested.}

"Can't we all just get along?" (Rodney King)

Thirty days before an already contentious national election, we’re in luck: the esteemed sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has released a new book (Stolen Pride) to help us better understand the misunderstood and much maligned MAGA voters!

Ms. Hochschild knows her subject; in her previous book, Strangers in Their Own Land, she expressed sympathy for the beleaguered Trump supporters who were constantly accused by liberals of being racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic simply because they enthusiastically endorsed a candidate who was, well, racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic. The new American Right, Hochschild found, felt excluded, stereotyped, insulted, abandoned, and under psychological and economic assault from the elite establishment, the D.C. swamp, and the fake news media—in short, all of them, Katie.  

According to Michael Sandel, Hochschild’s Stolen Pride is “the best book yet on the moral and political psychology of the new right, a masterclass in the art of listening across our cultural and political divides.” By her willingness to listen without judgement, “Arlie Hochschild reveals what liberals miss—that the moral emotions of pride and shame animate the resentment that roils our politics.” Stupid liberals, labeling all the MAGA people as a basket of deplorables rather than seeing them as motivated by such “moral emotions” as hate, fear, and self-pity.

Left-wing commentator Robert Kuttner chimes in: “If progressives are ever to regain the trust of downwardly mobile white voters powerfully drawn to Trump and the far right, we need to listen deeply to Arlie Hochschild.” And Robert Reich, a communist by MAGA standards, can barely contain his admiration for Hochschild’s “cutting-edge research into forgotten Americans, people who desperately need help but cling to the myth that anyone can make it in America through hard work. Hochschild’s insights are compassionate, illuminating, and deeply moving.”

It's enough to make a person say WTF? Are we to accept that right-wing anger is caused by the failure of left-wing empathy? What, then, causes left-wing anger, or doesn’t that matter?

I have no doubt that Arlie Russell Hochschild’s subjects are, like the vast majority of people everywhere, decent human beings leading difficult lives (can you say “hardscrabble”?). Apparently, they also feel misunderstood, misunderestimated, and discriminated against; in the MAGA narrative, white men can’t even get hired anymore, and “Help Wanted” signs today come with “No whites need apply” caveats. Unless you get the stamp of approval from your local DEI commissar, you can forget about applying for a mortgage, a small business loan, or a line of credit, and don’t even think about getting a cab on a rainy night! “Why Jared Kushner Can’t Get a Cab” should be Ms. Hochschild’s next project. Not to mention the War on Christianity being waged by atheists, Satanists, secular humanists, and liberals.

I have yet to hear MAGA enthusiasts express empathy or support for anyone who doesn’t look like them, live like them, or think like them. Conservatives don’t believe in “empathy” anyway, because facts don’t care about anyone’s feelings, amirite? Is Appalachia suddenly populated by snowflakes? Does MAGA need a safe space or a timeout? Maybe a grownup to talk to?

Ms. Hochschild is a sociologist; does she not realize that empathy is a two-way street? I can understand resentment and anger—lord knows, I own my share of both—but I can’t and won’t accept gullibility. If I haven’t shown sufficient respect for the MAGA crowd, it’s not because I lack empathy, but because that crowd has supported, and continues to support, the single most vile demagogue in the history of American politics, a man who, for all his populist bluster, has done and will do nothing to improve the lives of his followers (much less the rest of us). Liberals come to MAGA country and propose solutions, or at least possible solutions—job training, subsidies for new industries, extended child tax credits, affordable healthcare—for which they are denounced as “elite” and “heartless”; meanwhile, the once and future MAGA King tilts at windmills and sharks, hollers about toilets, steals government documents, attempts to overturn an election, and generally conducts himself the way he has always done, i.e., as a rich entitled narcissist, a pathological liar and megalomaniac who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.

But the MAGA folks love him, so liberals must be to blame. Thank goodness Arlie Russell Hochschild is here to explain that to us and to once again “shed light on an often-overlooked segment of Americans, providing a deeply human exploration of the rituals and emotions that sustain a proud region in precarious times.” Count me out when the rituals include storming the U.S. capitol hoping to overturn the results of an election, or voting for a multiply convicted felon who has never expressed one iota of regret or even taken responsibility for anything he has ever done.

It has been said that a liberal is someone who is too open-minded to take his or her own side in a quarrel. Arlie Russell Hochschild and her admirers seem bent on demonstrating the truth of that axiom.  

MAGA slogan

Wednesday with Pascal: The Roots of Our Problem

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has just watched the Netflix documentary series, ‘Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror’. That experience, along with his recent ruminations on Marcion, may explain his interest in Marilyn McCord Adams’ book ‘Christ and Horrors,’ an attempt at theodicy that is simultaneously, and refreshingly, an indictment of God.}

What sort of world do we live in, and who is responsible for its (and our) condition? As Marilyn McCord Adams notes, the traditional Christian answers are, “The human condition generally and Divine-human relations in particular are non-optimal,” and “We brought this condition on ourselves, and we have only ourselves to blame.” Humans are incorrigible sinners, and “being a sinner is the worst scourge with which a human being can be tormented.” Our failures and imperfections, however venial, gnaw at us if we allow ourselves even a moment’s introspection, which is why, as Blaise Pascal observed, we find ourselves unable to sit quietly alone in a room for any length of time—we must have distraction from our guilty and shame-ridden selves.

But our unease with our culpability is merely the tip of an existential iceberg, because, as Adams says, “Human history is riddled with horrendous evil,” by which she means the stuff of nightmares: “Paradigm horrors include the rape of a woman and the axing off of her arms, psycho-physical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, schizophrenia, severe clinical depression, cannibalizing one’s own offspring, child abuse, parental incest, participation in Nazi death camps, etc. Participation in horrors,” she writes, “furnishes reason to doubt whether the participant’s life can be worth living. Worse, virtually every human being is complicit in horrors merely by living in his/her nation or society, because of economic or social systems we allow to persist and from which most of us benefit.”

In today’s vernacular, we tend to use the word ‘trauma’ for what Adams calls ‘horror’. That being the case, who decides what counts as ‘trauma’ or as ‘traumatic’? Is trauma in the eye of the victim? Adams concedes that “what counts as horrific may to some extent vary from society to society,” but she insists that “the victim’s estimates of how bad the suffering is are among the most significant data to be considered.” After all, in the wake of trauma the existential “life project” is shut down, aborted, and/or distorted beyond the individual’s power to reclaim or to renew it; “what makes horrors so pernicious is their life-ruining potential, their power to degrade the individual by destroying the possibility of positive personal meaning.”

Against life’s horrors, regardless of their source, we find ourselves helpless. “Our ability to cause horrors unavoidably exceeds our powers of conception,” laments Adams. “In a very real sense, perpetrators of horror ‘know not what they do’. Meanwhile, our feeble attempts at justice are actually futile exercises in revenge: “Retributive justice—imposing horror for horror upon human beings—deepens the tragedy by multiplying the ruin.” An ordained Christian minister, Adams does not shrink from the logical conclusion: “God has created us radically vulnerable to horrors by creating us as embodied persons, personal animals, enfleshed spirits in a material world of real or apparent scarcity. Sin,” she writes, “is a symptom and a consequence” of our having been placed (or “thrown,” as the ancient Gnostics termed it) into such a world. Adams continues, “The real roots of our problem are systemic and metaphysical.”

Her elaboration of that point is worth quoting at length:

There is a metaphysical mismatch within human nature: tying psyche to biology and personality to a developmental life cycle exposes human personhood to dangers to which angels (incorruptible pure spirits) would be immune. The fact that human psyche begins in groping immaturity and dependence, stumble-bumbles by trial and error towards higher functioning, only to peak and slide towards diminishment—makes our meaning-making capacities easy to twist, even ready to break, when inept caretakers and hostile surroundings force us to cope with problems off the syllabus and out of pedagogical order. Likewise, biology, by building both an instinct for life and the seeds of death into animal nature, makes human persons naturally biodegradable. Biochemistry, too, can skew our mental states and cause mind-degenerating and personality-distorting diseases which make a mockery of Aristotelian ideas of building character and dying in a virtuous old age.  

There is also a metaphysical mismatch between human nature and the material world as we have it, one in which the necessities of life and of flourishing seem and often are difficult to access and in short supply. If human psyche and biology, personality and animality, mind and body, are odd couples that interfere with one another, scarcity triggers fear and animal aggression and drives us into Darwinian struggles for existence!

“It is God,” Adams admits, “who decided to include such mismatches in the world as we know it. We may ask: whatever for?”

To her credit, and unlike many Christian apologists, Marilyn McCord Adams does not minimize the difficulties faced by finite, fallible, vulnerable creatures struggling to survive in a world they (we) did not make. In Christ and Horrors, she valiantly argues that God, recognizing our plight—and his responsibility for it—has provided the solution. Her argument may not persuade everyone (it does not persuade me), but her willingness to acknowledge “the real roots of our problem” is admirable.

Just Another Day in Paradise

Sunday Sermon: "Waiting for a Train"

Waiting for a Train

All around the water tanks, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman, to give him a line of talk
He says "If you've got money, I'll see that you don't walk"
I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
"Get off, get off, you railroad bum"; he slammed the boxcar door

He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I'm on my way from Frisco, I'm going back to Dixieland
Though my pocketbook is empty and my heart is full of pain
I'm a thousand miles away from home, just waiting for a train

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Written by Jimmie Rodgers

Jimmie Rodgers original: Jimmie Rodgers - Waiting for a Train (youtube.com)

Boz Scaggs version: Waiting for a Train (youtube.com)

Saturday Lecture: Do You Know the Way to Modernity?

{I remain fascinated by the transition from pre-modern Christendom to Modernity, facilitated as it was by the Age of Discovery and by the Protestant Reformation. In what follows, historian Steven Ozment discusses the views of Joseph Lortz, a 20^th-century German scholar who vehemently disapproved of the Reformation and its modern consequences. Mr. Ozment does not here mention that Joseph Lortz was, from 1933 until at least 1937, a member of Germany’s Nazi Party who sought, allegedly, an unlikely alliance between Catholicism and Nazism. That biographical fact may not be essential in this context, but it seems worth noting.}

Steven Ozment (from The Reformation in Medieval Perspective):

Of various evaluations of the late Middle Ages written with an eye to the Reformation, none has been more impressive in scope, persistent in influence, and challenging in assessment than Joseph Lortz’s two-volume study, ‘The Reformation in Germany’. Lortz’s yardstick for assessing the late Middle Ages was the havoc he felt was wreaked on western civilization by the Reformation, a revolt which, in his opinion, supplanted basic medieval attitudes. Lortz wrote:

“Seen as a religious and ecclesiastical event, the Reformation was the denial of the visible Church, rooted and grounded in the objective teaching authority and in the sacramental priesthood; it was the acceptance of a religion of conscience erected upon the judgment of the individual with regard to the Biblical word. That is to say: along these two lines of development, the Reformation replaced the basic medieval attitudes of objectivism, traditionalism, and clericalism by those of subjectivism, spiritualism, and laicism.”

Lortz was especially sensitive to those ideas, events, movements, alliances, and personages which promoted, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, the conditions requisite for the overthrow of medieval commitments. For the Reformation to occur, a question had to be posed: was the papal Church the true, authoritative representative of Christendom? Lortz saw this doubt about the objective validity of the institutional Church being raised throughout the late Middle Ages by such diverse men and movements as Philip the Fair, the Spiritual Franciscans, nominalism, William of Occam, Marsilius of Padua, the Waldensians and Cathari, the conciliarists, John Wyclif, John Huss and the widespread Hussite revolt in fifteenth-century Bohemia.

Lortz considered the spirit of humanism to be the ‘conditio sine qua non' of the Reformation. This spirit was displayed, for Lortz, in a paradigmatic way by Pico della Mirandola, who argued in his ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man’ that every man has been created formless, as it were, so that he may choose to be exactly what he wishes. Man is the creature who legislates by free volition what he will be. His nature is not fixed. Among German humanists and theologians this was expressed in terms of dedication to and expectation of the truly novel. In addition, humanists launched very effective, albeit often exaggerated, satires against popes, scholastics, monks, and clerics. In these attacks, the traditional and institutional were ridiculed, according to Lortz, by a predominantly ‘worldly, naturalistic, anthropocentric’ concept of freedom. Renaissance humanism became the first classical period of criticism in Europe—a preview of greater doubts to come.

Lortz noted that, on the eve of the Reformation, humanists were already harvesting the fruit of their work. They exposed the ‘Donation of Constantine’ as a forgery and demonstrated the lack of historical justification for other precedents of ecclesiastical authority. They pointed out discrepancies between the official Latin Bible and the original text. Lortz viewed the bold realism of Machiavelli as a typical product of the critical humanist spirit which held nothing immune from the most uncompromising analysis. He believed that humanists achieved by satire what was accomplished by William of Occam with the philosophical separation of faith and knowledge. Humanism and nominalism introduced profound doubt and skepticism into late medieval society. Lortz also found religious life on the eve of the Reformation no less hostile to the traditional medieval attitude. The teachings of John Huss were widespread and, in Lortz’s judgment, prepared the way for Luther’s ideas. The fires of religious fervor were fanned, Lortz acknowledged, by legitimate social discontent, but they were also fed by the ideal of poverty in the Bible, now increasingly available in the vernacular, and by apocalypticism (e.g., the work of Joachim of Fiore).

With these pieces in place, Lortz saw the late Middle Ages culminating in a relativization of traditional, objective, doctrinal Christianity, aided and abetted by nominalism, humanism, and mysticism. Erasmus was the most eloquent representative of this development—Erasmus who taught that peace was more important than doctrinal truth and who pleaded for a relativistic ‘via media’ which could affirm without deciding. Lortz concluded, in agreement with Etienne Gilson, that ‘theological unclarity’ within the late medieval Church made the Reformation possible; it was ‘vagueness’ about religious truth and authority that permitted Erasmus to go without rebuke and allowed Luther to establish a firm beachhead before the peril he represented was recognized. Vagueness and lack of clarity thus prepared the soil during the late Middle Ages so that the Reformation was able to take root and thrive.

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Joseph Lortz - Wikipedia

Erasmus - Wikipedia

The Halcyon Days of Yore (Yore Welcome)

Wednesday with Pascal: My Favorite Marcion

{I made it very clear to Pascal the existential Russian blue cat that his proposed title for this post was unacceptable. Did he listen? No, he did not. I have allowed it to stand, but with my disapproval noted.}

“The problematics raised by heretics played a large and positive role in the discerning of the fullness of truth for the churchly Christianity itself.” (N. Berdyaev)

Christian theology, as is well known, started with Paul, in the decades immediately following Jesus’ death. It took nearly a hundred years more, however, before Christianity had its next important theologian, who also happened to be its first notable heretic. Marcion of Sinope, preaching to Christians in Rome, claimed that the Christian God (Jesus’ Abba) was not the same as Israel’s God, the YHWH of the Hebrew testament. Marcion’s reading of Jewish scriptures convinced him that YHWH was a petty tribal god afflicted with delusions of grandeur, which delusions led him to claim to be the only God in existence. ¹ According to Marcion, Jesus had been sent not by YHWH but by a hitherto unknown God, whose intent was not to save mankind from Satan, sin, and death, but to save it from YHWH, the true source of those evils. To call those views “unorthodox” is understating the case. Even so, it is hard to deny that “Elements of Marcionism can be discerned in the Fourth Gospel, in the epistles of Paul and in his hostility to the "world", in his teaching about redemption and about the surmounting of the Law, i.e. in the very essence of Christianity.”

However plausible his exegetics may have been, Marcion’s conclusions were not widely accepted. Naturally, having made those views public, Marcion was expelled from the good graces of the Roman church, leading him to form his own “Marcionite” sect. His heresies, however, by forcing apologists to think through Christian claims about God, Jesus, and salvation, were invaluable in the development of Christian theology; at the same time, Marcion’s creation of a corpus of “acceptable” Christian writings (ten letters attributed to Paul and an edited version of the Gospel of Luke) led in time to the Church’s canonical New Testament. ²

Two thousand years later, Marcion is all but forgotten, but anyone interested in post-Pauline Christian thought ignores him at their peril. The study of Marcion’s beliefs has been hindered by the fact that none of his writings have survived; we have only excerpts cited, for polemical purposes, by his theological opponents. We cannot know how accurate the excerpts are, or whether they were unfairly taken out of context, much less what was omitted that might have been germane to Marcion’s argument.

The 20th-century Russian theologian/philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev linked Marcion’s heretical thoughts to a perennially vexing issue: “Marcionism,” he wrote, “signifies a [radical solution] to the problem of theodicy.” Theodicy is the attempt to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the providence of a God said to be infinitely good, loving, and compassionate. Berdyaev acknowledged that the problem of evil “never had a rational theological resolution, one that is acceptable for the moral consciousness of man.” He also noted that “Modern man, when he approaches religion, becomes struck and shaken by the problem of evil and suffering.” The greatest of Russian writers, Dostoevsky, repeatedly grappled with the issue: “Ivan Karamazov does not accept ‘God's world’ because of the tears of a little child. He spurns both the Creator and the creation, in which there is pestilence and plague.” Theodicy would also be the underlying theme of Albert Camus’ novel The Plague.

Like the Gnostics of his time, “Marcion rose up against the God of the Bible, the God of the Old Testament, against the Creator and Fashioner of the world, responsible for having created evil and suffering, and against this he set in opposition Christ, the revelation of another and unknowable God, foreign to the world and not responsible for having created the world.” Marcion was not himself a Gnostic, but he shared Gnostics’ resentment at the suffering woven inextricably into existence itself. In Marcion’s mind, and despite his critics, he was a Christian; he believed that “Christ came to set free from the power of the evil God, the Demiurge, such as had created this evil world. If atheism is set in opposition to the belief that this world was created by an All-Good God, as revealed in the Bible, then Marcion was an atheist.”

For all the genuine exegetical and theological issues involved in the Marcionite controversy, we should not lose sight of the fact that more than orthodoxy was at stake. Early Christianity was reviled for being (among other things) a novelty, a new religion with no historical or socio-cultural foundation; pagans found the very idea of religious innovation to be offensive. Christians responded to such charges by associating themselves with biblical Israel, by expropriating Israel’s scriptures, and by insisting that their religion was the legitimate continuation of the centuries-old worship of YHWH. When Marcion proclaimed a new and hitherto unknown God, he was inadvertently confirming the accusations against Christianity; for that reason, if for no other, he and his heretical views had to be disavowed.

And there you have, in brief, the story of my favorite Marcion.

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¹ To be fair, Marcion’s reading is not indefensible, merely unpopular.

² Needless to say, Marcion’s “bible” did not include Israel’s scriptures (aka the Christian “Old Testament"), though he acknowledged those scriptures contained much that was of value.

Marcion and His Amanuensis

Sunday Sermon: "John Wesley Harding"

John Wesley Harding (by Bob Dylan)

John Wesley Harding
Was a friend to the poor
He traveled with a gun in every hand
All along this countryside
He opened a many a door
But he was never known
To hurt an honest man

It was down in Chaynee County
A time they talk about
With his lady by his side
He took a stand
And soon the situation there
Was all but straightened out
For he was always known
To lend a helping hand

All across the telegraph
His name it did resound
But no charge held against him
Could they prove
And there was no man around
Who could track or chain him down
He was never known
To make a foolish move

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Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

John Wesley Harding lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

(93) Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding (Official Audio) - YouTube

Saturday Lecture: The Language of Doubt and Certainty

John W. Frame, “Certainty” (for IVP Dictionary of Apologetics):

Certainty is a lack of doubt about some state of affairs. For example, if I have no doubt that the earth is the third planet from the sun, then I can be said to be certain of that fact. Certainty admits of degrees, just as doubt admits of degrees. Absolute certainty is the lack of any doubt at all. Short of that, there are various levels of relative certainty.

Philosophers have sometimes distinguished between psychological certainty, which I have described above, and another kind of certainty that is called epistemic, logical, or propositional. There is no universally accepted definition of this second kind of certainty, but it usually has something to do with the justification or warrant for believing a proposition: a proposition is epistemically certain if it has, let us say, a maximal warrant. The nature of a maximal warrant is defined differently in different epistemological systems. Descartes thought that propositions, to be certain, must be warranted such as to exclude all grounds for doubt. For others, a proposition is epistemically certain if no proposition has greater warrant than it does. And different philosophers give different weight to logic, sense experience, intuition, etc. in determining what constitutes adequate warrant.

In any case, epistemic certainty, however it be defined, is not something sharply different from psychological certainty. Whatever level of warrant is required for epistemic certainty, it must be a level that gives us psychological confidence. Indeed, if we are to accept some technical definition of warrant, we also must have psychological confidence that that definition actually represents what we call certainty. It may be said that epistemic certainty is reducible to psychological certainty, but it is also true that we should try to conform our psychological feelings of certainty to objective principles of knowledge, so that our doubts and feelings of certainty are reasonable, rather than arbitrary or pathological. Perhaps it is best to say that psychological and epistemic certainty are mutually dependent.

Philosophers have also differed as to the extent to which certainty is possible, some being relatively skeptical, others claiming certainty in some measure. Some have distinguished different levels of knowledge and have relegated certainty to the higher levels. Plato, for example, in the Republic, distinguished between conjecture, belief, understanding, and direct intuition, conjecture being the most uncertain, and direct intuition (a pure knowledge of the basic Forms of reality) warranting absolute certainty.

Is it possible to be absolutely certain about anything? Ancient and modern skeptics have said no. According to Descartes, however, we cannot doubt that we are thinking, and, from the proposition ‘I think,’ he derived a number of other propositions that he thought were certain: our existence, the existence of God, and so on. Empiricists, such as Locke and Hume, have argued that we cannot be mistaken about the basic contents of our own minds, about the way things appear to us. But in their view our knowledge of the world beyond our minds is never certain, never more than probable. Kant added that we can also be certain of those propositions that describe the necessary conditions for knowledge itself. And Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore argued that certain deliverances of common sense are beyond doubt, because they are in some sense the foundation of knowledge, better known than any principles by which they can be challenged.

Ludwig Wittgenstein distinguished between merely theoretical doubt and real, practical doubt. In everyday life, when we doubt something, there is a way of resolving that doubt. For example, when we doubt how much money we have in a checking account, we may resolve that doubt by looking at a check register or bank statement. But theoretical, or philosophical doubts are doubts for which there is no standard means of resolution. What would it be like, Wittgenstein asks, to doubt that I have two hands, and then to try to relieve that doubt? Similarly for doubts as to whether the world has existed more than five minutes, or whether other people have minds.

The language of doubt and certainty, Wittgenstein argues, belongs to the context of practical life, but the traditional philosophical questions are not proper subjects either of doubt or of certainty. Meaning, to Wittgenstein, is the use of words in their ordinary, practical contexts; in what he calls their language game. For Wittgenstein, relative certainty is possible in ordinary life through standard methods. His argument excludes absolute certainty; but he does recognize some beliefs of ours (e.g. that the universe has existed for more than five minutes) about which there can be no doubt. He excludes doubt, not by proposing an extraordinary way to know such matters, but rather by removing such questions from the language game in which doubt and certainty have meaning.

But philosophy is also a language game, and doubts about the reality of the experienced world have troubled people for many centuries, and the questions concerning certainty remain open among secular philosophers.  In general, the philosophical trend today is opposed to the idea of absolute certainty; and that opposition is rampant among deconstructionists and postmodernists.

“Certainty” (frame-poythress.org)

Wednesday with Pascal: Something Wicked Stupid This Way Comes

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat had been working on a post for today when he was interrupted by a news bulletin about an invasion of ‘satanic interdimensional forces.’ That seemed important enough for Pascal to set aside what he had been working on.}

"Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" (Bob Dylan)

According to Alex Jones--distinguished commentator, detector of false-flag attacks, and living proof that you cannot go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public (although you can if the public sues you for libel)--“The devil's gonna operate through all the possessed people he's got. It's a program. If you're exposing these satanic interdimensional forces, the special operations of this interdimensional alien invasion, that's how they come through. Just think of them as aliens, and then, then you can sell all these people, because that's what they are from their perspective, but they're demons, they're interdimensional creatures.”

How, you may ask, does Alex Jones know about this demonic ‘program’? Don’t ask. If he told you, he would have to kill you. Maybe he already has.

Of course, Jones knows he will be ridiculed—"People are going to laugh at that till one attacks them”—but that will not dissuade him, much less silence him. “See,” he explains, “and I know the Bible that as you approach Revelations, the gates of hell are gonna be opened, the interdimensional gate, and only a small number of Satan's operatives were here before. The gates will be thrown open and we're going to have these things literally running around the streets.”

Could the “interdimensional gate” be the demonic portal that Roger Stone detected opening above the White House around the time of President Biden’s inauguration? ¹ I don’t see why not.

Other questions (so many questions, really) arise, to which Jones has ‘answers’: “Now, you ask, why would these creatures attack people that were doing God's work but didn't have God's protection? You'd think that would make them wake up and accept Jesus. They can't help it. If you're not protected, they want to destroy you. They — it's like a zombie wants brains. It's got to go after you. It's its mission.”

Jones’ syntax (among other things) seems confused here, but the bottom line is, demons are after you, it’s in their nature, they have no choice, it’s just what they do. Fish swim, birds fly, zombies eat brains, interdimensional demons want you to die.

Skeptics will scoff, as always, denying the plain evidence of their senses. They can tell you the time of day, perhaps, and they may know the times of the seasons, but they cannot read the signs of the times:

“You're like, well, that's fantastical. Have you looked at the stars at night? If you look at the sun, have you looked at the birds, have you looked at the wind? Have you not felt the energy, the good and the bad?”

What more proof could anyone want? You heard it first from Alex Jones: the fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no interdimensional gate and there are no demonic interdimensional creatures,’ but Alex Jones is no ordinary fool, no run-of-the-mill huckster, no small-time carnival barker, no Glenn Beck on steroids, and he stands between us and our imminent destruction.

Personally, I’ll take my chances with the demons.    

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Alex Jones warns of an "alien invasion" by "satanic interdimensional forces" | Media Matters for America

¹ “I think that a portal, a demonic portal, opened above the White House around the time that the Bidens moved in,” Stone said in an interview with conservative radio host Eric Metaxas." Roger Stone says he saw demon portal open over White House (audacy.com) 

Emerging from the Hellmouth, this hideous creature--oh, wait, it's Buffy!