That's life - C'est la vie

HITCH-22

2012-01-18T00:19:00.003-05:00

Hitch-22
by
Christopher Hitchens (2011)

What Yvonne wanted was the metropolis, with cocktail parties and theatre trips and smart friends and witty conversation. What she got instead was provincial life in a succession of small English towns and villages, first as a Navy wife and then as the wife of a man who, “let go” by the Navy after a lifetime of service, worked for the rest of his days in bit-part jobs as an accountant or “bursar.” P14

We didn’t grow our hair too long, because we wanted to mingle with the workers at the factory gate and on the housing estates. We didn’t “do” drugs, which we regarded as a pathetic, weak-minded escapism almost as contemptible as religion. P89

Also, in my career as a speaker at the Oxford Union, I had a chance to meet senior ministers and parliamentarians “up close” and dine with them before as well as drink with them afterward, and be amazed once again at how ignorant and sometimes plain stupid were the people who claimed to run the country. P98

Another young man lodging at the same address (46 Leckford Road) was Bill Clinton. I don’t recollect him so well though my friend and contemporary Martin Walker, later to be one of Clinton’s best biographers, swears that he remembers us being in the same room. The occasion was to become a famous, one, since it was the very time when the habitual professional liar Clinton later claimed that he “didn’t inhale.” There’s no mystery about this, any more than there ever was about his later falsifications. He has always been allergic to smoke and he preferred, like many another marijuana enthusiast, to take his dope in the form of large handfuls of cookies and brownies. P106

In court, I failed to amuse the magistrate when I complained of the brutal behaviour of the arresting police officer and gave the number that he had worn on his uniform. “How can you be so sure,” snapped the man of the judicial bench, “of that number?” “Merely because, Your Honor,” I responded sarcastically, “the figures 1389 are the same as the date of the great Peasants’ Revolt.” The resulting heavy fine reflected the court’s view of my impromptu contempt, as well as of my refusal to swear on the Bible when I took my oath. When found guilty, my comrades and I rose to our feet in the dock and sang “The Internationale,” fists raised in the approved and defiant manner. P109

One of the claims of the Cuban revolution was to have abolished prostitution and though I had never personally believed this to be feasible (the withering away of the state being one thing but the withering away of the penis quite another), the whore scene in Santa Clara was many times more lurid than anything to be imagined in a “bourgeois” society. P115

Redmond O’Hanlon also, broke as he was and as we all were, invariably had the price of a drink or a smoke about his person, and I am glad that I loved and love him so, because it was he who awakened my thus far buried and dangerous lust for alcohol and nicotine. P129

Jews and Arabs are brothers under the skin. P180

Today I want to puke when I hear the word “radical” applied to slothfully and gently and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world. P181

Journalism was a state of mind: it was not the sort of thing that could be taught, or in which one could get an academic qualification. P219

The hyphenation question: one can be an Italian-American, a Greek-American, an Irish-American and so forth. (Jews for some reason prefer the words the other way around as in “American Jewish Congress” or “American Jewish Committee.”) And any of those groups can and does have a “national day” parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. But there is no such thing as an “English-American” let alone a "British-American," and one can only boggle at the idea of what, if we did exist, our national day parade on Fifth Avenue might look like. One can, though, be an Englishman in America. P227

Hyphenation - if one may be blunt - is for latecomers. It’s been very absorbing (the term I hope is the apt one) to see the emergence of another non-hyphenated immigrant group. Those from the south of the Rio Grande are now seldom if ever known as Mexican-American, say, let alone Salvadoran-American. They are, instead, “Hispanic” or “Latino.” And they, too, were in many ways forerunners rather than latecomers. P228

I did not at all like Ronald Reagan, and nobody then could persuade me that I should. Even now, when I squint back at him through the more roseate lens of his historic compromise with Gorbachev, I can easily remember (which is precisely why one’s memoirs must always strive to avoid too much retrospective lens adjustment) exactly why I found him so rebarbative at the time. There was, first his appallingly facile manner as a liar. He could fix the camera with a folksy smirk that I always found annoying but that got him called “The Great Communicator” by a chorus of toadies in the press, and proceed to utter the most resounding untruths. (“South Africa has stood beside us in every major war we have ever fought,” he declare while defending a regime whose party leadership has been locked up by the British for pro-Nazi sympathies in the Second World War. “The Russian language contains no word for ‘freedom’” was another stupefying pronouncement of his: Who knows where he got it from, or who can imagine a president whose staff couldn’t tell him of the noble word Svoboda? (Svoboda, a word in Slavic languages meaning "freedom".) P233

The Leader of the Free World [Ronald Reagan] was frequently photographed in the company of “end-times” Protestant fundamentalists and biblical literalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson: tethered gas-balloons of greed and cynicism once written up by Martin Amis as “frauds of Chaucerian proportions.” The president found time to burble with such characters about the fulfillment of ancient “prophecy” and the coming Apocalypse. He also speculated drivellingly that the jury might yet return an open verdict on the theory of evolution. He was married to a woman who employed a White House astrologer. P233

I had an alluring glimpse of Susan Sontag taking her lunch with Roger Straus. I knew Susan slightly by then: she was a sovereign figure in the small world of those who tilled the field of ideas. She didn’t have any boss, but she did have a distinguished book publisher who was also a friend and who was proud to print anything she wrote. P235

The stages by which one mutates or pupates from one identify to another are always evident while they are being undergone. I suppose I shed some skins and also acquire some layers. I wrote for some years a non-political column about cultural matters for the London Times Literary Supplement, calling it “American Notes.” But I sentimentally helped host Neil Knnock’s staff when he came on his doomed mission as the penultimate leader of the “old” Labour Party, and when I swore out an affidavit to testify to Congress during the impeachment trial of the loathsome Bill Clinton, I was asked to state my citizenship and found myself saying that I was a citizen of the European Union. All this made a loose but comfortable fit with my continuing ideal of myself as an internationalist. P239

I am occasionally “credited” with coining the unsatisfactory term “Islamofacism”. P244

Comparing Al Quaeda’s use of stolen airplanes with President Clinton’s certainly atrocious use of cruise missiles against Sudan three years before (which were at least ostensibly directed at Al Quaeda targets), Noam Chomsky found the moral balance to be approximately even, with the United States at perhaps a slight disadvantage. P244

The disgusting “Reverends” Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell [Larry Flint’s friend, hi,hi!] were also on hand to announce that the United States had merited the devastation because of its willingness to tolerate sexual deviance. P249

My Canadian friend David Frum, who was actually working in the White House and had had a hand in writing the famous “axis of evil” speech, had his personal paperwork lost when he applied to become an American. P251

To study the amendments - the Bill of Rights and its successor clauses - is to read the history of the United States in miniature. Here were all the measures that set out to distinguish the new United States from the arbitrary and corrupt practices of the Hanovarian usurpers: amendments abolishing the established church, postulating an armed people, opposing the billeting of soldiers upon civilians, limiting searches of property and persons and in general setting limits and boundaries to state power. One has to admire the unambivalent way in which these were written. “Respecting an establishment of religion,” said the very first amendment, drawing on Jefferson’s and Madison’s Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom, “Congress shall make no law.” Little wiggle room there; no crevice through which a later horse-and-cart could ever be driven. Alas for advocates of “gun control, the Second Amendment seems to enshrine a “right of the people to keep and bear arms” irrespective of whether they are militia members or not. (The clause structure is admittedly a little reminiscent of the ablative absolute.) And the Eighth Amendment, forbidding “cruel and unusual punishments,” is of scant comfort to those like me who might like that definition stretched to include the death penalty. If the Founders had wanted to forbid capital punishment (as, say, the state constitution of Michigan explicitly does), they would have done so in plain words. P252-53

In 1951 the Twenty-second Amendment limited presidential terms to two. P253

When I had published my Jefferson biography, we had essentially ventilated the matter of “slave servants”. Thanks to my friend Annette Gordon-Reed, the whole story of Jefferson’s other family had become an open page for any reader, and one could even begin to dare see Sally Hemings as one of the unacknowledged “founding mothers” of that multiethnic American republic that Jefferson himself could never have foreseen. So the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom was a man who owned other people. (Part of my education in the subtleties of racism had been learning to cope with American historians who could easily accept that Jefferson had owned Sally Hemings and had indeed acquired her as a wedding present from a man who was his father-in-law and her actual father - this making the girl his wife’ half-sister - but who could not bring themselves to believe that in addition to inheriting her and owning her, our third president has also go so far as to have fucked her.) P256

I first invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the heroine of feminine resistance to the living death known as sharia. I had met her at a conference in Sweden when she was still a relatively unknown Dutch dissident member of Parliament, trying to warn Western liberals against the sick relativism which has permitted them to regard “honor” killings and genital mutilation as expressions of cultural diversity. P257

...theocratic terrorism...

Jefferson has asked to be remembered as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the founder of the University of Virginia, and the drafter of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom. P259

There seemed to be no book or poem in English that Salman Rushdie hadn’t read, and his first language had been Urdu. This was of course the tongue of the camp followers of the Mughal Empire, who had brought Islam to India and to Salman’s best-beloved native city of Bombay. P266

It took me a long time to separate and classify the three now-distinctive elements of the new and grievance-privileged Islamic mentality, which were self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. P271

...the Islamophile Prince Charles... P273

Paul Valéry said that poetry is not speech raised to the level of music, but music brought down to the level of speech. P275

Muslim Bosnia was a site of daily slaughter by Christians and we had also been trying to get Clinton to take some kind of intelligibly vertebrate position on that. P277

Salman Rushdie was at one time very concerned that he would dry up as a writer because of being moved from one safe house to another, but in practice produced several first-rate fictions and many brilliant essays and reviews, thus disproving Orwell’s fine but fallacious dictum that “the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.” P279
It was my second visit to Iraq and I knew approximately four things about the country. The first was that it had been a British colonial invention, carved out between the other arbitrary frontiers of the post-Ottoman Middle East, between Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. This meant that, as a British socialist, I had an instinctive sympathy with its nationalists. The second thing I knew was that that it had a large Kurdish minority, and that the rights of this minority had long been a major cause of the Left. The third thing I knew was that the Ba’ath Party, which called itself socialist, was at least ostensibly secular and not religious. The fourth thing I knew was that the casinos and brothels and nightclubs of London, just then awash in Gulf Arab clientele after the free-for-all of the post-1973 oil embargo, did not tend to feature droves of greedy Iraqis throwing their country’s wealth away on drink and harlots. P282

I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as “Abu Nidal” (“father of struggle”), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat’s main enemies. P284. (At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of [the] struggle," was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders. He told Der Spiegel in a rare interview in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares.")

I also stopped hearing from my former Iraqi friends as the pall over the country thickened and as the long insane war with Iran, launched by Saddam in 1979, with the support of the pious born-again creep Jimmy Carter, went pitilessly on. P288

The Iraqi general in charge of the “operation,” I soon enough learned, was Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his atrocities in Kurdistan. P289

...Saddam’ unquenchable thirst for destruction... P293

Iraq meanwhile was retaken by Saddam Hussein as the private property of himself and his horrifying sons. P296

I knew that Saddam’s police force was searching for psychopathic killers and sadistic serial murderers, not in order to arrest them but to employ them. P297

Saddam has built himself a new palace in each of Iraqi’s eighteen provinces, while product like infant formula - actually provided to Iraq under the oil-for-food program - were turning up on the black market being sold by Iraqi government agents. P297

...Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s Catholic Christian crony and then foreign minister... P301

The Shi’a were ready to rise in revolt if they could be persuaded that they would not again be abandoned as they has been in 1991. P303

After I had written a few polemics about Iraq, and taken part in several television debates on the subject, I received a call one day from the Pentagon. It was from Paul Wolfowitz, Donal Rumsfeld’ deputy, asking if I would like to come and see him. P304

The thing that struck me most, once I had presented myself at his office, was the extent to which Wolfowitz wanted to live down precisely this image. The first thing he showed me was a photograph of the “Situation Room» in the mid-1980s, where, around the table I could see President Reagan and most of his foreign-policy team, from Weinberger to Shultz to Donald Regan, slumped in attitudes of mild exhaustion. Off to the side was a more youthful Wolfowitz. He told me that this picture, which had pride of place in his office, was of exactly the moment when the Reaganites had narrowly voted to dump the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986 and to recognize the election victory of his opponent Cory Aquino. P304-305

It had been a whole quarter of a century since Saddam Hussein had taken control of Iraq: Hitler had ruled for twelve years and Stalin for about twenty-five. P306

I did a few things in swift succession. I resigned my position as columnist for The Nation after an unbroken stint of twenty years man and boy as a bi-weekly contributor. There was no further point in working for a magazine that sympathized with the sort of “anti-war” culture I have just mentioned. I then booked a ticket for Qatar, the small but relatively open monarchic state which now housed both Al-Jazeera (then a new idea in the media) and the American Central Command or “Centcom.” P308

Lady Mallowan was better known as Agatha Christie. P314

Iraq is about the size of California. P315
Populations and size 2010:
California: 37 mm - 159,000 sq. mi. (411,000 sq. km)
Canada: 34 mm - 3,800,000 sq. mi. (10,000,000 sq. km)
Iraq: 32 mm - 169,000 sq. mi. (437,000 sq. km)
Russia: 143 mm - 6,600,000 sq. mi. (20,000,000 sq. km)

...Or by the Rumsfeld doctrine, which sent American soldiers to Iraq in insufficient numbers and with inadequate equipment... P323

I am often described to my irritation as a “contrarian” and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. P336

During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behaviour to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. P336

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast-track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono. P337

I distinguish remorse from regret in that remorse is sorrow for what one did to whereas regret is misery for what one did not do. Both seem to be involved in this case. P339

North Korea: a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved. P349

There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully. This ought to be obvious by induction: on average I produce at least a thousand words of printable copy every day, and sometimes more. P351

Alcohol makes some people less tedious, and food less bland and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. P351

My father’s robust health began to fail him in his late seventies and he died in late 1987. P354

...the fat-headed future Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan. P356

I have had my mother’s wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth. P363

Professor Friedrich Julius Stahl had been born Joel Golson, and it wasn’t enough for him to have converted to that bastardization of primitive Judaism known as Christianity: no, like Stalin after him he also wanted a surname of steel. P366

As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. P376

Lumber Kings & Shantymen - David Lee

2011-12-27T12:30:00.009-05:00

Lumber Kings & Shantymen by David Lee (2006) Timber Barons, Lumber Kings, Shantymen... The skilled and haughty axeman who could hew timbers square with the precision and art of a sculptor.

These romantic figures, these mighty men, could be found in New Brunswick and in other parts of Quebec and Ontario, but it was in the Ottawa Valley that they were made into myth and legend.

It was here, for example, that Joe Mufferaw/Montferrand, larger-than-life, but real, performed deeds that were carried across North America in story and song.

Charlotte Whitton, loyal daughter of the Valley and eventual mayor of Ottawa, wrote that its men “were said to have pine sap in their blood.” One Feature of life in the Valley was a passion for fighting, whether it was large-scale free-for-all or one-on-one fisticuffs.

The Valley’s reputation as a place populated by pugnacious shantymen, fellers, axemen, river drivers and raftsmen lingered a long time. This book will examine the three forest-based industries - SQUARE TIMBER, LUMBER AND PULP AND PAPER - that dominated the Ottawa Valley economy over its first century and a quarter (roughly 1800 to 1925) and left such a powerful imprint on its people.

From its source in Lake Capimitchigama (east of Grand Lac Victoria) to its mouth at the St. Lawrence near Montreal, it forms a broad semi-circle 730 miles in length. The founding of Hull by Philemon Wright a few years later turned out to be more significant, especially as it drew attention to the vast potential of the Ottawa River and the forests that lined its banks.

It was in February 1800 that Wright led a party of pioneers from Woburn, Massachusetts, up the Ottawa River to plant a settlement near Chaudière Falls. Some of the pines that once stood on what is now Parliament Hill were said to have measured 180 feet in height and 16 feet around.

Shipbuilders, particularly those of the Royal Navy, relied on the white pine for use as masts and ship framing, but it was also much in demand for furniture, housing, and heavy construction. The red pine (Pinus resinosa) is smaller, but since it is a little stronger, almost immune to dry rot, and not as abundant in the forest, it usually fetched higher prices. P18-19

Wright was probably not immediately aware of the significance of his accomplishment, but his sale of sawn lumber and square timber at Quebec in 1806 brought the Ottawa Valley into the world market economy (William Merrick’s earlier lumbering efforts on the Rideau served only a small, local clientele). P23

Although not highly educated and possessing few social graces, Philemon Wright was a shrewd and powerful personality, a man of high energy, vision, ambition, and determination. P23

After retiring from politics in the 1850s, Louis-Joseph Papineau devoted much of his time to the seigneury, including building a luxurious manor house, “Montebello’, which still stands today. P26

It was the Mears-Pattee mill that gave birth to Hawkesbury. P26

By the 1820s, some operators were already logging up the Madawaska River, one of the wildest tributaries of the Ottawa. Within a few years, the logging frontier had moved as far as Lake Timiskaming, fully 250 miles above the Chaudière: the McConnell family of Hull was rafting square timber from that lake by 1839 and perhaps even earlier. P26-27

Many more immigrants came from Ireland later, fleeing the miseries of the potato famine of the 1840s. p29

Twice over the years, the Algonquin and Nipissing Indians living in the Ottawa Valley requested that they be compensated in some way for the land the Crown had given to European settlers. The government’s response was that if any compensation were warranted it had been satisfied in 1853 by the establishment of a reserve at Maniwaki on the Gatineau River. P32

The Rideau Canal was built between 1826 and 1832 under the direction of Col. John By of the Royal Engineers, and in 1827 his name was given to the settlement - Bytown - that grew up at the eastern entrance to the canal. By’s marvellous engineering achievement, 123 miles in length, allowed shipping to move over a 300-foot height of land between the Ottawa River and Lake Ontario. P44

Several large dams were constructed on the Ottawa. The first, at the Chaudière (completed 1909), alleviated water shortages but could not mitigate difficulties caused by surplus water; this problem had to be resolved farther up the river. Accordingly, between 1911 and 1914, the government built reservoir dams to control water levels at Kipawa River, [Laniel] Lake Timiskaming, [Temiscaming] and Lac-des-Quinze [Angliers]. P47

After Confederation the department continued to add further single-stick slides in ever more remote areas. As late as 1914 they provided bypasses for sawlogs through the new dams at Lake Timiskaming, Lac-des-Quinze, and Kipawa River. P54

The success that Philemon Wright and others found selling timber to British buyers at Quebec sparked a timbering boom across Canada after 1806. p59

When Wright floated his first raft to Quebec, it took him two months to make the journey. P59

From there the timber was shipped across the Atlantic to London, Liverpool, and other British posts. P59

Red pine predominated at first, but the larger and more plentiful white pine prevailed after 1850; by 1888 this species made up better than three-quarters of all square timber produced in the Valley. P61

By the middle of the 19th century, the government had built roads from Montreal up both sides of the Ottawa River - one as far as Wrightstown and the other through Bytown to Pembroke. (Parts of old Ontario Highway 17 followed the same route.) This road reached Mattawa by the 1860s and Lake Timiskaming by 1888. p66

The villages of Chelsea, Wakefield, Low, Kazabazua, and Gracefield on the Gatineau River began as overnight stopping places for teamsters and horses; they are all 12 or 13 miles apart, the distance a wagon generally travelled in a day. P67-68

Decade by decade, water transport was extended farther and farther up the river. By 1882 steamboating reached lakes Timiskaming and Kipawa, a seven-mile rail line having been built to carry goods and passengers around the rapids on the Ottawa River between Mattawa and Lake Timiskaming. The steamboat services were initiated by Olivier Latour, who was soon bought out by another timberman, Alex Lumsden. Despite the number of times freight and passengers had to be unloaded and reloaded - from steamer to wagon or rail car then back to steamer - shipping on the Ottawa worked remarkably well, from spring to autumn. By the end of the century, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which afforded year-round service, was carrying most of the people and freight travelling up and down the Ottawa Valley. P68-69

The men were paid according to a hierarchy of skills, ranging from hewers at the top to road-makers and general labourers at the bottom. P71

The two-man crosscut saw was not used to bring down trees until the 1870s, when a number of technical advances were introduced - raking-teeth that removed sawdust from the cut, coal oil that washed sticky resin away from the teeth, and wedges that prevented blades from jamming in the cut. Still, as late as 1885, a government official noted that axes were still being used for felling purposes in the Ottawa Valley. By 1903, however, the Canada Lumberman was claiming that this practice was virtually confined to the maritime provinces. P72

It was usually the hewer who decided which trees were suitable for squaring. He looked for pines with a straight trunk, large girth, few branches, and no outward signs of rot or disease. The hewer, as the senior man in the gang, then sat back while others felled the trees and prepared them for squaring. Once on the ground, the trees were “topped off” at a point where the taper became too pronounced to allow squaring. After the branches and some of the bark were removed, the “liner” stepped in. Using a cord coated with soot or chalk, he marked the line along which the timber should be hewn. In effect, it was the liner who determined the dimensions of the finished timber. He was followed by “scorers,” who performed the preliminary hewing, chopping the side flat within an inch or two of the line. It was at this point that the hewer took over. With his many years of experience and his 10-to-12-pound broadaxe (sharpened every night to a razor’s edge), he finished the job. The hewer was the prideful, master artists, who, like the great sculptors and surgeons, had others to the preliminary work. At the same time, however, he alone had to bear ultimate responsibility for the quality of the product. The best hewers were able to carve a perfectly smooth surface along the entire length of the chalk line. After he performed his artistry on two flanks, the gang rolled the huge timber over and he repeated the process on the other two sides. As a final step, the men chopped each end of the squared timber to a pyramid point in order to ease its long passage to Quebec through the rocks and shoals of rivers without damaging the wood. P72-73

Each gang in the shanty was expected to produce five to seven square timbers a day in good weather. P73

Dragging often damaged the timber, however, and eventually most operators turned to a double bobsled (two sets of short runners), which could carry both ends safely above the rocks and snags of the trail; it could also carry more than one timber at once. P75

A raft put together on Lake Timiskaming might have to be disassembled and reassembled more then a dozen times along the Ottawa - at rapids such as Long Sault of the North, Deux-Rivières, Allumettes, Paquette, Calumet, and Chenaux, as well as at the eight government run timber slides. P83

By the 1850s the Valley accounted for more than 90% of the red and white pine timber produced in what is now Ontario and Quebec. P87

By sawing trees into boards and planks, the lumberman wasted far less wood than if he hewed them square. P91

Most mills relied on a single upright, or “muley,” saw; moving slowly up and down, it could take half an hour to slice one board off a large sawlog. P91-92

Ezra Butler Eddy, a native of Vermont, began by making matches, pails, and wash tubs from the scraps of nearby mills. Within 20 years he had a large sawmill on the Hull shoreline of the Chaudière and was one of the leading lumber manufacturers in the Ottawa Valley. P96

John Rodolphus Booth was born in 1827 in the Eastern Townships of Quebec; he rented a small mill at the Chaudière for a few years before acquiring hydraulic lots of his own. P96

The first lumber kings of the Ottawa Valley were, of course, the Hamilton family of Hawkesbury. P97

Investors in the B&PR (Bytown and Prescott Railway) decided that the Ogdensburg linkage was more important, for they chose to match their track gauge (width between the rails) with the American standard rather than the Grand Trunk’s. p100

On 31st December 1857, Queen Victoria chose Ottawa to be the capital of the Province of Canada. (With Confederation in 1867, it became the capital of the Dominion of Canada.) p100-101

The Canada Central and Canada Atlantic railways were only moderately profitable, but investors saw further potential in the Ottawa Valley, especially for rail lines that served the lumber trade. A new wave of rail construction ensued before long, with projects that opened up wide new areas of the Valley to lumbering. One example was a Canadian Pacific branch line, completed to Lake Timiskaming in 1896, that gave access to the rich forest of the Kipawa region in Quebec. Another example was the Thurso & Nation River Railway, (T&NRR) the last major rail project undertaken in the Valley. The T&NRR, which ran 56 miles northward from Thurso, Quebec, was constructed by the Singer Sewing Machine Co. of New York to get the cabinetry wood it needed to manufacture its sewing devices. The line was later bought by the James Maclaren Company to carry pulpwood to its mill at Thurso. P106

Lake Timiskaming was the northern limit of square-timber operations. Beyond there, it took too long for timber rafts to get to Quebec, and in any case, the pines found farther north were seldom large enough to be squared. Still, the areas around Lac Kipawa, Lac-des-Quinze, and Lac Expanse (now Lac Simard) in Quebec and the Temagami region of Ontario held grand stands of pine and spruce waiting to be cut for lumber. P106

Work in lumbering shanties was different, however. Cutting gangs here usually numbered only three men each - a “notcher” (the head man) and two sawyers; they were expected to cut at least 180 sawlogs a day in the autumn before the trees froze (and became harder to cut) and about 135 a day in the winter. P108

On flat sections of bush roads the men sometimes iced the surfaces with crude water-sprinklers to speed the movement of the sleds; on steep hills they would spread cinders and sand or used winches and chains to slow them down. Although it required careful planning, road-making involved more bull work than skill. P109

In the end, it was not steam but rather the internal-combustion engine that replaced horse power in the bush. The first gasoline-powered tractors and trucks arrived in the bush in the 1920s, though horses continued to be used on some limits for decades after. P110

Dimension timber was lumber sawn to make the thick beams and joists used in heavy construction projects; they usually measured five or more inches on the smallest side. P120

As with deals, the trade began when some investors realized they could earn greater profits by sawing large pines into timbers rather than hewing them square by axe. The best known manufacturer of dimension timber in the Valley was the Pembroke Lumber Co., controlled by the White family of that town. It was this firm that supplied the timbers for the decking of the new interprovincial Alexandra Bridge, which was constructed between Ottawa and Hull in 1901. p120

Scantling = 2” x 4” studs. P120

Circular saws could not cut logs larger than half their diameter, a problem which was resolved by placing one circular saw above another. P127 The most serious shortcoming of the circular saw was that its thick blades produced “kerfs” (the width of the cut made by the saw) sometimes of more than a quarter of an inch, resulting in an enormous amount of wood wasted as sawdust. P127

At the top of the pay scale were the sawyers, highly skilled technicians who, by manipulating a set of levers, controlled the whole sawing process. Sawyers received triple the pay of those at the bottom of the scale - labourers and boys (aged 14 to 16). P130

In Ontario no one under 14 years old could work in a factory or mill, while in Quebec the age limit was 12; no child could work more than 60 hours a week, but even then, exceptions were allowed in emergencies. P131

Lumbering in the Ottawa Valley reached its peak in the 1880s. p137

The worst forest fire ever recorded in the province of Ontario occurred in the Ottawa Valley, and it was blamed on both settlers and loggers. This was the horrific blaze that burned much of the land between Englehart and Cobalt in 1922, killing 43 people, destroying several towns [?] and leaving 11,000 people homeless. P138

In 1884 the Bronsons & Weston Company reported that the proportion of “cull” (lowest-grade) lumber turned out in their mill had risen from 47% to 66% in only seven years. For decades, Valley lumbermen had had it relatively easy, taking the choices red and white pines from the most easily accessible timber limits. P139

The McLachlin Brothers of Arnprior, for example, had timber limits far up the Kipawa River in Quebec and the Montreal River in Ontario, about 300 miles from their mill. The Hawkesbury Lumber Company (formed after the death of John Hamilton in 1888) also had limits in the Kipawa area, and their mill was an additional hundred miles down the Ottawa River. Some lumbermen had limits as far upriver as Lac Expanse (now Lac Simard), about 400 miles beyond Ottawa-Hull, and even on Grand Lac Victoria, nearly five hundred miles away. J.R. Booth operated in this remote area, but he avoided bringing his logs that distance by digging a short canal over to the Dumoine River and driving them down that stream to the Ottawa.[?] P140

On 26 April 1900, a great fire caused widespread destruction in Ottawa and Hull, striking another damaging blow to the Valley’s lumber industry. P141

The MaClaren family opened a pulp mill at Buckingham, while J.R. Booth built two pulp mills and a paper mill at the Chaudière. Both continued to saw lumber for commercial sale, but it was evident that pulp and paper had become the main focus of investors seeking better ways to exploit the forests of the Ottawa Valley. P143

Builders who continued to work with wood now had a cheaper source of supply: the Pacific Coast. Lumber from that area was of better quality than the Ottawa Valley could supply, and, sawn from much larger logs, it was cheaper to produce and thus could bear the heavy costs of transport to markets in eastern North America. British Columbia lumber was shipped to Montreal via the CPR as early as 1891. p144

It is clear that in the 1890s the Valley’s lumber industry entered a shrinking mode and lost its leadership to British Columbia. By the 1930s most of the great sawmills had closed, and lumbering was no longer a significant industry in the Ottawa Valley. P144

It was fortunate for the people of the Ottawa Valley that, just as lumbering went into decline; a new business - pulp and paper - was born. Pulp-and-paper manufacturing grew quickly to robust manhood and, in the process, reinvigorated the whole forest industry of the Ottawa Valley. P145

Today, while square timbering has long since disappeared from the Valley, and lumbering is only a minor endeavour, the pulp-and-paper industry continues to thrive. P145

By 1900 Canada had 112 dailies (most of them priced at only one cent each), serving a population of little more than five million. P146

Black spruce possessed the best combination of qualities required for the manufacture of wood pulp - low levels of resin and good fibre content. P147

For a couple of decades (until the last timber raft descended the Ottawa River in 1908), all three forest industries were active at the same time in the Ottawa Valley. In those years, square timer, sawlogs and pulpwood could all be seen floating down the Ottawa. J.R. Booth was himself, a major player in all three industries at once. P148

The cross-cut saw continued to be used in lumbering operations, but pulpwood cutters quickly switched to the new one-man bucksaw. With these lighter, modern tools, a logger was expected, by the 1930s, to produce at least 2½ “cords” per day. Chainsaws did not appear until the mid-1930s. p148

In the autumn alligators also saw service towing scows (chalands) carrying three or four tons of freight (even horses) up inland rivers to supply the shanties. This versatile new craft brought great savings to forest industries in both Canada and the United States, reducing manpower needs by shortening the time spent on river-drives. McLachlin Brothers were using alligators by 1892 and J.R. Booth by 1895, and they saw service for another 50 years or so. P150

Two methods were employed to convert the cellulose fibres of wood into the pulp needed by papermakers. “Ground pulp” (also called “mechanical pulp” because it was mechanically processed) was produced by pressing wood against rapidly revolving grindstones. P150

The second method employed chemicals to turn wood unto pulp. “Chemical pulp” could cost twice as much or more to prepare, but it yielded finer, stronger, and longer-lasting paper. In this process, chipping machines sliced pulpwood into small particles which were conveyed to large digesters, where the wood was steamed, and then cooked in a water-and-chemical solution. P150

Ezra Butler was the prescient pioneer of pulp and paper in the Ottawa Valley. P151

In 1889 Eddy erected two mills on the site of the old Wright, Batson & Currier sawmill: one to make ground pulp and the other to make sulphite pulp (the latter would have resembled the sulphite mill he erected in 1902, whose ruins can be seen today beside the Canadian Museum of Civilization). p151

Eddy remained confident in the new industry, and though he was now 73 years old, he was able to persuade his bankers to lend his firm the money to rebuild. Within a year he had replaced his losses with new pulp and paper mills that were nearly twice as large. After his death in 1906, his old partners continued to operate the business, retaining the Eddy name. In 1913 the firm completed an ambitious expansion of its pulp and papermaking capacity and added a large new hydroelectric power plant. P152

The James Maclaren Company (operated by the children of the lumber king) opened a pulp mill at Buckingham; on the Lièvre River in 1901 (they added a paper mill at Masson, farther downriver, in 1929). P152

Charles Riordon, who had pulp and paper mills at Merritton, Ontario, erected a large sulphite pulp mill at Hawkesbury in 1898 and opened another at Temiskaming, Quebec, in 1919. After Riordon went bankrupt, these installations were taken over (in 1925) by the Canadian International Paper Company. This multinational firm went on to build a huge pulp-and-paper manufacturing complex at Gatineau Point and diversified the Temiskaming mill to produce rayon cellulose (at one time, it supplied nearly half the world’s output of this textile fibre). P152-153 It was the wonderful water power resources of the Ottawa, Gatineau, and Lièvre rivers that decided where mills would be located. P153

Pulp-and-paper manufacturing in the Ottawa Valley did not achieve the premier status that timbering and lumbering had gained in earlier years, but the new industry proved of great value nonetheless. P155

A shantyman’s work could take three seasons: a winter cutting and hauling in the bush, spring on the river-drive, and a summer of rafting. P156

The Joe Montferrand of popular legend was depicted as a giant of a man who embodied the ideals of French Canadian character - strength, bravery, generosity, politeness, perseverance, religious fidelity. The fighting raftsman became a national hero in Quebec. He was later adopted in English Canada as Joe Mufferaw, a giant who performed mighty deed in the wilderness. P160

In later years, the shantyman’s exploits were taken to an affectionate level of cartoonishness and spoofery in the animated film The Log Drivers’ Waltz, and the Stompin’ Tom Connors song “Big Joe Mufferaw.” P162

The word “shantyman” may have had its origin in the Ottawa Valley. The word “shanty” itself comes from the French chantier, meaning a workplace. In nineteenth-century North America, shanty had two meanings. In a general sense, it denoted a crudely built wooden dwelling,[a shack] often the first erected by settlers as they cleared their land; today, the word is used to designate a low-quality tenement. In a more specific form, shanty referred to the rough, temporary, multi-purpose structures built in the bush for use in harvesting timber; today, it would be called a “logging camp.” P162-163

The word “shantyman” remained in common use well into the twentieth century in Canada and parts of the United States, but today it has been replaced by “logger” or “lumberjack.” P163

In 1901 the Ontario government stepped into the picture, passing legislation that mandated a separate cookhouse building and imposed minimum standards for shanty ventilation (300 cubic feet of air space per man), as well as for latrines and garbage disposal. P167

At the beginning of the twentieth century, general hands were being paid $18 to $25 per month (including board); middle-range shantymen were earning $25 to $40; cooks were getting $40 to $45, while hewers took in $45 to $60. Foremen at this time could make between $50 and $75 a month, a wage that reflected the heavy responsibilities they were expected to bear. P268

After a long, hard day of toil, the men had to spend most of their non-working hours in the cramped confines of a smoky, smelly camboose shanty. P168

Lamps improved conditions when they arrived late in the nineteenth century, but the coal oil that fuelled them also added to the odours emanating from unwashed bodies and unlaundered clothing. An English traveller visiting the Ottawa Valley in 1861 was appalled by the uncleanliness he found in the shanties. He noted, for example, that by the side of the camboose was a small wooden trough, which from the presence of a piece of soap beside it, and of a towel hanging close by, I concluded to be the contrivance for washing. From the colour of the towel, I guessed it to be a public one. Which I afterwards found to be indeed the fact... p170

Beef, for example, could now be brought in on the hoof, adding fresh meat to shanty fare. P172 [Hooves and boots were indeed the life of the shanties.]

Two staples - tea and salt pork - dominated shanty menus in the Ottawa Valley for more than a century. P172

The second staple - barrelled pork preserved in brine - provided the shantyman’s main source of protein. P173

Sunday was also the day the men could replenish their personal supplies from the “van,” described as “an immense chest, made of the strongest wood, ribbed with iron bands, and secured by a mighty padlock,” which only a foreman could open. The van held a selection of goods the men could buy, particularly shirts, trousers, jackets, mitts, socks, boots, moccasins, and soap, as well as lotions (for sore bodies) and “pain killers” (which may have contained alcohol and even narcotics). P174

Square timber would be assembled into cribs then into rafts and the sawlogs and pulpwood put into amorphous booms. P175

The Gatineau River, the longest tributary... P176

The Lord’s Day Act, passed in Ontario in 1906, prohibited work on Sundays and did not exempt the river-drive; everyone knew though, that its provisions would be almost unenforceable in remote areas. P176

1845 was an unusual year, the first year of a huge surge in square-timber production... P179

Shantymen valued bravery highly, and peer approval usually moved them to volunteer... P180

Wherever they went, though, shantymen carried with them a reputation for drinking and fighting. P188

The early years of the timber: 1835-1837 when gangs of "Shiners” terrorized the streets of Bytown and the waters of the Ottawa. A number of possible origins have been suggested for the name “Shiner,” but it was most likely a corruption of the French word chêneur, oak-cutter, a difficult job often given to newcomers to the shanties (as the Irish were). P188

North West Company was taken over by the Hudson’s Bay Company of London, England, in 1821. P194

The timbermen and lumbermen who dominated the economy of the Ottawa Valley were accustomed to having the public, especially the media, attach noble honorific to their names. A “timber baron” might be one who was able to send significant volumes of square timber (say a half-dozen rafts) to market every year for a number of years. Similarly, a “lumber king” might be one who was able to maintain high levels of lumber production (say ten million board feet) at his sawmill year after year. P196

The barons and kings, of course, were all male. There were no timber baronesses. P198

Booth, like many in the Valley, was both a baron and a king. P198

Few of those who began life as timbermen expanded into sawing lumber. P198

The Gillies brothers were set up in lumbering by their father, who sold most of the assets he had acquired and gave the proceeds to his sons as an advance on their inheritance. P199

E.B. Eddy had no sons and left only a small portion of his estate to his only grandson. Still, several sons did manage to carry on as second-generation Ottawa Valley nobility -men such as John Hamilton, Ruggles Wright, Robert Hurdman, Albert Maclaren, the Brysons, the Gillieses, and the McLachlins. For these men, the forest nobility proved to be hereditary. P199

J.R. Booth, for example, worked as a carpenter on heavy construction projects before arriving in Ottawa. P200

In 1850, Bytown (population 7,000) had only three banks, but by 1878 the City of Ottawa (population 25,000) had nine. P200

For Booth, the single most important step on his path to becoming the greatest of all lumber kings was taken in 1867, when he acquired the rich and extensive timber limits belonging to the estate of the late John Egan. The limits cost $45,000, and Booth could not have obtained them without a loan from the Ottawa branch of the Bank of North America. These timberlands lying along the Madawaska River, ultimately proved to be the most productive in the Ottawa Valley, and the foundation of Booth’s success. P200-201

In 1874, four Valley timber barons and lumber kings - Fraser, Gilmour, Bryson and Maclaren - joined some local merchants to organize their own bank, the Bank of Ottawa. The “B of O” was widely as “the lumberman’s bank” and its emblem was the shantyman’s broad-axe. P201

In the 19th century, the monikers “lumber king” and “timber baron” were a part of everyone’s vocabulary in the Ottawa Valley. The words recognized the power these men could command and usually carried no hint of irony or ill will. The expression “robber baron,” however, was different and certainly defamatory. P202

The timber and lumber tycoons of the Ottawa Valley were undoubtedly wealthy and powerful; their public image remained largely untarnished. P202

In 1891 the average daily pay of an Ottawa-Hull mill hand was $1.06 for an 11-hour day (usually for a 5 or 6-day week). P203

Loughrin ended his account chuckling about how dead men voted in those times. P207

Bronson was able to convince Mowat (3rd premier of Ontario, one of the fathers of Confederation) to grant a construction subsidy for J.R. Booth’s railway to Georgian Bay, a project that benefited all timber limit-holders in the Madawaska Valley. P208

Lumbermen were granted virtually unrestricted rights to cut timber on Crown land for relatively low fees; they were not required to purchase the timberlands they exploited, nor were they asked to reforest them after stripping them of trees. Governments helped these men build empires and fortunes. P208-209

In the middle years of the 19th century, John Egan was unquestionably the paramount timber baron in the Valley - in 1854 he owned one-fifth of all rafts sent down the Ottawa. Nonetheless, 80 other men turned out at least one raft of square timber that year. By 1881 the number of timbermen operating in the Valley had fallen by half, but the leading producer, J.R. Booth, accounted for only 8% of the total. P209

The Valley’s most violent period was the “Shiners’ War” of the 1830s. P210

Many timbermen and lumbermen established logging farms to grow fodder for their animals and food for their shantymen. P212

Chester Pickering came to Ottawa from Boston with a plan to use sawdust - the most abundant refuse in a lumber mill as a cleaning agent, particularly as a means to remove household dust. He added oil to absorb household dust, green dye for better visibility and nitrobenzol to add a pleasing aroma. He called the new product DUSTBANE. P213

The Canadian Match Company established a factory at Pembroke in the 1920s (later taken over by the E.B. Eddy Company). P214

Among the well known timber barons and lumber kings who went bankrupt were Egan, Skead, Currier, Baldwin, Mason and Riordon. On the other hand, many others did very well. On his death in 1902, timberman William Mackey left an estate of $1,200,000. E.B. Eddy left more than two-and-half million dollars and James Maclaren about $5,000,000 (some $90,000,000 in 2006 money). P215

For some - like J.R. Booth - wealth did not overcome their reputation for rustic manners and the rough nature of their business. P216

Another example was the majestic mansion built by J.M. Currier at 24 Sussex Drive, later bought by another lumber king, W.C. Edwards; today it serves as the official residence of the prime minister of Canada. P217

When lumber kings were building new, upscale residences, they were seeking to provide a more comfortable home life for their families; there is no doubt, however, that they were also employing architectural grandeur to make a visual statement of their importance in the community. P217

J.R. Booth’s house, still standing at 252 Metcalfe Street in Ottawa, is a good example. P219

By 1873, Allan Gilmour’s Chelsea mill was sawing about 35 million board feet of deals, boards, and planks for export to both Britain the United States. P220

John Rodolphus Booth was born in Shefford County, Quebec, near the village of Waterloo, in 1827. Growing up on a farm, he did not enjoy a lengthy education. P222

No other lumber king had the nerve to build a 427-mile railway linking his timber limits to his sawmill to his markets. He was 78 years old when he built his first paper mill. He believed in micro-management, hands-on personal leadership. J.R. Booth was a timber baron, lumber king, and pulp-and-paper magnate, a rare triple-hitter. P222

Many Ottawa Valley pioneers suffered when they made the mistake of trying to farm the rocky timberlands of the Canadian Shield. P227 ...

The Cockburn family’s famous pointer boats, made at Pembroke... P229

They also knew that their logging practices often destroyed great swaths of new-growth trees, the forests of the future. P231

Algonquin Park, the first provincial park in Canada... P232

The waste [in sawmills] included sawdust, butt ends, bark, edgings and slabs, for which little use could be found. P233

One Saturday night in February snowshoers crossing the Ottawa River were hurled into the air by a sawdust explosion under the ice. P234

The Ottawa River was more than a disgraceful mess; it was dangerous. P234

Mill closures were a great shock to towns like Arnprior, but they survived. The loss of the sawmill in a one-industry hamlet was, of course, a more serious matter. Some mill closures left behind ghost towns and broken dreams. P237

More than 150 automobiles followed Booth’s hearse to Beechwood Cemetery. Watching the funeral procession in miserable weather were more than a thousand workers from the Booth pulp, paper, and lumber mills, as well as many ordinary citizens. After all, the man had touched the lives of countless people, in one way or another, in the 70 years he had lived in Ottawa. P239

J.R. Booth’s son Jackson continued to saw lumber at their Chaudière Falls mill until about 1946 before closing it and opening a new facility at Tee Lake in Témiscamingue County in Québec. P240

One company - Gillies Brothers - managed to carry on sawing at its original location, and for a remarkably long time; their mill at Braeside (sold to Consolidated Paper Company in 1963) did not close until 1992. P240

More and more, the logs were intended for pulp mills, not lumber mills. As lumbering stagnated, the pulp-and-paper industry flourished and grew in the Valley. P241

The last surviving drive on the Ottawa River, the drive bringing sawlogs from the historic Gillies timber limits on Lake Témiscamingue to the Braeside mill, ended in 1990. P241

There is no doubt that over the decades, timbermen and lumbermen has removed tens of millions of trees from Crown lands and planted none in return. The provinces did not begin serious reforestation work until the 1960s, so no restocked Crown timberland is ready yet for harvesting. There are still some tracts of “old-growth” (virgin) forest remaining in the Valley today, the most extensive lie along the upper Ottawa River beyond Lac Simard, in areas too remote to be cut for commercial use. P242

That's life - C'est la vie

2011-11-22T18:20:00.000-05:00

That's life - C'est la vie

A Brief History of Time

2011-01-05T09:01:00.000-05:00

A Brief History of Time
by
Stephen Hawking (1988, 1996)

Einstein’s second great cause was Zionism. Although he was Jewish by descent, he rejected the biblical idea of God.

In 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic Church has made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the Pope [John Paul II]. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. (p120)

The universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand. Pviii

On the observational side, by far the most important development has been the measurement of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation by COBE (the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite) and other collaborations. These fluctuations are the fingerprints of creation, tiny initial irregularities in the otherwise smooth and uniform early universe that later grew into galaxies, stars, and all the structures we see around us. Pviii

The Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions. (Since the North Star lies over the North Pole, it appears to be directly above an observer at the North Pole, but to someone looking from the equator, it appears to lie just at the horizon.) p2

When asked: “What did God do before he created the universe?” Augustine didn’t reply: “He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.” Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe. P8

If one looks at the sky on a clear, moonless night, the brightest objects one sees are likely to be the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. p37

The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is four light-years away (the light from it takes about four years to reach earth at the speed of 186,000 miles per second - 300,000 km per second) or about 23 million million miles. Our sun, by comparison, is a mere 8 light-minutes away! p37

Our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars. P38

We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary average-sized, yellow star, near the inner edge of one of the spiral arms. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle and Ptolemy, when we thought that the earth was the center of the universe! P39

We can tell a star’s temperature from the spectrum of its light.
We can determine exactly which elements are present in the star’s atmosphere. P40

The different wavelengths of light are what the human eye sees as different colors, with the longest wavelengths appearing at the red end of the spectrum and the shortest wavelengths at the blue end. P40

The farther a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away! And that meant that the universe could not be static, as everyone previously had thought, but is in fact expanding; the distance between the different galaxies is growing all the time. P41

Microwaves are just like light waves, but with a wavelength of about one centimetre. P43

The universe is expanding by between 5% and 10% every thousand million years. p48

The Catholic Church seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.) p49

A crucial question: Does general relativity predict that our universe should have had a big ban, a beginning of time? P52

...the insignificance of our own planet in the vastness of the universe... p53

Quantum mechanics has been an outstandingly successful theory and underlies nearly all of modern science and technology. It governs the behaviour of transistors and integrated circuits, which are the essential components of electronic devices such as televisions and computers, and is also the basis of modern chemistry and biology. P58

Our sun has probably got enough fuel for another 5,000 million years or so. P85

Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky... p86

There is a problem with breaking the speed-of-light barrier. The theory of relativity says that the rocket power needed to accelerate a spaceship gets greater and greater the nearer it gets to the speed of light. We have experimental evidence for this, not with spaceships but with elementary particles in particle accelerators like those at Fermilab or CERN (Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire). We can accelerate particles to 99.99 % of the speed of light, but however much power we feed in, we can’t get them beyond the speed-of-light barrier. P163

Einstein refused to believe in the reality of quantum mechanics, despite the important role he had played in its development. P171

In this book I have given special prominence to the laws that govern gravity, because it is gravity that shapes the large-scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of the four categories of forces. (Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force). P189

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant! P191

The Greatest Show on Earth

2011-01-04T11:22:00.006-05:00

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
by
Richard Dawkins (2009)

In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44% of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42% believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.

Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed theologians, yet millions of people continue to question its veracity.

This book is my personal summary of the evidence that the “theory” of evolution is actually a fact - as incontrovertible a fact as any in science pvii.

Take a rabbit, any female rabbit (arbitrarily stick to females, for convenience: it makes no difference to the argument). Place her mother next to her. Now place the grandmother next to the mother and son back in time, back, back, back through the mega years, a seemingly endless line of female rabbits, each one sandwiched between her daughter and her mother. We walk along the line of rabbits, backwards in time, examining them carefully like an inspecting general. As we pace the line, we’ll eventually notice that the ancient rabbits we are passing are just a little bit different from the modern rabbits we are used to. But the rate of change will be so slow that we shan’t notice the trend from generation to generation, just as we can’t see the motion of the hour hand on our watches - and just as we can’t see a child growing, we can only see later that she has become a teenager, and later still an adult. p24

All breeds of dogs are modified wolves: not jackals, not coyotes and not foxes. p28

Darwin never knew Mendel’s laws, for although Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who was the father of genetics, was Darwin’s contemporary, he published his findings in a German journal which Darwin never saw. p29

Nowadays, we know that genes are lengths of DNA code, not physically separate like cards, but the principle remains valid. Genes don’t blend; they shuffle. p29

The American zoologist Raymond Coppinger makes the point that puppies of different breeds are mush more similar to each other than adult dogs are. Puppies can’t afford to be different, because the main thing they have to do is suck, (not suckle: mothers suckle, babies suck) and sucking presents pretty much the same challenges for all breeds. In particular, in order to be good at sucking, a puppy can’t have a long snout like a borzoi or a retriever. That’s why all puppies look like Pugs, Shih Tzu or Pekinese. p36

Bulldogs even have difficulty being born because the head is disproportionately big. Most if not all the bulldogs you see today were born by caesarean section. p36

What lessons do we learn from the domestication of the dog? First, the great variety among breeds of dogs, from Great Danes to Yorkies, from Scotties to Airedales, from ridgebacks to dachshunds, from whippets to St Bernards, demonstrates how easy it is for the non-random selection of genes - the “carving and whittling” of gene pools - to produce truly dramatic changes in anatomy and behaviour, and so fast. Surprisingly few genes may be involved. Yet the changes are so large - the differences between breeds to dramatic - that you might expect their evolution to take millions of years instead of just a matter of centuries. If so much evolutionary change can be achieved in just a few centuries or even decades, just think what might be achieved in ten or a hundred million years. p36-37

The idea of sculpture calls to mind the over-muscled physiques of human body-builders, and non-human equivalents such as the Belgian Blue breed of cattle. This walking beef factory has been contrived via a particular genetic alteration called “double muscling”. There is a substance called myostatin, which limits muscle growth. If the gene that makes myostatin is disabled, muscles grow larger than usual. It is quite often the case that a given gene can mutate in more than one way to produce the same outcome, and indeed there are various ways in which the myostatin-producing gene can be disabled with the same effect. Another example is the breed of pig called the Black Exotic, and there are individual dogs of various breeds that show the same exaggerated musculature for the same reason. Human body-builders achieve a similar physique by an extreme regime of exercise, and often by the use of anabolic steroids: both environmental manipulations that mimic the genes of the Belgian Blue and the Black Exotic. The end result is the same, and that is a lesson in itself. Genetic and environmental changes can produce identical outcomes. p37-38

Who would have thought, for example, that dogs could be bred for sheep-herding skills, or “pointing”, or bull-baiting? p39

You want high milk yield in cow, orders of magnitude more gallons that could ever be needed by a mother to rear her babies? Selective breeding can give it to you. Cows can be modified to grow vast and ungainly udders and these continue to yield copious quantities of milk indefinitely, long after the normal weaning period of a calf. As it happens, dairy horses have not been bred in this way, but will anyone contest my bet that we could do it if we tried? And of course, the same would be true of dairy humans, if anyone wanted to try. All too many women, bamboozled by the myth that breasts like melons are attractive, pay surgeons large sums of money to implant silicone with (for my money) unappealing results. Does anyone doubt that, given enough generations, the same deformity could be achieved by selective breeding after the manner of Friesian cows? p39

If human breeders can transform a wolf into a Pekinese, or a wild cabbage into a cauliflower, in just a few centuries or millennia, why shouldn’t the non-random survival of wild animals and plants do the same thing over millions of years? p42

...antennae, which is what insects smell with... p46

Canaries are best known for their song, and this too has been tuned up and enriched by human breeders. Various songsters have been manufactured, including Rollers, which have been bred to sing with the beak closed. p56

The silver fox is just a colour variant, valued for its beautiful fur, of the familiar red fox, Vulpes vulpes. The Russian geneticist Dimitri Belyaev was employed to run a fox fur farm in the 1950s. He was later sacked because his scientific genetics conflicted with the anti-scientific ideology of Lysenko, the charlatan biologist who managed to capture the ear of Stalin and so take over, and largely ruin all of Soviet genetics and agriculture for some twenty years. p73-74

The measured age of our planet is about 4.6 billion years, or about 46 million centuries. The time that has elapsed since the common ancestor of all today’s mammal walked the Earth is about two million centuries. p81

...THE IMMENSELY SLOW TIMESCALE OF EVOLUTION. P87

The second hand of a watch rotates 60 times as fast as the minute hand and 720 times as fast as the hour hand, so the three hands cover a range which is less than three orders of magnitude. This is tiny compared to the eight orders of magnitude spanned by our repertoire of geological clocks. p87

The half-life of carbon-14 is between 5,000 and 6,000 years. For specimens older than about 50,000-60,000 years, carbon dating is useless and we need to turn to a slower clock. The half-life of rubidium-87 is 49 billion years. The half-life of fermium-244 is 3.3 milliseconds. Such startling extremes serve to illustrate the stupendous range of clocks available. p95

Carbon-14’s half-life of 5,730 years is just right for dating on the archaeological timescale. An isotope much used on the evolutionary timescale is potassium-40 with its half-life of 1.25 billion years. p96

Long before radioactive dating was discovered; these layers had been identified and given names: names like Cambrian, Ordovician, Devonian, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene. Devonian sediments are recognizably Devonian, not only in Devon (the county in south-west England that gave them their name) but in other parts of the world. p98

Carbon dating is a comparatively recent invention, going back on to the 1940s. In its early years, substantial quantities of organic material were needed for the dating procedure. Then, in the 1970s, a technique called mass spectrometry was adapted to carbon dating, with the result that only a tiny quantity of organic material is now needed. This has revolutionized archaeological dating. The most celebrated example is the Shroud of Turin. Since this notorious piece of cloth seems mysteriously to have imprinted on it the image of a bearded, crucified man, many people hoped it might hail from the time of Jesus. It first turns up in the historical record in the mid-fourteenth century in France, and nobody knows where it was before that. It has been housed in Turin since 1578, under the custody of the Vatican since 1983. When mass spectrometry made it possible to date a tiny sample of the shroud, rather than the substantial swathes that would have been needed before, the Vatican allowed a small strip to be cut off. The strip was divided into three parts and sent to three leading laboratories specializing in carbon dating, in Oxford, Arizona and Zurich. Working under conditions of scrupulous independence - not comparing notes - the three laboratories reported their verdicts on the date when the flax from which the cloth had been woven died.
Oxford said AD 1200, Arizona 1304 and Zurich 1274. p105-106

Some 40%of the American population and a somewhat smaller percentage of the British population, claim to believe that the age of the Earth, far from being measured in billions of years, is less than 10,000 years. Lamentably, especially in America and over much of the Islamic world, some of these history-deniers wield power over schools and their syllabuses. p106

At present, the applicable isotopes all agree with each other in placing the origin of the Earth at between four and five billion years ago. p107

100 million years is comparatively recent by geological standards. p119

We don’t need fossils in order to demonstrate that evolution IS A FACT! The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure, even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized. It is a bonus that we do actually have rich seams of fossils to mine, and more are discovered every day. The fossil evidence for evolution in many major animal groups is wonderfully strong. Nevertheless there are, of course, gaps, and creationists love them obsessively. p145

Once again, humans are not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys. As it happens, the common ancestor would have looked a lot more like a monkey than a man, and we would indeed probably have called it a monkey if we had met it, some 25 million years ago. p155

One Australian river turtle, indeed, gets the majority of its oxygen by breathing (as an Aussie would not hesitate to say) through its arse. p173

What’s the difference between “species” and “genus”? Let’s get the question swiftly out of the way, before proceeding. Genus is the more inclusive division. A species belongs with a genus, and often it shares the genus with other species. Homo sapiens and Homo erectus are two species within the genus Homo. Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus afarensis are two species within the genus Australopithecus. The Latin name of an animal or plant always includes a generic name (with an initial capital letter) followed by a specific name (without a capital letter). Both names are written in italics. p190

Proteins are chains of smaller molecules called amino acids, and these chains, like the sheets of cells we have been considering, also fold themselves, in highly determined ways but on a much smaller scale. There are only twenty kinds of amino acid, and all proteins are chains strung together from just this repertoire of twenty, drawn from a much larger set of possible amino acids. p236

In the theory of plate tectonics the whole of the Earth’s surface, including the bottoms of the various oceans, consists of a series of overlapping rocky plates like a suit of armour. The continents that we see are thickening of the plates that rise above sea level. The greater part of the area of each plate lies under the sea. p275

Indeed, the speed at which South America and Africa pull apart has been memorably likened - to memorably that it has become almost a cliché - to the speed at which fingernails grow. The fact that they are now thousands of miles apart is further testimony to the vast and unbiblical age of the Earth, comparable to the evidence from radioactivity which we met previously. p277

The fossil evidence is indeed very strong. Truckloads of fossils have been uncovered since Darwin’s time, and all this evidence either actively supports, or is compatible with, evolution. More tellingly, as I have already emphasized, not a single fossil contradicts evolution. p283

What Darwin didn’t - couldn’t - know is that the comparative evidence becomes even more convincing when we include molecular genetics, in addition to the anatomical comparisons that were available to him.
Just as the vertebrate skeleton is invariant across all vertebrates while the individual bones differ, and just as the crustacean exoskeleton is invariant across all crustaceans while the individual “tubes” vary, so the DNA code is invariant across all living creatures, while the individual genes themselves vary. This is a truly astounding fact, which shows more clearly than anything else that all living creatures are descended from a single ancestor. Not just the genetic code itself, but the whole gene/protein system for running life, which we dealt with in Chapter 8, is the same in all animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses. What varies is what is written in the code, not the code itself. p315

It is the remarkable conclusion of the Watson-Crick molecular biology revolution that DNA is just DNA. It doesn’t “care” whether it is human DNA, chimp DNA or apple DNA. p319

The duckbilled platypus whose genome was sequenced in 2008 (the platypus was a good choice, because of its strategic position in the tree of life: the ancestor that it shares with us lived 180 million years ago, which is nearly three times as long ago as the extinction of the dinosaurs). p327

Darwin was right to hedge his bets, but today we are pretty certain that all living creatures on this planet are descended from a single ancestor. p408

The “Catch-22” of the origin of life is this. DNA can replicate, but it needs enzymes in order to catalyse the process. Proteins can catalyse DNA formation, but they need DNA to specify the correct sequence of amino acids. p420

It is now possible to estimate that there are upwards of a billion planets in our galaxy, and about a billion galaxies. p421
We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth. p426

At irregular but frequent intervals since 1982, Gallup, America’s best-known polling organization, has been sampling the national opinion of this question:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?

1 Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process. (36%)

2 Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.(14%)

3 God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. (44%)

The percentages I have inserted are from 2008. The figures for 1982, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006 and 2007 are pretty much the same.

What I am not surprised to see is a minority of 14% ticking the box for proposition 2. It is unfortunate that the wording of proposition 2, “but God had no part in this process”, seems calculated to bias religious people gratuitously against it. The real killer is the lamentably strong support for proposition 3. Forty-four per cent of Americans deny evolution totally, whether it is guided by God or not, and the implication is that they believe the entire world is no more than 10,000 years old. As I have pointed out before, given that the true age of the world is 4.6 billion years, this is equivalent to believing that the width of North America is less than 10 yards. In none of the nine years sampled did the support for proposition 3 drop below 40%. In two of the sampling years, it hit 47%. More than 40% of Americans deny that humans evolved from other animals, and think that we - and by implication all of life - were created by God within the last 10,000 years. THIS BOOK IS A MUST! p429-430

RIGHTS of MAN and COMMON SENSE

2010-12-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

RIGHTS of MAN and COMMON SENSE
by
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Napoleon claimed to sleep with a copy of Paine’s Rights of Man under his pillow. Only in his own country was recognition constantly denied him; in Britain Paine was denounced as a traitor and a spy - an American or a French one: no sharp distinction between the two was required. He himself accepted none of these definitions or frontiers, claiming to be the first of a new breed necessary to save mankind and womankind: a citizen of the world (pxi).

America made Thomas Paine - and he helped to make America (pxiii).

Journalism was the one trade for which he was equipped (pxiii).

Common Sense was not only a declaration of war and a summons to battle. Its writer was required also to convert many of his readers, with the result that the task of persuasion by pamphlet became his profession, the trade he knew best (pxiii).

It was Thomas Jefferson who played the leading part in producing the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on 4 July 1776, six months after the publication of Common Sense; ever after, he at least was willing to acknowledge his debt to Paine’s writing (pxv).

Apart from his own writing he did have other concerns. Like his friends Franklin and Jefferson, he was fascinated by new developments in the scientific world (pxvii).

The actual desk where he wrote his Rights of Man was preserved and treasured by one of his closest friends, and is now in the proud possession of the National Museum of Labour History, in Manchester.

What happened to that first band of friends, and what soon befell the author himself, is a central part of the story: no book in English was so often banned; no British author was ever so shamefully defamed - at least until the modern case of Salman Rushdie (pxxi)

Paine took pride in thinking for himself and therefore quoted very little from others. But Swift was his mentor (pxxv)

He constantly insisted that all ideas, including his own, must be subjected to free debate and above all, to free printing, since it was the power of the printed word which had made the revolutions of his age. When he died, on 8 June 1809 in New York, seven years after returning from Paris, and having been unable to go back to his native land where he was still branded a traitor, no one took much notice. (pxxviii)

End of Introduction by Michael Foot, March 1994

...in imitation of the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and State (p40)

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and , in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government, what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution. (p41-42)

The union of church and state has impoverished Spain. (p58)

The whole reign of Louis XV, remarkable only for weakness and effeminacy... (p63)

The American constitutions are to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them in syntax. (p65)

The two modes of Government which prevail in the world are first, Government by election and representation; secondly Government by hereditary succession. The former is generally know by the name of republic; the latter by that of monarch and aristocracy. (p110)

The most numerous religions denominations are the Presbyterians (p134 notes)

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right.

Thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy. (p254)

Avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor; it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy. (p257)

Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms. (p269)

2010-12-16T16:02:00.000-05:00

The Rise of Christianity
by
Rodney Stark (1996)
(Sociologist)

I am a sociologist who sometimes works with historical materials and who has, in preparation of this volume, done his best to master the pertinent sources, albeit mostly in English. pxii

Since this book is a work of both history and social science, I have written it for a non-professional audience. p3

Christians were so numerous that Constantine found it expedient to embrace the church. p5

Goodenough (1931) estimated that 10 percent of the empire’s population were Christians by the time of Constantine. If we accept 60 million as the total population at that time - which is the most widely accepted estimate (Boak 1955a; Russel 1958; MacMullen 1984; Wilken 1984) - this would mean that there were 6 million Christians at the start of the fourth century. p6

Christian growth was concentrated in the East - in Asia Minor, Egypt and North Africa. p10

Consider the term charisma. Max Weber borrowed this Greek word meaning “divine gift” to identify the ability of some people to convince others that their authority is based on divine sources. p24

For most of the twentieth century historians and sociologists agreed that, in its formative days, Christianity was a movement of the dispossessed - a haven for Rome’s slaves and impoverished masses. p29

...the poor they pray while the rich they play...

Emancipated Jews discovered that Judaism was not simply a religion, but an ethnicity. p52

The cross was a symbol used to signify the Messiah in Hebrew manuscripts prior to the Crucifixion (Finegan 1992:348). In contrast, many Gentiles apparently had trouble with the notion of deity executed as a common criminal. p62

Certain events are, indeed, due to natural causes beyond human control. p80

There was nothing new in the idea that the supernatural makes behavioural demands upon humans - the gods have always wanted sacrifices and worship. p86

Roman girls married young, very often before puberty. It is possible to calculate that many famous Roman women married at a tender age: Octavia and Agrippina married at 11 and 12, Quintilian’s wife bore him a son when she was 13, and Tacitus wed a girl of 13, and so on. The Greek historian Plutarch reported that Romans “gave their girls in marriage when they were twelve years old, or even younger” p105.

It was in the Greek cities of Asia Minor and North Africa that Christianity made its greatest early headway (p110)

Unborn lamb stomachs and goat bladders served as condoms; these, however, were too expensive for anyone but the very rich (p121).

Jews and Christians were opposed to sexual practices that diverted sperm from the vagina. As the biblical story of Onan makes clear, withdrawal and mutual masturbation were sins in that the seed was spilled upon the ground (p126).

Every competent historian has known that the Christian movement arose most rapidly in the Greco-Roman cities of Asia Minor (p143)

Upon closer examination, the notion that Greco-Roman cities enjoyed efficient sewers and sanitation also turns out to be largely an illusion. Granted, an underground sewer carried water from the baths of Rome through the public latrines next door and on out of the city. But what about the rest of the city? Indeed, just as it is obviously silly to suppose that the wretched masses of Rome soaked nightly in the Roman baths, hobnobbing with senators and equestrians (the capacity of the baths reveals this to be a physical as well as social absurdity), it is equally silly to think that everyone jogged off to the public latrines each time that nature called. Rome, like all cities until modern times, was dependent on chamber pots and pit latrines. Indeed, Stambaugh (1988) suggests that most tenements depended entirely on pots. As for sewers, they were, for the most part, open ditches into which slops and chamber pots were dumped. Moreover, these pots were frequently emptied out the window at night from several stories up. As Carcopino described it:

There were other poor devils who found their stairs too steep and the road to these dung pits too long and to save themselves further trouble would empty the contents of their chamber pots from their heights into streets. So much the worse for the passer-by who happened to intercept the unwelcome gift! Fouled and sometimes even injured, as in Juvenal’s satire, he had to redress save to lodge a complaint against the unknown assailant; many passages in the Digest indicate that Roman jurists did not disdain to take cognisance of this offence (p153)
Given limited water and means of sanitation and the incredible density of humans and animals, most people in Greco-Roman cities must have lived in filth beyond our imagining. The smell of sweat, urine, feces and decay permeated everything; “dust, rubbish, and filth accumulated; and finally bugs ran riot” (Carcopino 1940:44). Outside, on the street, it was little better. Mud, open sewers, manure, and crowds. In fact, human corpses - adult as well as infant - were sometimes just pushed into the street and abandoned (Stambaugh 1988). And even if the wealthiest households could provide ample space and cleanliness, they could not prevent many aspects of the filth and decay surrounding them from penetrating their homes. The stench of these cities must have been overpowering from many miles - especially in warm weather - and even the richest Romans must have suffered. No wonder they were so fond of incense (p154).

The goddess Isis was one of the many eastern additions to the Greco-Roman pantheon. Eventually there were more pagan gods than most people could name (p190).

A truly underground Christianity would have remained insignificant (p193).

In the fourth century paganism began “to collapse the moment the supporting hand of the State was withdrawn from it”; paganism was brought down by Christianity and the conversion of Constantine was the killing blow. Paganism declined precipitously during the fourth century when Christianity replaced it as the state religion, thus cutting off the flow of funds to the pagan temples (p196-197)

The idea that paganism’s weakness was caused by Christian political power fails to explain how Christianity managed to be so successful that it could become the state church.

There were too many cults, too many mysteries, too many philosophies of life to choose from under paganism (p197).

Love of one’s neighbour is not an exclusively Christian virtue; it existed among the Mithraist devotees. Its members were bound together not only by common rites but by a common way of life (p207).

In uniting its empire, Rome created economic and political unity at the cost of cultural chaos. Ramsay MacMullen has written of the immense “diversity of tongues, cults, traditions and levels of education” encompassed by the Roman Empire. But it must be recognized that Greco-Roman cities were microcosms of this cultural diversity. People of many cultures, speaking many languages, worshiping all manner of gods, had been dumped together helter-skelter.
In my judgment, a major way in which Christianity served as a revitalization movement within the empire was in offering a coherent culture that was entirely stripped of ethnicity (p218)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

2010-12-10T23:03:00.003-05:00

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)
by
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources and its open denigration of organised religion.

Gibbon wrote also in French, the first section of his book on the liberty of the Swiss and submitted it by the hands of Deyverdun, to the judge who he most admired, David Hume. Hume wrote an appreciative judgement of it but urged Gibbon to write not in French but in English. French, he admitted, was the universal language of the polite world, but would its supremacy last? Book1,plxix

Gibbon was not interested in religious doctrine, though he amused himself with its speculative refinements. But religion and churches, he would admit, are a social and psychological necessity, and the particular forms which they take are important, for they can influence the progress or decline of civilization. Therefore the historical question he asked was, did the ideas of Christianity and the organization of the Church, as adapted to the Roman Empire, generate or stifle public spirit, freedom, the advancement of knowledge and a plural society?
His answer was that they stifled it. If Christianity had first been established in independent city-states like those of Greece, perhaps it would have assumed a different and more useful form - as it eventually did in the communes of Italy and, more successfully, in Protestant cities of Switzerland. B1,p.xci

The monks were not learned, they did not teach, they fulfilled no social function, they founded no industry, they tilled no land, they cleared no waste. Their retreat from activity was absolute and to Gibbon it was contemptible and disgusting: a degradation of the human spirit, a denial of social duty, a refusal to face the challenge of the time. Nowhere is Gibbon’s irony more withering than in his thirty-seventh chapter on the “origin, progress, and effects of the monastic life” which prepares the reader for the final collapse of the Western Empire. B1,p.xciii

After the Mongol devastation of Persia “five centuries have not been enough to repair the ravages of four years”; once “active virtue” is lost in a society, it is hard to recover, perhaps impossible without radical social changes; and the survival of nations may sometimes depend on the life of one man. B1,p.xciv

The great age of Athens barely exceeded the span of a single human life. B1,p.xciv

Introduction by: Hugh Trevor-Roper

[Footnotes printed in square brackets were written by Oliphant Smeaton for the 1910 edition.]

When Syria became subject to the Romans, it formed the eastern frontier of their empire; nor did that province, in its utmost latitude, know any other bounds than the mountains of Cappadocia to the north and towards the south the confines of Egypt and the Red Sea. Phoenicia and Palestine were sometimes annexed to and sometimes separated from the jurisdiction of Syria. The former of these was a narrow and rocky coast; the latter was a territory scarcely superior to Wales, either in fertility or extent. Yet Phoenicia and Palestine will forever live in the memory of mankind since America, as well as Europe, has received letters from the one, and religion from the other. B1,p30

Ptolemy and Strabo, with the modern geographers, fix the Isthmus of Suez as the boundary of Asia and Africa. p31, note 2

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
The superstition of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. B1,p34

The thin texture of the pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials. As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes who had lived, or who had died for the befit of their country, were exalted to a state of power and immortality, it was universally confessed that they deserved, if not the adoration, at least the reverence of all mankind. B1,p35

It is a just though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers, who still command the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favourite object of study and imitation in Italy and the western provinces. But the elegant amusements of the Romans were not suffered to interfere with their sound maxims of policy. Whilst they acknowledged the charms of the Greek, they asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the latter was inflexibly maintained in the administration of civil as well as military government. The two languages exercised at the same time their separate jurisdiction throughout the empire: the former as the natural idiom of science; the latter as the legal dialect of public transactions. Those who united letters with business were equally conversant with both; and it was almost impossible, in any province, to find a Roman subject of a liberal education, who was at once a stranger to the Greek and to the Latin language. B1,p46

The propensity of mankind to exalt the past and to depreciate the present... B1,p65

Hadrian and the Antonines were themselves men of learning and curiosity. B1,p66

In the consideration of the Imperial government, we have frequently mentioned the artful founder, under his well-known title of Augustus, which was not however conferred upon him till the edifice was almost completed. The obscure name of Octavianus he derived from a mean family in the little town of Aricia. It was stained with the blood of the proscription; and he was desirous, had it been possible, to erase all memory of his former life. The illustrious surname of Caesar he has assumed as the adopted son of the dictator; but he had too much good sense, either to hope to be confounded, or to wish to be compared, with that extraordinary man. It was proposed in the senate, to dignify their minister with a new appellation: and after a very serious discussion, that of Augustus was chosen, among several others, as being the most expressive of the character of peace and sanctity, which he uniformly affected. Augustus was therefore a personal, Caesar a family distinction. The former should naturally have expired with the prince on whom it was bestowed; and however the latter was diffused by adoption and female alliance, Nero was the last prince who could allege any hereditary claim to the honours of the Julian line. But, at the time of his death, the practice of a century had inseparably connected those appellations with the Imperial dignity, and they have been preserved by a long succession of emperors, Romans, Greeks, Franks, and Germans, from the fall of the republic to the present time. A distinction was, however, soon introduced. The sacred title of Augustus was always reserved for the monarch, whilst the name of Caesar was more freely communicated to his relations. B1,p81

The army of Severus marched twenty miles every day, without halt of intermission. B1,p129 notes.

As Byzantium was one of the greatest passages from Europe into Asia, it has been provided with a strong garrison, and a fleet of five hundred vessels was anchored in the harbour. B1,p134

The contemporaries of Severus, in the enjoyment of the peace and glory of his reign, forgave the cruelties by which it has been introduced. Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example, justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire. B1,p141

[Sons of Severus: Caracalla and Geta]: Their rapid journey through Gaul and Italy, during which they never ate at the same table, or slept in the same house, displayed to the provinces the odious spectacle of fraternal discord.
On their arrival at Rome, they immediately divided the vast extent of the Imperial palace. No communication was allowed between their apartments: the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. B1,p147

...the hour of supper, the principal meal of the Romans. B1,p169

Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule. B1,p186

The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Commodus and Caracalla, were all dissolute and inexperienced youths, educated in the purple, and corrupted by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious voice of flattery. B1,p191

We are told that Maximin could drink in a day an amphora (or about seven gallons of wine), and eat thirty of forty pounds of meat. B1,p206

Maximin, abandoned by his guards, was slain in his tent with his son. (A.D. 238, April) B1,p205

But the prosperity of Gordian expired with Misitheus, who died of a flux, not without very strong suspicions of poison. Philip, his successor (A.D. 243) in the praefecture, was an Arab by birth, and consequently, in the earlier part of his life, a robber by profession. B1,p212

The strength of the frontiers, which has always consisted in arms rather than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman Empire. B1,p215

From the reign of Augustus to the time of Alexander Severus, the enemies of Rome were in her bosom; the tyrants and the soldiers. B1,p216

Xerxes, the descendant of Cyrus, invaded Greece. Thirty thousand soldiers, under the command of Alexander, the son of Philip, who was entrusted by the Greeks with their glory and revenge, were sufficient to subdue Persia. B1,p217

Sassanides governed Persia till the invasion of the Arabs. This great revolution, whose fatal influence was soon experienced by the Romans, happened in the fourth year of Alexander Severus, 226 years after the Christian era. B1,p217

The elements, and more particularly Fire, Light, and the Sun, whom they called Mithra, were the objects of their religious reverence, because they considered them as the purest symbols, the noblest productions, and the most powerful agents of the Divine Power and Nature. B1, p222

The Magi, or sacerdotal order, were extremely numerous, since, as we have already seen, fourscore thousand (80,000) of them were convened in a general council. Their forces were multiplied by discipline. A regular hierarchy was diffused through all the provinces of Persia; and the Archimagus, who resided at Balch, was respected as the visible head of the church, and the lawful successor of Zoroaster. The property of the Magi was very considerable. Besides the less invidious possession of a large tract of fortunes and the industry of the Persians, they levied a general tax on the fortunes and the industry of the Persians. ‘Though your good works,’ says the interested prophet, ‘exceed in number the leaves of the trees, the drops of rain, the stars in the heaven, or the sands on the see-shore, they will all be unprofitable to you, unless they are accepted by the destour, or priest.
To obtain the acceptation of this guide to salvation, you must faithfully pay him tithes of all you possess, of your goods, of your lands, and of your money. If the destour be satisfied, your soul will escape hell tortures; you will secure praise in this world and happiness in the next. For the destours are the teachers of religion; they know all things, and they deliver all men.’ B1,p224

The divine institution of tithes exhibits a singular instance of conformity between the law of Zoroaster and that of Moses. B1,p224 notes

By an edict of Artaxerxes, the exercise of every worship, except that of Zoroaster, was severely prohibited. B1, p225

Mr. Hume, in the Natural History of Religion, remarks that the most refined and philosophic sects are the most intolerant. B1,p225 notes

The army of the Great King (Artaxerxes) consisted of one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000) horses, clothed in complete armour of steel; of seven hundred (700) elephants, with towers filled with archers on their backs; and of eighteen hundred (1,800) chariots, armed with scythes. B1,p231

Almost the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Prussia and the greater part of Poland, were peopled by the various tribes of one great nation, whose complexion, manners, and language denoted a common origin and preserved a striking resemblance. B1,p238

Canada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient Germany. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest provinces of France and England, that country experiences the most rigorous cold. The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the great river of St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are usually free from ice. B1,p239

It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the influence of the climate of ancient Germany over the minds and bodies of the natives. Many writers have supposed, and most have allowed, though, as it should seem, without any adequate proof, that the rigorous cold of the North was favourable to long life and generative vigour, that the women were more fruitful, and the human species more prolific, than in warmer or more temperate climates. B1,p239-240

When Tacitus considered the purity of the German blood, and the forbidding aspect of the country, he was disposed to pronounce those barbarians Indigenae, or natives of the soil. B1,p240

From Sweden (which formed so considerable a part of ancient Germany) the Greeks themselves derived their alphabetical characters, their astronomy, and their religion. B1,p241

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent. B1,p245

Money, in a word, is the most universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of human industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what means a people, neither actuated by the one nor seconded by the other, could emerge from the grossest barbarism. B1,p245

A warlike nation like the Germans, without cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. B1,p248

The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. B1,p253

The rest of the sex, without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and equal companions of soldiers; associated even by the marriage ceremony to a life of toil, of danger, and of glory. B1,p253

...the blind terrors of superstition... B1,p255

The emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of the Danube by the invasion of the GOTHS (A.D.250). This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western empire that the name of GOTHS is frequently but improperly used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism. B1,p265

The alleged Scandinavian origin of the Goths has given rise to much discussion and has been denied by several eminent modern scholars. B1,p266 notes

Gothland in Sweden is not sufficient to prove that this country was the aboriginal abode of the people. B1,p266, notes

The most dangerous enemies of Rome during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus were:
1. The Franks; 2. The Alemanni; 3. The Goths; 4. The Persians. B1,p283

So little has been preserved of eastern history before Mahomet, that the modern Persians are totally ignorant of the victory of Sapor, an event so glorious to their nation. B1,p302 notes.

One of the soldiers had seduced the wife of his host. The guilty wretch was fastened to two trees forcibly drawn towards each other, and his limbs were torn asunder by their sudden separation. B1,p323

[The Wallachian language not only preserves many traces of the Latin language, but is derived from it, like the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The ‘new province of Dacia’ mentioned by Gibbon, was called ‘Dacia Aureliani,’ and was the district south of the Danube lying between Upper and Lower Moesia. - O.S.] B1,P325 notes

Fear has been the original parent of superstition. B1,p329

Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valour. B1,p333

Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire. B1,p387

From the time of Augustus to that of Diocletian, the Roman princes, conversing in a familiar manner among their fellow-citizens, were saluted only with the same respect that was usually paid to senators and magistrates. Their principal distinction was the Imperial or military robe of purple; whilst the senatorial garment was marked by a broad, and the equestrian by a narrow band or stripe of the same honourable colour. The pride, or rather the policy, of Diocletian, engaged that artful prince to introduce the stately magnificence of the court of Persia. He ventured to assume the diadem, an ornament detested by the Romans as the odious ensign of royalty and the use of which had been considered as the most desperate act of the madness of Caligula. It was no more than a broad white fillet set with pearls, which encircles the emperor’s head. The sumptuous robes of Diocletian and his successors were of silk and gold; and it is remarked with indignation that even their shoes were studded with the most precious gems. B1,p422

But Severus could obtain only an easy death and an Imperial funeral. When the sentence was signified to him, the manner of executing it was left to his own choice; he preferred the favourite mode of the ancients, that of opening his veins; and, as soon as he expired, his body was carried to the sepulchre which had been constructed for the family of Gallienus. B1,p446

A candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of Christianity may be considered as a very essential part of the history of the Roman Empire. While that great body was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or to the limits of the Roman Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by the means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chile, in a world unknown to the ancients. B1,p487

Herodotus, who visited Asia whilst it obeyed the last of those empires, slightly mentions the Syrians of Palestine, who, according to their own confession, had received from Egypt the rite of circumcision. B1,p489

When the law was given in thunder from Mount Sinai; when the tides of the ocean and the course of the planets were suspended for the convenience of the Israelites; and when temporal rewards and punishments were the immediate consequences of their piety or disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the visible majesty of their Divine King, placed the idols of the nations in the sanctuary of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia. B1,p491

The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes that from all the various religions of polytheism enlisted under the banner of Christ. B1,p496

The Roman pontiffs resided seventy years at Avignon. B1,p497 notes

The Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man was treated with profane derision by the Gnostics, who would not listen with patience to the repose of the Deity after six days’ labour, to the rib of Adam, the garden of Eden, the trees of life and of knowledge, the speaking serpent, the forbidden fruit, and the condemnation pronounced against human kind for the venial offence of their first progenitors. B1,p500

The Gnostics blended with the faith of Christ many sublime but obscure tenets, which they derived from oriental philosophy, and even from the religion of Zoroaster, concerning the eternity of matter, the existence of two principles and the mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. B1,p502

The pre-existence of human souls, so far at least as that doctrine is compatible with religion, was adopted by many of the Greek and Latin fathers. B1,p509 notes

BOOK 2

Paul considered the service of the church as a very lucrative profession. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction was venal and rapacious; he extorted frequent contributions from the most opulent of the faithful, and converted to his own use a considerable part of the public revenue. By his pride and luxury the Christian religion was rendered odious in the eyes of the Gentiles. B2,p52

Paul indulged himself very freely in the pleasures of the table, and he had received into the Episcopal palace two young and beautiful women, as the constant companions of his leisure moments. B2,p53

During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman Empire in the West, the bishops of the Imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as the clergy of the Latin Church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, assumed the popular character of reformers. The Church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud. B2,p79

Whatever symptoms of Christian piety might transpire in the discourses or actions of Constantine, he persevered till he was near forty years of age in the practice of the established religion; and the same conduct which in the court of Nicomedia might be imputed to his fear, could be ascribed only to the inclination or policy of the sovereign of Gaul. His liberality restored and enriched the temples of the gods; the medals which issued from his Imperial mint are impressed with the figures and attributes of Jupiter and Apollo, of Mars and Hercules; and his filial piety increased the council of Olympus by the solemn apotheosis of his father Constantius. But the devotion of Constantine was more peculiarly directed to the genius of the Sun, the Apollo of Greek and Roman mythology; and he was pleased to be represented with the symbols of the God of Light and Poetry. B2,p250-251

The Catholic Church was administered by the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of eighteen hundred (1,800) bishops; of whom one thousand were seated in the Greek, and eight hundred in the Latin provinces of the empire. B2,p279

The whole body of the catholic clergy, more numerous, perhaps, than the legions, was exempted by the emperors from all service, private or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes and contributions, which pressed on their fellow-citizens with intolerable weight; and the duties of their holy profession, were accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic. B2,p283

As soon as Christianity became the religion of the emperor and the empire, the national clergy might claim a decent and honourable maintenance: and the payment of an annual tax might have delivered the people from the more oppressive tribute which superstition imposes on her votaries. But as the wants and expenses of the church increased with her prosperity, the ecclesiastical order was still supported and enriched by the voluntary oblations of the faithful. Eight years after the edict of Milan, Constantine granted to all his subjects the free and universal permission of bequeathing their fortunes to the holy Catholic Church; and their devout liberality, which during their lives was checked by luxury or avarice, flowed with a profuse stream at the hour of their death. The wealthy Christians were encouraged by the example of their sovereign. An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic. B2,p285

The most precious ornaments of gold and silver, of silk and gems were profusely dedicated to the service of the altar, and this specious magnificence was supported on the solid and perpetual basis of landed property. In the space of two centuries, from the reign of Constantine to that of Justinian, the eighteen hundred (1,800) churches of the empire were enriched by the frequent and unalienable gifts of the prince and people. An annual income of six hundred pounds sterling may be reasonable assigned to the bishops, who were placed at an equal distance between riches and poverty, but the standard of their wealth insensibly rose with the dignity and opulence of the cities which they governed. B2,p286

The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, has confirmed to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the Catholic Church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity. B2, p295-296

The Nicene Creed was ratified by Constantine; and his firm declaration, that those who resisted the divine judgment of the synod must prepare themselves for an immediate exile, annihilated the murmurs of a feeble opposition; which, from seventeen, was almost instantly reduced to two, protesting bishops. B2, p323

A devout and sincere attachment for the gods of Athens and Rome constituted the ruling passion of Julian. B2, p407

The inclination of Julian might prefer the gods of Homer and of the Scipios to the new faith which his uncle had established in the Roman Empire, and in which he himself had been sanctified by the sacrament of baptism. B2, p419

This lively picture of the wealth and luxury of the popes in the fourth century becomes the more curious as it represents the intermediate degree between the humble poverty of the apostolic fisherman and the royal state of a temporal prince whose dominions extend from the confines of Naples to the banks of the Po. B2, p551

In the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman Empire, which may justly be dated from the reign of Valens... B3, p4

In the third century before the Christian era, a wall of fifteen hundred miles (1,500) was constructed, to defend the frontiers of China against the inroads of the Huns.
[According to Chinese authorities, its length is 10,000 li (about 1350 miles), and its height averages from 20 to 25 feet. -O.S.] B3, p20

The great Theodosius, a name celebrated in history and dear to the Catholic Church... B3, p61

The contempt of Gratian for the Roman soldiers had exposed him to the fatal effects of their resentment. His profound veneration for the Christian clergy was rewarded by the applause and gratitude of a powerful order, which has claimed in every age the privilege of dispensing honours, both on earth and in heaven. B3, p85

Among the benefactors of the church, the fame of Constantine has been rivalled by the glory of Theodosius. If Constantine had the advantage of erecting the standard of the cross, the emulation of his successor assumed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy, and of abolishing the worship of idols in the Roman world. Theodosius was the first of the emperors baptised in the true faith of the Trinity. B3, p85

The orthodox emperor [Theodosius] considered every heretic as a rebel against the supreme powers of heaven and of earth; and each of those powers might exercise their peculiar jurisdiction over the soul and body of the guilty. In the space of fifteen years he promulgated at least fifteen severe edicts against the heretics, more especially against those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. B3, p97

The office of Inquisitors of the Faith, a name so deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of Theodosius. B3, p98

The calamities which afflicted or threatened the declining empire were unanimously imputed by the Pagans to the new religion of Christ and of Constantine. B3, p142

The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. B3, p152

The profession of Christianity was not made an essential qualification for the enjoyment of the civil rights of society, nor were any peculiar hardships imposed on the sectaries who credulously received the fables of Ovid and obstinately rejected the miracles of the Gospel. B3, p159

‘The monks’ (a race of filthy animals, to whom Eunapius is tempted to refuse the name of men)... B3, p161

In the long period of twelve hundred years, which elapsed between the reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther, the worship of saints and relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the Christian model; and some symptoms of degeneracy may be observed even in the first generations which adopted and cherished this pernicious innovation. B3, p163

The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman Empire. B3, p169
The son of Theodosius [Honorius] passed the slumber of his life a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the barbarians. In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius. B3, p195

In these games of Honorius, the inhuman combats of gladiators polluted for the last time the amphitheatre of Rome. The first Christian emperor may claim the honour of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood; but this benevolent law expressed the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate abuse which degraded a civilised nation below the condition of savage cannibals. Several hundred perhaps several thousand victims were annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire; and the month of December, more peculiarly devoted to the combats of gladiators, still exhibited to the eyes of the Roman people a grateful spectacle of blood and cruelty. Amidst the general joy of the victory of Pollentia, a Christian poet exhorted the emperor to extirpate, by his authority, the horrid custom which had so long resisted the voice of humanity and religion. The pathetic representations of Prudentius were less effectual than the generous boldness of Telemachus, an Asiatic monk, whose death was more useful to mankind than his life. B3, p216-217

Honorius excluded all persons who were adverse to the Catholic Church from holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service of all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified many of his bravest and most skilful officers who adhered to the Pagan worship or who had imbibed the opinions of Aryanism. B3,p247

The regular forces which guarded that remote province had been gradually withdrawn; and Britain was abandoned, without defence to the Saxon pirates and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of their own strength. B3, p322
He [Theodoric] strenuously urged that it was the duty of every Christian to save from sacrilegious violation the churches of God and the relics of the saints; that it was the interest of every barbarian who had acquired a settlement in Gaul to defend the fields and vineyards, which were cultivated for his use, against the desolation of the Scythian shepherds. B3, p442

The severe inquisition, which confiscated their goods and tortured their persons, compelled the subjects of Valentinian to prefer the more simple tyranny of the barbarians, to fly to the woods and mountains, or to embrace the vile and abject condition of mercenary servants. B3, p464

The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table, and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of his temple, has been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people in the triumph of Titus. B3, p470

If you examine his countenance, [Theodoric’s] you will distinguish a high forehead, large shaggy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of white teeth, and a fair complexion that blushes more frequently from modesty than from anger. B3, p475

Ricimer returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He chose that moment to signify to Avitus that his reign was at an end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was compelled, after a short and unavailing struggle, to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however, or the contempt of Ricimer, he was permitted to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of Placentia: but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied; and their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death. B3, p479

2010-12-10T23:00:00.000-05:00

CITIES OF GOD
by
Rodney Stark (2006) sociologist & historian

Early Christianity was primarily an urban movement. The original meaning of the word pagan (paganus) was “rural person,” or more colloquially “country hick.” p2

Once Christianity became safely ensconced as the Roman state church, its missionary activities very rapidly decayed. Likewise, what probably was the first-ever appearance of monotheism - in Egypt during the 13th century BCE - did not produce rank-and-file missionaries and probably very few sincere professional missionaries either. p4

The world’s first missionaries were Jews, and the world’s first converts became Jews. p4

Maimonides, the famous medieval Jewish scholar, put it plainly: “Moses our teacher was commanded by the Almighty to compel all the inhabitants of the world to accept the commandments.” p5

The language of the Diasporan synagogues was not Hebrew, but Greek, and therefore comprehensible not only to everyone residing in Hellenic regions, but also to all educated Romans, since they more frequently spoke Greek than Latin. p6

By the first century, Jews made up from 10 to 15 percent of the population of the Roman Empire, nearly 90 percent of them living in cities outside Palestine. This would have amounted to from six to nine million people. To achieve these numbers a considerable amount of conversion would have been required. p6

What Christianity offered the world was monotheism stripped of ethnic encumbrances. p7

And so Christians went out to save the world, or at least the “world” as defined by Rome and less than three hundred years later they had converted millions of people and enjoyed substantial majorities in the cities. Ever since, historians have asked: How did they do it? How did this tiny messianic sect from the far eastern edge of the empire overwhelm classical paganism and come to rule triumphantly as the state church? p7-8
According to Friedrich Engels, “Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed peoples: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome”. p8

Abraham Malherbe concluded that the language used by early Christian writers clearly reflects a literate, educated audience. p9

The Unification Church, often called the “Moonies”... p10

Historians can do nothing other than interpret history to suit their preconceptions. p16

As for sewers, except for several over cited examples of actual underground sewers flushed by running water, sewers in Greco-Roman cities were ditches running down the middle of each narrow street - ditches into which everything was dumped, including chamber pots at night, often from second or third-story windows. We know this was a common practice because officials so often condemned it. As for water, it may have come to most cities via the picturesque Roman aqueducts, but once there it was stored in cisterns where it quickly turned “malodorous, unpalatable, and after a time, undrinkable.” In any event, except for a few of the wealthy to whose homes water was piped, everyone else had to lug water home in jugs from public fountains. That meant there was little water for scrubbing floors or washing clothes. It was a filthy life. And it stank! No wonder the ancients were so fond of incense! p28

...wealthy donors, motivated at least as much by a desire to display their social status as by any religious concerns. P31

To say that the Greco-Roman world was polytheistic is a gross understatement - the Greek poet Hesiod claimed there were 30,000 distinct gods. P31

Moreover, since no god could effectively demand adherence (let alone exclusive commitment), individuals faced the need and the burden to assemble their own divine portfolio, seeking to balance potential services and to spread the risks, as Dodds noted in his reference to religious insurance. p33

Assuming that 30,000 residents is a reasonable minimum city-size, there were thirty-one cities of that size or larger within the Roman Empire in the year 100 CE. p35

However, as of the year 100, Jerusalem had only a small population, having been smashed, burned, and sacked by the Roman army in 70; and it would be almost completely depopulated again when razed by Hadrian in 135. p35

Caesarea figured prominently in early Christian history. Pontius Pilate made Caesarea his headquarters and wintered his legions there. Paul and his companions passed through the port on their return from several missionary journeys, and later Paul was held captive there to await being sent to Rome. The early church father Origen lived there for about twenty years, as did his student Eusebius, the remarkable first church historian who also served as bishop of the city. p36

According to Acts II:26, it was in Antioch that the name Christian was coined by city officials needing to distinguish Jesus’ followers from Jews and pagans. p38

Under Roman rule, which began in 133 BCE , Pergamum served as the capital of “Asia” - eventually to be replaced by Ephesus. p41

Historians have long attributed Paul’s success to the dreadful situation of the city’s [Corinth] poor. As recently expressed: “It was primarily among the miserable poor that Paul found a positive response to his preaching.” p50

This prompted Nock to propose that the “Christian community in Rome seems to have come into being without any missionary act - simply as a result of the migration of men and women from Palestine and Syria.” p53

Syracuse became the Roman capital of Sicily and remained so until Byzantium took the island. p55

Map 2-1 shows all thirty-one cities having a population of 30,000 or more that were part of the Roman Empire in 100 CE. The map shows far more clearly that can be put into words that the urbanites were clustered in the East. p60

Map 2-1

Mass conversions are described in Acts and are ratified by many historians. For example, Acts 2:37-42 reports a sermon by Peter in Jerusalem on Pentecost, after which “three thousand souls” came forward and were baptized. Even so, the result would not have been three thousand converts, only three thousand wet Jews and pagans. p64

In 312, the year of Constantine’s conversion, these projections show nearly 9 million Christians, making up about 15 percent of the population. As will be seen, even as late as the fourth century the overwhelming majority of Christians lived in cities; hence their political importance probably was far greater than their total number might suggest - which no doubt played a role in Constantine’s seeking the support of the early church. p68

When Christianity first came to their attention, the Romans regarded it as just another eastern faith and Christos as just one more ‘oriental’ god. p71

During favourable weather, large grain transports from Egypt could make the voyage to Rome in less than three weeks. p74

In the first century far more Jews spoke Greek than Hebrew or Aramaic. Nearly all the Jews in the Diaspora spoke Greek - which was why the Torah was translated into Greek (the Septuagint). p77-78

Greek gods soon dominated the Roman pantheon (under new Roman names). Many of these Hellenic gods were believed to have begun as mere mortals who attained divinity; hence, aspects of the Christ story had a familiar ring to the Hellenic ear. So did the Christian commitment to a theology rooted in reason and logic. p79

Well before the birth of Jesus, two goddess-based ‘oriental’ religions achieved great power and prominence across the Roman Empire: Cybele from Phrygia (central Turkey) and Isis from Egypt. p85

The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the foreign gods the expression of personal belief. p89

Cybele seems to have first come into her own in Phrygia, in central Anatolia (modern Turkey). p89

Christianity gained immense influence by being credited with bringing Constantine victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge. p91

Not only did Cybelenes castrate themselves during their initiation, but subsequently they cross-dressed, wore makeup, frizzed their hair, drenched themselves in perfume and acted like women. Romans were shocked. Although they were not offended by homosexuality, they found effeminacy disgusting. p92

The gods of Greco-Roman paganism were of many sizes, shapes, sexes and species. Some of them, like Cybele, had many names, while many others shared the same name. p95

The Greek poet and philosopher Xenophanes dismissed Homer’s portrayal of the gods as immoral nonsense. p96

Xenophanes noted that “men imagine gods to be born and to have raiment and voice and body like themselves... p96

Xenophanes concluded by flatly asserting agnosticism: “No man has perceived certainty, nor shall anyone perceive it, about the gods... for, however perfect what he says may be, yet he does not know it; all things are matters of opinion.” p96

As for popular Taoism, all its temples abound in anthropomorphic gods, as do all the Confucian temples as well. p98

Many sophisticated Romans were offended by reverence for ‘animal’ gods or for half-human beasts such as jackal-headed Anubis, falcon-headed Horus, or cat-headed Bast. In reference to Mithra, Emperor Augustus often said he worshipped gods, not bulls. p99

Around 300 BCE Ptolemy I was a comrade of Alexander the Great and the first Greek ruler of Egypt. p100

Osiris and Isis had a brother Seth and a sister Nephthys, and they too married. p102

At this point Isis became pregnant with Horus. In some accounts she was impregnated rather miraculously by Osiris after his resurrection (sans penis). In others, she was impregnated by a flash of lightning. After Horus was born, he too became the target of Seth’s jealousy, and Isis was forced to flee into the marshes with her son to prevent him from being murdered. When Horus grew up he defeated Seth - a detail reminiscent of Moses having been hidden in the bulrushes and living to defeat the pharaoh. As for Isis, she ruled on for centuries as the goddess in charge of the annual inundations of the Nile, as a healer and as patron of lovers and married couples. p103

Jupiter, the leading traditional Roman god... p103

There are significant correspondences between the Isis story and Christianity. Isis’s birth (with Osiris) was greeted by heavenly displays. Her conception of Horus without intercourse, as well as her frequent depiction as the loving mother nursing her child, has led to many comparisons with the Virgin Mary. p104

In commemoration of the death of Attis, March 24 was designated the Day of Blood, a day devoted to fasting and mourning, and the next day was designated the Festival of Joy, noting the rebirth of Attis. This two-day event became one of the great festivals of Rome. The correspondence with Good Friday and Easter has often been noted. p105

This aspect of comparative religion may have reached its peak with James Frazer’s many volumes of The Golden Bough (1890-1915). Frazer compiled an enormous set of examples in order to argue that tales of crucifixion and resurrection are standards of world mythology. p105

From the beginning Christian theologians have been fully aware of similarities between the Christ story and pagan mythology. p106

John Calvin flatly asserted that God “reveals himself to us according to our rudeness and infirmity.” p107

In Taiwan people sometimes beat the statue of a god with sticks when their lottery tickets do not win. p115

In Japan, where polytheism still prevails, Soka Gakkai, a variant Buddhism that demands exclusive commitment, grew from fewer than six thousand households in 1951 to more than eight million in 1995. In Africa, traditional polytheism is vanishing in the face of very rapid Christianization as well as a substantial, but slower rate of conversion to Islam. The current progress of Christian growth in China is astounding, especially in the face of continuing government interference; very credible sources estimate that there are anywhere from 50 to 100 million Christians now in China, nearly all of this growth having come subsequent to the imposition of Communist rule. p115-116

Even most of the Jews of the Diaspora who did not assimilate were remarkably Hellenized. As noted, they spoke Greek and thought in Greek - Philo referred to Greek as “our language.” Most had taken Greek names, and “intermarriage was frequent.” All but a very few had so entirely lost their Hebrew that they worshipped in Greek and the Torah had to be translated into Greek. Many Diasporan Jews, probably the majority of them, had abandoned some provisions of the Law well before the arrival of Christianity. For example, the prohibition against eating with non-Jews probably was widely ignored. It seems equally likely that many took part in feasts and festivals having pagan significance, since tolerance of paganism had crept into even their scripture. In the Greek of the Septuagint, Exodus 22:27 was not translated as “You shall not revile God” but as “You shall not revile the gods.” p125

The union of gods and mortal women was a common theme in pagan mythology. p128

Christians had been spreading their faith in the West for some time before Paul took up that task following his mystical conversion in about the year 35. p129

Christianity began, after all, as a Jewish movement. p133

Many of the Gnostic scriptures are obvious forgeries, easily recognized as such by the early church fathers, just as they ought to be today, in that whoever wrote them tried to deceive readers into believing they were the work of famous figures of first-generation Christianity - Peter, James, Mary Magdalene, Pilate, or Thomas, for example - or someone claiming extraordinary status, such as being the twin brother of Jesus. p142
The word Gnosticism comes from a Geek word meaning “one who knows.” It refers to ‘revealed knowledge’ available only to those who have received secret teachings of a heavenly revealer. p143

Simon Peter said to them: “Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life.” p157

Polytheism is by definition tolerant and accommodating. p184

Voltaire went so far as to deny that the persecutions amounted to much. So did Gibbon, who charges that Christian “writers of the fourth and fifth centuries” exaggerated the extent of the persecutions because they “ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against heretics.” p184

Too often confused with the ancient Persian god Mithra, Mithras was a new god, so closely associated with the sun that he sometimes was called “Mithras, the Invincible Sun.” p185

From lowest to highest, the ranks of Mithraism were Raven, Bride, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Heliodromos and Father. The cult excluded women from membership and seems to have relied entirely on a volunteer clergy. p187

When Constantine expanded his hold on the empire to include the East, he marched under the banner of Christ. But only a few specialists know that his eastern opponent, Licinius, marched under the banner of Mithras. p189

Constantine neither outlawed paganism nor condoned persecution of non-Christians. p190

Ever since Gibbon’s time, leading historians have dismissed Constantine’s conversion as an insincere political gambit. But the most recent historians now regard Constantine’s conversion as genuine and cite the persistence of pagan elements in his reign as examples of his commitment to religious harmony. p190

Gibbon dates the “final destruction of Paganism” to the reign of Theodosius (379-395). p199

2010-12-10T22:56:00.005-05:00

THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE MYTHICAL CHRIST (1886)
by
Gerald Massey (1828-1907)
English poet, Historian, Egyptologist

Much of the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology. p1

I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago. At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the “Christian scheme” (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a fraud, founded on a fable in the Old! p1

The personal existence of Jesus as Jehoshua Ben-Pandira can be established beyond a doubt. p2

Jesus of Nazareth (and of the Canonical Gospels) was unknown to Justus, to the Jew of Celsus, and to Josephus, the supposed reference to him by the latter being an undoubted forgery. p3

The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who had learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put to death by them as a sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known to Celsus, the writer of the “True Logos,” a work which the Christians managed to get rid of altogether, with so many other of the anti-Christian evidences. p3

The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother - a factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one that can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions of primitive sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in theology. p4

Such history, however, does not show that illicit intercourse was the natural mode of the divine descent. p5

All that is non-natural and impossible as human history, is possible natural and explicable as Mythos. p5

The birthplace of the Egyptian Messiah at the Vernal Equinox was figured in Apt, or Apta, the corner; but Apta is also the name of the Crib and the Manger; hence the Child born in Apta, was said to be born in a manger; and this Apta as Crib or Manger is the hieroglyphic sign of the Solar birthplace. Hence the Egyptians exhibited the Babe in the Crib or Manger in the streets of Alexandria. The birthplace was indicated by the colour of the Equinox, as it passed from sign to sign. It was also pointed out by the Star in the East. When the birthplace was in the sign of the Bull, Orion was the Star that rose in the East to tell where the young Sun-God was re-born. Hence it is called the “Star of Horus.” That was then the Star of the “Three Kings” who greeted the Babe; for the “Three Kings” is still a name of the three stars in Orion’s belt. Here we learn that the legend of the “Three Kings” is at least 6,000 years old. p7

The same tradition of the Coming One is extant amongst the Millenarians and Adventists, as amongst the Moslems. It is the tradition of El-Mahdi, the prophet who is to come in the last days of the world to conquer all the world, and who was lately descending the Sudan with the old announcement the “Day of the Lord is at hand,” which shows that the astronomical allegory has left some relics of the true tradition among the Arabs, who were at one time learned in astronomical lore. p8

The Christian religion was not founded on a man, but on a divinity; that is, a mythical character. So far from being derived from the model man, the typical Christ was made up from the features of various Gods, after a fashion somewhat like those “pictorial averages” portrayed by Mr. Galton, in which the traits of several persons are photographed and fused in a portrait of a dozen different persons, merged into one that is not anybody. And as fast as the composite Christ falls to pieces, each feature is claimed, each character is gathered up by the original owner, as with the grasp of gravitation. It is not I that deny the divinity of Jesus the Christ; I assert it! He never was, and never could be, any other than a divinity; that is, a character non-human, and entirely mythical, who had been the pagan divinity of various pagan myths, that had been pagan during thousands of years before our Era. p9

The Canonical Gospels are only a later literalised réchauffé of the Egyptian writings; the representation in the Mysteries, and the oral teachings of the Gnostics which passed out of Egypt in Greece and Rome. p21

The Christian dispensation is believed to have been ushered in by the birth of a child, and the portrait of that child in the Roman Catacombs as the child of Mary is the youthful Sun-God in the Mummy Image of the child-king, the Egyptian Karast, or Christ. The alleged facts of our Lord’s life as Jesus the Christ were equally the alleged facts of our Lord’s life as the Horus of Egypt, whose very name signifies the Lord. p21

The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram, and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a dozen different gods. The imagery of the Catacombs shows that the types there represented are not the ideal figures of the human reality! p23

The Christian Theology was responsible for substituting faith instead of knowledge; and the European mind is only just beginning to recover from the mental paralysis induced by that doctrine which came to its natural culmination in the Dark Ages. p24

The Christian religion is responsible for enthroning the cross of death in heaven, with a deity on it, doing public penance for a private failure in the commencement of creation. It has taught men to believe that the vilest spirit may be washed white, in the atoning blood of the purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging God. It has divinized a figure of helpless human suffering and a face of pitiful pain; as if there were naught but a great heartache at the core of all things; or the vast Infinite were but a veiled and sad-eyed sorrow that brings visibly to birth in the miseries of human life. But “in the old Pagan world men deified the beautiful, the glad;” as they will again, upon a loftier pedestal, when the fable of this fictitious fall of man, and false redemption by the cloud-begotten God, has passed away like a phantasm of the night, and men awake to learn that they are here to wage ceaseless war upon sordid suffering, remediable wrong, and preventable pain; here to put an end to them, not to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow to be adored as a type of the Eternal. For the most beneficent is the most beautiful; the happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is most glad. The Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false theory, and waged incessant warfare against Nature and Evolution - Nature’s intention made somewhat visible - and against some of the noblest instincts, during eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood have been spilt to keep the barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been honeycombed with the graves of the martyrs of Free thought. Heaven has been filled with a horror of great darkness in the name of God.
Eighteen centuries are a long while in the life-time of a lie, but a brief span in the eternity of Truth. The Fiction is sure to be found out, and the Lie will fall at last! At last!! At last!!! p25

2009-11-17T11:04:00.003-05:00

ACCOMMODEMENTS RAISONNABLES
La commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse définit ainsi l’accommodement raisonnable: «Obligation juridique découlant du droit à l’égalité, applicable dans une situation de discrimination et consistant à aménager une norme ou une pratique de portée universelle, en accordant un traitement différentiel à une personne qui, autrement, serait pénalisée par l’application d’une telle norme. Il n’y a pas d’obligation d’accommodement en cas de contrainte excessive.»

Chers immigrants: "On ne vous a pas forcés à venir vous installer chez nous. Vous devez donc vous adapter à nous. Et non le contraire. Pas de couteau à l'école. Pas de turban dans la GRC, l'armée, les chantiers de construction et le port de Montréal. Pas de voile pour pratiquer un sport. Pas de voile pour voter. Tu veux faire tes prières et tes ablutions cinq fois par jour? Fais-ça chez toi!" -Platypus

Dear Muslims: "Welcome to the United States of America. We speak English here. We’re a free nation. We work hard, drink beer, take care of our family and friends and play hard. Although the religious majority is overwhelmingly Christian, we’re tolerant of all races and religions as opposed to your intolerant countries. You’re welcome to practice your faith here, but forget about dominating anything. You can stay as long as you respect our laws and our citizens. Understand that it’s not up to us to adapt to your culture, it’s your responsibility to adapt to ours. You’re in our house, so you follow the house rules or else… take a one way ticket back to your country and stay there, it's your fundamental right. The preservation of American culture, American borders, the English language and the United States Constitution remain at the forefront of the American Patriot agenda. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the backbone, the willingness or the means at our disposal to do what’s necessary in protecting this to-do list. Enjoy your day!" -D.C. Watson

Le port du Kirpan à l’école et du turban au travail: un jugement qui se moque de la sécurité des individus. Stupide jugement par des stupides juges de la plus haute instance! -Platypus

Accommodements raisonnables envers les immigrants.
Ça n’est pas encore la charia partout mais on charrie quand même un peu partout dans les pays démocratiques avec des accommodements même irraisonnables et farfelus envers les immigrants. Par exemple, en Angleterre (Royaume-Uni) le gouvernement vient d’acheter 900 trousses d’ustensiles qui serviront dans les prisons du pays où sont détenus quelque 7,000 prisonniers musulmans. Ces instruments uniques à manchons identifiables doivent être gardés sous clé et éviter tout contact avec les aliments non Halal tel le porc par exemple. Certains prisonniers musulmans ne sont pas impressionnés et trouvent que la démarche est un gaspillage d’argent. « Nous avons tous bouffé dans des restaurants et aucun d’entre nous ne s’est préoccupé de savoir si la préparation des aliments était 'Halal' ou pas,» de mentionner un prisonnier de la prison de Wakefield.* A 500£-800£ la trousse cela fait 1,000,000$Cdn à 1,700,000$Cdn pour 900 trousses payées par la population de 60 millions de « British » dont 1,600,000 de culte musulman (2.8%). Est-ce de l’« amour » britannique? A quand les repas Halal dans nos écoles canadiennes? L’orientation légitimement musulmane des toilettes dans les lieux publics? (Un musulman ne doit pas déféquer en faisant face vers La Mecque comme pour les prières...) Les musulmans dans leur pays d’origine n’ont pas de lieux de prière dans les places publiques.... Qu’on remplace les Sikhs qui refusent de porter le casque de sécurité au travail ainsi que ceux de la Gendarmerie Royale du Canada qui refusent de porter le chapeau « Stetson » dont l’image est un symbole canadien reconnu à travers le monde. Qu’on exige aux immigrants de prêter un serment de respect envers nos lois, nos us et coutumes et la pratique des leurs en privé et cela appuyé d’un formulaire signé. Que m’arriverait-il si je retournais à l’école avec un kirpan en forme de crucifix pendu au cou? Ah les religions : elles contiennent trop de superstitions! Et nos politiciens se font trop d’illusions... -

Circus Quebecus
La Commission Bouchard-Taylor
par
Jeff Henrich et Valérie Dufour (2008)

A Québec, Jacques Filiatrault s’est levé pour dénoncer le prix de la certification cachère « qui nous coûte cent cinquante millions par année, ça à nous les catholiques», M. Bouchard est sorti de ses gonds : « Nous ne pouvons accepter ce genre de discours. Ce sont des propos antisémites inacceptables dans une société démocratique. Passons au suivant.» -p.16

Patrice Brodeur, de la Chaire des études islamiques à l’Université de Montréal, est venu démontrer, statistiques à l’appui, que la proportion de musulmans au Québec avait plus que doublé en dix ans. De 0.7% de la population en 1991, elle a grimpé à 1.5% en 2001, pour un total d’environ 150,000 personnes. Le spécialiste a prédit qu’en 2011 la proportion de musulmans aura encore doublé, pour atteindre 3%. Le professeur a en outre expliqué que l’on comptait 63 mosquées au Québec. -p.53-54

Il y avait aussi le coloré conseiller de Hérouxville, André Drouin, qui a parlé du Seigneur et a demandé qu’on lui accorde plus que les deux minutes réglementaires pour témoigner. « Oui, mais pas si vous parlez de Dieu», a répondu Charles Taylor à la blague. -p.61

« Il faut que les nouveaux arrivants comprennent que nous ne voulons pas perdre nos acquis », ont unanimement martelé les participantes, rappelant que l’époque où l’Église forçait les femmes à porter la jupe longue, à obéir à leur mari et à avoir des familles nombreuses n’était pas si lointaine. Elles ont aussi fait valoir que les femmes avaient obtenu fort tardivement certains droits fondamentaux, notamment le droit de voter ou de se porter, seules, acquéreurs d’une propriété foncière. -p.72

Si on laisse aller, expliquaient-elles, les voiles se multiplieront, et l’on verra de plus en plus le niqab et même la burqa. -p72

Le témoignage de Jovette Groleau, enseignante à la retraite, résume assez bien ce que nous avons entendu à maintes reprises pendant les trois mois de travaux de la Commission. « Le conditionnement religieux a poursuivi mes parents jusque dans leur chambre à coucher - je dis souvent à la blague que je suis l’enfant des curés », a raconté la Mauricienne dont la mère a eu dix-sept enfants et fait quatre fausses couches. -p73

Mme Nicole Bélanger à Laval : « Je dis que dans une école publique laïque, on n’a pas le droit de porter de symboles religieux ostentatoire. »

« En 1995, la Commission des droits et liberté de la personne du Québec a jugé qu’il était discriminatoire d’interdire le port du voile à l’école, » a rappelé Gérard Bouchard.

« Oui, mais vous savez, ça tient des chartes, et les chartes, on peut les amender. Les lois se passent. Ça se fait dans d’autres pays. » -p82,81

La mairesse de Drummondville, Francine Ruest-Jutras : « Certains signes, comme le sapin de Noël, font partie de notre histoire et de notre patrimoine culturel. » -p107

Ces musulmanes qui ne veulent pas porter le voile, comme nous les Québécois, sont traitées de putes [dans d’autres pays]… Est-ce que nous aimerions, plus tard, dans cinquante ans par exemple, que les musulmans imposent leur religion comme les catholiques l’ont fait, bien des années passées, aux Indiens?
-Andréa Richard, Trois-Rivières

Comment se fait-il que mon beurre d’arachide Kraft, que mon miel et que mes noix de Grenoble soient cachères? Ça nous coûte cent cinquante millions par année ça à nous, les catholiques. -Jacques Filiatrault, Québec

Raymond Roy, résidant de Saint-Hippolyte, enchaîne en apostrophant directement les juifs : « J’aimerais qu’on m’explique de quel droit une communauté religieuse nous taxe en imposant le sigle cachère sur les pots de confiture, le ketchup, la mayonnaise etc. Et je crois que le sigle halal s’en vient s’insérer aussi. -p126
Promotion de La Presse en novembre 2007 : « Vous saviez… Que les sikhs de Vancouver peuvent rouler à moto sans casque? Que les Noirs sont refusés dans les bars de Calgary? Que les pêcheurs chinois se font jeter à l’eau à Toronto? » -p128

C’est Hérouxville qui a en quelque sorte mis le feu aux poudres en ce qui a trait aux accommodements raisonnables, amenant le gouvernement Charest à créer une commission publique sur la question. -p132

« L’homme politique qui a besoin de la religion pour gouverner est un lâche. » -Mustapha Kemal Atatürk -p135

« J’y ai déjà travaillé, en enfer, » a rétorqué M. Drouin, ingénieur qui a déjà fait carrière en Arabie saoudite. -p143

« Je ne suis pas une exaltée ou une illuminée, je suis tout simplement une catholique - modérée, ordinaire. » C’est dans ces mots que s’est présentée Monique Gélinas, résidante de Longueuil. « Cependant, quand j’ai vu disparaître les écoles confessionnelles, ensuite les croix dans les écoles, puis probablement au municipal et encore au gouvernement et tous lieux publics, et que je vois paraître le kirpan, le turban, les femmes voilées, le fameux chandelier juif, le tapis pour la prière, alors que la prière dans les conseils municipaux, ça choque les gens, bien moi, je n’embarque pas. Qu’on protège certaines minorités, bon - mais qui m’a protégée quand tout est disparu? Et qui me protège, encore maintenant? J’ai une croix. Bientôt, au rythme que ça va, je devrai peut-être la cacher, parce que ça choque des gens. Noël, Vendredi saint, Pâques, nos fêtes religieuse, je ne devrai peut-être plus parler du Christ parce que ça choque des gens. Me dire catholique deviendra peut être une maladie. Qui me protégera? » -p150

Serge Longval : « Je dénonce avec vigueur certaines décisions rendue par les intouchables juges suprêmes lorsque, d’une manière déraisonnable, ils travestissent un uniforme de policier, remplaçant un képi par une coiffe religieuse ou en permettant le port du kirpan à l’école, alors que cela ne peut se faire dans l’enceinte de n’importe quel tribunal, incluant la Cour suprême, là où se prennent parfois des décisions complètement déconnectées de la vraie vie et du bon peuple. » -p151

Revendicateurs, les représentants sikhs ont réclamé que l’on bannisse le crucifix de l’Assemblé nationale, car « il n’a pas sa place dans un endroit censé représenter l’État ». Ils ont en outre expliqué qu’ils n’avaient pas eu d’autre choix que d’en appeler à la Cour suprême pour faire valoir le droit de porter le kirpan, et ont demandé au gouvernement de changer la loi pour que chaque citoyen ait droit à des congés religieux variant selon sa confession. -p153

Les lois existantes obligent les travailleurs à porter le casque parce que cet outil de protection, comme les bottes munies d’un bout en acier, permet d’éviter que des incidents mineurs ne se transforment en accidents graves. De telles règles permettent donc d’éviter des blessures, des amputations et des décès à la suite d’accidents survenant sur les chantiers. -p155

Affublé d’un chapeau d’inspiration amérindienne, un homme d’ascendance iroquoise travaillant au port de Montréal est d’ailleurs venu faire part de son ras-le-bol aux commissaires lors d’un forum de citoyens de la métropole. « Au port de Montréal, c’est obligatoire de porter les bottes, le dossard et le casque. J’ai vu des gens qui portent le turban se promener sans casque. Je suis allé me plaindre de la situation et j’ai été suspendu cinq jours par mon employeur. Une journée, j’ai essayé d’entrer au travail avec mon arc et mes flèches. Je leur ai moi aussi dit que ça faisait partie de mes traditions, car je suis un homme spirituel. Je leur ai dit que je défendais mes droits de métis. On a fait venir la sécurité et la police. On m’a demandé ce que je faisais avec ça. Je leur ai répondu que j’attendais midi et que, quand j’aurais faim, j’utiliserais mon équipement pour tirer un pigeon. J’ai été suspendu sept jours. Mon neveu, lui, il porte toujours un couteau à son cou et il a été suspendu par son école. Si mon neveu ne peut pas porter un couteau traditionnel, le kirpan n’a pas sa place dans nos écoles. » -p156

Le kirpan est devenu le symbole d’une injustice, d’un passe-droit, de la politique « deux poids deux mesure », et cela préoccupe beaucoup de Québécois. -p157

Les représentants de la communauté juive étaient aussi attendus de pied ferme. Le premier organisme à déposer un mémoire officiel à la Commission a été le B’nai B’rith Canada, créé en 1875, qui n’est pas particulièrement reconnu pour tenir des discours nuancées. Le porte-parole de cette organisation, l’avocat Steven Slimovich, a plaidé avec fougue pour la primauté des droits individuels sur les droits collectifs. -p159

La solution libérale? Que les immigrants, avant d’arriver au pays, signent un contrat moral par lequel ils s’engageront à se conformer aux valeurs fondamentales du Québec. -p175

Du côté des partis fédéraux, le Bloc québécois et le Nouveau Parti démocratique ont eux aussi pris part au débat. Gilles Duceppe, chef du Bloc, et Thomas Mulcair, député néo-démocrate, ont dénoncé la rigidité des corporations professionnelles qui refusent de reconnaître les diplômes étrangers. M. Mulcair qui a dirigé l’Office des professions du Québec de 1987 à 1993, s’est montré très sévère à l’égard des organismes chargés d’encadrer les différentes professions. « Ça va prendre une intervention vigoureuse du gouvernement », a-t-il affirmé, soulignant que les experts ont maintes fois révélé qu’une des causes majeures du faible nombre d’immigrants est « le manque de reconnaissance de l’éducation acquise ailleurs, ou encore la sous-estimation des compétences ». Il a dit croire que les ordres professionnels ne changeront pas leurs règles sans y être fortement incités par le gouvernement, puisqu’ils existent d’abord pour protéger leurs membres, et non pas pour servir l’intérêt public. -p176,77

Il est vrai que le nombre de Québécois francophones de souche diminue lentement mais sûrement depuis 1970, en raison du faible taux de natalité. C’est un état de fait, une vérité indiscutable. Et c’est exactement pourquoi le Québec - comme les autres provinces - mise sur l’immigration en accueillant 45,000 à 50,000 étrangers par année sur son territoire. -p184

Plusieurs citoyens ont rappelé aux commissaires qu’ils avaient déjà vécu l’oppression de l’Église catholique, qu’ils étaient bien contents de s’en être débarrassée et qu’il n’était pas question de laisser une autre religion prendre la place laissée vacante par le Vatican. -p186

Médecins, ingénieurs, techniciens, chercheurs, enseignants, gens de métiers, ils ont tous un parcours différent, mais une histoire similaire. On [Immigration Canada et Immigration Québec]a choisi de les accueillir notamment en raison de leurs qualifications et de leur scolarité, mais on [les corporation professionnelles]refuse de reconnaître leur formation et leur expérience étrangères, il leur est donc impossible de décrocher un emploi à la hauteur de leurs compétences. Un des exemples les plus criants est celui d’Élaheh Machouf et de son mari, qui ont fui le régime dictatorial iranien à la fin des années 1980. On a demandé au mari, médecin spécialiste dans son pays, de reprendre sa formation en entier à son arrivée au Québec. « C’était vraiment affreux. Mon mari avait fait sa médecine à l’Université de Montréal et sa résidence à l’Hôpital Sainte-Justine. À notre retour au Québec, il n’a jamais été accepté pour pratiquer sa médecine. Malgré le fait qu’il a été professeur d’université, chef de service, médecin avec deux spécialités, il s’est trouvé à la retraite forcée. […] Mon mari avait cinquante-cinq ans. Il n’avait pas envie de retourner sur les bacs d’école. » Mme Machouf a conclu en observant simplement : « Le corporatisme nuit énormément. » -p187

Thomas Mulcair, cet ancien président de l’Office des professions a carrément dit aux commissaires que les ordres ne changeraient pas leur façon de faire à moins d’y être obligés par la loi. Ils ont beau affirmer, main sur le cœur, que la sévérité extrême des critères de reconnaissance est dicté par un souci pour la sécurité du public, la réalité est qu’ils tiennent surtout à protéger jalousement ceux qui les font vivre, leurs membres. -p187-88

En somme, le résultat de ce grand Circus quebecus est un véritable banquet linguistique, identitaire et surtout religieux. -p188

Paroles de la chanson sur les accommodements raisonnables. (Sur l’air de Le Moustique de Joe Dassin)

On pense que ça commence à faire là;
On pense qu'on a assez ri de nous autres là;
Pis pour ceux qui n'seraient pas contents;
Crissez-moi votre camp.

On veut bien accepter les ethnies;
Mais non pas à n'importe quel prix;
Si tu veux te joindre à notre beau pays;
Tu devras faire certains compromis.

Lorsque accueilli dans une place;
Il faut se fondre à la masse;
Parce qu'on peut dire qu'ici tu es bien;
Plus que d'où tu d'viens!

On peut maintenant porter le kirpan;
Parce que nous autres on est tolérant;
Changer les règles du YMCA;
Pis un coup parti du CLSC.

Nous sommes-nous fracturé la raison?
Pour les caprices de chaque religion;
Vos accommodements raisonnables;
On est pu capable!

Y'est maintenant temps qu'on soit entendu;
Quand notre culture se fait cracher dessus;
Si tu n'es pas content de ton sort;
Y'existe un endroit qu'est l'aéroport!

Toi ma minorité ethnique;
Arrête un peu ta musique;
Sinon dans ce cas-là tu devras;
Retourner chez toi, retourner chez toi

A propos du nouveau guide canadien pour les immigrants : C’est drôle ce guide me fait penser au Code de vie d’Hérouxville… -Platypus

2009-11-16T15:20:00.004-05:00

The Unholy Legacy of Abraham
By
G.M. Woerlee (2007)

"Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three religions divided by the same God." -The Author

Ishmael and Hagar were subsequently banished by order of Sarah, who was jealous that Ishmael might claim the inheritance of Abraham, but God promised Ishmael that he would become the arch-father of a great nation (Bible, Genesis 17:21, 21:9-18). And indeed, Ishmael had twelve sons who settled and founded tribes all over the Middle-East. -p.xi

...the innumerable fanatical Christian sects around the globe.

The sounding of church bells on Sundays is forbidden [in this fictitious ancient Dutch university city of Leiden] because it offends the sensitivities of the followers of Islam. Serving alcohol outside on a terrace during Islamic prayer times is forbidden. -p.xviii

"I’m not a devout follower of any creed or brand of religion; I’m also not an atheist, because that requires just as much belief as a belief in God. You could say I’m a sort of humanist, because I do believe in humankind and a belief in the rewards of a true understanding of the human condition, as well as an understanding of our individual place in the universe." -p.5

"During the Middle-Ages in Europe, relics, and the wonders associated with them were big business, generating a good income from pilgrims for any place with a particularly popular relic. Think of relics such as the bones of saints, mummies of saints and holy men, powdered breast milk of the mother of Jesus, samples of the blood of Jesus, splinters of the cross upon which Jesus was crucified, the shroud of Turin, and even more bizarre relics such as the Holy Prepuce. The Holy Prepuce was first recorded as being present in the abbey of Charroux in France sometime in the early twelfth century - more than 1000 years after Jesus lived on this world. I can’t believe it really was the foreskin of Jesus, because traditionally the foreskin is buried after a Jewish circumcision ceremony, and somehow I don’t believe the parents of Jesus preserved it for posterity." -p.6-7

"While still alive and physically present on this world, Jesus told his apostles specifically not to spread his teachings among Samaritans and Gentiles. Yet when appearing to his apostles after his resurrection, these prejudices are all gone, and he told them to spread his teachings to all peoples. This is an astounding and truly dramatic change of attitude!" -p.21

Abrogation is where a newer ordinance, law, or statement nullifies a previous statement. The Bible has a number of abrogations. We’ve already discussed one example - where Jesus first says that the apostles must not spread his teachings among Samaritans and Gentiles, but later abrogates this by telling the apostles to spread his teachings among all peoples. -p.25

Islam is no better or worse than Judaism or Christianity. These three religions espouse almost exactly the same philosophies and laws. But one thing is certain, just as you do, just as all Jews, and all Christians do, the followers of Islam also claim their religion is the one and only true religion. They also claim the Bible and the Torah are full of discrepancies and error. -p.27

The Koran tells us that we humans have no control over our destiny. Our paths in life are determined beforehand, or to use other words, are predetermined or predestined. Predetermination, or predestination, is a truly repulsive philosophy. It saps all personal initiative from some believers, leaving them with only one passive a fatalistic response to life expressed in the words: "It is all in the hands of God. I don’t have to do anything. God will decide whether I am rich or poor, whether I am hated or loved, whether I am evil or good, whether I will go to everlasting torment in Hell or dwell eternally in paradise." That’s the ultimate in fatalism. -p.30

Blood circulation:
The heart is just a pump, only it’s made of meat instead of metal, and its function is to pump blood around the body - no more than that. The heart has two sides - a left side and a right side, and they work in tandem, each pumping exactly the same amount of blood. The left side of the heart pumps blood into the arteries going to all organs and tissues of the body. Arteries are actually no more than tubes transporting blood to all organs and tissues of the body. Within these organs and tissues, the arteries divide and divide until they form microscopically blood vessels called capillaries. Oxygen, nutrients, and many other substances within blood diffuse out of these capillaries into the cells surrounding them. At the same time, carbon dioxide, waste products, many other substances diffuse out of the surrounding cells into the capillaries. The capillaries re-unite, and re-unite, forming ever larger blood vessels called veins. Veins return blood to the right side of the heart, which then pumps this blood through the lung capillaries, where oxygen diffuses into the blood, and waste carbon dioxide diffuses into the lungs where it is exhaled. Blood then flows into the left side of the heart where the whole process is endlessly repeated. This is the circulation. Normally an adult body contains about five to six litters of blood, and the heart of a resting adult pumps about four to six litters of blood per minute. -p.78

One of the effects of severe oxygen starvation is to cause widening of the pupils. -p.82

"Actually, tithing is not a Christian practice at all! Nowhere in the New Testament is there anything about the Christian Church requiring a tithe. Tithing is actually a custom taken over from ancient Judaism. After escaping from serfdom in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the tribes of Israel wandered the deserts of the Middle East for many years before finally arriving in Canaan, the land promised them by God. God distributed territories within Canaan to only eleven of the twelve tribes of Israel, granting no territory to the tribe of Levi, because their divinely appointed task was to function as clergy serving God. But possessing no lands of their own meant the Levites has no source of income, so God levied a tax on one tenth, or a tithe, upon the agricultural produce of the other eleven tribes of Israel to support the Levites in their divinely appointed role as intermediaries between God and the peoples of Israel. This is the origin of the custom of tithing (see Deu 14:22-27)."

"Oh dearly beloved," thundered the preacher from his high pulpit, "there is not a living being alive that will not die! You will all die! This is the certain fate of all who live. This is the punishment suffered by all generations of humankind since the original sin committed by the first woman Eve. Adam was the first man. But he was lonely, so God created him a helpmeet and companion from one of his ribs. She was called Eve. God gave them eternal life in the paradise of the Garden of Eden, giving them immortality and freedom to do all they wanted but for one thing - God forbade them to eat the fruit of the apple tree. But Eve, weak as are all women, allowed herself to be seduced by the powers of evil in the form of a serpent..." -p.189

The preacher paused to let the words take effect, and continued, "It is because of this original sin that we have lost our direct relationship with God! It is because of this original sin that we are condemned by God to grow old and infirm! It is because of this original sin that we are condemned by God to eventually die, to rot away and the substance of our bodies to return to the elements forming them! And all because of this original sin of the first woman! Cursed be Eve! Cursed be Eve the mother of all humankind!" -p.190

After all, about one in twenty persons (5%) is homosexual by nature, so it is not surprising that the Koran also has a very definite opinion on homosexuality. -p.231

Brain damage
Increasing degrees of brain damage begin to occur after the flow of blood to the head stops for more than 3 minutes at the normal body temperature of 37° Celsius, but when the body is cooled to 10° to 15° Celsius, about 45 to 60 minutes can elapse before any brain damage begins to occur. This is why profound cooling of the body has been a technique used to provide ideal surgical conditions for some types of brain and heart operations since the 1950’s. During these operations, the bodies of the patients are cooled to about 8.4° to 15° Celsius, and their breathing and heartbeat stopped for up to 45 to 60 minutes during which the surgeon can operate upon their hearts (Dobell 1997, Gordon 1962), or their brains (Koch 1991, Williams 1991). So as you see, the technique employed by the neurosurgeon of Pam Reynolds was nothing new or revolutionary. It was a known, albeit infrequently used method for enabling these difficult operations. -p.304

‘And,’ continued Ben, ‘the followers of Islam and Judaism say exactly the same. They also claim the wonders we see about us in our world are clear proof of the reality of God. This is the old nonsense of creation versus evolution, and the new unintelligent pseudoscientific drivel vomited up by those believing in "intelligent design". A few minutes with some books on astrophysics and evolutionary biology teaches you there are perfectly natural explanations for all these things. The universe does not require the existence of some paranormal and wondrous creator. -p.347

2009-11-16T15:20:00.003-05:00

THE GOD DELUSION
by
Richard Dawkins (2006)

Religion is a fixture; don’t even think of getting rid of it. Get over it! p.19

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion:
"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold." p.20

Just as feminists wince when they hear “he” rather than “he or she”, or “man” rather than “human”, I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as “Catholic child” or “Muslim child”. p.25

American polls suggest that atheists and agnostics far outnumber religious Jews and even outnumber most other particular religious groups. Unlike Jews, however, who are notoriously one of the most effective political lobbies in the United States, and unlike evangelical Christians, who wield even greater political power, atheist and agnostics are not organized and therefore exert almost zero influence. P.27

"I am a deeply religious non-believer. This is a somewhat new kind of religion." -Einstein

The president of a historical society in New Jersey wrote a letter that so damningly exposes the weakness of the religious mind, it is worth reading twice:

We respect your learning Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person perhaps is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons:
1. I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow beings;
2. because I agree with the writer who said, "There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another’s faith."... I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. P.38

Einstein was repeatedly indignant at the suggestion that he was a theist. So, was he a deist, like Voltaire and Diderot? Or a pantheist, like Spinoza, whose philosophy he admired: "I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"? p.39

Let’s remind ourselves of the terminology.
A THEIST believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deed, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them).
A DEIST, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one who activities were confined to setting the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs.
PANTHEISTS don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings.
DEISTS differ from PANTHEISTS in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist’s metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism. P.39-40

...society’s exaggerated respect for religion, over and above ordinary human respect. P.46

All politicians must get used to disrespectful cartoons of their faces, and nobody riots in their defence. What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged respect? P.50

A stunning example of such "respect" was reported in the New York Times in January 2007. A German Muslim woman had applied for a fast-track divorce on the grounds that her husband, from the very start of the marriage, repeatedly and seriously beat her. While not denying the facts, Judge Christa Datz-Winter turned down the application, citing the Qur’an. 'In a remarkable ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, said that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which she said it was common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote, sanctions such physical abuse' (New York Times, 23 March 2007). This incredible story came to light in March 2007 when the unfortunate woman’s lawyer disclosed it. To its credit, the Frankfurt court promptly removed Judge Datz-Winter from the case. Nevertheless, the New York Times article concludes by quoting a suggestion that the episode will do great damage to other Muslim women suffering domestic abuse: 'Many are already afraid of going to court against their spouses. There have been a string of so-called honor-killings here, in which Turkish Muslim men have murdered women.' Judge Datz-Winter’s motivation was put down to 'cultural sensitivity', but there is another name by which you could call it: patronizing insult. 'Of course we Europeans wouldn’t dream of behaving like this, but wife-beating is part of "their culture", sanctioned by "their religion", and we should "respect" it.' P.50

Historians of religions recognize a progression from primitive tribal animisms, through polytheisms such as those of the Greeks, Romans and Norsemen, to monotheisms such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam. p.52

In Hinduism there is only one God: Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Vishnu the preserver, Lord Shiva the destroyer, the goddesses Saraswati, Laxmi and Parvati (wives of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), Lord Ganesh the elephant god, and hundreds of others, all are just different manifestations or incarnations [avatars]of the one God. p.52-53

Thomas Jefferson, as so often, got it right when he said, 'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks or charlatans calling themselves the priests of Jesus.' p.55

The Catholic Community Forum helpfully lists 5,120 saints. P.55 [some 10,000 on the Internet]

The oldest of the three Abrahamic religions, and the clear ancestor of the other two, is Judaism: originally a tribal cult of a single fiercely unpleasant God, morbidly obsessed with sexual restrictions, with the smell of charred flesh, with his own superiority over rival gods and with the exclusiveness of his chosen desert tribe. P.58

The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. P.61

"I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -G.W.Bush P.65

Jewish lobby is notoriously one of the most formidably influential in Washington. P.65

There are 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 member of the Senate. Assuming that the majority of these 535 individuals are an educated sample of the population, it is statistically all but inevitable that a substantial number of them must be atheists. P.67

A philosopher’s job is to find out things about the world by thinking rather than observing. P.106

The only difference between The Da Vinci Code and the gospels is that the gospels are ancient fiction while The Da Vinci Code is modern fiction. P.123

Some non-believers attend church for purely social reasons.

The overwhelming majority of Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS), like the overwhelming majority of US Academicians, are atheists. P.128

Religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious). P.129

Hoyle said that 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. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility. The odds against assembling a fully functioning horse, beetle or ostrich by randomly shuffling its parts are up there in 747 territory. This, in a nutshell, is the creationist’s favourite argument - an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn’t understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas - in the relevant sense of chance - it is the opposite. P.137-138

Evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water. P.154

I think it is definitely worth spending money on SETI, because I think it is likely that there is intelligent life elsewhere. P.166

In 2005, the city of New Orleans was catastrophically flooded in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The Reverend Pat Robertson, one of America’s best-known [and moron] televangelist and a former presidential candidate, was reported as blaming the hurricane on a lesbian comedian who happened to live in New Orleans. P.270

Many many people do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us [atheists and agnostics], especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. P.275

What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? P.285

Did that hereditary sin pass down in the semen too? P.287

The Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. P.285

Hartung has some good fun with the book of Revelation, which is certainly one of the weirdest books in the Bible. It is supposed to have been written by St John and, as Ken’s Guide to the Bible neatly put it, if his epistles can be seen as John on pot, then Revelation is John on acid. -p.292

...the long Christian tradition of blaming the Jews as Christ-killers. -p.311

Hitler was not really religious but just cynically exploiting the religiosity of his audience. He may have agreed with Napoleon, who said, "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet," and with Seneca the Younger: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." -p.313

Euthanasia: Let’s invent an imaginary quotation from a moral philosopher: "If you allow doctors to put terminal patients out of their agony, the next thing you know everybody will be bumping off their granny to get her money." -p.331

"About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, and the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?"
"I would have terminated the pregnancy."
"Then you would have murdered Beethoven." -p337

Voltaire got it right long ago: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." So did Bertrand Russell: "Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do." -p345

There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the clergyman. -Victor Hugo

The Catholic Church worldwide has paid out more than a billion dollars [2.5 billion in 2009 -Platypus] in compensation for sexual fondlings and abuses of young persons. You might almost sympathize with them, until you remember where their money came from in the first place. -p.356

Scientists may think it is nonsense to teach astrology and the literal truth of the Bible, but there are others who think the opposite, and aren’t they entitled to teach it to their children? Isn’t it just as arrogant to insist that children should be taught science?
I thank my own parents for taking the view that children should be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their life that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents’ privilege to impose it by force majeure. And this, of course, is especially important when we reflect that children become the parents of the next generation, in a position to pass on whatever indoctrination may have moulded them. -p.367

The Amish people live in closed communities in various parts of the United States, mostly speaking an archaic dialect of German called Pennsylvania Dutch and eschewing, to varying extents, electricity, internal combustion engines, zippers and other manifestations of modern life. There is indeed, something attractively quaint about an island of 17th century life as a spectacle for today’s eyes. Isn’t it worth preserving, for the sake of the enrichment of human diversity? And the only way to preserve it is to allow the Amish to educate their own children in their own, way, and protect them from the corrupting influence of modernity. But, we surely want to ask; shouldn’t the children themselves have some say in the matter?
The Supreme Court was asked to rule in 1972, when some Amish parents in Wisconsin withdrew their children from high school. The very idea of education beyond a certain age was contrary to Amish religious values, and scientific education especially so. The State of Wisconsin took the parents to court, claiming that the children were being deprived of their right to an education. After passing up through the courts, the case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which handed down a split (6:1) decision in favour of the parents. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Warren Burger, included the following: "As the record shows, compulsory school attendance to age 16 for Amish children carries with it a very real threat of undermining the Amish community and religious practice as they exist today; they must either abandon belief and be assimilated into society at large, or be forced to migrate to some other and more tolerant region."
Justice William O. Douglas’s minority opinion was that the children themselves should have been consulted. -p.370-371

...the United States, which is dramatically more religious than other parts of the developed world. -p.383

The main reason the English Bible needs to be part of our education is that it is a major source book for literary culture. The same applies to the legends of the Greek and Roman gods, and we learn about them without being asked to believe in them. Here is a quick list of biblical, or Bible-inspired, phrases and sentences that occur commonly in literary or conversational English, from great poetry to hackneyed cliché, from proverb to gossip:

Be fruitful and multiply. - East of Eden. - Adam’s Rib. - Am I my brother’s keeper? - The mark of Cain. - As old as Methuselah. - A mess of pottage. - Sold his birthright. - Jacob’s ladder etc. -p383-384

The Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan

2009-11-16T15:17:00.002-05:00

The Dragons of Eden
by
Carl Sagan (1977)

Most organisms on Earth depend on their genetic information, which is "prewired" into their nervous systems, to a much greater extent than they do on their extragenetic information, which is acquired during their lifetimes. For human beings, and indeed for all mammals, it is the other way around. While our behaviour is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioural and cultural pathways on short time scales. -p.3

I am interested in the evolution of intelligence for another reason as well. We now have at our command, for the first time in human history, a powerful tool - the large radio telescope - which is capable of communication over immense interstellar distances. We are just beginning to employ it in a halting and tentative manner, but with a perceptibly increasing pace, to determine whether other civilizations on unimaginably distant and exotic worlds may be sending radio messages to us. -p.4-5

While I have formal training in biology, and have worked for many years on the origin and early evolution of life, I have little formal education in, for example, the anatomy and physiology of the brain. -p.5

The great principle of biology - the one that, as far as we know, distinguishes the biological from the physical sciences - is evolution by natural selection, the brilliant discovery of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in the middle of the nineteenth century. -p.6

Evolution is a fact amply demonstrated by the fossil record and by contemporary molecular biology. -p.6

The nature of the genetic material has now been fundamentally understood in terms of the chemistry of its constituent nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, and their operational agents, the proteins. -p.7

Geological stratification and radioactive dating provide information on archaeological, paleontological and geological events; and astrophysical theory provides data on the ages of planetary surfaces, stars and the Milky Way Galaxy, as well as an estimate of the time that has elapsed since that extraordinary event called the Big Bang - an explosion that involved all of the matter and energy in the present universe. -p.13

The most instructive way I know to express this cosmic chronology is to imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe compressed into the span of a single year. Then every billion years of Earth history would correspond to about 24 days of our cosmic year and one second of that year to 475 real revolutions of the Earth about the sun.

One day = ~40 million years. -p.13
200 million years ago is only 5 percent of the history of life on the planet, five days ago on the Cosmic Calendar. -p.21

All organisms on the planet Earth, whether they have well defined nuclei or not, have chromosomes, which contain the genetic material passed on from generation to generation. In all organisms the hereditary molecules are nucleic acids. With a few unimportant exceptions, the hereditary nucleic acid is always the molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). -p.21-22

We might say that the language of heredity is written in an alphabet of only four letters (ACGT). But the book of life is very rich; a typical chromosomal DNA molecule in a human being is composed of about five billion pairs of nucleotides. The genetic instructions of all the other taxa on Earth are written in the same language, with the same code book. Indeed, this shared genetic language is one line of evidence that all the organisms on Earth are descended from a single ancestor, a single instance of the origin of life some four billion years ago. -p.23

Mutations are caused by radioactivity in the environment, by cosmic rays from space, or, as often happens, randomly - by spontaneous rearrangements of the nucleotides which statistically must occur every now and then. -p.27

Among the most massive human brains on records are those of Oliver Cromwell, Ivan Turgenev and Lord Byron, all of who were smart but no Albert Einsteins. Einstein’s brain, on the other hand, was not remarkably large. Anatole France, who was brighter than many, had a brain half the size of Byron’s. The human baby is born with an exceptionally high ratio of brain mass to body mass (about 12 percent); and the brain, particularly the cerebral cortex, continues to grow rapidly in the first three years of life - the period of most rapid learning. -p.34

There is a statistical correlation between brain mass or size and intelligence in human beings. The relationship is not one-to-one, as the Byron-France comparison clearly shows. We cannot tell a person’s intelligence in any given case by measuring his or her brain size. However, as the American evolutionary biologist Leigh van Valen of the University of Chicago has shown, the available data suggest a fairly good correlation, on the average, between brain size and intelligence. -p.35-36

Malnutrition can lower intelligence. -p.37

The evolution of mammals from reptiles over two hundred million years ago was accompanied by a major increase in relative brain size and intelligence; and that the evolution of human beings from nonhuman primates a few million years ago was accompanied by an even more striking development of the brain. -p.41

The human brain (apart from the cerebellum, which does not seem to be involved in cognitive functions) contains about ten billion switching elements called neurons. (The cerebellum, which lies beneath the cerebral cortex, toward the back of the head, contains roughly another ten billion neurons.) -p.41-42

Horizon to horizon comprises an angle of 180° in a flat place. The moon is 0.5° in diameter. -p.45

Since a more massive cerebral cortex may make future learning easier, the importance of enriched environments in childhood is clearly drawn. -p.47

Squirrel monkeys with "got this" facial markings have a kind of ritual or display which they perform when greeting one another. The males bare their teeth, rattle the bars of their cage, and utter a high-pitched squeak, which is possibly terrifying to squirrel monkeys and lift their legs to exhibit an erect penis. While such behaviour would border on impoliteness at many contemporary human social gatherings, it is a fairly elaborate act and serves to maintain dominance hierarchies in squirrel-monkey communities. -p.54

MacLean has distinguished three sorts of drivers of the neural chassis. The most ancient of them surrounds the midbrain. We share it with the other mammals and the reptiles. It probably evolved several hundred million years ago. MacLean call it the reptilian or R-complex. Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system, so called because it borders on the underlying brain. -p.58

The most elaborately developed neocortex is ours (and the dolphins and whales). -p.58

MacLean has shown that the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behaviour, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. -p.63

The "master gland," the pituitary, which influences other glands and dominates the human endocrine systems, is an intimate part of the limbic region. -p.66

A lesion of the angular gyrus of the neocortex, in the parietal lobe, results in alexia, the inability to recognize the printed word. The parietal lobe appears to be involved in all human symbolic language and, of all the brain lesions, a lesion in the parietal lobe causes the greatest decline in intelligence as measured by activities in everyday life. -p.77

Penfield believed that the lost of long-term memory accessing ability arises from an inadequate blood supply to the hippocampus in old age - because of arteriosclerosis or other physical disabilities. -p.78

There has been some speculation that immersion in hyperbaric oxygen - that is, oxygen under high pressure - can raise the intelligence of infants. -p.79

For their surface area, insects weigh very little. A beetle, falling from a high altitude, quickly achieves terminal velocity: air resistance prevents it from falling very fast, and, after alighting on the ground, it will walk away, apparently none the worse for the experience. The same is true of small mammals - squirrels, mice etc... -p.87

Because of our size, we weigh too much for our surface area. Therefore our arboreal ancestors had to pay attention... -p.87

Childbirth is generally painful in only one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase in cranial volume. -p.97

Brain waves represent very small currents and voltages produced by the electrical circuitry of the brain. -p.136

The Greeks recognized Morpheus and Thanatos, the gods of sleep and death, as brothers. -p.137

One of the most interesting and promising hypotheses, first suggested by I.S. Shklovskii of the Institute for Cosmic Research, Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow, is that the dinosaurs died because of a nearby supernova event - the explosion of a dying star some tens of light-years away, which resulted in an immense flux of high energy charged particles that entered our atmosphere, changed its properties, and, perhaps by destroying the atmospheric ozone, let in lethal quantities of solar ultraviolet radiation. -p.145

Is it only an accident that the common human sounds commanding silence or attracting attention seem strangely imitative of the hiss of reptiles? -p.150

Bloodhounds have a widely celebrated ability to track by smell. They are presented with a "trace" - a scrap of clothing belonging to the target, the lost child or the escaped convict - and then, barking, bound joyously and accurately down the trail. Canines and many other hunting animals have such an ability in extremely well-developed form. The original trace contains an olfactory cue, a smell. A smell is merely the perception of a particular variety of molecule - in this case, an organic molecule. For the blood hound to track, it must be able to sense the difference in smell - in characteristic body molecules - between the target and a bewildering and noisy background of other molecules, some from other humans who have gone the same way (including those organizing the tracking expedition) and some from other animals (including the dog itself). The number of molecules shed by a human being while walking is relatively small. Yet even on a fairly "cold" trail - say, several hours after the disappearance - bloodhound can track successfully. -p.163

Accidents or strokes in the temporal or parietal lobes of the left hemisphere of the neocortex characteristically result in impairment of the ability to read, write, speak and do arithmetic. -p.167

ABORTION
There is no question that legalized abortions avoid the tragedy and butchery of illegal and incompetent “back-alley” [or “hanger”] abortions, and that in a civilization whose very continuance is threatened by the spectre of uncontrolled population growth, widely available medical abortions can serve an important social need. -p.205

Male masturbation and nocturnal emissions are generally considered natural acts and not cause for murder indictments. In a single ejaculation there are enough spermatozoa for the generation of hundreds of millions of human beings. In addition, it is possible that in the not-too-distant future we may be able to clone a whole human being from a single cell taken from essentially anywhere in the donor’s body. -p.207

An even more striking example of such chemotherapy is the use of lithium carbonate in the treatment of manic depressives. The ingestion of carefully controlled doses of lithium, the lightest and simplest metal, produces startling improvements - again as reported from the patients’ perspective and from the perspective of others - in this agonizing disease. Why so simple a therapy is so strikingly effective is unknown, but it most likely relates to the enzyme chemistry of the brain. -p.211

Recent evidence indicates that limbic hormones such as ACTH and vasopressin can greatly improve the ability of animals to retain and recall memories. -p.212

We may be able to engineer genes before we are able to engineer brains. -p.213

It is now possible to manufacture small proteins made of any specified sequence of amino acids. -p.214

The computer on the Viking Mars Lander had a memory of only 18,000 words. -p.220

Translation of "Out of sight, out of mind" by a computer: "Invisible idiot." -p.222

Our society is so profoundly influenced by science and technology, which the bulk of our citizens understand poorly or not at all. The widespread availability in both schools and homes of inexpensive interactive computer facilities could just possibly play an important role in the continuance of our civilization. -p.232

The Egyptian god Thoth was the equivalent of the Greek god Prometheus. -p.233

Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence may employ the electromagnetic spectrum, and most likely the radio part of the spectrum; or it might employ gravity waves, neutrinos, just conceivably tachyons (if they exist), or some new aspect of physics that will not be discovered for another three centuries. -p.239

The most incomprehensible property of the universe is that it is so comprehensible. -Einstein -p.243

There is today in the West (but not in the East) a resurgent interest in vague, anecdotal and often demonstrably erroneous doctrines. These doctrines include:
Astrology (the view that which stars, one hundred trillion miles away, are rising at the moment of my birth in a closed building affect my destiny profoundly);
The Bermuda Triangle "mystery" (which holds in many versions that an unidentified flying object lives in the ocean off Bermuda and eats ships and airplanes);
flying saucer accounts in general;
the belief in ancient astronauts;
the photography of ghosts;
pyramidology (including the view that my razor blade stays sharper within a cardboard pyramid than within a cardboard cube);
Scientology;
Auras and Kirlian photography;
the emotional lives and musical preferences of geraniums;
psychic surgery;
flat and hollow earths;
modern prophecy;
remote cutlery warping;
astral projections;
Velikovskian catastrophism;
Atlantis and Mu;
Spiritualism;
And the doctrine of the special creation, by God or gods, of mankind despite our deep relatedness, both in biochemistry and in brain physiology, with the other animals.
It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of scepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires. These are by and large, if I may use the phrase, limbic and right-hemisphere doctrines, dream protocols, natural - the word is certainly perfectly appropriate - and human responses to the complexity of the environment we inhabit. But they are also mystical and occult doctrines, devised in such a way that they are not subject to disproof and characteristically impervious to rational discussion. In contrast, the aperture to a bright future lies almost certainly through the full functioning of the neocortex - reason alloyed with intuition and with limbic and R-complex components, to be sure, but reason nonetheless: a courageous working through of the world as it really is.
It is only in the last day of the Cosmic Calendar that substantial intellectual abilities have evolved on the planet Earth. The coordinated functioning of both cerebral hemispheres is the tool Nature has provided for our survival. We are unlikely to survive if we do not make full and creative use of our human intelligence.
"We are a scientific civilization," declared Jacob Bronowski. "That means a civilization in which knowledge and its integrity are crucial. Science is only a Latin word for knowledge... Knowledge is our destiny." -p.248

Superstition - Robert L. Park

2009-11-16T15:12:00.003-05:00

SUPERSTITION
Belief in the Age of Science (2007)

Robert L. Park (1931-

It reflected a common view among many scientists at the time that one could not be a scientist and also be religiously oriented. -p.4

Science and religion are on divergent paths, growing ever farther apart as knowledge expands. -p.4

Barbour (PhD 1949 from University of Chicago, teaching assistant to Enrico Fermi) flatly rejects the literal interpretation of the biblical story of Genesis by the creationists, seeing it as clearly metaphorical. -p.7

"God" is sometimes used by physicists as a collective term for the imperfectly understood forces of nature. -p.11

"Texas-sharpshooter": He fires his six-gun at the side of a barn, and then walks over and draws a bull’s-eye around the bullet holes. -p.11

Invoking a designer solves nothing. It only raises the additional question of where the designer came from. -p.12

Experiment is the window of science; the window of religion is revelation. -p.13

The winners of the Templeton Prize and Templeton himself all seem to have been raised in strongly religious household. They are no more likely to shed their religion after puberty than they are to stop thinking in their first tongue. It happens, but not often. H.L. Mencken once grumbled that he could never trust an atheist who was raised as a Catholic - eventually they revert to their childhood faith. -p.15

A lifetime of talking to first graders left her handicapped in talking to adults. Her logic is better suited to children than adults. -p.17 (R.A.)

Our emotions are influenced by hormones secreted in response to instruction from the brain. -p.17

I have been married to the same woman for fifty-seven years. I have no doubt that at our first meeting in a college library our pheromones matched receptors in each other’s olfactory system. -p.18
You are not conscious of "smelling" pheromones because the signal from your pheromone receptors is routed straight to the amygdalae, bypassing the cerebral cortex. -p.18

Dr. Francis Collins suggested that evolution might have been God’s elegant plan for creating humankind. -p.20

Even if you accept the anthropic principle as evidence of a creator, it only raises additional questions. The most obvious question is "who created the creator?" And if I try to get around that by arguing that God has always existed, I’m confronted by the next question: "Why the Christian God?" Why not make up a new God? There have been thousands of gods throughout history. -p.21

Blood samples had to be centrifuged to remove the perishable red cells using the battery of the Land Rover as power. -p.22

Some tribes had discovered that by herding cattle, they could free themselves from the uncertainty of hunting. Domestication of cattle changed everything. -p.24

John Marburger described evolution as "the cornerstone of modern biology." By contrast, he said, "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Teaching intelligent design in a biology class would be like teaching astrology to a class in astronomy. -p.26

The concept of evolution in biology did not originate with Darwin. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck has proposed a theory of evolution half a century before Darwin. -p.26

When the famous biologist Thomas Huxley ["Darwin’s bulldog"] first heard Darwin explain his theory, he reportedly slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "Now why didn’t I think of that?" -p.27

Darwin’s theory had freed the human mind from the shackles of tradition. -p.27

Today, every culture still has a central creation myth. Western culture is dominated by three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that share a common creation myth: the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. Genesis was translated from ancient Hebrew texts written more than three thousand years ago, parts of which, including the great flood, were borrowed from Gilgamesh, a Sumerian epic that is the oldest known written story, composed five thousand years ago. -p.28

Intelligent design is merely a strategy, a tactic in a holy war fought to put God back in the classroom - and keep Darwin out. -p.29

The most humans could hope to do [during natural catastrophes] was to placate an angry God with offerings and flattery. -p.31

We have little direct evidence of what people thought before the invention of writing, which was about 5,000 years ago. -p.31

The practical problem for shamans, therefore, was to fiddle with the ceremonies and incantations to invent more reliable magic. They also advised people to avoid anything that might offend the spirits - and of course, leave generous offerings on the altar. -p.31

Mysteries are the stuff of shamans and holy men. Scientists hate mysteries. They make their findings, including the details of how they were obtained, available to the scrutiny of everyone. If someone comes up with more accurate measurements or a better analysis of the data, the textbooks are rewritten. -p.32

Anthropologists have unearthed remains of our species that are 160,000 years old, and yet all of written history goes back only 5,000 years. How much has Homo sapiens changed in 160,000 years? -p.34

Unable to fly from island to island, populations of Galapagos finches on each island were isolated unless carried by storm winds. Over time finches on each island developed distinctive beaks according to the kinds of seeds that were most abundant. -p.34

The Butler Act, passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1925, barred the teaching of evolution in schools. -p.35

As every teacher knows, many lessons are learned only by repetition. -p.37

Collecting fossils became the science of palaeontology only after Darwin’s theory gave it organization. -p.39

What Darwin didn’t know was that in Moravia at that time an Augustinian monk named Gregor Mendel was experimenting with the inheritance of plant characteristics. -p.39

Reaping the full benefits for humanity of unravelling the mystery of DNA, required mapping the entire human genome consisting of 24 chromosomes, with some 3 billion DNA base pairs containing perhaps 25,000 genes. -p.40

Initially recruited by NIH as the Human Genome Project was getting underway, Craig Venter (PhD in physiology) came up with a faster method of sequencing and left NIH to found Celera, a company that sought to patent its genomic information. -p.41

In 2007, Venter released the full diploid genome of a single person - himself. The experts seem to agree that Venter’s genome is better.
That is not to say he has better genes. Craig Venter now stands naked before the world, his genes exposed to public view. He has genes linked to Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, obesity, antisocial behaviour, tobacco addiction, substance abuse, and wet earwax. If there’s a gene for vanity, he’s probably got that one too. -p.42

To argue against Darwinism now would be like claiming the New World does not exist because it doesn’t show up on maps drawn before the voyage of Columbus. -p.42

In a 2005 interview with Michael Powell of the Washington Post, Phillip Johnson, a lawyer turned creationists, described his reaction to Darwinian evolution: "I realized that if the pure Darwinist account was accurate and life is all about an undirected material process, then Christian metaphysics and religious belief are fantasy."
Even though he is not a scientist, Johnson is recognized as the father of the intelligent design movement. -p.43

The basic assumption of modern science, and the dominant worldview of our time, is naturalism, which holds that whatever happens in the world can be explained by the laws of nature. While "materialism" can mean the same thing as "naturalism," it can also mean an obsessive desire for worldly possessions, giving it a more negative connotation. -p.44

Russian biology has never fully recovered from Lysenko, and it still trails the rest of the industrialized world. -p.48

According to a Gallup poll taken in the summer of 1999, 45% of adult Americans said they believe in a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation, and only about one in ten subscribe to a purely scientific interpretation of evolution. -p.49

Society is not very tolerant of nonbelievers. -p.49

Doctors are deliberately exploiting the placebo effect when they prescribe antibiotics for the common cold. Antibiotics have no effect on the cold virus, but recovery will come in a few days anyway, and the placebo effect may make the patient feel better in the meantime.
Although concerns are occasionally raised about the ethics of treating patients with placebos, it’s been going on for as long as there have been doctors. -p.58

The hypothalamus, a region at the base of the brain involved in controlling emotions, will instruct the adrenal cortex to release cortisol, a hormone that elevates blood pressure, increases blood glucose levels, and diverts blood from the digestive tract to the brain and limbs. -p.59

Millions of people get relief from anxiety by turning to antidepressants, such as Prozac and Zoloft. They work by boosting levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that constricts blood vessels, countering the effect of stress hormones and elevating your mood. -p.60

According to my dictionary, a "credulous belief in the supernatural" is called "superstition." "Credulous" means believing without much evidence to support it. -p.62

At the time, however, the 1916 Standford-Binet Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was still decades away. -p.65

Statisticians call citing just the data that supports your hypothesis "cherry picking." Scientifically, cherry picking is a sin. -p.66

The Journal of Reproductive Medicine is a peer-reviewed medical journal. That means papers must be reviewed by anonymous experts before they can be accepted for publication. The identities of the reviewers are closely guarded and they are not compensated for their time; peer review is considered to be a sacred responsibility of scientists. In addition to looking for obvious mistakes, reviewers render their opinion on whether the work is original, whether appropriate credit has been given to previous work, and whether the results are significant enough to warrant publication. The reviewers are expected to treat the material as confidential, and make no personal use of the information until it is in print. -p.73

Every scientific finding must be independently confirmed before it is accepted as new knowledge. -p.73

Parapsychology is not regarded as credible by scientists. -p.76

As I write this, [2007] the world population clock reads 6,630,725,709. Most people pray for their health and the health of loved ones. More than a billion pray five times a day. It’s a wonder people still get sick. -p.77

Prayer has no "metric". That’s science shorthand for "it can’t be measured." We can make some sort of measure of output, for example, a medical evaluation of the patient, but we have no idea how to measure prayer. The Oxford English Dictionary defines prayer as "a supplication to a deity," but does it matter which deity? Does it matter whether it is delivered on your knees? Does a prayer for a horse at the racetrack get the same divine attention as a prayer for world peace? Do the prayers of Billy Graham carry more weight than those of a vagrant? Many people no doubt stand ready to offer opinions on these questions, but what evidence could they possibly offer? -p.78

Millions of women have found The Pill to be safe and effective if taken after intercourse but before a spermatozoon penetrates the membrane of an ovum. This means the pill must be taken within 72 hours after intercourse. -p.80

"Why should a fertilized egg be considered a person," I asked my two friends?
They answered almost in unison: "Because it has a soul." -p.81

Creation of a zygote from the male and female gametes is nonetheless awesome. The intricate "pas de deux" of male and female chromosome strands twisting together to form the double helix of a totally unique DNA molecule has a sensuous beauty that inspires reverence. -p.81

Normally, the IVF procedure produces far more embryos than are needed. Unused embryos are stored cryogenically in case they might be used for a subsequent pregnancy, or donated to sterile women. An estimated 500 thousand frozen embryos are currently stored in the United States. Perhaps 6 million have been produced. When it becomes clear that frozen embryos will not be needed, they are simply thrown out. -p.83

George W. Bush, who owed his narrow re-election victory to the solid support of the religious right, remained firmly opposed to the use of embryonic stem cells in research. -p.84

One of the most promising advances in medical history was being held back because of a religious belief that a single zygote cell is endowed with a soul. But what evidence is there for a soul - in a zygote or at any stage of human development? -p.85

In most religions, "life" is defined by the existence of a soul, but there is scant agreement on when that happens. -p.85

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. -Genesis 2:7 -p.86

People read into metaphors whatever they wish...

Conservative Christians usually agree with Roman Catholics that a soul is given to the fertilized egg at conception, while most liberal Christians agree with Jews that the soul appears with the first breath. -p.86

Scientists reject any mystical interpretation such as the soul. -p.91

The soul, or spirit, plays an important role in virtually every religion on earth. -p.92

The secret of maintaining absolute power is to keep the people ignorant of the outside world. -p.93

A widely quoted 1997 feature article in U.S. News and World Report put the number of Americans who have had near-death experiences at 15 million.
It sometimes seems as if all of them have written a book about it, and many of the accounts seem similar - if you’re looking for similarities. They often include being in a long tunnel with a bright light at the end, [another train coming?] and feelings of contentment. -p.101

Life is just chemistry. -p.103

There was a death from the 2004.12.26 tsunami of the Indian ocean as far away as Port Elizabeth, South Africa, more than five thousand miles from the epicentre. The first wave that struck the beach at Banda Aceh was a gigantic surge, almost a hundred feet high. The total of dead and missing from the tsunami would approach 300,000. Rumors quickly spread that the tsunami was a test of a new American weapon... -p.105

In 2006 televangelist Pat Robertson was calling on God to unleash hurricanes on sinful Florida! -p.106

The gigantic earthquake centered in the Indian Ocean about a hundred miles west of Sumatra was the proximate cause of the tsunami. But what had caused the earthquake? [Slippage of tectonic plates way down under?]
It was one of the most powerful earthquakes recorded since the invention of the modern seismometer. -p.112

"Give me the boy until he is seven," Jesuits say, "and I will show you the man." -p.119 [Let's hope he won't be a pearl boy for the Muslims in Allah's whorehouse"]

In 1932 Werner Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for "the creation [discovery?] of quantum mechanics." The world would never be the same again. -p.132

The terrible flu pandemic of 1918 killed 100 million people worldwide. -p.142

Influenza is primarily a disease of birds. -p.142

Frequent hand washing is a good habit since flu spreads primarily from hand contact with surfaces that have been touched by others who have the virus. The flu virus is treated with antiviral drugs. -p.143

The term "Snake oil" derives from the petroleum that bubbled up from the ground in parts of Pennsylvania and was used as medicine by the Cherokee Snake tribe. -p.151

The germ theory of disease, emerging from the work of Pasteur and Koch after the death of Darwin, would prove to be the death of such superstitious nonsense as vitalism and such appalling treatments as bleeding and purgatives. -p.151

Before Pasteur & Koch vitalism was an accepted medical reality and the germ theory of disease did not exist. Diseases such as cholera were thought to be spread by miasmas, or bad air. -p.157

Millions of white blood cells, or leukocytes, manufactured in the bone marrow are constantly circulating in the bloodstream. -p.164

In the hospital following surgery, a catheter was inserted through a vein in my arm and threaded over my shoulder and down into the vena cava of my heart, allowing daily infusions of massive doses of powerful antibiotics. Although the antibiotics kept infection somewhat in check, osteomyelitis, or bone infection, was more stubborn. Osteomyelitis is due to bacteria that nestle against the surface of bone where there is less blood circulation, thus avoiding the opsonin and antibiotics. Around metal or synthetic material used to replace damaged joints or hold shattered bones in place so they can heal, there is even less blood circulation. Today, osteomyelitis is a particular concern in artificial knee and hip replacement. -p.165

Animal saliva is antimicrobial and washes away bacteria. That’s why injured mammals instinctively lick their wounds. -p.166

Antibodies are produced by specialized white blood cells called B cells. -p.166

Today, with life expectancy more than double that of just a hundred years ago, heart attacks have become the major cause of death among Americans over forty-five. -p.167

Superstition always resists change. -p.171

Science has shown homeopathy to be nothing more than a quaint superstition. -p.171

Acupuncture, like homeopathy, appears to be nothing more than a quaint superstition practiced by those who want to believe. -p.171

Whatever other languages we may learn later, most of us will continue to think in our first language for the rest of our lives. Having few previous beliefs to contradict what we are told, nothing seems implausible to a young child. We really can’t help it - our early beliefs are unqualified. We’re programmed and will never be entirely free of the culture we absorb while we’re learning our first language. -p.174

FDA involvement begins only after the fact - that is, after the bodies start piling up. -p.177

There is an old medicine to relieve pain. Opium has been cultivated since Paleolithic times. Instead of blocking the production of prostaglandins, opium and its derivatives such as morphine block the prostaglandin receptors in the brain. The opiates are marvellously effective at relieving pain, but have a powerful narcotic effect and are without exception highly addictive. -p.181

Few of us will ever entirely escape the unconscious control exerted by our early childhood indoctrination. -p.182

In 1975, just four years after John Vane discovered the mechanism of aspirin’s analgesic effect, endorphins were discovered. They are polypeptides produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. They are the body’s endogenous opioids. -p.183

In breech births, the baby emerges buttocks first rather than head first.
Most foetuses in the breech position get themselves turned around without help before entering society, but often wait to do so until just before birth. -p.185

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. -p.189

Any nation that fails to utilize the genius of half of its population cannot expect to compete successfully in the modern knowledge-based world. Opposition to the pill is primarily religious, but is abetted by a corporate world that identifies population growth with economic growth. -p.213

Is there a God? As it is impossible to prove there is, it is also impossible to prove there is not. -p.215

Science is the only way of knowing - everything else is just superstition. -p.215

Experimentation is to science what revelation is to religion... -p.13

I believe most politicians are looking after votes, swing votes, mafia votes, gay votes, religious votes, power, money and the next election. They are Politicians!
I believe statesmen like Lincoln and F.D.R. were looking after intelligent voters and they thought about the welfare of the next generations. They were Statesmen! -Jalegbert

Clinton? A cigar fiddler!

G.W. Bush? A graduated moron!

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan

2009-11-16T15:01:00.002-05:00

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
by
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (1992)

This book began in the early 1980’s when the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was making a potentially fateful intersection with 60,000 nuclear weapons that had been accumulated for reasons of deterrence, coercion, pride, and fear. Each nation praised itself and vilified its adversaries, who were sometimes portrayed as less than human. The United States spent ten trillion dollars on the Cold War. -p.xiii

Science is always subject to debate, correction, refinement, agonizing reappraisals and revolutionary insights. Science is never finished. -p.xv

God is an invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of Man. -p.4

In the observable Universe - containing as many as a hundred billion galaxies - perhaps a hundred solar systems are forming every second. In that multitude of worlds many will be barren and desolate. Others may be lush and fertile, on which beings exquisitely adapted to their several circumstances are growing up, coming of age, and attempting to piece together their beginnings. The Universe is lavish beyond imagining. -p.13

Today we understand something of how the exquisite precision that the Solar System now exhibits was extracted from the disorder of an evolving interstellar cloud by laws of Nature that we are able to grasp - motion, and gravitation, and fluid dynamics, and physical chemistry. The continued operation of a mindless selective process can convert chaos into order. -p.16

Organic molecules are composed of carbon and other atoms. All life on Earth is made from organic molecules. -p.23

Since the worldlets that have survived to our time - the comets and the asteroids - have sizeable proportions of organic matter, it readily follows that similar worldlets, also rich in organic matter but in much vaster numbers, fell on the Earth 4 billion years ago and may have contributed to the origin of life. Some of these bodies, and their fragments, burned up entirely as they plunged into the early atmosphere. Others survived unscathed, their cargoes of organic molecules safely delivered to the Earth. Small organic particles drifted down from interplanetary space like a fine sooty snow. We do not know just how much organic matter was delivered to and how much was generated on the early Earth, the ratio of imports to domestic manufactures. But the primitive Earth seems to have been heavily dosed with the stuff of life - including amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), and nucleotides bases and sugars (the building blocks of the nucleic acids). -p.23-24

Ozone is generated from oxygen. No oxygen, no ozone. If there’s no ozone, the searing ultraviolet light (UV) from the Sun will penetrate to the ground. The intensity of UV at the surface of the Earth in the early days may have reached lethal levels of unprotected microbes, as it has on Mars today. We are concerned - and for good reason - that chlorofluorocarbons [CFCs] and other products of our industrial civilization will reduce the amount of ozone by a few tens of percent. The predicted biological consequences are dire. How much more serious it must have been to have no ozone shield at all. -p.26

For hundreds of millions of years, what are now the southern continents - Antarctica, Australia, Africa, and South America - plus India, were joined in a common assemblage that geologists call Gondwana. -p.29

Pangaea was formed about 270 million years ago. -p.29

The giraffe strains to nibble at the leaves on the higher branches of the tree, and somehow the slightly elongated neck that attends the stretching is passed on to the next generation. -p.38

For hundreds of years, Jews and Moslems have been ritually circumcising their sons, with no break in continuity, and yet not one case is known of a Jewish or Islamic boy born without a foreskin. -p.38

The Galapagos is an archipelago of thirteen good-sized islands and many smaller ones lying off the coast of Ecuador. -p.46

When the plasmodium parasite causing malaria is injected (usually by mosquito bite) into the bloodstream, it eventually invades the red blood cells that carry oxygen from the lungs to every cell of the body. The red blood cells are rendered sticky, adhere to the walls of very small blood vessels and are prevented from being circulated to the spleen - which destroys plasmodium parasites. This is good for the parasites and bad for the humans. -p.65

Evolution suggests that God will not intervene, whether beseeched or not, to save us from ourselves. Evolution suggests we’re on our own - that if there is a God, that God must be very far away. This is enough to explain much of the emotional anguish and alienation that evolution has worked. We long to believe that there’s someone at the helm. -p.67

White supremacists seized on the notion that people with high abundances of melanin in their skin must be close to our primate relatives than bleached people. -p.67

Thomas Henry Huxley: "Darwin’s Bulldog." -p.71

...the ten trillion or so cells of your body... -p.78

The long self-replicating double-stranded molecule with the complex message is a sequence of genes, a little like beads on a string. Chemically, it is a nucleic acid (here, the kind abbreviated DNA, which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid). The two strands, wrapped around each other, comprise the famous DNA double helix. The nucleotide bases in DNA are called adenine[c5H5N5], cytosine[C4H5N3O], guanine [C5H5ON5]and thymine[C5H6N2O2], that is an essential constituent of DNA., which is where the abbreviations A, C, G, and T come from [the ACGT language]. -p.78

A particular sequence of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts is in charge of making the protein fibrinogen, central to the clotting of human blood. -p.80

The oxygen in the air is generated by green plants. -p.121

At the depth in the fossil record above which there are no more dinosaurs, there is, worldwide, a telltale thin layer of the element iridium, which is abundant in space but not on the Earth’s surface. -p.135

A great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. -p.143

A gene, as we’ve said is a sequence of perhaps thousands of As, Cs, Gs and Ts which codes for a particular function, usually by synthesizing a particular enzyme. -p.148

Nature is unsentimental. -p.152

Ticks often have no eyes. Males and females find each other by aroma, olfactory cues called sex pheromones. -p.160

The Church burned the philosopher Giordano Bruno alive because he thought for himself, spoke out, and would not recant. -p.165

Among the many human feelings that, although culturally mediated, may be fundamentally pre-programmed, we might list sexual attraction, falling in love, jealousy, hunger and thirst, horror at the sight of blood, fear of snakes and heights and "monsters," shyness and suspicion of strangers, obedience to those in authority, hero worship, dominance of the meek, pain and weeping, laughter, the incest taboo, the infant’s smiling delight at seeing members of its family, separation anxiety, and maternal love. -p.169

The spider builds her web near our porch light. The fine, tough thread reels out from her spinneret. We first notice the web glistening with tiny droplets after a rainstorm, the proprietor repairing a damaged circumferential strut. The elegant, concentric, polygonal pattern is carefully stabilized with a single guy thread extending to the cowl of the lamp itself, and another to a nearby railing. She repairs the web even in darkness and foul weather. At night, when the light is on, she sits at the very center of her construction, awaiting the hapless insect who is attracted by the light and whose eyesight is so poor that the web is quite invisible. The moment one becomes entangled, news of this event travels to her in waves along the threads. She rushes down a radial strut, stings it, quickly wraps it in a white cocoon, packaging it for future use, and rushes back to her command center - composed, a marvel of efficiency, not even, as far as we can see, a little out of breath. -p.169

The simplest geometry of a dominance hierarchy is linear or straight-line:
The private defers to the corporal;
The corporal to the sergeant (and if you look more closely, there are various hyperfine grades of privates, corporals and sergeants);
The sergeant to the second lieutenant, and so on, up through first lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, plain old general and general of the army or field marshal. The military establishments of different nations have different names for the various ranks, but the basic idea is the same: Everyone knows his rank. -p.208

Extreme arrogance was called hubris by the Greeks. -p.221

The testicles of a sparrow are about a millimetre long and weigh about a milligram. (That’s one of the reasons you never hear that someone’s hung lake a sparrow.) Ho!Ho!Ho! -p. 222

As with many hormones, testosterone is at the nexus of an array of positive and negative feedback loops that maintain the concentration of the molecule circulating in the blood. -p.223

5-alpha-androstenol is also copiously produced in the underarm perspiration of men. -p.225

Estrogen is taken by women, usually post-menopause or post-hysterectomy, to preserve sexual interest and lubrication, to slow loss of bone calcium and to achieve a more youthful complexion. -p.229

Fear is accompanied by a characteristic odor, a fear pheromone, easily recognized by others. -p.232

In the heads of goslings and ducklings and chicks at the moment they peck their way out of the egg is, a classic experiment suggests, a rough knowledge of what a hawk looks like. No one has to teach it to them. Hatchlings know. Inside the sperm and the egg that made that chick, encoded in the ACGT sequence of their nucleic acids, there’s a picture of a hawk. -p.232-233

The cry announcing an aerial predator is distinctly different from that announcing a ground predator - a fox, say, or a raccoon. -p.233

Like barrel makers in a world of steel containers, blacksmiths and buggy-whip tycoons in the time of the motorcar or manufacturers of slide rules in the age of pocket calculators, highly specialized professionals can become obsolete virtually overnight. -p.243

The genes - the instruction manuals written down in the ACGT alphabet of DNA - are mutating. -p.244

Mayan and Egyptian royal families were inbred for generations, brothers marrying sisters. -p.248

Purebred dogs are prone to deformities and crippling defects. -p.249

Carl Linnaeus, the eighteenth-century biologist, founded the science of taxonomy - the goal of which is to classify every organism on Earth. -p.273

Each of these categories is called a "taxon" (plural: "taxa"). So we humans, for example, are of the animal kingdom, the vertebrate phylum, the class of mammals, the order of primates, the family of Hominidae, the genus Homo, and the species Homo sapiens. -p.273

Every animal with a backbone has a bloodstream in which haemoglobin is the oxygen carrier. -p.276

The DNA sequence that codes for beta-globin is roughly fifty thousand nucleotides long; that is, along a given strand of the DNA molecule, fifty thousand As, Cs, Gs, and Ts in a particular sequence. -p.276

When ACGT sequences that are mainly active genes are examined, a 99.6% identity is found between human and chimp. At the level of the working genes, only about 0.4% of the DNA of humans is different from the DNA of chimps. -p.277

A 0.4% difference is substantial, because the DNA in any cell in either species is composed of some 4 billion ACGT nucleotides. -p.278

Apes are bigger and smarter than monkeys and lack tails. The apes are the chimpanzees, gorillas, gibbons, siamangs and orang-utans. The siamangs are about as closely related to gibbons as chimps are to humans. -p.319

We humans have not evolved from any of the two hundred other primate species alive today; rather, we and they have evolved together from a succession of common ancestors. -p.343

According to the molecular evidence, gorillas branched off from the evolutionary line leading to us about 8 million years ago; the still unidentified, now extinct common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees separated from the gorillas maybe a million years later. Very quickly thereafter, the lines to chimps and humans began evolving toward their separate destinies. On a planet that’s been inhabited a thousand times longer, that’s pretty recently, as recent as the last two weeks in the life of a fifty-year-old human. This doesn’t mean that humans and chimps themselves began 6 million years ago; only that our common twig in the evolutionary tree branched out then. -p.343

Our genus, Homo is 2 million years old. Our species, Homo sapiens, is maybe 100,000 to 200,000 years old - the equivalent of the last day in the life of that fifty-year-old. -p.349

Ameslan: American Sign Language (ASL) used by hearing-impaired humans.

Perhaps sometime in the future we will discover that unique sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts encode for particular sequences of amino acids that constitute particular proteins that catalyze particular chemical reactions that motivate particular behaviour that we might agree is characteristically human. But so far no such sequence has been found. -p.363

The idea of the beast within is also familiar to us from Sigmund Freud, who called it the "id," Latin for "it," and from neurophysiology, starting with the work of J. Hughlings Jackson. A more recent incarnation can be found in the perspective of the neurophysiologist Paul MacLean, who identifies many of the control centers for sex, aggression, dominance, and territoriality in a deep-lying, ancient part of the brain called the R-complex -"R" for reptile, because we share it with the reptiles, who lack much of a cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness. -p.404

Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan

2009-11-16T14:58:00.003-05:00

PALE BLUE DOT
by
Carl Sagan (1994)

Voyager I was 3.7 billion miles away from Earth, so far away that it took each pixel 5½ hours, traveling at the speed of light, to reach us. -p.2

From 1981 at Saturn, to 1986 at Uranus, to 1989, when both spacecrafts had passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. -p.4

Astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. -p.7

Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. -p.8

"See that star?"
"You mean the bright red one?" his daughter asks in return.
"Yes."
"You know, it might not be there anymore. It might be gone by now - exploded or something. Its light is still crossing space, just reaching our eyes now. But we don’t see it as it is. We see it as it was." -p.9

The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in space in the past - some as they were before the Earth came to be. -p.9

The great astronomer of antiquity, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), in the second century knew that the Earth was a sphere, knew that its size was "a point" compared to the distance of the stars. -p.12

"Certainty could be found only in religion." -p.14

Far from being at the center of the Galaxy, our Sun with its entourage of dim and tiny planets lies in an undistinguished sector of an obscure spiral arm. We are thirty thousand lights years from the Center. -p.21

The Milky Way Galaxy is one of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies notable neither in mass nor in brightness nor in how its stars are configured and arrayed. Some modern deep sky photographs show more galaxies beyond the Milky Way than stars within the Milky Way. Every one of them is an island universe containing perhaps a hundred billion suns. Such an image is a profound sermon on humility. -p.21

The nearest spiral galaxy like our own, M31 in the constellation Andromeda is 2 million light-years away, so we are seeing it as it was when the light from it set out on its long journey to Earth 2 million years ago. And when we observe distant quasars 5 billion light-years away, we are seeing them as they were 5 billion years ago, before the Earth was formed. -p.23

...no such problem arises for those many religious people who treat the Bible and the Qur’an as historical and moral guides and great literature, but who recognize that the perspective of these scriptures on the natural world reflects the rudimentary science of the time in which they were written. -p.24-25

A distinction needs to be drawn between how old the Earth is (around 4.5 billion years) and how old the Universe is (about 15 billion years since the Big Bang).-p.25

As for humans, we’re latecomers. We appear in the last instant of cosmic time. The history of the Universe till now was 99.998% over before our species arrived on the scene. -p.25

Chimps and humans have 99.6% of their active genes in common. -p.27

Projection is the essential precondition for compassion. -p.29

Andrei Linde, formerly of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow and now at Stanford University envisions a vast Cosmos, much larger than our Universe - perhaps extending to infinity both in space and time - not the paltry 15 billion light-years [in 1994] or so in radius and 15 billion years in age which are the usual understanding [in 1994].

In 1633 the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth goes around the Sun. -p.39

The Church declared, in its indictment of Galileo:
"The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both psychologically and theologically false and at the least an error of faith." -p.39

There is a celebrated story in the Western tradition like this, except that not quite everything was there for us. There was one particular tree of which we were not to partake, a tree of knowledge. Knowledge and understanding and wisdom were forbidden to us in this story. We were to be kept ignorant. But we couldn’t help ourselves. We were starving for knowledge - created hungry, you might say. This was the origin of all our troubles. In particular, it is why we no longer live in a garden: We found out too much. So long as we were incurious and obedient, I imagine, we could console ourselves with our importance and centrality, and tell ourselves that we were the reason the Universe was made. -p.53

In an oxygen atmosphere, methane is a sign of life. -p.60

When you take pictures at a meter resolution or better, you find that the crisscrossing straight lines within the cities and the long straight lines that join them with other cities are filled with streamlined, multicoloured beings a few meters in length, politely running one behind the other, in long, slow orderly procession. -p.63

Galileo is a NASA spacecraft designed to explore the giant planet Jupiter, its moons, and its rings. To get to Jupiter, the spacecraft had to fly close by Venus (once) and the Earth (twice) and be accelerated by the gravities of these planets [sling shot effect] - otherwise there wasn’t enough oomph to get it where it was going. -p.66

Galileo passed only 960 kilometers (about 600 miles) above the Earth’s surface. With some exceptions - including pictures showing features finer than 1 kilometer across, and the images of the Earth at night - much of the spacecraft data described in this chapter were actually obtained by Galileo. With Galileo we were able to deduce an oxygen atmosphere, water, clouds, oceans polar ice, life, and intelligence. [On earth]. -p.67

An orbiting weapon is in many circumstances a sitting duck. -p.70

Earth-observing satellites, especially a new generation soon to be deployed, monitor the health of the global environment: greenhouse warming, topsoil erosion, ozone layer depletion, ocean currents, acid rain, the effects of floods and droughts, and new dangers we haven’t yet discovered. This is straightforward planetary hygiene. -p.71

Each Voyager spacecraft picked up a velocity boost of nearly 40,000 miles per hour from Jupiter’s gravity. -p.73

Voyager 2 took advantage of a rare lining-up of the planets: A close flyby of Jupiter accelerated it on to Saturn, Saturn to Uranus, Uranus to Neptune and Neptune to the stars. But you can’t do this anytime you like: The previous opportunity for such a game of celestial billiards presented itself during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. We were then only at the horseback, canoe and sailing ship stage of exploration. (Steamboats were the transforming new technology just around the corner.). -p.73

The two Voyager spacecrafts [of 1977] should be able to return data to Earth roughly through the year 2015 [1977-2015= 38 years] -p.81

The Voyagers embody the technology of the early 1970s; if spacecraft were designed for such a mission today [1994],they would incorporate stunning advances in artificial intelligence, in miniaturization, in data-processing speed, in the ability to self-diagnose and repair, and in the propensity to learn from experience. They would also be much cheaper. -p.81

The building blocks of all terrestrial life are called organic molecules, molecules based on carbon. Of the stupendous number of possible organic molecules, very few are used at the heart of life. The two most important classes are the amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and the nucleotide bases, the building blocks of the nucleic acids. -p.84

Just before the origin of life, where did these molecules come from? There are only two possibilities: from the outside or from the inside. -p.85

Oxygen is generated by green plants. -p.85

Titan, the big moon of Saturn is about 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) in diameter, a little less than half the size of the Earth. It takes 16 of our days to complete one orbit of Saturn.
No world is a perfect replica of any other and in at least one important respect Titan is very different from the primitive Earth: Being so far from the Sun, its surface is extremely cold, far below the freezing point of water, around 180° below zero Celsius. -p.86

The most complex organic gases we make have six or seven carbon and/or nitrogen atoms. These product molecules are on their way to forming tholins. -p.90

But we’ve found out some things about Titan tholins. It contains many of the essential building blocks of life on Earth. Indeed, if you drop Titan tholins into water you make a large number of amino acids, the fundamental constituents of proteins, and nucleotide bases also, the building blocks of DNA and RNA. -p.91

In a joint NASA/ESA program, a spacecraft called Cassini will be launched in October 1997 [launched the 15th] - if all goes well. With two flybys of Venus, one of Earth, and one of Jupiter for gravitational assists, the ship will, after a seven-year voyage, be injected into orbit around Saturn. -p.96

When it got to be time to design the week - a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrincic astronomical significance - it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn’s day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin’s (or Wodin’s) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it’s spelled, "Wedn’s Day"; Thurday is Thor’s day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German.
In all Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian, the connection is still more obvious, because they all derive from ancient Latin, in which the days of the week were named (in order, beginning with Sunday) after the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. (The Sun’s day became the Lord’s Day.) They could have named the days in order of the brightness of the corresponding astronomical bodies, the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Mercury (and thus Sunday, Monday, Friday, Thursday, Tuesday, Saturday, Wednesday) - but they did not. If the days of the week in Romance languages had been ordered by distance from the Sun, the sequence would be Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. No one knew the order of the planets, though, back when we were naming planets, gods, and days of the week. The ordering of the days of the week seems arbitrary, although perhaps it does acknowledge the primacy of the Sun.
This collection of seven gods, seven days and seven worlds - the Sun, the Moon and the five wandering planets - entered the perceptions of people everywhere. The number seven began to acquire supernatural connotations. -p.99-100

A revolution in our understanding of the Uranus system - the planet, its rings, and its moons - began on January, 24, 1986. On that day, after a journey of 8½ years, the Voyager 2 spacecraft sailed very near to Miranda and hit the bull’-eye in the sky, Uranus’ gravity then flung it on to Neptune. The spacecraft returned 4,300 close-up pictures of the Uranus system and a wealth of other data. -p.106

Neptune glides along the hem of interstellar night. It is so far away that, in its sky, the Sun appears as little more than an extremely bright star. How far? So far away that it has yet to complete a single trip around the Sun, a Neptunian year, [165 years] since its discovery in 1846. It’s so far away that it takes light more than five hours to get from Neptune to Earth. -p.110

The outermost planets, Neptune and Pluto, are about 40 AU from our Sun [AU (Astronomical Unit) = 93 million miles, the distance between Earth and Sun]. -p.116

Planets are small and shine by reflected light. -p.117

We have now learned that there are other Earths. -p.119

The energy put out by B1257+12, a pulsar neutron star 1,300 light-years away is about 4.7 times that of the Sun. But, unlike the Sun, most of this is not in visible light, but in a fierce hurricane of electrically charged particles. Suppose that these particles impinge on the planets and heat them, then even a planet at 1 AU would have surface around 280° Celsius above the normal boiling point of water, greater than the temperature of Venus. -p.119

The Voyager spacecrafts are bound for the stars. They are on escape trajectories from the Solar System, barrelling along at almost a million miles a day [40,000 mph].

In space the daytime sky is black. The Sun shines brightly on your ship, the Earth below you is brilliantly illuminated. But the sky above is black as night. -p.128

VENUS
When it became clear that the atmosphere of Venus was much thicker than the air on Earth - as we now know, the pressure at the surface is ninety times what it is here - it immediately followed that in ordinary visible light we could not possibly see the surface, even if there were breaks in the clouds. -p.140-141

Every object warmer than absolute zero [0°Kelvin,-459°F,-273°C] gives off radiation throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, including the radio region. You, for example, emit radio waves at an effective or "brightness" temperature of about 35°C, and if you were in surroundings colder than you are, a sensitive radio telescope could detect the faint radio waves you are transmitting in all directions. Each of us is a source of cold static. -p.143

"How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?" asked Bob Dylan in the ballad "Blowing in the Wind." The answer depends on which planet we’re talking about. For the Earth, it’s typically about ten million years. -p.152

The Viking microbiology experiments found that organic matter carried from Earth to Mars and sprinkled on Martian surface dust is quickly oxidized and destroyed. The materials in the dust that do the destruction are molecules something like hydrogen peroxide - which we use as an antiseptic because it kills microbes by oxidizing them. Ultraviolet light from the Sun strikes the surface of Mars unimpeded by an ozone layer; if any organic matter were there, it would be quickly destroyed by the ultraviolet light itself and its oxidation products. Thus part of the reason the topmost layers of Martian soil are antiseptic is that Mars has an ozone hole of planetary dimensions - by itself a useful cautionary tale for us, who are busily thinning and puncturing our ozone layer here on earth. -p.177-178

Some of the most important recent work on global warming has been done by James Hansen and his colleagues at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, a NASA facility in New York City. -p.179

Global warming is something to be taken seriously. -p.180

Life on Earth is intimately connected, for the most basic chemical reasons, with liquid water. We humans are ourselves made of some three-quarters water. The same sorts of organic molecules that fell out of the sky and were generated in the air and seas of ancient Earth should also have accumulated on ancient Mars. -p.186

We expect life on Mars, like life on Earth, to be organized around carbon-based molecules. -p.190

The round-trip travel time of the up-link radio commands from Earth to Mars and the down-link data returned from Mars to Earth might take half an hour or more. -p.197

There are promising ion and nuclear/electric propulsion systems by which a small and steady acceleration is exerted. -p.206

Deeper than 300 kilometers, the pressures should transform carbon into diamond. -p.218

The return to Earth of a spacecraft stuffed with gorgeous multicarat diamonds would doubtless depress prices (as well as the shareholders of the de Beers and General Electric corporations). -p.219

Some 250,000 more people are born than die every day. -p.222

...when our ancestors were gracefully flinging themselves from branch to branch in the primeval forest. -p.228

...the 4.5 billion years since the Sun and the planets condensed out of interstellar gas and dust. -p.235

For example, the Perseid meteors, seen on or about August 12 of each year, originate in a dying comet called Swift-Tuttle. -p.239-40

Every million years, an impact by a body over 2 kilometers in diameter occurs, equivalent to nearly a million megatons of TNT - an explosion that would work a global catastrophe, killing (unless unprecedented precautions were taken) a significant fraction of the human species. A million megatons of TNT is 100 times the explosive yield of all the nuclear weapons on the planet, if simultaneously blown up. -p. 251

...Asteroid deflection...

Antimatter is just like ordinary matter, with one significant difference. Consider hydrogen: An ordinary hydrogen atom consists of a positively charged proton on the inside and a negatively charged electron on the outside. An atom of anti-hydrogen consists of a negatively charged proton on the inside and a positively charged electron (also called a positron) on the outside. -p.270

Matter and anti-matter, when brought into contact, violently annihilate each other, disappearing in an intense burst of gamma rays. -p.270

DEFLECTION TECHNOLOGY
With fusion rocket engines, it will be possible to move asteroids and comets around the inner Solar System, taking a main-belt asteroid, for example, and inserting it into orbit around the Earth. A world 10 kilometers across could be transported from Saturn, say, to Mars through nuclear burning of the hydrogen in an icy comet a kilometer across. (Again, I’m assuming a time of much greater political stability and safety.) -p.272

On Mars the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. It seems likely that in self-contained habitats - perhaps domed enclosures - we could grow crops, manufacture oxygen from water, and recycle wastes. -p.273

VENUS: Clearly the problem with Venus is its massive green-house effect. If we could reduce the greenhouse effect almost to zero, the climate might be balmy. But a 90-bar CO2 atmosphere is oppressively thick. -p.277

MARS: For Mars we have just the opposite problem. There’s not enough greenhouse effect. The planet is a frozen desert. -p.279

There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. -p.287

The first SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] program was carried out by Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, West Virginia in 1960. He listened to two nearby Sun-like stars for two weeks at one particular frequency. ("Nearby" is a relative term: The nearest was 12 light-years - 70 trillion miles - away.) -p.289

The New York Times in a dismissive editorial not retracted until the eve of Apollo 11 - insisted that rockets could not work in a vacuum, that the Moon and the planets were forever beyond human reach.
A generation later, inspired by Tsiolkovsky and Goddard, Wernher von Braun was constructing the first rocket capable of reaching the edge of space, the V-2. But in one of these ironies with which the twentieth century is replete, von Braun was building it for the Nazis - as an instrument of indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, as a "vengeance weapon" for Hitler, the rocket factories staffed with slave labor, untold human suffering exacted in the construction of every booster, and von Braun himself made an officer in the SS. He was aiming at the Moon he joked unselfconsciously, but hit London instead. -p.303

Richard Gott III, an astrophysicist at Princeton, predicts at the 97.5% confidence level, that there will be humans for no more than 8 million years. -p.307

Two billion years ago our ancestors were microbes;
half a billion years ago, fish;
a hundred million years ago, something like mice;
ten million years ago, arboreal apes;
a million years ago, proto-humans puzzling out the taming of fire.
Our evolutionary lineage is marked by mastery of change. In our time, the pace is quickening. -p.332

Huxley vs Wilberforce

2009-11-16T14:48:00.002-05:00

When T.H. Huxley read The Origin of Species he became at once an ardent exponent of Darwinism. Since Darwin could not nor would not fight, Huxley took to the lecture platform with enthusiasm. In 1860, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, he faced the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce (called Soapy Sam because of his unctuous way of speaking), and who was primed with "facts”" by Owen and who asked sarcastically if Huxley traced his own descent from the apes through his father or mother.
Before and overflow crowd of seven hundred, Huxley answered with deep disdain that if he had to choose as an ancestor either a miserable ape or an educated man who could introduce such a remark into a serious scientific discussion, he would choose the ape. Exit Wilberforce.

God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens

2009-11-16T14:45:00.003-05:00

God is not Great
by
Christopher Hitchens (2007)

God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization. p.8

Today the most educated person in the world has to admit that he or she knows less and less about more and more. p. 9

["An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less; an ordinary person is one who knows less and less about more and more"].

Those who have believed what the priests and rabbis and imams tell them about what the unbelievers think and about how they think, will find further such surprises as we go along. They will perhaps come to distrust what they are told - or not to take it "on faith," which is the problem to begin with. p.10

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head. p.11

Geert Wilders

2009-11-16T14:42:00.001-05:00

Geert Wilders:

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against the creeping Muslim sharia law. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

For millions of Muslims the Quran and the life of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam "the most retrograde force in the world," and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Koran.

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can come only from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Billions & Billions - Carl Sagan

2009-11-16T10:43:00.003-05:00

BILLIONS & BILLIONS
by
Carl Sagan (1997)

WORLD POPULATIONS
The population of the Earth at the time of Jesus was perhaps 250 million people. There were almost 4 million Americans at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; by the beginning of World War II, there were 132 million. It is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the Earth to the Sun (One AU). Approximately 40 million people were killed in World War I; 60 million in World War II. There are 31.7 million seconds in a year (as is easy enough to verify). The global nuclear arsenals at the end of the 1980s contained an equivalent explosive power sufficient to destroy 1 million Hiroshimas. For many purposes and for a long time, "million" was the quintessential big number. -p.5

STELLAR DISTANCES
The distance from our Solar System to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 25 trillion miles (about 40 trillion kilometers, or 4.3 light-years). -p.6
[At 10% the speed of light (18,600 miles per second) it would take 43 years to get there from mother Earth. You’d probably be bald on return...]

AGE OF UNIVERSE
Among the decaying monuments of Coba, in Quintana Roo, are inscriptions showing that the Maya were contemplating a Universe around 1029 years old. -p.11

POVERTY
Exponential population growth slows down or stops when grinding poverty disappears.
One of the central issues in the world population crisis is poverty. -p.21

GENERATIONS
If there are, say, 25 years to a generation, then 64 generations ago is 64 x 25 = 1,600 years ago, or just before the fall of the Roman Empire. -p.23

HALF-LIFE OF RADIOACTIVITY
Another common appearance of exponentials is the idea of half-life. A radioactive "parent" element - plutonium, say, or radium - decays into another, perhaps safer, "daughter" element, but not all at once. It decays statistically. There is a certain time by which half of it has decayed, and this is called its half-life. Half of what is left decays in another half-life, and half of the remainder is still another half-life, and so on. For example, if the half-life were one year, half would decay in a year, half of a half or all but a quarter would be gone in two years, all but an eighth in three years, all but a about a thousandth in ten years, etc. Different elements have different half-lives. Half-life is an important idea when trying to decide what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants or in contemplating radioactive fallout in nuclear war. -p.25

Radioactive decay is a principal method for dating the past. -p.25

BRAINS V. GENES
Since our passions for sports run so deep and are so broadly distributed, they are likely to be hardwired into us - not in our brains but in our genes. -p. 32

SKIN PIGMENTATION
Skin pigmentation is produced mainly by an organic molecule called melanin, which the body manufactures from tyrosine, an amino acid common in proteins.
Albinos suffer from a hereditary disease in which melanin is not made. Their skin and hair are milky white. The irises of their eyes are pink. Albino animals are rare in Nature because their skin provides little protection against solar radiation, and because they lack protective camouflage they tend not to last long. -p.51

VISITS TO OTHER PLANETS
We humans are one of the 50 billion species that have grown up and evolved on a small planet, third from the Sun, that we call the Earth. We have sent spacecraft to examine seventy of the other worlds in our system, and to enter the atmospheres or land on the surfaces of four of them - the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. We have been engaged in a mythic endeavour. -p.56-57

ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH
...Maybe life was transported by meteorite impact from one world to another... -p.60

JUPITER’S ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE
Jupiter’s atmospheric pressure gets so large that electrons are squeezed off atoms and the hydrogen becomes a hot metal. -p.64 [Jupiter is 5 AU from the Sun].

ECOLOGICAL DAMAGES
Radioactivity from a Ukrainian nuclear accident [in 1986] compromises the economy and culture of Lapland. The burning of coal in China warms Argentina. -p.80

DEPTH OF ATMOSPHERE
Even if we include the high stratosphere, the atmosphere isn’t as much as 1 percent of the Earth’s diameter. -p.86

DINOSAURS
After flourishing for 180 million years, the dinosaurs were extinguished. Every last one. There are none left. No species is guaranteed its tenure on this planet. And we humans have been here for only about a million years... -p.89

COIN INVENTION
It was in the time of Croesus, King of Lydia (in Anatolia, contemporary Turkey.) that coins were invented - minted by Croesus in the seventh century B.C. -p.93

SCIENTISTS AS POLITICIANS
There are almost no scientists who are members of the U.S. Congress. Much the same is true of other countries. -p.95

OZONE DEPLETION
Supersonic transports do not threaten the ozone layer. -p.97

"Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt." -p.97

OXIGEN (O) & OZONE (O3)
The air all around us, the stuff we breathe, is made of about 20% oxygen - not the atom, symbolized as O, but the molecule, symbolized as O2, meaning two oxygen atoms chemically bound together. This molecular oxygen is what makes us go. We breathe it in, combine it with food, and extract energy. Ozone is a much rarer way in which oxygen atoms combine. It is symbolized as O3, meaning three oxygen atoms chemically bound together. -p.100

Ozone is naturally formed up there at an altitude of around 25 kilometers (15 miles). -p.103

MELANIN & UV
Dark-skinned people have a generous supply of melanin to protect them. (Suntanning is an adaptation whereby whites develop more protective melanin when exposed to UV.) -P.104

More serious is the fact that UV injures the immune system - the body’s machinery for fighting disease. -p.104

UV & DESTRUCTION OF LIFE
If increasing UV falls on the oceans, the damage is not restricted to the tiny one-celled plants that float near the surface of the water - the phytoplankton - that are the food of one-celled animals called the zooplankton, who are eaten in turn by little shrimp like crustaceans, who are eaten by small fish, who are eaten by large fish, who are eaten by dolphins, whales, seals, and people. The destruction of the little plants at the base of the food chain causes the entire chain to collapse. -p.104-105

CFCs
The effects of CFCs, once introduced into the air, will persist for about a century. -p.107

There’s a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer. It has shown up every spring since the late 1970s. While it heals itself in winter, the hole seems to last longer each spring. No scientist had predicted it. -p.108
<
The trouble is, we will have to stop producing all CFCs and then wait a century before the atmosphere cleans itself up. -p.111

Bromine is release to the air in halons used in fire extinguishers, and methyl bromide, use to fumigate soil and stored grain. -p.112

POPULATION CONCENTRATIONS
Most people on Earth live at northern midlatitudes. -p.114

CO2
Trees remove CO2 and convert it to wood and oxygen. -p.124

ICE PERIOD
Twenty thousand years ago, the city of Chicago was under a mile of ice. -p.129

TEMPERATURE VARIATION
A temperature change of only a few degrees can be serious business in planetary temperature. -p.129

Global warming does not by itself make bad weather. But is does heighten the chances of having bad weather. Bad weather certainly does not require global warming, but all computer models show that global warming should be accompanied by significant increases in bad weather - severe drought inland, severe storm systems and flooding near the coasts, both much hotter and much colder weather locally, all driven by a relatively modest increment in the average planetary temperature. This is why extreme cold weather in, say, Detroit in January is not the telling refutation of global warming that some newspaper editorial pages pretend. Bad weather can be very expensive. To take a single example, the American insurance industry alone suffered a net loss of some $50 billion in the wake of single hurricane (Andrew) in 1992, and that’s only a small fraction of the total 1992 losses. Natural disasters cost the United States over $100 billion a year. The world total is much larger. -p.133

METHANE (CH4)
Much methane is sequestered in bogs (which sometimes produces the eerily beautiful dancing lights called "will-o-the-wisps"). -p.137

5% v. 25%
With 5% of the world’s population, the United States uses nearly 25% of the world’s energy. -p.145

HALF- LIFE
The half-lives of many of the radioisotopes are centuries to millennia long. -p.149

Most nuclear power plants use or generate uranium and plutonium that can be employed to manufacture nuclear weapons. -p.150

FISSION vs. FUSION
There is another kind of nuclear power - not fission, where atomic nuclei are split apart, but fusion, where they are put together. In principle, fusion power plants might run off sea water - a virtually inexhaustible supply - generating no greenhouse gases, posing no dangers of radioactive waste, and wholly uninvolved with uranium and plutonium. -p.151

TREES, TREES, TREES
The only method of cooling down the greenhouse effect which seems both safe and reliable is to plant trees. Growing trees remove CO2 from the air. After they’re fully grown, of course, it would be missing the point to burn them; that would be undoing the very benefit we are seeking. Instead, forests should be planted and the trees, when fully grown, harvested and used, say, for building houses or furniture. Or just buried. But the amount of land worldwide that must be reforested in order for growing trees to make a major contribution is enormous, about the area of the United States. This can only be done as a collaborative enterprise of the human species. Instead, the human species is destroying an acre of forest every second. Everyone can plant tree - individuals, nations, industries. But especially, industry. Applied Energy Services in Arlington, Virginia, has built a coal-fired power plant in Connecticut; it is also planting trees in Guatemala that will remove from the Earth’s atmosphere more carbon dioxide than the company’s new facility will inject into the air over its operational lifetime. Shouldn’t lumber companies plant more forests - of the fast-growing, leafy variety useful for mitigating the greenhouse effect - than they cut down? What about the coal, oil, natural gas, petroleum, and automobile industries? Shouldn’t every company that puts CO2 into the atmosphere be engaged in removing it as well? Shouldn’t every citizen? What about planting trees at Christmastime? Or birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries. Our ancestors came from the trees, and we have a natural affinity for them. It is perfectly appropriate for us to plant more. -p. 158-159

NATURAL DISASTERS vs. INSURANCE COMPANIES
Violent storms and other weather extremes that are greenhouse-driven, floods, drought, and so forth might "bankrupt the industry," says the president of the Reinsurance Association of America. -p.160

From the time of the domestication of fire and the elaboration of stone tools, it was obvious that our skills could be used for evil as well as for good. -p.163

VISITS TO THE MOON
Twelve of us humans have walked on the Moon. -p.164

PROTECTING THE EARTH
Science and religion may differ about how the Earth was made, but we can agree that protecting it merits our profound attention and loving care. -p.172

EDUCATION
America has more young black men in jail than in college. -p.185

ABORTION
Pro-choicers hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere.
Pro-lifers hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or foetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. -p.198

Back alley abortion or the coat hanger? -p.206

What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life. -p.200

The Jewish Talmud teaches that the foetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments - rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words - contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. -p.204

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human.) -p.204

The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. -p.207

HUMAN THOUGHT
Our one great advantage, over other animals, the secret of our success, is thought - human thought. -p.211

The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. -p.212

Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. -p. 213

Since, on average, foetal thinking occurs even later than foetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester - except in cases of grave medical necessity - it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life. -p.214

When this article appeared in Parade it was accompanied by a box giving a 900 telephone number for the readers to express their views on the abortion issue. An astonishing 380,000 people called in. They were able to express the following four options:

"Abortion after the instant of conception is murder,"
"A woman has the right to choose abortion any time during pregnancy,"
"Abortion should be permitted within the first three months of pregnancy,"
"Abortion should be permitted within the first six months of pregnancy."

Parade is published on Sunday, and by Monday, opinions were well divided among these four options. Then Mr. Pat Robertson, a Christian fundamentalist evangelist and 1992 Republican Presidential candidate, appeared Monday on his regularly scheduled daily television program, urged his followers to pull Parade "Out of the garbage" and send back the clear message that killing a human zygote is murder. They did. The generally pro-choice attitude of most Americans - as repeatedly shown in demographically controlled opinion polls, and as had been reflected by the early 900 number results - was overwhelmed by political organization. -p.215

MORAL CODES
The codes of Ashoka (India), Hammurabi (Babylon), Lycurgus (Sparta), and Solon (Athens), which once held sway over mighty civilizations, are today largely defunct. -p.217

EVOLUTION OF PRESENT NATION-STATES
A million years ago, there were no nations on the planet. There were no tribes. The humans who were here were divided into small family groups of a few dozen people each. We wandered. That was the horizon of our identification, and itinerant family group. Since then, the horizons have expanded. From a handful of hunter-gatherers, to a tribe, to a horde, to a small city-state, to a nation, and today to immense nation-states. -p.240

LIFE EXPECTANCY
Life expectancy in the United States and Western Europe in 1901 was about 45 years, while today it is approaching 80 years.
Life expectancy is probably the single most effective index of quality of life: If you’re dead, you’re probably not having a good time. -p.247

NUTRITION
40,000 children die of starvation every day on our planet. -p.247

TECHNOLOGY
Radio, television, phonographs, audiotape players, compact discs, telephones, fax machines, and computer information networks, did not exist in 1900 and it has profoundly changed the face of popular culture. -p.247

GEOPHYSICS
In geophysics, plate tectonics was discovered - a set of conveyer belts under the Earth’s surface carrying continents from birth to death, and moving at a rate of about an inch a year. -p.252

OUR SUN & GALAXY
Our Sun is revealed to be in the remote outskirts of a vast, lens-shaped galaxy comprising some 400 billion other suns. At the beginning of the 20th century it was thought that the Milky Way was the only galaxy. We now recognize that there are a hundred billion others, all fleeing one another as if they are the remnants of an enormous explosion, the Big Bang. -p.255-256

The transforming power of love... -p.257

MYELODYSPLASIA
My red cells, which carry oxygen all over the body, and my white cells, which fight disease, were both severely depleted. -p.260

RUSSIAN ROULETTE
...That’s like playing Russian roulette with four cartridges instead of one in the cylinder... -p.261

Dictionnaire philosophique - Voltaire

2009-11-16T10:39:00.005-05:00

DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE
par
Voltaire (1694-1778)

Nous ne nous adressons ici qu’aux Arabes; ils se ventent de descendre d’Abraham par Ismaël; ils croient que ce patriarche bâtit la Mecque, et qu’il mourut dans cette ville. Le fait est que la race d’Ismaël a été infiniment plus favorisée de Dieu que la race de Jacob. L’une et l’autre race a produit à la vérité des voleurs; mais les voleurs arabes ont été prodigieusement supérieurs aux voleurs juifs. -p22

A ne juger des choses que par les exemples de nos histoires modernes, il serait assez difficile qu’Abraham eût été le père de deux nations si différentes; on nous dit qu’il était né en Chaldée, et qu’il était fils d’un pauvre potier, qui gagnait sa vie à faire des petites idoles de terre. Il n’est guère vraisemblable que le fils de ce potier soit allé fonder la Mecque à trois cents lieues de là sous le tropique, en passant par des déserts impraticables. -p22

La Genèse rapporte qu’Abraham avait 75 ans lorsqu’il sortit du pays de Haran après la mort de son père Tharé le potier : mais la même Genèse dit aussi que Tharé ayant engendré Abraham à 70 ans ce Tharé vécut jusqu’à 205 ans, et qu’Abraham ne partit de Haran qu’après la mort de son père. A ce compte il est clair par la Genèse même qu’Abraham était âgé de 135 ans quand il quitta la Mésopotamie. Il alla d’un pays idolâtre dans un autre pays idolâtre nommé Sichem en Palestine. Pourquoi y alla-t-il? Pourquoi quitta-t-il les bords fertiles de l’Euphrate pour une contrée aussi éloignée, aussi stérile et pierreuse que celle de Sichem? La langue chaldéenne devait être fort différente de celle de Sichem, ce n’était point un lieu de commerce; Sichem est éloigné de la Chaldée de plus de cent lieues; il faut passer des déserts pour y arriver; mais Dieu voulait qu’il fît ce voyage, il voulait lui montrer la terre que devaient occuper ses descendants plusieurs siècles après lui. L’esprit humain comprend avec peine les raisons d’un tel voyage.
A peine est-il arrivé dans le petit pays montagneux de Sichem que la famine l’en fait sortir. Il va en Égypte avec sa femme chercher de quoi vivre. Il y a deux cents lieues de Sichem à Memphis; est-il naturel qu’on aille demander du blé si loin et dans un pays dont on n’entend point la langue? Voilà d’étranges voyages entrepris à l’âge de près de 240 années. -p23

C’est un singulier exemple de la stupidité humaine, que nous ayons si longtemps regardé les Juifs comme une nation qui avait tout enseigné aux autres, tandis que leur historien Josèphe avoue lui-même le contraire.
Il est difficile de percer dans les ténèbres de l’antiquité; mais il est évident que tous les royaumes de l’Asie étaient très florissants avant que la horde vagabonde des Arabes appelé Juifs possédât un petit coin de terre en propre, avant qu’elle eût une ville, des lois, et une religion fixe. -p25

L’amour des garçons était si commun à Rome qu’on ne s’avisait pas de punir cette fadaise dans laquelle tout le monde donnait tête baissée. -p37

La vanité a toujours élevé les grands monuments. Ce fut par vanité que les hommes bâtirent la belle tour de Babel : «Allons, élevons une tour dont le sommet touche au ciel et rendons notre nom célèbre avant que nous soyons dispersés dans toute la terre. » L’entreprise fut faite au temps d’un nommé Phaleg, qui comptait le bonhomme Noé pour son cinquième aïeul. L’architecture et tous les arts qui l’accompagnent avaient fait, comme on voit, de grands progrès en cinq générations. Saint Jérôme, le même qui a vu des faunes et des satyres, n’avait pas vu plus que moi la tour de Babel; mais il assure qu’elle avait 20,000 pieds de hauteur. C’est bien peu de chose. L’ancien livre Facult, écrit par un des plus doctes Juifs, démontre que sa hauteur était de 81,000 pieds juifs; et il n’y a personne qui ne sache que le pied juif était à peu près de la longueur du pied grec. Cette dimension est bien plus vraisemblable que celle de Jérôme. Cette tour subsiste encore; mais elle n’est plus tout à fait si haute. Plusieurs voyageurs très véridiques l’ont vue; moi qui ne l’ai point vue, je n’en parlerai pas plus que d’Adam mon grand-père, avec qui je n’ai point eu l’honneur de converser. Mais consultez le R.P. dom Calmet : c’est un homme d’un esprit fin et d’une profonde philosophie; il vous expliquera la chose. Je ne sais pas pourquoi il est dit dans la Genèse que Babel signifie confusion; car Ba père dans les langues orientales, et Bel signifie Dieu; Babel signifie la ville de Dieu, la ville sainte. Les anciens donnaient ce nom à toutes leurs capitales. -p59

Baptême, mot grec qui signifie immersion. -p60

On était initié chez les chrétiens dès qu’on avait été plongé; avant ce temps, on n’était que catéchumène. -p61

Pierre Chrysologue, au cinquième siècle, imagina les limbes, espèce d’enfer mitigé, et proprement bord d’enfer, faubourg d’enfer, où vont les petits enfants morts sans baptême, et où étaient les patriarches avant la descente de Jésus-Christ aux enfers; de sorte que l’opinion que Jésus-Christ était descendu aux limbes, et non aux enfers, a prévalu depuis. -p61

L’empereur Julien le philosophe, dans son immortelle Satire des Césars, met ces paroles dans la bouche de Constance, fils de Constantin : « Quiconque se sent coupable de viol, de meurtre, de rapine, de sacrilège, et de tous les crimes les plus abominables, dès que je l’aurai lavé avec cette eau, il sera net et pur. »
C’est en effet cette fatale doctrine qui engagea tous les empereurs chrétiens et tous les grands de l’empire à différer leur baptême jusqu’à la mort. On croyait avoir trouvé le secret de vivre criminel, et de mourir vertueux.
Quelle étrange idée, tirée de la lessive, qu’un pot d’eau nettoie tous les crimes! -p62,63

Caractère : Du mot grec impression, gravure. C’est ce que la nature a gravé dans nous. -p73

Sixte-Quint était né pétulant, opiniâtre, altier, impétueux, vindicatif, arrogant. -p73

Pourquoi dans les jours d’abstinence l’Église romaine regarde-t-elle comme un crime de manger des animaux terrestres, et comme une bonne œuvre de se faire servir des soles et des saumons? Le riche papiste qui aura eu sur sa table pour cinq cents francs de poisson sera sauvé; et le pauvre, mourant de faim, qui aura mangé pour quatre sous de petit salé, sera damné! -p75

Prêtres idiots et cruels! à qui ordonnez-vous le carême? Est-ce aux riches? Ils se gardent bien de l’observer. Est-ce aux pauvres? Ils font carême toute l’année. Le malheureux cultivateur ne mange presque jamais de viande et n’a pas de quoi acheter du poisson. Fous que vous êtes, quand corrigerez-vous vos lois absurdes? -p75

Cette hiérarchie plaît beaucoup aux bonnes gens, qui croient voir le pape et ses cardinaux suivis des archevêques des évêques; après quoi viennent les curés, les vicaires, les simples prêtres, les diacres, les sous-diacres; puis paraissent les moines, et la marche est fermée par les capucins. -p107

Plusieurs savants ont marqué leur surprise de ne trouver dans l’historien Josèphe aucune trace de Jésus-Christ. -p114

Les savants se sont aussi fort tourmentés sur la différence de deux généalogies de Jésus-Christ. Saint Matthieu donne pour père à Joseph, Jacob; à Jacob, Mathan; à Mathan, Éléazar. Saint Luc au contraire dit que Joseph était fils d’Héli; Héli, de Matat; Matat, de Lévi; Lévi, de Janna, etc. Ils ne veulent pas concilier les cinquante six ancêtres que Luc donne à Jésus depuis Abraham, avec les quarante-deux ancêtres différents que Matthieu lui donne depuis le même Abraham. Et ils sont effarouchés que Matthieu, en parlant de quarante-deux générations n’en rapporte pourtant que quarante et une. -p116

Jésus ne baptisa jamais personne; il ne parla point des sept sacrements, il n’institua point de hiérarchie ecclésiastique de son vivant. Il cacha à ses contemporains qu’il était fils de Dieu, éternellement engendré, consubstantiel à Dieu, et que le Saint-Esprit procédait du Père et du Fils. Il ne dit point que sa personne était composée de deux natures et de deux volontés; il voulut que ces grands mystères fussent annoncés aux hommes dans la suite des temps, par ceux qui seraient éclairés des lumières du Saint-Esprit. -p116

Les Actes des Apôtres ne font aucune mention du voyage de Pierre en Italie. -p121

Il est dit que quand Marie fut enceinte en l’absence de son mari, et que son mari s’en plaignit, les prêtres firent boire de l’eau de jalousie à l’un et à l’autre, et que tous deux furent déclarés innocents. -p123

Le christianisme s’établit d’abord en Grèce. Les chrétiens y eurent à combattre une nouvelle secte de Juifs devenus philosophes à force de fréquenter les Grecs. -p126

...et les catéchumènes et énergumènes qui attendaient le baptême. -p127

L’empereur Constantin finit sa vie en 337. -p134

Les Phéniciens et les Palestiniens avouent qu’ils ont pris la circoncision des Égyptiens. Les Syriens, qui habitent aujourd’hui sur les rivages du Thermodon et de Parthénie, et les Macrons leurs voisin, avouent qu’il n’y a pas longtemps qu’ils se sont conformés à cette coutume d’Égypte; c’est par là principalement qu’ils sont reconnus pour Égyptiens d’origine. -p140

Après le premier concile de Nicée, composé de 317 évêques infaillibles, il s’en tint un autre à Rimini; et le nombre des infaillibles fut cette fois de 400, sans compter un détachement à Séleucie d’environ 200. Ces 600 évêques, après quatre mois de querelles, ôtèrent unanimement à Jésus sa consubstantialité. Elle lui a été rendue depuis, excepté chez les sociniens; ainsi tout va bien. -p144

Un des grands conciles est celui d’Éphèse, en 431; l’évêque de Constantinople Nestorius, grand persécuteur d’hérétiques, fut condamné lui-même comme hérétique, pour avoir soutenu qu’à la vérité Jésus était bien Dieu, mais que sa mère n’était pas absolument mère de Dieu, mais mère de Jésus. Ce fut saint Cyrille qui fit condamner Nestorius; mais aussi les partisans de Nestorius firent déposer saint Cyrille dans le même concile; ce qui embarrassa fort le Saint-Esprit. -p144

Autre grand concile de Latran, en 1215. Le pape Innocent III y dépouilla le comte de Toulouse de tous ses biens, en vertu de l’excommunication. C’est le premier concile qui ait parlé de transsubstantiation.
En 1245, concile général de Lyon, ville alors impériale, dans laquelle le pape Innocent IV excommunia l’empereur Frédéric II, et par conséquent le déposa, et lui interdit le feu et l’eau : c’est dans ce concile qu’on donna aux cardinaux un chapeau rouge, pour les faire souvenir qu’il faut se baigner dans le sang des partisans de l’empereur. -p145

Les chrétiens adoptèrent la confession dans les premiers siècles de l’Église, ainsi qu’ils prirent à peu près les rites de l’antiquité, comme les temples, les autels, l’encens, les cierges, les processions, l’eau lustrale, les habits sacerdotaux et plusieurs formules des mystères : le Sursum corda, l’Ite miss est, et tant d’autres. -p146

Nous avons traduit les génitoires par cuisse. Éliézer met la main sous la cuisse d’Abraham; Joseph met la main sous la cuisse de Jacob. Cette coutume était fort ancienne en Égypte. Les Égyptiens étaient si éloigné d’attacher de la turpitude à ce que nous n’osons ni découvrir ni nommer qu’ils portaient en procession une grande figure du membre viril nommé phallum, pour remercier les dieux de la bonté qu’ils ont de faire servir ce membre à la propagation du genre humain.
Tout cela prouve assez que nos bienséances ne sont pas les bienséances des autres peuples. -p186

Lorsqu’une fois le fanatisme a gangrené un cerveau, la maladie est presque incurable. -p190

Les douleurs de l’enfantement ne sont considérables que dans les femmes délicates; celles qui sont accoutumées au travail accouchent très aisément, surtout dans les climats chaud. -p210

Le mot kerub signifie bœuf. Un bœuf armé d’un sabre enflammé fait une étrange figure à une porte. Mais les Juifs représentèrent depuis des anges en forme de bœufs et d’éperviers, quoiqu’il leur fût défendu de ne faire aucune figure. Ils prirent visiblement ces bœufs et ces éperviers des Égyptiens, dont ils imitèrent tant de choses. Les Égyptiens vénérèrent d’abord le bœuf comme le symbole de l’agriculture, et l’épervier comme celui des vents; mais ils ne firent jamais un portier d’un bœuf. -p211

« Les dieux, Éloïm, voyant que les filles des hommes étaient belles, prirent pour épouses celles qu’ils choisirent. » -p212

Les Romains eurent leurs douze grands dieux, six mâles et six femelles, qu’ils nommèrent Dii majorum gentium : Jupiter, Neptune, Apollon, Vulcain, Mars, Mercure, Junon, Vesta, Minerve, Cérès, Vénus, Diane. Pluton fut alors oublié : Vesta prit sa place.
Ensuite venaient les dieux minorum gentium; les dieux indigètes, les héros, comme Bacchus, Hercule, Esculape; les dieux infernaux, Pluton, Proserpine; ceux de la mer, comme TTéthys, Amphitrite, les Néréides, Glaucus; puis les Dryades, les Naïades; les dieux des jardins, ceux des bergers. Il y en avait pour chaque profession, pour chaque action de la vie, pour les enfants, pour les filles nubiles, pour les mariées, pour les accouchées; on eut le dieu Pet. On divinisa enfin les empereurs. Ni ces empereurs, ni le dieu Pet, ni la déesse Pertunda, ni Priape, ni Rumilia la déesse de tétons, ni Stercutius le dieu de la garde-robe, ne furent à la vérité regardés comme les maîtres du ciel et de la terre. Les empereurs eurent quelquefois des temples, les petits dieux pénates n’en eurent point; mais tous eurent leur figure, leur idole. -p232

Il est évident que les prêtres attachaient le plus de divinité qu’ils pouvaient à leurs statues, pour s’attirer plus d’offrandes. On sait que les philosophes réprouvaient ces superstitions, que les guerriers s’en moquaient, que les magistrats les toléraient, et que le peuple, toujours absurde, ne savait ce qu’il faisait. C’est en peu de mots l’histoire de toutes les nations à qui Dieu ne s’est pas fait contremaître. -p233

Ensuite un certain bœuf Apis, un certain chien nommé Anubis, furent adorés; on mangea toujours du bœuf et des oignons; mais il est difficile de savoir ce que pensaient les vieilles femmes d’Égypte des oignons sacrés et des bœufs. -p233

Les premières offrandes furent des fruits. Bientôt après il fallut des animaux pour la table des prêtres; ils les égorgeaient eux-mêmes; ils devinrent bouchers et cruels; enfin ils introduisirent l’usage horrible de sacrifier des victimes humaines, et surtout des enfants et des jeunes filles. Jamais les Chinois, ni les Parsis, ni les Indiens, ne furent coupables de ces abominations; mais, à Hiérapolis en Égypte, au rapport de Porphyre, on immola des hommes.
-p234

Tout est miracle dans l’histoire du déluge : miracle que quarante jours de pluie aient inondé les quatre parties du monde, et que l’eau se soit élevée de quinze coudées au-dessus de toutes les plus hautes montagnes; miracle qu’il y ait eu des cataractes, des portes, des ouvertures dans le ciel; miracle que tous les animaux se soient rendus dans l’arche de toutes les partie du monde; miracle que Noé ait trouvé de quoi les nourrir pendant dix mois; miracle que tous les animaux aient tenu dans l’arche avec leurs provision; miracle que la plupart n’y soient pas morts; miracle qu’ils aient trouvé de quoi se nourrir en sortant de l’arche; miracle encore, mais d’une autre espèce qu’un nommé Le Pelletier ait cru expliquer comment tous les animaux ont pu tenir et se nourrir naturellement dans l’arche de Noé.
Or l’histoire du déluge étant la chose la plus miraculeuse dont on ait jamais entendu parler, il serait insensé de l’expliquer : ce sont de ces mystères qu’on croit par la foi; et la foi consiste à croire ce que la raison ne croit pas, ce qui est encore un autre miracle.
Ainsi l’histoire du déluge universel est comme celle de la tour de Babel, de l’ânesse de Balaam, de la chute de Jéricho au son des trompettes, des eaux changées en sang, du passage de la mer Rouge, et de tous les prodiges que Dieu daigna faire en faveur des élus de son peuple; ce sont des profondeurs que l’esprit humain ne peut sonder. -p237

Si les Hébreux, qui ont traduit le Pentateuque de l’arabe, se sont servis du mot Jéhovah pour signifier Dieu, ils empruntèrent ce mot des Phéniciens, et des Égyptiens, comme les vrais savants n’en doutent pas. Le mot de Satan n’était point hébreu, il était chaldéen; on le sait assez. -p242

Les Hébreux n’ont jamais eu la moindre connaissance de l’astronomie, ils n’avaient pas même de mot pour exprimer cette science; tout ce qui regarde les arts de l’esprit leur était inconnu, jusqu’au terme de géométrie. -p244

C’est une erreur absurde d’avoir imaginé que les Juifs fussent les seuls qui reconnussent un Dieu unique; c’était la doctrine de presque tout l’Orient; et les Juifs en cela ne furent que des plagiaires, comme ils le furent en tout. -p244

Il est démontré que ce petit peuple ne put avoir des annales que lorsqu’il eut un gouvernement stable; qu’il n’eut ce gouvernement que sous ses rois; que son jargon ne se forma qu’avec le temps, d’un mélange de phénicien et d’arabe. -p244

L’histoire de Joseph, à ne la considérer que comme un objet de curiosité et de littérature, est un des plus précieux monuments de l’antiquité qui soient parvenus jusqu’à nous. Elle paraît être le modèle de tous les écrivains orientaux; elle est plus attendrissante que l’Odyssée d’Homère, car un héros qui pardonne est plus touchant que celui qui se venge. -p245

On rend quelque fois justice bien tard. Deux ou trois auteurs, ou mercenaires, ou fanatiques, parlent du barbare et de l’efféminé Constantin comme d’un Dieu, et traitent de scélérat le juste, le sage, le grand Julien. Tous les autres copistes des premiers, répètent la flatterie et la calomnie. Elles deviennent presque un article de foi. Enfin le temps de la saine critique arrive, et, au bout de quatorze cents ans, des hommes éclairés revoient le procès que l’ignorance avait jugé. On voit dans Constantin un heureux ambitieux qui se moque de Dieu et des hommes. Il a l’insolence de feindre que Dieu lui a envoyé dans les airs une enseigne qui lui assure la victoire. Il se beigne dans le sang de tous ses parents, et il s’endort dans la mollesse; mais il était chrétien, on le canonisa. -p249

Il n’y a aucun bon code dans aucun pays. La raison en est évidente; les lois ont été faites à mesure, selon les temps, les lieux, les besoins, etc.
Quand les besoins ont changé, les lois qui sont demeurées sont devenues ridicules. Ainsi la loi qui défendait de manger du porc et de boire du vin était très raisonnable en Arabie, où le porc et le vin sont pernicieux; elle est absurde à Constantinople. -267,268

Un miracle, selon l’énergie du mot, est une chose admirable. En ce cas, tout est miracle. L’ordre prodigieux de la nature, la rotation de cent millions de globes autour d’un million de soleils, l’activité de la lumière, la vie des animaux sont des miracles perpétuels.
Plusieurs physiciens soutiennent qu’en ce sens il n’y a point de miracles; et voici leurs arguments.
Un miracle est la violation des lois mathématiques, divines, immuables, éternelles. Par ce seul exposé, un miracle est une contradiction dans les termes. -p289

Les philosophes chrétiens disent : « Nous croyons aux miracles opérés dans notre sainte religion; nous les croyons par la foi, et non par notre raison, que nous nous gardons bien d’écouter; car, lorsque la foi parle, on sait assez que la raison ne doit pas dire un seul mot. Nous avons une croyance ferme et entière dans les miracles de Jésus-Christ et des apôtres. » -p291

MOÏSE
Est-il bien vrai qu’il y ait eu un Moïse? Si un homme qui commandait à la nature entière eût existé chez les Égyptiens, de si prodigieux événements n’auraient-ils pas fait la partie principale de l’histoire d’Égypte? Sanchoniathon, Manéthon, Mégasthène, Hérodote n’en auraient-ils pas parlé? Josèphe l’historien a recueilli tous les témoignages possibles en faveur des Juifs; il n’ose dire qu’aucun des auteurs qu’il cite n’ait dit un seul mot des miracles de Moïse. Quoi! Le Nil aura été changé en sang, un ange aura égorgé tous les premiers-nés dans l’Égypte, la mer se sera ouverte, ses eaux auront été suspendues à droite et à gauche, et nul auteur n’en aura parlé! et les nations auront oublié ces prodiges! et il n’y aura qu’un petit peuple d’esclaves barbares qui nous aura conté ces histoires, des milliers d’années après l’événement.
Quel est donc ce Moïse inconnu à la terre entière jusqu’au temps où un Ptolémée eut la curiosité de faire traduire en grec les écrits des Juifs? Il y avait un grand nombre de siècles que les fables orientales attribuaient à Bacchus tout ce que les Juifs ont dit de Moïse. Bacchus avait passé la mer Rouge à pied sec, Bacchus avait changé les eaux en sang, Bacchus avait journellement opéré des miracles avec sa verge : tous ces faits étaient chantés dans les orgies de Bacchus avant qu’on eût le moindre commerce avec les Juifs, avant qu’on sût seulement si ce pauvre peuple avait des livres. N’est-il pas de la plus extrême vraisemblance que ce peuple si nouveau, si longtemps errant, si tard connu, établi si tard en Palestine, prît avec la langue phénicienne les fables phéniciennes, sur lesquelles il enchérit encore ainsi que font tous les imitateurs grossiers? Un peuple si pauvre, si ignorant, si étranger dans tous les arts, pouvait-il faire autre chose que de copier ses voisins? Ne sait-on pas que jusqu’au nom d’Adonaï, d’Ihaho, d’Eloï, ou d’Eloa, qui signifia Dieu chez la nation juive, tout était phénicien? -p294,295

Plusieurs savants ont cru que le Pentateuque ne peut avoir été écrit par Moïse. Ils disent que par l’Écriture même il est avéré que le premier exemplaire connu fut trouvé du temps du roi Josias, et que cet unique exemplaire fut apporté au roi par le secrétaire Saphan. Or, entre Moïse et cette aventure du secrétaire Saphan, il y a 867 années par le comput hébraïque. Car Dieu apparut à Moïse dans le buisson ardent l’an du monde 2213, et le secrétaire Saphan publia le livre de la loi l’an du monde 3380. Ce livre trouvé sous Josias fut inconnu jusqu’au retour de la captivité de Babylone; et il est dit que ce fut Esdras, inspiré de Dieu, qui mit en lumière toutes les saintes Écritures.
Or que ce soit Esdras ou un autre qui ait fait ce livre, cela est absolument indifférent dès que le livre est inspiré. Il n’est point dit dans le Pentateuque que Moïse en soit l’auteur : il serait donc permis de l’attribuer à un autre homme à qui l’Esprit divin l’aura dicté, si l’Église n’avait pas d’ailleurs décidé que le livre est de Moïse.
Quelques contradicteurs ajoutent qu’aucun prophète n’a cité les livres du Pentateuque, qu’il n’en est question ni dans les psaumes, ni dans les livres attribués à Salomon, ni dans Jérémie, ni dans Isaïe, ni enfin dans aucun livre canonique. Les mots qui répondent à ceux de Genèse, Exode, Nombres, Lévitique, Deutéronome, ne se trouvent dans aucun autre écrit ni de l’ancien ni du nouveau testament.
D’autres, plus hardis, ont fait les question suivantes :
1° En quelle langue Moïse aurait-il écrit dans un désert sauvage? Ce ne pouvait être qu’en égyptien; car par ce livre même on voit que Moïse et tout son peuple étaient nés en Égypte. Il est probable qu’ils ne parlaient pas d’autre langue. Les Égyptiens ne se servaient pas encore de papyrus; on gravait des hiéroglyphes sur le marbre ou sur le bois. Il est même dit que les tables des commandements furent gravées sur la pierre. Il aurait donc fallu graver cinq volumes sur des pierres polies, ce qui demandait des efforts et un temps prodigieux.
2° Est-il vraisemblable que, dans un désert où le peuple juif n’avait ni cordonnier, ni tailleur, et où le Dieu de l’univers était obligé de faire un miracle continuel pour conserver les vieux habits et les vieux souliers des Juifs, il se soit trouvé des hommes assez habiles pour graver les cinq livres du Pentateuque sur le marbre ou sur le bois? On dira qu’on trouva bien des ouvriers qui firent un veau d’or, et qui réduisirent ensuite l’or en poudre; qui construisirent le tabernacle, qui l’ornèrent de trente-quatre colonnes d’airain avec des chapiteaux d’argent; qui ourdirent et qui brodèrent des voiles de lin, d’hyacinthe, de pourpre et d’écarlate; mais cela même fortifie l’opinion des contradicteurs. Ils répondent qu’il n’est pas possible que dans un désert où l’on manquait de tout, on ait fait des ouvrages si recherchés; qu’il aurait fallu commencer par faire des souliers et des tuniques; que ceux qui manquent du nécessaire ne donnent point dans le luxe; et que c’est une contradiction évidente de dire qu’il y ait eu des fondeurs, des graveurs, des sculpteurs, des teinturiers, des brodeurs, quand on n’avait ni habits, ni sandales, ni pain.
3° Si Moïse avait écrit le premier chapitre de la Genèse, aurait-il été défendu à tous les jeunes gens de lire ce premier chapitre? Aurait-on porté si peu de respect au législateur? Si c’était Moïse qui eût dit que Dieu punit l’iniquité des pères jusqu’à la quatrième génération, Ézéchiel aurait-il osé dire le contraire?
4° Si Moïse avait écrit le Lévitique, aurait-il pu se contredire dans le Deutéronome? Le Lévitique défend d’épouser la femme de son frère, le Deutéronome l’ordonne.
5° Moïse aurait-il parlé dans son livre de villes qui n’existaient pas de son temps? Aurait-il dit que des villes qui étaient pour lui à l’orient du Jourdain étaient à l’occident?
6° Aurait-il assigné quarante-huit villes aux lévites dans un pays où il n’y a jamais eu dix villes, et dans un désert où il a toujours erré sans avoir une maison?
7° Aurait-il prescrit des règles pour les rois juïfs, tandis que non seulement il n’y avait point de rois chez ce peuple, mais qu’ils étaient en horreur, et qu’il n’était pas probable qu’il y en eût jamais? Quoi! Moïse aurait donné des préceptes pour la conduite des rois qui ne vinrent qu’environ huit cents années après lui, et il n’aurait rien dit pour les juges et les pontifes qui lui succédèrent? Cette réflexion ne conduit-elle pas à croire que le Pentateuque a été composé du temps des rois, et que les cérémonies instituées par Moïse n’avaient été qu’une tradition? -p295,296

Lequel vaut le mieux, que notre patrie soit un État monarchique ou un État républicain? Il y a quatre mille ans qu’on agite cette question. Demandez la solution aux riches, ils aiment tous mieux l’aristocratie; interroges le peuple, il veut la démocratie : il n’y a que les rois qui préfèrent la royauté. -p308
Paul était-il citoyen romain, comme il s’en vante? S’il était de Tharsis en Cilicie, Tharsis ne fut colonie romaine que cent ans après lui; tous les antiquaires en sont d’accord. S’il était de la petite ville ou bourgade de Giscale, comme saint Jérôme l’a cru, cette ville était dans la Galilée; et certainement les Galiléens n’étaient pas citoyens romains. -p308

Il n’est pas même conté dans la Genèse que Dieu ait condamné Adam à la mort pour avoir avalé une pomme. Il lui dit bien : « Tu mourras très certainement le jour que tu en mangeras »; mais cette même Genèse fait vivre Adam neuf cent trente ans après ce déjeuner criminel. Les animaux, les plantes, qui n’avaient point mangé de ce fruit, moururent dans le temps prescrit par la nature. L’homme est né pour mourir, ainsi que tout le reste. -p310

Les premiers chapitres de la Genèse (en quelque temps qu’ils fussent composés) furent regardés par tous les savants juifs comme une allégorie, et même comme une fable très dangereuse, puisqu’il fut défendu de la lire avant l’âge de vingt-cinq ans. P.310

La société chrétienne ne prit une forme que vers la fin du second siècle. -p318

Quant à la personne de Pierre, il faut avouer que Paul n’est pas le seul qui ait été scandalisé de sa conduite; on lui a souvent résisté en face, à lui et à ses successeurs. Ce Paul lui reprochait aigrement de manger des viandes défendues, c’est-à-dire du porc, du boudin, du lièvre, des anguilles, de l’ixion et du griffon; Pierre se défendait en disant qu’il avait vu le ciel ouvert vers la sixième heure, et une grande nappe qui descendait des quatre coins du ciel, laquelle était toute remplie d’anguilles, de quadrupèdes et d’oiseau, et que la voix d’un ange avait crié : « Tuez et mangez. » C’est apparemment cette même voix qui a crié à tant de pontifes : « Tuez tout, et manger la substance du peuple », dit Wollaston. -p318

Parmi tant de papes ambitieux, sanguinaires et débauchés, il y a eu un Alexandre VI, dont le nom n’est prononcé qu’avec la même horreur que ceux des Néron et des Caligula. -p320

C’est par préjugé que vous respecterez un homme revêtu de certains habits, marchant gravement, parlant de même. -p321

Jonas fut avalé par un poisson; il est vrai qu’il ne resta dans son ventre que trois jours et trois nuits; mais c’est toujours passer soixante et douze heures for mal à son aise. -p325

Ce n’est pas qu’on ne puisse absolument parler sans dents; on a vu de vieilles édentées très bavardes. -p325

Un certain savant donne de fortes raisons pour prouver que le polythéisme a été la première religion des hommes, et qu’on a commencé à croire plusieurs dieux avant que la raison fût assez éclairée pour ne reconnaître qu’un seul Être suprême. -p328

Il faut bien donner un nom à cette puissance qui tonne, qui grêle sur nous, qui fait mourir nos enfants. Appelons-la donc chef, maître, seigneur; cette puissance est donc appelée Monseigneur. C’est probablement la raison pour laquelle les premiers Égyptiens appelèrent leur dieu Knef; les Syriens, Adonaï; les peuples voisins, Baal, ou Bel, ou Melch, ou Moloch, les Scythes, Papée : tous mots qui signifient seigneur, maître. -p329

La religion théologique est la source de toutes les sottises et de tous les troubles imaginables; c’est la mère du fanatisme et de la discorde civile; c’est l’ennemie du genre humain. -p336

La croyance en la résurrection est beaucoup plus ancienne que les temps historiques. Athalide, fille de Mercure, pouvait mourir et ressusciter à son gré; Esculape rendit la vie à Hippolyte, Hercule à Alceste; Pélops, ayant été haché en morceau par son père, fut ressuscité par les dieux. Platon raconte qu’Hérès ressuscita pour quinze jours seulement. -p337

On servait par jour, pour le dîner et le souper de la maison de Salomon, cinquante bœufs et cent moutons, et de la volaille et du gibier à proportion; ce qui peut aller par jour à soixante mille livres pesant de viande : cela fait une bonne maison.
On ajoute qu’il avait 40,000 écuries et autant de remises pour ses chariots de guerre, mais seulement 12,000 écuries pour sa cavalerie. Voilà bien des chariots pour un pays de montagnes; et c’était un grand appareil pour un roi dont le prédécesseur n’avait eu qu’une mule à son couronnement, et pour un terrain qui ne nourrit que des ânes. -p343

On n’a pas voulu qu’un prince qui avait tant de chariots se bornât à un petit nombre de femmes; on lui en donne sept cents qui portaient le nom de reines; et ce qui est étrange, c’est qu’il n’avait que trois cents concubines, contre la coutume des rois, qui ont d’ordinaire plus de maîtresses que de femmes. Si ces histoires ont été dictées par le Saint-Esprit, avouons qu’il aime le merveilleux.
-p343

Salomon aurait-il dit : « Ne regardez point le vin quand il paraît clair, et que sa couleur brille dans le verre »?
Je doute fort qu’on ait eu des verres à boire du temps de Salomon; c’est une invention fort récente; toute l’antiquité buvait dans des tasses de bois ou de métal. -p345

Notre religion chrétienne est fondée sur la juive, mais non pas sur tous les livres que les Juifs ont faits. -p348

Toute secte, en quelque genre que ce puisse être, est le ralliement du doute et de l’erreur. Scotistes, thomistes, réaux, nominaux, papistes, calvinistes, molinistes, jansénistes ne sont que des noms de guerre. -p349

La superstition née dans le paganisme, adoptée par le judaïsme, infecta l’Église chrétienne dès les premiers temps. Tous les pères de l’Église, sans exception, crurent au pouvoir de la magie. L’Église condamna toujours la magie, mais elle y crut toujours : elle n’excommunia point les sorciers comme des fous qui étaient trompés, mais comme des hommes qui étaient réellement en commerce avec les diables.
Aujourd’hui la moitié de l’Europe croit que l’autre a été longtemps et est encore superstitieuse. Les protestants regardent les reliques, les indulgences, les macérations, les prières pour les morts, l’eau bénite, et presque tous les rites de l’Église romaine comme une démence superstitieuse. La superstition, selon eux, consiste à prendre des pratiques inutiles pour des pratiques nécessaires. -p358

Les quakers sont les plus superstitieux de tous aux yeux des autres chrétiens. -p359

Quiconque dans son testament ne laissait pas une partie de son bien à l’Église était excommunié et privé de la sépulture. Cela s’appelait mourir déconfès, c’est-à-dire ne confessant pas la religion chrétienne. -p359

Le théiste est un homme fermement persuadé de l’existence d’un Être suprême aussi bon que puissant, qui a formé tous les êtres étendus, végétants, sentants, et réfléchissants; qui perpétue leur espèce, qui punit sans cruauté les crimes, et récompense avec bonté les actions vertueuses. -p361

Constantin commença par donner un édit qui permettait toutes les religions; il finit par persécuter.

Dès la fin du 1er siècle on peut compter trente sectes de chrétiens dans l’Asie Mineure, dans la Syrie, dans Alexandrie, et même dans Rome. -p366

Jésus s’abstenait du porc parce qu’il est immonde, et du lapin parce qu’il rumine et qu’il n’a point le pied fendu; nous mangeons hardiment du porc parce qu’il n’est point pour nous immonde, et mangeons du lapin qui a le pied fendu, et qui ne rumine pas. -p367

Les Français qui passent, je ne sais pourquoi, pour un peuple fort humain, s’étonnent que les Anglais aient eu l’inhumanité de nous prendre tout le Canada. -p370

Néron, le pape Alexandre VI, et d’autres monstres de cette espèce, ont répandu des bienfaits; je réponds hardiment qu’ils furent vertueux ce jour-là. -p374

Absurdités de la Bible

2007-11-14T14:48:00.008-05:00

Adam et Ève, Caïn et Abel (Gen. 4)

De son union avec Adam, Ève mit au monde deux fils : Caïn et Abel. Abel devint berger et Caïn cultivateur. Dieu préféra Abel à Caïn parce qu’il lui offrait des agneaux de son troupeau alors que Caïn offrait des produits de la terre et cela n’était autant apprécié de Dieu. [Dieu végétarien?] Caïn en éprouva un profond dépit et il tua son frère Abel. Caïn partit habiter au pays de Nod à l’est d’Éden, loin de la présence de Dieu [pourtant "Dieu est partout"…].

De son union avec son mari, la femme de Caïn devint enceinte et mit au monde Hénok. [Où diable Caïn a-t-il dénicher une femme? Ils n’étaient que trois sur la planète depuis l’assassinat d’Abel]. Enfin Adam mourut à l’âge de 930 ans mais on ne parle plus de Caïn, ni de son sort, ni de sa mort.

Animaux purs et animaux impurs (Lev 11)

Dieu dit à Moïse et Aaron de communiquer aux Israélites les instructions suivantes:
« Parmi les animaux terrestres, vous pouvez manger ceux qui ont des sabots fendus et qui ruminent. Mais vous ne devez pas manger ceux qui ont seulement des sabots fendus ou qui ruminent seulement; ainsi vous considérerez comme impurs les animaux suivants :
- le chameau, car il rumine, mais n’a pas de sabots;
- le daman, car il rumine, mais n’a pas de sabots; [espèce de lapin]
- le lièvre, car il rumine, mais n’a pas de sabots;
[Mon cher Dieu le daman et le lièvre sont des rongeurs et non des ruminants!]
- le porc, car il a des sabots fendus, mais il ne rumine pas.
[C’est pourtant si délicieux un p’tit rôti de lard piqué à l’ail…ou bien un mishoui au petit cochon de lait…Dieu n’a certes pas goûté à ces délicieux mets qu’il a lui-même créés!
Ne consommez pas la viande de ces animaux-là et ne touchez même pas leurs cadavres; considérez-les comme impurs. »

« Parmi les animaux aquatiques, vous pouvez manger ceux qui ont des nageoires et des écailles, mais abstenez-vous de manger ceux qui en sont dépourvus.
[Adieu cuisses de grenouille, pétoncles, crabes et tous les bons fruits de mer!]
« Parmi les oiseaux, ayez en horreur et ne consommez pas les oiseaux rapaces en général ainsi que les oiseaux charognards.
« Ayez en horreur les insectes pourvus d’ailes et de pattes. Toutefois vous pouvez manger certaines catégories d’insectes sauteurs comme certaines sauterelles, criquets et autres.

« Le contact avec certaines bêtes rend l’homme impur: quiconque touche leur cadavre est impur jusqu’au soir;
Quiconque transporte leur cadavre doit laver ses vêtements, il reste également impur jusqu’au soir.

Les patriarches vécurent très longtemps (Gen 5.1-32 et Gen 11.10-31)
Voici la liste des descendants d’Adam :

Le jour où Dieu créa les êtres humains il les fit à sa ressemblance.[??] Il les créa homme et femme, il les bénit et leur donna le nom d’êtres humains au jour même de leur création.

A l’âge de 130 ans Adam eut un autre fils [dans la bible c’est l’homme qui a le crédit de la paternité, sa compagne qui a fait le travail pendant 9 mois est ignorée et la plupart du temps ce sont des fils qui lui ressemblaient tout à fait (…)]. Il l’appela Seth. Après la naissance de Seth Adam vécu encore 800 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 930 ans, il mourut.[ Yétait temps! ]

A l’âge de 105 ans Seth eut un fils, Énos. Après la naissance d’Énos Seth vécut encore 807 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 912 ans, il mourut.

A l’âge de 90 ans Énos eut un fils, Quénan. Après la naissance de Quénan Énos vécut encore 815 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 905 ans, il mourut.

A l’âge de 70 ans Quénan eu un fils Melaléel. Après la naissance de Malaléel Quénan vécut encore 840 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 910 ans, il mourut.

A l’âge de 65 ans Malaléel eut un fils, Yéred. Après la naissance de Yéred Malaléel vécut encore 850 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 895 ans, il mourut.

A l’âge de 162 ans Yéred eut un fils, Hénok. [Yétait certainement « raide »] Après la naissance d’Hénok Yéred vécut encore 800 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en 962 ans, il mourut.

A l’âge de 65 ans Hénok eut un fils, Matusalem. Après la naissance de Matusalem Hénok vécut 300 ans, en communion avec Dieu. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Sa vie dura 365 ans. Il vécut en communion avec Dieu, puis il disparut, car Dieu l’enleva auprès de lui.

A l’âge de 187 ans Matusalem eut un fils, Lémek. Après la naissance de Lémek Matusalem vécut encore 782 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 969 ans, il mourut.

Après la naissance de Noé Lémek vécut encore 595 ans. Il eut d’autres fils et des filles. Après avoir vécu en tout 777 ans, il mourut.

Un jour Dieu se dit : « Je ne peux pas laisser les hommes profiter indéfiniment du souffle de vie que je leur ai donné; ils ne sont après tout que des êtres mortels. Désormais ils ne vivront pas plus de 120 ans. »

Mais Dieu a la mémoire courte car en Gen 11.10-31 les patriarches de Sem à Abraham vivent encore aussi longtemps.

Heureusement qu’ils moururent tous avant l’instauration de la Pension de vieillesse du Canada et de la Régie des Rentes!

La génétique biblique (Gen 30.25-42)

Jacob, fils d’Isaac et Rebecca, épouse ses deux cousines, Léa et Rachel, filles de son oncle Laban, frère de Rebecca.

Pour mériter Rachel, la cadette qu’il convoite avec ardeur, Jacob doit travailler 7 ans pour Laban à s’occuper des bêtes de ce dernier.

Au moment du mariage, Laban lui substitue Léa, donnant comme raison que la coutume exige le mariage de l’aînée avant la cadette. Il doit donc travailler un autre 7 ans pour mériter Rachel qu’il aime tant.

Rachel stérile, Léa fertile mais « mal aimée » Jacob doit forniquer avec Bila la servante de Rachel, sur une suggestion de cette dernière, pour lui donner des descendants qu’elle adoptera, ensuite ce fut au tour de Zilpa la servante de Léa de forniquer avec Jacob quant cette dernière fut passée date. C’était la coutume dans ce temps-là de forniquer avec les servantes et même avec les enfants. Lot eut des enfants avec ses deux filles…(Gen 19.30-36) Abraham, le grand-père de Jacob dut forniquer avec Agar la servante égyptienne de son épouse Sarah stérile. (Mais que le dieu de la Bible rendit féconde à l’âge de 90 ans pour donner naissance à Isaac sur une « opération » du saint-esprit!)

Moutons et chèvres à la toison rayée, tachetée ou de couleur foncée sont le salaire de Jacob pour prendre soin du troupeau de Laban.

Voyant cela, Jacob fabrique des baguettes rayées à partir de branches de peuplier en enlevant des bandes d’écorce. Il place ces baguettes au fond des abreuvoirs sous les yeux des animaux qui s’accouplent souvent en s’abreuvant. Ainsi ils donnaient naissance à des animaux rayés ou tachetés qui semble-t-il étaient indésirables dans le troupeau de Laban.

Lorsque des animaux robustes venaient s’abreuver, Jacob plaçait les « baguettes génétiques » au fond des abreuvoirs. Quand les bêtes étaient chétives, il ne mettait pas de baguettes, ainsi les bêtes chétives mais de couleur unie étaient pour Laban et les robustes pour Jacob indépendamment de la couleur de leur toison.

Si Mendel avait étudié ce passage de la Bible il ne se serait peut-être pas compliqué l’existence avec des petits pois au milieu du 19ème siècle…

Résultat de l’accouplement des animaux regardant les baguettes rayées : des animaux rayés ou tachetés sont la propriété de Jacob qui s’enrichit de cette façon et se venge ainsi de Laban qui l’a exploité.

Très subtil cette revanche de Jacob n’est-ce pas? Vive la génétique biblique!

Accouplements divers. (Lev 19. 19)
Dieu ordonna à Moïse de communiquer aux Israélites les instructions suivantes :
« Vous observerez également ces lois-ci : N’accouplez pas, dans vos troupeaux, deux bêtes d’espèces différentes; ne semez pas dans vos champs deux semences différentes, ne portez pas de vêtement tissé de deux sortes de fils.
« Ne taillez pas en rond le bord de votre chevelure et ne vous rasez pas la barbe sur les côtés.

« Si un homme couche avec un autre homme comme on couche avec une femme, ils se rendent tous les deux coupables d’une action monstrueuse et doivent être mis à mort. Ils sont seuls responsables de leur mort.

« Si un homme a des relations avec une bête, il doit être mis à mort, et on abattra la bête.

« Si un homme couche avec une femme qui a ses règles, ils seront tous les deux exclus du peuple d’Israël pour avoir, d’un commun accord, découvert la source de son sang.

Empêchement au sacerdoce (Lev 21. 18-24)
Dieu dit à Moïse de communiquer à Aaron les prescriptions suivantes :

« Dans les générations à venir, aucun de tes descendants atteint d’un défaut physique ne sera autorisé à s’approcher de l’autel pour m’y offrir ma nourriture.
Aucun infirme n’est admis à ce service, que ce soit un aveugle, un boiteux, un homme défiguré ou difforme, un homme atteint d’une fracture de la jambe ou du bras, un bossu ou un gringalet, un homme affligé d’une tache à l’œil, un homme souffrant d’une maladie de la peau, ou encore un eunuque. Aucun de tes descendants atteints d’un défaut physique ne doit donc s’approcher de l’autel pour m’y offrir ma nourriture. A cause de son infirmité, les tâches habituelles du prêtre lui sont interdites. Il peut manger de ce qui m’est offert en sacrifice, aussi bien les aliments très saints que les aliments saints; mais à cause de son infirmité, il ne doit pas s’approcher du rideau du sanctuaire ni s’avancer jusqu’à l’autel. Il ne faut pas qu’il profane mon sanctuaire, car je suis le Seigneur, et c’est moi qui consacre les prêtres à mon service. »

Tarif pour les voeux (Lev 27)
Dieu dit à Moïse de communiquer aux Israélites les prescriptions suivantes :
« Si quelqu’un a fait vœu d’offrir une personne à Dieu, il peut s’acquitter de son vœu en payant une somme d’argent, d’après le tarif que voici :
« Personne de 20 à 60 ans : cinquante pièces d’argent - en monnaie du sanctuaire - pour un homme, trente pièces pour une femme.
« Enfant de 5 à 20 ans : vingt pièces pour un garçon, dix pièces pour une fille.
« Enfant de 1 mois à 5 ans : cinq pièces pour un garçon, trois pièces pour une fille.
[Comme on peut le constater, la dévaluation de la femme vient de très loin, et c’est ainsi dans toutes les "saintes écritures" de la majorité des religions ou superstitions. Les saintes écritures sont la prérogatives de l’homme!]

Notes de lecture -Index

2007-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

1. Forgery in Christianity - Joseph Wheless

2. Freethinkers - Susan Jacoby

3. Is It God’s Word - Joseph Wheless

4. The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine

5. The Best of Robert Ingersoll

6. Why I Am Not a Christian - Bertrand Russell

7. Why I Am Not a Muslim - Ibn Warraq

8. Mes Opinions et Croyances

9. Acharya S. 1. The Christ Conspiracy
2. Suns of God

10. Religion of Peace? - Gregory Davis

Why I Am Not A Muslim -Ibn Warraq

2007-11-11T11:07:00.004-05:00

IBN WARRAQ (1946-

Even before I could read or write the national language I learned to read the Koran in Arabic without understanding a word of it - a common experience for thousands of Muslim children. As soon as I was able to think for myself, I discarded all the religious dogmas that had been foisted on me. I now consider myself a secular humanist who believes that all religions are sick men’s dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious. (p. xiii)

I, who had never written a book before, was galvanized into writing this one by these events [the Rushdie affair]. (p. xiii)

There is hardly an image or thought that I can claim to be my own creation. (p. xv)

Muhammad despised the poets. (p. 1)

Muhammad cursed the painter or drawer of men and animals (Mishkat, 7,ch. 1, pt.1) and consequently they are held to be unlawful. [In Islam] (p.1)

Artistic, philosophical, and scientific traditions were totally lacking in Arabia. (p. 2)

Islamic law is a totalitarian theoretical construct, intended to control every aspect of an individual’s life from birth to death. (p. 2)

Circumcision is not mentioned in the Koran. (p. 2)

"Belief can blunt human reason and common sense," - Dashti (p. 4)

In the field of moral teachings, however, the Koran cannot be considered miraculous. Muhammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in earlier centuries and many places. Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Moses, and Jesus had said similar things… Many of the duties and rites of Islam are continuations of practices which the pagan Arabs had adopted from the Jews. (p. 5)

The God of the Koran ["Allah"] is cruel, angry, and proud. [So is the god Yahweh of the Jewish-Christian bible] (p. 5)

The fact that Abraham and Ishmael appear in the Koran "is not sufficient to establish their historical existence." (p. 6)

…the old habit [of Islamists] of blaming incidents on a Zionist-American conspiracy… (p. 6)

Under the cover of protecting the people’s traditions, values, art, religion, and morals, the cultural effort of the Arab liberation movement was used to protect the backward institutions and the medieval culture and thought of an obscurantist ideology. (p. 6)

Islam relies on blind faith and the uncritical acceptance of texts on which the religion is based, whereas science depends on critical thought, observation, deduction, and results that are internally coherent and correspond to reality. (p. 7)

Sudanese theologian Mahmud Muhammad Taha tried to minimize the role of the Koran as a source of law. He was tried and was publicly hanged at 76 years of age in Khartoum in January 1985. (p. 7)

Qaddafi confined sharia to private matters; his own ideas were promulgated in the public domain. He changed the Islamic calendar, mocked Meccan pilgrims as "guileless and foolish," criticized the prophet Muhammad, and claimed that his own achievements were greater than those of the Prophet. (p. 7)

In 1986, a Cairo lawyer, Nur Farwaj, wrote an article criticizing the sharia, the Islamic law, as "a collection of reactionary tribal rules unsuited to contemporary societies." (p. 7)

Islam is absolutely incompatible with a modern state… No, I don’t see how Islam could be a system of government. - Rachid Boudjedra, novelist, playwright, essayist, communist, and self-confessed atheist. (p. 8)

It is not generally known that Boudjedra has had a fatwa pronounced against him since 1983, and that despite death threats he remains in Algeria, trying to carry on as normally as possible, moving from place to place in heavy disguise. (p. 9)

Boudjedra has nothing but contempt for those who remain silent and those who are not only uncritical of the Islamicists, but who also pretend to see something "fertile" in their regression to medieval times. (p. 9)

"The Koran is an endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds." - Gibbon (p.10)

Many of Dante’s contemporaries thought that Mahomet was originally a Christian and a cardinal who wanted to become pope. (p. 10)

All Muslims believe that the Koran is literally the word of God. (p. 11)

The celebrated Dictionary of Islam defines jihad as: "a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad." (p.12)

Voltaire was a deist, that is, "he believed in the existence of God; while opposing revealed religion - miracles, dogmas, and any kind of priesthood." (p. 20)

In his "The Sermon of the Fifty" (1762), Voltaire attacks Christian mysteries like transubstantiation as absurd, Christian miracles as incredible, and the Bible as "full of contradictions." The God of Christianity was a "cruel and hateful tyrant." (p. 20)

Carlyle advises us that one would have to be at a fairly primitive stage of development to believe in prophets. (p. 23) [Snake oil peddlers]

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Carey, expressed his understanding of the hurt feelings of the Muslims, since Rushdie’s book "contained an outrageous slur on the Prophet." What will Dr. Carey make of the outrageous slur on Jesus Christ contained in the Koran? The Koran explicitly denies the crucifixion. (p. 29)

Scholars like Watt, Daniel, and Esposito are more apologists than objective historians. (p. 32)

The Koran contains references to various Old Testament and New Testament figures: Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Jonah, Enoch, Noah, and Jesus, to name but a few. What of the rise of the critical method in Germany in the nineteenth century, and its application to the study of the Bible and religion in general? When biblical scholars say that Jonah never existed or that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, then, implicitly, the veracity of the Koran is being called into question. (p. 33)

Muhammad was not an original thinker: he did not formulate any new ethical principles, but merely borrowed from the prevailing cultural milieu. The eclectic nature of Islam has been recognized for a long time. Even Muhammad knew Islam was not a new religion, and the revelations contained in the Koran merely confirmed already existing scriptures. The Prophet transferred to Islam the beliefs and practices of the heathen or pagan Arabs, especially into the ceremonies of the pilgrimage to Mecca. And yet Muslims in general continue to hold that their faith came directly from heaven that the Koran was brought down by the angel Gabriel from God himself to Muhammad. To find a human origin for any part of it is not only vain but also meaningless and, of course, blasphemous. (p. 34)

The influence of Zoroastrianism on Islam, of Judaism, of Christianity, of Sabianism and pre-Islamic Arabia of foreign vocabulary in the Koran, all combine to make us concur with Zwemer’s conclusion that Islam "is not an invention, but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the genius of Mohammad in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for human ills and forcing it down by means of the sword." (p.35)

Islam owes many of its most superstitious details to old Arabian paganism especially in the rites and rituals of the Pilgrimage to Mecca (see suras 2.153, 22.28-30; 5.1-4; 22.37) (p. 35)

Pilgrimage
People come from far corners of the land
To throw pebbles (at the Satan) and to kiss the (black stone).
How strange are the things they say!
Is all mankind becoming blind to truth? -Dashti.

From an ethical standpoint, the Mecca pilgrimage, with its superstitious and childish ritual, is a blot upon Mohammedan monotheism. -S.Zwemer

The pilgrim then turns to the right and circumambulates the Kaaba seven times, three times at a quick pace, and four times at a slow pace. Each time he passes around the Kaaba he touches the Yamani corner, where another auspicious stone is encased, and also kisses the sacred Black Stone. (p. 36)

Society in pre-Islamic Central Arabia was organized around the tribe, and each tribe had its principal deity, which was worshipped in a fixed sanctuary even by the wandering nomads. The deity resided in a stone and was not necessarily in human form. (p. 39)

The sacred black stone and Hubal (p. 39)

The Prophet railed against the homage rendered at the Kaaba to the goddesses al-Lat, al-Manat, and al-Uzza, whom the pagan Arabs called the daughters of Allah, but Muhammad stopped short of attacking the cult of Hubal. From this Wellhausen concludes that Hubal is no other than Allah, the "god" of the Meccans. (p. 39)

The Kaaba
According to Muslim writers, the Kaaba was first built in heaven, where a model of it still remains, two thousand years before the creation of the world. Adam erected the Kaaba on earth but it was destroyed during the Flood. Abraham was instructed to rebuild it; Abraham was assisted by Ishmael. While looking for a stone to mark the corner of the building, Ishmael met the angel Gabriel, who gave him the Black Stone, which was then whiter than milk; it was only later that it became black from the sins of those who touched it. (p. 41)

Islam also took over - or rather, retained - the following customs from the pagan Arabs: polygamy, slavery, easy divorce, and social laws generally, circumcision, and ceremonial cleanliness. In the preparations for the five daily prayers, especially in the process of ablution, the object is to free the worshipper from the presence or the influence of evil spirits and has nothing to do with bodily purity as such. (p. 42)

According to one tradition, Muhammad said, "If any of you wakens up from sleep let him blow his nose three times, for the devil spends the night in a man’s nostrils." (p. 42)

According to Semitic conception, water drives away demons. -Goldziher (p. 42)

Zoroastrianism
The thesis of the influence of Zoroastrianism - sometimes called Parsism - on the world’s religions has been disputed by some scholars and vigorously defended by other. (p. 43)

Islam was directly influenced by the Iranian religion, but the indirect influence on Islam of Judaism and Christianity, has never been doubted. (p. 43)

Ahura Mazda, the supreme lord of Iran omniscient, omnipresent, and eternal, endowed with creative power, which he exercises especially through the medium of his Spenta Mainyu - Holy Spirit - … (p. 43)

Ahura Mazda imparts his revelation and pronounces his commandments to Zoroaster on the mountain of the two holy communing ones; in the other YHWH holds a similar communion with Moses on Sinai. (p. 43)

The six days of creation in Genesis find a parallel in the six periods of Creation described in the Zoroastrian scriptures. (p. 43)

The concept of acquiring religious merit by reciting various parts of the Koran is an echo of the Persian belief in the merit of reciting the Avestan Vendidad.

The prayer in congregation has a value twenty-five times higher than individual prayer.

The Muslim institution of five daily prayers also has a Persian origin. Muhammad himself, at first, instituted only two daily prayers. Then, as recounted in the Koran, a third was added, giving the morning prayer, the evening prayer, and the middle prayer, which corresponded to the Jewish shakarith, minkah, and arbith. But on encountering the religious fervor of the Zoroastrians, Muslims, not wishing to be outdone in devotion, simply adopted their custom; henceforth, Muslims paid homage to their God five times a day, in imitation of the five gahs (prayers) of the Persians.

…the preposterous idea that God needed to take a rest after creating the world in six days…

The Hindu account of paradise in many ways resembles the Muslim view, with its vivid and voluptuous scenes of houris and virgins that so scandalized early Christian commentators. (p. 47)

Given all the gross superstitious elements in Islam, already described, one wonders how eighteenth-century philosophers ever came to regard it as a rational religion. (p. 48)

Unquestionably, the first impression gained by a reader of the Koran is the Jews of the Hijaz. On almost every page are encountered either episodes of Hebrew history, or familiar Jewish legends, or details of rabbinical law or usage, or arguments which say in effect that Islam is the faith of Abraham and Moses. -Torrey, p.2)

Some scholars, such as Noldeke and Wellhausen, agree with the Muslim tradition that Muhammad was illiterate; while Torrey and Sprenger are convinced that he was literate. It seems unlikely, considering Muhammad’s social background, that he did not receive any education. He came from a respected family, and it is unthinkable that a rich widow would have asked him to take care of her business affairs if he had been unable to read or write. It is true Muhammad did not want to be seen as a man of book learning, for that would have undermined his assertion that his revelations came directly from heaven, from God.

The Koran itself is said to be a copy, the original of which is written in a table kept in heaven.

In our sceptical times there is very little that is above criticism, and one day or other we may expect to hear that Muhammad never existed. -Snouck Hurgronje

The Prophet Muhammad died in A.D. 632. The earliest material on his life that we possess was written by Ibn Ishaq in A.D. 750, 120 years after Muhammad’s death.

The Hadith of the Books of tradition are a collection of sayings and doings attributed to the Prophet and traced back to him through a series of putatively trustworthy witnesses (any particular chain of transmitters is called an "isnad", while the text or the real substance of the report is called "matn").

The hadith is an oral communication derived from the Prophet, whereas the sunna is the traditional norm in the rites and laws that govern the practical conduct of life; the sunna refers to a religious or legal point without there necessarily being an oral tradition for it. In other words, something can be taken to be sunna without there being a hadith relating to it.

There are said to be six correct or authentic collections of traditions accepted by Sunni Muslims, namely, the compilations of a) al-Bukhari d. 870, b) Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj d. 875, c) Ibn Maja d. 887, d) abu Dawud d. 889, e) al-Tirmidhi d. 892, and f) al-Nisai d. 915.

All the lives of Muhammad and his immediate successors are as apocryphal as the accounts of Christ and the Apostles. -Morozov, Christ (1930) (p. 69)

Muhammad was a necessary fiction since it is always assumed that every religion must have a founder. (p. 69)

Goldziher demonstrated that a vast number of hadith accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries - and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads (chains of transmitters) which supported them were utterly fictitious. (p. 69)

Storytellers made a good living inventing entertaining hadiths. (p. 71)

…So Zayd proceeded to collect the Koran "from pieces of papyrus, flat stones, palm leaves, shoulder blades and ribs of animals, pieces of leather and wooden boards, as well as from the hearts of men." (p. 73) [And one million peoples believe that?]

Although there is no doubt that someone called Muhammad existed, that he was a merchant, that something significant happened in 622, and that Abraham was central to his teaching, there is no indication that Muhammad’s career unfolded in inner Arabia, there is no mention of Mecca, and the Koran makes no appearance until the last years of the seventh century. -Cook (p.79)

Saracens = Arabs

Although Palestine does play some sort of role in Muslim traditions, it is already demoted in favour of Mecca in the second year of the Hijra, when Muhammad changed the direction of prayer for Muslims from Jerusalem to Mecca. (p. 80)

Muhammad told the Arabs that, as descendants of Abraham through Ishmael, they too had a claim to the land that God had promised to Abraham and his seed. (p. 80)

The formula "There is no God but the One" is an ever-recurring refrain in Samaritan liturgies. A constant theme in their literature is the unity of God and His absolute holiness and righteousness. We can immediately notice the similarity of the Muslim proclamation of faith, "There is no God but Allah." And of course, the unity of God is a fundamental principle in Islam. The Muslim formula "In the name of God" (Bismillah) is found in Samaritan scripture as "beshem." (p. 82)

A sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man. -Winwood Reade (1872)

Muir’s Life of Mahomet appeared between 1856-61, in four volumes, based on the original Muslim sources, the very sources whose reliability was questioned in the last chapter, but which Muir accepted as worthy of attention. Muir was to pass a judgment on Muhammad’s character that was to be repeated over and over again by subsequent scholars. The scholar divided Muhammad’s life into two periods, the Meccan period and the Medinan period; during the first period in Mecca, Muhammad was a religiously motivated, sincere seeker after truth; but in the second period, Muhammad the man shows his feet of clay, and is corrupted by power and worldly ambitions. (p. 86-87)

A special license was produced, allowing the Prophet many wives. (p.87)

The sword of Mahomet and the Coran [Koran], are the most stubborn enemies of Civilization, Liberty, and Truth, which the world has yet known. -Muir (p.88)

The battle of the Trench: The butchery, begun in the morning, lasted all day, and continued by torchlight till the evening. Having thus drenched the market place with the blood of seven or eight hundred victims, and having given command for the earth to be smoothed over their remains, Mahomet returned from the horrid spectacle to solace himself with the charms of Rihana, whose husband and all her male relatives had just perished in the massacre. (p.96) [Charlemagne beat this slaughter with 4,500 killed in one day in 782]

The fact that the Jews’ scorn and rejection of his religion was the greatest disappointment of Muhammad’s life. (p. 96)

Barbarity remains barbarity in whichever epoch one finds it. (p. 98)

As always, a revelation came to him in time, enabling his to "cast his scruples to the wind." (p. 99)

…the mindless way children are forced to learn either parts of or the entire Koran (some 6,200 odd verses) by heart at the expense of teaching children critical thought. (p. 105)

VERSES MISSING, VERSES ADDED
There is a tradition from Aisha, the Prophet’s child wife, that there once existed a "verse of stoning," where stoning was prescribed as punishment for fornication, a verse that formed a part of the Koran but that is now lost. The early caliphs carried out such a punishment for adulterers, despite the fact that the Koran, as we know it today, only prescribes a hundred lashes. It remains a puzzle- - if the story is not true - why Islamic law to this day decrees stoning when the Koran only demands flogging. According to this tradition, over a hundred verses are missing. Shiites, of course, claim that Uthman left out a great many verses favourable to Ali for political reasons. (p. 112)

Enough has been said about Jinns and Janns to show that such a system is as rich and superstitious as any Greek, Roman, or Norse polytheistic mythology. (p. 117)

Schopenhauer asks us to reflect on the "cruelties to which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedan, have given rise" and "the misery they have brought on the World." Think of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, and then the religious wars, that bloody madness of which the ancients had no conception. Think of the crusades which were a quite inexcusable butchery and lasted for two hundred years, their battle cry being: "It is the will of God." Christianity is no more spared than Islam in Schopenhauer’s indictment. (p. 120)

Feminists have criticized the monotheistic God as a male chauvinist who is unwilling to change, and is insensitive to "femininity." (p. 123)

Muhammad was an opportunist preacher and politician and not a systematic theologian. (p. 123)

In Islam it is predestination that ultimately predominates. There is not a single tradition that advocates free will. -Wensinck (p.124)

Before commenting on the doctrine of predestination, I should like to consider the Koranic hell. Several words are used in the Koran to evoke the place of torment that God seems to take a particular delight in contemplating. (p. 125)

Muhammad really let his otherwise limited imagination go wild when describing, in revolting detail, the torments of hell: boiling water, running sores, peeling skin, burning flesh, dissolving bowels, and crushing of skulls with iron maces. And verse after verse, sura after sura, we are told about the fire, always the scorching fire, the everlasting fire. From sura 9.69 it is clear that unbelievers will roast forever. What are we to make of such a system of values? As Mill said, there is something truly disgusting and wicked in the thought that God purposefully creates beings to fill hell with, beings who cannot in any way be held responsible for their actions since Allah Himself chooses to lead them astray. (p. 125)

GOD’S WEAKNESSES
We are told that the God of the Bible is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent; yet He behaves like a petulant tyrant, unable to control his recalcitrant subjects. He is angry, He is proud, He is jealous: all moral deficiencies surprising in a perfect Being. If He is self-sufficient, why does He need mankind? If He is All-powerful, why does He ask the help of humans? Above all, why does He pick an obscure Arabian merchant in some cultural backwater to be His last messenger on earth? Is it consistent with a supremely moral being that He should demand praise and absolute worship from creatures He Himself has created? What can we say of the rather curious psychology of a Being who creates humans - or rather automata - some of whom are pre-programmed to grovel in the dirt five times a day in homage to himself? This obsessive desire for praise is hardly a moral virtue and is certainly not worthy of a morally supreme Being. (p. 127-128)

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; The Christians that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. -Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason. (p. 129)

It is very odd that when God decides to manifest Himself, He does so to only one individual. Why can He not reveal Himself to the masses in a football stadium during the final of the World Cup, when literally millions of people around the world are watching? But as Patricia Crone said, "It is a peculiar habit of God’s that when he wishes to reveal himself to mankind, he will communicate only with a single person. The rest of mankind must learn the truth from that person and thus purchase their knowledge of the divine at the cost of subordination to another human being, who is eventually replaced by a human institution, so that the divine remains under other people’s control." (p. 130-131)

"From what has been said, it thus clearer than the sun at noonday that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses," concludes Spinoza in A Theologico-Political Treatise. (p.132)

How could an oral tradition [speaking of the Bible] have preserved true details across such a gap? (p. 132)

Historians no longer believe the stories of Abraham as if they are history: like Aeneas or Heracles, Abraham is a figure of legend. - Lane Fox (p. 133)

Noah was asked to take into the ark a pair from every species (sura 11.36-41). Some zoologists estimate that there are perhaps ten million living species of insects; would they all fit into the ark? It is true they do not take up much room, so let us concentrate on the larger animals: reptiles, 5,000 species; birds, 9,000 species; and 4,500 species of class Mammalia. In all, in the phylum Chordata, there are 45,000 species. What sized ark would hold nearly 45,000 species of animals plus food? A pair from each species makes 90,000 individual animals, from snakes to elephants (80 pounds of food per day), from birds to horses, from hippopotamuses to rhinoceroses. How did Noah get them all together so quickly? How long did he wait for the sloth to make his slothful way from the Amazon? How did the kangaroo get out of Australia, which is an island? How did the polar bear know where to find Noah? As Robert Ingersoll asks, "Can absurdities go farther than this?" Either we conclude that this fantastic tale is not to be taken literally, or we have recourse to some rather feeble answer, such as, for God all is possible. Why, in that case, did God go through all this rather complicated, time-consuming (at least for Noah) procedure? Why not save Noah and other righteous people with a rapid miracle rather than a protracted one? (p. 133)

No geological evidence indicates a universal flood. There is indeed evidence of local floods but not one that covered the entire world, not even the entire Middle East. (p. 133)

Allah merely has to say "Be," and His will is accomplished, and yet it takes the Almighty six days to create the heavens. Also, how could there have been "days" before the creation of the earth and the sun, since a "day" is merely the time the earth takes to make a revolution on its axis? We are also told that before the creation God’s throne floated above the "waters." Where did this "water" come from before the creation? The whole notion of God having a throne is hopelessly anthropomorphic but is taken literally by the orthodox. Then we have several accounts of the creation of Adam. According to the Koran, Allah created the moon and its phases for man to know the number of the years (sura 10.5). Again, a rather primitive Arabian notion, since all the advanced civilizations of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese, and Greeks used the solar year for the purpose of time reckoning. (p. 136)

About one million years after the Big Bang [God’s astrophysical fireworks], protons and electrons could combine to form hydrogen atoms. We had to wait ten billion years before our solar system came into existence. (p. 137)

The Term "heavens" is hopelessly vague; does it mean our solar system? Our galaxy? The universe? No amount of juggling will make sense of the Koranic or biblical story of the creation of the "heavens" in six, eight, or two days. (p. 137)

Religion knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the investigator of Nature, of the artist. (p. 142)

We cannot easily dismiss the possibility that an historical figure lies behind the Jesus legend of the New Testament. (p. 184)

Even the Christian theologians who accept Jesus’ existence concede a number of problems concerning his life have not been resolved. Most of the stories in the New Testament concerning his life are now accepted, even by conservative Christian theologians, to be legends with no basis in history. (p. 148)
Blind dogmatism has shut Muslims off from the intellectually challenging and exhilarating research, debate, and discussion of the last century and a half. In the words of Joseph Hoffmann: "It is through such discussion, however, that we avoid the dogmatism of the past and learn to respect uncertainty as a mark of enlightenment." (p. 149)

The evangelists made Jesus say and do what they expected - from their knowledge of the Old Testament - that the Messiah would say and do. (p. 150)

The mystery cult of Mithras was first established in the Roman world in the first half of the first century B.C. This cult developed secret rites and rituals and stages of initiation through which the god’s devotees had to pass. Mithraic mysteries also showed striking similarities to the Christian Baptism and the Eucharist. (p. 150)

Despite the fact that there were approximately sixty historians active during the first century in the Roman world, there is remarkably little corroboration of the Christian story of Jesus outside Christian traditions. What there is, is very inconclusive and unhelpful - Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, the Younger Pliny. (p. 151)

Scholars now count it a certainty that the Gospels are compilations of "traditions" cherished by the early Christians rather than historical annals. - Hoffmann (p. 152)

Just as we find that the early Christians fabricated details of the life of Jesus in order to answer doctrinal points, so we find that Arab storytellers invented biographical material about Muhammad in order to explain difficult passages in the Koran. (p. 153)

Where Christianity arose from a fusion of Judaic and Greco-Roman ideas, Islam arose from Talmudic Judaic, Syriac Christian, and indirectly, Greco-Roman ideas. (p. 154)

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand.-Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian (p.157)

The notion of everlasting punishment is incompatible with and unworthy of a benevolent, merciful God. (p. 157)

There is not sufficient reason to believe that any religion is true. (p. 159)

Muslims fervently believe that Abraham built the Kaaba. Abraham never set foot in Arabia and perhaps did not even exist. (p. 162)

The sunna complements the Koran and is essential for understanding it properly, for clarifying the Koranic vagueness and filling in the Koranic silences. (p. 165)

But with all their attendant obscurities, we still need some kind of interpretation of the sunna and the Koran, and this is the task of the science of sharia (fiqh). (p. 165)

CRITICISMS OF ISLAMIC LAW (p. 169)

The continuing influence of the ulama is the major factor why there has been so little intellectual progress in Muslim societies, why critical thought has not developed. (p. 170)

The sharia only reflects the social and economic conditions of the time of the early Abbasids and has simply grown out of touch with all the later developments - social, economic, and moral. (p. 171)

The Democratic system that is predominant in the world is not a suitable system for the peoples of our region…. The system of free elections is not suitable to our country. -King Fahd of Saudi Arabia

Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures. -Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (p. 177)

The Americans would not have walked on the moon, we are told, if it had not been for the "Arab contributions to the exact sciences." At the same time, the West is denounced as being shallow, materialistic, decadent, irreligious, and scientific. (p. 193)

There are no more pure civilizations than there are pure races. Nabokov once said we are all a salad of racial genes; this is even more true of civilizations: civilizations are a salad of cultural genes, different interpenetrating, interinfluencing strands. (p.195)

In the past, a simple increase in knowledge has led to a change in culture. In the last century and a half there has been an enormous increase in knowledge, objective knowledge that is of universal validity. This scientific knowledge cannot but have an impact on every single culture on earth. Traditions are not necessarily "good" simply because they are ancient or well-established. As Von Hayek put it "Follies and abuses are no better for having long been established principles of policy." The British intervened in the affairs of an alien culture and abolished the ancient tradition of suttee, [in India] whereby a widow had to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. This must be considered a step forward in the lot of women and the moral progress of mankind. (p. 196)

The most recent impassioned plea for secularism comes from Fouad Zakariya, writing in 1989, after the Rushdie affair. Zakariya, an Egyptian philosopher teaching at the University of Kuwait, laments the fact that the principles of Islamic religious dogma have never been critically examined, that there is no single periodical devoted entirely to secular thought in Arabic. Secularism is absolutely necessary, concludes Zakariya, especially for those societies threatened by any kind of authoritarian and medieval way of thinking. Since the Muslim world is still plunged in the Dark Ages, secularism is needed more than ever. (p. 196-197)

In India, for example, present-day Muslims are the descendants of Hindu converts, in Iran, of Zoroastrians, in Syria, of Christians. A vast number of Muslims throughout the world have been persuaded to accept a religion that originated thousands of miles away, to read a book in a language that they do not understand which they learn to read and write before they know their mother tongue or the national language. The Muslims learn more of the history of a people remote from them geographically and ethnically than the past of their own countries before the advent of Islam. (p. 199)

Russia’s greatest writer, Pushkin, had black Ethiopian ancestry. (p. 204)

Iraq and Iran can boast of a magnificent pre-Islamic past (p. 207)

The perverted division of the world into the faithful and the infidel has had a disastrous effect on the perception of even nominally secular-minded Arab intellectuals, who, as we shall see, transfer all responsibility for the lamentable state of the Middle East onto the West. (p 208)

Every ill, every failure in the Muslim world is still blamed on the West, Israel, or some Zionist conspiracy. (p. 210)

Berber Nationalism

The Berber-speaking peoples have been living in North Africa since prehistoric times. "Proto-Berbers" have been settled in North Africa since 7000 B.C. (p. 210)

At present, some two or three hundred Berber dialects are spoken by a total of approximately 12 million peoples in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania. (p. 211)

Yacine had nothing but harsh words for the three monotheistic religions that in his view had caused nothing but unhappiness in the world: "The religions are profoundly evil ('néfastes') and the unhappiness of our people comes from there. (p. 212)

Kateb Yacine went on to complain that just as they were once forced to learn French in the hope of creating a French Algeria, the Algerians are being forced to learn Arabic and forbidden to speak their mother tongue, Tamazight or Berber: "Algeria is a country subjugated by the myth of the Arab nation, for it is in the name of Arabization the Tamazight is repressed. In Algeria and throughout the world, there is a belief that Arabic is the language of the Algerians." But it is Tamazight that is the country’s first language, and that has lasted despite centuries of foreign domination. (p. 212)

The Medinan chapters such as suras 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 22, and 47 reveal Muhammad at his most belligerent, dogmatic, and intolerant. (p. 215)

JIHAD

The totalitarian nature of Islam is nowhere more apparent than in the concept of jihad, the holy war, whose ultimate aim is to conquer the entire world and submit it to the one true faith, to the law of Allah. (p. 217)

It is abundantly clear from many of the above verses that the Koran is not talking of metaphorical battles or of moral crusades: it is talking of the battlefield. To read such blood thirsty injunctions in a holy book is shocking. (p. 218)

To escape persecution and the forced conversions many Zoroastrians emigrated to India, where, to this day, they form a much respected minority known as Parsis. (p. 236)

The indisputable fact remains that Islamic civilisation as we know it would simply not have existed without the Greek heritage. (p. 261)

Translations of Greek scientific works (p. 262)

All the crass anthropomorphic passages of the Koran and all the Koranic descriptions of heaven with its voluptuous houris and hell with its pathological imagery of torments were to be accepted as literally true. Worst of all, al-Ghazali reintroduced the element of fear into Islam; in his preaching, he emphasized the "wrath to come" and the punishments of hell. (p. 265)

The prophets - these billy goats with long beards, as al-Razi disdainfully describes them - cannot claim any intellectual or spiritual superiority. (p. 268)

Custom, tradition, and intellectual laziness lead people to follow their religious leaders blindly. Religions have been the sole cause of the bloody wars that have ravaged mankind. Religions have also been resolutely hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The so-called holy scriptures are worthless and have done more harm than good, whereas the "writings of the ancients like Plato, Aristotle, Euclid and Hippocrates have rendered much greater service to humanity." (p. 268)

In his political philosophy, al-Razi believed one could live in an orderly society without being terrorized by religious law or coerced by the prophets. Certainly the precepts of Muslim law, such as the prohibition of wine, did not trouble him in the least. It was, as noted already, through philosophy and human reason that human life could be improved, not through religion. (p. 269)

According to Averroes, much of the poverty and distress of the times arises from the fact that women are kept like "domestic animals or house plants for purposed of gratification, of a very questionable character." (p. 271)

The Kharijites are called the puritans of Islam (p. 244)

Islamic science was founded on the works of the ancient Greeks, and the Muslims are important as the preservers and transmitters of Greek (and Hindu) learning that may well have been lost otherwise. (p. 272)

It is true that the Christian Church also cast great difficulties in the way of science in the middle ages; but she did not strangle it outright, as did the Musalman theology. (p. 274)

Early Islam developed the idea of bida - innovation - and according to a famous hadith, every innovation is heresy, every heresy is error, and every error leads to hell. Innovation was the opposite of sunna. Some early theologians went so far as to demand the death penalty for anyone introducing an innovation. (p. 278)

As for religion, all men unquestioningly accept the creed of their fathers out of habit, incapable of distinguishing the true from the false. (p. 283)

For Al-Ma’arri, [Syrian 973-1058 CE] religion is a "fable invented by the ancients," worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses. (p. 283)

Al-Ma’arri was a supreme rationalist who everywhere asserts "the rights of reason against the claims of custom, tradition and authority." (p. 286)

Al-Ma’arri attacks many of the dogmas of Islam, particularly the Pilgrimage, which he calls "a heathen’s journey." Al-Ma’arri regards Islam and positive religion generally, as a human institution. As such, it is false and rotten to the core. Its founders sought to procure wealth and power for themselves, its dignitaries pursue worldly ends, its defenders rely on spurious documents which they ascribe to divinely inspired apostles, and its adherents accept mechanically whatever they are told to believe. (p. 286)

All religions are contrary to reason and sanity. (p. 288)

Christianity "made something unclean out of sexuality;" to use Nietzsche’s phrase. (p. 291)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights - UDHR - (adopted on December 10, 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris and ratified by most Muslim countries) at no point has recourse to a religious argument. These rights are based on natural rights, which any adult human being capable of choice has. They are rights that human beings have simply because they are human beings. Human reason or rationality is the ultimate arbiter of rights - human rights, the rights of women. (p. 293)

One cannot ignore the ulama, those learned doctors of Muslim law who by their fatwas or decisions in questions touching private or public matters of importance regulate the life of the Muslim community. (p. 294)

Islamic culture and civilization is profoundly antifeminist. (p. 299)
[ So is Christianity and Bible Bull S. ]

Ghazali defines the woman’s role: She should stay at home and get on with her spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbours and only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband and respect him in his presence and in his absence and seek to satisfy him in everything. (p. 300) (Le saint Augustin Musulman?)

Three things can interrupt prayers if they pass in front of someone praying: a black dog, a woman, and an ass. (p. 301)

"God comes to your aid rather conveniently when it is a question of your desires." -[Young Aisha to her husband Muhammad.] (p. 303)

The hijab was imposed by the Koran (suras 33.53, 33.59 and 33.32-33) (p. 315)

The veil was adopted by the Arabs from the Persians, and the woman’s obligation to stay closed in at home was a tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn has adopted an ancient Greek custom. (p. 315)

The Koran expressly forbids pork:
Sura 5.3. You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh dedicated to any other than God. (p. 334)

The hygienic reasons for the prohibition of pork are older than one would imagine, but nonetheless false. For example, Maimonides (1135-1204) said: "All the food which the Torah has forbidden us to eat has some bad and damaging effect on the body…. The principal reason why the law forbids swine’s flesh is to be found in the circumstances that its habits and its food are very dirty and loathsome." (p. 335)

Pigs were not known, or hardly known to the pre-Islamic Arabs. Pliny in his Natural History noted the absence of pork in Arabia. We know from Sozomenus (5th century A.D.) that certain pagan Arabs abstained from pork and observed other Jewish ceremonies. If that is the case, why would Muhammad prohibit an animal that was not likely to be found in Arabia, let alone eaten? (p. 335)

What of the putative dirty habits of the pigs? Pigs are not particularly worse than chickens and goats that also eat dung. (p. 335)

Muhammad railed against idolatry, yet incorporated all the idolatrous practices of pagan Arabs in the ceremonies of the pilgrimage - such as the kissing of the Black Stone. (p. 349)

There is nothing sacrosanct about customs or cultural traditions - they can change under criticism.

British Christians working in Saudi Arabia are forced to practice their religion in hiding, in sharp contrast to the freedom of worship allowed Muslims in Britain, to the extent of permitting the construction of a mosque, financed by Saudi Arabia, in the heart of London without respect for the surrounding architectural tradition. (p. 358)

Why I Am Not A Christian -Bertrand Russell

2007-11-11T11:04:00.003-05:00

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) 98 years
I think all the great religions of the world -Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and Communism - both untrue and harmful. (p. v)

I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue. (p.vi)

But there are also, in most religions, specific ethical tenets which do definite harm. The Catholic condemnation of birth control, if it could prevail, would make the mitigation of poverty and the abolition of war impossible. The Hindu beliefs that the cow is a sacred animal and that it is wicked for widows to remarry cause quite needless suffering. (p. vii)

When I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness. (p. 5)

"Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-tse and Buddha some 500 or 600 years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept. (p. 14)

Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him. (p. 16)

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. (p. 17)

You will find that in the Gospels Christ said: "ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell." (p.17)

I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture. (p. 18)

I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above him in those respects. (p. 19)

As I said before, I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. (p. 19)

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. (p. 21)

There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. (p.21)

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. (p. 22)

When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. (p. 23)

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. (p. 24)

Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. (p. 24)

The church opposed Galileo and Darwin; in our own day it opposes Freud. (p. 26)

Monks of all religions have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. (p. 27)

The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged. (p. 27).

The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. (p. 29).

To Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews the most fundamental question involved in the truth of religion is the existence of God. (p. 31)

The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting the Turks, like St. Louis. (p. 33)

I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility. (p. 34)

The church has made much of the persecution of Christians by the Roman State before the time of Constantine. (p. 36)

Nobody nowadays believes that the world was created in 4004 B.C. (p. 37)

Until very recently it was held that, if a boy could not learn his lessons, the proper cure was caning or flogging. (p. 41)

…the two greatest social institutions - namely, the church and the state… (p. 41)

Undoubtedly the most important source of religion is fear. (p. 42)

Battle, pestilence and shipwreck all tend to make people religious. (p. 42)

It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit and hatred. (p. 44)

We could also secure that the world’s population should be stationary if we were not prevented by the political influence of churches which prefer war, pestilence and famine to contraception. (p. 47)

Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. (p.47)

In former days, miracles happened in answer to prayer; they still do in the Catholic Church, but Protestants have lost this power. (p. 53-54)

My view is this: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. (p. 56)

Neither love without knowledge nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. (p. 56)

Although both love and knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love. (p. 57)

Some saints, it is true, have called fleas and bugs and lice "the pearls of God," but what these men delighted in was the opportunity of displaying their own sanctity. (p. 59)

Wars are acts of passion, not of reason. (p. 63)

The Aztecs considered it their painful duty to eat human flesh for fear the light of the sun should grow dim. (p. 64)

Current morality is a curious blend of utilitarianism and superstition, but the superstitious part has the stronger hold, as is natural, since superstition is the origin of moral rules. (p. 65)

The defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts, as may be seen from the love of militarism displayed by church dignitaries. (p. 66)

None of them [clergymen] condemn the brutality of a husband who causes his wife to die of too frequent pregnancies. (p. 68)

In the absence of children, sexual relations are a purely private matter, which does not concern either the state or the neighbours. (p. 69)

Even more harmful than theological superstition is the superstition of nationalism, of duty to one’s own state and to no other. (p. 70)

…then there is foreign trade, without which half the inhabitants of Great Britain would starve… (p. 74)

Paine was an innovator in the manner of his writing, which was simple, direct, unlearned, and such as every intelligent working-man could appreciate. (p. 134)

The greater part of The Age of Reason consists of criticism of the Old Testament from a moral point of view. Very few nowadays would regard the massacres of men women and children recorded in the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua as models of righteousness, but in Paine’s day it was considered impious to criticize the Israelites when the Old Testament approved of them. (p. 143)

People of today have forgotten still more completely that it was men like Paine who, in face of persecution, caused the softening of dogma by which our age profits. (p. 144)

In his own neighbourhood [in America] he, Paine, was mobbed and refused a seat in the stagecoach; three years before his death he was not allowed to vote, on the alleged ground of his being a foreigner. (p. 145)

His posthumous fame was greater in England than in America. To publish his works was, of course, illegal, but it was done repeatedly, although many men went to prison for this offence. (p. 146)

Paine’s influence in the world was twofold. (p. 146)

The evils of Communism are the same as those that existed in Christianity during the Ages of Faith. (p. 197)

In the West the view prevails that Christianity is essential to virtue and social stability. (p. 199)

There are innumerable stories of Virgin Births in pagan mythology, but no one dreams of taking them seriously. (p. 200)

Buddhism has never been a persecuting religion. The Empire of the Caliphs was much kinder to Jews and Christians than Christian states were to Jews and Mohammedans. It left Jews and Christians unmolested, provided they paid tribute [dhimmi]. Anti-Semitism was promoted by Christianity from the moment the Roman Empire became Christian. [In 380 CE] (p. 202)

What the world needs is reasonableness, tolerance, and a realization of the interdependence of the parts of the human family. (p. 204)

Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world. (p. 204)

For my part, I think the important virtues are kindness and intelligence. Intelligence is impeded by any creed, no matter what; and kindness is inhibited by the belief in sin and punishment. (This belief, by the way, is the only one that the Soviet Government has taken over from orthodox Christianity). (p. 205)

More important is the limitation of population. (p. 205-206)

Stalin’s language is full of reminiscences of the theological seminary in which he received his training. (p. 206)

…a man [Russell] who is a recognized propagandist against both religion and morality, and who specifically defends adultery… (Bishop Manning of the Protestant Episcopal Church) (p. 209)

…this professor of immorality and irreligion… [Russell] (p. 210)

"…to pay for teaching a philosophy of life which denies God, defies decency and completely contradicts the fundamentally religious character of our country, government and people." (p.213)

"Great spirits," Einstein remarked, "have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." (p. 215)

As publishers we do not necessarily subscribe personally to all the views expressed by those whose books we publish, but we welcome great minds to our lists, particularly now at a time when brute force and ignorance have gained such ascendancy over reason and intellect in many parts of the world. We think it more important than ever to honour intellectual superiority whenever the opportunity presents itself. Similar sentiments were expressed by Publishers’ Weekly and the New York Herald Tribune, both editorially and by Dorothy Thompson in her column "On the Record." "Lord Russell is not immoral," she wrote; "anyone who knows him is aware that he is a man of the most exquisite intellectual and personal integrity."

The Christ Conspiracy -Acharya S.

2007-11-11T11:00:00.005-05:00

The Greatest Story Ever Sold (1999)
While Islam is currently the source of much fear in the world today, Christianity is far and away the bloodiest in history. (P. 2)

To deflect the horrible guilt off the shoulders of their own faith, religionists have pointed to supposedly secular ideologies such as Communism and Nazism as oppressors and murderers of the people. However, few realize or acknowledge that the originators of Communism were Jewish (Marx, Lenin, Hess, and Trotsky) and that the most overtly violent leaders of both bloody movements were Roman Catholic (Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco) or Eastern Orthodox Christian (Stalin), despotic and intolerant ideologies that breed fascistic dictators. (P.2)

Thousands of Nazis were later given safe passage by the Vatican, as well as by multinational governmental agencies, to a number of locales, including North and South America, via the "Ratline" from Germany through Switzerland and Italy. (P 3)

In reality, it was the Christian church that did much more persecuting and made many more martyrs than Rome had ever done, because tolerance was the usual Roman policy. (P. 6)

What is reality is that from the fourth century onward, it was the Christians who were doing the persecution. (p. 6)

Like so much else about Christianity, the claims of its rapid spread are largely mythical. (P. 7)

Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and humans as a species are prone to amnesia. It is thus imperative that these all-important matters of religious ideology and doctrine be thoroughly explored and not left up to blind faith. (P. 11)

There remains in the public at large a serious and unfortunate lack of education regarding religion and mythology, particularly that of Christ. (P. 13)

Jesus Christ is a mythological character along the same lines as the gods of Egypt, England, Greece, India, Phoenicia, Rome, Sumeria and elsewhere, entities presently acknowledged by mainstream scholars and the masses alike as myths rather than historical figures. (P. 14)

Even if we discount the countless mistakes committed over the centuries by scribes copying the texts, the so-called infallible "Word of God" is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, errors and yarns that stretch the credulity to the point of non-existence. (P. 15)

"Evemerism" or "Euhemerism," is named after Evemeras, or Euhemeros, a Greek philosopher of the 4th century BCE who developed the idea that, rather than being mythical creatures, as was accepted by the reigning intellectuals, the gods of old were in fact historical characters, kings, emperors and heroes whose exploits were later deified. (P. 16-17)

No scholar believes that Osiris or Jupiter or Dionysus was an historical person promoted to the rank of a god, but exception is made only in favour of Jesus. (P. 19)

The fact is that this crowd-drawing preacher Jesus finds his place in "history" only in the New Testament, completely overlooked by the dozens of historians of his days,[some 60 historians] an era considered one of the best documented in history. (P. 19)

The Old Testament canon remains different to this day in the Catholic and Protestant versions. (P. 31)

He [Jesus] was not born in Bethlehem and was not from Nazareth, which did not even exist at the time. (P. 36)

John is the only gospel containing the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which is an Egyptian myth. (P. 39)

The most "historical" figure in the Gospels was Pontius Pilate. (P. 43)

The Christian Church is thus founded on a forgery of pretended words of the pretended Christ. (P. 47)

There are basically no non-biblical references to a historical Jesus by any known historian of the time during and after Jesus’ purported advent. (P. 49)

Every culture and nation had its heroic epics and legendary foundations, including Greece and Rome. Israel was no exception, and its legendary foundation related in the Old Testament is as fictitious as the tale of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome in 753 BCE. The foundation of Christianity is no less fictitious, except in the minds of the people who have been told otherwise. (p. 72)

It is beyond belief that had Jesus existed and been seen by "the multitudes", no one would remember what he looked like. The authors of the gospels, pretending to be the apostles, professed to remember Jesus’ exact deeds and words, verbatim, yet they couldn’t recall what he looked like! (P. 78)

Coin evidence is one of the more underrated methods of archaeology, yet it provides a superior dating system for a number of reasons, including that coins do not disintegrate over time. Unfortunately for Christian propagandists, the coin evidence for early Christianity is nil:
"The close consideration of coin evidence may shake the foundations of the literary narrative. This is because coins are produced with immediacy in response to events, whereas the literary record is composed after the event, often much after, and can suffer from bias if not outright distortion or suppression of facts." Why, no Christian coins dating to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd centuries C.E.? Because the "events", were literary events (Fiction!) only! (P. 80)

The relic- and site-fabrication is standard behaviour in the world of mythmaking and is not indication or evidence of historicity. (P. 83)

At one point, a number of churches claimed the one foreskin of Jesus, and there were enough splinters of the "True Cross" that Calvin said the amount of wood would make "a full load for a good ship." The disgraceful list of absurdities and frauds goes on, and, as Pope Leo X exclaimed, the Christ fable has been enormously profitable for the Church.

The Hebrews were by no means the originators of the concept of monotheism, as the Egyptians, for one, had the One God at least a thousand years before the purported time of Moses, by orthodox dating. (P. 88)

The monotheism of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, in fact, is virtually identical to that of Judaism, or Yahwism, which is, in part, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism. (P. 88)

El was the sun or "day star", as well as the planet Saturn. (P. 92)

Another word basically the same as Baal is Adonis, which in the plural is Adonai, a term used for "Lord" over 400 times in the Hebrew bible. Adonis, like Baal and El, is an epithet for the sun. (P. 94)

The Hebrews had a difficult time turning from their ancient worship of the Egyptian god Horus as the golden calf, son of the Egyptian mother goddess, Hathor, who was represented as a cow. (P. 97)

Marduk and Ishtar were worshipped by the Jews at Elam. (P. 98)

The word Israel is not a Jewish appellation but comes from the combination of three different reigning deities: Isis, the goddess revered throughout the ancient world; Ra, the Egyptian sun god; and El. (P. 98)

We find the same tales around the world about a variety of godmen and sons of God, a number of whom also had virgin births or were of divine origin; were born on or near December 25th in a cave or underground; were baptized; worked miracles and marvels; held high morals, were compassionate, toiled for humanity and healed the sick etc... (P. 104)

Attis of Phrygia was born on December 25th of the virgin Nana.
Buddha was born on December 25th of the virgin Maya.
Dionysus was born of a virgin on December 25th.
Horus of Egypt was born on December 25th of the virgin Isis-Meri.
Krishna of India was born on December 25th of the virgin Devaki.
Mithra of Persia and India was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave. This was a very ancient god predating Christianity by hundreds of years. (P. 119)

The merging of the worship of Attis in that of Mithra, then later into that of Jesus, was effected almost without interruption. (P. 120)

Virtually all of the elements of the Catholic ritual, from mitre to wafer to altar to doxology, are directly taken from earlier pagan mystery religions. (P. 120)

The difference between the well-respected astronomy and the vilified astrology is that astronomy charts the movements and constitution of the celestial bodies, while astrology attempts to determine their interrelationships and meaning. (P. 129)

Menorah (seven-branched candlestick) (P. 133)

Hebrews and Israelites worshipped a variety of Elohim, Baalim, and Adonai, many of which were aspects of the sun, such as El Elyon, the Most High God. (P. 136)

The Jews of Elam worshipped Marduk, not Yahweh... (p. 144)

Solstice: "the sun stands still". The sun "dies" for three days at the winter solstice, to be born again or resurrected on December 25th. (p. 154)

The wafer or host used in Communion by the Catholic Church as a symbol for the body of Christ is actually a very ancient symbol for the sun. The Catholic "monstrance" or "ostensorium," the device used to serve the "Lord’s host," is also a sunburst, as admitted by Catholic authorities. Christian art, like that of Buddhism and Hinduism, makes extensive use of the halo or sunburst behind its godman, mother of God, and saints. As Massey says, "The halo of light which is usually shown surrounding the head of Jesus and Christians saints, is another concept taken from the sun god." (P. 160)

Of the biblical Genesis, Walker says, "However absurd, these myths still maintain a hold on vast numbers of people deliberately kept in ignorance by an obsolete fundamentalism. Even educated adults sometimes insist that an omniscient god created the world for a purpose of his own."

Like other major biblical characters and tales, the fable of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden is based on much older versions found in numerous cultures around the globe. The Hindu version of the first couple was of Adima and Heva, hundreds if not thousands of years before the Hebraic version, as has been firmly pointed out by Hindus to Christian missionaries for centuries. Jackson related that these myths "seemed to have originated in Africa, but they were told all over the world in ancient times..." (P. 184)

"Hebraic tradition said Adam was married to Lilith because he grew tired of coupling with beasts, a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declared it a sin." (P. 186)

Indeed, Jackson expresses his disgust at "...that damnable doctrine of original sin, which slanders nature and insults all mankind..."

Nazareth: The town of Nazareth did not appear on Earth until after the gospel tale was known. As Holley says, "There is no such place as Nazareth in the Old Testament or in Josephus’ works, or on early maps of the Holy Land. The name was apparently a later Christian invention." In fact, the town now designated as Nazareth is near Mt. Carmel, indicating it was the Carmelites who created it.
Jesus, therefore, was not from Nazareth, which did not exist at the time of his purported advent.

As Massey states, "The actual birthplace of the carnalized Christ was NEITHER BETHLEHEM NOR NAZARETH, BUT ROME!”"

In Christian tradition, Jesus was said to be born variously in a manger,[Luc 2,16] stable and/or cave,[in a house: Matt 2,11] like many other preceding gods. As stated, the divine babe Adonis/Tammuz was born in the very cave in Bethlehem now considered the birthplace of Jesus, long before the Christian era. Regarding the Adonis cave, Christian apologist Weigall admits:

The propriety of this appropriation was increased by the fact that the worship of a god in a cave was a commonplace in paganism: Apollo, Cybele, Demeter, Herakles, Hermes, Mithra and Poseidon were all adored in caves; Hermes, the Greek logos being born of Maia in a cave, and Mithra being rock-born. (P. 191)

"The cave was universally identified with the womb of Mother Earth, the logical place for symbolic birth and regeneration." (P. 191)

The flight of the virgin-mother with her babe... is simply the same old story, over and over again. Someone has predicted that a child born at a certain time shall be great, he is therefore a "dangerous child," and the reigning monarch, or some other interested party, attempts to have the child destroyed, but he invariably escapes and grows to manhood, and generally accomplishes the purpose for which he was intended. This almost universal mythos was added to the fictitious history of Jesus by its fictitious authors, who have made him escape in his infancy from the reigning tyrant with the usual good fortune. -Doane

Mary Magdalene was described as a harlot; but in those times, harlots and priestesses were often one and the same. (P. 196)

The Eucharist, or the sharing of the god’s blood and body, has been a sacred ritual within many ancient mystery religions, and the line ascribed to Jesus, "This is my blood you drink, this is my body you eat," is a standard part of the theophagic (god-eating) ritual. While this cannibalistic rite is now allegorical, in the past participants actually ate and drank the "god’s" body and blood, which was in reality that of a sacrificed human or animal, as the consuming of the flesh has been thought since time immemorial to bestow the magical capacities of the victim upon the eater. (P. 200)

The Darkening of the Sun at the Crucifixion: Like the other contradictory and impossible events of the biblical narrative, this event is only explainable within the mythos. As noted, the same mythical darkening of the sun occurred at the deaths of Heracles/Hercules, Krishna, Prometheus, Buddha and Osiris. (P. 210)

Angels and devils: The concept of angels and devils in no way originated with Judaism or Christianity but is found in many other cultures around the globe. The Jews, in fact, took the names of some of their angels from the Persians. (P. 215)

Heaven and Hell: The concepts of heaven and hell were not introduced by the Judeo-Christian tradition but existed for millennia in other cultures, such as the Persian and Indian.(P.221)

The descent into hell by the saviour is a common occurrence within many mythologies, found in the stories of Adonis, Bacchus, Balder, Hercules, Horus, Jesus, Krishna, Mercury, Osiris, Quetzalcoatl and Zoroaster. (P. 222)

Like Moses, Krishna was placed by his mother in a reed basket and set adrift in a river to be discovered by another woman. The Akkadian Sargon also was placed in a reed basket and set adrift to save his life.
The same story was told of the sun hero fathered by Apollo and the virgin Creusa; of Sargon, king of Akkad in 2242 B.C.; and of the mythological twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, among many other baby heroes set adrift in rush baskets. It was a common theme. -Walker (P.241)

It has also been demonstrated that the biblical account of the Exodus could not have happened in history, implausibility! (P. 242)

William Dever, a University of Arizona archaeologist, flatly calls Moses a mythical figure. (P. 242)

The famed Ten Commandments are simply a repetition of the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and the Hindu Vedas, among others. (P. 244)

In the ancient world, laws generally came from a deity on a mountaintop. Zoroaster received the tablets of law from Ahura Mazda on a mountaintop. (P. 245)

The Jews strictly are of the Tribe, or Totemic Clan of Judah. The Israelites were not Jews. The Israelites, a mythological name, were a number of Totemic Tribes who originally left Egypt and went to the East during the Stellar Cult. (P.245)

St. Josaphat: In one of the more obvious of Christian deceptions, in order to convert followers of "Lord Buddha" the Church canonized him as "St. Josaphat," which represented a Christian corruption of the Buddhistic title, "Bodhisat." (P. 252)

"The name Jesus Christ was unknown until after the Nicene Council (325 CE). It appeared in no writings before that time." (P. 257)

The Phallic Cult: So obsessed are the biblical peoples with the foreskin that in exchange for the hand of his daughter, Saul demands the foreskins of 100 dead Philistines from David, who enthusiastically indulges the request by bringing Saul 200 foreskins. (P. 279)

In fact, the male genitals were so sacred to the Israelites that if, in defence of her husband, a woman grabbed the "private parts" of his enemy, she would have her hand cut off (Deut. 25:11-12). (P. 280)

Words like testament, testify, and testimony still attest to the oaths sworn on the testicles. (P. 281)

The Inquisition’s torturers usually raped their victims first. (P. 289)
[The Islamists too!]

One of the most notorious of the "closeted" Christian homosexuals was in fact King James I, the patron of the King James Bible, which is so highly esteemed by evangelical Christians. As related by Otto Scott, King James "was a known homosexual who murdered his young lovers and victimized countless heretics and women. His cruelty was justified by his 'divine right' of kings." (P. 292)

Opium, hashish and cannabis have a long history of use within religious worship and spiritual practices. (P. 293)

Drug use was rampant all over Christian Europe. Even Pope Leo XIII used a "coca leaf and red wine concoction." (P. 294)

Throughout the Old Testament the god of Israel repeatedly commanded "his people" to exterminate other cultures and to commit genocide. (P. 325)

In their creation of Christianity, the Therapeuts had at their disposal the university and library at Alexandria, which had been established by Alexander the Great as an international center of learning. Indeed, in its heyday the Alexandrian Library was a vast repository of some 500,000-700,000 manuscripts collected from around the world. (P. 330)

While Christianity "sprang up in a thousand places," its seed germinated in Antioch and grew to strength at Alexandria. But it would not become a force to be reckoned with until its roots took hold at Rome. (P. 333)
Mithraism was so important to Rome that in 307 the emperor designated Mithra the protector of the empire. (P. 335)

The doctrine of the incarnation has been evolved and established in the Osirian religion at least 4,000 and possibly 10,000 years before it was purloined and perverted in Christianity. -Massey (P. 336)

In the century before the birth of Christ and in the century or two after, so many Eastern religions and mysteries entered Rome that very little was left of the original Roman religion. The great city was simply a hotbed of cults of all possible sorts which vied with one another for supremacy. From Egypt came the worship of Isis and Osiris, from Phrygia the cult of Attis, and from Persia via Asia Minor the powerful soldier religion of Mithra, dominant in the second century A.D. (p339)

Rather than the advent and death of a "historical" Christ, the single most important events in the history of Christianity were the "conversion" of the Pagan Emperor Constantine and the convening of the raucous Council of Nicea in 325, which in fact marked the true birth of Jesus Christ. (p340)

In a typical religion-making move, the gods of the other cults were subjugated under the new god and changed into "apostles" and "saints." (p.340)

It is obvious the conspirators were after power and money, and, as Pope Leo X quipped, they certainly have become wealthy from the fable of Christ. In fact, during the 500-year period of the Inquisition, which Walker calls, "a standing mockery of justice - perhaps the most iniquitous that the arbitrary cruelty of man has ever devised," the Church grew extremely rich. In reality, there is no other way to explain why the Romans would willingly worship a Jewish man as a god incarnate, a title and honour usually reserved for Caesars. (p. 349)

... And Jews did many things that were intensely offensive to European sensibilities, like cutting the tip off of the male children’s penis as a matter of "religious" law. They were obsessed with "nonsensical" dietary superstitions and a seemingly endless set of "absurd" restrictions that seemed to prevent them from ever getting anything accomplished. The Greeks and Romans, both being steadfast believers in monogamous marriage and fierce defender of the sanctity of the institution of the family, were morally outraged when they discovered that Jews allowed a man to have more than one wife if he wanted to. They were even more disgusted and scandalized by the Jewish practice of permitting men to divorce a wife for no reason other than he felt like doing so. In stark contrast to the general Greek and Roman attitude of religious tolerance, the Jews had an obnoxious tendency to denounce everyone’s religion but their own in the most disrespectful ways imaginable, and sometimes spoke as if they had the right, or even the obligation to destroy the churches, altars, and holy shrines of other people. (P.350-351)

One of the greatest crimes in human history was the destruction in 391 of the library at Alexandria perpetrated by Christian fanatics under Theophilus bent on hiding the truth about their religion and its alleged founder. Because of this villainy, we have lost priceless information as to the true state of the ancient world, with such desolation also setting back civilization at least 1,000 years. (p356)

The Christian patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, instigated mobs to terrorize Jews and to hideously torture and murder the exalted female Pagan philosopher Hypatia (c.370-415) by scraping the flesh from her bones with oyster shells. For his evil acts, Cyril was later canonized by the "infallible" Church. Hypatia was so esteemed and renowned for her wisdom and brilliance that her murder has been considered the "death of the Pagan world." The destruction did not end there, however, as the ruination of literacy and history became an all-consuming Christian pursuit. As Graham states, "By the fifth century the destruction was so complete Archbishop Chrysostom could boast of it thus: 'Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth.'" (p357)

The Christian story is in large part Egyptian. (p358)

In addition to this odious Christian behaviour was the Inquisition, the most ghastly period in all of human history, in which millions were tortured and murdered so that they or their descendants would conform to the dogma of the Catholic Church. During those centuries, no dissenter was allowed to flourish and few to live at all. Anyone who dared to question the fairytales now being forced upon them - in other words, all the honest people - were forced to convert or die. (p358)

The whole Christian bible was derived from the sacred books of Egypt, such as: The Book of the Dead, The Pyramid Texts, and The Books of Thoth. Taylor shouted it out, "EVERYTHING OF CHRISTIANITY IS OF EGYPTIAN ORIGIN." Massey, of course, concurred. (p380)

It is not definite that there is a single source of all human languages, but much western language certainly comes out of India, a fact known for millennia and now being revamped with the "Nostratic theory," which seeks to trace language to India around 12,000 years ago. (p382)

The current paradigm favours Sumeria as the birthplace of human culture. (p383)

The Middle East is considered to be the "birthplace" of all human culture, the source of biblical tradition, the Garden of Eden, etc. (p392)

One of the Mexican gods was "Yao," the same as the Egyptian Iao and Hebrew Yah. The early Hebrews and their neighbours such as the Phoenicians and Canaanites called their Lord "Baal," but, astonishingly, "Bal is a Maya word meaning 'Lord of the Fields.'" (p393)

The traditions of the Polynesians start from 12,000 years back, and how much more no one can surmise. The Biblical tradition started with Moses some 3,000 thousand years ago, which proves that it was handed down to Moses in some form. (p394)

"There had to be a single worldwide culture at one point in ancient history.... Something or someone inspired the ancients to perform incredible feats of construction." - John Keel (p397)

Mayan pyramids are found from Central America to as far away as the Indonesian island of Java. (p398)

The Great Pyramid of Gizeh could not possibly have been the work of the Egyptian natives, nor has any one ever claimed that it was. (p398)

In Hebrew mythology the god El is both the sun and the planet Saturn. (p403)

When pressed, scholars and clergy alike will admit that the founding of the Christian religion is shrouded in centuries of intrigue and fraud. They will confess that there is not a single mention of Jesus by any historian contemporaneous with his alleged advent and that the biblical accounts are basically spurious, not written by their pretended authors and riddled with thousands of errors, impossibilities and contradictions. (p408)

Indeed, the efforts to find a historical Jesus have been pitiful and agonizing, based mainly on what he was not: To wit, the virgin birth is not history, and Jesus’ parents were not called Mary and Joseph. Jesus was not from Nazareth, which didn’t exist at the time, and the magi, star, angels and shepherds did not appear at his birth. He didn’t escape to Egypt, because Herod was not slaughtering children, and he didn’t amaze the priests with his teaching at age 12 in the temple etc... etc... It’s all baloney! (p409)

The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a dozen different gods. -Massey (p411)

"We have repudiated Greek and Roman mythologies with disdain. Why, then, admit with respect the mythology of the Jews? Ought the miracles of Jehovah to impress us more than those of Jupiter... I have much more respect for the Greek Jupiter than for the God of Moses; for if he gives some examples not of the purest morality, at least he does not flood his alter with streams of human blood." -Jacolliot (p413)

The Best of Robert Ingersoll -R.E. Greeley

2007-11-11T10:56:00.002-05:00

The Best of Robert INGERSOLL the "Great Agnostic" 1833-1899 (66)

Possessing a commanding appearance, a magnificent speaking voice, and a keen wit, Ingersoll held audiences spell-bound and speechless wherever and whenever he spoke. While attacking entrenched orthodoxy, he laid the foundation for the religion of the future, the religion of humanity. (p. vi)

People’s Church was a creedless Unitarian church. Its object is to make people happy in this world. Miss Bartlett is the pastor. She is a remarkable woman and is devoting her life to a good work. (p. ix-x)

Ingersoll created an enormous furor within orthodoxy as he systematically dissected and ridiculed the absurdities and fallacies of the Bible. (p. xi)

He was always careful to distinguish between belief and believer. He pitied those he regarded as "the prisoners of a cruel God." (p. xii)

His opinion was that until we were emancipated from all superstition and falsehoods, the human race would not, could not accept full responsibility for its destiny on planet earth. (p. xii)

The majority has always found it difficult to accept individualists, debunkers, iconoclasts, innovators, dissidents and reformers, regardless of the merit of their causes. (p. xv) Theodore Roosevelt was vilifying the memory of Thomas Paine, calling him that "filthy little atheist," Ingersoll’s confidence in the ultimate acceptance by this nation of Paine’s proper place was vindicated in 1945 when, at last, Paine entered the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, 136 years after his death! (p. xv)

Immortality as continuing personal existence beyond the grave is an unproved and improvable theological myth. (p. xvi)

Historians are quick to point out that it is doubtful that a religious nonconformist such as Thomas Jefferson (Unitarian) could obtain, today, nomination without a more respectable church affiliation. (Do you recall the religious odyssey of one Adlai Stevenson in his two tries for the presidency?) While a military man, Dwight Eisenhower had felt no compelling need to be a church member; but when the White House beckoned, he quickly embraced an organized church. Is there not something to be regretted in religious conviction as a ticket to political stardom? (p. xviii)

Ingersoll was not a professional philosopher. He loved billiards, cigars and the theatre. (p. xix)

He could not respect ignorance because it has enjoyed longevity. He worshipped, instead, the quest for the truth, the growth of human knowledge, and the spread of science. (p. xix)

Ingersoll was an agnostic, not an atheist. (p. xx)

Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe that a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in God. [Response to the fact that declared atheists cannot give testimony in legal proceedings.] (p. 3)

It is by the imagination that you are able to put yourself in the place of another. (p. 4)

Wagner was a sculptor, a painter in sound. (p. 4)

By poems I do not mean jangles of words. I mean great thoughts clothed in splendour. (p. 5)

Why was it that the disciples of Christ wrote in Greek, whereas, in fact, they understood only Hebrew? (p. 6)

If a person would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane. (p. 6)

Blasphemy
Each church has accused nearly every other of being a blasphemer. The Catholics called Martin Luther a blasphemer and Martin Luther called Copernicus a blasphemer. Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. Some of the greatest men of the world, some of the best, have been put to death for blasphemy. (p. 7)

Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth. Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice. Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless. (p. 8)

The Old Testament is just a little too old. (p. 9)

Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgement, in many respects the grandest man ever President of the United States… Upon his monument these words should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world who, having almost absolute power, never abused it except on the side of mercy." (p. 10)

Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did more to free the human race than any other of the sons of men. (p. 11)

We must educate the children; rescue them from ignorance and crime. Schoolhouses are the real temples and teachers are the true priests. Let us develop the brain, civilize the heart, and give wings to the imagination. (p. 13)

What I Want For Christmas:
If I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves. I would have the nobility drop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara and take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God - is not infallible - but is just an ordinary Italian [or Kraut]. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would have them tell their "flocks" to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly woman, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness. (p. 16)

Cruelty hardens and degrades; kindness reforms and ennobles. (p. 16)

The Church and Money
The church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down. (p. 17)

Calvinism is the cancer of Christianity. (p. 21)

Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity. (p. 22)

Crime and Punishment
A penitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again and again at the bar. (p. 23)

As long as man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school. No man can get too much knowledge. (p. 32)

Evolution (Darwinism)
When I first heard of that doctrine, I did not like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who have nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the duke Orang Outang, or to the princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. (p. 32)

God/Gods
Jehovah was not a moral God. He had all the vices and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out all his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise. (p.35)

Act of God
Is it not strange that Christians speak of their God as an assassin? (p. 36)

Government
I am an individualist instead of a Socialist. I am a believer in individuality and in each individual taking care of himself. (p. 39)

Nothing is farther from democracy than this perpetual application of the veto power. As a matter of fact, it should be abolished, and the utmost a U.S.A. President should be allowed to do, would be to return a bill with his objections, and the bill should then become law on being passed by both houses by a simple majority. This would give the Executive the opportunity of calling attention to the supposed defects and getting the judgement of Congress a second time. (p. 41)

I suppose that the superstition most prevalent with public men is the idea that they are of great importance to the public. Men in office reflect the average intelligence of the people, and no more. (p. 41)

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows. (p. 60)

If we read in the annals of China that several thousand years ago, five thousand people were fed on one sandwich, and that several sandwiches were left over after the feast, there are few intelligent men (except, it may be, the editors of religious weeklies) who would credit the statement. But many intelligent people, reading a like story in the Hebrew, or in the Greek, or in a mistranslation from either of these languages, accept the story without a doubt. (p. 60)

I am not trying to destroy another world. I am trying to prevent the theologians from destroying this world. (p. 64)

Wealth is not a crime and poverty is not a virtue - although the virtuous have generally been poor. (p. 75)

Laws do not of themselves make good people. Good people make good laws. (p. 77)

There is a certain sociability about wine that I should hate to have taken from the earth. (p. 78)

Religion has not civilized man - man has civilized religion. (p. 83)

Religion does not consist in worshipping gods, but in aiding the well-being, the happiness of man. No human being knows whether any god exists or not. All that has been said and written about "our god" or the gods of other people has no known fact or foundation. Words without thoughts, clouds without rain. Let us put theology out of religion. (p. 83-84)

Religion and morality have nothing in common. (p. 84)

In my judgement, the religion of the future will be Reason. (p. 85)

Usefulness is the highest possible form of worship. The useful person is the good person; the useful person is the real saint. I care nothing about supernatural myths and mysteries, but I do care for human beings. (p. 85)

I am a believer in the home… I believe that the home, the family, is the unit of good government… That is all there is in this world worth living for. Honour, place, fame, glory, riches - they are ashes, smoke, dust, disappointment, unless there is somebody in the world you love, somebody who loves you; unless there is someplace where you can feel the arms of children around your neck, some place that is made absolutely sacred by the love of others. (p. 84)

I would not kill any living creature. I am sometimes tempted to kill a mosquito on my hand, but I stop to think what a wonderful construction it has, and shoo it away. (p. 86)

The sciences are not bound by the creeds. We should remember that there are no such things as Methodist mathematics, or Baptist botany, or Catholic chemistry. The sciences are secular. (p. 88)

Only those able to raise and educate children should have them. (p. 89)

To Paine, Jefferson and Franklin, we are indebted more than to all others, for a human government, and for a Constitution in which no God is recognized superior to the legally expressed will of the people. (p. 90)

Governors and Presidents should not issue religious proclamations. They should not call upon the people to thank God. It is no part of their official duty. It is outside and beyond the horizon of their authority. There is nothing in the Constitution to justify this religious impertinence. (p. 90)

The framers of our Constitution intended that the government should be secular in the broadest and best sense; and yet there are thousands and thousands of religious people in this country who are greatly scandalized because there is no recognition of God in the Federal Constitution… for several years a great many ministers have been endeavouring to have the Constitution amended so as to recognize the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. (p. 92)

Suicide as Euthanasia
There are circumstances in which suicide is natural, sensible, and right. When a man is of no use to himself, when he can be of no use to others, when his life is filled with agony, when the future has no promise of relief, then I think he has the right to cast the burden of life away and seek the repose of death. (p. 96)

Every man of sense knows that a person being devoured by cancer has the right [if not his right, it is his choice, what can you do about it?] to take morphine, and pass from agony to dreamless sleep. (p. 96)

The old idea that God made the world and then rested is idiotic. (p. 97)
[Extremely childish the Bible! -Platypus]

Spain has always been exceedingly religious and extremely cruel. (p. 103)

As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The Bible was not written by a woman. Within its lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame. She is regarded as the property of man. (p. 108)

For weeks at a time Ingersoll would leave his hearth and home and crisscross the country, delivering his iconoclastic attacks upon the excesses and cruelties of orthodox religion. (p. 127)

Ingersoll’s fame as an orator and iconoclast had made him the most loved and hated man of his day. Taking stock of what Darwin and T.H. Huxley had done to undermine the superstition and ignorance of the Bible’s authors, Ingersoll built a career around liberating the minds of the timid and fearful by exposing the errors and absurdities of orthodoxy. He spoke with sarcasm, wit, and sincere hostility against the unmitigated horrors and cruelties of "hell and eternal damnation." He outdrew all other orators, clerical or other wise. He simply had no competition. (p. 132-133)

ENCOMIUMS

William E. Clark - Ex-clergyman/Freethinker
The world is a better place to live in because Ingersoll lived in it. He helped to make living in this word popular… It was Ingersoll’s inexhaustible fund of humour that enabled him to laugh the devil out of the pulpit… Humanity owes a debt of everlasting gratitude to this great and splendid man because he did so much toward rescuing the human mind from fear. (p. 152)

Caroline Bartlett Crane - Pastor, People’s Church, Kalamazoo
It was the People’s Church of Kalamazoo that Ingersoll visited and said that it was the "finest thing of its kind in the state if not the nation. If there were such a church in my home town and its members would permit me, I would join it." (p. 153)

Eugene Debs - Socialist Candidate for President
He was the Shakespeare of oratory… (p. 153)

Chauncey Depew - Orator, Republican Politician
Not to have heard… Ingersoll was to have missed being for an evening under the spell of a magician. (p. 154)

…his unequalled eloquence… (p. 156)

He was a master of colloquial speech. (p. 157)

Ingersoll was above all a lover of Shakespeare. (p. 158)

Edgar "Ed" W. Howe - Newspaper Editor, Proprietor
The death of Robert G. Ingersoll removed one of America’s greatest citizens. It is not popular to admire Ingersoll but his brilliancy, his integrity and patriotism cannot be doubted. Had not Ingersoll been frank enough to express his opinion on religion he would have been President of the United States. Hypocrisy in religion pays.
There will come a time when public men may speak their honest convictions in religion without being maligned by the ignorant and superstitious, but not yet. (p. 158)

Edgar Dewitt Jones - Clergyman/Author
Of all the eloquent speakers America has produced, the most gorgeous rhetorician was Robert G. Ingersoll. He possessed all the qualities that are required for the perfect orator. (p. 159)

The prophet of the Religion of Humanity. (p. 163)

A keen analytical brain and a marvellous gift of oratory. (p. 163)

Charles Francis Potter - Clergyman/Author/Lecturer
Robert Ingersoll was the apostle of the religion of the unchurched. Had it not been for Ingersoll’s anti-Christian views openly expressed, he could have been President of the United States. (p. 164)

Oscar S. Straus - Banker and Philanthropist
He abolished Hell and anchored Heaven on Earth! Robert Ingersoll had the eloquence of Webster and the genius for justice and humanity of Lincoln. (p. 166)

He is largely characterized as one who was merely "against the cherished traditions of his day." (p. 171)

Roger E. Greeley