Deep Thought 1

666 anti-Christ Technology

Introduction and Thesis Statement

[NOTE: This article was originally one of my 300-level Computer Science term papers.]

Kings, tyrants, madmen and exploiters have been abusing mankind for thousands of years. Using the simple tools of spies, informants, bribes, torture and intimidation they have very effectively oppressed populations both large and small throughout the history of civilization. Until the middle part of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, however, these oppressors were restrained by basic physical limitations. That is, their rule extended only as far as their most distant military outposts, and only as fast as their orders could be carried to those outposts by horse, runner or sailing ship. Anyone taking a single step outside the boundaries of the Realm could be free of the oppression; or at least free from that particular oppression.

The period from the mid nineteenth century through the first three-quarters of the twentieth century saw the arrival of some truly amazing inventions: self-powered ships, railroads, airplanes and automobiles; the telegraph and telephone, radio and television; hydro-powered, fossil-fueled, and nuclear driven electrical power generation; electric lights, motors, heaters and—last but not least—the electronic computer.

As important as those inventions were, they did not substantially increase the range or oppressive potential of tyrannical regimes. What increased was the speed by which information or commands could be disseminated throughout those regimes. However, the tyrant's tool bag was not fundamentally increased by those inventions.

One invention during that period did have the potential to fundamentally increase the capabilities of tyrants: The mass-produced large-scale integrated circuit microprocessors on which virtually all modern electronic devices are founded. That invention (and associated software) leads directly to this article's thesis statement:

“In the past forty years, computer and microprocessor technology has spawned a range of devices particularly employable for tyrannical purposes. This report will examine the key technologies related to this issue in order to determine if special concern is actually warranted.”

Section One

Almost Omniscient: Databases and Telecommunications

When Winston Smith climbed the stairs in his dreary apartment building that cold, blustery London morning in 1984, he came face-to-face with the outsized poster visage of his peerless leader reminding him of the universally known fact that “Big Brother is watching you (Orwell, 5).” This should not have come as a surprise to him or anyone else who has ever lived under tyrannical rule. Big Brothers have always been watching! Indeed, it is difficult to imagine an oppressive regime that could endure for any length of time without some significant effort at identifying and monitoring its subject population.

Dr. Baase pointed out in her textbook A Gift of Fire that the Communist East German secret State police acquired and maintained paper-based dossier files of approximately six million people. Those files filled over a hundred miles of shelf space. All of this was done without computers (Baase, 36). This section will provide an overview of the present capabilities of electronic data mass storage and management, and the communications infrastructure feeding the databases.

Databases:

The computer disk/tape hardware and software systems related to databases and data storage have literally become commodity items. Besides the obvious sources such as IBM and HP, a ready sample of manufacturers and suppliers of database materiel can be found at the website for the latest symposium on mass storage hosted by StorageVisions (Storage Conference).

IBM, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, has developed and markets the High Performance Storage System (HPSS). As described on its promotional website, “HPSS is software that manages petabytes of data on disk and robotic tape libraries (HPSS)”. The University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center maintains an extensive data processing and storage system available for a wide range of uses (SDSC).

Although the HPSS and San Diego systems are geared primarily towards large-file scientific research needs, the systems currently available on the open market represent a vast—and growing—resource that could be used for virtually any purpose (fair or foul) by any entity (good or evil). Time will only improve the effectiveness, capacity and speed of the software and hardware underlying these systems.

Telecommunications: Landlines

Databases—whether high speed electronic disks or cave drawings—must be accessible for input and output, or else they are rendered worthless. Present day database systems require high-speed, high capacity communication systems to convey the tremendous amounts of data generated by modern global society. Although this portion of the article emphasizes communications in the United States, there is a growing trend towards a seamless global communications system.

Much has been made over the breakup of “Ma Bell”, the AT&T/Bell Telephone monopoly that existed during much of the twentieth century. Although the judicial “Final Judgment” in the antitrust action occurred in 1956, the actual breakup of Ma Bell did not begin in earnest until the Modified Final Judgment by U.S. District Court Judge Greene in 1984, and was not complete in a practical sense until the Telecommunications Act of 1996. However, the individual component parts of that breakup (Regional Bell Operating Companies, interexchange carriers, Internet service providers, etc.) are really creatures of the U.S. Justice Department. That is, they are in no way required for the operation of a fully functional telecommunications system. Therefore this article mentions them only in passing (Hill Associates, 14-15).

Of prime importance are the ‘AT&T Long Lines’ type of operations that are capable of long distance, high speed, high volume telecommunications. These are the workhorse companies that actually make modern databases possible and relevant. However, the technology that is truly allowing the explosive growth in telecommunications is fiber optic transmission. Copper wire and coaxial cable transmission lines have limits imposed by basic physics that render them unsuitable for the data rates and distances demanded by modern database operations.

When the actual breakup of Ma Bell created new phone companies, it became obvious to them that in order to function, a new way of interconnecting was going to be required. Fiber optics lines were to be the preferred medium, and Bellcore provided a set of unified standards for fiber optic communications. This standard was called Synchronous Optical NETwork, or SONET. Fundamental to this new standard was the requirement that it not only be compatible with existing U.S.-based copper wire systems, but also allow international compatibility. As Hill Associates put it:

“The designers of the SONET standards crafted those standards in such a way as to encompass the transmission requirements of the entire world into a single system. Thus, the global counterpart to the SONET standards in North America came to be known as the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, or SDH. …unlike the potpourri of incompatible data rates that characterize metallic transmission networks around the globe, SONET and SDH were designed from the ground up to support interoperability among global optical transmission networks (Hill Associates, 205).”

A single SONET/SDH communications channel has a maximum data rate of almost 40 gigabytes per second—SONET level STS-768 (ibid). As impressive as that data rate is, fiber optic lines allow many individual SONET communications channels to be transmitted on a single fiber by using (or ‘multiplexing’) multiple modulated lasers operating at different wavelengths. The performance of fiber optics is being further enhanced by recent developments in amplification that will substantially increase the distances a single fiber optic line can travel.

For example, ‘Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers’ take advantage of a quantum phenomenon that energy from unmodulated lasers can be injected into a fiber optic line at specially manufactured locations and combine constructively with the data-carrying laser light, thereby amplifying the signal. This could replace the bulky and inefficient current technique of periodically converting fiber optic laser signals to regular electronic signals, cleaning up and amplifying the signals, and then reconverting them back to laser light for retransmission down the line. This could extend a single fiber line to as long as three thousand miles. Further developments in the areas of diffraction gratings and micro-electromechanical mirrors for SONET channel routing and manipulation could result in purely fiber optic long distance communications systems (ibid, 221-222).

Telecommunications: Wireless

An overview of telecommunications would not be at all sufficient without mentioning the growing world of wireless communications. Wireless (or ‘cellular’) phones and data devices are really just variants of FM (frequency modulated) mobile radios. There are, however, several technical features of wireless systems that separate them from the older mobile FM radio systems.

First (though not at all obvious) is that wireless devices typically do not communicate directly with each other as is the case with older FM radio systems. That is, most customer/user mobile devices communicate through the intermediary of a wireless company Mobile Base Station (MBS), and possibly through a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and a landline phone company as appropriate in order to enable nationwide—even global—communications. This necessitates that each mobile device be individually serialized for identification and subscription service purposes. This serial ID information is automatically transmitted out of the mobile device when it is in use.

Second, both user devices and MBSs operate at low power. This requires a rather large number of MBSs to provide continuous, uninterrupted communications service. In rural settings this might be a string of Mobile Base Stations along a main highway. In an urban setting, the MBSs would take on a honeycomb shape. Each MBS and its transmission/reception area is called a ‘cell’. It is in the urban setting that the full suite of technology must be brought to bear to successfully execute a commercial wireless system.

The third point separating wireless from old-fashioned FM mobile radio is that the customer unit is capable of operating at multiple frequencies, but the frequency is computer program controlled from the MBS, not by the customer, so as to minimize interference and allow the maximum number of users within each MBS wireless cell.

Fourth, each customer unit and MBS is also capable of automatically adjusting its transmission power to the lowest level that will complete a connection so as to maximize usage and minimize interference between adjacent cells. This, also, is computer controlled by the MBS.

The fifth difference between current wireless and mobile radio (and older cellular) is the switch currently being made from analog modulation to digital modulation. This has the effect of increasing data rates from three to eight times that of analog (Hill Associates, 278-279).

A well developed technology that is used extensively in other countries and is gaining attention in the U.S. is adaptive phase-array antenna systems. These systems use banks (or ‘arrays’) of individual antenna elements on an MBS cell tower to receive the customer's signal. A powerful computer program analyses the signals from each antenna element to determine the time the signal was received by each element. This timing information allows the computer program to determine the precise direction of the customer unit. The program can then use this information to focus on that particular customer. Other customers are similarly focused upon by this software analysis, allowing the antenna to service multiple customers within a single cell even if they are using the same frequency.

Transmission from the adaptive array antenna is basically the reverse of reception. Since the MBS knows the direction of the customer unit, the computer adjusts the timing of the individual transmission signals going to the array elements, thereby focusing the outbound signal towards the specific customer. Other users—even on the same frequency and using the same antenna array elements—are unaffected. Adaptive arrays can greatly increase the number of simultaneous users in a single wireless cell (Cooper, 49-55).

International Standards:

One of the great hindrances of science, technology, government and commerce down through the ages has been the lack of universal standards. A patchwork crazy quilt of individual, local, regional, national, trade and professional standards produced the technological equivalent of medieval feudalism. A notable feature of the twentieth century was the rise of international organizations dedicated to establishing and validating standards for government, business and industry.

Highly relevant to this section are organizations such as the United Nations sponsored International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Internet Society (ISOC), and the Alliance for Telecommunications industry Solutions (ATIS).The priciples underlying the efforts of these organizations were conveyed by ISO President Oliver R. Smoot at the 67th International Engineering Consortium general meeting in Montreal on 17 October 2003:

“We in ISO and IEC also share common values when it comes to the development of globally relevant international standards. We have both been able to demonstrate that we implement fully the six principles for international standardizing bodies identified by the World Trade Organization as the criteria needed to promote the use of international standards to eliminate technical barriers to trade, whether or not related to technical regulations. These principles are: transparency, openness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness and relevance coherence, and consideration of the needs of developing countries. In addition, to our common 1+1+1 objective (one standard, one test, accepted everywhere), we have developed jointly a widely used ‘tool box’ of good conformity assessment practices, guides, and standards.”

Although International standards are not a requisite for modern technology, their acceptance and implementation have greatly accelerated the pace of electronics innovation and the worldwide dissemination of the resulting products, services and capabilities.

Section Conclusion:

Up to this point we have considered the subjects of mass storage databases, telecommunications, and international standards. The capacity of commercially available databases is limited only by funding; that is, effectively endless. These databases can be fed at tens-of-gigabytes per second with current global telecommunications technology. International standards allow worldwide compatibility and usage. A ‘Big Brother’ or 666 anti-Christ tyrant could quickly become all but omniscient.

However, so far we have not found anything inherently evil or sinister. The worst of the criticism against this technology is little more than nuisance. Indeed these technologies have been, for the most part, blessings to mankind increasing productivity, efficiency, income, convenience, safety and security.

Perhaps danger lurks elsewhere…

Section Two

I know who you are: Biometrics and RFID

As relates to this article, biometrics is the ability to automatically check and verify the identity of a person without need for human intervention, using intrinsic characteristics of that person's body. RFID is a recent technology that allows a non-contact radio interrogation of the information on a microchip physically attached to or inserted into an object.

Biometrics:

There has always been a legitimate need in civilized society to verify the identity of individual people. Business transactions, property claims, citizenship, inheritance claims, etc. can hinge on establishing the true identity of persons involved in the actions. From the dawn of animal existence individual creatures have been distinguished by features such as appearance, odor, and sound. People have always identified each other by facial features, body build, and voice. The challenge to modern computer technology is to automate the process of recognizing and verifying the identity of individual humans. The three most common and prevalent biometrics points are fingerprints, voice, and the eye.

Fingerprints have been used as a distinctive identifier for over two thousand years. However, it has only been since the mid 1800s that a real science of fingerprints has developed (Higgins, 45-47). In the early 1970s, research into the digital scanning of live fingerprints commenced, with the first commercial fingerprint scanning units being marketed in the early 1980s. In the early 1990s ANSI and NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) were requested by the FBI to establish standards for electronic data-basing and transmission of digitally scanned fingerprints. This resulted in ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2000, commonly known as ANSI/NIST Standard (Higgins, 57-58).

The human voice is rich in distinctive characteristics. Voice (or ‘speaker’) recognition works by recording and digitizing a sample of a person's voice while that person is speaking a specific word or string of words. The voice sample becomes the database standard for that person's identity. During authentication, a person is asked to repeat that specific phrase. It is digitized and analyzed against the voice recorded in the database to determine if there is a match (Orlans, 82-84).

Iris and retina scanning take advantage of the uniquely distinctive features of the human eye. Iris scans map the pigmentation of the colored part of the eye. Retina scans map the unique configuration of veins at the back of the eye. Both types of scan-maps are digitized and stored in a database. Those seeking recognition have their eyes scanned and the test scan is compared with the database scan (ibid, 89-99).

RFID:

RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification. Unlike biometrics, RFID does not have anything to do with the characteristics of the human body. It is much more closely related to a stick-on label or a barcode on a product box. That is, RFID is as inorganic as a cell phone.

RFID takes advantage of two facts of electronics. First, modern microcircuits truly are very small but can pack a lot of information. They also require very little power to operate. Second, RFID takes advantage of the fact that a radio frequency broadcast signal has energy that can be tapped and used by the receiving device. An RFID ‘tag’ consists of an information-bearing microcircuit, a tiny radio receiver/transmitter, and a small antenna. All of this can be housed in virually anything from tiny surgical glass vials to credit cards.

The trick with RFID is that a special reader unit emits a radio signal at the frequency to which the tag is tuned. The tag's antenna picks up the RF energy from the reader, uses that energy to power both the RFID microcircuit and transmitter, then the information in the microcircuit is broadcast out of the tag's antenna and received back at the reader which decodes the information and takes whatever action it is programmed to take such as update inventory, complete transaction, report to database, grant entry, sound alarm, notify police, etc. (Want, 58-65).

Of special interest to the author is the VeriChip implant. It is an RFID tag encapsulated in a surgical grade glass vial about the size of a grain of rice which can be quickly and easily inserted under the skin with a simple hypodermic needle. As currently used, its microchip is uniquely encoded for personal or medical identification purposes (VeriChip). However, that microchip could also be encoded with government mandated information to be used as government deems necessary.

Section Conclusion:

There is nothing inherently wrong or evil in wanting to positively identify someone. In most instances this is a good and desirable thing. Biometrics is just the computer assisted, automatic version of looking at someone's face and saying, “Yup, that's you all right! Come on in.”

However, the idea of government required RFID implants in humans does start to get a little creepy. There's really not that much difference between tracking pets or cattle and tracking/monitoring/controlling humans. It would be all too easy to post RFID detectors in the doorways or ‘bottlenecks’ of virtually every publicly accessible place in the world to monitor and record who passes through. Targeted persons injected with an RFID tag could be automatically detected and dealt with as provided for by Law.

Section Three

I know where you are: GPS and Video Surveillance

GPS:

The Glogal Positioning System (GPS) was established primarily to aid the U.S. military. It consists of twenty-four broadcast satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit at about 12,600 miles above the earth at 55 degrees tilt relative to the equator. A single satellite would be in view from the ground for about twelve hours, and the full constellation of satellites are placed in orbits so that at least four of the satellites (the minimum needed for a 3D position fix) will be in view at all times at all location on earth.

These satellites transmit timing and orbit information that can be received and processed by earth-based receivers in order to determine a three-dimensional location; that is, latitude, longitude and altitude (Larijani, 4-5). As relates to this article, present day commercially available GPS receivers are about the size of a typical cell phone. Indeed, many new models of cell phones have built-in GPS capability. Current civilian accuracy for GPS is somewhere between a radius of thirty to one hundred yards. Scheduled improvements in GPS satellites in the next few years should improve these accuracies further (Enge, 91-97).

The small size of GPS receivers would allow this technology to be utilized virtually anywhere, and in any way. For example, Government regulations in a Big Brother/anti-Christ regime could mandate that new automobiles be fitted with combination GPS/cell phone systems (e.g., OnStar) in order to monitor (or even have control over) automobiles. Older cars could be retrofitted with GPS/cell phone units for monitoring purposes. A large and growing number of businesses are offering aftermarket kits for these purposes. An example of this is found at Brickhousesecurity.com Example. Big Brother would smile.

The enforcement of court-issued restraining orders against domestic violence offenders and home detention sentences of non-violent criminals has created an actual market for GPS/cell phone units that can be strapped to the person. Commercial vendors are marketing hardware and monitoring services for this very purpose. Even Walmart offers these devices (Ankle monitor). The technology—hardware and software—is now ubiquitous.

Video Surveillance:

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to (Orwell, 6).”

Companies such as ObjectVideo Labs produce software to enable the large-and-growing number of private and public surveillance camera systems to automatically computer analyze what they “see” in accordance with user parameters. As ObjectVideo Labs CEO Raul Fernandez put it, “The problem with large closed-circuit television infrastructures is there are a lot of cameras, but nobody's watching them. That's where technology comes in (Video Surveillance).” With the help of computers and high-speed telecommunications networks, a Big Brother or anti-Christ really could be watching all of the time—even in his sleep.

Section Four

Constitutional Considerations

This section assumes the nicety that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights would still have some force in an Big Brother/anti-Christ tyrannical environment. The books Biometrics and A Gift of Fire both adequately cover the usual aspects of privacy and constitutional civil rights such as the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. This article will add a single observation on one generally ignored area: Foreign treaties.

Article. VI., paragraph two states, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

This really does mean that foreign treaties are coequal with the United States Constitution, although a reasoned view of the matter would indicate that treaties should not abuse or modify our Constitution (American Jurisprudence, 419-423). Unfortunately, this author doubts that the typical U.S. history or civics course provides adequate coverage of the subject of foreign treaties. Therefore, the general population is probably unaware of the ‘backdoor’ option for the abuse of power and authority. However, considering that if an abusive treaty were actually to be made by the President of the United States and ratified by “two thirds of the Senators present (Art. II, Sect. 2, Para 2)”, it would literally take a U.S. Supreme Court decision—or revolution—to undo the damage.

Conclusion:

With the possible exception of injecting RFID tags into humans, there is simply nothing inherently evil or sinister about any of the technologies examined in this article. Virtually all such technologies have been quite beneficial, and virtually all legitimate concerns about these technologies are being addressed through normal legislative, regulatory or market-force avenues.

If, however, a worst-case Biblical Apocalyptic situation were to befall mankind, then the technologies examined above could be put to truly evil use in such ways as would materially increase the effects of tyranny above that of premodern societies. Most hurtful would be the ability to individually tag each human, or a target population, and use RFID detectors at strategic locations (grocery stores, banks, airports, bus and train stations, government/office buildings, etc.) to physically control access or monitor movement. Another very plausible tactic would be for a tyrannical regime to actually convert to a smart card or RFID tag-controlled cashless society so as to monitor or control all significant transactions on a global basis. Modern high capacity databases and nearly instantaneous global telecommunications would allow worldwide tracking, monitoring, recording and control. You could run, but your could not hide.

With the increasing trend towards computer controlled transportation, the day may soon come when you can't even run.

In final closing, only time will tell if the doomsayers are right or wrong. One thing is for certain, however: the technology of the future will only increase in speed, capacity and power. If Big Brother—or the 666 anti-Christ—ever takes over, he will find a tremendously powerful tool of oppression in modern computer electronics technology.

Bibliography

Baase, Sara
A Gift of Fire
Prentice Hall (2002)

Cooper, Martin
Scientific American
June 09, 2003

Enge, Per
Scientific American
April 26, 2004

Higgins & Orlans
Biometrics: Identity Assurance in the Information Age
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (2002)

Hill Associates
Telecommunications: A Beginner's Guide
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (2001)

Larijani, L., Casey
GPS for Everyone
AIAA (1998)

Orwell, George
1984
Signet (1961)

Want, Roy
Scientific American
December 15, 2003

Table of Contents

Abortion

I start this subject with quotes from Mr. Justice Blackmun's majority opinion in Roe v Wade (1973) as recorded in the lawyers reference book 35 L Ed., 2nd: “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection. We bear in mind, too Mr. Justice Holmes' admonition in his now-vindicated dissent in Lochner v N.Y.” (1905):

“The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”

From pages 164 through 173 the High Court examined the medical/religious/legal histories of abortion. These histories revealed a wide range of policies regarding abortion, from total acceptance to total prohibition (e.g. Hippocratic Oath, the AMA report of 1859, etc.). In considering the legitimate interests of the State, the Supreme Court was persuaded in argument (pgs 175-176) that the idea of the personhood of the fetus was a very recent development, and that most laws and court decisions focused on the rights and well-being of the pregnant woman.

Regarding the issue of a woman's right to privacy, the opinion stated, “This right of privacy, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.”

The Court listed medical and psychological harm to the mother, problems and expense of unwanted children, and social stigma as prime reasons for abortion. They made no mention of the personhood of the fetus. The Court did recognize that the privacy-based right to abortion was not absolute. At viability, the fetus could be protected as a function of a compelling interest of the State: “…that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute and is subject to some limitations; and that at some point the State interests as to protection of prenatal life, become dominant. We agree with this approach.”

The lawyer representing Roe claimed that a woman has an unrestricted right to abortion; Wade claimed that the State has a compelling interest in the unborn. The Court said, “As noted above, we do not agree fully with either formulation. The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the 14th Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the 14th Amendment.

“The Constitution does not define ‘person’ in so many words. But in nearly all these [previously cited] instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible prenatal application. All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word ‘person’, as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.

“Texas argues that, apart from the 14th Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

“If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.”

Clearly the Supreme Court was fully aware of all aspects and implications involved in this decision. However, they deliberately chose to take a fairly narrow view of the question and refrained from making a moral stand. Christian conservatives have often criticized the federal courts for being “activist”; that is, of forcing social change through judicial rulings. Roe v Wade, however, is clearly a case where the High Court deliberately chose to not be activist, by taking the most cautious and constitutionally well-founded path to its final Opinion. Social Conservatives really need to recognize and respect this Judicial restraint, even if they disagree with the overall final result.

The general subject of abortion is much better covered on other websites. However, I want to make the observation here that if the Pro-life Movement should ever succeed in legally establishing the 14th Amendment personhood of the unborn, we must be prepared to deal with the full consequences flowing from such an event. Consider the logical chain of events that would unfold from a determination that the unborn are protected by the 14th Amendment. The matter would be turned over to Justice Department law enforcement bureaucrats for physical implementation. The first thing that would spring to their minds is that in order to protect the fetus, one must first detect the fetus. That means that the federal government would have to set up a nationwide system of mandatory pregnancy testing for all females who might conceivably conceive (pun intended). This would require the establishment of a truly massive federal agency with the resources to test all of these women on at least a quarterly basis, and the authority to compel them all to come in and ‘pee on the stick’.

If a pregnancy is detected, then the Agency must have the power to appropriate the woman's body as an incubator for the full term of the pregnancy, with frequent mandatory prenatal care and examinations. Should the pregnancy terminate before delivery, a thorough investigation would have to be conducted to determine if a crime was committed. This will require a substantial expansion of general law enforcement resources and authority. Inevitably, women and medical practitioners will run afoul of this system; that is, be arrested and prosecuted. The general mass media will have a field day spotlighting every case brought to court. One needs little imagination to see the political and legal firestorm that would be ignited by a bureaucratic solution to ending abortion.

I feel that the most effective (and least disruptive) course of action for the Pro-life Movement would be a four-pronged agenda. First, to step-up the existing campaign to encourage abstinence from premarital sex, and to convince the general public that the fetus is actually a person in need of protection and respect from the moment of conception. Second, to persuade drug companies and the government to develop truly effective birth control methods that will prevent conception rather than chemically abort the fertilized egg. I realize that birth control is a very controversial subject in its own right, but this point really needs to be done in order to prevent unplanned pregnancies in the first place. Third, the Pro-life Movement must pressure the government to establish a well-funded, well-equipped nationwide system of pregnancy support centers so that any woman who gets pregnant—regardless of age, marital, or economic status—will have the ready resources and assistance to bring the baby to full birth for adoption. That is, every incentive should be to avoid abortion and bring the pregnancy to full term. Fourth, the members of the Pro-Life Movement must roll up their sleeves for the vitally important work of actually adopting and raising the millions of babies that will be brought into this world through the success of their activist efforts.

In the end, these four initiatives would bring to fulfillment President Bill Clinton's failed campaign promise to make abortion safe, legal—but RARE. And the rarer the better, as far as I'm concerned.

I close this article by posing a question to Pro Choice advocates: Would you support a law allowing a mother to ‘choose’ to terminate an infant within 48 hours after birth? Of course you recognize that I am laying a bit of a trap. If you answer “Yes”, then you would be supporting outright and obvious infanticide. However, if you answer “No”, then you would be face-to-face with the Pro Life assertion that the fetus is a human in the womb that deserves recognition and protection. This is because the infant 48 hours after birth is exactly the same infant as 48 hours before birth. Only the physical location differs. 48 hours after birth the infant is in its mother's arms; 48 hours before birth the infant is in its mother's belly. Otherwise, it is exactly the same infant.

Table of Contents

The Bill of Rights and Barron v Baltimore

by Brian Bloedel

Email the author at “bloedel@verizon.net”

In this article I will be swimming against two very strong currents of longstanding Supreme Court precedent and Constitutional legal doctrine. First I will be arguing that, contrary to Barron v Baltimore (1833), all of the general provisions of the Bill of Rights amendments were originally effective (as of December 15, 1791) against the State and local governments as well as the federal government without need for recourse to ‘Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation’. Second, I will be arguing that the First Amendment's ‘Religion Clause’ is badly misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misapplied.

To understand my first assertion we must refer to Article V of the original Constitution. In abbreviated form it reads: “The Congress…shall propose Amendments to this Constitution…which…shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States…”.

This was reiterated in the Congressional preamble to the Bill of Rights amendments thusly (and do bear in mind that the term ‘Bill of Rights’ is a popular term, and was not used in the written instruments submitted to the several States for their consideration nor by the Barron Court to describe the first ten Amendments): “RESOLVED …that the following Articles be proposed…as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which Articles, when ratified…to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz..ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America,…pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.” [Note: Bold ink emphasis actually used in the original script of the handwritten documents submitted to the several States for their consideration.]

It should be quite clear from the above that properly ratified amendments to the U.S. Constitution are full-blooded ARTICLES of the U.S. Constitution, and must not be regarded as redheaded stepchildren, footnotes, or inferior afterthoughts. They are fully equal in force, stature and effect to the original seven Articles framed during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. Further underscoring this is the fact that in the original documents submitted to the several States, each proposed amendment was termed an ‘Article’, as in “Article the first”, “Article the second”, &c. Indeed, of the twenty-seven Amendments ratified to our Constitution, eleven specifically denominate themselves as an “article”. For example, the 13th Amendment clearly states, “Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

At this point we must clearly understand a critically important difference between the ratification process of the original Constitution and the ratification process of the Bill of Rights amendments. The original seven-Article Constitution proposed by the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was presented to the specially convened State Ratification Conventions as a package deal that had to be accepted or rejected as a whole. The Bill of Rights amendments produced by the First Congress in 1789, on the other hand, were a bundle of individual proposed amendments submitted to the existing State legislatures that were to be ratified or rejected by each State on an Article-by-Article basis.

The two proofs of this are that, first, the Congressional Preamble to the Bill of Rights amendments clearly stated: “…all or any of which Articles, when ratified…”. Second, there were twelve original proposed amendments submitted to the several States for their consideration. The first two proposed amendments (“Article the first”, and “Article the second”, that dealt with the operation of the Congress) failed at that time to gain sufficient support for ratification and effectively dropped off the table. What we call the First Amendment was originally the proposed “Article the third”. The fact that the bundle was sent out by the Congress to the several States on the same day (Sept. 25, 1789), and that all of the surviving Articles were certified and reported to Congress by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on December 15, 1791 does not change the fact that each proposed amendment was a separate entity individually considered and ratified—or rejected—by the several States over a period of more than two years.

That being the case, each Article in the finalized Bill of Rights stands on its own two feet and must be interpreted and applied solely on the basis of its own internal content as a fully ratified, fully incorporated, and totally separate Article of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment (more properly called “Article VIII of the U.S. Constitution”) obviously limits itself to effect only on the general government: “Congress shall make no law…”. The remaining (and independent) Articles of the Bill of Rights, on the other hand, have no such internal limitations, and it is totally improper to extend the Congressional limitation found in the First Amendment to the rest of the Bill of Rights. After all, there was no requirement that the proposed “Article the third” had to be ratified. It could have failed ratification just as its preceding two siblings failed ratification. This means that the words “Congress shall make no law” would not have appeared in the Bill of Rights. It is also improper to treat the Bill of Rights as a single Article or Section composed of ten internal Clauses, all prefaced and limited with the words “Congress shall make no law”.

This bring us to the range of effect, or ‘scope’, of the ten independent Articles popularly and collectively known as the “Bill of Rights”. In abbreviated form we find these words in Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution: “This Constitution…shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” Since amendments to the U.S. Constitution immediately become fully incorporated, independent Articles upon proper ratification by the several States and certification to the Congress (or take their proper designated places inside the original Constitution so as to modify its content), the range and extent of such Articles are determined solely by their own internal content.

An Amendment in the Bill of Rights is exclusively binding on the general government only if it so limits itself, as in the case of the First Amendment. It would be exclusively binding on the State governments only if it so limits itself, as is the case with each Clause in Article I, Section 10 of the original Constitution. If, however, there is no limiting, qualifying, or restricting language in an Article of the Bill of Rights, then that Article is universal in its range and effect. That is, it becomes “the supreme Law of the Land.” Full consideration of Article V and Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution should have compelled the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the plaintiff in this Case.

The High Court in Barron said, “The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty. [p247]” and two pages later: “We search in vain for that reason. [p249]”; “that reason” being the application of the 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights at the State and municipal levels—the Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, to be specific. I maintain that the Court gave the critically important questions presented in Barron a superficial gloss quite amazing—downright shocking!—considering the Constitutional brainpower sitting on that Bench. The Opinion, written by Mr. Chief Justice John Marshall for an unanimous Court (which, by the way, included Justice Joseph Story, famous for his Commentaries), did not even mention Articles V & VI found in the original Constitution. Their exclusive considerations in deciding this Case were the expectations and suggestions from the various State Constitutional Ratification Conventions regarding a bill of rights, the general temper of the First Congress as expressed in its official Preamble to this bundle of suggested amendments, along with an analysis of the grammatical construction of Article I, Sections 9 & 10 in the original Constitution.

I feel that the High Court was quite reasonable and correct in its conclusion that these amendments were originally intended to be operative only against the general government formed under the U.S. Constitution. It is absolutely essential, however, to comprehend that any expectations or suggestions from the State Constitutional Ratification Conventions or intentions of the First Congress—be they express or implied—are moot and irrelevant if not “averred in positive words [p249]” within each individual and independent Article of the Bill of Rights.

The Court illustrated its reasoning with a comparison of Article I, Sections 9 & 10 in the original Constitution. Because Section 9 simply continued the obvious flow to that point of provision for the legislative Branch of the general government, there was no need to expressly mention “Congress” in each subject dealt with in that Section. On the other hand, Section 10 was totally exceptional in Article I in that it dealt exclusively with the State governments, therefore each Clause was prefaced with the words “No State shall”; or as the Court put it: “the restrictions contained in the tenth section are in direct words so applied to the States. [p249]”

My conclusion is that the Supreme Court in Barron v Baltimore was both right and wrong. They were correct in their assessment of the original intent of the Bill of Rights as being restrictive of the general government only. They were wrong in not considering the full implications of Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution as regards proposed amendments (by whatever popular name or term of art) that achieve full ratification by the several States. That is, the U.S. Supreme Court in Barron v Baltimore failed to resolve a Constitutional question “of great importance” by Constitutional means.

This Case brings to light the serious blunder committed by the First Congress. If their original intent was a Bill of Rights operative only against the general government of the United States of America, then each individual Article in that Bill of Rights needed to be framed “in direct words” to that effect. For example, the Second Amendment (Article IX of the U.S. Constitution) should have carried forward the explicit limitation from the First Amendment by ending: “…keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed by Congress.”; the Third Amendment: “…but in a manner to be prescribed by Congress.”; the Fourth Amendment: “…papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizures by the general Government, shall not be…”; &c., &c. Indeed, by the very logic used by the Barron Court, the fact that the First Congress made the explicit limitation of “Congress shall make no law” in the First Amendment but did not do so in the following Amendments clearly shows that the remainder of the Bill of Rights was effective against the State and municipal governments per Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution.

However, the blunder was committed by the First Congress of 1789, formally ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, and properly reported to the Congress by Thomas Jefferson on December 15, 1791, therefore the U.S. Supreme Court was duty bound in Barron v Baltimore to interpret the individual “Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America” according to the explicit provisions mandated by Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution. Their failure to do so in this Case seriously undermined, if not nullified, the applicable provisions in those two original—and clearly worded—Articles. Indeed, this Case set the very dangerous precedent that Constitutional questions “of great importance” can be resolved by extra-Constitutional considerations and materials while totally ignoring explicit provisions within the Constitution of the United States of America itself, thereby establishing the U.S. Supreme Court as a standing nine-person Constitutional Convention that can change the U.S. Constitution at will by simple majority vote.

This is particularly important as regards the highly controversial Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This independent Article, as written and ratified, is totally unrestricted and unqualified in its wording (to borrow from the Court on page 248, “No language can be more general…”) and is therefore an universal declaration and guarantee; binding at the federal, State, and municipal levels. Not only was the McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) ‘Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation’ Supreme Court case unnecessary, it was quite improper. The Second Amendment stood on its own internal content as a fully ratified, fully incorporated Article of the U.S. Constitution effective December 15, 1791 courtesy of Article V & Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution. (From the Table of Contents please select my Second Amendment and D. C. v Heller article below, for further elaboration.)

To close the subject of Barron v Baltimore I make the personal observation that the Justices on the High Court used this question in order to very deliberately constrict the civil rights of the people of America to the greatest extent that could possibly have been done in this Case. It is impossible that all of the Justices on that Bench were unaware of Article V and Article VI, Clause 2 of the original Constitution, or the implications of those Articles regarding the Bill of Rights as actually written by the Congress and ratified by the several States. At least one Justice (especially Story) should have filed a Dissent. This decision was a very intentional, cold-blooded, and unanimous attack on civil rights. This was an attack that forced the stare decisis status of Binding Precedent to this decision; a precedent that was continued without question by every subsequent Supreme Court until the invention and implementation of Fourteenth Amendment Selective Incorporation beginning with Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago in 1897. Even then, our fundamental Constitutional civil rights were doled out to us in dribs and drabs over the course of more than a hundred years. This matter should have been correctly resolved by the High Court in 1833, not dragged out piecemeal into the twenty-first century via judicial gymnastics.

I now take up the Religion Clause in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”. The common—and official Judicial—understanding of this clause is that the federal government shall not make laws that in any way could work towards establishing a State religion or forcing religious practice upon the People, nor shall it make laws that would tend to interfere with the free practice of religion by the People. While I quite agree with these sentiments, and they were almost certainly the original intent of the Clause, I must call them down as incorrect. To support this understanding, the Religion Clause would have had to have been constructed thusly: “Congress shall make no law that would establish a religion, or prohibit the free exercise of religion by the people;…”. However, as actually phrased in the First Amendment, the construction, word-choice and grammar of the Religion Clause simply do not allow the official interpretation. As above, it is the duty of the Supreme Court and federal Judiciary to interpret and apply all parts of the Bill of Rights as they were actually written by the First Congress and ratified by the legislatures of the several States after lengthty consideration.

As used in the Religion Clause, the main problem here is that the word “establishment” is incorrectly understood as a verb so as to mean ‘make’, ‘create’, ‘form’, ‘institute’, or ‘found’. That is, the noun (“people, places, things, and ideas”, Hodges' Harbrace 15th ed., pg. 6) word “establishment” is being confused with the word ‘establish’, which is most definitely a verb (“n. a word or words indicating action or occurence or being…”). Granted, the word “establishment” can also have a meaning of “n, 1. establishing, being established”. However, the use of the preposition “respecting” (“prep. concerning, with respect to.”) and the article “an” speak strongly against this understanding. (NOTE: All quoted definitions taken from the Oxford American Dictionary (OAD), Heald Colleges Edition, 1980)

If the object of this Clause was to prevent Congress from creating or founding a State religion, then an action verb such as ‘effectuating’ (“v. to cause to happen.”) should have been used in place of the preposition “respecting”. Also, the article ‘the’ should have been used in place of the article “an”. There is a subtle but important difference between the phrases “an establishment” and ‘the establishment’. The phrase ‘effectuating the establishement of religion’ would speak strongly to the act of making or forming a State religion. The phrase “respecting an establishment of religion” speaks strongly to the noun physicality of religion in general as it exists, as opposed to the act of the Congress making, creating, or founding a State religion from scratch or endorsing an already existing religion or favored denomination within an already existing religion.

This becomes a major grammatical issue because of the word “thereof” at the end of the clause. At first blush, the phrase “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” would reasonably seem to point back to the word “religion”, thereby guaranteeing freedom of religion to the People. However, the word “religion” is part of the prepositional phrase “of religion”; and as we all know, a prepositional phrase modifies another element in the sentence—in this case, it modifies the noun “establishment” (Harbrace., pg.32).

The misunderstanding of words and poor grammar displayed in the common (and official) understanding of the Religion Clause result in an actual meaning of, “Congress shall make no law to establish a State religion, but shall have the free exercise of establishing a State religion.” This, of course, is grammatically and logically absurd, and cannot be the actual meaning intended by the First Congress. All absurdity is avoided if we correctly understand the word “establishment” in its strict noun sense so as to mean “n. 2 an organized body of people maintained for a purpose, a household or staff of servants etc. 3. a business firm or public institution, its members or employees or premises (OAD).” This is underscored by the preposition “respecting” and the article “an”, that clearly mark the word “establishment” as a physical noun (Harbrace, pg. 7). The correct understanding of the Religion Clause as actually written is: “Congress shall make no law concerning the physicality of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion therein.”

This leaves us with a strange question: “What did the First Congress actually mean with the Religion Clause of the First Amendment?” If they actually intended the common understanding of the Religion Clause, then they did a shocking botch job on the grammar while constructing this Clause. If they intended what they actually wrote, then everyone—especially the ratifying State legislatures and the federal Judiciary—since 1789 have totally misunderstood and misapplied the Religion Clause, with the members of the First Congress doing absolutely nothing to correct the confusion.

Very strange indeed.

To close, the practice of corporate religion involves both the profane physical and the heavenly Divine. That is, the physical (noun) aspects of grounds, buildings, equipment, accessories and staff along with the spiritual (adj.) aspects of teachings, doctrines, rites, rituals and ceremonies conducted within the confines of the physical “establishment”. Whether intended of not, the Religion Clause of the First Amendment as written and ratified actually speaks to both aspects of corporate religion, and prevents federal interference with either of them.

But let's do keep the prohibitions of State established religion or federally mandated compulsory religious practice. Those are excellent safeguards of rights and liberties whether enumerated or not.

Questions? Comments? e-mail the author at “bloedel@verizon.net”

Table of Contents

Gravity: A Weighty Subject

(NOTE: There's no ‘deep thought’ here. This article is just for fun. It is a modified version of my Physics 101 term paper.)

Introduction

Prof. Paul G. Hewitt's 101-level textbook Conceptual Physics, 9th edition is an excellent and delightful work. The textbook chapter on gravity was, for me, worth the price of book and tuition. I had often wondered about the question of a hole extending from pole to pole, and what would happen to a person who jumped into that hole. And now I know!

I've also shared the general public interest in ‘black holes’. In this article I intended to expand a little on the information presented in Chapter 9 of the text by considering the gravitational characteristics of planet Earth as it is, and what they would be if Earth were collapsed into a ‘black hole’.

Section One: The Big APE

Standing on the surface of the Actual Planet Earth (APE), we make tangential contact with the vast bulk of the mass of the planet. Discounting the trivial mass of our above-ground surroundings, 100% of the mass of Earth is below our feet. Because the gravitational vector resultant of all that mass is straight down through the center of the planet, we may lose sight of the fact that all of the mass of the APE contributes to that vector, even the mass at the far horizon. Granted, that contribution may be infinitesimal in itself, but that mass will play a very significant role on a trip through the center of the Earth.

Fig.1: Diffuse source of gravitational force

Moving to the North Pole, we find that the Acme Construction Company (having misread a simple sewer repair contract for Pittsburgh) has just completed digging a hole all the way through the center of the Earth to the South Pole. Heads will roll over this screwup. Standing on the platform next to the hole we are truly in tangential contact with the planet; all of its mass from the horizon on down is beneath our feet.

Fig. 2: Journey to the center of the Earth

Oops! A careless construction worker has just bumped into us, sending us down into the hole. Our initial acceleration is approximately 9.8 meters per second squared. As the textbook points out, due to the increasing density of the APE from the surface to the center, our acceleration will increase slightly for the first few kilometers (1). However, we are no longer in tangential contact with the planet. As we fall, all of the gravity of the mass perpendicular to the hole cancels out to zero, while the gravitational attraction of the mass above us actually works to slow our acceleration. So as we fall there is less and less mass below us while there is more and more mass above us.

The gravitational acceleration decreases until we reach the center of the Earth, where all of the gravitational forces cancel out to zero, and acceleration also hits zero. It is not so much that there is no mass-generated gravity (as would effectively be the case if we were floating around out in deep intergalactic space) as that the vector resultant of existing gravitational mass forces works out to zero. Our momentum speed at the center of the Earth would be high, but the acceleration would be zero. As we continue towards the South Pole, we would actually be decelerated by the increasing mass gravity behind us. Our speed drops to zero as our heads bob out of the hole at the South Pole, then the reverse acceleration holds sway and we head back towards the North Pole with an initial acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared.

After an approximate ninety-minute trip to the South Pole and back again, we grab the edge of the platform and pull ourselves out of the hole. Just as we get our footing, another clumsy construction worker accidentally bumps into the speed control of the construction site pile driver causing it to go into high gear. The shock of the pile driver is so great (remember, this is an Acme operation we have here) that the entire planet collapses into a black hole.

Section Two: Black Hole Planet Earth (BHPE)

What a bind! Standing on the platform we hold our breaths and watch as Earth shrinks smaller and smaller, taking the atmosphere along with it. Soon it disappears from sight. Strangely enough, we are still standing on the platform (remember, this is an Acme platform) with the same weight as we had before! Since Earth has not lost any mass, the gravitational acceleration of BHPE at this distance (6,400,000 meters) is still about 9.8 meters/s².

Where is Earth? Using the radius formula for a black hole (2GM/c²) we find that Earth has collapsed down to a ball about 19mm in diameter (2). Yes, that's about the size of a penny, illustrating that most of the volume of the APE is empty space. For all practical purposes, Earth's entire mass is now a geometric point orbiting around the Sun in the open vacuum of space.

Fig. 3: Where did Earth go?

The gravitational characteristics between the APE and BHPE are now radically different. On the APE, the mass source of gravitation was spread from horizon to horizon. Tidal forces on the human body were negligible at the surface of Earth, and would actually decrease as you fell towards the center of the planet. Consider also that although the vector line through the center of the APE gave a false impression of horizontal constriction, the diffuse source of gravity and decreasing acceleration towards the center of the planet made such constriction meaningless.

All of that changes with the BHPE as we shall now see, because having nothing better to do with our time (and getting tired of holding our breath) we decide to jump off the platform and visit BHPE. For ease of computation, I am assuming that one of us is a 2 meter tall basketball player with a shoulder span of 0.5 meter (500mm), and the masses of the feet and head each only 1 kg (obviously an Acme basketball player).

Stepping off the platform we experience the weightlessness of free fall starting at 1g of acceleration. However, this is a very special free fall. Since there is no atmosphere there will be no terminal velocity due to air drag. Also, since Earth is now a gravitational point source, our acceleration will increase by the inverse square of the decreasing distance as we get closer to BHPE.

Actually, the trip is kind of boring. With no sense of speed or motion it appears that nothing at all is happening. This, however, is a deadly illusion. Consider the following table:

Table 1: Half-distance points figures.

For about the first fifteen minutes of the trip you would hardly notice a thing except maybe a vague tightening sensation. However, once you get within 100km (60 miles) of BHPE the end is very near. For about seven tenths of a second you will have a definite stretching and compressive feeling. For the next twenty-five milliseconds your discomfort turns into a brief burst of agony as the tidal forces of BHPE begin to pull your body apart and constrict it down to the millimeter scale. The next nine milliseconds turns your body into a long stream of molecules less than half a millimeter wide. The final five-hundred microseconds of your existence in the knowable universe sees you as a tortured stream of atoms and plasma more than a kilometer in length and only a tenth of a millimeter wide. At this point the first mass of your body hits the Event Horizon and is accelerated at the speed of light.

It's been nice traveling with you. Unfortunately this is a one-way trip for there is no escape from BHPE, except perhaps ages and ages in the future as quantum radiation when BHPE slowly evaporates to nothing (3).

FINI. (Roll the credits)

ENDNOTES

1. Conceptual Physics, 9^th Ed., Paul G. Hewitt, p.166 footnote.
2. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics, 1996, pp. 115-6.
3. A Brief History of Time, Stephen W. Hawking, pp. 105-8.

APPENDIX

Note on Computations

The values in Table 1 are not intended to be rigorous. They are presented for illustrative purposes only, and are based on the easy approximate values of 6,400 kilometers for the radius of planet Earth, 6 x 10 to the 24 power kilograms for Earth's mass, and a rounded-off value for GM of 4 x 10 to the 14 power. Other values were also rounded off.

The gravitational acceleration and tidal force values were obtained assuming 1kg masses, using the F=GM/d² formula. For ease of calculation all of the tidal force figures were simply calculated for a difference in distance of 2 meters, ignoring stretching effects close to BHPE.

Since the luckless participants in this experiment jumped off the platform at the North Pole there were no significant rotational momentum or orbital factors to consider; they fell straight down towards BHPE. Also, no relativistic factors were considered.

The ‘time of travel’ and values in Table 1 were manually calculated using a crude brute force method. Taking each ‘half distance’ length and dividing it into ten equal sub-distances I simply assumed a constant acceleration from one point to the next and used the d=(Vo·t)+(0.5·at²) and V=(Vo+at) formulas.

Table of Contents

One Nation, Under ?

An examination of the Constitutional Convention era as relates to modern day Christianity.

Introduction:

“America is a Christian nation founded by Christian men, with a Christian Constitution based on Christian principles that launched a Christian government.” Perhaps you've heard words to this effect spoken by Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Dr. James Dobson. Or maybe you come from a strong Christian background and this sentiment is a given; ingrained from childhood.

I had taken this as an assumed given for most of my life. Not until I began an in-depth study of the Second Amendment/gun control issue in recent years did my assumption begin to crumble. While wading through literally hundreds of pages worth of speeches, debates, convention journals, letters, diary entries and newspaper articles from the Revolutionary War and Constitutional Convention period I noticed something missing: meaningful mention of Jesus, Christianity, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the Bible.

The following is a very disturbing look at the work of the men who forged our national Constitution and founded our federal Republic.

Section One: A Deafening Silence

To the devout Christian the words ‘God’ and ‘Creator’ have fairly specific meanings. That is, the God of Genesis 1; of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the father of Jesus; the inspiring Author of the Bible. However, modern day Christians really need to exercise great care and discernment when reading material from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, for the words ‘God’, ‘Creator’ and ‘divine providence’ had a much broader range of meanings when used by the men of that time period.

Deism and Freemasonry were major philosophical and religious forces during the timeframe in question. Deism recognized that there was a Creator/God, but this deity was not the ‘up close and personal’ God of the New Testament, nor was Jesus the unique Son of this God. The God of deism interacted with humanity only in a general fashion, leaving mankind free to work out its own destiny on its journey to achieve ultimate perfection.

Freemasonry was a fraternal/religious expression of the deistic philosophy. The ‘Great Architect of the Universe’ and ‘All-Seeing Eye’ of the Masonic Lodge guided the Freemason towards perfection. Of the leading luminaries of that period, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were clearly deists, and George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and James Monroe (at the very least) are known to have been Freemasons.

With the above in mind, consider for a moment all of the references to deity in the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence: “Laws of Nature and Nature's God”, “endowed by their Creator”, “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World”, and “firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence”. Although at first glance these references may seem Christian in nature, they are actually deistic. This should come as no surprise, since the Declaration of Independence was written by the deist Thomas Jefferson with alterations made by another deist: Benjamin Franklin. (See Appendix)

The main point I want to make here is that I know of no serious objections to the lack of direct and explicit Christian terminology or imagery in the crafting of the Declaration of Independence. With the exception of a few other non-relevant alterations (see Appendix) the Declaration was accepted and signed as presented.

Moving on to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 we find an utterly secularist, humanist enterprise. I have read the written records related to the Constitutional Convention collected by the scholar Max Farrand early in the twentieth century. Those records include not only the official minutes kept by the Convention's secretary William Jackson (which are surprisingly sparse), but also the private records surreptitiously made on a daily basis by Convention delegates such as New York's Robert Yates, Virginia's James Madison, and Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin along with relevant material such as letters and diary entries written by the other Delegates. From a Christian standpoint the Convention must be viewed as a dismal affair, so lacking in spiritual or religious outlook and activity that on June 28 (almost five weeks into the Session) Mr. Madison (along with a shorter account from Mr. Yates) recorded Benjamin Franklin making the following speech and formal Motion:

“Mr. President [i.e. the convention chairman George Washington], the small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other-our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

“In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection.-Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

“I therefore beg leave to move-that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberation, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service-.”

Although Mr. Sherman (Connecticut) formally seconded the motion, and three or four voices in favor were heard, opposition to Franklin's formal motion was so vocal and intense that George Washington unilaterally closed the day's business at that time without taking a vote—perhaps to spare his good friend Dr. Franklin the embarrassment of a formally recorded rejection. Indeed, the official Minutes made no mention of this matter at all, and the subjects of God and prayer never came up again during the rest of the Convention. Franklin speech, pgs 450-452

The proposed Constitution formed by the Convention was utterly secular in nature. The Preamble was a humanist manifesto: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Compare that with the statement of purpose found in the Mayflower Compact of Anno Domini 1620: “In the Name of God, Amen…Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith…do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid…”

God, Jesus, Christianity and the Bible were nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, and the sole reference to religion was in the negative: “The Senators and Representative before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Art. VI, par. 3) This prohibition was included with barely a murmur of discussion by the Convention.

The only glimmer of something Christian appears in the certifying postscript to the Constitution: “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth in Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,” (followed by the signatures). However, the term ‘Year of our Lord’ was merely a formal politeness rather than a religious policy statement. Furthermore, since the postscript was clearly and unambiguously placed after and outside of the final Article (by white space and different margin size), it is not a part of the main body of the actual Constitution itself and therefore carries little weight and has no force.

Section Two: Misc. Musings

I would encourage the reader to make a pilgrimage to our nation's Capital, which has been described as the most Masonic city in the world. Bring a good pair of walking shoes, and be prepared to spend at least one full day making the circuit around the Mall. At a minimum your circuit should include the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the National Archives and the White House. As you make your tour notice the style, architecture, art and impressions you encounter. Keep a mental tab on all things relating to Biblical themes and Christianity. Be sure to visit the gift shop at the top of the Washington Monument because the last time I was there the shelves had several books relating to Freemasonry—none on Christianity.

When you finish your tour, tally up all those things relating to the Bible and Christianity, and compare them with all those things you saw relating to paganism, humanism, Freemasonry, Rome, Greece and Egypt. I am confident that you will find the former utterly overwhelmed by the latter. Should time and opportunity permit, travel the Beltway south into Alexandria to visit Mount Vernon and the George Washington Masonic Memorial. The Masonic Memorial is an impossible-to-miss edifice right off the Beltway and is well worth the trip. You will find more than enough to validate my earlier assertions regarding several of the Fathers of our federal Republic and Framers of our Constitution.

As a further exercise, take out a one dollar bill and look at the back. You will see both sides of the Great Seal of the United States, officially adopted in 1782. I challenge you to find the slightest shred of Christian symbolism or sentiment in those two sides. To the right we find a Roman ‘spread eagle’ of worldly power whose banner proclaims, “Out of many: One”. To the left we find the All-Seeing Eye and ANNUIT COEPTIS (signifying “God/Providence favors our undertakings”) hovering over an unfinished thirteen-stepped pagan Egyptian pyramid guiding the way to a “New Secular Order”—NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM.

It is relevant (and fair) to note that the original design proposal for the Great Seal submitted by Jefferson and Franklin did contain Biblical (though non-Christian) symbolism. My point here is that the men responsible for designing and approving the Great Seal had more than enough opportunity to incorporate explicit Christian symbolism and expressions, yet they deliberately chose pagan/Masonic/humanist imagery and terminology.

An examination of the debates during the U.S. Constitution's State Ratification Conventions sheds additional light on this subject. After finishing this article, go to the Library of Congress website (at ‘www.loc.gov’) and enter a search for “elliot's debates”. Go to Vol. II, and the bottom of page 117 of the Massachusetts debates and read through page 120. Then read pages 148-149. Go to Vol. IV and read the North Carolina debates from the bottom of page 191 through page 200. These, I feel, represent the most significant comments on religion.

The sentiments expressed there speak for themselves. The main problem as I see it is that the Christians who raised the objections during the ratification conventions assumed that everyone understood what they meant by ‘religion’. When those Christians used the word ‘religion’ I've no doubt they meant the sincere adoption of faith in Jesus Christ, and the good character and morals that should result from such faith. On the other hand, it seems quite clear to me that those who answered the objections understood ‘religion’ in a more technical and structured sense to be related to sects, denominations, organizations and dogmas. A religious ‘test’ desired by the former would have examined the Christian character and maturity of a nominee for public office. The religious tests feared by the latter would have tested for establishment membership, credentials and public displays of orthodoxy. What we have here is a classic case of ‘failure to communicate’. The Christians simply could not clearly articulate their position, therefore the religious liberals carried the day.

Before ending this section I want to firmly drive home the dearth of reference to all things biblical during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. Go back to the Library of Congress website and search “farrand's records”. This is the most authoritative reference to the internal workings of the Philadelphia Convention. I could easily find reference to Aristotle, Cicero, Charlemagne, Blackstone, Hume, Locke, Montesquieu, Rome, Sparta, and Carthage but could find no mention of Jesus, Moses, Christianity, Bible, Jerusalem, or Israel. The only mention that I could find of ‘God’ was Franklin's motion as quoted above, and of course his reference to “the Father of lights” and “superintending providence” showed this ‘God’ to be the impersonal god of Deism.

I have also carefully examined the Federalist Papers written by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison. As above, I could easily find reference to Plato, Socrates, Hume, Blackstone, Montesquieu, Rome, Athens, Sparta, and Carthage but could find no reference to Jesus, Moses, Jewish, Bible, Jerusalem or Israel. There was one general reference to Christianity in Federalist #3: “In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied…”; three items on God, one being ‘demi-god’, one referring to pagan gods, and this in Federalist #43: “…transcendent law of nature and of nature's God,…”; and seven references to religion, the most important being in Federalist #2: “…a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government,…”.

Conclusion

It is difficult to document the absence of something. I am begging the reader's trust that my research has been reasonably thorough and that references to ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Bible’ are actually as rare as I claim them to be in the above-cited material. If I have your trust and confidence, then by now it should be crystal clear that the Framers of our Constitution and Founders of our federal Republic had no intention whatsoever of making any attempt at crafting a Christian constitution or establishing a Christian government.

However, what if that had actually been the intent? Surely the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention would have been formally charged by their States with such a result. Every morning of the Session would have seen prayers and devotionals. The officially recorded Minutes of the Constitutional Convention debates and Motions, Federalist Papers, newspaper articles and State Ratification Conventions debates would have been peppered with references to God, Jesus, Christianity and the Bible. The Constitution's Preamble would have explicitly stated our Christian character and objectives. The powers of Congress would have frowned upon—if not outright forbidden—the declaration of war or the use of offensive military power or the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal (remember, we're supposed to love our enemies and turn the other cheek). The oath of public office would have been written so as to include the phrase, “…so help me God.” The prohibition of religious tests would have been turned into a requirement of examining the Christian morals and maturity of all those considered for public office. Finally, the postscript to the Constitution would have said, “…in the Year of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Such was not the case. The ratification of our secular Constitution launched a secular government. The First Amendment to our Constitution further clarified the distance desired between Church and State: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” and herein may be found the great bulk of today's strife and contention.

It is almost a national tragedy that the two Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960s regarding prayer in public schools have been so badly misunderstood by Christians, and misinterpreted and misapplied by media pundits, government officials and school administrators. At the heart of the problem is a deep misunderstanding of what the First Amendment is actually saying regarding government and religion. The High Court quoted extensively from Constitutional Law in these two decisions, and in the portion of that work dealing with religious freedom they quoted from §936:

“The clauses of the First Amendment which prohibit laws respecting an establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof, although overlapping in certain instances, forbid two quite different kinds of governmental encroachment upon religious freedom: the establishment clause, unlike the free exercise clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion, whether or not those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals.

“The First Amendment prohibition of laws respecting an establishment of religion rests on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion, and upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecution go hand in hand.

“The test in determining whether a legislative enactment violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which withdraws all legislative power respecting religious belief or the expression thereof, is the purpose and primary effect of the enactment. If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion, then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the First Amendment; to withstand the strictures of the ‘establishment’ clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.

“The purpose of the ‘free exercise’ clause of the First Amendment, which withdraws from legislative power, state and federal, the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of religion, is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority; hence it is necessary in a free exercise case for one to show the coercive effect of a legislative enactment as it operates against him in the practice of his religion.

“The distinction between the ‘free exercise’ and the ‘establishment’ clauses of the First Amendment is that a violation of the former clause is predicated on coercion, while a violation of the latter clause need not be so attended.”

Having read Engle v Vitale (1962) and School District of Abington Township v Schempp & Murray (1963) in their entireties, I've no doubt that the Justices on the Supreme Court also felt pain over the general misinterpretations of their clearly worded and plainly reasoned Opinions. In Engle v Vitale, Justice Douglas wrote, “…The First Amendment leaves the government in a position not of hostility to religion but of neutrality. The philosophy is that the atheist or agnostic—the nonbeliever—is entitled to go his own way. The philosophy is that if government interferes in matters spiritual, it will be a divisive force. The First Amendment teaches that a government neutral in the field of religion better serves all religious interests.”

These two Supreme Court decisions focused exclusively on the ‘establishment clause’ aspects of public school prayer, and rendered no formal opinions regarding voluntary ‘free exercise’ prayer. Unfortunately this distinction was lost on most public officials, with the general result that all prayer and religious expression (individually voluntary as well as State mandated) has been purged from public schools. This is definitely NOT what the Court had in mind.

In final conclusion, let us heed the words of Jesus. When the religious leaders of his time tried to trap him into saying something sacrilegious or seditious by asking if it was right for Jews to pay taxes to Rome, Jesus asked to see a common coin used for paying the tax. He then asked them whose figure and inscription were on the coin. The leaders answered that they were of Caesar. Whereupon Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” (Mt 22:15-22, NIV)

The Framers of our Constitution and the Founders of our republic clearly intended the federal government to do only those secular things that should rightly be left to ‘Caesar’. They meant for government to remain entirely out of the business of religion and personal spiritual conscience; and that for the general safety and liberty of all. Modern day Christians would do themselves and the cause of Christ great good if they fully understood and publicly embraced the intent of the framers regarding the proper and respectful separation of Church and State.

Whatever the spiritual and religious orientation of the people of America two hundred and thirty years ago, clearly modern America is a land of religious and philosophical pluralism. The days of calling America a ‘Christian nation’ are over. There is little remaining but a thin veneer of Christianization. Politicians and public officials—especially in urban areas—must be careful in what they say and do so as not to offend or alienate the growing populations of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Buddhists, Scientologists, atheist secular humanists, &c &c; all of whom having just as much right to free religious expression (or freedom from religion) as Christians.

Christianity in modern America is slowly being lost in a swirling sea of religious, philosophical and materialistic pluralism. Today it simply doesn't matter if we could prove that the Founders intended a Christian nation; we aren't one. Insisting that we are a Christian nation only makes us look like fools who are dangerously out of touch with reality.

Indeed, if Christian activists were successful in their attempts to breach the ‘wall of separation’ between Church and State I am sure that we would be mortified by the results. Since government would not be allowed to establish one religion over others, all religions would have to be observed. For example, much has been made in recent years of efforts to post the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and other public buildings. Now, if that is done then there is no excuse for not also posting quotations from the Koran, the Hindu Vedas, Confucius, the Book of Mormon, or the wit and wisdom of L. Ron Hubbard. Witnesses in court, raising their hands and swearing (or ‘affirming’) to tell the truth, would be placed in a queue: the first being forced to swear by the Christian God, the next by Krishna, the next by his/her Ancestors, &c, &c. The actual end result would be a laughable Babel of religion in governmental operations.

Is there hope for Christianity? Is there a way out of the morass? Yes, but the solution will require a level of effort and cooperation that I am not at all sure can be mustered by the deeply divided ‘body of Christ’. The first order of business would be to intensively train Christians in the basics of the Faith. Due to laziness and general apathy, far too many Christians are simply not able to clearly explain what they believe regarding Christianity, let alone explain why they believe it. This inability hobbles Christian outreach, and makes us look like confused idiots.

Secondly, there must be found some point(s) on which all of Christianity can agree; perhaps the traditional Apostle's Creed. All of the main branches of the ‘body of Christ’—Eastern, Roman and protestant—must come together and publicly declare this universal agreement. We must be able to unanimously state, “Whatever our denominational differences, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in agreement and support of these points.”

Third, all of the main branches of the ‘body of Christ’ must publicly declare that we will evangelize the world in a spirit of love, peace and compassion, but that we now-and-forever renounce the use of coercion, violence, terror or murder in the spreading of the Gospel of Christ. We must clearly separate ourselves not only from the terrorists and extremists of today, but also from the crimes and abuses of our own Church past.

And then we must take the good news of eternal salvation to the ends of the earth. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Appendix

The following is the only significant mention of religion during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, recorded in Vol. II of Farrand's Records.

Aug. 30, pg. 461, the official Journal:

It was moved and seconded to add the following clause to the 20 Article. ‘But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the authority of the United States.’ Which passed unan: in the affirmative.

Aug. 30, pg 468, Madison's account:

Art.XX. taken up.—‘or affirmation’ was added after ‘oath.’ Mr. Pinkney. Moved to add to the art. ‘But no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the authority of the U. States.’
Mr. Sherman thought it unnecessary, the prevailing liberality being a sufficient security agst. Such tests.
Mr. Govr. Morris & Genl. Pinkney approved the motion,
The motion was agreed to nem: con:

The following is a letter by Benjamin Franklin on the subject of religious tests:

To Richard Price. Passy, 9 Oct., 1780
“I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection, when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. But I shall be out of my depth, if I wade any deeper in theology,…”

The following are three letters written by Thomas Jefferson:

To Mr. Miles King, September 26, 1814
“I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in those principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a good conscience, let us be happy in the hope that by these different paths we shall all meet in the end.”

To John Adams, Jan. 11, 1817
“The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words, ‘Be just and good,’ is that in which all our inquiries must end; as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, ‘ubi panis, ibi deus.’ What all agree in, is probably right. What no two agree in, most probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was, ‘say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.’”

To John Adams, May 5, 1817
“…If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, ‘That this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’ But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, ‘something not fit to be named even, indeed, a hell.’”

And this from Jefferson's autobiography relating to the Declaration of Independence:

“On the 15^th of May, 1776, the convention of Virginia instructed their delegates in Congress, to propose to that body to declare the colonies independent of Great Britain. It appearing in the course of debates, that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1^st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Ceclaration of Independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and myself. Committees were also appointed, at the same time, to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance. The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence, desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 29^th of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. On Monday, the 1^st of July, the House resolved itself into a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censure; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4^th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson.”

Resourses:

Besides Farrand's Records and Elliot's Debates, accessible through the Library of Congress website, I recommend the following:

The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History
Michael Kammen
Penguin Books

The Origins of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History in Commentaries on Liberty, Free Government, and an Armed Population during the Formation of the Bill of Rights
David Young
Golden Oak Books

The Federalist Papers
Publius (Madison, Hamilton & Jay)
Penguin Classics
(worth the purchase price just for the editor's introduction)

Yale Avalon Project
A very extensive collection of material from the 18^th century. Unfortunately, its word search-engine is very poor.

The Great Seal
For additional information on the Great Seal of the United States.

National Archives
The National Archives website.

Table of Contents

Just Seven Words

(Christian exclusivity)

Perhaps you've heard (or used) this argument against Christianity: “How can belief in Jesus be the only way to eternal salvation? What about all those people who died before Jesus began his ministry or who lived and died outside the reach of Christian missionaries? There had to have been at least a billion of them, including all of the Old Testament Jews! Is God going to throw the whole lot of them into hell for not believing in a man they could not possibly have known about?”

This would seem to be the logical consequence of New Testament verses dealing with the divinity (or Christhood) of Jesus, especially John 14:6 in which Jesus himself clearly stated, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (NIV)” The apparent hardhearted and arbitrary unfairness of the above consequence strikes the nonbeliever's mind as nothing short of monstrous. Many people see this as a very effective refute of Christianity.

But wait! The situation is not as simple or clear-cut as it may seem from either side of the fence. Skeptics and believers both need to dig much deeper into the issue. However, before directly addressing the above question, it would be well to frame the general problem. After all, it is difficult to suggest a solution to a problem that is not clearly understood. Please follow me through a very brief overview of the situation from the Christian perspective.

In the distant past (possibly before the creation of our universe) Lucifer existed as the highest of the created beings in God's transcendent heaven. Though created without fault, he brought sin into being by coveting the throne of God. Lucifer led a rebellion so as to seize the throne and establish himself as God. A third of the angels threw in their lot with Lucifer, and there was war in heaven which rages to the present day. The angelic host loyal to God will ultimately prevail, but the fundamental problems of sin and rebellion remain to be solved (1). It is not clear as to whether God created our universe before the rebellion or in response to it. Be that as it may, our universe and planet Earth are the carefully enclosed and quarantined environments created by God in order to safely work out the eternal solution to the deadly problems of sin, rebellion and suffering.

As the very last act of the Genesis creation week before the seventh day of rest (this article will not address the ‘creation date’ and ‘human origins’ controversies. These are addressed in other articles here on the site.), God brought modern spiritual man into existence. In his current guise as Satan, Lucifer all too easily tempted the first man and woman into willful rebellion against God, thereby introducing sin and death into humanity(2). God immediately began the process of solving the problem of sin by establishing the animal sacrifice system (3). This system would see its highest and clearest form thousands of years later as a result of the prophetic ministry of Moses (4).

The Jewish Torah elaborates in great detail a full-blown animal sacrifice religion designed to atone (i.e. ‘cover’) sin and reconcile man to God. In modern times, ancient Judaism has been condemned as a horrible slaughterhouse religion. But God intended for animal sacrifice to convey in the most primitive, brutal and graphic manner that the penalty for sin is death; death is most obviously evidenced by the shedding of blood; but (and this is the good news) God will allow an acceptable substitute (in this case, an animal) to pay the penalty of death in our place.

This brings us to the most direct and relevant claims of Christianity: that animal sacrifice cannot actually atone the sins of humans; that Jesus is the unique son of God; and that God offered up his own son in sacrifice as the perfect, permanent and final atonement for the sins of all mankind (read the Book of Hebrews, especially chapters 7 through 11, for elaboration). And finally, I must clarify the Christian meaning of ‘salvation’. The object of salvation is to secure adoption into the family of God so that upon death the individual human spirit will find eternal life in the heavenly kingdom of God, as opposed to being condemned to hell. The most sure and direct means of securing this adoption is to publicly confess belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and to sincerely repent of sin by conforming to the teachings of Jesus.

Although the above overview is intentionally brief and sketchy, it is meant to convey the purpose of Christianity and to explain the urgency of the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, thereby bringing the original objection to Christianity into better focus. My answer to the objection is based on three assumptions: first, I assume that God desires the greatest number of souls from the widest geographical extent to inhabit His kingdom (Gen 12:3, 18:18, 22:18, Isa 25:6-8 & Jonah); second, I assume that God is neither capricious nor unfair, so the Way to salvation must be available and accessible to all of mankind throughout human history; and third, I assume that God is not going to commit the absurdity of condemning Able, Abraham, Moses and Elijah (i.e. all of the Old Testament saints) to hell for not explicitly calling upon the name “Jesus of Nazareth”. So when the Judeo/Christian Bible refers to a person as “righteous”, that person is ‘saved’ in the Christian sense of being adopted into the eternal family of God.

I begin my explanation with the Book of Genesis. That Book is extremely concise and economical of phrase, especially in the first few chapters. But it is clear that God communicated directly and freely with man from the beginning, even after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. Consider chapter 4. Little is written but much is said. To start with, it is fairly obvious that God told both Abel and Cain exactly what to do regarding the sacrificial offerings. God could not in any fairness have rejected Cain's offering and then said to him, “If you do what is right… (Gen 4:7)” if He had not previously told Cain what to do and how to do it. The point that I am driving at is this: Cain knew the Way! So did Able, and this is where I make use of the assumption in the above paragraph. In Matthew 23:35 Jesus himself referred to Able as “righteous”. If ‘righteous’ means ‘saved’, then the Way was known and available from the very beginning of spiritual humanity.

An obvious question is, “How can you have a ‘Way’ that utilizes Jesus when Jesus of Nazareth is not explicitly known outside of the sphere of post-Advent Christianity?” Clearly, the ‘Way’ must satisfy two conditions: First, it must be acceptable to God. Second, it must be accessible to mankind prior to the Advent of Christ. And both conditions must be capable of being satisfied without mentioning the name “Jesus”! How can this be done? Please consider the following as a plausible model of the Way to eternal salvation that would be acceptable to God and accessible to people everywhere, throughout human history:

1. Having a spiritual recognition of the true God; that is, the transcendent, omnipotent, holy and righteous Creator of the universe.
2. Making the spiritual admission of your personal offence (i.e. sin in thought, word and deed) against the Creator's holy character, which brings a penalty of death.
3. Having the personal realization that you cannot atone, nullify or cancel that penalty of death by your own strength, ability or performance.
4. Throwing yourself on the mercy of God by declaring your faith that God has taken the necessary action to provide for your atonement, redemption and reconciliation (even though you don't know what that ‘action’ might be).
5. Humbly asking God for the free Grace of that ‘action’.
6. Allowing your life to be changed and guided in accordance with the Holy Spirit of God (i.e. repentance).

I believe that the above six steps are a fair representation of the main points necessary for a person to receive eternal Salvation in the Christian sense. The only real sticking point would be step #4. But consider what is actually happening when a person declares belief in Jesus. Is it not step #4? The only difference is that, thanks to the Christian Gospels, we can now know the explicit means of God's grace. But on a basic level what is happening is the same as step #4 whether we know the name “Jesus” or not!

Now, a skeptic might ask, “If the so-called “Way” has been known from the beginning, why isn't it more prominent in religion and philosophy? It should be common!” To answer, return with me to the fourth chapter of Genesis. Cain, I believe, is the answer. Biblically he is the first recorded bald-faced rebel, religionist, liar and murderer. Key to the issue was Cain's reaction to being caught in his crime. His was not to confess to God and man, beg forgiveness and repent. No, his was to simply try and save his own earthly hide. And Cain had a wife. Isn't it likely that she was also a rebel? After all, birds of a feather flock together. Cain fathered children. Were they brought up in the Way of God or in the way of rebellion? Cain founded a city. Was that city the precursor of Jerusalem or of Sodom? Jeremiah put it in a nutshell when he prophesied: The Lord said, “It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them. (Jer 9:13-14)”

Too little attention is paid to the mortal/generational nature of humans. We are born into this world with minds and spirits equivalent to completely blank sheets of paper. We are utterly dependent upon what our elders teach us and what we observe in the world around us. For the most part this becomes our reality and truth. Then, upon sexual maturity it is likely that children will be produced, and they will be as dependent upon us for knowledge as we were upon our own forebears. Eventually, death will overtake us all. Whatever knowledge, ability or condition was attained in life (true or false; right or wrong; good or bad) terminates at the grave.

If the true Way to salvation has been taught and accepted during life, then all is well. But what if it has not? We might dispute the degree to which the Gospel of Christ is exclusive of other religions and philosophies, but far more serious are the tragic consequences of ancestral rebellion on subsequent generations, and the expanding nature of those consequences. An ancestor's rebellion against the Way can breed rebellion, ignorance and/or false knowledge in following generations. A rebel becomes a family in rebellion, which becomes a clan in rebellion, which becomes a nation in rebellion, which becomes a whole people blinded and misled by rebellion ignorance and/or false knowledge. Humans are freewill creatures, and God is going to allow human history and individual lives to play out with minimal interference. So the true horror here is not the exclusive nature of the Christian Gospel but the terrible consequences visited upon descendants by the choices made by forebears acting in a spirit of rebellion against the Way of God; a Way made known from the very beginning of mankind.

So, where is the dividing line between the saved and the lost? And could this dividing line have been known before the Advent of Christ, or been known outside of the expanding sphere of Christianity? Jesus neatly explained this with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. The Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” This prayer exemplifies what I call the Four Deadly D's of rebellion: Denial, Delay, Distraction and Defiance.

Denial is to reject the reality of God or the Christhood of Jesus. Either one is a fatal error that leads to condemnation. Delay is a subtype of denial in which a person effectively denies God by putting off the matter of Salvation until later; as if anything is really more important than our eternal fate. Distraction is a subtype of Delay in which the cares of the world drive out consideration of eternally important matters. And finally Defiance, which comes in two flavors: self-sufficiency and open rebellion. The Pharisee felt himself to be sufficiently righteous before God so as to not need a savior, thereby elevating himself up to the level as a compeer of God. In this case Jesus is also Denied as irrelevant. A person in open Defiant rebellion might very well recognize Jesus as the son of God, but would say in effect, “I don't care if God exists or if Jesus is who he says he is; I'm going to live my life my own way and I don't care if I rot in hell because of it.”

Now consider the prayer of the tax collector: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The prayer of the tax collector represents those who recognize the existence and holiness of the Creator; the hopelessness of their ability to atone or cancel out their sins; and the faith to reach out to God for his mercy and eternal salvation. They are just seven words, but this simple one sentence prayer satisfies—in spirit and in truth—all six steps outline earlier in the article. This prayer is acceptable to God and (in principle at least) is accessible to all of mankind throughout human history. To that extent, the tax collector's prayer is exclusive of all prayers or spiritual attitudes of pride, arrogance and falsehood, just as the Gospel of Christ stands exclusive of all contrary belief structures based on denial, rebellion or human ability.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to explore how verses like John 14:6 (“I am the way…”) and others like it could be applied to those outside the sphere of Christianity without making God look monstrously cold, arbitrary and unfair. There is a public perception (rightly or wrongly) that Christianity is rigidly and unreasonably exclusive of other belief structures. Skeptics use this perception to attack the Faith and damage the credibility of the explicit Gospel of Christ. Indeed, the vigor and lengths to which the Church has gone to fulfill the Great Commission serve to reinforce this perception. After all, if any old good-hearted kind-souled religion or code of conduct will secure eternal salvation, then why the expansionist fervor and missionary zeal of Christianity down through the centuries? It seems excessive, especially in view of the apparent right-mindedness of many of the world's religions, past and present.

Certainly God intends eternal salvation to be easily accessible to all of mankind from Adam to the end. He intends to cast a wide net for a large catch. But that net is cast against a strong headwind of human rebellion, pride and arrogance, compounded by ignorance, false knowledge and the mortal/generational nature of mankind. Though God desires to heavily populate the New Heaven and the New Earth, He will not allow rebels against Himself or His son Jesus to gain entry into the coming Kingdom. There has already been one war in Heaven, and God is not going to allow another one. If there is a dividing line between the saved and the lost it is exemplified by the prayer of the tax collector. Any person who sincerely gets anywhere close to that prayer will find a loving and merciful God eager to bestow the free gift of eternal life. Any religion or philosophy that truly leads to this prayer is a salvific Way.

Alas! Satan has been busily at work from the Garden of Eden to the present day, and has done his level best to poison every mind and corrupt every social philosophical and religious structure available to man. While other religions and philosophies may have points or doctrines that are actually true in the sight of God, more than likely the end result of those religions and philosophies will be to mislead people into one or more of the Four Deadly Ds.

Admittedly, the above begs the question: “If the Gospel of Christ simply overlays the original Way, then why bother with Christianity?” Surely on the morning of the third day after the Crucifixion Jesus could have ascended directly to the right hand of God the Father and left behind nothing but some very frightened and confused disciples. The main objectives of His earthly mission would have been accomplished: the sacrificial atonement; the defeat of death; and His ascension to glory. From a minimalist standpoint God did not need to go any further than that. There is no theological requirement for a Great Commission, or a spiritual Pentecost, or a New Testament or a Church.

Clearly, however, these did in fact occur and they demand some explanation. I offer one possibility based on the earthly ministry of Jesus. During His time on earth Jesus preached and taught the Gospel, and validated Himself through miracles and prophetic fulfillment. Many people believed because of this, yet many also rejected the direct evidence from Christ Himself. The Church with its Bibles, missionaries, theologians, philosophers and social structures will refute those on Judgment Day who plead, “If only I knew! If only I had lived there! I would have believed!” Jesus can say to them, “Many did hear, yet rejected Me. Many did know, yet disbelieved. Many did live within the shadow of my Church, and yet turned from Me anyway. You are without defense or excuse.”

To close, the Way to eternal salvation has been fixed and rendered immutable from the beginning of time. The Gospel of Christ does not shift, change or nullify the Way; rather, it highlights the Way and puts it into stark contrast with all other religions and philosophies. The universal prayer of the tax collector exemplifies the demarcation line between the saved and the lost, and the Gospel of Christ makes that ‘line’ clearly explicit. The Gospel therefore tends to polarize people away from the line to the one side or the other. That is, those who hear and accept the Gospel know that they are saved and tend to move away from the line towards Christ-oriented righteousness. On the other hand, those who hear the explicit Gospel and reject it tend to move away from the line towards a position hardened against the true Way. Fewer people are left milling around the ‘line’. If there is any “exclusivity” in Christianity, it is a self-exclusion—the end result of the freewill choice of individual human beings deciding their own eternal fate.

Endnotes:

1. Ez 28:11-19, Is 14:12-15, Rev 12.
2. Genesis chapters 1-3
3. Genesis chapter 4
4. Exodus & Leviticus

Suggested reading:

Divine Revelation, Paul Avis (ed.)

Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Kreeft & Tacelli

The Compact Guide to World Religions, Dean C. Halverson (gen. ed.)

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The Confederate Flag

Reflections on the “Stars and Bars”

The recent controversy over the display of the Confederate Flag did not take me by surprise. Quite the contrary, I was surprised that it had not happened far sooner. Proponents of flying that flag claim that they are simply doing so in remembrance of all that was good, right, and decent in the antebellum South, and to honor those who fought to preserve the heritage from that period.

As I see it, however, the institution of human chattel slavery is so inextricably intertwined with Southern heritage, law, and culture that the two cannot be separated. There is simply no amount of ‘goodness’, ‘decency’ or ‘bravery’ that can possibly counterbalance the evil done during nearly two hundred fifty years of “The Peculiar Institution” of human slavery. As the visible symbol of that culture, the Confederate Flag is hopelessly stained by that evil.

I would no sooner fly the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy than I would fly the swastika flag of the Nazi Third Reich, or the ‘rising sun’ flag of Japanese Imperialism, or the hammer-and-sickle flag of the fallen Soviet Union. All are symbols of tyranny, oppression, terror, war, and mass murder.

The bottom line here is that the Confederate Flag cannot be redeemed from the evils of the past and therefore should never see the light of day again.

Associated with the problem of displaying the Confederate flag is the problem of statues and monuments honoring the leaders of the fallen Confederate nation. As I see it, the actual purpose of these monuments is to continue the ideal of white supremecy and to perpetuate the “Cause” of the Southern rebellion. However, if we are to be honest with ourselves we must acknowledge that this Cause had only one apology: naked greed; its only descriptive title: evil. The actual effect of these memorials is to glorify the Cause of human chattel slavery. Their actual message is continued defiance and intimidation. Their presence in modern America can only be divisive.

If there is to be a memorial to the common soldiers of the Lost Cause of the Southern Confederacy, then let that memorial be in the form of a mausoleum symbolically housing the souls of the tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers who laid down their lives in defense of a rebel nation whose only purpose was to perpetuate, expand, and protect the “Peculiar Institution” of human slavery. Otherwise, all of these monuments should come down and be scrapped.

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The Physics of Cosmic Significance

[NOTE: This article is an expanded version of another of my Physics 101 term papers.]

Introduction

During the course of my life I have several times encountered the following two statements (or words to their effect):

1. Earth is a third-rate planet orbiting a third-rate star in a third-rate galaxy in a run-of-the-mill universe.
2. The universe is so vast and we humans are so small that we cannot possibly have any significance whatsoever.

Only in the last few years have I come across information that tells the truth about our proper place in the universe. Indeed, it has only been in the last twenty five or thirty years that science has developed the theoretical and empirical tools necessary to actually observe, measure and understand the universe from the quantum to the cosmic. Let's see where we really stand.

Section One

Third rate or top drawer?

“Perhaps we have never considered just how remarkable, perhaps unique, our planet is. We exist here today because of an amazing series of geological coincidences, each of which has contributed to the life-supporting conditions we currently find around us. This book is the story of that almost incredible sequence of events that has culminated in the comforts of our Earth. (1)”

The book Historical Geology recounts the most recent accepted version of how Earth developed from primordial stellar accretion debris field to our current ‘blue jewel of life’. Central to that story is the explanation of how our Moon came into being. Approximately four and a half billion years ago the primordial Earth was struck an off-center blow by a Mars-sized planet. This impact changed Earth's geological history from a pathway that would have led to a Venus-like hell to a pathway allowing oceans, continental land masses, a thin oxygen atmosphere, and stable orbital and axial characteristics.

The book Rare Earth takes a very wide-ranging view of the requirements necessary for obtaining a life-supporting planet. The authors of that book (along with the author of Historical Geology) recognized the critical specifications of impact timing, impactor composition, impactor strike angle/speed/direction, etc., etc. for this moon formation event, and how utterly unlikely it was. Had it not been for this highly specific event, Earth almost certainly would have suffered the same fate as Venus.

The book Rare Earth goes on to consider the specifications of an optimal life-supporting star (G-II, yellow dwarf) and planetary distances. The authors comment on the ideal characteristics of luminosity, spectral distribution, and long-term stability of this type of star, and the fortuitous positioning of Earth in a nearly perfect circular orbit in the ‘habitable zone’ of distance from the Sun. They also observe that the outer gas giants are very peculiar in their positioning and stable circular orbits. This was underscored by the March 2000 Discover magazine article Field Guide to New Planets that showed that all of the planets discovered to that date were gas giants orbiting either very close to their parent stars or orbiting in exaggerated elliptical orbits. Such arrangements would have destroyed any possible earthlike planet's chances of ever developing into a life-sustaining habitat. So far, no planetary system has been discovered that could reasonably be expected to have a true Earth-like planet.

Our solar system also seems to be positioned in a conspicuously favorable location in our Milky Way galaxy. Dr. Hugh Ross (PhD, astronomy) points out that only a spiral galaxy can support a life-sustaining planet. The reason for this is that only a spiral galaxy can have regions of space that will simultaneously have a sufficient density of heavy elements, a scarcity of neighboring stars (so as to avoid gravitational disturbances), and low radiation levels. All other types of galaxies fail on one or more of the above points (2).

Further aiding our existence is the fact that our solar system is located between galactic spirals at what is called the ‘galactic co-rotation radius’. This position allows our solar system to track along synchronously with the rotation rate of the galaxy so that we don't drift forward or backwards into one of the galactic spirals, or drift into or away from the galactic core, or drift up or down out of the galactic plane. Any such change(s) in our position would expose us to gravitational disturbances and/or lethal levels of radiation (3).

Astrophysicist Martin Rees elaborated in his book Just Six Numbers how the fundamental constants of our universe (gravity, electromagnetism, cosmic expansion rate, etc.) must fall within very narrow ranges in order for an Earth-like planet to have even the possibility of coming into existence.

To end this section, it turns out that we live on a first-rate idealized planet orbiting around a top-drawer star in a conspicuously well structured stable solar system located in one of the very few habitable locations of a top-flight spiral galaxy in a very quiet, uncrowded corner of a universe that gives every appearance of being fine-tuned for life. Within the limits of the physical laws governing the cosmos, things could not possibly be any better for us than they are right here on good old planet Earth.

Section Two

Is bigger better?

The second question under consideration is whether or not size counts as a valid indicator of cosmic significance. As it turns out, the assertion is bogus on four counts:

1. Astrophysicist Martin Rees devoted chapter six of Just Six Numbers to an explanation of the importance of the cosmic expansion rate. If that rate was only a little higher the universe would be so large and expanding so fast that star and galaxy formation could not properly take place. On the other hand, if the expansion rate were only a little lower, then gravity would have held sway and the universe would have collapsed in a Big Crunch before any star systems could have formed. So in order for us to exist, the universe must be just as big as it is, in all its vast array.
2. Regardless whether Inflationary Hot Big Bang theory or Ekpyrotic Cyclical theory is correct, the space/time manifold is so incredibly large—and ordinary matter/energy so sparse and thinly distributed—that there could not be any possible material object that can be counted as “significant” based solely on its physical size. All of the matter in the entire universe brought together into one big ball would be lost in the vastness of space/time (4).
3. There are basic structural scaling limits as to how big a biological creature can be. We cannot possibly be as big as a galaxy (which isn't all that big compared to the space/time manifold), or even as big as a planet. Blue whales and the largest dinosaurs exist(ed) at the upper limits as to animal size; and they are really not all that much bigger than we are, relative to the size of planet Earth.
4. If physical size alone is to be the criterion of significance, then we must consider the full spread of possible size. We actually stand about midway between quantum smallness and cosmic largeness. A quark is no larger than 1 x 10 to the negative 19 meter in size (5). If string theory turns out to be true, then a quantum string exists at the Planck length of √hG/c³ or about 1.6 x 10 to the negative 35 meter in size (6). The current estimate of the diameter of the observable universe is on the order of 100 billion light years, or 1 x 10 to the 27 meters (7). The typical adult human stands somewhere between 1.5 – 2 x 10° meters in height. So, we're not small at all; we're medium sized!

Conclusion

In the final analysis, we humans are just the right size—neither too big nor too small—in order to be what we are and do what we do in an idealized four dimensional universe having every indication of custom crafting in order to support our existence. I close with the observation that ‘significance’ can only be determine by that which makes or forms something. Since there is nothing behind an atheist universe beyond blind physics, chemistry, geology and hydrology, the word ‘significance’ loses all meaning. I end with this quote of Deuteronomy 10:14-15: “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.” (NIV)

Come, Lord Jesus.

ENDNOTES:

1. Foreword, by Peter D. Moore (PhD), Historical Geology, pg. IX, ©2002, Facts on File, Inc., NY, NY.
2. Hugh Ross (PhD), Creator and the Cosmos (second edition), pg. 132 ©Navpress, Co. Springs, Co.
3. Hugh Ross (PhD) & Guillermo Gonzalez (Ph. D), Facts for Faith Magazine, pp. 36-41 ©2000 Reasons to Believe.
4. Joel L. Swerdlow, Unveiling the Universe, National Geographic Magazine, pg. 25, ©October 1999. Steinhardt & Turok, Endless Universe.
5. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Physics, Quark, pg. 459, ©1996.
6. Ibid, String, pg. 1556.
7. National Geographic Magazine, ibid.

Bibliography

Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang, by Drs. Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, ©2007, Doubleday, NY, NY.

Just Six Numbers; The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, by Dr. Marin Rees, ©2000, Basic Books, NY, NY.

Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, by Drs. Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee, ©2000, Copernicus Books, NY, NY.

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Deep Thinking

“Read much, but not too many books.”
Benj. Franklin as ‘Poor Richard Saunders’, 1738

What would a website named Deep Thought 1 be without an article on how to engage in ‘deep thinking’? As I practice it, deep thinking has three requirements:

1. A truly universal (i.e. wide-ranging) education.
2. Sufficient uninterrupted time for careful study, meditation, and reflection on the subject(s) at hand.
3. The personal willingness to follow where the evidence leads and to accept the conclusion demanded by that evidence.

Taking this list one at a time, the first step in deep thinking would be to stay awake and pay attention in school from kindergarten through your senior year. Actual study would help enormously. Though much maligned in recent years, the American education system is, in reality, an excellent start on an universal education. Unless you live in an inner city combat zone or some poverty stricken rural area, you will be well served by an American public school education. Upon graduation, your next stop would be an Associates Degree in General Studies at any decent, accredited community college. Beyond the Associates Degree, the typical course of university study tends to narrow towards a particular profession, so therefore tends to be of little use in deep thinking.

Time is the next requisite ingredient. Rome was not built in a day, so no one should expect to examine any worthwhile or challenging subject quickly. It is unfortunate that modern American society is so hectic and stressed. The typical American is so bogged down with making a living and raising a family that virtually no time is left over for calm, lengthy study and meditation.

I am blessed to work a job that has frequent night shifts that allow extensive periods for uninterrupted investigation and contemplation of whatever subject or issue catches my fancy. In the wee hours of the night when most (normal) people are sound asleep, I am wide awake—and thinking.

The third ingredient in deep thinking is personal honesty and integrity. If you simply start with a predetermined conclusion and then work backwards towards a beginning, then you are either a deceiver or a propagandist. No “Deep Thought” is necessary if you travel that road. The test of true ‘deep thinking’ would be if you thoroughly investigate a subject and the conclusion disturbs or offends you—yet you accept the conclusion anyway.

To pull it all together, get as good a general education as you can as your foundation for deep thinking. As subjects or issues of interest present themselves, seek out the best sources of information related to your subject of interest, then read them carefully. This I believe is what Poor Richard was advising above. Seek out the best; study deeply; then digest the information slowly. This takes time.

I would also advise being sensitive to side issues that may not be obviously relevant to the immediate subject, yet might be very important in arriving at a truly correct conclusion. This is where an universal education comes into play. For example, while researching my article on the Jewish Holocaust, the historian Prof. R.G.L. Waite made the almost offhand remark that the Great Depression was vital to the success of Adolf Hitler. Professor Waite said virtually nothing else about the Great Depression. This led me down the very important rabbit trail of investigating the economic aspects of the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent worldwide Great Depression. The trick here is to be able to follow the rabbit trail of truth without falling down the rabbit hole into the Wonderland of error. A good, wide-ranging, general education will help to guide and protect you.

In the end, you must be willing to follow where the evidence leads regardless of personal preference or prejudice. If your sources are trustworthy and the information is well founded then you must accept the conclusion.

Deep Thought requires it.

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Education

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon, from the song Kodachrome

This article is not so much ‘deep thought’ as ‘personal rant’. I am a product of the American public education system, graduating high school in 1971 and going on to a successful career as an electronics technician. I must say up front that I received a good education by the standards of the time; and by the standards of today, my education would probably rank as excellent. Having more than fifty years of adulthood under my belt, I feel that I am in a position to realistically evaluate the practical effect of that education.

I am deeply satisfied with my elementary and middle school (junior high) education. On the other hand, I am deeply dissatisfied with my high school education. With that as preface, I proceed with the rant.

What is the purpose of education? It is to equip young people with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed and prosper in whatever culture and environment that they will mature into.

South Sea islanders teach their young what they will need to know to succeed in the South Seas. Eskimos teach their young what they will need to know in order to succeed in the Far North. Nepalese teach their children what they will need to know in order to succeed in the Himalayas. But for some strange reason we Americans fail to equip our youth with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed and prosper in modern post-industrial, hyper-legalized, web-connected, complex-economic America.

What are the foundation stones for success in modern America? They are:

1. Personal finance/investment, and small business operation.
2. Practical civics and politics.
3. Practical law.

As stated above, I am deeply satisfied with my early education. Indeed, everything that I have found of practical value in my adulthood I learned by the end of eighth grade. But as I also stated above, I am deeply dissatisfied with my high school education. With the exception of typing class (which today would be called ‘pc keyboarding’) and drivers education, the last four years of my public school education were a complete and utter waste of time and effort. Either the courses were useless repetitions of material already taught, or the material had no practical relevance to my actual adulthood. And remember, I received a good education by the standards of the time.

Indeed, had I been taught typing and drivers education in middle school I could have been given my public school diploma at the end of eighth grade and been absolutely no worse off in adulthood for having missed the last four years of school.

So why my deep dissatisfaction? With the crystal clear vision of 20/20 hindsight, I can now see that I missed or botched many financial opportunities that passed my way during the first thirty years of my adulthood. I can see how I was not even a minimally functioning citizen during a time when good citizenship was needed. And I made simple legal mistakes that could easily have been avoided had I received even rudimentary training in that vital area.

There is an old saying that “you can't know what you don't know”. But I would go even deeper and say that “you can be so ignorant that you don't even know that you're ignorant”. And that was my condition the morning after I graduated from high school in 1971: so ignorant that I didn't know that I was ignorant. I passed into adulthood utterly unprepared for the realities, responsibilities and opportunities that I would face.

My parents knew nothing about the three areas listed above, so they were no help to me. If other adults in my life knew anything, they didn't share any insights with me. And there were no courses taught in any of these areas, so high school was a total waste. And remember, I received a good education!

In the past fifteen years I have seen five children through high school. It sickens me to see that the public school curriculum is virtually the same as I received over fifty years ago. I did my best to try to educate my children in these areas, but considering that I myself am still clawing my way to some minimal level of proficiency, I can offer little more than advice. I did enroll them in a personal investment course at the local community college; every little bit helps.

So what should be done? I end my rant with this suggestion: treat high school as a true adult-life preparation course. The three vitally important areas listed above should be the required core of curriculum for all students. College prep courses such as literature, chemistry, history, biology, mathematics, etc. should be treated as the extraneous electives that they truly are. By graduation night, every student should have a basic proficiency in personal financial management/investment and simple business operation, be able to evaluate political issues and governmental leaders, and have at least a rudimentary knowledge of law as regards contracts, marriage/divorce, wills and personal liability.

There. I feel much better now. Thank you.

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The Physics of Eternity

Christians tend to bandy the word ‘eternity’ without giving adequate thought as to its practical requirements. God promises us that at the end of the current Age He will create a New Heaven, a New Earth, and bring down a New Jerusalem. We will inhabit that New Earth and New Jerusalem in glorified bodies like unto the angels and fit for existence in eternity. We need to realize, however, that this New Creation must employ physical laws utterly different from the universe as it now exists. From the ‘time zero’ Creation event to the present day, and from the quantum to the cosmic, literally everything (and I do mean everything) about this current universe works towards decay, degeneration, coldness, darkness, and ever expanding emptiness.

Christian clergy and scholars all too often give people the mistaken impression that the New Creation will require only some relatively minor corrections and modifications of our current universe. They use terms such as “regeneration”, “renewed”, “refurbished” and “cleansed”. Recently I heard one of the famous radio preachers (Dr. David Jeremiah or Chuck Swindoll, I can't remember which) use the word “refreshed” to describe the change from the current creation to the New Creation.

These terms, however, are utterly inadequate and fall infinitely short of the requirements for eternity. As pointed out above, everything about this present universe works towards decay and destruction, so literally everything about the basic laws of the New Creation will have to be either radically changed, replaced with something totally new, or done away with entirely from what they are now. Literally everything! Therefore the New Creation bound for eternity would of necessity be unrecognizable from the present creation bound for decay, darkness and destruction.

To understand the reason for this, we must change our perspective of time from the animal to the eternal. In our normal animal lives (typically less than a hundred years) the destructive nature of the laws of this present universe rarely affects us. Beyond the immediate problems of earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes we simply do not live long enough to experience the destructive effects of the natural laws governing this universe. But in the New Creation we will be experiencing cosmic spans of time as ordinary. A million years will be the new ‘second’; a billion years will be the new ‘day’; a trillion years will be the new ‘year’. If the New Creation is just a refurbished, remodeled, “refreshed” version of the current universe, then we will personally experience the devastating effects of decay and degeneration that will result if any of the current laws and characteristics of the present universe are retained. A few examples will illustrate:

1. If atomic radioactivity is allowed to exist, then the New Earth (and possibly the New Jerusalem) will be constantly threatened (as now) by earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonic action and continental drift.
2. If gravity exists as it now does, the New Jerusalem (basically a huge cube) will collapse into a much smaller ball under its own gravitational mass.
3. If the New Jerusalem rests on its “foundation” upon the surface of the New Earth, then it must be centered exactly on one of the polar icecaps or else its mass will cause Earth to have an eccentric wobble. If the New Jerusalem floats in space near the New Earth, then there will be serious orbital/gravitational/tidal force problems between the New Earth, the New Jerusalem and the Moon.
4. Unless solar physics is radically changed, the Sun will first fry the New Earth and the New Jerusalem as it ages through the death gasps of the red giant stage, then freeze both as it finally dies and becomes a white dwarf nebula. Also, the related dangers from meteor impacts, solar flares, cosmic radiation, gamma ray bursts, and nearby supernovae explosions, plus the imminent (i.e. just five “days” from now) collision of Andromeda galaxy with our Milky Way galaxy.
5. Unless God brings the current cosmic expansion rate to a halt, then that exponentially increasing expansion will (in just a very few eternal “weeks”) eventually tear the New Creation apart at the seams.

I could go on and on, but I hope you get the point. Unless the New Creation be completely different (that is, totally NEW) from our current universe, a single “year” in that New Creation would see utter devastation. Of course I trust that God will have everything under control, and that full provision will be made for all of these points. Still, I wish that Christian leaders would give some ‘deep thought’ to these considerations before they lightly tread upon the subjects of the New Creation and eternity.

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Gun Control

The issue of gun control is really the issue of handgun control. Although the national news media has whipped up a frenzy of public panic over spectacular mass killings committed with so-called military styled “assault rifles”, in reality long guns are used in only a small fraction of the firearms crimes committed in the United States. In order to get a firm grip on this issue we must clearly understand three things about handguns:

1. The technology and methods for making modern handguns (both revolvers and semiautomatics) and their basic ammunitions were perfected over a hundred years ago, and cannot be uninvented. Indeed, any decently equipped high school machine shop, making copies from a sample .38 Special and 9mm semi-auto, could crank out handguns by the thousands; bullets by the hundreds of thousands. Such an operation would be limited only by time, equipment, manpower and matèriel.
2. The violent criminals who would use handguns make up a minority of the overall criminal population which itself is a small minority of the overall U.S. population. Therefore, supplying this sub-minority with handguns and ammunition would be relatively easy. Even if handguns were totally banned, a single international arms smuggling ring or domestic illegal gun/ammunition manufacturing operation, moving its utterly untracable wares through the already established underground drug trafficking networks, could supply the criminal demand for handguns and ammunition in the entire western hemisphere.
3. Unlike illegal drugs that are quickly consumed and must be replaced, properly manufactured handguns and ammunition are extremely durable items. Bullets have a shelf life measured in years—if not decades. Assuming decent care, handguns have an indefinite service life. There are handguns made over a century ago that are, today, in perfect firing condition. From a public policy and law enforcement standpoint, handguns—like diamonds—are forever.

The upshot of all this is that there is no level of hardware ‘gun control’ in modern America that could possibly disarm the common street thugs, organized gangbangers, drug dealers, and deranged lone killers who already operate completely outside the bounds of law, order and decency, and who commit the vast majority of all firearms crimes.

This is why law abiding gun owners are so disturbed by the cries for “reasonble and sensible” gun control involving registration and license schemes. Gun owners have seen far too many cases—both domestic and overseas—where such schemes were ultimately used to disarm the general population while having little or no impact on violent criminals. Also bear in mind that criminals cannot be required to register or obtain licenses because these would be violations of their 5th Amendment protection against self incrimination. Only the law abiding can be required to submit to these schemes

I am deeply disturbed by the persistence and intensity of the call for gun owner licensing and firearm registration. This can only be for the ultimate ideological goal of general civil disarmament so as to render the People of America physically powerless—as is the case with the people of Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. This would end any claim of citizen sovereignty over Government, thereby leaving the federal government as the sole sovereign power in America, with the several States and municipalities acting as mere administrative subunits.

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Hell

Perhaps no other aspect of Christianity is as shocking and repellant to the common mind as the subject of hell. Even a significant percentage of Christians are uneasy about Judgment Day and eternal perdition because they seem to refute our claim of a loving God. However, hell actually makes a lot of sense—even becomes a necessity—once you consider a few basic assumptions of the Faith.

The first assumption is that the human spirit—once it is brought into existence—is eternal and will never cease to exist. This eternal spirit will ultimately be clothed in a new and perfected body that will be fit for an existence in eternity.

The second assumption is that Jesus really is the Son of God who will reign as the sovereign Lord of the New Heaven and the New Earth for the rest of eternity. That is, that Jesus will never retire, never come up for election, and never be deposed or otherwise replaced. Furthermore, the light of the holiness of God and the glory of His son Jesus will suffuse and illuminate the New Creation such that there will be neither darkness nor night (Rev 21:22-25 & Rev 22:5). In short, it will be Jesus: 24/7/eternity.

Another assumption ties in with the first. That is, that hell will be made by God in order to deal with the rebel Lucifer and his fallen angels. This is borne out by the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:41, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (NIV) The reason for this is that God created the angels to be indestructible eternal creatures endowed with transcendent powers and capabilities far beyond that of mortal man. God—exercising His sovereign authority—has decided that these angels are not to be annihilated; that is, their ultimate fate is not to be unconscious oblivion. Since God is going to replace the old heaven and earth with a New Heaven, a New Earth and a New Jerusalem, and cannot allow these demons to have any access to the New Heaven and the New Earth (read Revelation 20 – 22), a totally separate realm must be created in order to contain these dread creatures. That containment realm is called ‘hell’.

So why hell for humans? It really comes down to the question of who God can allow into the New Heaven and the New Earth. Since Jesus is going to be the eternal Lord of the New Heaven and New Earth, God can only allow access to those humans and angels who willingly submit to the Lordship of Jesus. If God allowed access to those who reject or oppose the Lordship of Jesus, it would only be a matter of time before there would be rebellion and open warfare in the New Creation. There has already been one war in Heaven (which rages to the present day), so God cannot allow enemies of Jesus into the New Creation so as to start a new war.

I would also point out that the reality of the Lordship of Jesus would render irrelevant any questions over the nature and character of Jesus. If Jesus is going to be the Lord of the New Creation, then it really doesn't matter if Jesus is the ‘Third Person of the Trinity’ (per orthodox Christianity), or was only a virgin born prophet (per the Koran), or merely a regular human who was a very good teacher and guru (per New Age humanist philosophy). In fact, it wouldn't matter if Jesus was a homeless Skid Row bum. If God appoints or elevates Jesus to the position of Lord of the New Creation (for whatever reason or by any criterion), then we must bow to that lordship or be rejected to hell. How you respond to that lordship will determine your eternal destination.

While hell may seem sadistically cruel and needlessly harsh, it is actually reasonable and necessary given the transcendent and eternal nature of the human spirit, our new and perfected bodies, and the New Creation. This leads to a final assumption regarding hell. That is, that the restraining power of the Holy Spirit of God will either be absent from hell or utterly inactive in the realm of hell. If that is the case, then the ‘lake of fire’ will serve to distract, neutralize and isolate dread creatures that otherwise would be unbounded and unrestrained in their evil, viciousness and malice one towards the other—and us. In that sense, the isolation chamber of hell will be the final parting mercy from God to those who have chosen to separate themselves from the love of God and His freely given offer of eternal salvation through Jesus the Christ in the New Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem.

Choose carefully.

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The Horror of War

Over the years I've heard and read many people expound upon and decry “the horror of war”. Here in Deep Thought 1 I am going to tell you the real horror of war. No, it is not the destruction, suffering and death normally associated with war. The true horror of war is the ordinary commonness of war throughout the animal kingdom. From humans down to bees and ants war is, in a word: NORMAL. War can simply not be got rid of. It is built into us at the most fundamental level of our nature.

What is abnormal—downright unnatural—is the swift planetary reach and incredible destructive power of modern ICBM-delivered thermonuclear weaponry. I'll even throw in biological and chemical weapons for good measure. 21st Century mankind has the power to annihilate itself—or at least to blast itself back into the Stone Age.

Given our weaponry, our penchant for warfare and the barely concealled instabilities in the world today I hold out little hope for the long-term survival of our species. And that's assuming Global Warming and Climate Change don't ‘do us in’ first.

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Human Spirit

There is no question more important to the human condition than the question of what happens to us after we die. Common experience tells us everything we need to know about our very short trip from ‘cradle to grave’. Science tells us everything we need to know about the termination of the electrical activity in the brain and the decay of the physical human body as it returns to the dust. So, is there anything else? Is there substance to the claim that there is a human ‘spirit’ that survives physical death?

It would seem that if the human spirit actually exits, then it must be a completely supernatural phenomenon. The instrumentation and techniques of modern science have progressed to the point that if there was even the slightest residuum of ‘spirit’ left on this side of the grave then it would have been detected and analyzed years ago. That being the case, the breath of spiritual life God breathed into Adam was a supernatural connection from God to man. The supernatural spiritual connection is established by God, maintained by God, and ultimately broken by God at His discretion—and on His side of the grave.

However, this would put the ‘spirit’ completely inside the realm of metaphysics and totally out of the reach of human science. If this is true in fact, then the spirit will forever be beyond test or verification. Claims can be made, but they will be purely religious in nature regardless the truth or falsehood of the claims. I'm afraid that this is one subject that will have to be accepted or rejected entirely on faith. The only way to test it is to die.

Any volunteers?

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The enduring victory of Jim Crow racism in America

Unlike several of the other articles here on Deep Thought 1, this article is not a deeply researched work. It is a sketch of my personal impressions of the effects of Jim Crow racism from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the present day in America. Please read my Slavery and Civil War article for an actual ‘scholarly’ treatment of those subjects.

The de facto defeat of the Confederate States of America with Lee's surrender at Appomatox Court House on April 9, 1865 did not end the fundamental problem of the status of the millions of Black Africans living in America. Nor did the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution do anything to change the realities of deep-seated race hatred in the newly defeated Southern States. These merely drove the Southern States into a campaign of social, political, and economic guerrilla warfare in order to protect the interests of the White population by suppressing or destroying all opportunities by the newly freed Black Africans—who were now officially citizens, not only of the United States of America as a whole, but also citizens of the States in which they resided.

Almost as soon as the Southern States were readmitted to the Union, and State governments were reestablish, there was a deliberate effort to enact laws and policies that would inhibit or stop all efforts to integrate the newly freed Black Africans into American society. Most important to the subject of this article were the laws, policies, and unofficial social actions to suppress or destroy the creation of independent wealth that would be afforded by starting African American business, enterprise and industry. Most of the other obstacles to African Americans could be addressed and eventually solved through normal political and judicial means. Obstacles such as voting restrictions and general civil rights violations could be solved through changes in the law, and through social activism. The creation of wealth through business, enterprise and industry, on the other hand, requires unfettered access to the full range of the social and economic landscape of America. And that free access and operation must be in effect over spans of time measured in generations turning into more than a century.

White Americans are so used to unfettered access and operation in American society that they simply don't think about it. Their freedom of action is as natural and ordinary as the air they breath. African Americans, on the other hand, have had every obstacle imaginable thrown in their paths. From official governmental and regulatory obstacles, to economic obstacles at financial institutions, to outright violence against African American bussinesses and their owners, every possible barrier has been erected to prevent or destroy Black owned bussines, enterprise and industry.

The upshot of all of this is that from 1865 to the present day, Black-owned business, enterprise and industry in the Southern States has been very effectively suppressed or destroyed. Conditions in the Northern States were better, but not by much. Although not codified into official law and governmental policy, deep-seated racism in the North also had its very effective chilling effect on the start and growth of Black-owned business, enterprise and industry.

I have not researched this, but how many of the Dow Jones Industrials companies were founded, owned and operated by Black African Americans since 1865? Precious few, I'll wager. Of the Fortune 500 companies, how many were founded, owned and operated by Black Americans in that same time frame? Again I'd wager: precious few. And of professional sports teams, how many were founded, owned and operated by Black Americans? Of those that might have been created, how many survive to the present day? You do the research. I'll wager that you'll need no more than the fingers of one hand——if that.

There has been some talk in recent years of providing ‘reparations’ to African Americans as compensation for these inequities. As generally understood, however, reparations are usually extracted from the losing government in war to compensate the winning government for its cost of waging the war. If reparations were to be extracted from the slave States of antibellum America, those reparations needed to be extracted back in the 1860s, not the twenty-first century. Those men who committed the crimes of the antebellum slave South are now long dead—their wealth sunk in the cost of War; the Black Africans deserving reparations from those slave owners are also now long dead. So, can anything be done in modern America to make amends for the crimes and injustices of the distant past?

I flatter myself by calling this website “Deep Thought 1”. On this particular subject, however, I freely admit that my ‘deep thought’ founders in the abyssal sea of race hatred. The success of Jim Crow racism in suppressing or destroying Black business, enterprise and industry in America is a victory resonating to the present day. Whereas civil rights injustices can be corrected with relative swiftness through law and policy, the creation of wealth requires time, risk and great effort—with no guarantee of success for Whites or Blacks. The ideals of private property ownership are so ingrained into the very fabric of America from the Constitutional level down to the individual citizen that there is no quick or easy solution to the inequity of business ownership and its resulting wealth and power in America. It's not like we can simply confiscate 23% of American business and industry, and then redistribute it to the African American population. The inequity of that would, I think, offend even most African Americans. It would stike to the very heart of the meaning of America itself, and would threaten the very concept of personal wealth and advancement.

As I see it, most—if not all—of the race related problems in modern America can be traced directly to the stark imbalance of wealth and social standing caused by the victory of Jim Crow racism through the destruction of Black owned businesses, while protecting and nurturing White owned businesses. This is most graphically demonstrated in the imbalance and abuse of our entire criminal justice system, which is structured to discriminate against African Americans. The poverty and disadvantage caused by the imbalance of business wealth drives up crime and violence in African American communities. This crime and violence justifies racial profiling, overly zealous police actions—which, as we have seen, has all too often turned lethal—and harsh sentencing practices by a justice system largly owned and controlled by Whites—and run to protect White interests.

If there is a way out, it will require African Americans to start business, enterprise and industry; work in and patronize those new businesses in order to nurture them to full maturity; and allow the time—possibly spaning several generations—in order for Black Americans to gain an economic and social footing in modern America fully equal to that of White Americans. Granted, this is asking Black Americans to climb a hill that they should not have to climb. But this creation of wealth—and resulting social and political power—in the African American community would be necessary in order to effect an actual defeat of Jim Crow racism in modern America.

Anything else would just be a “Band-Aid” solution to the problem.

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Justice

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
the Mahatma Gandhi

Few ideas from the Bible are as misunderstood and abused as the concept of ‘justice’, as exemplified by the command of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Here is what the Bible actually has to say:

“Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly. Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deut 16:18-20)

and

“Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone's animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the LORD your God.” (Lev 24:17-22 NIV)

and

“One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

“If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deut 19:15-21 NIV)

At first blush this may seem to be the prescription for vicious retribution and personal vengeance. In reality it is the basis for measured, proportioned justice administered by duly appointed officials. Whereas pagan or heathen justice might allow a head for an eye, a jaw for a tooth, or a whole family killed in retribution for a single wrongdoing, Biblical justice is limited to only a one-for-one correspondence.

An excellent example of disproportioned pagan justice is to be found in the Book of Daniel, chapter 6. For those not familiar with the story, Daniel was a prophet of the one true God during the Jewish exile in Babylon. In the reign of King Darius the Mede, Daniel had risen to one of the highest ranks in government. His fellow administrators in the King's government were jealous of Daniel, so they set him up to be killed. Knowing that Daniel prayed three times daily to God, they persuaded King Darius to issue a binding decree that during a thirty day period no one was to pray to any god or man but to the King alone.

Of course Daniel continued to pray to God, so King Darius was forced by his own law to execute Daniel by having him thrown into a den of lions. King Darius prayed that Daniel's God would save him even as Daniel was being lowered into the lion's den—and certain death. The next morning Daniel was pulled out of the lion's den with barely a scratch, having been protected by an angel of the Lord.

Now we get to the justice portion of the program. In his anger over being tricked by the administrators into having Daniel executed, King Darius ordered that all of the administrators be thrown into the lion's den to be killed. Not only all of the administrators, but also their wives and children too!

But remember, Daniel came out of the lion's den alive and well. And he was only one man, not dozens. While the trickery and false testimony of the administrators may have justified their execution, the wives and children had nothing to do with the attempt on the life of Daniel. Having them killed was simply an act of retribution and kingly terror.

Disproportioned, emotional, vengeful retribution passing as justice.

I close by arguing that modern American justice has swung too far to the other side of the social pendulum. That is, today we practice a justice that is too lax and too lenient. Instead of the Biblical prescription, we now practice a Due Process system of ‘a fine for an eye, community service for a tooth, and a limited jail sentence for a life’. While this might please our sense of liberality, it does make crime attractive and affordable in modern America.

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Letter to the editor

NOTE: Over the years I've had many letters printed in my local paper, the Eastern Shore (of Virginia) News. For some reason, this letter did not pass muster with the editor and was not published. It appears here for your consideration. The “Mr. Martin Freed of Quinby, Virginia” mentioned towards the end is a local ultra-left wing liberal who positively froths at the pen over the Fox News Network. Enjoy!

Sunday, June 15, 2014

To the editor,

I was inclined to respond to several pieces in recent issues of the ES News, starting with the reprint of editorial cartoons from the Vietnam War era, but I just couldn't pull my thoughts together for a reasoned reply. However, this past Thursday (June 12) I accompanied my son to Washington D.C. on his school field trip. We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam and Korean War memorials, the MLK Memorial and the WW2 Memorial. During the walking tour I kept seeing the same message over and over again on billboards, posters, bumper stickers and tee-shirts: Freedom isn't free.

In the past hundred years America has been confronted with four great absolutist, lethally intolerant, and globalist social movements: German Nazism, Japanese Imperialism, Marxist Communism and Islamic Jihadism. They were absolutist in that each regarded itself as the ultimate and final order for mankind; lethally intolerant in that each was willing to ruthlessly and mercilessly impose itself on mankind; and globalist in that each would subject every last person on the planet to its will.

In America we hold these truths to be self evident: that all are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of personal happiness. Absolutists, on the other hand, reject these “rights” as ridiculous and hold as self evident that the Master Race or common Collective or final Great Revelation is the ultimate truth. And each was willing to kill—by the millions if need be—to achieve their respective goals. Americans are broadminded and tolerant enough that we have a very difficult time understanding the psyche of the single-minded, focused and dedicated ideological fanatic.

The Allied nations, Britain and the U.S. in particular, brought the Nazi and Japanese Empires down to ruins in the 1940's, and ended their particular threats to mankind. To my mind the most frightening thing about WW2 is that if Adolf Hitler and Gen. Tojo had done just two or three things differently and correctly they could have won the war, either defeating us outright or forcing an unfavorable peace that would have left us a vassal state. We won that war at the great expense of blood and treasure.

Freedom isn't free.

At the end of WW2 America was threatened by the tentacles of international Marxist Communism. The leaders of that movement, from Stalin to Mao to Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro, were unwavering in their determination to bring the entire world under the collective of Marxism Communism. Had the leaders of the free world, from Truman and Churchill to Reagan and Thatcher, been less resolute in the defense of freedom we might very well have lost the Cold War against Communism. Bear in mind that though the old Soviet Union has met its demise, Communist China is taking a different tack by waging economic and industrial war against us while using the profits from its trade to amass a huge and growing military. Communism is by no means dead. It is alive and kicking. The wars in Korea and Vietnam (more properly called their respective Theatres of Operation in the overall Cold War) to halt the spread of International Communism were concluded with great expense of blood and treasure.

Freedom isn't free.

The war against Islamic Jihadism has been ongoing literally for centuries. The Koran commands that all peoples worldwide be brought to their knees in submission through the religion of Islam. Those who refuse to submit are to be killed as infidels. Muhammad was not just a religious prophet. He was also a military commander. He led armies. He and his companions fought battles, killed people, conquered territory, took prisoners and claimed the spoils of war. The Koranic commands, along with the historical exemplification of Muhammad and the early leaders of Islam, have inspired the faithful to physical action for over a thousand years.

Today there are more than a billion people worldwide who claim to be Muslims. If only one percent of them take the Koran seriously, that leaves a dedicated support base of ten million people. If only one percent of those people take up their swords in Jihad, that leaves a fanatical shock army of at least a hundred thousand soldiers of Islam ready and willing to attack the infidel—that's you and me. But as frightening as this army may be, I feel that the true threat of absolutist, intolerant, globalist Islam is not the Jihadist but the immigrant and native born Muslim. As their numbers grow in Western nations they may one day succeed in democratically taking over a major industrialized nation. They could then present the same level of danger posed by the Nazis, Imperialists, and the Soviets.

Only time could tell if the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam were fruitful. Honest people to the present day disagree on the answer. Only time will tell if the actions in Iraq and Afghanistan—the overall War Against Terrorism—taken by President George W. Bush and continued by President Barack Obama will be fruitful. Again, honest people differ in opinion. But what should not be in doubt is the threat to individual freedom and liberty posed by a longstanding religious movement that is absolutist in its claims, lethally intolerant in its conduct, and global in its outlook; not to mention backed up with over a billion adherents. The defense of liberty will come with the expense of blood and treasure. Once again…

Freedom isn't free.

I now move from the global to the local. More specifically I intend to ‘crawl out of my hole’ and respond to Mr. Freed's letter in the Wednesday June 11 issue of the News. The attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya was part and parcel with Islam's war of global subjugation. Attacks have been made before and will be made again. But our ability and willingness to respond to such attacks is a very serious concern. American weakness, be it real or perceived, is to the Jihadist as blood in the water is to a circling shark. Therefore it is very important to determine the truth about Benghazi in order to correct errors and shore up weak spots.

Mr. Freed says that Republican stinginess deprived Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the resource to defend the embassy. If so, no amount of smoke from the Republican camp could possibly conceal this fact. Republicans would move heaven and earth to prevent any type of investigation of this incident. For them to initiate such an investigation in an election year would be political suicide. On the other hand, Fox News has been claiming that resource was available but not used in Benghazi. Personally I do not expect the Secretary of State or the President, of either political party, to be familiar with the details of embassy security. That is handled by lower level executives and functionaries. If resource was available but not utilized by those executives, then Secretary of State Clinton should have been mad as the proverbial wet hen and initiated her own investigation of the matter. In short, heads should have rolled at State, with dismissals, resignations, demotions and letters of reprimand. Such swift and decisive action by Secretary Clinton would have greatly and favorably impressed Americans—even a hole-crawler such as myself. So, Mr. Freed, did Secretary Clinton conduct such an investigation? Perhaps Fox News overlooked it.

I conclude this letter with comments on Fox News. Mr. Freed seems quite incensed with this news outlet. He attributes great, and downright evil, influence to it. However, the idea that Fox News (and I'll throw Rush Limbaugh into the pot) on one side of the scale can outweigh the combined effect of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Public Television/Radio, Time, Newsweek, The NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Martin Freed of Quinby would by funny if false, tragic if true. My personal view on the American mass media is summed up with this quote from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”

I have been lied to, misinformed, misdirected and propagandized by the mass media so often that I rarely bother with it. I also regard most of the misinformation to be presented for ideological and political purposes. While I occasionally tune in to Fox News, I’m just as likely to tune in to CNN Headline News—when I tune in at all. In my “cynicism” I heed the advice of that wicked Republican, Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”

I now crawl back into my hole.

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DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

The Unlikely Journey from Samuel L. Clemens to Mark Twain

Thesis Statement:

[NOTE: This article is a slightly modified version of my 200-level American Literature college term paper.]

Was the emergence of Mark Twain from the mind of Samuel Langhorne Clemens a literary inevitability? This article will show that there were special, unpredictable historical events related to Clemens' life that produced the literary icon known as Mark Twain—and could just as easily have snuffed him out.

Introduction:

“Because geography is taught in grade schools along with spelling and arithmetic, most of us are likely to think of it as something very simple and rudimentary, something like “What is the Capital of Afghanistan?” or “Bound Iowa.” Few of us realize that it is the prince of disciplines, combining the fruits of geology, meteorology, anthropology, sociology, economics, and dozens of other specialties. The good geographer is a philosopher. The medieval Arabs, who wrote some of the finest geographical treatises ever penned, knew this. They knew that the culture of a people bears an intimate relationship to the landscape on which they live. They knew that the geography of a region shapes the way of life of its inhabitants, as the bones and muscles of a healthy man shape his skin. …If one is to understand the civilization of a people, one must start with the geography of the land they inhabit (Coon, 10).”

A raw diamond is a rather nondescript looking rock that might pass unnoticed by the untrained eye. It is not until it has been carefully cut and polished by the jeweler that it can sparkle as a finished gemstone. Unlike an inanimate diamond, a human being is cut and polished by family, culture and geography. However, the processes of life are often careless and accidental. As this article progresses, the reader will come to see that the cut and polish of Samuel L. Clemens depended heavily upon the haphazard fortunes, decisions, and actions of his father John Marshal Clemens. How John M. Clemens fared quite literally determined the existence of the man the world would come to know as Mark Twain.

Section One

Mountain Cats and River Rats

John Marshall Clemens, named for the future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born in Virginia in the year 1798 (Fishkin, 29). John's father Samuel took his family to Kentucky in the early 1800s in search of cheaper land (Hoffman, 2). Samuel Clemens died during a house building accident when John was a child. His mother remarried, but the stepfather was inattentive to the boy, and John left home as soon as he was old enough to be on his own. He returned to his native Virginia to apprentice (occupation not determined) with a relative named Langhorne. However, his apprenticeship was not a success, and he returned to Kentucky to start anew by studying the law (Bloom, 8).

He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in the year 1822. All of the references consulted for this article that describe the personality of John Clemens use terms such as ‘dour’, ‘serious’, ‘somber’, even ‘cadaverous’. Mark Twain referred to his father as “stern, unsmiling (Ward, 3).” Apparently an unhappy childhood gave rise to a very sober adult.

As we shall soon see, behind the sober mask of John's face was a man of ambition, drive, determination, and deep dedication to family. In the year after he entered the Kentucky bar, John represented two brothers named Lampton in a bankruptcy case. He lost the case, but married Ben Lampton's daughter Jane. The newlywed couple was a study on contrasts, the overly serious John paired with the outgoing, fun loving, humorous Jane (Bloom, 6-7). John and Jane Clemens spent the first two years of their married life in Jane's hometown of Columbia, Kentucky (Hoffman, 3).

John was not satisfied with his prospects in Kentucky, so in the year 1825 he moved south to the Tennessee town of Gainesboro where his eldest son Orion (per mother Jane, accent on the first syllable) was born. Still not satisfied with life, in 1826 he moved his small family forty miles east to the Fentress County seat of Jamestown where his eldest daughter Pamela (accent on the second syllable) was born in 1827, with short-lived son Pleasant born in 1828. Daughter Margaret joined the family in 1830. John moved his family yet again in 1831 nine miles north to the Wolf River valley town of Pall Mall where his third son Benjamin was born in 1832 (Hoffman, 3). They remained in the Jamestown/Pall Mall area until they left Tennessee in May of 1835 (Hogue, 1).

It was the decade from 1826 to 1835 that is of central importance to this article, for this was the decade that the John Clemens clan spent on the Cumberland “knob” (i.e. plateau) of Fentress County, Tennessee. It was here that John Clemens could have achieved satisfactory success. It was here that John Clemens could have stayed for the rest of his life. It was here that Samuel L. Clemens could have been born and raised to full adulthood—if he survived infancy.

Local historian Albert R. Hogue described his home county as “a great county in many respects. Few countries furnish grander scenery. Many countries of wide fame have less attraction and less merit than our own county. One will travel far to find more balmy, invigorating breezes than bless this land (Hogue, 28).” Even allowing for hometown bias, this description was probably not too much of an exaggeration. The land was rich in coal, timber and pine products such as tar, resin, and turpentine, along with livestock such as hogs and cattle. More than one of my references claimed that the land in Fentress County was only good for growing potatoes (Hoffman, 3), but the reality was that the land could have easily supported profitable farming in beans, tobacco, and broccoli (Hogue, 16).

In short, Fentress County, Tennessee was a land of real potential and held promise of actual success; if not for John himself, then for his children. By all appearances, John Clemens was well on his way to achieving social and financial success. By all accounts, he was a respected and well-liked leader; a mover and shaker in the community. He was a shopkeeper, land trader, county commissioner, and court clerk (Bloom, 6-7; Fishkin, 29-30). He helped draw up the specifications and plans for the county Court House (sic) and the county jail, practiced law, served as Attorney General pro-tem (Hogue, 1), bought two black slaves in 1833 (Hogue, 49), and owned the properties directly to the east and west of the Court House square (Hogue, 4).

The crowning achievement by John Clemens during this period was to secure a Tennessee State land grant for 75,000 acres of Fentress County land. That represented almost one quarter of the 486 square miles of the county (Hogue, 1 & 28). Samuel Clemens related this story in fictional form in his book The Gilded Age:

“Nancy, do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in the county—think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! I haven't whispered to a soul—not a word—have had my countenance under lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals here how to discern the gold-mine that's glaring under their noses. Now, all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly—five or ten dollars—the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be glad to get if for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! (Clemens, 7)”

It is unclear in my sources as to whether John Clemens had to pay any money for this land grant. Assuming that the grant wasn't free, if we take Sam Clemens' figure of a third of a cent per acre as an indicator, one fourth of Fentress County would have cost his father John Clemens two hundred and fifty dollars, with yearly taxes to secure ownership ranging from five to ten dollars per year. Though certainly not a trivial amount in the 1830s, this price should not have put John Clemens into financial straits.

This leaves as a mystery why John M. Clemens did not actually achieve the level of success he so deeply desired for himself and his family. My sources simply do not explain the financial difficulties that Clemens seemed to have gotten himself into by the year 1835. John seemed to be constantly in debt, but there is no detail as to the nature of those debts, their amounts, or to whom they were owed. However, this lack of success was not a foregone inevitability. John Clemens could have achieved success and stayed in Tennessee. Other people seemed to be making a satisfactory go of it in Fentress County. That is, the county was not depopulated by mass bankruptcy or abandonment.

At any rate, by early 1835 John Clemens was ready to start over again and was looking for opportunities on the Western Frontier across the Mississippi River. Word came to the Clemens family from Jane's sister Martha that there was budding opportunity on the wind-swept plains of Missouri. Martha had married one John Quarles, storekeeper and farmer in the hamlet of Florida, Missouri on the banks of the Salt River about thirty miles southwest of Hannibal. Their father had also moved to Florida, adding to the attraction.

The town was brand new, having been laid out in 1831 at the fork of the north and south branches of the Salt River. A grain mill constructed in 1835 processed the produce brought in from the surrounding farms. The milled grain was transported by flat-bottom boat down the eighty serpentine river-miles of the Salt River to the Mississippi port town of Louisiana, Missouri for transport to market (Hoffman, 2). John Clemens was impressed by this report, and moved his family to Florida, Missouri in May of 1835. His fourth son—born two months premature, weak and sickly—arrived in November under the ghostly light of Halley's Comet.

Jane Clemens had claimed the honor of naming all of her previous children. However, the newborn was so unlikely to live that she relinquished the job to her husband John. He chose the names of his own father Samuel—a man he barely remembered—and that of the man Langhorne he apprenticed with in Virginia. Perhaps this was John's way of letting go of sad memories, by sending them to an infant's grave (Hoffman, 2). Little did he suspect that he was actually immortalizing both names.

The concerted efforts of mother Jane and aunt Martha helped pull Samuel Langhorne Clemens through a very difficult infancy. Young Sam managed to survive into a childhood quite different from his older brothers and sisters. The extended family of aunt Martha and grandfather Ben, along with the rest of the outgoing, gregarious Quarles family and their dozen or so slaves, gave Sam a warm, rich, nurturing environment in his earliest formative years. His mother Jane was delighted to be back amongst close relatives (Hoffman, 4-5).

John Clemens arrived in Florida with high hopes and grand ambitions. He quickly established himself as a lawyer, and worked in the Quarles's store. He used his experience in county building to lobby hard for having Florida named as the new county seat. He also set in motion a plan to dredge and straighten the Salt River to improve transport and commerce. In 1837 he became a judge in the Monroe County Court (Hoffman, 4-5). Once again, John Clemens looked to be headed towards success. However, unbeknownst to anyone in Florida, a runaway freight train of disaster was speeding across America and was about to run right over John Clemens' grand plans. That freight train was named The Financial Panic of 1837.

The Bank of the United States was the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton, and was brought into existence through the bank bill passed by Congress in 1791. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson vigorously opposed the creation of the Bank of the United States as being both unconstitutional and a dangerous concentration of power. Always controversial, the Bank was a private enterprise funded partly by federal money deposits.

Andrew Jackson was opposed to the Bank when he entered the White House in 1829. Nicholas Biddle, the Bank's president since 1823, was afraid that the Bank's charter would not be renewed in 1836, so he persuaded his friend Senator Henry Clay to secure renewal of the Bank's charter in early 1832—a presidential election year. Senator Clay ran for president that year against Andrew Jackson. However, Jackson made the renewal of the Bank's charter a major campaign issue, and handily defeated Clay both at the polls and in the Electoral College—219 votes to Clay's 49.

Jackson took his victory as a popular mandate to end the Bank of the United States. He attacked the Bank by suspending deposits to the Bank and by withdrawing monies that were then deposited in select State banks. Biddle retaliated in 1833 by calling in all federal loans and contracting credit to the federal government. This brought on a serious economic recession that resulted in anti-Jacksonian sentiments and the formation of the Whig party.

In 1836, another election year, President Jackson responded to the demands of Congress to put surplus federal money in deposit banks while loosening federal control of those banks. This resulted in monetary inflation, wild land speculation and the increased printing of paper money. Reacting to these unexpected results, Jackson issued an executive order in July of 1836 that only gold or silver would be accepted for payment of public lands. This sudden action curbed the inflation and speculation, but at the cost of precipitating The Financial Panic of 1837 (Hoffman, 6-7; Divine, 226-228).

All of John Clemens' plans went up in smoke, as did the similar plans made by one Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. Florida was not selected as the county seat, funding for the river project dried up, the economy in Monroe County went into depression in spite of population growth in Missouri as a whole, and the Quarles family moved to a farm outside Florida (Hoffman, 6-7). John struggled on for a couple more years, but in late 1839 he threw in the towel and left Florida in order to start over yet again—this time in the Mississippi River port town of Hannibal, Missouri. Sam Clemens lost the comfort and support of his extended family, but gained the rich, mind-shaping experiences of his life on the Mississippi (Bloom, 9).

Samuel L. Clemens was born in 1835, but Mark Twain was not born until 1839.

Section Two

Sturm und drang

““The South is a land that has known sorrow; it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead.”—E. W. Carmack. This statement is particularly applicable to Fentress County, Tennessee (Hogue, 55).”

This section returns to the question of the possible consequences had John Clemens achieved reasonable success in Fentress County, and stayed in Tennessee. Such an outcome would have surrounded the Clemens family in some of the worst action of the American Civil War. During the first two and a half years of the War, major army movements swirled through central Kentucky and Tennessee. Armies led by John Morgan, Burnside and Wheeler passed through Fentress County (Hogue, 46), and Bragg's army passed close by (Randall, 203). Major battles in Tennessee occurred at Ft. Donelson, Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Chattanooga (Divine, 340 & 347; Randall, 203).

Possibly more serious for the residents of Fentress County were the homegrown bands of raiders that sprang up during the war and terrorized the entire region. Supporting the Union cause were groups led by Dowdy, Tinker, Beaty, and the Wolf Gang. Donning the Rebel Gray were groups led by John Hughes, Scott Bledsoe, and Champ Ferguson. Union raiders murdered and pillaged any and all that they suspected of supporting the Confederacy. The Rebel groups returned the favor by murdering and looting those they suspected of supporting the North (Hogue, 46). After the war, a Union Military Court tried and convicted Champ Ferguson of murdering fifty-three people, many of them from Fentress County. He was hanged on 30 October, 1865 (Hogue, 59).

The Civil War was a disaster for the Nation, a disaster for the South, and a disaster for Fentress County, Tennessee. As A. R. Hogue put it:

“No other region suffered more heavily from the hardships of war, than did Fentress County. No other region lost so many of its people. No other region staked so much on the fortunes of the Confederacy. Whole companies marched away to war. None were to return. Six sons in one family laid down their lives for the cause. Others suffered more or less heavily. But the longing for native land, and the longing to see home again, was denied to the living as well as the dead (Hogue, 56).”

Even allowing for local exaggeration, Mr. Hogue was not far from the truth. The Fentress County government and Court suspended operations at the start of the Civil War, and did not return to business until after the end of the War. All of the leading landowners, businessmen, County officials and Court officers in power in 1860 were gone by 1865—either killed or exiled by war. Those who survived the War were afraid to return to a county whose government and court system were run by Union appointees, and which held the rebel veterans criminally and civilly liable for all actions taken during the War in support of the Confederacy (Hogue, 56).

On the other hand, the wartime action in Missouri paled in comparison. Although there was a certain level of battlefield combat and raider violence in Missouri, the greatest portion of it was confined to St. Louis and points south and west. Nothing noteworthy occurred in the Hannibal region of the northeast part of the State (Randall, 197 & 234-236). As regarded one Samuel L. Clemens, distaste for war was quickly cured by making the easy sixty-mile trip upriver to the safety of the solidly Union free State of Iowa. From there it was relatively simple to ‘rough it’ with his brother Orion out to the Nevada Territory—and eventual fame and fortune.

Conclusion

Cut and polish

The sparkle of a finished diamond depends first upon the intrinsic quality and characteristics of the raw stone, and then upon the particular cut and polish executed by the jeweler. The sparkle—or lack of same—from a human being depends first upon the native traits and capacities of the individual person, and then upon factors such as family, community, culture and geographical location.

The bright, glittering gem known around the world as Mark Twain was the combination of the native drive and genius of Samuel L. Clemens and the peculiar characteristics of his childhood in the wide open Missouri plains town of Florida and the Mississippi River port town of Hannibal. In order to get Mark Twain, history had to bring John and Martha Quarles and her father Ben Lampton to the vicinity of Florida. Then history had to uproot John M. Clemens from his mountain knob in the northeastern part of Tennessee and entice him to migrate four-hundred miles northwest to Missouri.

To become Mark Twain, young Sam Clemens needed to feel the nurturing warmth and affection of the Quarles family in Florida; to mingle with the Quarles family slaves and to hear their stories (Hoffman, 6); to move to Hannibal so that he could fall in puppy-love with Laura Hawkins and run with the free-spirited juvenile delinquent Tom Blankenship, carousing on Glasscock's Island in the Mississippi River with his gang of adventure seeking youths (Hoffman, 17); to find the decomposed body of a runaway slave floating in the river, and visit the copper coffin containing the petrified girl in McDowell's Cave (Hoffman, 18-19); to enjoy the circuses and minstrel shows coming to town on the riverboats (Fishkin, 32); to see the fights, stabbings and killings along the waterfront; to witness as storekeeper William Owsley pumped two bullets into the town drunk Sam Smarr (Hoffman, 16); and a host of other experiences both wonderful and terrible that would shape the mind and mold the character of Samuel L. Clemens during the first twelve years of his life before his father died of pneumonia in 1847.

Failing that, history would have served up a significantly different Sam Clemens. Not necessarily inferior, but necessarily not the same person who would have written Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This, of course, assumes that he would not have been sacrificed by History upon the altar of War in the 1860s; cut down before a literary career could have begun.

In the end, the fascinating journey from Samuel L. Clemens to Mark Twain depended heavily upon the sad journey from a youthful, ambitious John M. Clemens to a bankrupt, pneumonic failure clinging—even with his final breath—to the fruitless dream of elusive wealth (Hoffman, 19-20).

References:

Bloom, Harold ed. [et al.]
Bloom's BioCritiques: Mark Twain
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003

Clemens & Warner
The Gilded Age
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1915

Coon, Carlton S.
Caravan: The Story of the Middle East
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1951

Divine, Robert [et al.]
America Past and Present, Vol. 1
New York: Longman Publishers, 2002

Fishkin, Shelley ed. [et al.]
A Historical Guide to Mark Twain
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002

Hoffman, Andrew
Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997

Hogue, Albert R.
Mark Twain's Obedstown and Knobs of Tennessee (A History of Jamestown and Fentress County, Tennessee)
Jamestown: Cumberland Printing Co., 1950

Randall & Donald
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1969

Ward, Duncan & Burns
Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001

Table of Contents

Millennial Kingdom

(NOTE: Read the Book of Revelation, especially chapters 17 through 22)

The apostles and disciples of Jesus fully expected the return of Christ during their lifetime. Christians down through the following centuries to the present day have been perplexed by the apparent slowness in the return of the One who said, “Behold, I am coming soon!” (Rev 22:12 NIV) Obviously God has a different definition of ‘soon’ than we do.

Be that as it may, God has an ongoing plan for the conquest of evil and rebellion, and the ultimate creation of an entirely new, perfect and eternal home for mankind. A major objective in the conquest of evil and rebellion will be the historical/experiential proof that mankind cannot achieve final perfection or lasting solutions to the problems of human existence on planet Earth through human effort—even with Divine assistance. From the pristine conditions of the Garden of Eden all the way through to the end of the Godly kingdom of the Millennial reign, mankind will have tried—and failed at—all possible human solutions.

To my mind the most fascinating aspect of the Millennial kingdom is that it will fail to solve any of the basic problems of mankind. Even with the physical presence and Lordship of Jesus Christ (some say that King David will sit on the throne) during the entire Millennial period, along with the conspicuous assistance of resurrected martyrs from the Tribulation and Battle of Armageddon, Satan will still be able to tempt and provoke mankind to open rebellion and warfare against the very throne of God in the Temple at Jerusalem.

It is generally—if vaguely—assumed by those who read the Book of Revelation that the people living during the Millennial Kingdom will be physically immortal, and that the human population will be static in size. My assertion is that the Millennial Kingdom will start out with the traumatized survivors of the Tribulation and Battle of Armageddon. Those survivors will be regular mortal humans. They will mate, bear children, grow old and die—just as people do right now. Each generation of people in the ever-expanding population of the Millennial Kingdom will need to come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ—just as people do right now. Indeed, the Millennial Kingdom will be surprisingly like the world as it is right now (minus the crime, violence and open immorality). By the end of the Millennial Kingdom, the Tribulation and Armageddon period will be as remote to human memory as the reign of King Charlemagne is to the present human mind. It may even seem the stuff of myth and superstition.

Picture a peaceful and prosperous commonwealth of nations loosely governed by Jesus from His throne at Jerusalem. The hardest thing to understand about this Kingdom is that Jesus will not be exercising full omnipotent power or omnipresent supervision over mankind. Though supernatural in character (just like the rule of the Anti-Christ!), the government of Jesus during His thousand-year reign will be strikingly similar to a regular human constitutional monarchy; that is, rebellion will seem to be an achievable objective to those people.

From the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden on through to the start of the Millenial Kingdom there have been three main driving forces of human sinful rebellion. The first is direct demonic temptation and deception. The second is the influence of Satan's worldly system which works to deceive, misguide and tempt people away from salvation through Christ. The third is our inborn sin nature; that is, our inclination to rebel against God. At the very beginning of the Millenial Kingdom, Satan (and presumably all of his demon angels) will be cast into the Abyss thereby ending his direct influence. Then Jesus will dismantle the sinful, immoral world system and establish a new worldwide system based upon righteous principles. However, the inborn sin nature of mankind will still be in play.

Throughout the Millennial Kingdom a significant portion of humanity will secretly harbor sinful, rebellious desires. These, however, will be stiffled or thwarted by the righteous rule of Jesus from His throne in Jerusalem. When released from the abyss, Satan will tap directly into this bubbling undercurrent of sinful desire. The great deception by Satan will be that if all those inclined to rebellion quickly mobilize and launch a blitzkrieg attack on Jerusalem, then Jesus can be dethroned and a New World Order of mankind established in His place.

Unlike riots which tend to be short-lived spontaneous outbursts of mindless violence, true revolts require three main ingredients. First, they require a very significant cause; a deep sense of dissatisfaction, injustice or inequity. Second, they require deeply dedicated leadership willing to risk death or exile in the event of failure. Third, true revolts require at least a ghost of a chance of success.

God will grant to humanity the full freedom of action and the latitude of organization needed by Satan in order to perpetrate the final great deception of mankind for the purpose of open rebellion and attack against the kingship of the Son of God. This drama will be allowed by God to play out to its final and bitter conclusion.

At the very end of the Millennial Kingdom, after the final rebellion has been put down, God is going to terminate human history in this universe. God will create an entirely new Heaven, new Earth and a New Jerusalem, employing a totally different set of physical laws that will do away with decay and degeneration. All those who were saved through faith in Jesus Christ will be given new, perfected and eternal bodies like unto the angels. The devil and his mutinous demons, along with those people who rejected Jesus, will spend the rest of eternity in the solitary confinement chamber of hell. The old Earth will be destroyed by fire, and the old universe sent back into the nothingness whence it came. Post-Millennial mankind will pass into God's dynamic eternity for purposes beyond our wildest dreams, and fulfillment beyond our deepest desires.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Table of Contents

Net Risk

We live in a world full of risk. The risk of hazard, injury, loss or death simply cannot be avoided in this life. Risk can be minimized. Risk can be mitigated. But risk cannot be eliminated. That being the case, what is my net risk of harm by being a Christian? Is it substantially higher than that of being an atheist or an adherent of another religion, philosophy or lifestyle?

I do not perceive that there is any additional risk worth worrying about. The teachings of Jesus are right-minded in and of themselves, and have been lauded by many who do not accept the religion as a whole. If called upon by God to enter the mission field so as to spread the Gospel of Christ, I may be exposed to increased risk. But no more so than that of an atheist explorer who heads into dangerous territory or even that of an atheist social worker headed into the rough part of town. Being a Christian might expose me to persecution. However, people may be persecuted for a wide range of reasons having nothing to do with religion. Race, culture, sexual orientation, style, social status, ethnic or tribal origins, etc. spring immediately to mind as reasons for persecution.

Perhaps my Christian faith is simply wrong, and some other religion or philosophical position is actually correct. In that case, my net increase of risk depends entirely upon the penalty (if any) for being wrong. If the atheists are correct, there is no consequence at all beyond the universal fate of oblivion. If one of the Eastern religions or Scientology is correct, then I would simply be pulled through the mill for a few extra reincarnations—assuming that being a Christian would not actually put me ahead of the game! If some other pagan or barbarian religion is correct then I might suffer the consequences by being a Christian. But considering the incredible multiplicity of such religions throughout human history, it is unlikely that I would have found myself in the correct one to start with even if I wasn't a Christian. And the same holds with Judaism. I do not know of a single Jew in my family tree. That being the case, even if Christianity had never existed I would today almost certainly not be a Jew. If YAHWEH, the Great and Terrible, is going to mete out a judgment or penalty for not being Jewish, then I would simply join the rest of the 99.7% of the world's population and be damned to a burning hell—or whatever.

The net increase in risk by my being a Christian: virtually zero.

Table of Contents

Providence

Part of a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Ezra Stiles, Philadelphia, 9 March,1790:

“You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it. And think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.

“I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness.” (NOTE: This letter was written five weeks before Franklin's death)

I introduce the subject of God's general Providence by way of Benjamin Franklin's letter for two reasons. First, Dr. Franklin is almost universally recognized as a man of great wisdom, deep spirituality, wide-ranging genius, high achievement and good fortune. Second, this letter tragically underscores how a person even of Franklin's mental and spiritual capacities could mistake the general blessings of Providence for the specific blessing of eternal Salvation obtainable only through Jesus the Christ.

Christian clergy, theologians and apologists have made a grave error in failing to recognize and drive home the vitally important distinctions between general Providence and eternal Salvation. Providence (or more specifically the physical/material blessings of general Providence) is made available by God to all of mankind without any particular distinctions. That is, planet Earth was formed by God and has been conspicuously established so as to favorably support all human life. The rain falls and the sun shines on saint and sinner alike; on the rich and the poor alike; on the Christian and the atheist alike. The material blessings of God's creation are accessible and available to all mankind regardless of religion, philosophy, or lifestyle.

Along the same lines, God has incorporated certain psychological and spiritual precepts into humanity. Precepts such as love, honesty, and generosity are universally available. All who recognize, submit to, and put these precepts into practice will almost assuredly reap both material and spiritual blessings thereby.

On the other hand, eternal Salvation from judgment and hell through Jesus the Christ is something entirely separate from God's general Providence. The subject of Salvation is treated in greater depth in my Christian Exclusivity article above, but in brief, God is working out the extremely difficult solution to the deadly dangerous problems of rebellion, evil, wickedness and suffering that were started by Lucifer when he coveted the throne of God and tried to become God. That solution will be achieved in God's good time right here on planet Earth. At the heart of the matter is how each person responds to the call of God. If a person denies that call or feels that he/she can approach God based on personal righteousness or merit, then that person will be rejected by God as a rebel and condemned to hell (see the associated article above). If, however, a person recognizes the hopelessness of approaching a perfect God on the basis of personal righteousness and merit, and throws him/her self on the mercy of God, then that person will be ascribed the righteousness of Jesus Christ and will be admitted into the eternal New Heaven and New Earth.

The terribleness of the situation is that although God has supplied adequate and sufficient evidence to mankind in order for us to make correct decisions and take correct actions, humans have a propensity to miss or misinterpret the evidence thereby coming to utterly incorrect conclusions. God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen a course of minimal interaction and intervention in human affairs (not to be confused with Deism), thereby allowing maximum latitude for human free will—and the potential for horrific consequences. The problem here is that a person may live a life in such a way so as to experience the material and social riches of God's general Providence while completely missing the need for eternal Salvation; that is, mistaking Providence as being the evidence of eternal Salvation. Hence the above letter by Dr. Franklin.

Confounding and confusing the situation is that a person can live life in such a way so as to almost totally miss out on the blessings of God's general Providence, yet have eternal Salvation through Jesus the Christ. This was illustrated in the parable of the rich man and the beggar in Luke 16:19-26. However, the lack of material blessings in this world seems, in the minds of many sincere and spiritual people, to be proof-positive of God's disfavor and eternal rejection.

To close, humans tend to mistake material blessings as being sure signs of God's approval, acceptance, and eternal Salvation. Christians need to do a much, much better job of explaining to people that there may be little or no connection at all between temporal, material Providence and eternal Salvation. Those (like Dr. Franklin) showered by the riches of God's general Providence may stand before God's terrible Great White Throne of Judgment shocked and bewildered by the seeming perverseness of the situation. Why, after all, would God go to the trouble of blessing them mightily during this life only to damn them in the Afterlife?

The answer to that question is: free will. God is looking to populate the New Heaven and the New Earth with people whose spirits will eternally honor and love His son Jesus the Christ; not rebel against Him. There has already been one war in Heaven due to the prideful rebellion of Lucifer and his fallen angels. God will not allow human enemies to enter the New Heaven and New Earth so as to start another war.

Table of Contents

Reality vs. Religion

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” (from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution)

Even a cursory examination of the world's religions (past and present) will show a bewildering array of beliefs demanding a wide range of ofttimes contradictory and incompatible views of ‘reality’. It would be weak minded or intellectually dishonest to suggest that all of these ‘realities’ are simultaneously true in fact. On the other hand, it would be improper to state that all of them are automatically false. The reason for this is that human science is not developed to the point where it can test for the existence of metaphysical, transcendent or supernatural realms. That being the case, there is no way to scientifically obtain a definitive or final answer regarding that which is ultimately true in fact and in reality.

Being in this state of ignorance, our Constitution and Courts have wisely left it to the individual to sort through the matter of ‘reality’ so as to reach an individual conclusion. The consequences (if any) of an incorrect conclusion would therefore be confined to the individual person and not forced upon the general population as a whole as would be the case with a State-mandated religion or philosophy.

Science, however, is not without value or utility in the search for ultimate reality. If nothing else, it can test those religious and philosophical claims that are within its reach. If there really are gods on Mount Olympus, they should be detectable with the instruments of modern science. If there really is a ‘soul’ that survives death so as to be rerouted (i.e. reincarnated) back to another physical body as featured in religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Scientology, then human science should (at least in principle) be able to detect and analyze the entire process. To my knowledge, the sciences have so far come up empty in this regard.

In any collision between science and religion (or philosophy), the question that must be answered by the individual is this: How will I react if science honestly and properly disproves (or casts serious doubt upon) essential points of my religious or philosophical position?

Having taken up my cross and followed Jesus, my personal answer as regards Christianity is that I would stop, take a deep breath, and reexamine the basis of the disputed points to determine if my understanding of my religion was correct, or if error in understanding had led me to an incorrect position in the first place. If it turns out to be an error in understanding, then science has done me a valuable favor by alerting me to the error so as to effect a correction. Such can only be to the good; and only dogmatic obstinacy would resist the change.

On the other hand, atheists and religious skeptics should honestly admit that science is not all-powerful nor is scientific knowledge fully complete, therefore there may be more to ‘reality’ than science can detect. Simple prudence should caution against outright rejection of the very idea of the Transcendent and Divine.

In the end, however, our Constitution leaves us free to adopt and adhere to any religion—or lack of religion—we choose; even if that religion flies in the face of scientifically validated reality.

Choose carefully.

Table of Contents

Reincarnation

We are all going to die, and something is going to happen to us after we die. Even atheistic oblivion is ‘something’; that is, it is an outcome. One of the more popular of the possible outcomes of death is that of ‘reincarnation’. The general idea here is that the human soul or spirit will survive the death of the physical body and go on to another life in another body. I intend to ignore the theological details of the various religions utilizing the doctrine of reincarnation and focus on the two main requirements of the straightforward mechanics of reincarnation.

The first requirement is that there actually be a ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that exists independent of the physical body. This begs the questions: Where did all of these ‘spirits’ come from originally, and why they need to be run through multiple physical lives on this—or any other—planet? As outlined above in my article Human Spirit, it would seem that this ‘spirit’ would have to be purely transcendent and supernatural or else modern science would have long ago detected and detailed the nature of that ‘spirit’. So far, science has come up empty on this question.

This is a very serious problem considering the findings of science regarding the evolution of our universe. Regardless whether you subscribe to Inflationary Hot Big Bang theory or Ekpyrotic Cyclical theory, literally billions of years would pass from the start of this current universe until the very first physical life forms could possibly come into existence anywhere in the cosmos. It has also been determined by science that modern humanity started in the relatively recent past from a small initial population (in general agreement with Genesis 1), but has exploded to more than eight billions of souls. So, where did all these billions of brand new ‘spirits’ come from; who/what made them; and why?

The second requirement is that there must be some sort of natural process or conscious intentional entity that has the power, knowledge, and wisdom to evaluate each and every ‘spirit’ so as to determine what type of life and body that spirit needs in its next incarnation. Two points derive from this observation. The first is that this process or entity must—like the ‘spirit’ itself—be supernatural and transcendent, for science has detected nothing of it. The second point is that this natural process or conscious entity must be of truly God-like capacity in order to do everything that must be done in order to make reincarnation work. I have wracked my brain trying to imagine a natural process similar to metabolism or photosynthesis that could make reincarnation work, but come up empty. The driving Force of reincarnation would have to be a conscious and purposeful entity.

If actually real, the driving Force behind reincarnation seems to be utterly transcendent, supernatural, impersonal, inscrutable, uncommunicative and undetectable. The ultimate goal(s) and objective(s) of that driving Force are also in question. Whatever the ultimate goal(s), the entire process of reincarnation appears to be a forced inevitability. That is, it doesn't matter whether you know or don't know; believe or disbelieve; cooperate or resist; accept or reject. Everyone will be pulled through the mill of reincarnation, like it or not. The only variable here would be the total number of incarnations a ‘spirit’ would be subjected to before arriving at the final destination—whatever that might be. In the end, you have no choice in the matter.

Table of Contents

Two Questions:

Deep Thought 1 nears a close with these observations. I believe that most of the serious objections against Christianity can be reduced to the following two questions:

1. If God is truly God, and if Christians are truly the Children of God, then why aren't the blessings of God conspicuously showered down upon His “children” while being just as conspicuously withheld from those who are not His “children”?
2. If God is truly God, and if Jesus is truly the Son of God, then why isn't the evidence in favor of Christianity overwhelming and beyond any doubt or dispute?

The short answer to both questions is this: human free will. As detailed in my articles Hell, Just Seven Words (Christian Exclusivity) and Providence, God intends to populate the New Creation as heavily as possible, but can only allow entry to those who willingly submit to the Lordship of Jesus the Messiah. For that reason God will not compel anyone to accept Jesus. God may woo; God may pursue; God may persuade; but God will not compel.

For that reason God's treatment of Christians (and Jews, for that matter) is not noticeably different from that of non-Christians. And while I may assert that the evidence in favor of Christianity is adequate and sufficient, that evidence is highly disputed and hotly challenged. The evidence will allow you to swing either way. It's your choice.

Be careful.

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World Peace

The popular desire for world peace runs headlong into the problem of human leadership. No, I do not mean the difference between good leadership and bad leadership. Rather, the problem of human leadership itself. Virtually all of the strife, contention and warfare in human history can be tied directly to the fundamental differences in the goals and objectives of human leaders. These leaders have control over their respective populations and national resources, and therefore have the means to command violence in order to achieve their personal goals and objectives. War becomes inevitable.

In order to achieve world peace, humanity would need to effect the total extermination of the entire population of ‘leaders’. And I mean every last one them, from presidents, prime ministers and dictators down to local business and Scout leaders. Unfortunately, this program would itself require leadership! Since leaders are not going to work to their own extinction, humanity would merely exchange one set of leaders for a new set of leaders. Eventually the world would be right back at square one with strife, contention—and WAR.

World peace cannot be achieved by human means.

Come, lord Jesus.

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Young Earth Creationism and Noah's Flood

by Brian Bloedel

For the purposes of this article, Young Earth Creationism is predicated on the Biblical translational/interpretational assumption that the Hebrew word ‘yom’ used in Genesis chapter 1 must—and can only—mean a twenty-four hour period of time; that is, a normal terrestrial day. Although completely correct according to the ordinary everyday grammatical rules and usage of the ancient Hebrew language, this understanding of ‘yom’ in Genesis chapter 1 clearly indicates that God created the entire universe, Earth, life on Earth, and Adam during a mere hundred forty-four consecutive hours of time—the six days of Creation.

Further assuming that the Genesis genealogies are exhaustively complete and rigorously sequential, and working backwards from the time of Abraham (a very simple exercise that anyone can do), puts the creation of everything that exists at about six thousand years ago. Of course that's an awful lot happening in a very short period of time in what calculates to be a very recent past. This article will briefly consider a few problems related to the recent creation of the universe, and some problems with the Young Earth Creationism (YEC) assumption that Noah's Flood was a global event.

While researching the question of major changes in the speed of light during the Creation Week, I found the article “Speed of light slowing down after all?” by Dr. Carl Wieland on the Creation Ministries International website (creation.com). This is a very important issue for YEC because of the vast distances involved with the observable and measurable universe. A hundred years ago, science considered that the Milky Way Galaxy included the totality of the physical material in a universe that was infinite, eternal, and basically static in its operation, therefore eons of time under ideal conditions would be available on Earth for Darwinian evolution to work its atheistic magic. That being the consensus within the scientific community, the Christian Fundamentalist community sought to counter this with the recent—and nearly instantaneous—creation of the universe called for by their accepted Biblical translational/interpretational position. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, however, improvements in astronomical instrumentation and theoretical/empirical knowledge decreased the observable size of the universe down to billions of light years of distance—and age. Although certainly smaller than ‘infinite’, this verified and well documented scientific information put YEC into a very hard position.

The most obvious difficulty for the YEC position is simply getting the light of the observable, verified, and vastly large universe here to Earth within ten thousand years. The only way to do this (without invoking Divine magic) is for the speed of light to have been much faster during the Creation Week; and by ‘faster’, I mean by factors of millions or billions. This, of course, runs right smack into Einstein's famous equation: e=mc². This equation means that the energy (in metric Joules) released in all nuclear reactions—most notably solar hydrogen thermonuclear fusion reactions—is equal to the rest mass (in metric kilograms) being converted into energy multiplied by the constant factor of the speed of light squared.

As it is, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second. Squaring that figure yields the number 9 with sixteen zeros behind it. A very big number indeed, which is why all nuclear reactions produce such large amounts of energy from small amounts of rest mass. But the good thing about this number is that once it is computed, the number becomes a permanent ‘constant’ that never has to be computed again. Einstein's equation then becomes a simple fifth grade arithmatic problem. Just plug in the amount of rest mass in kilograms being converted to energy, multiply by the permanently constant factor, and voila: energy in Joules!

To assert that the speed of light was vastly faster during the Creation Week would require fantastic increases in solar energy output that would be immediately obvious to astronomers and astrophysicists. Such energy release, however, has no basis whatsoever in the observed data. In order to solve this problem, Dr. Wieland posited that rest mass itself is inverse square dependent upon the squared increase of the speed of light, therefore there is no energy increase involved. This, of course, is a simple Algebra 101 manipulation of Einstein's equation. But again there is no empirical evidence to support the necessity. Further complicating the matter is that if rest mass were actually to decrease by the many orders of magnitude demanded by the YEC position, the gravitational attraction holding stars together for hydrogen fussion would be disrupted. Again, if true in actual reality then this would be immediately obvious to astronomers and astrophysicists.

A truly heroic effort to solve such problems is presented by Dr. John Harnett in his article “A 5D spherically symmetric expanding universe is young”. However, my concern is not with the far distant objects of the observable universe, but rather those objects that are nearby. In particular are black holes, neutron stars and white dwarf stars in our own immediate neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy. The problem is that these objects are the remains of stars that have gone through their full life spans, blown off their outer layers, leaving behind dead cores. The stellar physics behind all of this is now very well known and emperically verified.

There are at least one black hole and one neutron star within a thousand light-years from Earth (a distance that is actually very close to us, and well within the YEC time frame) plus several white dwarf planetary nebulas within 30 light-years of Earth—right on our own back doorstep. Since they are so close to us, they are to all intents and purposes coincident with our own recent Divine creation. Therefore, any ‘time dilation’, major changes in the speed of light, or ‘dimensional expansion’ arguments from YEC are irrelevent to these objects. They absolutely require the same amount of time it would take for our own Sun to be born, burn through all of its hydrogen in a normal lifespan, go through the death gasps of the red giant stage, then blow off its outer layers in final stellar death as the glowing cinder of a ‘white dwarf’.

This necessitates millions or billions of years of age for our immediate locality in the Milky Way Galaxy. There is simply no way around this by any mathmatical manipulations or distortions of science. Either these nearby objects represent millions or billions of years of local age or else God Almighty created everything from stellar infants through middle-aged stars such as our own Sun, to stellar corpses enveloped in their nebula death shrouds during a single day six thousand years ago; a clear case of Divine hocus pocus for no conceivable purpose. I think that even the most ardent Young Earth Creationist would be deeply disturbed by the implications of such a confusing, misleading, and deceptive Act.

Even with a full survey of the most advanced material on the Creation.com website (which, at the time this article was written, boasted more than 11,700 articles and 700 videos supporting its position), I'm sure that a fully qualified physicist/astronomer would be able to identify a multitude of additional factors that would need to significantly and detectably vary in order for the YEC position to possibly work. All of this leads to intellectual gymnastics and theoretical contortions more fitting to Lewis Carol's Wonderland than to factual reality. The YEC position related to the Creation Week ends up being easily refutable, which allows atheists and other enemies of Biblical Christianity to hold the Faith up to ridicule. Honest skeptics will simply shake their heads and turn away from Biblical Christianity—to their eternal destruction.

To close this portion of the article, let us try a couple of thought experiments to see how Six Day Young Earth Creationism should have played out if it is actually true in verifiable reality. First, I will posit the Divine creation of everything that exists during one hundred forty-four consecutive hours roughly six thousand years ago, and ask this simple question: what would Adam have seen during the first night of his life? Assuming a good vantage point and crystal clear skies, what is the most that he should have been able to see? In a cosmos Divinely created in toto, in situ mere hours earlier, the most that Adam should have seen with the setting sun would have been the Moon, Mercury and Venus. Under ideal conditions, Moonset and full darkness should have brought Mars, Jupiter and Saturn into view. With brand new and flawless eyes, Adam might possibly have caught the slightest glimmer of Uranus and Neptune.

But beyond that there would be an inky, radiation-free blackness to the entire night sky absolutely unimaginable to our modern eyes, for it would be another four years before the first light from our nearest neighbors in the Alpha Centauri group winked into view. The following years, decades, centuries and millenia would have brought more and more stars into view from our immediate region of the recently and Divinely created Milky Way Galaxy. Indeed, the nightly appearance of newly visible stars measured to a distance of no more than 10,000 light years would be an absolute confirmation of the YEC version of Genesis 1—and physical reality. This scenario, however, leaves the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy and the entire cosmos behind a radiation-free vale of blackness, and therefore invisible to modern astronomers, because the first light from Andromeda Galaxy would be another two million years in the future. Even the most hardened atheists would be forced by this evidence to acknowledge Genesis 1 as being correct, even if they denied the existence of the creator Diety behind Genesis 1.

The second scenario has God Almighty creating the heavens and the earth during that single week six thousand years ago. However, in this scenario all observable objects are Divinely created the same age as our own Sun, planet Earth, and local solar system. That is, there are no infant stars, and certainly no stellar corpses like black holes, neutron stars or white dwarf planetary nebulas. The sameness of the age of all observable objects in our immediate region of the Milky Way galaxy would, like above, be incontrovertable evidence of the recent Creation of the universe. As above, the rest of the universe would be hidden behind a radiation-free vale of blackness.

Case closed. Genesis confirmed.

Alas for YEC. There is hardly a shred of emperical evidence from any branch of the reputable modern sciences that supports its claims and assertions regarding the Creation Week from Genesis 1. There is absolutely no way to get a comprehensive and cohesive Young Universe Creation Model that accounts for the universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system, planet Earth, and the full natural history of life on Earth as they are actually known to exist, in ten thousand years or less. The Creation itself clearly speaks to vastly ancient age to the tune of hundreds of millions and billions of years.

Moving on to Noah's Flood, I will consider two major concerns: the confirmed asteroid impacts on Earth (indeed, on all of the solid bodies in our Solar System) and the confirmed thick sedimentation in deep-water oceans. The known major asteroid impact events (check this out for the ‘Top Ten’: National Geographic along with “How many impact craters should there be on the earth” by Michael J. Oard on the “creation.com” website) would have had devastating effects either regionally or globally. Then add to that all of the confirmed lesser impacts, such as Meteor Crater in Arizona. Had this global shotgun-blast of impacts occurred during the recent Creation Week, the surface of planet Earth would have been absolutely wrecked—to the present day. Eden would either have been a lifeless wasteland every bit as bad as the backside of the Moon, or turned into a lake of glowing lava.

If these impact events occurred during the Flood period, the overall effects would have been much the same. Noah's Ark would have been capsized and broken up by super-sized waves—or outright vaporized by a direct hit. None would have survived these major impact events. Humanity (indeed, the entire animal Kingdom) would not be here today. I would further point out that there is not the slightest hint of any of this in either the secular historical record or the Biblical Genesis record. Things seemed to have been quite safe and peaceful in Eden, and Noah had a relatively uneventful ride on the Ark from start to finish.

An illustrative thought experiment similar to the ones above would be an impact-free Earth, and an impact-free and featureless Moon and other solid bodies in our Solar System. Add to that a Solar System lacking meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and all of the other normal debris expected from an Inflationary Hot Big Bang cosmic evolution and ordinary planetary system development. The physical evidence for the virtually instantaneous in toto, in situ Divine Creation of the entire universe and planet Earth in the very recent past would be secure and beyond doubt.

As regards the problem of deepwater sedimentation, check out this graphic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): ocean sedimentation. In particular, consider the very deep sedimentation off the East Coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Also, very problematical are the thick sedimentation areas in the mid Pacific Ocean—far from any continental landmass. Young Earth Creationists claim that these layers were caused by sedimentary runoff from the continental landmasses during the very recent Genesis Flood. But this is untenable according to the assumptions mandated by their Biblical translational/interpretational choices. As YEC specified, Noah's Flood had four main points detailed in Genesis chapter 7:

1. Sudden torrential rainfall lasting forty days and forty nights.
2. Upwelling of water from the “fountains of the great deep”. (verse 11; KJV)
3. Planetwide covering of all landmasses “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.” (ibid, verse 20)
4. The sustained covering of the entire planet for at least 150 days.

The first three points from above are interlinked. To achieve the specification of planetary waters 15 cubits above the highest mountains would require approximately 1 billion cubic miles of water from the sky and the “fountains of the great deep” to raise the planetary water levels 15 cubits above K2 and Everest in the Himalayas, and the summit of Mount Chimborazo in Equador (the point of land farthest from the center of the Earth). There is no known way to quickly get this much water from the atmosphere and crust/mantle of planet Earth under anything other than direct supernatural miraculous Cause. This miraculous ‘Cause’, however, is not indicated in the Biblical text. The event is clearly described as involving readily and naturally available water. There is no hint of tremendous amounts of Divinely ‘created’ water at the beginning of the Flood, nor its Divinely caused removal at the end of the Flood.

I now address the problem of accounting for the known global oceanic sedimentation levels, including coal and oil deposits. Young Earth Creationists claim that runoff from the continental landmasses during the 40 days of flooding caused this oceanic sedimentation, and that the animals and plants buried under this sedimentation during the flooding event account for oceanic coal and oil deposits. But this is untenable, as I will now show. While planetwide torrential downpoar would most certainly have caused very substantial sedimentary runoff from continental landmasses, the immediate rise in global sea waters would have met and stopped this runoff dead in its tracks, thereby preventing oceanic sedimentation.

As YEC specified, the planetary water levels at the peak of the Flood after forty days would have been approximatelly thirty thousand feet above present sea level—that's almost six miles. A simple linear division of thirty thousand by forty yields a minimum daily rise in global sea levels of at least 700 feet—about 30 feet per hour; six inches per minute. Of course, in any reality such flooding would have been non-linear. The Deluge would have been maximal during the first week of the Flood, then tapering off towards the end of the 40 days.

But either way, the main point here is that every hour from the very start of the Flood would have seen oceanic waters pushing inland, thereby stopping the sedimentary materials, along with animal and plant remains, from reaching the oceans. Any such material reaching the oceanic areas would have been in a thinned out and dispersed form; too dispersed for meaningful sedimentation. Also, every hour of flooding would have seen less and less exposed landmass available for sedimentary erosion as the oceanic waters forced their way inland—and up. Therefore there is absolutely no way for YEC to account for the extremely thick deepwater deposits known and verified to exist in the Earth's oceans.

Associated with this are the extensive oceanic oil deposits. There would be no way to get the tremendous amounts of animal remains out to these areas, no way to pile these remains in concentrated heaps, and no way to bury all of this under deep sedimentation for oil production. Similarly regarding coal deposits, there would not have been enough biomass produced in the fairly short period from the Creation Week to the start of the Flood to account for the known (and vast) coal deposits, and not enough sedimentary material to cover these bio-remains and form the coal deposits. Also extremely problematical for YEC are the known and verified highland sedimentary deposits and fossil fields such as the Burgess Shale on continental landmasses. There would not have been enough erosive material nor animal remains available to form thick sedimentary fossil deposits at these higher elevations.

I now go out on a limb and propose a possible model for the Genesis Flood that is plausible, faithful to the Biblical account, and minimizes recurrence to Divine Intervention. I start by placing the Flood period during one of the major ice ages roughly thirty thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. This time frame is within the range of the Genesis genealogies if you allow the reasonable assumption that there were many generations of people between each person actually named in the genealogies. A major feature in this model is that as the ocean levels drew down hundreds of feet during the ice age to produce greatly expanded polar ice caps and glaciers (especially glaciation in the Mountains of Ararat and other nearby mountain chains), an earth dam would form across the Strait of Hormuz similar to the verified earth dams that have occurred at different times in geological history across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bosporus. I place Noah's human population in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, perhaps even deep into what is now the Persian Gulf which would have been mostly if not totally drained of water as worldwide oceanic levels dropped due to the ice age.

With the stage set I must now invoke the only case of Divine Intervention. This model posits an absolutely astounding—possibly unique—meteoroligical event requiring stationary storm systems in the Arabian and Mediterranean Seas that dump torrential rains into the entire Mesopotamian area, including the Ararat glaciers, over a continuous forty day period of time. This deluge rainfall and glacier melt off (“fountains of the great deep”?) would not only pin down both human and animal populations but would begin the flooding of the entire Mesopotamian region, the waters held in by the earth dam at Hormuz. Only Noah, his family and the animals within the Ark could possibly survive the suddenly rising waters.

At the end of this admittedly supernatural, Miraculous weather event, Noah's Ark would be floating in a vast sea of water. To his eyes, the entire world would be covered with water. The Ark could drift in this vast sea for all of the months called for in the Genesis record, be pushed by prevailing winds to the north, then the earth dam at Hormuz would slowly break down, allowing the drainage of the Mesopotamian area back into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. The Ark would settle down in the region near the Mountains of Ararat, and the rest of the story would unfold according to Scripture.

With only one case of Divine Intervention, the story of Noah's Flood becomes physically plausible yet fully faithful to the Genesis record.

To conclude, Young Earth Creationism utterly fails to explain the known and verified results that currently exist on planet Earth, in our immediate solar system, and throughout the observable universe. My personal conclusion is that the translational/interpretational choices of Young Earth Creationism are simply—and honestly—wrong. No disgrace or discredit here. Biblical translation of the ancient Hebrew texts into English is very difficult and fraught with the potential of unintentional error. The competent and honest Scholars who produced the King James Version of the Bible completed their work in the year 1612 A.D.; at the very dawn of Modern Science. The microscope had only recently been invented and had produced no significant information, while the telescope was only just then being invented by Galileo in Italy.

At that time, the modern sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, planetary geology/hydrology and paleontology/anthropology were either in their infancies or not yet invented. The KJV translators simply didn't have any reason to question their translational choices, and therefore chose the most simple, direct, and obvious English words in place of the Hebrew originals. I would have done exactly the same if put in their position. There was literally nothing in their world view that would have challenged the longstanding doctrinal assumptions that the Earth sat stationary at the center of the universe with the entire cosmos orbiting around Earth on a daily basis, and that the heavens, the earth, all of the creatures of the Earth, and Adam were created in a single week mere thousands of years ago.

On the other hand, modern Biblical translators and those who would interpret the Holy Bible are in a much different position. The ancient Hebrew language was a small and very limited language used by a simple people leading the ordinary lives in the pre-scientific era of 3,500 years ago. The Biblical Hebrew language had a core vocabulary of fewer than 1,500 words, with all possible variations totaling fewer than 9,000 words in the entire language. Contrast that with modern English, with its vast vocabulary of available words. I have next to me at this writing a shirt pocket Websters dictionary that boasts “More than 40,000 Entries Defined”. With only the words contained in this small dictionary I can be as exacting and precise as I like on virtually any general subject. Not so the Hebrew. Therefore, in light of the findings of modern Science, modern translators and interpretors of Genesis 1 must ask this question: “Do we shrink the known physical Creation down to fit the ordinary everyday usage and limitations of the ancient Hebrew language, or do we expand the Hebrew language to account for the “vast array” of the known and verified Creation?”

It is most likely, given the full fruits of modern science, that Genesis chapter 1 in the original Hebrew Torah describes absolutely amazing, extraordinary, titanic events spanning six very long (but physically finite) periods of time, each period of time called a “yom”, with the ordinals (day 1, day 2, etc.) establishing that the list of events in Genesis 1 is a structured, rigidly sequential, ordered list; as oppossed to the vague, unstructured, random, or ‘bullet list’ accounts so common to all of the other ancient creation stories. Also, that chapter 7 describes a regional flooding event of large enough scale and duration so as to appear to Noah and his family as covering the entire planet. In recent times we have seen such horizon-to-horizon flooding events in the American Midwest. I feel that this is Biblically reasonable given that the Judgement was against humanity, not the planet itself. Noah's Flood need only have impacted a relatively small and clustered population of humans and the animals in their corrupted locality. Global coverage was not needed to achieve this Judgment.

I close this article—and Deep Thought 1—with these final observations on Genesis 1 as literature. A major characteristic of all the creation myths of other cultures, around the world and back through time, is that these stories are just that——stories! The most obvious literary characteristic of Genesis 1 is that it is most definitely not a story. There are no characters, no dialog, no plot, no storyline, no action—nothing of literary significance. Genesis 1, as written, has the characteristics of a travel itinerary, or a business meeting agenda list, or a warehouse inventory sheet. It is a very calm, straightforward, concise, chronological listing of verifiable physical events.

Some have argued that Genesis 1 is simply a literary device used to get the Biblical story going. If, however, Genesis 1 (and its companion account in Genesis 2) is nothing more than literary device, then it is either way too long or way too short. If its only purpose is to launch the mythical Biblical story into the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, then Genesis 1 as written is way too long—and boring. The same literary purpose could have been accomplished in just a couple of sentences thusly: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all of the creatures of the earth. And God created man in His own image; male and female created He them.”; then launched right into the Garden story starting at Genesis 2:15. There would be little or no conflict with modern science or with other religions. If, however, a true literary introduction to the Garden story was desired, then a full-blown mythical Enuma elish-style epic story of the conflicts, wars and struggles in the transcendent heavenlies before a transition through the short Creation statement to the Garden story would have held the interest of listeners through generations of telling and retelling until finally put down in written word by whomever you choose to credit.

However, when all is said and done, Genesis 1 is there—as written. It must serve a purpose—as written. The claim of Biblical Christianity is that Genesis 1 is not a mere myth concocted by the human mind in order to try to explain our own origins. Genesis 1 is Divine Revelation given by the Creator Lord God Almighty to His prophet Moses. My conclusion is that God is ‘leading with His chin’ by starting the Bible with this testable/falsifiable chronological listing of natural historical events. The full import of Genesis 1 lay obscured by human ignorance throughout our entire species history until the latter part of the twentieth century of the Christian Era.

With the dawning of the twenty-first century of the Christian Era, human science has finally caught up with the subject matter presented in Genesis 1. This allows present day Christians to use the full fruits of modern science to verify and validate Genesis 1 as uniquely correct. Genesis 1 identifies the primal Cause of this universe: God Almighty, thereby rendering the Bible plausible and worthy of further investigation and consideration by honest, open-minded, truth-seeking skeptics.

I end with two verses from the Bible that I feel connect Genesis 1 with John 3:16, “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.” (Deut. 10:14-15, NIV)

Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Word study of “yom”: OEM

Reasons to Believe bookstore (most important are the three books The Creator and the Cosmos, Creation as Science, and A Matter of Days by Dr. Hugh Ross)

Prof. Barbara C. Sproul
PRIMAL MYTHS Creation Myths Around the World
©1979, HarperCollins, NY, NY.
[NOTE: more than 120 myths presented in this book in addition to the Biblical passages.]

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Deep Thought 1 now draws to a close. Thank you for visiting my site.

Questions? Comments? e-mail the author at “bloedel@verizon.net”