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Saturday, 26 May, 2007

WITNESSES OF JEHOVAH

About once every two years Pridger receives his courtesy call from a car load of Jehovah's Witnesses. Pridger always enjoys their visits and tries to learn a little with each one.

Usually two Witnesses will come to the door and another two or three will remain in the car as backup. Pridger has always imagined that the ones in the car have their hand on something with a button or trigger on it, ready to address any emergency that may develop.

The two (in this instance, a distinguished looking middle aged man and an attractive young woman), began their talk by asking whether Pridger thought the end of the world was near. "I don't know near the end is – though all things must must certainly end some time," Pridger answered, "But, whether or not it ends in the short term, I do believe God is going to rattle our cage soon."

They could tell from this that Pridger is somewhat of a Bible scholar, and they were gratified to learn that Pridger believes in God. And they could relate to the prospect of "God rattling our cage" pretty well too.

They brought up the subject of hell-fire and damnation, wondering if Pridger believed God would really put anyone into hot flames for an eternity. Pridger allowed that it was unlikely, since that would constitute cruel and inhumane treatment even by our post 9/11 war on terrorism standards.

They reassured Pridger by saying that the Bible never said anything about burning in hell. How could a good God do any such thing, since even most of us earthly sinners wouldn't even burn a dog at the stake?

"Or even a cat," Pridger contributed. And then, after a second's pause, he added, "Well, maybe a cat – but certainly not a dog."

This elicited a laugh from the Witnesses. After all, they allowed, cats do kill little birds and mice. But, of course, we were all joking. We wouldn't subject even a cat to what many believe God subjects errant humans too. And, naturally, it's a little difficult to swallow the proposition that a "good and just" God would do to people what most of us wouldn't do to even a cat.

The gentleman pointed to a few words in his Bible that seemed to confirm God's goodness, and Pridger dutifully put on his reading glasses to take a look at the passage. 

"Why do you think God allows pain and suffering?" the man asked.

"Well, the way I see it," Pridger opined, "it's just part of the human condition. And that condition is certainly not confined to humans – just think of those poor little mice and birds that are unfortunate enough to fall prey to our feline friends. And think of those feline friends that are unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of mischievous young pranksters armed with a string and tin cans, or even fire-crackers! Humans are only unique in that they have the God-given ability – gift – to truly experience love, beauty, and fellowship – and remorse for their willful transgressions, whether against cats or fellow humans."

The Witnesses then asked if Pridger believed in Heaven and a better life after death. Pridger admitted that he had less faith than hope for such a reward, and not much of that – and that in the mean time he preferred to make the most of the life and wonderful rewards that God had already given him. But then the subject of the division of wealth came up.

The gentleman brought out the May issue of Awake! and opened it to the lead article "Prosperous Times for Whom?" The article pointed out, according to a recent United Nations publication, the "wealth of the world's three richest individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest nations."

"Do you think anything is wrong with that?" the gentleman asked.

"Well, if you asked Rush Limbaugh, he'd say it was perfectly just," Pridger said. "He'd merely point out that they had excelled in whatever it was that brought them success, and succeeding in life was their inalienable right in a free and just capitalist society such as ours. He'd say that everybody has not only the the right, but the duty, to be the very best he can be."

"But what do you think?" the comely lady inquired.

"Of course, I think there's something fundamentally wrong with a system in which individuals can accumulate such magnitudes of wealth while half the world struggles in poverty and most of the rest are lucky to have a minimum wage job and are financially ruined if they happen to get seriously ill."

"What do you think makes that possible?" the man inquired.

"I think it's possible because we live in a world in which the reigns of political and economic power are firmly vested in the hands of those who worship at the altar of Mammon." Pridger answered.

We had a fairly animated discussion all in all, and Pridger believes all three of us enjoyed it. But the Witnesses' time was limited, for they had other calls to make.

The lady reached into her bag and drew out a copy of Watchtower magazine to add to the Awake! already at hand. "Have you ever seen these magazines?" the man asked.

"Well, you're hardly the first Jehovah's Witnesses to pay me a visit," Pridger replied as he accepted the copies, "And I once delivered a whole barge load of them to starving Ethiopians. I'm sure they gained considerable inspiration, if not nourishment, from them."

"I'll be glad to look them over – maybe even read them – in hopes of gaining as much," Pridger said as he thanked the pair and shook hands as they parted.

Most of Pridger's visits from Jehovah's Witnesses have gone similarly. It's always a pleasant exchange. They are kind and sincere people out trying to accomplish some good – trying to insure their own salvation by showing others the way to the same. Unfortunately they are not always kindly received.

John Q. Pridger

MAIL BAG – GLOBAL WARMING

I subscribe to a financial news letter by John Maulden. Buried in this weeks
missive was this aside; which to me, nails the present level of debate on
global warming. 

//My studied remedy is for everybody to go out and kill 9 people...//
cheers
o'b

And speaking of environmentalism, I close with this gem from good friend Dennis Gartman, who often hits it out of the park with his comments. This one goes 500 feet.

"CATECHISM CLASS: Raised as good Lutherans back in Ohio, we always understood how the selling of Indulgences helped bring the Catholic Church low in the 16th Century. Indulgences were the pieces of paper sold by the Pope that allowed 'sinners' to pay down their debts they had incurred through sinning. One could sin, buy an Indulgence from the Church, and go about one's life with a sense of having done something worthwhile for the building of more churches AND in curtailing one's time in purgatory or actually buying one's way into heaven. Indeed, we learned that one of the Popes of the age, Leo X, actually sold such large Indulgences, costing such large sums of money, that he was able to finance the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica. Having been to St. Peter's, in retrospect, perhaps this was not such a bad idea given the stunning beauty of the church.

"But the whole notion of Indulgences is being revisited these days by the new religion of global warming, for if we consider what Mr. Gore has recently done by buying carbon offsets from those who plant trees to offset his enormous carbon footprint, or knowing what Sen. Edwards has done by buying offsets to the electricity and energy needed to power his enormous home in Chapel Hill, N. Carolina, we are hard pressed to see where this practice differs from the 16th century selling of Indulgences.

"Parishioners in the 16th century bought their way out of Purgatory and/or Hell; 21st century tree-hugging energy users can buy their conscience clear by buying offsets. We look for arguments from our global warming friends out there." Yea and verily. 

Well, Pridger doesn't advocate the first remedy, though it would certainly do the trick. If everybody killed nine people, the murderer finally left standing (if there was one left standing), would hardly have much opportunity to enjoy the wonders of a reinvigorated planet. He'd undoubtedly soon find himself overwhelmed by larger or more physically fit predators – and nobody would be around to lament his passing.

As for the modern environmental "Indulgences" known as Carbon Credits or "carbon offsets," one can hardly expect more in a corporate world. The corporate managers, heeding the cry of influential environmentalists (increasingly backed up by apparently hard corporate science), must invent corporate remedies and solutions for corporate problems – and (most importantly), it must be done without short-circuiting corporate profits, corporate expansion, or increased global trade. Carbon Credits are such a solution. Money changes hands, profits are made, and the corporate machinery continues to plunge on in a frenzy aimed a preserving only a global business Utopia.

The system might accomplish some good in widely scattered, particularly threatened, natural areas. But the whole thing is a lot like the old shell game, or some other game of shifting things around and making good appear by means of deception or diversion of attention from one place to another. It might be likened to the environmental equivalent to Voodoo Economics.

Pridger wonders how many carbon credits it would take to ease his own environmental conscience. And he wonders how much they would cost, who would get the money, and what good they might do.

Pridger's "carbon footprint" is embarrassingly large, especially considering his relatively "simple" country life-style. By rights, in a sane world, Pridger's carbon footprint should be much smaller than it is. But the complexities of modern life continually put creeping demands for "conveniences" in the path of life, which inevitably enlarge the footprint in spite of good intentions.

But the family that lived on this same ground for sixty years prior to Pridger's purchase was about as close to zero as is possible in the modern world. That's how close we are to consumptive sanity – in this case, a single ownership generation.

Of course, they were pretty poor people. But they didn't think of themselves as particularly poor. They had plenty to eat, and the lack of electricity had been a fact of life since man first walked the earth. They were modern enough to have coal oil lamps. They heated with wood which was abundant. And going to bed early made rising at the crack of dawn to do chores as easy and natural as going to bed early was.

The farm was poor clay ground, and hardly produced enough in the way of crops to feed the horses and other livestock. The livestock produced enough manure to fertilize the garden place, albeit with very little left over to spread over the fields where corn was grown. But the garden was always profuse and provided more vegetables than the family required. Horses pulled the plow and other farm equipment, as well as provided family transportation. The horses ate grass rather than gas.

Chickens provided eggs for breakfasts and meat for those special Sunday dinners. Hunting supplemented the family diet, with squirrel, raccoon, and possum meat filling in between the Sunday diners of fried chicken and the ham and bacon from the yearly hog slaughter. A single milk cow provided more than enough milk and butter for the family throughout most of the year, with plenty of milk left over to provide the hogs with extra nourishment.

"Trading" was done at the local store, a little over a mile away. There, eggs and butter could be traded for such things as salt, coal oil, and canning jars. Most of the cash income was from the woods. The old man and boys, cut trees and hewed out railroad ties and mining timbers, for which there was a ready market. And they made a little whisky during their leisure hours in order to squeeze a little more cash out of the meager corn crop.

Life was made up of both work and pleasure, and the work was adequate to insure that all got sufficient exercise to remain strong and healthy. The children walked to school, a little over a mile away. Their carbon foot print was small indeed, as was that of the school itself. Great fleets of buses were not necessary, and they got their daily exercise free of charge.

Modernity was beginning to intrude during the years that family lived here. The first family pickup truck probably débuted in the 1930s or 40s. Rural electrification came about 1956. These two things required more money than the family had been accustomed to having. Coal was cheap since this is coal country, and soon the household heated with coal rather than wood.

With electricity came an increasing array of nice modern conveniences and labor saving devices. All of these required more money than the family had been accustomed to having. The old man finally passed away, and finally the old lady. Now the boys owned the farm. They no longer cut trees with axes and hewed timbers with broad axes. They had to buy chain saws so they could get more work done. But the sale of logs didn't produce enough income to pay all the expenses. They had to find off farm jobs to keep the modernized household functioning.

They didn't have much time to farm any more. It required full time jobs to keep the truck, the chain saws, and other modern conveniences running. And they had to buy a lot more of the food they ate, coal they burned, and pay increasing taxes and electric bills.

In the end, the remedy was credit, and finally the only way to keep up with the new life-style and pay the bills was to mortgage the farm – something the old man would have never done.

When Pridger bought the place from the financially distressed boys the farm had been mortgaged for ten years. In spite of making semi-regular payments the mortgage was greater and more oppressive than it had been when they first took it out. They had to sell their family homestead to get out from under the debt burden.

Though Pridger had hoped to establish a simple country life, all the conveniences of former era had become necessities. An array of monthly and annual bills were fixed facts of life that required much more cash than a small farm could hope to produce. But, since Pridger had an established means of making money, and the wife had the typical domestic expectations of a modern housewife, the carbon footprint, in spite of having the "infrastructure" for simple self-reliance, became that of the average city dweller.

Not only did Pridger have to have a pickup, but the wife had to have her own automobile too. A telephone was required, and a television, a washer and drier, and dozens of other little and not so little things. Satellite TV became a requirement, and a cell phone for the wife. And, of course, Pridger has allowed himself the indulgence of a computer addiction. And real estate taxes continually crept upward until they resemble paying rent to live in the home Pridger supposedly owns.

And that's where it remains today. Though Pridger is retired with what should be a comfortable retirement income, it barely makes ends meet. There has been no escape to the simple life, which is still there for the taking (all that would be required, would be to give up all those frivolities that masquerade as necessities). But we've learned to live with a large carbon footprint in spite of all. It's been pretty easy, all that it required was for Pridger to remain at least sporadically committed to his outside "career" for forty years.

The only good thing is that there is no mortgage, and no debts with compounding interest. And if the bottom falls out of the "system" we could easily make do with about a tenth of the conveniences that we have – and life would be better, easier, and much more relaxed from Pridger's perspective. But cutting those attachments to "modern conveniences" would be the hard part, particularly for the wife.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 21 May, 2007

OLD QUOTES BEHIND THE WORLD DISORDER

"Jesus Christ never uttered a more profound truth than when He declared, “where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.” The loan of $500,000,000 to England by American capitalists, to say nothing of the profits of munitions manufacturers, has destroyed the semblance even of neutrality in the United States, and will probably lead us into war. ... I will not stultify my conscience nor stain my hands with the blood of my countrymen."
— Congressman Robert N. Page, North Carolina, February, 1916.

Woodrow Wilson pointed out: "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

From the New Freedom A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (Page 24), by Woodrow Wilson. A SPECTRUM BOOK, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Read more at:
http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/vegyes_/wilson_11.html

Saturday, 19 May, 2007

WAKING UP?

During the past year it seems that the subject of global warming is being taken seriously by a significant number of people.

If the threat is real, will we get on the right track fast enough to avoid catastrophe? Not likely – not even maybe. It isn't just global warming we have to worry about. That's perhaps the least of our worries in the shorter term. We, as the most powerful and influential nation in the world, are still trying to build the New World Order – the wrong kind of New World Order. We're building a New World Order that is not only a total repudiation of everything this nation once stood for, but flies in the face of both historical experience, gathering science, and just plane old horse sense. 

This means that we're not only on the wrong track, we are barreling down the track in the wrong direction. We're likely to enter a tunnel at breakneck speed while the tunnel builders are trying to complete their job. The train has no brakes, only a throttle that can speed it up but not slow it down. In other words, our national trajectory is still about 180 degrees off course with a full head of steam.

What our leaders are are still building at breakneck speed cannot adjust to "limits" or moderation because it is built on a corporate model that craves unlimited expansion of all systems in order to thrive and survive. It worships at the altar of one deity only – Mammon – and it recognizes only four holy grails, the need for: (1) speed, (2) efficiency, (3) the economics of scale, (4) and, above all, profits.

The "march of progress" is taking us into dangerous and uncharted waters at breath-taking speed. Yet there have been many red lights flashing all around us for a long time. But our governing body has not only ignored them, but officially decreed that the red lights are actually green lights.

Now some people claim to be waking up. But the hands of power are still on the throttle, and the remedy is always to stoke the fires and pile on more steam.

John Q. Pridger

WAKING UP TO THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

After all the wake-up calls, Congress appears to be falling into the same old non-solution pattern that won't satisfy anybody. We're going to get a handle on the problem by somehow legalizing the illegals. Nobody is going to be happy with it. 

The real problem is that we have willfully been importing a whole new working under-class for almost fifty years. Now that it is here in the tens of millions, it's too big to deal with. So, we're going to stop it by saying "we need that working underclass" and ought to make it possible for it to come out into the sunshine and be a legitimate part of America.

THEN, while acknowledging that we actually need more immigrants to do the work that doesn't pay enough to tempt "regular Americans," we'll start controlling our borders. We've heard that line before. We can be fairly certain that whatever "immigration reform" bill passes, it will simply be a compromise aimed at protecting our elected officials from the large and growing Mexican-American voting block.

Those of us who consider ourselves "old time Americans" might as well realize that we can't get to where we want to go from here. It's impossible. For one thing, in spite of all the hand wringing over illegal immigration, it's merely a major symptom of what our leaders continue to plan for our country – or what used to be the country we thought we had.

If our leaders are going to build a North American Union, or a Union of the Americas, illegal immigration is hardly relevant. We're supposed to become a single happy hemispheric family with open borders anyway. So why worry about a few million Latin American immigrants?

The hope of getting our representatives to represent the American majority of fifty years ago is hopeless. Even getting them to represent the majority of today's Americans is an impossibility. When the Constitution was effectively abandoned half a century or more ago, the nation of our founders was certain to wither away in the fullness of time.

The Civil War era was perhaps the key turning point in hour history. Not because the slaves were freed, but because "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" began to perish from this earth even as Lincoln vowed otherwise at Gettysburg. The war that preserved the Union also killed the notion of a Union of independent republics, replacing it with an all-powerful federal State – something destructive of the principles upon which it had been founded, and incapable of preserving the freedoms we once thought our birthright.

John Q. Pridger

THE FARM BILL AND FOOD CONTAMINATION

The 2002 farm bill had a "Right to Farm" section. That sounds pretty good. But it doesn't mean what it appears to mean. It doesn't mean that Pridger can now farm on his farm. He's always had the right to do that. What it really means is that large corporate scale "farmers" can't be prevented from constructing huge toxic animal concentration camps called "farms" just because they stink and pollute and destroy the quality of life for everybody for miles down wind.

This is mega-pollution and inhumane treatment masquerading as a "food supply solution."

Meanwhile, our food supply is causing problems of a nature that hardly existed before the era of mega corporate farms and massive feed-lot operations.

The E-coli contamination of greens is being blamed on cattle in pastures surrounding vegetable farms in California. The liability lawyers are saying, "Get those cattle further away from those fields!" The fields must be contaminated with wind-blown cow manure or methane gases. 

One wonders how small diversified farms used to operate with general mixed farming and stock raising in close approximation? Cattle and horse manure was the fertilizer of preference on the garden, truck, and field crops. But somehow that worked, and we'd never heard of E-coli. And we never imagined importing tainted wheat glutton from China.

John Q. Pridger

Thursday, 10 May, 2007

PROVING THAT GOD EXISTS

CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" has been running a whole series on "What is a Christian," and last night Pridger watched Nightline for a few minutes as a Hollywood actor, turned preacher, and a friend, "prove" God exists, and an equally stellar atheist "proves" otherwise. The studio audience, of course, consisted of the usual mix of faithful and skeptical – with "true believers" on both sides. 

It's difficult to believe that we are still "seriously" involving ourselves in the very same silly discussions and arguments about religion that has occupied the atheists and believers from time immemorial. One has to wonder why these questions are never settled to the satisfaction of everybody. Let the believers believe, and the non-believers believe what they will. Why continue arguing apples and oranges?

Pridger hasn't really been following the programs or debate, but he did watch Nightline long enough last night to hear the following exchange (paraphrased). It went something like this:

BELIEVER: (Holding up a framed painting) If you have a painting, the painting itself is proof that there is, or was, a painter. So, if you have an Universe – a "Creation" – this in itself is proof that a Creator must have existed to create it. And since the Universe is a living, ongoing thing, the Creator must still be around to keep things oiled and running.

NON-BELIEVER: (Smug, confidently, and slightly condescendingly) Where did the creator come from? Who or what created him? If there is a painting, you can call up the artist and talk to him. (Even atheists believe in artists). But you can't call up the creator of the Universe and chat with him. Nobody has seen him.

Firm believers and non-believers are hard-headed people. Both readily claim that "You simply can't get a blind man to see anything, or a deaf man to hear." The non-believers' refuge is in science (a discipline of tangible proof), and "common sense," and the believers' refuge is usually a combination of scripture, and "common sense." The common sense part for the believer is "if there is something there, there must be something behind it."

Thus far, it has proven literally impossible to prove that God does or does not exist through debate or argument – at least to the satisfaction of opposing parties. What is proof to the believer is merely a speculative leap to the non-believer. And what is proof to the non-believe is nothing more than lack of quantifiable scientific evidence that he can put his finger on. The believer, though seldom up to the task of convincing the non-believer, actually has the best argument. The non-believer can only say that what he cannot see and touch, and what science has not proven, must not exist.

Pridger's old Pappy told him when he was a small child, that the only difference between a Christian (believer), and an atheist is that, "A believer believes in a Universe created by a self-created God, and an atheist believes in a self-created Universe." Both positions are pretty difficult to swallow, so Pridger's Pappy took refuge in agnosticism – the simple, and very reasonable, admission of ignorance of ultimate Truths.

Agnosticism seemed like the only sensible way of avoiding claim to "knowledge" of things that are still impossible to scientifically prove – so Pridger hung that sign around his neck for a long time. But then he started thinking.

To be perfectly truthful, Pridger didn't "catch religion" until he became politically aware. And he never did get baptized, saved, or otherwise sanctified by any holy practitioner. But at some point he realized that in a world (or nation) of atheists and agnostics, the very concept of "God-given rights" would unavoidably be considered nothing more than the "silly little notion" of the ignorant and superstitious.

Yet, our nation itself would not have come into being as it did had our founders not had a faith in God, because the Declaration of Independence leaned heavily upon the existence of a Creator and a Higher Law.

Our nation does exist, but if it were universally acknowledged that it is based on fallacy and fraud – that the notion that our founders assuming on behalf of the people, and among the powers of the earth, "the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them" was a falsehood – then we must assume we have been living a national lie since 1776.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions... with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence..."

If all of this (upon which our nation was founded and our Constitution stands), was empty, meaningless, and errant rhetoric (which must be discarded in the light of scientific enlightenment), then we must admit that we have no God-given rights. We must admit that the notion of God-given rights was, and is, a fraud.

In such case, all we have are a few privileges granted by a government fraudulently foisted upon us by frauds or fools. If that be so, Big Brother would be the nearest thing to a Heavenly Father that we can hope for – and government the "ultimate power" among men, and the Supreme Court would stand in place of any notion of a Higher Law (as it already tries to do).

Pridger found these things troubling because he knows in the very core of his being that his fundamental rights are (or at least ought to be), inviolable and not simply a matter for other men to grant or withhold at their whim. He didn't get those rights from either the government or the Bill of Rights. He was born with them – and if they aren't a gift of God, then Pridger's claims on them are pretty flimsy and difficult to defend.

It had always perplexed Pridger that such men as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and many of our other founders, strongly relied on a belief in God, in spite of their dim view of religious dogma and most orthodox Christian beliefs. These were men of scientific mind, without any "faith-based" notions of religion – except their faith in God. And they were men with an abundance of good, common, horse sense. Yet they not only insisted on a belief in God, but the fundamental validity and goodness of Christianity – the essence of which was to be found in the teachings of Jesus (rather than what they considered the adulterated teachings of any "Church" or the broader Scriptures). Were those men frauds? Pridger doesn't think so.

The advent of Darwin's theory of evolution didn't change anything at all, in spite of all the argument it has caused among supposedly intelligent men. (Who are we to take issue with "just how God did it" and continues to do it?) At bottom, the "arguments" are all superficial, and really unworthy of truly intelligent men of broad understanding and outlook – though intelligent men repeatedly and continually set their feet firmly into the mire, taking one side or the other. Intelligent Design? Who are we, whether believers or non-believers, to dispute that notion?

It's obvious that Genesis doesn't tell the whole story, but it's equally obvious that the "science" of evolution is also missing several entire chains, rather than just a link or two. And, at the far end of any and all evolutionary chains, remains the great unknown. They are two very incomplete records – one written thousands of years before the scientific era, and the other based in many assumptions that seem to have a scientific validity. In the overall scheme of the Universe, Genesis and evolutionary science displace just about as much space. The issues only loom large from our acutely handicapped position and severely limited perspective.

As for proving the existence of God, Socrates said that knowledge begins with the careful definition of the words being employed. It does little good to argue apples and oranges – or for blind men to argue over what an elephant looks like after each has felt a foot, trunk, or the tuff of hairs at the end of the tail.

Socrates also defined God in a way that helped bring Pridger a little closer to the light. "God is truth, and light his shadow." Eventually Pridger adopted this along with another definition that a close friend stated – "God is the Universal Living Truth."

Few challenge the notion that the term enlightenment is symbolized by light. There's hardly anybody, whether a card carrying atheist or true Christian who doesn't believe in Truth – or at least un-capitalized truth. Literally everybody believes in truth, insofar as he believes it to be true.

Heaven help us if the meaning of the words "true" and "truth" are transformed in the manner of such formerly well understood words as "gay" and "marriage"!

The atheist believes in nature and natural causes. But the capitalized word "Nature" might easily be put in the place of "God," for what is nature but the embodiment of All in the Universe, including the as yet unknown attributes, laws, and components, of nature?

Herein is proof that God exists, without waxing poetic or into spiritual or scientific devolutions. It's a matter of defining what God is – the actual meaning of the word – as well as a concept that can be grasped by even the spiritually challenged. And it doesn't matter whether the word is God, Jehovah, Yahweh, or the Great Spirit. 

Atheists deny the existence of God because they do not agree on what the word refers to – it refers to something scientists have not yet shown them. Atheists do believe in truth, even though they would readily admit that most truth is as yet unknown. But, if most truth is unknown (and perhaps even unknowable), it becomes a matter of faith that it is nevertheless "out there" and true, and merely waiting to be discovered.

When it comes to arguments over a "personal, caring, God", "personal Savior", or the literal veracity of written scriptures, the issue also becomes one of faith. But, to the faithful, that faith is the result of proofs that an atheist is incapable of seeing or even rationalizing. Pridger doesn't address arguments of this nature, but merely allows that the faithful have a perfect right to believe what they will as do non-believers. But Pridger also believes that Christian faith (as well as other religions), is essentially a very positive thing for most of the faithful. Among the faithful there are perceived truths to which the atheist is blind. There are no arguments, scientific or otherwise, that will bring them closer together.

The atheist may have faith that we will continue to accumulate scientifically provable facts, and he may even accept science-based theory as fact, yet denies that God would be part of it. The religiously faithful believe they already know truths that science has not yet verified, and is thus far incapable of verifying.

To prove the existence of God to himself, Pridger discarded all scripture and (for all practical purposes), religion itself. "Faith in God" has to do with how men perceive God. Orthodox religions have more to do with what they believe with regard to the scriptures of their own particular sects. But God (as a concept of Ultimate Truth and One and All powerful Supreme Being, or Cosmic Force) can be perceived without reference to, or dependence on, either faith or science. It's simply a matter of properly defining one's terms.

Of course, these lines of thought on God are not new. (Nor is Pridger going to go very far with them here.) But Pridger has always been one to come at some things the hard way – re-inventing the wheel, if necessary, in order to haul fertilizer to the garden in a wheel borrow. All of this has been covered over and over by thinking men for millennia, of course, and similar rationalizations (most often greatly embellished, of course), serve as the basis for some of the esoteric "mysteries" of cabalism, theocracy, secret societies, etc. In the end, there is never a scientific answer to the mysteries, no matter how much scientific or metaphysical rationalization is employed in defining what God is.

Pridger was once asked by a friend (the son of a Baptist minister), who proclaimed himself an atheist, if Pridger believed in God. Knowing that Pridger was the son of a notorious local free thinker, and not exactly a church-goer, he was a little surprised at the answer.

"Yes, I do." Pridger said.

"On what can you possibly base such a belief?" he asked.

"That," Pridger said, "depends on how you define the world 'God'."

"What do you mean by that?" the friend asked. "How would you define God?"

"First, let me ask if there anything that you claim not to know?"

"Yes, quite a lot." the friend admitted

"Well, let me define God as consisting of all that you do not know – along with all that you do know – or think you know. That is how I define God, and how I know He exists."

Pridger's friend was not converted, of course, but he did scratch his head a little. The point is, there is so much that we do not know, and are not yet able to scientifically quantify, that there's still plenty of room for God. And if there is a God, we Americans (and others too), might be able to continue to enjoy most of our "God-given rights" without apology or any by-your-leaves from those who do not believe such things exist.

Voltaire once poignantly observed that, if God did not exist, we'd have to invent Him. Fortunately, God does exist, and the only thing we've had to invent were the words by which to describe or deny that existence – though many cannot see the import of the message.

As for Christianity, Pridger believes the Christian message is embodied in the fundamental teachings of Jesus. While Pridger may be considered a heretic by fundamentalists and other orthodox Christians, he nonetheless considers being "Christian" the most important aspiration in his life – and this position perhaps has much more to do with right conduct and basic morality than anything that might be considered strictly "spiritual." The spiritual aspects of religion do not belong in "political" discussions.

This is not to say that the message of "Christ" is exclusive to Christians. Other great men and religions have very similar messages which work just as well in their own societies and cultures – just as the Christian message ought to work for those of us who are children of the Christian tradition.

While recognizing the "family of man" and the universality of human aspirations, Pridger believes in "differences." Differences make for a much more interesting, colorful, exciting, and wonderful world than an universal "sameness" would. But if everybody lived their lives in strict accordance with the core messages of their respective religions, these differences could never be cause for conflict. (Unfortunately, there are errant "religions" and "churches," just as there are errant faithful individuals who miss the most important message.)

This doesn't exclude atheists and agnostics by any means. Their non-faith or non-religion, or their secular humanism, is their "religion" – and they may be as good and "righteous" as anybody else – but they (not unlike the faithful) must develop and nurture their own "goodness" by means of personal rationalization processes, tapping into those "self-evident" non-spiritual "truths" that have somehow found a fertile seedbed in the hearts of all "right-minded" men everywhere throughout the history of mankind.

Yet the atheist and agnostic must, by the necessity of exclusion, defer to government as the ultimate power among men and their earthly societies. And this, in Pridger's opinion, would be a dangerous position for the majority of "We the People" to allow ourselves to be placed in.

In Pridger's opinion, if there were no God nor Higher Law, we'd still be very well advised to cling to the fiction that there is, and to keep government from occupying the position our founders very wisely reserved to God alone. Once government becomes "Government, Omnipotent, and Deified" (G.O.D.), government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," will have perished from this earth. We've gone far enough down that road already. 

John Q. Pridger

Wednesday, 9 May, 2007

BACK TO BASICS

With the various wars going on, mass killings on college campuses, devastating tornados, pets and chickens dying of imported food poisoning, and the Imus crises, it's easy to get distracted from the important issues at hand – the things this blog is intended to address.

Some of these distractions, of course, are the result of the major issues that are the subject of this blog. Our wars, for example, and the matter of importing wheat gluten from China when the United States produces more than enough wheat to satisfy our need for wheat gluten.

The price of gas is on the way up again, and this is one of the core problems we face because we've simply been on the wrong track as a nation for far too long.

But $3.00 gas really isn't that surprising. Pridger goes by what he knows or has experienced. Since about 1960 average consumer prices have increased by a factor of at least 10. Some things have gone up much more, and other things by much less. Gas was about $.30 a gallon in 1960, so $3.00 per gallon would seem about right by now. Since it had apparently been under-priced for so long, playing catch up will undoubtedly become part of the game currently unfolding.

Pridger bought his first car in 1963 after getting out of the Navy. It was a 1960 Ford Falcon. Pridger bought it from a dealer for $500.00. It's pretty difficult to find a three year old car for $5,000.00 today.

By 1960 we were already beginning to import large numbers of small cars from Japan, and many Americans liked them for both their quality and fuel efficiency. And the German Volkswagen "bug" was one of the most popular cars on the road. The Falcon was one of Ford Motor Company's first answers to that challenge – one of the first relatively small American cars since the days of the Model T and Model A.

It seemed that Ford was on the right track with the Falcon but, in American fashion, the Falcon grew bigger as new models came out. Soon Americans were buying more and more Japanese cars. Today Toyota has not only surpassed Ford, but GM too, as the world's largest automaker. Half the American car market it in the hands of Japanese and other Asian automakers, and the big three U.S. automakers are in dire straits – turning out big cars, SUVs, monster pickups, and tanks like Humvees.

Our gas appetite has progressed right along with with the continued planned growth of the automotive society – where the cities, towns, and the whole country have been reengineered to make automobiles necessities for everybody. Like the cars most people can afford, we are obliged to import most of the oil required to power and lubricate our American lifestyle.

Importing more fuel efficient cars, however, isn't getting back to basics. Getting back toward basics would be relearning how we once produced almost everything we needed for ourselves – that once one of the great advantages of living in a town or city was that one didn't have to have a car at all – and that it was once possible to catch a train in every little town with connections to every other little town in the whole country.

John Q. Pridger

Tuesday, 8 May, 2007

THE FOREST AND THE TREES

As the old saying goes, it's sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees. Each tree becomes an obstruction hiding the forest. And there are so many trees at the edge of the forest! And malevolent things can hide behind the trees. They're dangerous!

In this day and age, the remedy is usually to get out the old chain saw and bull dozer and remove all the trees. But if we wanted to see the forest, because of it's innate mystery and beauty, it becomes obvious that our solution has fallen somewhat short of our goal. Though the bothersome trees are gone, we still can't see the forest. Though we started out to do a good thing, the results aren't anything like we imagined they would be. The forest is gone.

An artificially forested theme park, of course, is the answer. But lo! Even artificial forests must have trees! 

Sometimes we wish we could just go back to something that seemed to work petty well before. Maybe the natural forest, with all it's obstructive trees, was really the best thing after all! And though artificial trees may be wonderful, they are expensive and require maintenance, whereas the natural trees grew by themselves.

Our "Wonderful New World" is a lot like a corporately built and administered theme park. Carefully planned to the nth degree, and proclaimed by the builders the most wonderful thing since way before sliced bread, somehow things just don't seem right.

TAKE THE PET FOOD SCARE FOR EXAMPLE...

If there's one area in which the the United States is still internationally competitive, it's in the production of grains and meats. For some reason it doesn't seem right that we should be importing large quantities of either animal foods or feed products or  from China. Yet American pets have been dying, and hogs and poultry have been contaminated with melamine-tainted Chinese wheat gluten. An estimated 2.5 million American broiler chickens have dined on tainted Chinese imports. Some of the animals and chickens have already passed into the human food chain. Many have died. We've got farmers who are going to have to euthanize thousands of hogs and perhaps hundreds of thousand of chickens.

David Acheson, chief medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, "I want to emphasize none of this contaminated product ended up directly in human food." Only indirectly, in diluted form, if that makes you feel any safer.

Earlier this year, one Chinese company shipped more than 700 tons of wheat gluten labeled "nonfood" product through a Chinese textile company. This enabled the shipment to bypass both Chinese and U.S. food inspectors. One of these days we'll probably find that a million tons of tainted pizza crusts, peanut butter, and fortune cookies have arrived (last year), from IBM China, Inc., labeled as ipods, cell phones, and printer ink.

In a sane country – and one able to feed itself and have plenty left over for export – one would think that the only sort of food items we'd import from China would be the more exotic things that aren't produced in this country – and those in very limited volumes and subjected to careful food safety inspections.

John Q. Pridger 

Thursday, 3 May, 2007

GLOBAL WARMING, TRAVEL, SPEED, AND FREE TRADE

One of the reasons global warming has become such a problem is our societal and cultural fixation with speed. As a people, we've been in far too big a hurry at least since the automobile replaced foot and horse travel, and airplanes replaced steamships, trains, and leisurely passages by land or water. Speed has become a necessity for many of us, and for many, that means flying in big jet liners.

Though most of the focus is on automobile emissions and coal fired power plants as the biggest producers of CO2, some concerned environmentalists are finally beginning to point out that jet air travel is one of the biggest culprits of all – and there is no technology on the immediate horizon with which to attack the problem. Jet airliners are about as efficient as current technology allows. But they are big polluters – delivering their gaseous emissions right up into the upper atmosphere where it has to most immediate effect – and air travel is expected to double in the next few decades.

The problem was recently pointed out in George Monbiot in "Flying Into Trouble – why most airplanes must be grounded" (The Nation, May 7, 2007).

"Jets produce staggering amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that accelerate global warming... The CO2 produced by planes is augmented by the other greenhouse gases they release, magnifying its efect by 270 percent. This means that flying is one of the most destructive things we can do.

"...Because our economy has been built around the rapid mobility of goods and people (the volume of US airfreight grew by 372 percent between 1980 and 2004), this could be our greatest political challenge."

Our problem seems clear. We travel altogether too much, and too far, without compelling reasons – and we all need to get there in too much of a hurry.

Our increasing trade is another big problem that almost nobody ever focuses on as a problem. There are more than 40,000 huge containerships and tankers plying the oceans on our behalf, and their contribution to the problem of climate change is significant and growing as our trade volumes increase. 

This problem seems clear too. We trade altogether too much, over too great of distances, without any compelling reasons, other than to relieve American workers of good production jobs so large global corporations can make a good profit as we're compensated at the Wal-Mart checkout counter.

But both more travel and more trade, always at the fastest possible speed state of the arts technologies can produce, are expected, and both are on policy auto-pilot.

If there is a focus, it's seldom on the real problem of too much travel or too much trade. No, more of everything is the holy grail of progress. The "solution" is supposed to be in finding out how we can travel more efficiently at even higher speeds. In the mean time we're expanding airports and preparing for twice as many air travelers. And the idea of cutting our volume of trade is literal political heresy. We're trying to figure out how to increase it, and how to make 40,000 ships, plus 40,000 more in the next few years, less polluting. Even if we can make 80,000 ships less polluting than 40,000, we have still got a much bigger problem than before – and it is dependence on trade as well as environmental degradation.

Given our levels of industrialization and consumption, we recognized that there is too much pollution some time ago, and the strides that we made in cleaning up "our" air and environment have been pretty impressive. But many of those gains were merely problems swept under the rug – destined to become somebody else's problem. Dirty industries were merely shipped off to others where they become bigger global polluters than before – and the industries even more profitable (usually under the same ownership, but different workers). And, as for the massive and growing solid waste problem, we merely bury it in massive land-fills scattered all around the country and the world.

Trains could replace domestic personal automobiles and air travel at great benefit to the environment, but there are two big problems. We've already junked our once great passenger rail infrastructure, with Amtrak just barely holding on in long distant service, serving too few places, on tracks that belong to big international freight corporations. And we're now in too much of a hurry for ordinary train travel over long distances. Because we are in such a hurry, any new passenger train rails and rolling stock will have to be of the super-fast, bullet train, variety. And with super high-speed trains, energy consumption advantages collapse.

These are times when everybody wants instant gratification. The trip or the voyage is no longer part of the adventure. A long trip is considered lost time. Everybody wants to "be there" and be there now!

Even a few hours' flight is considered quite an inconvenient imposition. So why not just stay home and speed back and forth to the store in our SUVs? If we hanker to see exotic places, in front of the TV is the best and safest place to be. But nobody really wants to be known as a couch traveler. The thing to do is to "buy a package" and take a couple days off and fly over to experience the "real thing."

What bothers Pridger is that, in this speed-shrunken world, it's getting to where almost everywhere is just about the same as everywhere else. 

Still, Pridger would actually travel more, if he could travel by train or ship. But we've got so far advanced that it's almost impossible to get anywhere that way any more. In Pridger's case, the nearest airport, bus stop, and Amtrak station are one county up and two counties over. And finding passage on any kind of ship, simply to go somewhere, other than on a fantasy cruise, has become nearly impossible. There aren't any passenger ships plying the seven seas, only cruise ships for retired jet-setters.

Pridger seldom flies, but his phobia is less due to a fear of flying than a deep-seeded dislike for what the "convenience" of air travel is doing to the world – it's both shrinking and debasing it. It's making our big and wonderful world embarrassingly small, and Pridger is disturbed by that. As he's said before, the world is getting so small, Pridger is becoming ashamed of it.

The most practical mode of local transportation ever invented for humans was the bicycle, which produces no polluting gases at all (except, perhaps, during manufacture). But when people want to travel a few blocks or mile or two, they hop in the SUV or Humvee.  Meanwhile, almost everybody needs a lot more exercise than they are apt to get. Rather than getting useful exercise, they pay money to go to a fitness center, or buy some sort of home-bound contraption to peddle, pump, or otherwise wrestle with in front of the TV.

The country should be the place where a guy could put a bicycle, or even a horse, to good use. But our highways are speed strips where a bicyclist or mounted traveler is in great danger of being mistaken for a deer and made into road kill. And most of the local stores have disappeared so people have to speed to town for the convenience of trading with Kroger or Wal-Mart rather than their neighbors. Horses are now used for recreation (and a good recreation they perhaps are), but recreation means riding around, usually to nowhere, or in circles, or trailering one's horse to some distant trailhead in order to ride – usually to nowhere that has any more than a recreational value.

The high speed automotive culture is going to be around for a while, regardless of soaring gas prices. Yet in a sustainable and practical world, most local transportation should be free and relatively clean and slow, as they once were, and mass transit would satisfy the needs of the urban commuter who lives too far from work to walk or peddle. 

A city, at least, should be a place where people could live comfortably without having to have an automobile. But the urban well-to-do are likely to find a four wheel drive SUV, Humvee, or massive pickup truck a necessity – for self-defense, if nothing else. If fully armored tanks were available, there's a class of consumer who'd buy them for commuting to the store.

Just the other day Pridger took the wife off on an expedition to trade with the enemy. The local SAM's warehouse store is located about 30 miles from Paradise Ridge. In passing through the wonderful countryside on rural roads that took them through several little towns and villages, Pridger once again took note of what seems to be largely an American phenomenon.

It struck Pridger, as it always does, that he was able to travel that distance, through several towns, and into the fairly urbanized destination – without spotting so much as a single pedestrian! There were many horses to be seen at pasture on several farms, but not one rider on horseback traveling anywhere. These days, pedestrians only venture out between car and door, whether at home or at the big store.

Pridger's hometown is a "city" over almost 10,000 people. But one can drive through town any number of times without spotting a pedestrian on the streets or sidewalks. The shopping center parking lots are the only places people are likely to be seen walking – between their car and the front door of a store.

To Pridger's Asian wife, this is the saddest, most disconcerting, thing of all about "American life," and why she often pines for the country of her roots. In most nations, and most particularly Asian nations, everywhere one goes, whether in the city or the country, people are seen everywhere – doing things and going places, on foot, or riding bicycles or motorbikes. There are innumerable small mom and pop businesses everywhere people live in any numbers, pass, or congregate. And the people are seemingly happy and their societies vibrant. Our brand of modernity, with all of its conveniences, has produced a very sterile, lackluster, and drab society.

Americans tend to stay in the controlled comfort of their air-conditioned homes – expending large amounts of energy as they recline before the TV. Or they will venture out in their climate controlled automobiles, to the air-conditioned mall or workplace.

Pridger isn't so old that he doesn't remember when things were a little different here. But even in his youth he lamented our societal commitment to an increasingly sterile modernity. Yet kids, at least, still did a lot of walking and bicycle riding, though our parents had already largely succumbed to the automotive culture. But it wasn't until Pridger got out to see the world that he fully realized just how hopelessly sterile our society had become in comparison to the "have-nots" elsewhere.

So, now that we've found out that we have a serious problem with global warming which is being fed by our ultra-modern way of life, we are coming to realize that we have been getting things wrong (very wrong!). Yet we're still actively pushing to bring the very same ulta-consumptive and wasteful modernity to all the rest of mankind. We call it the "American way of life" and we are eager to make it the global standard, under the amazingly capable hand of corporate systems under our seriously flawed capitalist model.

Meanwhile we continue to consume far too much, travel too much, too far, and too fast, and we trade far too much, over too great of distances, producing far too much in the way of greenhouse gases with every corporate managed or facilitated activity. And this fundamentally flawed system works so well that it is now literally on autopilot and is unstoppable except through catastrophic events, either through the intervention of economic realities, war, or an act of God, or all three. And all are very much in the offing, if not already in the picture.

John Q. Pridger