An Adventure Down Alice's Rabbit Hole

I'm in the closing section of an essay on torture, but as my blog title suggest I capriciously exercise the prerogative to go off subject on a tangent: I had lunch with my son in the slums of Baltimore, Maryland, where I slid down the dilapidated, economically depress 'Alice's Rabbit Hole' resident of my son, Jake... Below is an email response to him.

...Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked. "There's no sort of use in knocking," said the footman, "and that for two reasons.... Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

What is the probability of two Jakes residing in the same dilapidated superstructure, that apparently is, the recycling dumpster site for flaccid, stained mottled mattress, and beer and wine bottles. Actually, I never did spy the 4th floor Jake: With great trepidation, I braved the gritty white-washed stair-well corridor to the forth floor, where I initially turned left and with nervous apprehension pried opened the door; only after, repeatedly knocking and bellowing your name in crescendo. With slow deliberate steps, and your name as my mantra; each step warrant a cry of Jake. I finally came upon a frail, black woman rolled up in a mattress like a sushi-roll, who mustered enough courtesy to grunt and point from whence the direction I just came. I interpreted this gesticulation as an indication you were to be located in the flat across the hall. I quickly retraced my tracks, exited, and repeated the knocking and Jake yelling: I guess that whole mainstream tradition of answering the door seems to be passe'; again, I cautiously opened the door and proceeded, but this time I was meet by a hulking young black man with a Rastafarian-do who politely inquired, "can I help you?" I explained my business, he promptly turned heel-toe and walked away: confounded, I stood my ground and waited, then after a short time lapsed, there appeared a petite young women with a hostess warm smile name Kats and a short, post college age mature demeanor man with a brisk walk, curt tongue, sporting a beard who promptly directed me to 'the' 4th floor Jake's room. The room partition by a bed sheet, when pulled away was shrouded ink-black, impenetrable to discernible vision. Employing a blind man’s tactics I verbally groped with your name as a searching staff from which, I engendered an inarticulate garble groan from the 4th floor Jake. Trying to roust the fourth floor Jake from his slumber and liberate him from the mattress, I implored him to get ready for lunch, he tersely retorted, I don’t think so! So, you can imagine what kind of emotion that evoked; especially, after I had just drove three long hours to have lunch with you: I was a touch irritated. A cauldron of emotions quickly came to a boil, and before a spilling display of disappointment and discontentment erupted, I left the premise. Returning to the car Jake-less, Mary was flummoxed; I relayed the events to her. We decided to go have lunch at the Inner Harbor and attempt a second contact latter. We were in route when you made phone contact.

So, you perception of the initial pick up for lunch was reptilian in warmth was accurate. But, what I want to bring to your attention, that in spite of what one could easily interpret as rude and inconsiderate behavior, I was willing to forgo this in order to have lunch with my son. Please extend my apologies to ‘the’ 4th floor Jake for disturbing his slumber.

And--------as lunch progressed my exothermic emotive attributes began to warm; as would, a lizard sunbathing on a rock, Mary and I drank every word in that flowed describing this new found zeal and enthusiasm you had for teaching the poverty stricken, Baltimore resident children. I was very pleased to hear of this new calling for teaching.

I still strongly encourage you to pursue graduate, doctorate degrees with an end-game in a professorship: possibly in community colleges, where the financially challenge first initiate a run at collegiate academics. Apparently, the political scuttlebutt is, President Obama eyeing the community colleges as recipients for an infusion of capital: More people are attending Community Colleges because a four year degree is too expensive…..

Put on your calendar, please, Josh, your cousin, that currently employed by the Air Force is going to be making a surprise visit in August to Baltimore for training. I was going to come up to take him out to lunch: I was considering making it a Birthday visit, also…

Lov Pops

Torture: Yahweh, Hippocrates, From Whom Should We Entreat Moral Counsel

How pretentious would one be, if one were to suggest that man is morally superior to the God of Abraham; for words, do in fact, have consequences, and moral probity and turpitude are viscerally distinguishable. As an apologist Atheist, a frequent asked question of me is, from whence do I derive my moral guidance, if obviously, the bible is not available as a reference: I am quick to correct and reassure the religiously dogmatic oriented inquisitor that I frequent the passages of scripture; but, my interpretations of the sacred text are done through the enlightened eyes of reason not blind faith. So, when one reads the God inspired text, or the word of God, pending one's doctrinal inclinations, what is one to glean from prose that condone torture through venues of eternal damnation in a conflagrant residence; stoning for being human, 'to error is to be human'; the Noah drowning, water-boarding extreme; and, crucifying your only son, what the hell---oh yea, that has already been addressed....for the ecclesiastical predispose, we have some moral direction from the inerrant bible word from you know who, who seems to be sending mix messages on empathy and compassion: torture is OK?

...with sulphur where the Creature and False Prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever Revelation 20: 10

Stoning for: Adultery, Deut 22: 23-24; women who are not a virgin on her wedding night, Deut 22:13-21; disobeying parents, Deut 21: 18-21; breaking the Sabbath, Numbers 15:32-56

The Flood, Noah's Ark, millions of innocent children "water-board" to death, Genesis 7-9

Crucifixion of Jesus, God the Father had his only son crucified John 3: 16

Then, there was the sowing of the seed of moral probity three hundred years before the year of our Lord, Jesus, the son of God, who according to the Council of Nicaea where the Emperor Constantine presided over the consensus to agree that they are one in the same, where a Greek physician, Hippocrates, inculcated: "above all do no harm".

From whom should we solicit rectitude, a mere mortal or a supernatural double speak Deity: Not a difficult question and I suggest to keep it real and go with your gut. Is torture wrong regardless of caveats of ticking time bombs scenarios? Yes, let me make myself abundantly clear: Torture is unequivocally morally repobatory; and, under no circumstances should it be given a nod of approbation. Interesting to me is, the conscious conflicted Christians, well, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt about being conflicted, church going white evangelicals, (62%) indicated in a new poll of a Pew Research that torture often is justifiable: After reading the above selected scriptures inspired by the God of Leviticus, who would of thought...My second audacious question is, what in the world are the Christians alleging when they profess that we are obliged to the holy scriptures for our moral and ethical standards? Were they skim-reading? Are they reading the same text that I am? Granted, some of the parables of Jesus, not all, as Thomas Jefferson's edited King James version implied, are unequivocally imbued in rectitude; however, the first covenant, the Old Testament, is, what it is: the tyrannical edicts of a pissed-off, vindictive, vengeful, hoary apparition, who capriciously smites. Apparently, as Nietzsche exclaimed, there has been only one Christian and he died on the cross....

What catalyzed the conscious raising of empathy to challenge torture as a culturally accepted punitive measure against laws scoffers? One putative claim was offered in Lynn Hunt's (a Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at UCLA) book, Inventing Human Rights, where in the Chapter 2 "Bone Of Their Bone" Abolishing Torture she suggest the case of The Calas Affair, where purportedly the son of Sr Calas committed suicide by self inflicted hanging, and the family concerned and frightened of France's sectarian laden laws fabricated a murder to preclude the legal system from implementing its current laws against suicide of their son: " A person guilty of suicide could not be buried in consecrated ground, and if buried, exhumed , dragged through town, then hung by the feet and thrown in the garbage dump"....the crazy bastards even tortured the dead! The investigation of the alleged murder implicated the father as the suspect and later convicted. The non sequitur judicial system of the 1700s were obliged to employ the 'preliminary questioning' to evoke a contrition of possible accomplices by water boarding (yes it existed then) and breaking of all the long bones: humerus, femur, tibia and fibula on the "wheel". In spite of this brutal 'preliminary questioning, Calas insisted on his innocence; he did not murder his son. Calas' unyielding conviction of his innocence, regardless to the bone crushing, water dosing drowning torture engendered the public empathy and cacophonous outcry to banish the extraction of confessions of guilt before sentencing and contrition of accomplices. History suggest that the head turning, winch evoking, sound of bones being crushed by torture was of a decibel intensity that it's waves momentum transcended the political-legal medium of all of Europe, where philosophers and barrister weighed in with their renunciation of this lurid, horrific assault to human rights. Why this particular case and time in history when chroniclers of human events have assiduously scripted man's long gauntlet of ghoulish, baleful behavior of brutality toward his fellow species; one can only speculate and scratch the cranium casing encapsulating the organ that distinguishes us from other species, and currently, inexplicably bleeds the 'mind', which afford us with the capacity to discern morality and ethics.

Once Enlightenment writers, Voltaire and Rousseau; and legal reformers, Beccaria, began to question torture and cruel punishment, an almost complete turnabout in attitude took place over a couple of decades by abolishing its practice: 1754 in Prussia, 1772 Sweden, Austria and Bohemia 1776. In 1780 France, eliminated the use of torture to extract confessions of guilt before sentencing and in 1788, it abolished the use of torture just prior to execution to produce the names of accomplices. Inventing Human Rights A History, Lynn Hunt

"We should not forget that even criminals [including terrorist] possess souls and bodies composed of the same materials as those of our friends and relations. They are bone of their bone. " Benjamin Rush 1787

Rushing history to the twentieth century, we, the United States of America were of the collective that signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which clearly stipulates in Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We are a country of integrity and laws, and compliance is not dictated by convenience. Waterboarding was/is illegal:

Following World War II American prosecutors convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Allied prisoners of war. The soldiers were tried as part of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. During the Vietnam War, a U.S. soldier who participated in the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese prisoner of war was court-martialed in 1968. As recently as 1983, a Texas sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison for waterboarding suspects in an attempt to coerce confessions.

In 1994 the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). When this international treaty was ratified, its provisions became U.S. law. The convention defined torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”

Also in 1946 the U.S. Congress adopted the Torture Statute, which provides criminal liability for a U.S. national who tortures a person outside of the United States. A foreign national apprehended in the United States for torturing someone outside of the United States could also face criminal liability under the Torture Statute.

The U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 provides life imprisonment or the death penalty for a U.S. national or any member of the U.S. armed forces who is convicted of torturing someone to death. Anyone charged with a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which forbids torture, could also be tried in the United States under the War Crimes Act

So you see, the written law is clear; yet, the Bushies fomented an interpretation of the above law of such an exaggerated, torturous (pun intended) spin it can only be explained in medical terminology of pathology of delusion, and arguably, drug induced, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law as indicated by the above historical recounting of these egregious violations of human rights.

THE DRUMS OF WAR

JACKSON BROWNE

Who gives the orders, orders to torture

Who gets to no bid contract the future

Who lies, then bombs, then calls it an error

Who makes a fortune from fighting terror

Who is the enemy trying to crush us

Who is the enemy of truth and justice

Who is the enemy of peace and freedom? ....

Beseeching moral guidance from an external agent: corporal or spiritual, is unnecessary because the answer is within you--- if it feels wrong, guess what, it is ... which segues me to another gut wrong of mixing religion and science: President Obama has nominated Francis Collins as the next director of the National Institutes of Health.........something about the fox watching the chicken coop comes to mind...

The Swine Flu A Genetic Cous...

Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, advice to, 'Go, proud reasoner, and call the worms thy sister!', is prescient of the genetic commonality of all organisms and why the Theory of Evolution is irrefutably pertinent, and has a transcending frame to predict and explain natural phenomena in all the biological disciplines. Much to the consternation of the pious nay-sayers of evolution, H1N1, aka the swine flu, is the quintessential evolving machine, and our long lost cousin. The "selective reasoning" creationist readily avail themselves to the medical advances of western medicine, yet execrate the very theory, evolution, which provided the empirical scaffolding to discover species specific immunizations and antiviral drugs.

"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he/she understands it ", Jacques Monod

As much as it pains me to admit this; especially, in the 21st century, and a citizen of the most scientifically technological advanced country in the world, the irrational subscribers to religious superstition, will not recant their remissness of reason and observable evidence. This recalcitrant demur against the method of science engender, at least in me, obfuscation; for, sentinel beings of reason publicly declare that it is by this means we know things, and advance our culture to a higher standard of living. This paradox of forfeiting reason and embracing faith is explicated in Bruce M. Hood, psychologist of Cambridge, new book, Supersense Why We Believe In The Unbelievable: He postulates that we bipedals with the advanced cerebral cortex have a mental tendentious inclination to perceive patterns, purpose and causality, which is counter-intuitive to evolution's process of randomness and non-teleology

Basically, Evolution is a theory explicating biological change manifested by genetic variation over time and expressed in the next generation randomly and without purpose

Maybe, the above definition is counter intuitive; however, arguably simple, just as simple as the phenotypical composition of the nano-size virus: consisting of nucleic acid (genetic material) which is surrounded by a protective protein coat called a capsid. Its natural history is to infiltrate a host by either ingestion, inhalation (H1N1 route), or contact, where its target is the receptor site of a cell. Its force entry into to cell is facilitated by secreting chemicals that weaken the cell wall enough to permit the interloper to inject its nucleic acids intracellular, where it commanders the cell's machinery of replicating cellular components. What makes the virus a studly example of evolution is its capacity for exponential population growth in minutes (~ 20 minutes) to turn over a generation of millions of microscopic squiggles; progenies that are all sporting their own genetic signature. The Evolutionary strategy of resistance is exemplified by the lone, genetically coy virion that withstood the chemical fallout of our cornucopia of pharmaceuticals designed to sequester their very existence and toxic pathology. Game on: from one comes many, but now armed with the genetic arsenal of resistance. This is Natural Selection plain and simple.

A virus, geranium, worm, all genetic relatives; they are sometimes refer to as the cousin so many times removed, and apparently, the creationist are reticent to admit are family. Maybe, we should water-board their contrition of relation to their genetic cous---and speaking of torture...

A Pink Slip For God's Science Teacher

A PINK-SLIP FOR GOD’S SCIENCE TEACHER

The religious fundamentalist are pathological prevaricators. Their flagrant unremorseful breaking of the eighth commandment to foment Christian dogma as science is awash in hypocrisy. Their new ruse is the beguiling Academic Freedom Petition with the insidious subversive intent to “teach the controversy”, which is Intelligent Design. Now, personally, I have mix emotions on how to retort to yet another autistic creationist banging his/her head of faith against the science classroom door. Should they be commended for their perseverance; berated for their hypocritical decisive duplicity [metastatic lying] for the soul [misspelling deliberate] purpose to proselytize Christianity with no compunction for breaking the 8th commandment]; or, held intellectually accountable. Well, since the topic is science, intellectual accountability begs to be chosen. We will employ the flanking strategy of reason, the handmaiden of science; generally, not a good tactic to use against people of faith, but, what the hell.
Since the creationists are autistically adamant about teaching the Word of God as science. What does God actually know about science? With due consideration that God was unavailable to sit for an interview, I decided to entertain the next best option, His Word: The Bible. Let us take a gander at the scriptures for some insightful science. Genesis is great place to start (pun intended).
The first five books of the Old Testament (Torah) The Law, where the creation myth and Ten Commandments reside are a bonanza of biology and cosmology cataclysmic errors. One has to wonder if Moses, the allege author, was tripping on peyote; maybe, delirious from heat stroke from too much desert sun; or, God’s communication skills are appreciable wanting: because, no matter how you try to spin the scriptural prose, like a stroke patient with pathological limb deficits, the sacred writings were transcribed with glaring scientific deficits, and more often, then not, quadriplegic-like, and completely absent of any scientific appreciation of natural laws. An omniscient God should be acutely aware that words are important--- and taken deliberate due diligence to have had selective verbiage, which would have precluded misrepresentation and misinterpretation: The Great Communicator, he/she was/is not!
The sequential order of the universe, cosmological physics, natural history, photosynthesis, pollination, etc…is remised in the below scriptures, which poignantly illuminates my charge that God was literally science ignorant:
The Sequential Order of the Universe: Gen 1:16-17 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. The stars and the sun were in existence before the planet earth
Cosmological Physics: Ps 96:10 …the earth also shall be established that it shall not be moved. The earth rotates on it axis … Joshua 10:12-13 and, the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. The earth rotates around the sun, not vice versa.
Natural History: Portray fictional creatures as authentic animals. To name a few: SATYR, UNICORN, and COCATRICE (dragon)
· Satyr: Lev 17:7; Isaiah 13:21, 34:11, 34:14
· Unicorn: Numb23:22, 24:8; Deut 33:17; Job39:9
· Cockatrices: Isaiah 11:18, 14:29, 59:5; Jeremiah 8:17
Hares chew the cud, Lev 11:6; bat is a bird, Deut 14:11, 18; “four footed” birds and flying insects, Lev 11:20-23.
Photosynthesis: Gen 1:11-19, God created plants on day three of the creation myth and the sun on the fourth day. Those little chloroplasts of plants would take issue with this sequence.
Pollination: Gen 1: 12, 21 God created fruit tree before animals---who were their pollinators; bats, humming birds, bees, moths, and butterflies, where art thou---oh, that’s right, they didn’t show up on the creation scene until the next day.
I could continue with this laundry list of desecrations of biological precepts with such nonsense as virgin birth, talking donkey and snakes, magical trees, etc; however, I hope my expostulation have made it abundantly clear that employing the bible as a heuristic tool, a reference text is irrefutably fatuitous, and God’s science teacher should be handed a pink slip.
My next blog will offer real time evolution for those hard-liner creations: the invisible hand of natural selection on the virulence of the swine flu.