Mass

What does the word, "Mass" really mean? Does it derive from the same words as "Michaelmas" (which is really what we just celebrated in the view of some) which literally means, Michael-sent?

Christmas means Christ-sent, of course; One can argue that we are celebrating the conception of the One Sent, with Michael being just the bearer of the tidings of great joy; but the actual birth may have taken place in September, around the Feast of Trumpets, which could possibly be more appropriate for such a birth.

(See "The Journey of the Magi"--"I should be glad of another death.")

insert Chi Roh here

"No man ever spoke like this man."

Yes, I keep coming back to this observation, esp. when I am tempted to look at the writings of others, including my own, as anything but purest speculation. We write as if driven, yet Christ (Yes, that Christ after which Christ Mass is named) only wrote in the sand. It's surely not because he was an illiterate Galilean peasant--how then could he have argued with all those doctors about the Scriptures? No, he chose to be quoted by us, because as far as any can tell, his words are for us. And, "if God be for us (before us too!!!) who can be against us?"

One can "explain" history by materialism alone; yet is that not like trying to 'splain quantum phenomenae with Newtonian tools,with which materialism only appears to be true on a local human level? It's sure no theory of everything, even though millions have made it so in their own minds, usually to maintain their own less-fettered hedonism.

Yet even so, God wants us, apparently, to be Christian hedonists, i.e. to "enjoy Him forever." The true pleasures, per Mr. Screwtape and Mr Lewis, are His invention, and are inimitable and unsubsumable and have their components of sensate desire, but dominate them in the long run. (See John Piper's "Desiring God".

As to Christmas itself, an odd thing has happened to me on the way to the manger.

As a child, I was dominated by my desires to get stuff--giving was kind of a drag, rather like writing thank you notes for socks and underwear. So mine were Newtonian and Darwinian assumptions: you give, I get--I increase, you decrease! Kind of John the Baptist in reverse.

Since then I have been rather inundated by "Theories of Christmas" from Dickens to the "new" atheists and back to Church again. But as a result, I note that Jesus Himself had no reported words about His birth; a physician, who was apparently also a compulsive writer, gave the most commonly used account. So in deference to a scientist that was there--or thereabouts!--I would tend to accept Luke's version as definitive, "good enough", but not comprehensive--as has been said of the Bible as a whole.

But, strangely enough, it is the many tsunamis of opinion that restore a sense of mystery beyond words. "Why believe him rather than the others?" (Beckett)

Well, that's the point and there's the mystery. The gospels are as good an account as we are going to get. Scholarship will neither add nor detract from any of them. Inconsistencies simply relate to the relative views of man and are one of many reasons why the gaps will be filled in only later, as was the case with Isaiah and all the OT prophets.

Question: what does Jesus think of Christmas? Only the denizens of heaven know, and are informed more fully. "Angels long to look into these things." re: human existence.

Therefore one can only, even logically, say, "This too is a great mystery. I speak concerning the church..." concerning its Brideship. The coming in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which I hope everyone has read--recently(!!!), therefore regains the status of mysterium tremendum simply because the plethora of opinions are all wrong, to greater or lesser degrees. This is the right sort of relativism, rightly applied to our own estate, not God's . And who then can prove otherwise? (seeing as even the revered gold standard of the scientific method and doubly-blinded studies are now suspect--as with the numbers highly specified to maintain our universe, it appears that God has been toying with the science as well--because of scientism, i.e. idolatry?

Well, so much for "Christmas Science!!!" Thanks esp. to Joyce and Dennis and John and Alex for sticking with this sticky wicket of a blog since its inception, and for making it worthwhile and challenging me to rethink my opinions and see and know how relativistic they are. For the records, I see no reason to change what is axiomatic, except the consequences of them surely need fleshing out. And if God deigned to come in the flesh, surely I can be at "present" content with my low estate and poverty of being a carnal and pushy person, and let Christ be in me more and more. Perfection eludeth me, hence the AA saying: "I can't--He can-- so I'd better let Him, eh?"

"REJOICE! AGAIN I SAY IT:RE-JOICE!!!

"oxymoron of the month"

Freeway

Dream as Traum-a Lieder

Didja ever have one of those dreams wherein you're on a wide superhighway approaching a bridge over a river the size of the Mississippi and you start to climb but the road gets narrower and narrower? And the grade becomes steeper and steeper as your car gets smaller and smaller and slower and slower?

I didn't think so. But it ends when you almost get to the top and you realize your car is stuck at the top of a grain bin and your superhighway is a tin tube to a deep dark tank--so you must get tanked! "Every grain of wheat must die".....first....a fitful fearful ferment follows sometimes. Even when I wake to full sunshine...hence this late entry.

The old saying, "yeah, but in the long run, we're all dead," may be be apropos here...since all we see is a tiny fraction of what's over the bridge/tube and we never quite get to the top so that we are once again left with wonder, on the plus side, and dread on the other. Notice how these dreams are almost always cut off just before the most spectacular views and/or the most terrible abysses should appear? Maybe our curiousity IS limited? A bit,a bit...

Define death, then! Doth death, like taxes, evade all formats of relativity? One must assume that either biological death is the end; or it's not. If our deaths are final, as most of the Western world lately seems to assume, then as Gordon Liddy says (yeah that Gordon Liddy--but who would know better than a real burglar?), "we're all just worm food." and life is all sensate satisfaction and avoidance of pain,"full of low sounds and silent fury".

I have gone back to reading Joseph Conrad's short stories, such as "The Lagoon", which with all its brooding may have been a precursor or a postlude to "Heart of Darkness" in which all human aspirations are reduced to one low unlit level which is quickly swallowed up by an omnivorous wilderness, without and within.

"Arsat had not moved. He stood lonely in the searching sunshine; and he looked beyond the great light of a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions." Arsat expects himself to go back to a whole world of enemies to avenge his brother's death and to assuage his guilt for not dying with his brother and having caused that same brother's death as well. "In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike--to strike. But she has died, and ....now...darkness."

You see, Arsat was both a feared warlord and a thief of his king's wife, all thanatos and eros which clearly caused the death of the "secret sharer" long before he would be biologically dead. So, if death can come before death, can it not only come after death as well, what is known as "the second death"?

We cannot assume it does not--at least not from evidentiary methods that we have or are likely to develop. "Unless a man die......"

7777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

I see that the subject of suffering strikes a chord among my couple of readers. I would say, "Oh, good!" like Mrs. Fawlty but that might be disrespectful to those billions who do suffer considerably more than the all the three of us thrown together-- that too would be an assumption based on little or no evidence at all except the bits we have shared together thus far. (Thanks to Joyce and Dennis for being semi-public sharers on this bog of a blog:)

My job, for good or ill, requires me to inure myself to the suffering of others as much as it requires me not to faint at the sight of entrails. It's a thin line between these three at least: detachment, empathy, and unacceptable callousness. If we did not have some inborn interpersonal and societal reflexes, this would be impossible to do. Think of Asperger's. Think of the sociopath. Think of the portait of the artist as a young man-- namely Dorian Gray.

"It's Complicated" (maybe unsubsumable)

As Joyce can tell us, I was what we could kindly call a social "retard" as a young man, with lots of squeamishness but very little "outer directedness" (Riesman); only a very blighted, erroneous self-awareness. But are we to call subsequent developments inevitable, the result of hard work, or the Grace of God? Given every man's "heart of darkness" (I dare not speak for the other half of the human race here) what defense or hope can there be? This judgment too I will leave to others--but I will say that esp, this time of year, I see life far more as a Gift and a call to both Grace-i-tude and Forgiveness-hood of the transcendent kind, than as a blow in the face or the results of my trying to build a giant bridge from Hell to Heaven. "Be content with such as you have."; "be ye kind"; and "be ye thankful" are all simple messages from the same author, which are so simple as to be unnatural and hence only possible with tankfuls of Mercy and Grace.

And a larger car? "In your dreams!"

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 is not great

"Oh Lord woncha buy me a Meeeeercedes Benz............." Applause, pleez.

To blurb is human; to forgive is impossible...

"_______________'s limitless curiosity will engage and enlighten readers..."

From one of multiple blurbs 'o praise from a recent nonfiction release.

What a funny statement--first of all, I will disregard the tedious and by now somewhat meaningless phrase, "engage and enlighten readers." Since this was penned by another published author, it still seems odd that he couldn't take the time to "engage and enlighten" us more than this!

The other phrase, "limitless curiosity" is, as we all know, "just a phrase." Also overused to the point of no meaning. On the other hand, if it is really meant as is, the implications are profound. First, it implies everlasting life as well as attributes that really could only describe a god or goddess. It implies a kind of omnipotence, yet also limitless ignorance as well. So it describes neither a human being nor the idea of God as the West generally defines the term. Pandora had limits--as the gods most quickly showed her! Her curiousity was abruptly curbed and it is hard to imagine how the rest of her life turned out (jes' kiddin'). What is really implied here is a type of paganism in which one cannot really tell much difference between gods and men. Which makes for great tales--all tall, too tall but not tall enough; esp. not to evince sustained sincere belief. Is this what we now call, "truthiness!"?

The art of blurbization is obviously far behind the state of the rest of the "bozarts" (see H.L. Mencken, a well established bigot yet could probably write better blurbs than these.)

I would suggest one postmodernist interpretation of such hypertonic solutions; blurbs represent a kind of circling of the wagons of those who make similar--however unjustified
--assumptions and also unknowingly produce similar self-contradictions and unthoughtful unhelpful mutual praise. It's about power and reinforcing whatever cultural hegemony such authors assume they have-- and sometimes really do have, along with their contributions of considerable talent and hard work. The blurbs are felt to help the sect, if you will; and to re-advertise the blurbers own books and boost what are probably by this time sagging sales.

The other tribes may object...with predictable and possibly internicine "unintended consequences"......

Please read: "THE TRUTH WEARS OFF" by Jonah ! Lehrer TNY 12/13/10

An open letter to The New Yorker

12-17-10

As a practicing scientist/physician, the new and humiliating paradigm shift for science comes as no surprise to me; although I have to congratulate the New Yorker editorial board for their bravery in presenting this data to a world blissfully and willingly unaware of such bleeding-out of our scientific integrity.

The first and most immediate question is the most apparently practical one: who is going to pay for all this? I cannot but think of the horse Boxer in "Animal Farm" who in the face of an obviously failed pig's paradigm simply declared that he must work harder. My guess is that if our studies cannot be few but many to achieve the funnel effect, and must have larger and larger numbers of subjects--then science in which we can have confidence will become rather like much of our medical and consumer technology, i.e. a luxury that increasingly few can afford.

I have seen this effect time and time again in medical practice, not only the effect of entropy on hype, but also a therapeutic law of diminishing returns. The broader question now is, can science be actually and reliably done by mankind? Is, as you rightfully ask, the scientific method flawed to the core? Do we have enough resources to actually do trustworthy science any more? Or are we lacking something else we cannot see or imagine?

At the very least it demonstrates that the source and sustenance of science is culture, not the other way around. The scientific community is the tail, not the dog, in spite of its vaulting ambitions to dominate every field from politics to poetry to philosophy.

It also suggests what many have long suspected, that it isn't just a paradigm shift that defines and redefines the role and methods of science; there is an unsubsumable (to use Walker Percy's phrase) ethic required to do science that is not only transcultural but supracultural. If science as we currently know it is in thrall to the la belle dame sans merci of cultural norms, then the very definition of science becomes a de facto moot point, and we are back to the purely arbitrary. Which is where your excellent article left it, more or less. Good meat for postmodernists and political junkies!

This has implications for TNY itself. In retrospect, TNY has only been around since 1925, and its founder based its unique contribution on the phrase, "I believe in malice." as per your previous article on this subject.

That may be the critic's go-ahead signal, but it is far more than that. TNY would not even be possible without the advent and assumption of scientific materialism. And like Boxer, the horse that knows not what he does, TNY has participated unknowingly in the demise of its own basic paradigm, which is the same essence as Loren Eisley's famous statement, that one must be sure that no mysterious supranatural foot gets in the door. The TNY has been fastidious to a fault in this regard.

The scientific commmunity at large however is far less united on the principle of "materialism-only, forever and ever amen", than are the editorialists of the magazines we generally read--these family feuds in science are something we rarely hear about because we get much of our information from said magazines.

Spiritual beliefs were supposed to die out after Darwin--but studies done at the dawn of the 20th century and repeated recently showed that a steady 40% of scientists in general would not assume that there is no divine principle at work in the world. Under the surface of well- publicized unity of scientism there are enough personal doubts to put the whole scientific enterprise into a larger perspective which sees the scientific method as an occasionally useful tool, in the nature of a hammer or a saw; not as a life-coach or a master over philosophy etc. There are, obviously, many ways of knowing--but virtually always "in part, through a glass dimly"

Is this then,at last, a "Boxer Rebellion"?

Sincerely,

William Schuler M.D. Mendota IL

To eror is human--but not humane!

Cognitive biases that lead to diagnostic erors (oops):

"Anchoring bias; availability bias; confirmation bias; diagnosis momentum; overconfidence bias; premature closure; search-satisfying bias."

It's obviously only by grace that anything gets done in medicine or science at all! Yet the last thing we will acknowledge in these fields is Grace and Mercy! There are salient exceptions, such as the editor of the Journal of the AMA, as I mentioned in the past. Yet her brief acknowledgment may even so be cultural lip service, or a concession to Muslim physicians.

But Flannery was generally correct, even about the 1950's, that the majority settle for "practical atheism" and that "nihilism is the very air we breathe now." (my paraphrase--was she a canary down the gemeinschaft?)

Will computerrors solve our problems with medical errors? Not so long as they are the manufacture of men! If anything they have compounded the problem by the surfeit of more information than we can even sort out, much less handle in any practical sense. Medicine in particular and in practice is in a great reverse; we are using and being compelled to use drugs that are relatively ancient, because they are cheap and because of the current debunking juggernaut/political bias against newer drugs. The new bottom line: if it's new and expensive, it's gotta go. In this case the tail of politics is definitely wagging the dog of science and medicine--which may be nothing new. At bottom, science and medicine are largely products of culture(s) and their goals are almost always those that the given and current social mileu dictates. No where is this more evident that in hospital boardrooms!!!

Time magazine recently paraded out Stephen Hawking who reasserted his basic atheism; one writer's critique was published: "As I see it, the only handicap Hawking has is his inability to recognize a personal God who created the universe. Someone needs to nudge Mr. Hawking on the shoulder and tell him that the realm of God likely begins where physics ends. Trying to explain God's existence from within the confines of physics reminds me of the saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." This brings to mind all the inevitable biases noted above, esp. overconfidence bias and premature closure.

Not that I am fond of the God-of-the-Gaps theory ( or any gap theory for that matter) nor would I rely on such an argument from ignorance, in spite of human ignorance being a true and blatant abyss, which is also relatively devoid of much sense of wonder or thankfulness. Thanklessness and the narcissism from which it springs is not only a universal human bias, it is also frequently a disease that affects adversely every human body part.

The problem with "proving" God's existence is that although there is both a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis to this most basic of all questions, there is no conceivable experimental protocol for something above science from within the small world of pure science.(assuming there is such purity/holiness of science, which is patently doubtful but often used to get grants) Once again, this is not a subsumable entity we are talking about, so when one assumes that the God v no God hypothesis can turn from theory to proven fact,which is stridently trumpeted from the academy, one has to proceed from a huge bias towards materialism--which is precisely what we see in Hawking and Dawkins.

They rule out God by assumption no matter where the data leads. So the "design" hypothesis means absolutely nothing to them, axiomatically and automatically. Once again we see human will and subrational choices--with some attempt to disguise them by PR and shouting loudly on both sides--in the fore, supported by pro and con sensate reactions to current perceptions and biases; but lacking any unspurious methodology.

TNY has an article just out on the problems of experimental science--will comment later