American Heathen®

(The following is a transcript of a segment by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 07/28/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s a reminder that, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times, we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world.

Last Sunday, July 22, but in 1822, Moravian monk and amateur botanist Gregor Mendel was born. It was as Abbott in the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, modern Czech Republic, that Mendel made the first experiments in cross-breeding pea plants, combining botany with his mathematical knowledge to produce predictions about dominant and recessive genetic traits. Mendel’s theories were rediscovered posthumously and by courtesy his name is given to Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance. Popular writers say we Freethinkers forget to mention, among scientists, “Christians whose faith supported them in their scientific endeavors, like Blaise Pascal, Louis Pasteur and Gregor Mendel.” This is a truly bizarre criticism: Pascal was seriously ill all his life and the work on which we judge his religious beliefs (Penseés) was published only after his death. Pasteur was a Rationalist all his life. As for Gregor Mendel, this so-called “devoted monk,” and “great Catholic scientist” is not even claimed by the Catholic Encyclopedia. His biographer, Hugo Iltis gives evidence that Mendel was seriously anti-Christian in his youth and remained skeptical all his life. Mendel wrote an aggressively Rationalist poem two years before entering the monastery – which he entered to get leisure to study!

Last Monday, July 23, but in 1995 Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by Alan Hale and, independently, by Thomas Bopp. A professional astronomer, Alan Hale made his observations in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. It should come as no surprise that Alan Hale is a supporter of Internet Infidels, the publishers of the Secular Web. Agreeing with science writer Carl Sagan, that science is the only useful candle in this dark, demon-haunted world, Hale referenced the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide of comet cult followers when he asked, “How many more Rancho Santa Fes are we going to have before we finally say ‘Enough!’ to ignorance and superstition? How many more of these types of reports are we going to have to listen to before we finally decide that we are going to use the candle of science, and the reasoning skills that we have, to take back the darkness from the ignorance and superstition that is enveloping us?”

Also last Monday, July 23, but in 1989 the English actor known for a 10-year run as the title character in the Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe was born. In 2012, Radcliffe stated, “I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I’m English.” He has also said, “I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation,” and that he is “very proud of being Jewish.” Christian conservatives, already suspicious of the pagan orientation of the Harry Potter books and films, were even more dismayed when, in an interview promoting the 2009 release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Radcliffe said, “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do.”

Last Wednesday, July 25, but in 1368, the foremost surgeon of medieval Europe, Guy de Chauliac, died. He was born in what is now France sometime in 1300, which, among other places, is where he learned to eliminate astrology and mysticism from surgery. He wrote the Chirurgia magna, which was a standard surgical text for three centuries. At Avignon Chauliac was physician to Popes Clement VI, Innocent VI and Urban V, where he treated victims of Bubonic Plague and Pneumonic Plague – and noticed the difference. The underpinning of surgery is, of course, a knowledge of human anatomy. Yet it is this study that the Christian Churches stopped dead in its tracks for a thousand years – until the 16th century. The medieval argument against anatomical study, that “the Church abhors the shedding of blood,” would be laughable if the Churches themselves had not spilled oceans of blood from the bodies of other Christians to enforce orthodoxy. For the most celebrated surgeon in the 14th century, it was chiefly the bull by Pope Boniface VIII (1235-1303), that was interpreted and enforced as a general prohibition against dissection – and that prevented Guy de Chauliac from being a true light in the Dark Ages.

Last Thursday, July 26, but in 1856, the prolific Irish playwright, Nobel Laureate (1925) and social critic George Bernard Shaw was born. A vegetarian who neither smoked nor drank, Shaw saw human society as reformable. It is said that the young Shaw attended a revival service by Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey in Dublin, and in one of his first critical notes wrote, “if this sort of thing is religion, then I am an atheist.” In the Preface to his 1912 play Androcles and the Lion, which runs over 36,000 words and has its own Table of Contents, Shaw commits a thorough dissection of Jesus and Christianity. In it, Shaw says, “The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” In his 1920 play, Heartbreak House, Shaw has the character Ellie say, “We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.” George Bernard Shaw was known to quip, “Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.”

Famous Freethinkers born this week:

July 24: Venezuelan military and political leader Simón Bolívar (1783)

July 27: Italian poet and Nobel Laureate Giosuè Carducci (1835)

July 27: French author and dramatist Alexandre Dumas fils (1834)

July 27: Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1777)

July 28: Austro-British philosopher of science and politics Sir Karl Popper (1902)

July 28: German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig von Feuerbach (1804)

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

(The following is a transcript of a quick comment by contributor John Mill that aired on the AH Radio Show on 07/28/12 )
This is John Mill with a Quick Comment. So now Chick-fil-A has become politicized. If you “Eat Mor Chikin,” as the cows advise, you are homophobic and oppose gay marriage, like Chick-fil-A’s president and CEO Dan Cathy – which sounds like a hermaphrodite name.

Naturally, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are rising to the defense of Chick-fil-A because, as everybody knows, the Christian majority in the U.S. is constantly under attack by the 14% of us seculars. If any of these defenders of God’s will had ever gone to a real school and learned any useful history, they would know that there is nothing novel about going against God’s will. We just call it science, or medicine, or social progress.

Remember when Ben Franklin’s lightning rod was a defiance of god’s will to smite sinners? I’m pretty sure God is “over” that!

Religion says the world and everything in it was created in six days by an entity that somehow created itself; science says the world and everything in it evolved from pre-existing material whose origin is unknown.

Religion says the world is flat; we’ve seen its true contours from space.

Religion says the earth is the center of the universe; science says there is no center of the universe and the universe is infinite and earth is only a dust mote in it.

Religion says weather is caused by their notoriously bipolar deity in response to the moral depravity of his intelligent design; science says weather is caused by physical processes that would occur even without humans – or gay marriage.

Religion says disease is caused by defective faith; science says it’s caused by germs and viruses and spread by bad sanitation.

Religion says insanity is caused by demon possession; science says it’s caused by chemistry.

I don’t patronize the Christian Chicken Store for health reasons, but now I’ve got an even better reason not to go to Chick-fil-A – and I don’t mean just because they donate money to bigoted causes. I avoid Chick-fil-A because I can eat healthier at home. I’m not worried about God’s will: humanity has done better in direct proportion to our violation of God’s will!

(The following commentary is called “Reflections” by John Mill.  John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster.  This series airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show.  Air Date 07/21/12)

The professor interviewing him before a student audience demanded a human moment of TV anchor Will McAvoy. He got one: a five-minute diatribe, laden with statistics, on just why the U.S. is not “the greatest country in the world.” This is John Mill and, the way that explosive philippic is set up in the first episode of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” it seemed as if, after a career of playing it down the middle, creating balance even where none exists, Will McAvoy had reached an epiphany, a sudden realization. When he reached that tipping point there was no going back.

As a point of irreversible change from one state to another, the “tipping point” might have originated in epidemiology to describe when an infectious disease reaches a point beyond any local ability to control it from spreading more widely. As contrasted with a slippery slope, a tipping point is a slippery cliff: you can dance on the edge, but unless you pull back in time, you will inevitably fall.

In business, as described by author Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2000), some examples include the first low-priced fax machine in 1984, which sold slowly until, by 1987, everyone had to have one. The same path was followed by the adoption of cellphones: in the early 1990s few people had them, but by 1998 a tipping point had been reached and nearly everybody had one.

A less trivial example could be human-caused global climate change. Most recently in the June 6 issue of the science journal Nature, authors Anthony D. Barnosky and 21 co-authors “review evidence that the global ecosystem … is approaching a planetary-scale … ‘tipping point’” making it “necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.” In other words, we are soiling our resources so badly even Tide won’t get it out. And since most wars are fought over resources, there will be blood.

In history, there were tipping points that brought about the French Revolution (1848, 1830), the American Revolution (1775–1783), the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Chinese Revolution (1949), the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the Russian Revolution (1917).

What makes the concept of tipping point so dramatic is that the point of inevitable change is often knowable and avoidable. But just as often that the point is only crystal clear in the rear-view mirror, as the car hurtles over the cliff. “Oh, yes,” you find yourself saying – or perhaps something more scatological – “that is where I should have turned back. Oops.”

One thing that was not a tipping point: there is no empirically demonstrable event in history to justify the current tipping point between BC and AD. There are much more important events in history from which to start our calendars – and they don’t rely on mythical men and negative numbers!

You might assume this country is too pluralistic to ever tip toward theocracy. But witness, for example, the resurgence of stupid: anti-vaccination efforts denying the germ theory of disease and leading to rises in curable disease, like whooping cough, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, typhoid, hepatitis, meningitis, pneumonia, influenza, diphtheria and polio. As Dr. Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC’s Immunization Services Division, pointed out, “When you choose not to get a vaccine, you’re not just making a choice for yourself, you’re making a choice for the person sitting next to you.” Incredibly, in the U.S., all but two states (Mississippi and West Virginia) allow parents, for religious reasons, to opt out of otherwise-mandatory vaccinations of their children. Is this a return to disease as demon possession? Germs for Jesus, anyone?

The case for the US heading down the road to theocracy was observed by journalist Bill Moyers in a 2005 essay: “True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals,” Moyers wrote. “It’s the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties. The country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is, and they are driving American politics, using God as a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.”

But that was seven years ago and I’m still not going to church. Maybe there’s not going to be a tipping point because, as I believe, there are still people in this country who care about not just their own freedom but the freedom of their neighbor, as well.

Instead, I think there is a real tipping point in our American future. The wave of tea-bagging that flooded the House of Representatives in 2010, with politicians who see the opposition as not just in error but in sin, might just have undone themselves, as right-wingers often do. The Tea Party has spent its energy on getting members of Congress elected and what has America to show for it? A stagnant economy, with stagnant wages, in which we make nothing, invent nothing, explore nothing, imagine nothing. They talked about jobs, jobs, jobs and legislated abortion, contraception and the protection marriage – an institution that needs protection from heterosexuals!

I believe Americans see all of this. Are Americans about to have an epiphany themselves? We may not anymore be enchanted with Mr. Obama, because the bloom is surely off his rose. But Americans have to see the other guy and his party as the ones who led us to that cliff, that tipping point. Neither party can get elected if they, like Will McAvoy, “speak truth to stupid.” But before we tip over that edge maybe we will take a turn like another fictional newsman, Howard Beale, in the 1976 film Network: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” I know I’m not.

(The following is a transcript of  co-host 2Buck Chuck’s (Dr. Charles A. Doswell III) segment “Leading Horses To Water” which airs on my American Heathen® radio show.  Chuck is a world-renowned scientist in the field of meteorology.  Air date of this particular segment – 07/21/12)

Ancient Greeks began the way of thinking originally known as natural philosophy but which we now call science. Science emerged as we know it during the Renaissance, in an age dominated by fear, superstition, injustice, and brutality. In other words, pretty much like the present. These musings are aimed at explaining how science works, and how science can serve even nonscientists in their efforts to make sense of the world. I can try to explain things but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you wish to drink from these waters.

Last time, I talked about the role of disagreement in science. A while back, someone posted a comment responding to an announcement of our American Heathen show on Facebook. The comment read as follows: “Being I’m not an Atheist-Libertarian what I’m (sic) I going to gain?” [The grammatical error remains unchanged.] My response was

… you will gain a perspective that’s likely to be different from what you want to hear, but if you only listen to what you want to hear, then you learn nothing, but only “confirm” what you think you already know.

All of us are vulnerable to this sort of selective listening. We all make such choices all the time. Virtually by definition, what we want to listen to is what we typically choose to listen to. It seems odd, perhaps, to do otherwise. Why listen to country and western music if you’re not C&W fan? Why tune in a political commentator with whom you disagree strongly on most things? Why go to a basketball game if you’re bored by the game?

In many cases, our choices are driven by our past experience – you tried to listen to C&W but it just didn’t click with you. You listened to the political commentator enough times to know he infuriates you, so why subject yourself to more of that? You’ve attended basketball games, and found you just weren’t into the game. These are choices based on experience, not assumptions. In effect, you’ve collected empirical data, similar to what a scientist would do, and reached a conclusion based on those data.

My advice to the person who commented about the American Heathen posting was based on my assumption that he’d never actually listened to our show and was basing his reaction on no evidence, other than what he might know (or thinks he knows) about our show. It’s quite likely that he indeed would find nothing in our content to make it worth his time, but one never knows without actually listening in. His view of the world might be of the sort that he simply would be angered by our program, as I’m angered every time I listen to Bill O’Reilly on Faux News. I don’t have a problem with disagreement, assuming it remains within reasonable bounds, and harbor no anger toward people with whom I disagree about something. Occasionally, someone with whom I disagree offers some new and interesting argument to challenge my position. I find that experience enjoyable, but do not enjoy hearing the same worn-out non sequitors and flawed logic repeated many times. I like to think that American Heathen offers challenges to our listeners that may represent a new angle they’ve not heard before, or is based on something our listeners might not know.

As a scientist, however, my professional obligation is to pay attention to the arguments and evidence offered by my professional colleagues, even those with whom I’m in strong disagreement over some issue; even when I’ve heard most of their arguments before. We scientists are required to guard against closing our minds to the contributions of others. We need to be careful not to succumb to what is called “confirmation bias” – accepting only evidence that confirms our ideas and challenging anything that disputes our position. The effort to avoid confirmation bias is a habit of scientific practice that translates well into the non-science world. I have no wish to convert everyone on the planet to being scientists – far from it, actually – but I do believe that a conscious effort to listen carefully to ideas we don’t necessarily want to hear is inherently a better way to think than simply to close your mind and shut out everything that you don’t like.

Having an open mind means that some effort to understand the nature of a challenge to your beliefs is necessary. It does not mean you have to cave in at the first challenge! Many arguments in science have their foundations in what is called the consensus within each branch of science, as I talked about last time. This core of agreement makes scientific arguments both possible and worthwhile.

Perhaps I’m being naïve but I suspect our political and religious arguments could do with a heavy dose of scientific standards. Many people I know are pretty much unwilling to be challenged about certain topics, which typically is a strong indicator that they really are not very certain of themselves or the evidentiary basis for their positions. Challenges to such people are distressing for them, because they might eventually be forced to admit that their position is weak or even unjustified. They’re comfortable with their delusions and illusions and prefer not to have them criticized. “Please don’t make me think!” Scientists can’t afford to have that luxury.

Assumptions, beliefs without hard supporting evidence, and dogma are fit to be challenged. If you want to challenge us … bring it on! If you’re not willing to be challenged … shut the fuck up!

Science is not a religion but rather a tool for those who wish to think for themselves about the natural world. Its primary characteristic is its willingness to entertain questions from those who wish to obtain believable answers.

(The following is a transcript of a segment by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 07/21/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s a reminder that, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times, we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world.

Last Monday, July 16, but in 1821, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, Mary Baker Eddy was born. A sickly youth, Eddy studied alternative medicine, alongside the Bible, in search of a mind-body-Bible connection. Prompted by her supposed recovery from a life-threatening accident in 1866 through Biblical insights, in 1875 Eddy published the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This book outlined her faith-healing system, in what she called “Christian Science.” Eddy’s followers reject the germ theory of disease, seeing sickness as the medieval Church did – as an illusion caused by incorrect faith. But Christian Science is both logically and ethically flawed. If you take poison by mistake, say, does that still mean your faith was faulty? Babies get sick: how can their beliefs be incorrect? Animals get sick: is their faith defective, too? What about diseased plants? For adults, faith healing is a free choice, but what of children subjected to prayer over medicine? Christian Science is not science, and may not even be Christian, but it is definitely dangerous.

Also last Monday, July 16, but in 622, by tradition and on the Western calendar, Muhammad’s hegira (or هِجْرَة) occurred – that is, his flight from Mecca to Medina (then called Yathrib) in order to escape persecution and found a community of believers. History shows the event taking place in September 622, but Islam fixes the date A.H. 1 – for “in the year of the hegira” – at the first day of the lunar year in which the hegira took place. Muhammad (محمد) and his followers from Mecca set up a community in Medina for the express purpose of waging war and acquiring booty. Conversions to Islam, most often by threat of the sword, usually followed. This was especially tragic in Muhammad’s treatment of the Jews in Medina and elsewhere. Although he borrowed much of Islam from Judaism, and likely from the Palestinian Samaritans, the Jews simply refused to become Muslim. Muhammad slew them by the thousands. Clearly, it was conquest and loot, more than religion, that was the engine of Islamic progress across Arabia.

Last Tuesday, July 17, but in 1917, the comedienne and actress with the distinctive laugh, Phyllis Diller, was born. Diller got her first national exposure as a contestant on the Groucho Marx game show “You Bet Your Life” around 1950. Diller’s break was being discovered by comedian Bob Hope while performing in a Washington DC nightclub. Part of Diller’s stand-up trademark was mentioning her fictional husband, “Fang.” Diller was interviewed for the November 2001 AIDS magazine A&U, which appeared just months before her retirement announcement. Asked how she visualizes the hereafter, Diller replied, “There isn’t any, you dingbat!” After her famous hacking laugh, Diller continued, “This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can’t buy any of it. … So God made man in His own image? It’s just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. … [I]t’s all about money.”

Also on July 17, but in 1934, actor Donald Sutherland was born. The lanky actor stands 6’4″ and his distinctive voice seems to have been bequeathed to his son, actor Kiefer Sutherland. Sutherland made his Hollywood break in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He played a military misfit in 1967′s Dirty Dozen and came to prominence as Korean War surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in Robert Altman’s 1970 anti-war film, M*A*S*H. Other films include the Jane Fonda thriller Klute (1971) and the popular remake of The Italian Job (2003). During the 13 June 1999 broadcast of “Inside the Actors Studio” on the Bravo channel, the interviewer asked, “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you are at the Pearly Gates?” Sutherland chuckled and replied, “Oh, you know something? I’m so far away from believing that it exists, and the only thing I know are jokes about it.” Pressed to humor the question, Sutherland quipped, “`You’re just in time. We’re casting the film. God has this girl….’”

And on July 17, but in 1943, American singer-songwriter and producer Barry Manilow was born. He is best known for such recordings as “Could It Be Magic” (which samples Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor), “Mandy” and “Can’t Smile Without You.” In the November 18, 1998 issue the UK daily, The Independent, the songwriting hall-of-famer was questioned by readers. One asked, “Do you believe in God?” Manilow quipped, “Yes. His name is Clive Davis, and he’s the head of my record company.” Another reader asked, “How important is your Judaism to you?” Barry Manilow answered, “It isn’t. My humanism is.”

Last Wednesday, July 18, but in 1811, British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was born. Sent to school in England, Thackeray later attended Cambridge, where he lost a poetry contest to an upstart named Alfred Tennyson. Thackeray supported himself by selling sketches until, in 1847, his novel Vanity Fair made his reputation among British novelists. Like John Ruskin and Tennyson, he was a Rationalist, but he did not go out of his way to criticize religion. One of his correspondents preserved a letter in which Thackeray describes a certain preacher as “on the evangelical dodge.” Biographer Herman Merivale, says that Thackeray “seems to have formed no very definite creed”** and biographer Louis Melville quotes him saying: “About my future state I don’t know: I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father.”

Last Thursday, July 19, but in 1649, Edward Winslow (1595-1655), governor of Plymouth Colony – in what is now Massachusetts – helped to organize the Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England. The purpose of the Society was to Christianize the native people of America. Winslow’s band of Separationists had sailed on the Mayflower. Their destination was the New World, where they established their own theocratic settlement at Plymouth in 1620. That first winter saw the deaths of half their 102 intrepid colonists, including Winslow’s wife, but making nice with the heathen residents enabled them to survive past 1621. No doubt they thought they were doing their American Indian friends a favor by Christianizing them. It is characteristic arrogance to suppose that imported superstitions are in any way superior to the home-grown variety, but the Puritans achieved success just as the early Roman Church did: through force and law.

Yesterday, July 20, but in 1910, the Christian Endeavor Society of Missouri began a campaign to ban all motion pictures that depicted kissing between non-relatives. The first couple filmed kissing for the general public was John C Rice and May Irwin in the 1896 film called The Kiss – just as movies were beginning to become a form of mass entertainment. The Christian objection is hard to fathom: kissing in public, especially kissing between men, is not only mentioned but commanded by the Bible. The reticence about kissing between men and women really stems from the early Christian belief that the body and sexuality – especially female sexuality – are evil, an idea Christians borrowed from the Zoroastrians and perhaps the Essenes. As a matter of fact, the Christian battle against public displays of sexuality is far from over: bring on Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney, Lada Gaga and Rihanna!

Today, July 21, but in 1925, a court in the tiny mining town of Dayton, Tennessee, handed down a guilty verdict against 24-year-old high school teacher John T. Scopes for violating the Butler Act (passed earlier that year) – that is, for teaching the theory of evolution in a public school classroom. Everyone knows the principal combatants in the courtroom, but it is not as well known that the case was sought by the American Civil Liberties Union to turn back a string of state laws forbidding the teaching of science rather than religion in science class, but also as a publicity stunt to bring world attention onto Dayton. That part was engineered by Dayton promoter George W. Rappelyea. Through Rappelyea’s persuasion and the backing of ACLU lawyers, including trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, the reluctant Scopes agreed to be defendant. The trial began on July 10, 1925, and the post-World War I Daytonians suffered a media multitude in order to hear their favorite pastor, William Jennings Bryan, defend the faith. In spite of a drubbing by Darrow, Bryan won the case and Scopes was fined $100. The verdict was overturned in early 1927 on a technicality, much to the relief of many in Dayton. Rappelyea’s publicity stunt had succeeded only too well!

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

(Editorial Comment from  host RJ Evans on his American Heathen® radio show – Air Date 07/14/12)

He holds the rattlesnake in his hands, assured of his control over the venomous creature, unwavering in his faith that he will be protected by the spirit of the lord. Although he’s been bitten before, and knows the power of the serpents poison, he’s not afraid. And, even if the creature does strike, it will be the lord’s will. He is at peace. His faith is strong. He sets the serpent on the ground next to him, and within seconds the only thing that stands between his life and his death is the tradition that he was born into. Within a matter of hours, he’s dead. Like his father before him, he followed the tradition, and like his father before him, tradition consumed him.

There are many different varieties of tradition. Some prove to be fatal. Others not. But, what all traditions have in common is self-induced ignorance. Tradition slowly eats away at the human capacity for change and advancement. It is easily identified by the characteristics of laziness, complacency, and beguiled euphoria in the glaciated hands of time.

Arguably the greatest tradition of all is religion, the tradition of worshiping gods, goddesses, plants, animals, practically anything a human being can delude themselves into deifying. Religious tradition gives birth to romantic, utopian ideas, carefully crafted from arcadian notions, precariously supported by a few gingerly hand picked pieces of history that are white washed sparkling clean of historical fact. Tradition removes the context of dirt,filth, and the utter ignorance of our ancestral past, leaving nothing but the squeaky clean perfection of illusion.

Ah yes… “The good ole days!” How many of us have heard those words, or uttered them in a moment of reflection? We have all done it. We have all traveled back in time through our minds eye, remembering small fragments of pleasurable moments in our lives. But, what we fail to remember is the context surrounding those moments. What we fail to acknowledge is how poorly our brains record reality. Whether intentional or not, we sift the wheat from the chaff, and through the process of time and the limitations of our brains, we create a much more palatable history. But, it is about tradition after all, accuracy and reality don’t apply. We’d much rather live in our white washed past as opposed to learn from the reality of the dirt and filth that surrounded it.

Think of Tradition as a ship that floats on an ocean of dung, an abyss of myth, legend, and fantastic tales. It’s tethered to the bottom by the chain of time attached to the anchor of ignorance. Tradition only moves when it is forced to by the winds of change. But, even then, it simply pivots on its chain, never straying from its moor.

How far would our voyage have taken us if not for Tradition, trapped for time eternal on its leaky, miserable, heaving rot of wood? That’s a good question. I have no idea how far we could have traveled across the ocean of dung on the winds of change. The clear waters of progress can be seen on the horizon on a good day. But, we can’t seem to break free from the chain and anchor. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we ever will. But, one thing is certain… those who claim to command the vessel of Tradition are shortening the anchor chain, and are adamant in their efforts to stop anyone who attempts to abandon ship.

Each and every day, our sensibilities are assaulted, our reason dismissed, our inquiry rejected, our ambition muted by the monotony of floating endlessly on Tradition. We were shanghai’d , forced to produce only that which benefits the ignorant self-appointed commander’s dogma. We are a crew of slaves. There is no bounty to be discovered and shared. Science, our bastion ship of human endeavor, a ship that once sailed the seas of progress, has been mothballed, towed deep into a hidden cove, left to wither on a sandbar out of sight, out of mind. The commanders of Tradition have rendered our ambition and exploration sterile. Our only task now is to row through the sea of dung, in endless circles, resisting the winds of change, and to obey under the threat of our master’s lash. Row, row, row to the cadence of stupidity. Row row row through the ocean of dung, going nowhere, by design. Row row row in circles, never ending, torturous, defeating.

Mutiny my friends. Mutiny. Or we will die here. Rowing forever in circles, in an ocean of dung, around the anchor of ignorance. Row, row, row to the death of human progress. Row row row until the serpent from the ocean of dung comes to consume us.