As long as this writer can remember, the general American public has been strongly imbued with the proposition that private sector enterpreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are wicked and evil conniving villains out to defraud an unsuspecting society, while government is comprised exclusively of "good guys in the white hats" who, without any profit motive, will surely keep those satanic private enterpreneurs toeing the straight-and-narrow line. and society-at-large thus benefits from the legendary and proverbial arrow-straight integrity of government.
The Bible says differently: "There is none righteous; no, not one....for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:10-23). President Theodore Roosevelt agreed, by saying, "Under government ownership, corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership." Man never changes his basic moral character, according to whether he works for government or for the private sector. Can leopards ever change their spots? Again, the Bible speaks: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he..." (Proverbs 23:7).
-LKM
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
LKM Brief Autobiography
I, Lawrence Keeney Marsh, entered the world on June 19, 1946. I was born the second child of Dr. Paul Bruce Marsh and Mrs. Ruth Carolyn Keeney Marsh. I was given my middle name after the family name of my maternal grandfather. The first child, my sister, is Susan Jean Marsh (Ellsworth), born March 2, 1943. I was born at James A. Garfield Hospital on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.. This facility has long since been merged into the Washington Hospital Center on Michigan Avenue.
My father was a plant scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my mother was a public schools music teacher. My father was born in Niagara Falls New York on November 21, 1914, and my mother was born in Mallard, Iowa on November 29, 1913. For one year after my birth, we lived in Washington D.C. at 3115 Newton Street N.E. just across the District line from Mt. Ranier, Maryland. Then, our family moved to 9509 50th Avenue in College Park, MD, where we lived until 1957.
I remember my childhood neighborhood well. I knew most of our neighbors, and often played with them. I also remember all of my elementary school teachers, and most--but not all--of my junior- and senior-high school teachers. (See my BLOG article on LKM school days recollections.)
I grew up in a musical family: My father played the clarinet, my mother and sister played the violin, and I played the violoncello, even as I still do until today. I arrived at cello as my instrument of choice by process of elimination: I did attempt to play brass-wind instruments, but gave them up because I was always getting pimples and boils on my mouth which disabled me to play. At age five, I had started to play the piano, but also gave that up because my little hands at the time simply could not make th reaches on the key-board which most music demanded of me. The cello became my instrument of choice because it is physically the most comfortable to play, and has a very pleasing tone quality if played in the hands of expert artists. Still, I wish to this day I had begun to play piano when my hands grew bigger, and had taken lessons on it to play it, side-by-side with cello. On Saturday evenings, we would often gather together as a family to play chamber music together, rather than to watch television. My musical activities, as I recall, made me extremely "culturally incorrect" (as a parallel to "politically incorrect") in the opinion of my contemporary peers, and I remember a sense of chagrin and embarrassment to let them know of my cultural predilections. Nevertheless, I so valued my musical life that I personally did not regret it then and do not regret it now. As a family, we did much over a period of several years, to bring into existence an all Prince George's County High School orchestra, this being largely thanks to my mother's position as a music teacher in the county schools. This genre of music, I felt, and still feel today, is definitely superior in quality to the latest "pop-culture" music. This latter is transient, here today and gone tomorrow; but the names of great Classical music composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and many others who lived between 1700 and 1900 live in immortality. So despite my extreme unpopularity among my peers, I had and still have the cultural better half! Today, I wear my badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with honor and pride. Politically incorrect and proud of it!
I remember well my four excellent cello teachers: William Stokking Jr., John Martin, Leopold Teraspulsky, and Mihaly Virizlay. I recall liking Mr. Teraspulsky the best because he did not smoke, and thus never smoked during my lessons with him. All four were excellent cellists and teachers per se; however, I did find the smoking habit of the other three most disconcerting, as I was raised as a non-smoker, and now the medical community knows it possible to contract smokers' diseases from second-hand exposure to smokers' smoke. I believe at least two of my four former teachers are now dead because of diseases linked to long-term smoking.
Bill Stokking was my teacher from age eight until I entered junior high school. At the time, he played in the Navy band orchestra, later moving on to become principle cellist in the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Sometimes, he would frighten me by telling me at my lessons that unless I played my lessons exactly as he demanded, he was going to "wrap that music stand around my neck". But Dutch-uncle Bill was still a lot of fun, as he often told tall tales in the which he always made himself out to be the hero! Despite his fast temper, he still had a great sense of humor to go with it. Then came my second teacher, John Martin, principle cellist of the National Symphony. He was much more of a gentleman, more easy-going, and I appreciated that! He was my teacher from the start of my junior high school days, until I graduated from high school. To this day, I always remember his immortal comment on my performance at my lessons: "That was nice for a warm-up; now, let's play it!" By that, he meant to say my playing lacked artistic expression, despite it being technically flawless. My third teacher, Leopold Teraspulsky, was at Indiana University Music School. I studied with him only two of the four years I was at Indiana University, and this was a distinctly disappointing experience. I had wanted to study with him for all four of my years at Indiana University, but I withdrew from the Music School after my sophomore year and returned to major in my foreign language studies in the College of Arts and Sciences simply because the Music School was greatly over-crowded and thus it was well-nigh impossible to get time to rehearse in the school practice rooms. All the cello faculty was great, and I felt guilty that I could not give them the practice-time in preparation of my lessons that they truly deserved. I temporarily took a hiatus-break from my cello, but returned to it in 1974, when I studied with my fourth teacher--Mihaly Virizlay--at the George Peabody Music Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This I did until 1980, when tuition for lessons became simply too expensive for my budget. I remember Mr. Virizlay as being an excellent teacher, when he taught! But the point here is that he often ran out on me, skipping out on lessons obligations to me in favor of concertizing in order to glorify and deify his own personal repute. He was one of the most conceited persons I have ever met: if he heard a clap of thunder, he would walk over to the window and take a bow! In all, I had 18 years of formally-structured cello education, and still continue to learn today by listening to CDs of the great cellists of the past to play, as well as to the performances of contemporary cellist colleagues.
Later in 1957, our family moved to Beltsville, and lived at 4203 Wicomico Avenue. I went to Buck Lodge Jr. High School in Adelphi, Maryland in grades 7 and 8, while Beltsville Junior High School, just at the end of our street, was under construction. I transferred to it at the beginning of the 9th grade.
I recall generally hating my years in junior and senior high school, they were sad and demoralizing because the Education Establishment had mandated me to take certain courses, ostensibly "for my own good", on compulsory basis. I also felt socially rejected because for all my gargantuan efforts, I was no good at sports, whereas our society at large glorifies and even deifies its athletes. I strongly felt at the time, especially as a member of the male sex, that being a smash success in sports is the only possible avenue to popularity and social acceptance. Given my failure in that endeavor, and culturally-incorrect involvement in musical endeavors, I sadly wrote off a priori all social life in my teenage years, feeling sure no woman in her right mind would care to be seen in my company. This factor was extremely damaging to my social development, and accounts for the fact that I postponed marriage until age 46, and that to a woman of foreign origin who herself gives no popular assent to the sports world. I do not harbor any ill will against my former class-mates, concerning my "culturally-incorrect" relation to them as a musician: they had no mean-spirited hate of me per se; rather, in their cultural ignorance of my musical endeavors, they just did not "get it". Indeed, the genre of music I play on my cello was never composed for consumption of the masses of common people. Rather, it was meant for the consumption of Europe's upper-crust socio-political elite at the time.
Academically, I always did reasonably well in both high school and college, always on the honor roll--but not at the very top of my class. In addition, while in high school, I was very busy with extra-curricular activities: I ran cross-country and track-and-field. I also took private lessons on my cello and in the Russian language, in addition to playing in the all Prince George's County High School orchestra. In my senior year, in addition to college entrance exams on my high school subjects, I also took the Russian language exam. Out of all my exams, I made the best score on my Russian exam, something which made school teachers and officials angry at me instead of pleased, to see me take academic initiative of my own.
My college years were much happier than my public school years, insofar as I was studying what I wanted to study, rather than what I was forced to study against my will. I will always say that the truly successful teacher is the one who inspires his/her students to continue study of his/her subject long after they leave his/her class-room. That describes my private teachers but a small number of my public school teachers. I went to college at Indiana University from 1964-1968, graduating from there with a B.A. degree in Middle Eastern studies. I also took cello lessons from the university's music school while there. I continued on for an M.A. degree at University of California Los Angeles, from January 1969 until June 1971. For the most part, my college years were much happier than were my junior- and senior high school years because my chosen academic endeavors in college were highly respectable in those institutions: not so in junior and senior high school. I temporarily discontinued my cello studies while at U.C.L.A., but later resumed them after graduation as I continued them at the George Peabody Music School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, 1974-1980. I can truthfully say that my cello has been and still is an invaluable and irreplacable joy of my life. I would not trade the experience for any other riches of this world and this life. My cello is a rare find: made in Cremona, Italy in the year 1684, it is now worth about half the value of my house.
In 1968, our family moved within Beltsville from 4203 Wicomico Avcnue to 11105 Emack Road. When not in college, between academic sessions, I lived with my parents until starting government employment with the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency on June 21, 1976.
In my government career, I served as a geographic names specialist serving two government entities simultaneously: the Defense Mapping Agency and the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Our work was primarily in service to the military, but secondarily was in service throughout the entire civilian government as well: our job is to standardize geographic names and thus end confusion as to their correct spellings, as encountered on various diverse maps and in other geographic publications. I felt greatly honored to serve my country, but found the supervisory managers to be quite demoralizing insofar as they managed the work-force negatively by heavy-handed fear and coercion, rather than positively through inspirational leadership and encouragement. They had not a clue about smooth inter-personal relationships; they were fine managers of information, but were anything but excellent leaders of people. As I review my overall career experience with the government, I would not say it was altogether a failure, there were some good times to be had. The pay and side benefits were also excellent, I had no complaint about those, until after taxes! Overall, I give the thirty-year experience a grade of "C". Perhaps the most demoralizing aspect of the experience was that my individual initiative to make suggestions for improvement in the agency were usually rejected by arrogant self-worshipping managers and agency officials who thought they know everything, and we the peon rank-and-file employees know nothing. Even if ideas were "wrong" in substance, the truly demoralizing rudity was that I was not even thanked for my initiatives and concerns. I was often sternly reprimanded by bosses for having the temerity to think for myself. Little did they understand that citicism of the present status quo is a golden opportunity for improvement in disguise, and we must think not only of ourselves at the present, but of future succeeding generations of workers coming after us.
I married Lidia Bertha Aguilar-Marin from Bolivia in Darnestown at the Poplar Grove Baptist Church on December 19, 1992. We moved into our present home shortly afterwards. Our first and only child, daughter Eva Keeney Marsh, was born to us October 11, 1993, at the Rockville Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. My mother passed into eternity in May of 1993, one day just before Mother's Day. My father did likewise on November 5, 1995, just three weeks shy of his 81st. birthday. It was sad to lose my parents, but it was well for me to start a new chapter of my life. We now live in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Today, I look back on my childhood and teen-age years with some degree of fondness, but admit if I had them to do over now, there are a few things I would not have done. Most notably, I would not have tried to succeed in the sports world. Why waste my time on an endeavor in which I have no talent? Also, I would not have taken certain academic courses, had I had the prerogative in my hand--most notably, math and science courses. To be sure, my teachers of those subjects were extraordinarily nice people, per se! Still, God does not endow all of us with equal physical and mental gifts, or even with equal levels of intellectual acumen. I doubt, too, that my math and science teachers could even have begun to play a musical instrument at the level which I play the cello, nor could they begin to tackle the mastery of a foreign language completely strange to English. In one word, Dr. Know-It-All is simply not out there! Still, it must be the goal of the education establishment to change the attitude of American youth towards education: we want students coming to school because they eagerly want to learn, rather than because they have to learn: school must not be a substitute for prison.
Were I to have time and resources to do so, I could write a book on my life a thousand pages long, recording some very humorous events and others not so humorous. But it stands well worth to say that some school subjects, while a dreadful bore in class at the time, may take on an unexpectedly strong relevance later in adult life. Such is the case of my experience with U.S. History. Today, now that America is re-evaluating itself with much intensity, the topic of America's past history is very interestingly controversial as it never was before. Especially captivating in American life is fascination with the American Civil War experience, it was a defining turning-point in America's history which demands further re-evaluation today.
Finally, I cannot close out this commentary on my past, without appropriate commentary on my view of the future. I am very confident that Americans will always make great advances in science and technologies, but fear a concommitant decline in morality because of unwise applications of new inventions and discoveries. Yes, Satan the devil also loves to go to school! For the future, my largest concern lies also rooted in the past: Will we ever have equal justice under law for all, as the words in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building boast? We have rarely, if ever, had it before. (See my BLOG article, "The U.S. Supreme Court Not So Very Supreme"). To date, some people have enjoyed great liberty at the cost of heavy sacrifice from many others. Tomorrow, when freedom finally rings throughout the land, will both poet and peasant hear it equally? Will they be allowed to do so?
-LKM
My father was a plant scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and my mother was a public schools music teacher. My father was born in Niagara Falls New York on November 21, 1914, and my mother was born in Mallard, Iowa on November 29, 1913. For one year after my birth, we lived in Washington D.C. at 3115 Newton Street N.E. just across the District line from Mt. Ranier, Maryland. Then, our family moved to 9509 50th Avenue in College Park, MD, where we lived until 1957.
I remember my childhood neighborhood well. I knew most of our neighbors, and often played with them. I also remember all of my elementary school teachers, and most--but not all--of my junior- and senior-high school teachers. (See my BLOG article on LKM school days recollections.)
I grew up in a musical family: My father played the clarinet, my mother and sister played the violin, and I played the violoncello, even as I still do until today. I arrived at cello as my instrument of choice by process of elimination: I did attempt to play brass-wind instruments, but gave them up because I was always getting pimples and boils on my mouth which disabled me to play. At age five, I had started to play the piano, but also gave that up because my little hands at the time simply could not make th reaches on the key-board which most music demanded of me. The cello became my instrument of choice because it is physically the most comfortable to play, and has a very pleasing tone quality if played in the hands of expert artists. Still, I wish to this day I had begun to play piano when my hands grew bigger, and had taken lessons on it to play it, side-by-side with cello. On Saturday evenings, we would often gather together as a family to play chamber music together, rather than to watch television. My musical activities, as I recall, made me extremely "culturally incorrect" (as a parallel to "politically incorrect") in the opinion of my contemporary peers, and I remember a sense of chagrin and embarrassment to let them know of my cultural predilections. Nevertheless, I so valued my musical life that I personally did not regret it then and do not regret it now. As a family, we did much over a period of several years, to bring into existence an all Prince George's County High School orchestra, this being largely thanks to my mother's position as a music teacher in the county schools. This genre of music, I felt, and still feel today, is definitely superior in quality to the latest "pop-culture" music. This latter is transient, here today and gone tomorrow; but the names of great Classical music composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and many others who lived between 1700 and 1900 live in immortality. So despite my extreme unpopularity among my peers, I had and still have the cultural better half! Today, I wear my badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with honor and pride. Politically incorrect and proud of it!
I remember well my four excellent cello teachers: William Stokking Jr., John Martin, Leopold Teraspulsky, and Mihaly Virizlay. I recall liking Mr. Teraspulsky the best because he did not smoke, and thus never smoked during my lessons with him. All four were excellent cellists and teachers per se; however, I did find the smoking habit of the other three most disconcerting, as I was raised as a non-smoker, and now the medical community knows it possible to contract smokers' diseases from second-hand exposure to smokers' smoke. I believe at least two of my four former teachers are now dead because of diseases linked to long-term smoking.
Bill Stokking was my teacher from age eight until I entered junior high school. At the time, he played in the Navy band orchestra, later moving on to become principle cellist in the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Sometimes, he would frighten me by telling me at my lessons that unless I played my lessons exactly as he demanded, he was going to "wrap that music stand around my neck". But Dutch-uncle Bill was still a lot of fun, as he often told tall tales in the which he always made himself out to be the hero! Despite his fast temper, he still had a great sense of humor to go with it. Then came my second teacher, John Martin, principle cellist of the National Symphony. He was much more of a gentleman, more easy-going, and I appreciated that! He was my teacher from the start of my junior high school days, until I graduated from high school. To this day, I always remember his immortal comment on my performance at my lessons: "That was nice for a warm-up; now, let's play it!" By that, he meant to say my playing lacked artistic expression, despite it being technically flawless. My third teacher, Leopold Teraspulsky, was at Indiana University Music School. I studied with him only two of the four years I was at Indiana University, and this was a distinctly disappointing experience. I had wanted to study with him for all four of my years at Indiana University, but I withdrew from the Music School after my sophomore year and returned to major in my foreign language studies in the College of Arts and Sciences simply because the Music School was greatly over-crowded and thus it was well-nigh impossible to get time to rehearse in the school practice rooms. All the cello faculty was great, and I felt guilty that I could not give them the practice-time in preparation of my lessons that they truly deserved. I temporarily took a hiatus-break from my cello, but returned to it in 1974, when I studied with my fourth teacher--Mihaly Virizlay--at the George Peabody Music Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This I did until 1980, when tuition for lessons became simply too expensive for my budget. I remember Mr. Virizlay as being an excellent teacher, when he taught! But the point here is that he often ran out on me, skipping out on lessons obligations to me in favor of concertizing in order to glorify and deify his own personal repute. He was one of the most conceited persons I have ever met: if he heard a clap of thunder, he would walk over to the window and take a bow! In all, I had 18 years of formally-structured cello education, and still continue to learn today by listening to CDs of the great cellists of the past to play, as well as to the performances of contemporary cellist colleagues.
Later in 1957, our family moved to Beltsville, and lived at 4203 Wicomico Avenue. I went to Buck Lodge Jr. High School in Adelphi, Maryland in grades 7 and 8, while Beltsville Junior High School, just at the end of our street, was under construction. I transferred to it at the beginning of the 9th grade.
I recall generally hating my years in junior and senior high school, they were sad and demoralizing because the Education Establishment had mandated me to take certain courses, ostensibly "for my own good", on compulsory basis. I also felt socially rejected because for all my gargantuan efforts, I was no good at sports, whereas our society at large glorifies and even deifies its athletes. I strongly felt at the time, especially as a member of the male sex, that being a smash success in sports is the only possible avenue to popularity and social acceptance. Given my failure in that endeavor, and culturally-incorrect involvement in musical endeavors, I sadly wrote off a priori all social life in my teenage years, feeling sure no woman in her right mind would care to be seen in my company. This factor was extremely damaging to my social development, and accounts for the fact that I postponed marriage until age 46, and that to a woman of foreign origin who herself gives no popular assent to the sports world. I do not harbor any ill will against my former class-mates, concerning my "culturally-incorrect" relation to them as a musician: they had no mean-spirited hate of me per se; rather, in their cultural ignorance of my musical endeavors, they just did not "get it". Indeed, the genre of music I play on my cello was never composed for consumption of the masses of common people. Rather, it was meant for the consumption of Europe's upper-crust socio-political elite at the time.
Academically, I always did reasonably well in both high school and college, always on the honor roll--but not at the very top of my class. In addition, while in high school, I was very busy with extra-curricular activities: I ran cross-country and track-and-field. I also took private lessons on my cello and in the Russian language, in addition to playing in the all Prince George's County High School orchestra. In my senior year, in addition to college entrance exams on my high school subjects, I also took the Russian language exam. Out of all my exams, I made the best score on my Russian exam, something which made school teachers and officials angry at me instead of pleased, to see me take academic initiative of my own.
My college years were much happier than my public school years, insofar as I was studying what I wanted to study, rather than what I was forced to study against my will. I will always say that the truly successful teacher is the one who inspires his/her students to continue study of his/her subject long after they leave his/her class-room. That describes my private teachers but a small number of my public school teachers. I went to college at Indiana University from 1964-1968, graduating from there with a B.A. degree in Middle Eastern studies. I also took cello lessons from the university's music school while there. I continued on for an M.A. degree at University of California Los Angeles, from January 1969 until June 1971. For the most part, my college years were much happier than were my junior- and senior high school years because my chosen academic endeavors in college were highly respectable in those institutions: not so in junior and senior high school. I temporarily discontinued my cello studies while at U.C.L.A., but later resumed them after graduation as I continued them at the George Peabody Music School of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, 1974-1980. I can truthfully say that my cello has been and still is an invaluable and irreplacable joy of my life. I would not trade the experience for any other riches of this world and this life. My cello is a rare find: made in Cremona, Italy in the year 1684, it is now worth about half the value of my house.
In 1968, our family moved within Beltsville from 4203 Wicomico Avcnue to 11105 Emack Road. When not in college, between academic sessions, I lived with my parents until starting government employment with the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency on June 21, 1976.
In my government career, I served as a geographic names specialist serving two government entities simultaneously: the Defense Mapping Agency and the U.S. Board of Geographic Names. Our work was primarily in service to the military, but secondarily was in service throughout the entire civilian government as well: our job is to standardize geographic names and thus end confusion as to their correct spellings, as encountered on various diverse maps and in other geographic publications. I felt greatly honored to serve my country, but found the supervisory managers to be quite demoralizing insofar as they managed the work-force negatively by heavy-handed fear and coercion, rather than positively through inspirational leadership and encouragement. They had not a clue about smooth inter-personal relationships; they were fine managers of information, but were anything but excellent leaders of people. As I review my overall career experience with the government, I would not say it was altogether a failure, there were some good times to be had. The pay and side benefits were also excellent, I had no complaint about those, until after taxes! Overall, I give the thirty-year experience a grade of "C". Perhaps the most demoralizing aspect of the experience was that my individual initiative to make suggestions for improvement in the agency were usually rejected by arrogant self-worshipping managers and agency officials who thought they know everything, and we the peon rank-and-file employees know nothing. Even if ideas were "wrong" in substance, the truly demoralizing rudity was that I was not even thanked for my initiatives and concerns. I was often sternly reprimanded by bosses for having the temerity to think for myself. Little did they understand that citicism of the present status quo is a golden opportunity for improvement in disguise, and we must think not only of ourselves at the present, but of future succeeding generations of workers coming after us.
I married Lidia Bertha Aguilar-Marin from Bolivia in Darnestown at the Poplar Grove Baptist Church on December 19, 1992. We moved into our present home shortly afterwards. Our first and only child, daughter Eva Keeney Marsh, was born to us October 11, 1993, at the Rockville Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. My mother passed into eternity in May of 1993, one day just before Mother's Day. My father did likewise on November 5, 1995, just three weeks shy of his 81st. birthday. It was sad to lose my parents, but it was well for me to start a new chapter of my life. We now live in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Today, I look back on my childhood and teen-age years with some degree of fondness, but admit if I had them to do over now, there are a few things I would not have done. Most notably, I would not have tried to succeed in the sports world. Why waste my time on an endeavor in which I have no talent? Also, I would not have taken certain academic courses, had I had the prerogative in my hand--most notably, math and science courses. To be sure, my teachers of those subjects were extraordinarily nice people, per se! Still, God does not endow all of us with equal physical and mental gifts, or even with equal levels of intellectual acumen. I doubt, too, that my math and science teachers could even have begun to play a musical instrument at the level which I play the cello, nor could they begin to tackle the mastery of a foreign language completely strange to English. In one word, Dr. Know-It-All is simply not out there! Still, it must be the goal of the education establishment to change the attitude of American youth towards education: we want students coming to school because they eagerly want to learn, rather than because they have to learn: school must not be a substitute for prison.
Were I to have time and resources to do so, I could write a book on my life a thousand pages long, recording some very humorous events and others not so humorous. But it stands well worth to say that some school subjects, while a dreadful bore in class at the time, may take on an unexpectedly strong relevance later in adult life. Such is the case of my experience with U.S. History. Today, now that America is re-evaluating itself with much intensity, the topic of America's past history is very interestingly controversial as it never was before. Especially captivating in American life is fascination with the American Civil War experience, it was a defining turning-point in America's history which demands further re-evaluation today.
Finally, I cannot close out this commentary on my past, without appropriate commentary on my view of the future. I am very confident that Americans will always make great advances in science and technologies, but fear a concommitant decline in morality because of unwise applications of new inventions and discoveries. Yes, Satan the devil also loves to go to school! For the future, my largest concern lies also rooted in the past: Will we ever have equal justice under law for all, as the words in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building boast? We have rarely, if ever, had it before. (See my BLOG article, "The U.S. Supreme Court Not So Very Supreme"). To date, some people have enjoyed great liberty at the cost of heavy sacrifice from many others. Tomorrow, when freedom finally rings throughout the land, will both poet and peasant hear it equally? Will they be allowed to do so?
-LKM
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
LKM School Days Recollections
I have always been a friend and strong advocate of education. I grew up in the home of a PhD summa cum laude father from Cornell University, and a Prince George's County Public Schools music teacher mother, graduated from Drake University and student of violin at Eastman School of Music. However, this by no means intends to say I have no disapproval of certain school policies I experienced while in public school, grades 1-12. Often, trouble can also spell opportunity, and so this essay is mostly based on inspiration for education improvement opportunity. Some fond personal incidents and events will be recounted, however!
I remember by name every one of my elementary school teachers, and most(but not all) of my junior high and high school teachers. It is reasonable to presume that these have all moved to the world of the great beyond by now. Hence, I will refer to them by name without trepidation or misgivings, while also refraining from mentioning any former school classmates by name, out of respect for the on-going repute of the living.
My parents had taught me to read, write and do basic arithmetic early-on. Hence during my first and second-grade years, I spent some class-time in the hall-way, teaching these skills to a slower-learning friend and class-mate. While this gesture was virtuous in itself, I should have spent that time on subject areas where I myself was weak, most notably in mathematics.
I recall my first grade books: Reading For Meaning, and Tip and Mitten(the saga of a dog and a cat). One story I recall was of a boy who put his dog on top of his head and shoulders, and covered the dog up to its neck with his coat. To this day, his ostensible reason for doing this still escapes me. But in any event, when the boy removed the coat and released the dog to its freedom, the boy had dog-excrement all over his head! Boy, did I think that to be hilarious!
My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Guest, was a real pill: she was an embarrassment to some students. One day, while students were eating lunch in the school cafeteria, the relative quiet of the occasion was suddenly pierced with a loud shriek of her voice, as she frantically rang a desk-bell on the table. Pointing to one of the students, she shouted, "STOP EVERYBODY, STOP! THIS BOAH(BOY) IS EATING HIS PEACH LIKE AN UMBRELLA!" She went on to demonstrate in detail how that hapless little boy was just enjoying eating his peach in a manner strongly-contrary to her approbation. "What's the big deal here?", I thought to myself. In the end, the dunce of the day was Mrs. Guest, rather than the boy.
In fourth grade, I had Mrs. Ruth Howard for a teacher. I remember little of that year, except that I actually drew a picture of a night-time street scene which drew much praise from her. this was surprising because I generally suck at art.
Then in fifth grade, I transferred from Berwyn Elementary School to Hollywood Elementary School. One week-end day, I and a classmate friend decided to be adventurous(boys will be boys), and so we dug up the temerity to climb up onto the school building roof and look around! Fortunately, we came back down and no harm was done. Still, a few days later, the school principal, a Mr. Parker, found out about our little "Mission Impossible" and called us to his office to tell us on no uncertain terms that he took strong exception to it. He was visibly shaken by the incident. So, we did not repeat our bravado, and, as in years past, I continued to be a very good student otherwise.
In sixth grade, our family moved to Beltsville, and again I transferred to Beltsville Elementary School. There, my teacher was a Mr. Charles Harpole, whom I fondly remember for all his stories to the class about his adventures in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. For the most part, I was an excellent student there. But once again, I was a little bit naughty--boys will be boys! I just loved airplanes, and was reading a book about them which I found in our classr0om. One day, Mr. Harpole asked the class for the book: had anybody seen it? He said he needed it for reference at some conference he would attend. I had the book in my desk, but did not say peep one about it: I just loved those airplanes too much, and I was to be damned, if I would return the book to my teacher! A few days later, I was absent from school. Upon my return, I learned that Mr. Harpole had found the book in my desk in my absence! "Do you remember my asking for it?", he asked me. I must confess to lying: I told him yes, I remembered, but had located the book myself a couple of days after he asked for it(lie!). So in sixth grade, I was 95% virtuous, but not 100% so: I just loved those airplanes! I collected and assembled many plastic model airplane models at home.
Then came junior high school years. I do not recall too many momentous events of those years, but one bit of humor came from my seventh-grade science class. Another student wrote on an exam: "The sensory nerve is the nerve that senses, and the motor nerve is the nerve that motors." Brilliant! My first two years of junior high school were at Buck Lodge Junior High School in Adelphi, with the third being at the newly-constructed Beltsville Junior High School. I recall meeting a very outstanding music teacher at Buck Lodge by the name of Leonard Moses. You could give him any three notes, and from there, he could improvise at the piano a theme based on those notes after the structural styles from Vivaldi, Corelli and Palestrina, all the way to Elvis and the Kingston Trio, with Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin in between. WOW!
I also remember well my physical education teacher, Mr. Kenneth Hildreth. He had previously been in the Navy. He was a short fellow--5'6" or 5'7"--but he was very muscular, built like an Army tank, and you did not mess with him unless you are Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He taught us human anatomy for a while. I remember he taught us that the human heart is the strongest muscle in the body: if all its energy could be harnessed to some sort of lifting machine, the machine could lift ten(!) tractor-trailer trucks one foot off the ground! I will always remember a true-false exam he gave us: every statement he made therein on the exam is true! I missed two questions I marked "false". No other teacher of mine has ever done that, before or since! But I got an "A" grade from him for the course.
Social life was very difficult for me in my teen-age years, largely sad and miserable. Academically, I did reasonably well, always an honor-roll student. Still, I was a social reject. I had started to take music lessons on the violoncello at age eight, and started trumpet soon after. I did not mind telling my classmates I play trumpet: this is a band instrument, and bands are associated with football games. Thus, playing trumpet was and is "culturally correct". But cello? "Culturally incorrect" as per American culture. I recall feeling a sense of chagrin and embarrassment at the time, to tell my classmates I play cello. To be sure, I greatly enjoyed it personally and still play it today. But in my adolescent days, a teen-ager playing Classical music on cello was seen by my classmates as being as odd as a fish trying to walk on land. Most had--and probably still do not have--the first idea what the cello is all about. FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
While at High Point High School, I made gargantuan efforts to excel at sports; but alas and alack, I was not made of the right stuff to do so, and sucked at them. Then, as now, sports athletes in our society are so deified that success or failure at this sacred endeavor is the defining criterion--at least for men--for acceptability into or rejection from society. Because I was a royal flunk-out at sports, I distinctly recall great chagrin and reluctance to socialize with my contemporaries, especially with the opposite sex. What woman in her right mind wants for her male consort a guy who plays cello instead of football? My years were sad at High Point High School because I was not honored and respected for the talents I did and do have. I was first-chair principal cellist in the all-Prince George's County high school orchestra for three years, but without any honor for it from the school administration: FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
The High Point High School experience was not altogether somber and dark, though. The senior P.O.D. civics class with Donald Horner as our teacher was a blast, as we often discussed current public affairs. I remember doing for that class a statement made by an educator: "Facts wear out, skills obsolesce. So, what is the use of learning anything? Nothing, except the art of learning how to learn." I disagreed with that statement, citing the on-going value of learning and knowing foreign languages. They do not obsolesce so quickly within one or two generations so as to be no longer good after that. Then, our tenth-grade biology class was also great. Mr. Ronald Neafy, our teacher, was first-rate excellent! But I had troubles with chemistry and higher mathematics. My teachers--Paul Boston and Belva Hopkins--were just some of the nicest and most congenial of people I could hope to meet. Still, that part of my brain geared to math and sciences was woefully under-developed. I just could not "hack" those subjects! Still, my overall academic record in both junior high school and high school was always of honor-roll caliber. My sadness was definitely not caused by academic failure: rather, it was caused by 1)lack of academic freedom, i.e. compulsion to study course subjects contrary to my personal wishes, ostensibly "for my own good"; and, 2)I was a total failure in sports, and not socially acceptable for my musical endeavors. I was--and still am today--"culturally incorrect". I had grown up in a very musical family. and for that reason, I was the "white crow" among my classmates. At the time, I felt like an object of ridicule, a total social outcast. Today, however, the general public is getting pretty weary and disgusted with this doctrine of "political correctness". Hence, I now wear the badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with great pride.
I was glad to graduate from high school, and go on to college--first, at Indiana University(B.A.), and then at University of California Los Angeles(M.A.). There, I would have much more academic freedom than in high school. I did not always get the best grades I hoped for; still, I was much happier in college, pursuing academic endeavors I wanted to study, instead of putting my heart on "hold" to study something some education bureaucrat told me I must study. Also, at last, my musical endeavors were respectable at Indiana University. Football was still important there, but at least, I no longer had to feel any chagrin about playing the cello at Indiana University.
Finally, the story about Larry's revenge! I took private lessons in the Russian language for two years while in high school. In my senior year, when taking college entrance exams, I took the Russian language exam along with several others. I made my highest score of all on that Russian language exam, thus successfully thumbing my nose at all I had studied in public schools for twelve years!
A few of my former high school classmates likewise pursued greatly successful careers competely independently of anything they learned in twelve years of public schooling. Today, I feel it is a crime, for the education establishment to require specially-gifted students to put their hearts on "hold" while studying topics they have neither the talent nor the interest to study. "No child left behind" also sounds like "no child can get ahead" to me. School curriculae priorities are mandated according to the lowest common denominator, and so I begin to appreciate the true meaning of Ayn Rand's controversial book, The Virtue of Selfishness.
My hope for the future of education in America is that public schools will be operated much like colleges and universities, granting much more academic freedom than before. We want in our schools enthusiastic students eager to learn, rather than bored students finding it drudgery to learn. But judging by the low turn-out at our 45th anniversary high school reunion--just 12% of the former class--I gather most of our classmates prefer to forget those years of 45+ years ago, and just move on. My prayer is that this tragedy can be reversed by education reforms resulting in far more highly-cherishable class reunions of future generations.
There is dispute and debate between the merits and demerits of a "well-rounded" education versus high specialization in one subject. I see both virtue and vice in both choices. But in the final analysis, whether I be intellectually "rounded", "squared" or "triangular" is my business, not that of government. And even if we make mistakes in life, it is far better that we make them, than that government make them for us!
-LKM
I remember by name every one of my elementary school teachers, and most(but not all) of my junior high and high school teachers. It is reasonable to presume that these have all moved to the world of the great beyond by now. Hence, I will refer to them by name without trepidation or misgivings, while also refraining from mentioning any former school classmates by name, out of respect for the on-going repute of the living.
My parents had taught me to read, write and do basic arithmetic early-on. Hence during my first and second-grade years, I spent some class-time in the hall-way, teaching these skills to a slower-learning friend and class-mate. While this gesture was virtuous in itself, I should have spent that time on subject areas where I myself was weak, most notably in mathematics.
I recall my first grade books: Reading For Meaning, and Tip and Mitten(the saga of a dog and a cat). One story I recall was of a boy who put his dog on top of his head and shoulders, and covered the dog up to its neck with his coat. To this day, his ostensible reason for doing this still escapes me. But in any event, when the boy removed the coat and released the dog to its freedom, the boy had dog-excrement all over his head! Boy, did I think that to be hilarious!
My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Guest, was a real pill: she was an embarrassment to some students. One day, while students were eating lunch in the school cafeteria, the relative quiet of the occasion was suddenly pierced with a loud shriek of her voice, as she frantically rang a desk-bell on the table. Pointing to one of the students, she shouted, "STOP EVERYBODY, STOP! THIS BOAH(BOY) IS EATING HIS PEACH LIKE AN UMBRELLA!" She went on to demonstrate in detail how that hapless little boy was just enjoying eating his peach in a manner strongly-contrary to her approbation. "What's the big deal here?", I thought to myself. In the end, the dunce of the day was Mrs. Guest, rather than the boy.
In fourth grade, I had Mrs. Ruth Howard for a teacher. I remember little of that year, except that I actually drew a picture of a night-time street scene which drew much praise from her. this was surprising because I generally suck at art.
Then in fifth grade, I transferred from Berwyn Elementary School to Hollywood Elementary School. One week-end day, I and a classmate friend decided to be adventurous(boys will be boys), and so we dug up the temerity to climb up onto the school building roof and look around! Fortunately, we came back down and no harm was done. Still, a few days later, the school principal, a Mr. Parker, found out about our little "Mission Impossible" and called us to his office to tell us on no uncertain terms that he took strong exception to it. He was visibly shaken by the incident. So, we did not repeat our bravado, and, as in years past, I continued to be a very good student otherwise.
In sixth grade, our family moved to Beltsville, and again I transferred to Beltsville Elementary School. There, my teacher was a Mr. Charles Harpole, whom I fondly remember for all his stories to the class about his adventures in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. For the most part, I was an excellent student there. But once again, I was a little bit naughty--boys will be boys! I just loved airplanes, and was reading a book about them which I found in our classr0om. One day, Mr. Harpole asked the class for the book: had anybody seen it? He said he needed it for reference at some conference he would attend. I had the book in my desk, but did not say peep one about it: I just loved those airplanes too much, and I was to be damned, if I would return the book to my teacher! A few days later, I was absent from school. Upon my return, I learned that Mr. Harpole had found the book in my desk in my absence! "Do you remember my asking for it?", he asked me. I must confess to lying: I told him yes, I remembered, but had located the book myself a couple of days after he asked for it(lie!). So in sixth grade, I was 95% virtuous, but not 100% so: I just loved those airplanes! I collected and assembled many plastic model airplane models at home.
Then came junior high school years. I do not recall too many momentous events of those years, but one bit of humor came from my seventh-grade science class. Another student wrote on an exam: "The sensory nerve is the nerve that senses, and the motor nerve is the nerve that motors." Brilliant! My first two years of junior high school were at Buck Lodge Junior High School in Adelphi, with the third being at the newly-constructed Beltsville Junior High School. I recall meeting a very outstanding music teacher at Buck Lodge by the name of Leonard Moses. You could give him any three notes, and from there, he could improvise at the piano a theme based on those notes after the structural styles from Vivaldi, Corelli and Palestrina, all the way to Elvis and the Kingston Trio, with Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin in between. WOW!
I also remember well my physical education teacher, Mr. Kenneth Hildreth. He had previously been in the Navy. He was a short fellow--5'6" or 5'7"--but he was very muscular, built like an Army tank, and you did not mess with him unless you are Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He taught us human anatomy for a while. I remember he taught us that the human heart is the strongest muscle in the body: if all its energy could be harnessed to some sort of lifting machine, the machine could lift ten(!) tractor-trailer trucks one foot off the ground! I will always remember a true-false exam he gave us: every statement he made therein on the exam is true! I missed two questions I marked "false". No other teacher of mine has ever done that, before or since! But I got an "A" grade from him for the course.
Social life was very difficult for me in my teen-age years, largely sad and miserable. Academically, I did reasonably well, always an honor-roll student. Still, I was a social reject. I had started to take music lessons on the violoncello at age eight, and started trumpet soon after. I did not mind telling my classmates I play trumpet: this is a band instrument, and bands are associated with football games. Thus, playing trumpet was and is "culturally correct". But cello? "Culturally incorrect" as per American culture. I recall feeling a sense of chagrin and embarrassment at the time, to tell my classmates I play cello. To be sure, I greatly enjoyed it personally and still play it today. But in my adolescent days, a teen-ager playing Classical music on cello was seen by my classmates as being as odd as a fish trying to walk on land. Most had--and probably still do not have--the first idea what the cello is all about. FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
While at High Point High School, I made gargantuan efforts to excel at sports; but alas and alack, I was not made of the right stuff to do so, and sucked at them. Then, as now, sports athletes in our society are so deified that success or failure at this sacred endeavor is the defining criterion--at least for men--for acceptability into or rejection from society. Because I was a royal flunk-out at sports, I distinctly recall great chagrin and reluctance to socialize with my contemporaries, especially with the opposite sex. What woman in her right mind wants for her male consort a guy who plays cello instead of football? My years were sad at High Point High School because I was not honored and respected for the talents I did and do have. I was first-chair principal cellist in the all-Prince George's County high school orchestra for three years, but without any honor for it from the school administration: FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
The High Point High School experience was not altogether somber and dark, though. The senior P.O.D. civics class with Donald Horner as our teacher was a blast, as we often discussed current public affairs. I remember doing for that class a statement made by an educator: "Facts wear out, skills obsolesce. So, what is the use of learning anything? Nothing, except the art of learning how to learn." I disagreed with that statement, citing the on-going value of learning and knowing foreign languages. They do not obsolesce so quickly within one or two generations so as to be no longer good after that. Then, our tenth-grade biology class was also great. Mr. Ronald Neafy, our teacher, was first-rate excellent! But I had troubles with chemistry and higher mathematics. My teachers--Paul Boston and Belva Hopkins--were just some of the nicest and most congenial of people I could hope to meet. Still, that part of my brain geared to math and sciences was woefully under-developed. I just could not "hack" those subjects! Still, my overall academic record in both junior high school and high school was always of honor-roll caliber. My sadness was definitely not caused by academic failure: rather, it was caused by 1)lack of academic freedom, i.e. compulsion to study course subjects contrary to my personal wishes, ostensibly "for my own good"; and, 2)I was a total failure in sports, and not socially acceptable for my musical endeavors. I was--and still am today--"culturally incorrect". I had grown up in a very musical family. and for that reason, I was the "white crow" among my classmates. At the time, I felt like an object of ridicule, a total social outcast. Today, however, the general public is getting pretty weary and disgusted with this doctrine of "political correctness". Hence, I now wear the badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with great pride.
I was glad to graduate from high school, and go on to college--first, at Indiana University(B.A.), and then at University of California Los Angeles(M.A.). There, I would have much more academic freedom than in high school. I did not always get the best grades I hoped for; still, I was much happier in college, pursuing academic endeavors I wanted to study, instead of putting my heart on "hold" to study something some education bureaucrat told me I must study. Also, at last, my musical endeavors were respectable at Indiana University. Football was still important there, but at least, I no longer had to feel any chagrin about playing the cello at Indiana University.
Finally, the story about Larry's revenge! I took private lessons in the Russian language for two years while in high school. In my senior year, when taking college entrance exams, I took the Russian language exam along with several others. I made my highest score of all on that Russian language exam, thus successfully thumbing my nose at all I had studied in public schools for twelve years!
A few of my former high school classmates likewise pursued greatly successful careers competely independently of anything they learned in twelve years of public schooling. Today, I feel it is a crime, for the education establishment to require specially-gifted students to put their hearts on "hold" while studying topics they have neither the talent nor the interest to study. "No child left behind" also sounds like "no child can get ahead" to me. School curriculae priorities are mandated according to the lowest common denominator, and so I begin to appreciate the true meaning of Ayn Rand's controversial book, The Virtue of Selfishness.
My hope for the future of education in America is that public schools will be operated much like colleges and universities, granting much more academic freedom than before. We want in our schools enthusiastic students eager to learn, rather than bored students finding it drudgery to learn. But judging by the low turn-out at our 45th anniversary high school reunion--just 12% of the former class--I gather most of our classmates prefer to forget those years of 45+ years ago, and just move on. My prayer is that this tragedy can be reversed by education reforms resulting in far more highly-cherishable class reunions of future generations.
There is dispute and debate between the merits and demerits of a "well-rounded" education versus high specialization in one subject. I see both virtue and vice in both choices. But in the final analysis, whether I be intellectually "rounded", "squared" or "triangular" is my business, not that of government. And even if we make mistakes in life, it is far better that we make them, than that government make them for us!
-LKM
LKM On Money
Money is still our universal king, even if sex is the crown prince. Money is an all-consuming focus of our attention in all human affairs, and nothing happens without money in the picture somewhere.
How does money relate to religion? The Bible New Testament mandates Christian believers to understand themselves as being not owners of money, but merely its stewards. Money, says the Bible, must be used to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and not to be consumed on personal carnal lusts: war and contentions among men result from the latter behaviour. Luke 12:43-48, 18:18-25, and James 4:1-3. The Lord requires of each Bible believer a measure of financial accountability concommitant with the extent of his or her financial blessing: "..to whom little is given, little is required, and to whom much is given, much is required.." The religion of Islam condemns usury, i.e. taking undue and exploitive advantage of those needing to borrow money. Judaism sees money as a ladder to heaven, saying few, if any, good works on earth are possible without money. Indeed, Christianity also has a long historic record of building academic institutions and hospitals, and rest assured these tasks were not accomplished for free! But money could also be a ladder to hell, if used for ungodly, diabolical purposes. Even so, the famous Bible New Testament parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14-30) agrees with the Judaic view of money, so long as its use is for cause of advancing the Lord's kingdom. Indeed, Jesus Christ said the unprofitable servant is to be cast out and rejected.
What of the conflict between capitalism and Communism? Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was descended from a long ancestry of Jewish rabbis. Some of his complaints about the social impact of capitalism are also shared by the Bible, e.g. capitalism makes a virtue out of greed, it destroys all human inter-personal abstract values and replaces them with shameless cash value, it leads to militarism and global imperialism, private property-owners are exploiters of working-class people, and, in the end, it digs its own grave through business failures and mergers, until monopoly is accomplished. This process, said Marx, is the historically inevitable evolution from capitalism to socialism and finally Communism. The Bible goes further, to record in Ezekiel 7:19 that in the Day Of The Wrath Of The Lord, men will throw their gold and silver in the streets as useless to the satisfaction of their needs and greeds, because "it is the stumbling block of their iniquity".
Still, the Bible does not advocate Communism, as once claimed by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his hey-day of the early 1950s. Jesus Christ did advocate sharing of one's riches with the less fortunate, but on voluntary basis motivated by love for both God and man. Whereas, Karl Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Jesus Christ said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the need of others". Communism proposes to solve the enigma of human greed by forcible confiscation of all private property from individuals by the government. The Bible, by contrast, proclaims that God loves a cheerful giver. II Corinthians 5:7. The Bible advocates private property, as seen in the Decalogue commandments of THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S POSSESSIONS.
As long as capitalism is based on voluntary exchange of goods and services without government intervention of any kind, the consumer is king in the free and open market-place, while Communism is largely discredited and doomed to the trash-heap of history. Economic Communism and socio-political free democracy simply will not cooperate to mutual benefit. Either we will freely decide for ourselves, or government will decide for us, and rob us of the capacity to decide for ourselves.
Who or what decides the purchasing power of the dollar? Most people today would point to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and to other financial institutions. But surprise! It is the heart and spirit of the individual person, who decides how many dollars he or she must receive in exchange for a product or service. This decision, in turn, is based on ability and willingness do distinguish between need and greed: how high-off-the-hog do people think they "need" to live? But the answser to this question necessarily includes potential capacity to bless and benefit other people, as well as one's self. It is great for us to have money, so long as money does not have us!
-LKM
How does money relate to religion? The Bible New Testament mandates Christian believers to understand themselves as being not owners of money, but merely its stewards. Money, says the Bible, must be used to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and not to be consumed on personal carnal lusts: war and contentions among men result from the latter behaviour. Luke 12:43-48, 18:18-25, and James 4:1-3. The Lord requires of each Bible believer a measure of financial accountability concommitant with the extent of his or her financial blessing: "..to whom little is given, little is required, and to whom much is given, much is required.." The religion of Islam condemns usury, i.e. taking undue and exploitive advantage of those needing to borrow money. Judaism sees money as a ladder to heaven, saying few, if any, good works on earth are possible without money. Indeed, Christianity also has a long historic record of building academic institutions and hospitals, and rest assured these tasks were not accomplished for free! But money could also be a ladder to hell, if used for ungodly, diabolical purposes. Even so, the famous Bible New Testament parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14-30) agrees with the Judaic view of money, so long as its use is for cause of advancing the Lord's kingdom. Indeed, Jesus Christ said the unprofitable servant is to be cast out and rejected.
What of the conflict between capitalism and Communism? Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was descended from a long ancestry of Jewish rabbis. Some of his complaints about the social impact of capitalism are also shared by the Bible, e.g. capitalism makes a virtue out of greed, it destroys all human inter-personal abstract values and replaces them with shameless cash value, it leads to militarism and global imperialism, private property-owners are exploiters of working-class people, and, in the end, it digs its own grave through business failures and mergers, until monopoly is accomplished. This process, said Marx, is the historically inevitable evolution from capitalism to socialism and finally Communism. The Bible goes further, to record in Ezekiel 7:19 that in the Day Of The Wrath Of The Lord, men will throw their gold and silver in the streets as useless to the satisfaction of their needs and greeds, because "it is the stumbling block of their iniquity".
Still, the Bible does not advocate Communism, as once claimed by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his hey-day of the early 1950s. Jesus Christ did advocate sharing of one's riches with the less fortunate, but on voluntary basis motivated by love for both God and man. Whereas, Karl Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Jesus Christ said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the need of others". Communism proposes to solve the enigma of human greed by forcible confiscation of all private property from individuals by the government. The Bible, by contrast, proclaims that God loves a cheerful giver. II Corinthians 5:7. The Bible advocates private property, as seen in the Decalogue commandments of THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S POSSESSIONS.
As long as capitalism is based on voluntary exchange of goods and services without government intervention of any kind, the consumer is king in the free and open market-place, while Communism is largely discredited and doomed to the trash-heap of history. Economic Communism and socio-political free democracy simply will not cooperate to mutual benefit. Either we will freely decide for ourselves, or government will decide for us, and rob us of the capacity to decide for ourselves.
Who or what decides the purchasing power of the dollar? Most people today would point to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and to other financial institutions. But surprise! It is the heart and spirit of the individual person, who decides how many dollars he or she must receive in exchange for a product or service. This decision, in turn, is based on ability and willingness do distinguish between need and greed: how high-off-the-hog do people think they "need" to live? But the answser to this question necessarily includes potential capacity to bless and benefit other people, as well as one's self. It is great for us to have money, so long as money does not have us!
-LKM
Monday, June 28, 2010
That "Dirty" Four-Letter L-Word
Some words in the English language have always invoked strong social disapprobation among the more elegant and cultured among us, e.g. the "f"-word, the "s"-word, used by those persons of the common plebian classes. Other words, once used in earlier times with universal innocence, now have joined the ranks of understood obscenity. The four-letter word love is such a highly-controversial word in circulation today. It has been widely tossed about in society, to signify many varied notions. Thanks mainly to Hollywood and other popular entertainment media, this word love in recent decades has become synonymous with sexual lust, debauchery, lechery, and ruination of virginal innocence. Satisfaction of perverse carnal self-desire has replaced altruistic and sacrificial devotion to the welfare of other fellow human beings, usually segued by an eventual dumping of the objects of one's lasciviousness onto a personal trash-heap of history. A word which once signified the highest and most noble of social approbation has been perverted into a depriviledging of human life to the final extreme. Today, unlike in the generations of an idyllic past, most people lack the temerity to overtly declare their amorous sentiments to other persons, lest mutual understanding of ulterior sexploitive intent be presently extant.
What now do to? Is restoration of a new American Golden Age of Innocence still possible? Or are truly tender-hearted American patriots to believe the Bible's warning, that only The Second Coming, bearing the heavenly message IN HOC SIGNET VINCES will rescue humanity from its present moral mess?
True love signifies a valuing of one's fellow man, for some reason. What, then, to value in man? Physical strength, great monetary wealth, socio-political prestige, sexual attraction and symmetric beauty of external corporeal appearance are often cited as ideal human values. But in God's eternal scheme of things, such values, so typical of the flower of youth, are of light and transcient cause: few of us having these traits at age of 20 years still have them at age of 80 years. Will love still endure, despite degeneration of these very temporary values?
True love, then. seeks foundation and root in the soil of God's eternity, encumbered by values incorruptible by the passage of time.
-LKM
What now do to? Is restoration of a new American Golden Age of Innocence still possible? Or are truly tender-hearted American patriots to believe the Bible's warning, that only The Second Coming, bearing the heavenly message IN HOC SIGNET VINCES will rescue humanity from its present moral mess?
True love signifies a valuing of one's fellow man, for some reason. What, then, to value in man? Physical strength, great monetary wealth, socio-political prestige, sexual attraction and symmetric beauty of external corporeal appearance are often cited as ideal human values. But in God's eternal scheme of things, such values, so typical of the flower of youth, are of light and transcient cause: few of us having these traits at age of 20 years still have them at age of 80 years. Will love still endure, despite degeneration of these very temporary values?
True love, then. seeks foundation and root in the soil of God's eternity, encumbered by values incorruptible by the passage of time.
-LKM
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
LKM On God, Israel and The Jews
Reference is made to Bible scriptures I Samuel 16:7 and Romans 2:25-29.
The nation of Israel is unique in the world, in that it was given by God to a people on the basis of a conditional divine contract. When one party to a contract declines to honor their obligations to it, the other party is also free to discontinue their obligation to it as well. What does the Bible record about God and the Jewish people?
The Bible makes it clear that God is not interested in racial hubris, since a)God is not a respecter of persons(Acts 10:34-35), and b)Both Jew and Gentile are under sin, and there is none righteous(Psalm 14:1-3, Romans 3:9-20). The Old Testament records God's use of Gentile powers(i.e. Assyrians, Babylonians) as His instruments of chastisement upon His original people for their straying from His divine statutes. So, obedience to God, and not physical fleshly identity, is the basis of Israel's right to exist. Whom the Lord loves, He chastens(Hebrews 12:6-10). Finally, as the Jews of the Old Testament times intermarried with Gentile pagans and adopted the customs of their nations, God agreed with their wishes by dispersing them into Gentile-world nations. QUESTION: Is God through with His original people? Does God have future plans for the nation of Israel? The answer to this question depends upon whether or not God's prodigal sons come home--in spirit, as well as physically. The apostle Paul wrote, in Romans 11:7-27, of God's original people being given of God a spirit of slumber, while Gentiles are "grafted in" to God's tree. Thus, we know God will save a remnant of His original people, but not all of them. Gentiles will take the place of those physical Israelites who rejected God.
Today, national Israel continues to exist, but as in ancient Old Testament times, it faces constant harassment from pagan Arab nations, while most Israelites are secular "Jews" not caring less about God and His divine statutes. For the most part, modern national Israel has forgotten that being Jewish is a state of spiritual consciousness, not one of physical existence. In such instance, Israel's existence will always be precarious. Still, God is not through with His original people, and will never let the Jew completely disappear from the earth--as evidenced in the 20th century by the failure of the ferocities of even an Adolf Hitler and a Joseph Stalin to completely erase them from all human memory. Many instances in human history can be cited, where, at every major turning point in human history, a Jew was always on hand, either behind the scenes or on center-stage, to make it all happen. No one individual Jewish person could possibly pre-arrange all those major events of history, to make them happen as they did. It must be God at work.
The Jews, for their part, must understand that the title of "God's chosen people" is not a divine priviledge, but rather, a divine responsibility. This phrase refers exclusively to those who accept this divine responsibility, and always walk faithfully according to the Lord's divine statutes for man.
God's promise to Abram, recorded in the Bible, Genesis 12:1-3, was made exclusively to Abram, and not to his descendants. Any of Abram's natural descendants would be blessed by God for blessing Abram, and cursed by God for cursing Abram, with reference to the divine covenant made between God and Abram. The nation of Israel, while promised to Abram, had not yet been created by the time of Genesis chapter 12. So, contrary to popular misapplication of Genesis 12:1-3, the nation of Israel as a whole is not heir to this promise. But it is certainly heir to God's promise of II Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land."
-LKM
The nation of Israel is unique in the world, in that it was given by God to a people on the basis of a conditional divine contract. When one party to a contract declines to honor their obligations to it, the other party is also free to discontinue their obligation to it as well. What does the Bible record about God and the Jewish people?
The Bible makes it clear that God is not interested in racial hubris, since a)God is not a respecter of persons(Acts 10:34-35), and b)Both Jew and Gentile are under sin, and there is none righteous(Psalm 14:1-3, Romans 3:9-20). The Old Testament records God's use of Gentile powers(i.e. Assyrians, Babylonians) as His instruments of chastisement upon His original people for their straying from His divine statutes. So, obedience to God, and not physical fleshly identity, is the basis of Israel's right to exist. Whom the Lord loves, He chastens(Hebrews 12:6-10). Finally, as the Jews of the Old Testament times intermarried with Gentile pagans and adopted the customs of their nations, God agreed with their wishes by dispersing them into Gentile-world nations. QUESTION: Is God through with His original people? Does God have future plans for the nation of Israel? The answer to this question depends upon whether or not God's prodigal sons come home--in spirit, as well as physically. The apostle Paul wrote, in Romans 11:7-27, of God's original people being given of God a spirit of slumber, while Gentiles are "grafted in" to God's tree. Thus, we know God will save a remnant of His original people, but not all of them. Gentiles will take the place of those physical Israelites who rejected God.
Today, national Israel continues to exist, but as in ancient Old Testament times, it faces constant harassment from pagan Arab nations, while most Israelites are secular "Jews" not caring less about God and His divine statutes. For the most part, modern national Israel has forgotten that being Jewish is a state of spiritual consciousness, not one of physical existence. In such instance, Israel's existence will always be precarious. Still, God is not through with His original people, and will never let the Jew completely disappear from the earth--as evidenced in the 20th century by the failure of the ferocities of even an Adolf Hitler and a Joseph Stalin to completely erase them from all human memory. Many instances in human history can be cited, where, at every major turning point in human history, a Jew was always on hand, either behind the scenes or on center-stage, to make it all happen. No one individual Jewish person could possibly pre-arrange all those major events of history, to make them happen as they did. It must be God at work.
The Jews, for their part, must understand that the title of "God's chosen people" is not a divine priviledge, but rather, a divine responsibility. This phrase refers exclusively to those who accept this divine responsibility, and always walk faithfully according to the Lord's divine statutes for man.
God's promise to Abram, recorded in the Bible, Genesis 12:1-3, was made exclusively to Abram, and not to his descendants. Any of Abram's natural descendants would be blessed by God for blessing Abram, and cursed by God for cursing Abram, with reference to the divine covenant made between God and Abram. The nation of Israel, while promised to Abram, had not yet been created by the time of Genesis chapter 12. So, contrary to popular misapplication of Genesis 12:1-3, the nation of Israel as a whole is not heir to this promise. But it is certainly heir to God's promise of II Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land."
-LKM
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The God Delusion: LKM Answers Dr. Richard Dawkins
The basic thesis of Dr. Richard Dawkin's book, The God Delusion, is that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is the root cause of all the world's troubles, and IF ONLY we would abolish religion from the face of the earth forever, humanity would immediately usher in a new Golden Age of peace, justice, love, prosperity, and brotherhood/sisterhood. He boasts in his book that all persons of any religious persuasion who start to read his book will be confirmed atheists by the time they finish reading it. LKM replies:
1)Dr. Richard Dawkins says Christianity is stupid, for people who do not think. He says it is anti-science.
LKM replies: Science and the Bible clash only over the book of Genesis question of the earth's origin, and how life on it came into existence and subsequently developed. Questions of morality and socio-political relations, discussed extensively in the Bible, cannot be addressed by pure "hard" science. Science concerns itself with delineation in the physical realm between the possible/probable and the impossible, whereas the Bible concerns itself with the human spiritual realm, delineating what should and should not be, regarding moral relations between people. There is a world of difference between "can" and "should". Theologians may be just as educated and intellectual as any scientists. In fact, in Medieval times, there lived Islamic theologians who also were medical doctors or other genres of scientists. An example of this was Ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna. In any event, there can be no scientific explanation either in support of or in opposition to the Mosaic Commandments not to kill or steal.
2)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries wars and other physical violence against other people, supposedly instigated by "wicked and evil" Christianity.
LKM replies: There is no Bible New Testament scripture anywhere, in the which Jesus Christ commands that these wars and violences are to be done in His name and for His benefit. Jesus Christ taught forgiveness of moral wrong, love to one's enemies, and response to evil with good.
3)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is child abuse, for parents to inculcate their children with their(the parents') moral and social values, before the child is old and discerning enough to refute the parents' values.
LKM replies: Child-rearing by other adults, even by government officials, is the same evil: children are being inculcated by some other adult's values, when the child is too mentally incompetent and knowledgeable to refute those views as well. Even in offering moral choices to children, Dr. Dawkins wants to be sure Christianity is not one of those choices.
4)Dr. Richard Dawkins says if only we eliminate religion--especially Christianity--the world would then enter into a Golden Age of peace, virtue, love and prosperity.
LKM replies: Has anyone checked out what life was like for average citizens in godless Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union lately? If atheism is so great, why the blood-baths in Communist China and in Communist Southeast Asian countries? Why do not atheist-Communist countries open their doors to unlimited immigration and emigration? The politics of envy, as well as religion, can instigate wars of race and economic class disparity. These could occur in a totally atheistic socio-political environment.
5)Dr. Richard Dawkins credits natural selection, not divine creation, for order in the biological universe.
LKM replies: Can Dr. Dawkins demonstrate to us with scientific data from experimentation, how the natural selection mechanism works? How is it we have both man and monkeys with us today, but the alleged "intermediary hominid" forms got "selected out" and eliminated for survival? Were they not "higher" on the evolutionary chain for survival than the monkeys, and thus "more fit for survival" than are the monkeys? Dr. Dawkins provides no examples in reality, to illustrate how this natural selection mechanism works.
6)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is a fraud, to pray for God's divine intervention to improve one's own or other people's physical health situations.
LKM replies: God does not answer prayer or is obliged to answer prayer according to the dictates of men. God may answer prayer in completely unexpected ways, thus suprising even the supplicants. God thus demonstrates His sovereignty and pleasure in not being bound by human demand. Archie Bunker once said too much prayer to God gets to be nagging! Let God do His own thing.
7)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries persecution of scientists by the Christian church.
LKM replies: Communism has been hawked as a "scientific" form of government. All "smart" scientists will become first atheists, and then good Communists, the argument goes. All intellectualism leads to Communism, just as surely as death and taxes, so goes the argument. But under Communism, Christians have also been ferociously persecuted, thus proving Communist desire for thought-policing and control also. Communist regimes have also killed scientists and other intellectuals in great number. The pot calls the kettle "black" here.
8)Dr. Richard Dawkins, like Carl Sagan, says the physical universe is all there is. Anything we cannot sense with one or more of our five natural physical senses does not exist.
LKM replies: As a musician, I feel deeply sorry for Dr. Dawkins, then! He has no ability to aesthetically evaluate a piece of music, any more than does a crocodile. The ability to aesthetically evaluate an art form--music or otherwise--is a spiritual gift unique to man, and not in evidence throughout the alleged process of evolution. The Bible tells us God is a spirit, and if man is not any special form of creation in God's image, what else accounts for the unique human ability of aesthetic evaluation? Well, Dr. Dawkins?
9)Dr. Richard Dawkins says religion, even in relatively benign forms, cannot peacefully coexist with atheism. We must smash all religion, says he, because even religious "moderates" contribute to a socio-political climate of hateful and fanatical persecution of atheists.
LKM replies: In his clarion call to abolish all religion, Dr. Dawkins is proving himself to be guilty of the same intolerant bigotry of which he accuses Christians. When, in America, was there ever a government pogrom targeting atheists? He says no atheist candidate for elected public office could ever win an election. From my Maryland 8th Congressional district, we elected a member of Congress who declined to publicly state any religious affiliation or belief. He got elected strictly on secular merits.
10)Dr. Richard Dawkins says believers in God cannot also do good science, as they are too lazy-brained for that. They are all too eager to attribute to God anything they cannot scientifically explain,and will not exert themselves to do honest research.
LKM replies: The book, Men of Science/Men of God, by Dr. Henry M. Morris, lists many great scientists from the past who also believed the Bible. The more they discovered through honest scientific research, the more convinced they became, how infinitely great God is! The problem now is that science has been hijacked by atheists having an extra-scientific political agenda, and wish to enlist science as their ally, to accomplish essentially socio-political goals.
11)Dr. Richard Dawkins says atheists can behave morally, and do not need religion as a measure of discernment between right and wrong.
LKM replies: This statement is undoubtedly true, but what is the source of the atheist's morality? Dr. Dawkins does not so-state in his book. Atheistic societies and nations have never been moral leaders in modeling ideal human behaviour. Human life in ancient Greece and Rome was held to be extremely cheap without knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most likely, today's atheists are still borrowing moral capital from the larger Christian-American socio-political concensus. Pagan Rome finally collapsed from within under the sheer weight of its own moral debauchery.
12)Dr. Richard Dawkins says the Christian church desires to severely restrict individual socio-political freedom, and stop people from enjoying life to the fullest measure.
LKM replies: I would challenge Dr. Dawkins to find one country on earth where the gospel of Jesus Christ has never before been preached, and still that country has more freedom than does America. Incidentally, it is by no accident or coincidence, that in centuries past, it was Christianity which strongly fostered education in both Europe and America. The Christian church has built countless schools and universities. The decline of academic excellence in American public schools is recent decades is directly tied to the dissociation of God from them. This trend is well-documented in David Barton's book, America: To Pray Or Not To Pray? On June 7, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered prayer out of public schools. Since then, the book illustrates, America's school-age youth have experienced precipitous decline in SAT and GED test scores, side-by-side with exponential increase in such social troubles as premarital sexual activity, STDs, crime, high divorce rates, single parent homes, violence in school, school drop-outs, "shacking up", children running away from home, and even youth suicide. Who. did you say, Dr. Dawkins, is anti-education? Even the U.S. military is worried: young people getting out of high school today still lack the education to master the new and sophisticated technologies today's military uses. In any case, atheistic Communism has most certainly stopped the people living under it from enjoying life to the fullest measure.
13)Dr. Richard Dawkins writes in his book of a "religious center" in the human brain, and cites an evolution of religious belief from primitive pre-historic polytheism to modern monotheism, cutting down on the number of gods worshiped, and then says atheism is the final step in that progression.
LKM replies: Hebraic monotheism is approximately contemporary with Hindu polytheism. Dr. Dawkins offers no archaeologic evidence to support his claim of this historic religious progression from many gods to one. He also offers no scientific evidence for a biologic "urge" of man to be religious, i.e. cannot offer proof of biologic origin of religion. Also, Dr. Dawkins calls religion "wishful thinking". driven entirely by basic primitive human desire and need for comfort and consolation. The answer, in the case of Christianity, is that the Bible often calls for its adherents to forego wish fulfillment, to deny self in the name of spiritual discipline, and put desires and needs of other people ahead of selfish greeds. These concepts run contrary to basic human nature.
14)On page 31 of his book, Dr. Richard Dawkins calls God a "control freak".
LKM replies: If thieves were to break into Dr. Dawkins' private abode to steal his most prized possessions, I wonder if he would call upon human earthly "control freaks" a.k.a. the friendly local police constabulary, to apprehend them? After all, the "unjust, unforgiving control freak" in the sky did say, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
15)Dr. Richard Dawkins says evolution is a completely established fact.
LKM replies: But in his interview with Ben Stein on the Expelled DVD, he admits not knowing how life first began. If you do not know how a process began, how can you say its continued progression is a proven fact? Nobody has ever witnessed the process of evolution in action. In his book, Dr. Dawkins gets way off his "home turf" with speculative plausibilities about the cosmos which likewise have never been conclusively proven, e.g. "the Big Bang".
The God Delusion is full of name-calling which does not get the ball rolling in terms of genuine criticism of theology. Dr. Dawkins engages in ad hominem attack and ridicule of religious people, in appeal to the very same irrationalism on the part of his readers which Dr. Dawkins himself so liberally criticizes. This BLOG writer, however, admits to some degree of amusement at the notion of having a divine deity to be called "The Flying Spaghetti-Monster". LKM's reply to this good humor is, "Try him, you'll like him!" What harmless good fun that is! No wonder the apostle Paul wrote in the Bible, I Corinthians 1:18-31, "as the world by wisdom knows not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe"; and, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."
Whosoever thinks himself to be wise is a fool! But whoever knows himself to be a fool is wise!
-LKM
1)Dr. Richard Dawkins says Christianity is stupid, for people who do not think. He says it is anti-science.
LKM replies: Science and the Bible clash only over the book of Genesis question of the earth's origin, and how life on it came into existence and subsequently developed. Questions of morality and socio-political relations, discussed extensively in the Bible, cannot be addressed by pure "hard" science. Science concerns itself with delineation in the physical realm between the possible/probable and the impossible, whereas the Bible concerns itself with the human spiritual realm, delineating what should and should not be, regarding moral relations between people. There is a world of difference between "can" and "should". Theologians may be just as educated and intellectual as any scientists. In fact, in Medieval times, there lived Islamic theologians who also were medical doctors or other genres of scientists. An example of this was Ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna. In any event, there can be no scientific explanation either in support of or in opposition to the Mosaic Commandments not to kill or steal.
2)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries wars and other physical violence against other people, supposedly instigated by "wicked and evil" Christianity.
LKM replies: There is no Bible New Testament scripture anywhere, in the which Jesus Christ commands that these wars and violences are to be done in His name and for His benefit. Jesus Christ taught forgiveness of moral wrong, love to one's enemies, and response to evil with good.
3)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is child abuse, for parents to inculcate their children with their(the parents') moral and social values, before the child is old and discerning enough to refute the parents' values.
LKM replies: Child-rearing by other adults, even by government officials, is the same evil: children are being inculcated by some other adult's values, when the child is too mentally incompetent and knowledgeable to refute those views as well. Even in offering moral choices to children, Dr. Dawkins wants to be sure Christianity is not one of those choices.
4)Dr. Richard Dawkins says if only we eliminate religion--especially Christianity--the world would then enter into a Golden Age of peace, virtue, love and prosperity.
LKM replies: Has anyone checked out what life was like for average citizens in godless Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union lately? If atheism is so great, why the blood-baths in Communist China and in Communist Southeast Asian countries? Why do not atheist-Communist countries open their doors to unlimited immigration and emigration? The politics of envy, as well as religion, can instigate wars of race and economic class disparity. These could occur in a totally atheistic socio-political environment.
5)Dr. Richard Dawkins credits natural selection, not divine creation, for order in the biological universe.
LKM replies: Can Dr. Dawkins demonstrate to us with scientific data from experimentation, how the natural selection mechanism works? How is it we have both man and monkeys with us today, but the alleged "intermediary hominid" forms got "selected out" and eliminated for survival? Were they not "higher" on the evolutionary chain for survival than the monkeys, and thus "more fit for survival" than are the monkeys? Dr. Dawkins provides no examples in reality, to illustrate how this natural selection mechanism works.
6)Dr. Richard Dawkins says it is a fraud, to pray for God's divine intervention to improve one's own or other people's physical health situations.
LKM replies: God does not answer prayer or is obliged to answer prayer according to the dictates of men. God may answer prayer in completely unexpected ways, thus suprising even the supplicants. God thus demonstrates His sovereignty and pleasure in not being bound by human demand. Archie Bunker once said too much prayer to God gets to be nagging! Let God do His own thing.
7)Dr. Richard Dawkins decries persecution of scientists by the Christian church.
LKM replies: Communism has been hawked as a "scientific" form of government. All "smart" scientists will become first atheists, and then good Communists, the argument goes. All intellectualism leads to Communism, just as surely as death and taxes, so goes the argument. But under Communism, Christians have also been ferociously persecuted, thus proving Communist desire for thought-policing and control also. Communist regimes have also killed scientists and other intellectuals in great number. The pot calls the kettle "black" here.
8)Dr. Richard Dawkins, like Carl Sagan, says the physical universe is all there is. Anything we cannot sense with one or more of our five natural physical senses does not exist.
LKM replies: As a musician, I feel deeply sorry for Dr. Dawkins, then! He has no ability to aesthetically evaluate a piece of music, any more than does a crocodile. The ability to aesthetically evaluate an art form--music or otherwise--is a spiritual gift unique to man, and not in evidence throughout the alleged process of evolution. The Bible tells us God is a spirit, and if man is not any special form of creation in God's image, what else accounts for the unique human ability of aesthetic evaluation? Well, Dr. Dawkins?
9)Dr. Richard Dawkins says religion, even in relatively benign forms, cannot peacefully coexist with atheism. We must smash all religion, says he, because even religious "moderates" contribute to a socio-political climate of hateful and fanatical persecution of atheists.
LKM replies: In his clarion call to abolish all religion, Dr. Dawkins is proving himself to be guilty of the same intolerant bigotry of which he accuses Christians. When, in America, was there ever a government pogrom targeting atheists? He says no atheist candidate for elected public office could ever win an election. From my Maryland 8th Congressional district, we elected a member of Congress who declined to publicly state any religious affiliation or belief. He got elected strictly on secular merits.
10)Dr. Richard Dawkins says believers in God cannot also do good science, as they are too lazy-brained for that. They are all too eager to attribute to God anything they cannot scientifically explain,and will not exert themselves to do honest research.
LKM replies: The book, Men of Science/Men of God, by Dr. Henry M. Morris, lists many great scientists from the past who also believed the Bible. The more they discovered through honest scientific research, the more convinced they became, how infinitely great God is! The problem now is that science has been hijacked by atheists having an extra-scientific political agenda, and wish to enlist science as their ally, to accomplish essentially socio-political goals.
11)Dr. Richard Dawkins says atheists can behave morally, and do not need religion as a measure of discernment between right and wrong.
LKM replies: This statement is undoubtedly true, but what is the source of the atheist's morality? Dr. Dawkins does not so-state in his book. Atheistic societies and nations have never been moral leaders in modeling ideal human behaviour. Human life in ancient Greece and Rome was held to be extremely cheap without knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most likely, today's atheists are still borrowing moral capital from the larger Christian-American socio-political concensus. Pagan Rome finally collapsed from within under the sheer weight of its own moral debauchery.
12)Dr. Richard Dawkins says the Christian church desires to severely restrict individual socio-political freedom, and stop people from enjoying life to the fullest measure.
LKM replies: I would challenge Dr. Dawkins to find one country on earth where the gospel of Jesus Christ has never before been preached, and still that country has more freedom than does America. Incidentally, it is by no accident or coincidence, that in centuries past, it was Christianity which strongly fostered education in both Europe and America. The Christian church has built countless schools and universities. The decline of academic excellence in American public schools is recent decades is directly tied to the dissociation of God from them. This trend is well-documented in David Barton's book, America: To Pray Or Not To Pray? On June 7, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered prayer out of public schools. Since then, the book illustrates, America's school-age youth have experienced precipitous decline in SAT and GED test scores, side-by-side with exponential increase in such social troubles as premarital sexual activity, STDs, crime, high divorce rates, single parent homes, violence in school, school drop-outs, "shacking up", children running away from home, and even youth suicide. Who. did you say, Dr. Dawkins, is anti-education? Even the U.S. military is worried: young people getting out of high school today still lack the education to master the new and sophisticated technologies today's military uses. In any case, atheistic Communism has most certainly stopped the people living under it from enjoying life to the fullest measure.
13)Dr. Richard Dawkins writes in his book of a "religious center" in the human brain, and cites an evolution of religious belief from primitive pre-historic polytheism to modern monotheism, cutting down on the number of gods worshiped, and then says atheism is the final step in that progression.
LKM replies: Hebraic monotheism is approximately contemporary with Hindu polytheism. Dr. Dawkins offers no archaeologic evidence to support his claim of this historic religious progression from many gods to one. He also offers no scientific evidence for a biologic "urge" of man to be religious, i.e. cannot offer proof of biologic origin of religion. Also, Dr. Dawkins calls religion "wishful thinking". driven entirely by basic primitive human desire and need for comfort and consolation. The answer, in the case of Christianity, is that the Bible often calls for its adherents to forego wish fulfillment, to deny self in the name of spiritual discipline, and put desires and needs of other people ahead of selfish greeds. These concepts run contrary to basic human nature.
14)On page 31 of his book, Dr. Richard Dawkins calls God a "control freak".
LKM replies: If thieves were to break into Dr. Dawkins' private abode to steal his most prized possessions, I wonder if he would call upon human earthly "control freaks" a.k.a. the friendly local police constabulary, to apprehend them? After all, the "unjust, unforgiving control freak" in the sky did say, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
15)Dr. Richard Dawkins says evolution is a completely established fact.
LKM replies: But in his interview with Ben Stein on the Expelled DVD, he admits not knowing how life first began. If you do not know how a process began, how can you say its continued progression is a proven fact? Nobody has ever witnessed the process of evolution in action. In his book, Dr. Dawkins gets way off his "home turf" with speculative plausibilities about the cosmos which likewise have never been conclusively proven, e.g. "the Big Bang".
The God Delusion is full of name-calling which does not get the ball rolling in terms of genuine criticism of theology. Dr. Dawkins engages in ad hominem attack and ridicule of religious people, in appeal to the very same irrationalism on the part of his readers which Dr. Dawkins himself so liberally criticizes. This BLOG writer, however, admits to some degree of amusement at the notion of having a divine deity to be called "The Flying Spaghetti-Monster". LKM's reply to this good humor is, "Try him, you'll like him!" What harmless good fun that is! No wonder the apostle Paul wrote in the Bible, I Corinthians 1:18-31, "as the world by wisdom knows not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe"; and, "God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."
Whosoever thinks himself to be wise is a fool! But whoever knows himself to be a fool is wise!
-LKM
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