The damage done by America’s loss of truly mass media–and especially the loss of trusted local newspapers–isn’t confined to government and civil society. Health officials are now reporting that people who get their “information” from rightwing media sources like Sinclair and Fox are putting themselves at far greater risk from Covid-19.
Sinclair Broadcast Group is less well-known than Fox, but it operates almost 200 television stations. It has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, and recently published an interview with a conspiracy theorist claiming that Dr. Fauci “created the coronavirus using cells.”
Meanwhile, Fox News pundits continue to question the seriousness of the virus, and to promote untested “cures” touted by Trump and other non-experts.
It isn’t just Sinclair and Fox. Earlier this week, Trump and Don Junior both retweeted a video they evidently got from Breitbart, in which a group of “doctors” said that masks were unnecessary and that Trump’s favorite drug– hydroxychloroquine–cured the virus. (Real medical experts say hydroxychloroquine is useless against Covid and masks are essential.)
One of the “doctors” quoted by Trump is Stella Immanuel, the spiritual leader of Fire Power Ministries, which the Washington Post calls “a pronouncedly non-orthodox church.”
Endometriosis and other potentially dangerous gynecological conditions are the residue of sexual intercourse with demons, Immanuel teaches. These demons, known as “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives” (you might prefer their pet names: Incubus and Succubus) once walked the Earth in physical form. After they drowned in Noah’s flood, however, they carried on only in non-corporeal form. They visit humans in sexy dreams, which aren’t dreams after all but spirit spouses making a booty call.
According to Immanuel, the demons are responsible for a wide variety of problems, including male impotence, most financial troubles and marital discord.
So who are you going to believe? That downer Fauci, or “Doctor” Immanuel?
There are obviously a number of reasons why the U.S. has fallen so far behind other rich countries in containing the virus. The number one reason, of course, is Donald Trump, and the lack of anything approaching a thoughtful, co-ordinated national response managed by medical professionals who actually know what they are doing. Another is the significant minority of our population who justify selfish (and self-destructive) behavior by braying about “freedom.”
But a not-insignificant cause of our failure to contain the virus is the prevalence of right-wing media sources unconstrained by journalistic ethics or professionalism. Fox and Sinclair are the most pervasive, but millions of Americans also read–and believe–sources like Infowars and Breitbart.
Crazy people have always been with us, but the Internet and social media have dramatically amplified their reach. Radical news media–left and right–have always been around, but they have rarely exerted the influence of Fox and Sinclair.
As Max Strasser put it in the introduction to a recent New York Times newsletter (no URL),
Canada, Japan and much of Europe have no equivalent to Sinclair — whose local newscasts reach about 40 percent of Americans — or Fox News. Germany and France have widely read blogs that promote conspiracy theories. “But none of them have the reach and the funding of Fox or Sinclair,” Monika Pronczuk, a Times reporter based in Europe, told me.
Fox is particularly important, because it has also influenced President Trump’s response to the virus, which has been slower and less consistent than that of many other world leaders. “Trump repeatedly failed to act to tame the spread, even though that would have helped him politically,” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has written.
What we are experiencing is a perfect storm: a mentally-ill President receptive to conspiracies peddled by cynical–and profitable– propaganda mills, with few if any local newspapers remaining that could provide non-political, trustworthy information alerting citizens to the dangers of misinformation–or explain that the President is quoting a “doctor” who believes that alien DNA is used in many therapeutic drugs and that government scientists are developing a vaccine to prevent religious faith.
Please excuse the personal view of an atheist, but a vaccine against religious faith is exactly what humanity needs.
Greetings Anita. Great idea! Irvin
I have often wondered who benefits from such disinformation as is reportedly spread by Fox, Sinclair, et al, and how do they benefit? Is it just that they are now backed into a corner and simply refuse to acknowledge their mistake, or is something darker at work?
I’m in agreement Anita!
James, it isn’t “something darker at work”; it’s something greener… as in money. See yesterday’s blog and the video about Alex Jones.
When you and your organization (be it political or informational) have no ethics, have no talent, have no standards and cannot compete with those who do, you go after an audience of dunces and psychologically unhinged followers. And our economic system rewards you for doing so.
I thought identifying some of Sinclair’s affiliates might be of help here, copied and pasted from Wikipedia:
“Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate which is controlled by the family of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland,[2] the company is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations (after Nexstar Media Group), owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), many of which are located in the South and Midwest, and is the largest owner of stations affiliated with Fox, ABC, and The CW. Sinclair also owns four digital multicast networks (Comet, Charge!, Stadium, and TBD), sports-oriented cable networks (Tennis Channel and Fox Sports Networks), and a streaming service (Stirr), and owns or operates four radio stations in the Pacific Northwest. Among other non-broadcast properties, Sinclair also owns the professional wrestling promotion Ring of Honor and its streaming service Honor Club.”
Anita; I “self-medicated” by removing myself from all organized religions by realizing the preaching of fear, demanding my husband who did not attend services tithe 10% of his salary, a rape attempt by the superintendent of Bible School, ripped off by a church deacon who was my attorney, open racism in all denominations I tried, and the list goes on. I do like your idea of a vaccine but the anti-vaxxers are the right-wing evangelicals. Attempting to vaccinate them would be like trying to get Trump to wear a mask and social distance…or get him to stop lying.
Whoever coined the term, “No news is good news.” couldn’t foresee a mentally unstable Trump as the most powerful leader in the world.
Anything and everything right wing is bad for everybody except the money grabbers. As mentioned above, religion has ALWAYS exploited ignorance and fear to attain and maintain power over people’s minds and uh, pocketbooks.
It’s too bad that the really true believers like Jon Sorg on this blog and friends of mine are tarred by the brush of these exploiters. The really, really bad people who run organized religion are an American tragedy and have been for a couple centuries. The really, really good people who believe in God should avoid organized churches like the plague they are.
Trump proved to all the world what using religion to advance destructive, anti-human agendas looks like. In the hands of a psychopath, and those who follow him, religion is as dangerous a weapon as guns and bombs.
The “media” whether on the left or right isn’t the cause of the problem; it’s a symptom of a broken political system. If Gov. DeSantis in FLA or the Republican legislators in WI, where I live, worried about the health of those who elected them and called out the virus B.S. (to use just one example), the Fox’s and Sinclair’s would have few enablers to interview and report on. Alas though, these “sanctity of life” people spout inanities about freedom and Constitutional Rights in order to score some political capital while people die. And the media dutifully lap it all up and bring it into our living rooms.
I’ve written this before – when half of a country’s political landscape is intellectually, morally, and ethically bankrupt said country is in deep trouble. Sure hope I’m proven wrong some day.
Great video on Alex Jones below. While all vitriol towards right wing media is well-placeD I can’t let mainstream media off the hook either. They have done as much to amplify TRE45ON’S tweets and idiotic policy statements as anyone because they’re “controversial”. And they still won’t call him out for lying in real time when they know he’s lied upward of 20,000 times. Many MSM outlets still treat him with deference as AS IF he’s a real POTUS when he’s not and deserves none.
https://www.pbs.org/video/united-states-of-conspiracy-1phat1/
Apologies to all and esp Ms. Kennedy. I missed yesterday’s blog regarding Jones. I just happened to have watched the Frontline episode last night!
What a state of turmoil we are in…the prez “finds a video” that shows several “doctors”…does he not know anyone can buy and put on a white lab style coat….the clothes do no make the man/woman…he told us flat out that he didn’t know what country the female doc in the video is from…..but the voodoo high priestess as I refer to her wacky ideas, is “a trusted authority” according to our equally delusional prez. Hell’s fire, he didn’t care about his own family members when they were ill and hospitalized…..why do we think he would care about us when we are dying to the tune of 150,000+ at this point.
Theresa said it correctly: When you and your organization (be it political or informational) have no ethics, have no talent, have no standards and cannot compete with those who do, you go after an audience of dunces and psychologically unhinged followers. And our economic system rewards you for doing so.
Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting cast of characters who espouse his BS, should be incarcerated right beside inmate trump!
As Noam Chomsky has written about, the role of the American media is to manufacture consent. Some folks may ask, “Consent for what?”
The Oligarchy needs to keep people in this country divided and diverted from seeking the truth. If we had 100 Julian Assange-type executives leading our media (which we should if the press was truly holding the government accountable), then we wouldn’t have the mess called classism, racism, sexism, etc. We wouldn’t have the largest military in the world, nor would we have a political class owned and serving the oligarchs.
We wouldn’t have a political class who accepted bribes, and the press would be reporting the numerical values of all such bribes to viewers/readers. We also wouldn’t have the mass consolidation of power and money in the hands of a few, nor would we have capitalism in its current form.
If we indeed had a free press, we wouldn’t be jailing and blackballing real journalism or whistleblowers in this country. We’d be giving whistleblowers awards for their service to our democracy.
We also wouldn’t have a surveillance state capturing every dot of information communicated by Americans. Our data wouldn’t be traceable, nor would citizens and activists be tracked and harassed by local and federal officials.
Democracy or people power is the last thing our Oligarchy wants in this country, so sowing the seeds of discord is essential, and our “media” takes on that role. I mean, look at who owns 85% of all media — the Oligarchy.
Much of the “fringe far-left media” as identified by those who consider themselves occupants of ‘political center’ are real journalists who cannot serve the Oligarchy in their owned media outlets. They follow their conscience and go where they can hold the powerful accountable.
The masses in the “middle” once again cut off their noses to spite their faces because power does not lie upon a right-left spectrum. Power in an oligarchy is hierarchical and is distributed from the top-down. If you cannot recognize the problem or our current condition, then you cannot attempt to solve the problem. Any cure which suggests “voting for political party controlled candidates” is missing the mark by a wide margin.
There is no cure coming from the problem itself.
I read yesterday’s blog just now and thought my response was just as relevant to today’s as well so here it is. Lost in the conversation was the role that social media plays in amplifying nut jobs like Alex Jones and conspiracy theories in general (Frontline gave it scant mention).
To use the airplane metaphor, he is the terrorist pilot, Facebook was the jet airplane, his millions of Facebook followers are the fuel and democracy is the World Trade Center. And just like the real 9/11 terrorists knew about thermo-dynamics and structural engineering (Several of them we’re in fact engineers) the conspiracy-theory-peddlers know exactly what they’re doing.
I’m not a member of an organized religion. I’m Episcopalian. We don’t so demon sex dreams. We do believe that one of the greatest gifts we have from God is our ability to do scientific inquiry into the causes of disparate things like diseases and rainbows.
The people who believe in FOX and Sinclair are the same people who broke out the torches and pitchforks to burn down the monsters that live in their neighborhood back in the old days, before mass media. I’m not sure they could ever be persuaded that their information is faulty. I am sure we need to re-think many of the regulatory changes we have made in media ownership and we need government to more actively pursue anti-trust actions that we have been blinking at for the last 50 years or so.
One measure of the unsustainability of our world is our susceptibility to pandemics. That’s just one of the cyclic tragedies that awaits our future selves. Today we have repeats of impossible to extinguish wildfires in California and a hurricane attack on the east coast in addition to the pandemic. Unusual? No. It’s just part of the new normal of 7.5B people living unsustainable lives.
We have survived such tragedies before but everything is made worse by incompetent completely partisan people governing.
We could be in progress mode instead, living by the scientific human knowledge that we have accumulated and working towards softening the blow of future repeats and/or mitigating the causes of our troubles but democracy has been compromised by our overindulgence in entertainment media.
We can launch the great turnaround in November and begin investing resources into saving the future by building global government, taming advertising’s grip on our souls and building a poverty free human family that doesn’t have to require large families for old age survival.
Two dilemmas will not go away soon: COVID-19 and neosorcery of the far right. They are the evil enablers complimenting each other’s impact unwanted by the greater majority.
ive moved alot over my 65 years,mainly looking for a place that wasnt rat race..being big city bred,and learning from others and experience,and getting the stress issue dropped,by chance found North Dakota..NoDak..(home of four walls that keep any sense of real America out)land of smiles and words uttered in silence,sometimes. i dont face or twit, the influence i read about is astounding.i have always read viable journalism,and followed past history that led to takeovers and wars,and now,thru social (yea right) media,mass hysteria. seems like a cold war of values and cheap talk that pressured voices and minds that could use a reality check outside of their needless workd views., if anyone of them has near traveled and witnessed the all around bullshit ive seem and heard over the past 43 years driving truck around the lower 48 and some Canada, take stock, its a world of ignorance. many just play it for self gratification. money,notoriety,fame,small minds with big ideas..social media is like white mans disease to indigenous people, we wernt ready for it.. its a playground full of anthrax .religion has made its play, and so has the rich and famous,(by their standards) along with goverment memes and dictators who find self gratification in distroying ones sect of people for gain. we as humans have decided to,out do one another with little to gain..alex jones, really,sells BS for ad money like rush and such,,tell me they dont exploit the media for gain?(i somehow will get dark here,ill leave to your imagination) if we as Americans still feel thers a country to be had after trump, then make a effort to change it. if it quacks like a duck,then hell its a duck. nut cases demean us because they don’t have a life beyond their own little world,and they found the very media,well you all use..me, i prefer to call a nut a nut to his face in public…if your into distroying our democracy,then by all means,say so..tell us all how much better authoritarianism is..and how much you want it…and demand we all live by it..
Todd,
i have asked many about Noam,of course in my world of working class..few if any have heard of him,and his work.. seems the blue collar type, dont understand,because of the lack of primary eduction in 12 ,(or less) years..if the education system in America were to focus on works like Mr chomsky,as citzenship, maybe we woild have him,instead of alex jones…
PS sorry for my spelling and such,im at work over a steering wheel waiting to get loaded..
Always good to hear from Jack. Like your style. I never knew an English teacher who could drive a freight liner and have thought provoking ideas to share from the dark side of midnight on the road. Keep on truck’n. Be safe.
Watch the movie “Truth”; when the vast fortunes of a family dynasty such as the Bush family can use the Republican party to destroy the reputation of a trusted journalist such as Dan Rather and Mary Mapes and the entire crew who made public George W’s bogus military “career” on a “60 Minutes” segment, the media isn’t always to blame. Mary Mapes and her crew made public the torture at Abu Graib in a prior “60 Minutes” presentation. Dan Rather was allowed to “resign”; a well known Trump tactic to rid his own administration of those who disagree with him and has the Republican party protecting his every move; Mr. Rather was very public after the release of the movie stating it was indeed the “TRUTH”. The Bush family and the Republican party killed the messengers en mass; beware of their public lip service and promises made on the media only to be broken.
I agree that the biggest problem is the right-wing media’s insanity and that of their new mouth-piece and retweeter-in-chief, Trump.
It could have been less dire if the “experts” understood two things: human nature and first principles
Human nature – people like simple answers – the right-wing media is all about black and white, right and wrong – “mainstream media” is about shades of gray – “Masks are a liberal plot” is easy to understand; “masks may be useful, if you don’t social distance and if the ventilation is inadequate, and if….” makes people tune out.
First principles – my old chemistry mentor told me that if I didn’t know how the reaction worked that I should “push electrons” – make an educated guess based on basic principles of chemistry – so it is with biology – before it was “proved”, one could make an educated guess that if everyone wore a mask, there would be multiple layers that would filter out some portion of the viral particles – this is a respiratory infection – even a spray of naked viral particles would mean that some would hit the fibers and get stuck there – they should have recommended masks from day one
Similarly, my brother and sister-in-law were immediately told that they would not be allowed near their grandchildren, not because it was “proved” that it was dangerous, but in the “better safe than sorry” mode.
I will forgive physicians for their obsession with hand washing, a good practice, but not the only source of infection. That is a fact in their lives. Hospital infection rates drop when they can get personnel to wash their hands frequently, something that has been going on since Semmelweis was ignored in 1847.
A note an Atheism – I hate blanket condemnations of religion as much as I hate treating it as a panacea
Atheism, like religious belief, suggests that you know the answers. The skeptical position is agnosticism – I really don’t know the answer, so I am open to evidence (which I haven’t seen yet).
More to the point – I am an Agnostic Jew raised by one parent who questioned organized orthodoxy, but was still a believer, and another parent who was an atheist –
Do I believe that the world is full of sparks of the divine and the it is our purpose to reunite those sparks by performing acts of loving kindness, and thus to “heal the world”? – that would be NO
Do I believe that if everyone acted “as if” that were true the world would be a better place? – “You betcha” (see even wacko former Alaskan Governors can have one quote worth using)
Now, did I arrive at those beliefs independent of religion, or were the “bleeding heart liberal” ideals of my atheist mother a reflection of the religiously informed culture of her family? I can’t say
Please don’t pick on religion any more that you would pick on “race” – individual people and institutions may be good or bad and should be judged on an individual basis
Todd, you are right about the Oligarchy but wrong about a political party controling anything. I have served a political party at the precinct, distruct and state levels. Most candidates take money and orders from the Oligarchs and ignore the party.
While it certainly is not necessary to be religious to be a good citizen and member of society, and while many pretend to religious beliefs for the glory and the green, Len makes a good point in suggesting that we live up to religious idealism as individuals anyway. Atheism suggests that we either know the answer or there isn’t any. Agnostism says I don’t know, and there may be another ism out there – one that says I don’t care what the answer is, or if one is available, or even if there is an issue that needs an answer, because you come and you go and so what?
Does religion as a concept even exist short of dreamland? There is a school of thought which posits that if you can think about it, that it exists. That theory, since it does not include material presence for existence, could include much we as individuals do not know about, but one can argue that objective reality should not be made to depend upon our senses, which only measure what we call reality, including our sense that religion is a fantasy. By what known standard do we measure? Reason? And by what standard do we establish the parameters for reason? This debate could go on into infinity. We have to stop somewhere along the line and take a stand, as it were, or just decide not to be bothered.
Len is, I think, right again when he writes that agnosticism is the safe harbor. Einstein, when asked if he were an atheist, responded that he wasn’t smart enough to be an atheist. (Note that “smart” involves good use of the senses and that he obliquely dodged the issue by introducing intellignence into the query posed, and who am I to argue with Einstein?)
Charlie Belch @ 11:21, I would agree “The Party” as dominant entity is a fiction. Sometimes a person can dominate “The Party”. Richard Daley the Elder dominated the Democratic Party in Chicago for decades. LBJ dominated the Democratic Party in the Senate for years. LBJ lost to JFK the person in 1960.
Reagan dominated the Republican Party – He was the Republican Party. Today it is The Trumpet – The Trumpet is the Republican Party. The Trumpet’s ideology is the Republican ideology. The Trumpet knows this and he is not shy about wielding this power, in this sense he is far stronger than Reagan.
There are in some cases the two parties merge into one and become the Republicrat Party dedicated to serving the interests of Crony-Capitalists and the Oligarchy. This is rather evident when Republicans and Democrats lavish the Defense Department with billions every year.
Sinclair, FOX, MSDNC and CNN have carved out their respective marketing niches. It has nothing to do with educating the public on issues, these “News Networks” do not really report the news rather they slant the stories to fit their respective marketing niches. It is all about profit.
These news networks are like radio stations – You do not tune into the Heavy Metal station to hear Country and Western or elevator music. You listen to what you like.
I’m an atheist/agnostic/skeptic, but I know there is value in organized religion, similar to the value of fraternal organizations. I see it when somewhere in the world there is a catastrophe too large and too awful for individuals to be of much help. It is then that organized religions of many different denominations get busy and move large assistance –habitat, food, and medical help– to the center of the catastrophe and do much good.
Organized religions go wrong when on all those Sundays they are urging folks to believe in the church’s particular brand of myth. Belief is the culprit, not organization. In fact, I might be convinced to join some religion if I could find one that did not believe.
Belief (in anything that has not established credibility) ruins all things good.
This rough example is meant to explain my differentiation between belief and credible evidence. I am reasonably sure the brakes on my car will work when I push the brake pedal not because I believe brakes work but because they have worked almost every previous time–because they have established credible odds. And even with overwhelming credible odds in favor of the brakes working, my skepticism is of high value, because it enables me to be aware of the tiny odds that the next need for brakes may be the moment in which they do not work; thereby skepticism prepares me somewhat for that surprise of failed brakes by making it less surprising. What better analysis is there to go forward on?
Perhaps, instead of teaching religion in churches, churches should be teaching us actuarial skills, or bringing in Vegas odds makers to give sermons on making choices. Actuarials and odds-makers are the experts, not preachers, rabbis, priests, or imams.
Patrick @ 8:29 a.m.
Nailed it! You can’t Roil about conspiracy theories while promoting them, lol.
And, just wondering? If we evolved from single cell organisms, how did we acquire morality? Or compassion? Or empathy? Or a conscience? Or love? Or hate? Or covetous behavior? Or instead of living by instinct, we live by gaining knowledge that can be passed on from generation to generation each one building off of the other. How did lifestart procreating through mitosis and then all of a sudden changing to meiosis? Combining DNA from two separate life-form sources is extremely difficult, which meiosis is. Mitosis is how single cell organisms procreate by splitting themselves in half IE an amoeba. Or, why would an animal leave the water and come on dry land, and then after tens or hundreds of millions of years go back into the water? How did RNA or DNA develop? How did all these separate amino acids develop to form specific proteins? And then after that, how did all of these proteins get together to form specific cells? Each one of these leaps has been attempted in the laboratory, men have been working for over 100 years to try to produce a single cell organism, and, they haven’t yet! I’ve had people twist themselves into knots trying to explain the unexplainable, LOL! Just like I’ve had those religious individuals try to convince me that Christians need to tithe and observe the Sabbath, and, that’s not the case! Azazels goat for atonement, and Christ dying thereby symbolically becoming the goat himself. of course you have to read scripture to know about any of this stuff, and most people who claim to be religious do not read scripture anyway. Hebrews 9: 11, 12 & Hebrews 9: 24 – 28.
It has been reported that early-on in the pandemic–say March and April, Jared Kushner came up with the idea that since most cases where cases were surging were “Democratic” states, like New York, California and Washington, that if the feds did nothing, this would make the governors, like Cuomo and Newsome, look bad. This theory also depended on the virus going away with the advent of warm weather, like seasonal flu. They figured it would help Republicans look good, but this is a novel virus–meaning we don’t know all there is to know about it, and clearly, it does not act like seasonal flu. Now deep-red states are surging. Trump is still giving conflicting information about wearing masks. His “administration” keeps trying to claim that he’s done a wonderful job, that a cure and/or vaccine are coming very soon, and that testing is the cause of the surge. This is like arguing that pregnancies will go away if we stop doing pregnancy testing.
The other thing with hydroxychloroquine is that Trump’s “administration” purchased millions of doses of the drug, so he could look like Joe Hero by dispensing it, thinking it would help his chances of being re-elected. That flopped, too, and that’s one reason for the “demon sperm” Doctor saying masks aren’t needed and that we have a cure. That fake “news conference” was engineered by Breitbart and Tea Party Patriots. Another reason for pushing hydroxychloroquine is that der fueherer cannot be wrong. The real immorality about pushing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 is that rheumatoid arthritis and lupus patients who have been prescribed the drug because the benefits outweigh the risks, can’t get their prescriptions filled because Trump has created an artificial shortage and they may suffer irreversible joint damage or unnecessary pain.
I still don’t understand why Republicans let this charade continue, and how on earth even 30% of the US population could support that orange thing.
Pretty profound discussion today.
The truth is that the most powerful religion today comes to us not from bibles and preachers but from entertainment media which is so much more pervasive and persuasive than all the other religions combined. Like them it is based on faith that what anyone wishes to be true in fact is despite any contrary evidence or the complete absence of it.
Trump is like P&G detergent which is an abstract creation of what others imagine we dream about. When you wade through the entertainment hype you eventually get to nothing, his real persona. He’s a black hole of greed sucking in all that wander over the media event horizon.
We will survive this and restore caring for each other older and wiser about the danger of a government ruling without a majority consent from the people governed.
That’s life: learning from successful and failed experiments trying to push back ignorance.
Given only Chaos and Time, two things that exist of their own accord, all things we now observe on Earth are possible. It’s just a matter of odds. Even a 6 billion to 1 long shot will surprise us with an appearance once in 6 billion years, and a possibility greater than that statistically may appear the very next year or any year thereafter. No God is necessary. Neither is Satan needed for bad stuff to exist, although the presence of mankind and religious belief seems to increase the odds. Whatever; Chaos/Time is the Great Creator.
When I think of RNA or DNA or morals or ethics, or any other inexplicable, I don’t jump to the myth of a God/Creator as an explanation. I’m not that lazy, but I am lazy enough that I don’t need an immediate explanation. Given Time and Chaos, even explanations will develop organically. Meanwhile, I can be comfortable with the inexplicable…and oh so wondrous at the potential of Time and Chaos.
I understand the drive, even the obligation, to show off that which I am skilled; certainly, I show off my paintings. But what if I had spent my lifetime memorizing myths once written on the cured hides of murdered infants? Perhaps to justify my wasted time I might feel somewhat obligated to show off that which I had committed to memory. Fortunately, neither my memory nor my tolerance for myth is resplendent enough to show off either. Imagine how long and boring my posts would be had I a fab memory, say, for children’s stories…or comic book heroes!
When Biden wins this Fall I hope he will re-enact fairness in broadcasting. It’s been made evident that extremist influence has a corralling effect with the expense of suspending reality. If people can believe in something shared(even if not based in reality) it has a momentous effect on them. In this day & age we need more respect for fact/truth, we as a US citizen deserve that! Progress will only be made from confronting & dealing effectively with facts. Essentially I see no conflict in believing in God and facing facts. Our ancestors dealt with reality the best they could without scientific method and developed stories of metaphor. Taking those stories out of context and not as metaphor is a problem. We’re at a different stage these days, but still the truth & history can teach us a lot. I would suggest that the combo of spiritual belief & scientific fact will lead to a state of being, that will be missed if either aspect of ourselves is neglected.
Larry, LOL!
You know what the easy way is? Exactly how you explained it. Because it’s all chaos and time! It’s a mystery, and even a 6 billion to one shot can show itself every 6 billion years? But what about trillions to one! because hundreds of billions to one would be possibly one amino acid, now add all of the amino acids! Now have all those amino acids combine into one protein, now one protein combining with hundreds of other combinations to possibly create one cell! You’re not talking about billions or trillions or even centillionz you’re talkin about something that’s completely incomprehensible! No other creature on this planet has a conscience or has empathy or has compassion, they all live by instinct! Humans are the only ones that do not live by instinct and carry all of these emotions! You would think in the grand scheme of evolution, there would be other creatures that are smarter than some of the animals but not quite as smart as humans! Humans have been trying to create life for well over 100 years, and haven’t succeeded yet! And not just in a couple of laboratories, in controlled continuous experiments that lasted for decades around the globe.
See, that’s where faith comes in Larry, some things can’t be explained even though the easy way to explain them is it just happened by happenstance. But people have faith that the sun will rise the next day, faith their paycheck will be cashed, or that they won’t get run over by a bus on the way to work, are they won’t be murdered in their sleep, or that their significant other loves them, or maybe that they will have enough food to eat!
Some people even put faith in that there is no God, but you put Faith in evolution even though you haven’t seen it yourself, people poo poo scripture, but they revel in diaries that they’ve never seen written either! I’ve never met Aristotle or Plato, we have writings that are attributed to them, but where they real? Concerning the faith and belief in these individuals themselves, were they fake, where they figments of imagination? Were they real!?! what about Isaac Newton? What about Copernicus? What about Galileo? I don’t know anything about those folks because I’ve never met them only what I’ve read by individuals who claim they knew them in history. You have to have some faith I guess.
About 3,500 years ago give or take a few decades, Job said the Earth was suspended upon nothing. Chapter 26.
Or, Isaiah 40:22 the talks about humankind populating the circle of the Earth.
Now, it wasn’t till a few hundred years ago that people realized the Earth was round and not supported by turtles or elephants or dragons or floating in a giant universal ocean like a ship. That knowledge came from somewhere because no one else believed it at the time.
So, yeah Larry, I could go on, but the lazy way is not believing in a God, the lazy way is saying it just happened! What if 200000 years from now someone digs up the skeleton of Manute Bol or Andre the Giant? What would they assume? If there was a race of giants at one time on the planet? Or, what about the skeleton of the person they called The elephant Man? What would they think about that? Logic dictates that mankind didn’t come into existence by happenstance, they’re just are too many variables and the odds are greater than the stars in the universe!
John: “Logic dictates that mankind didn’t come into existence by happenstance, they’re just are too many variables and the odds are greater than the stars in the universe!”
There’s no evidence of any other process that brought us to here other than a fortunate chemical coincidence followed by random RNA/DNA mutations and natural selection.
Fortunately we had all of the stars in the universe to form planets and billions of years to find the right place for perfect conditions.
It’s mind boggling.