Anthony G. Payne Old story actually but one worth revising. And one I intersected with in the 1980s into the 1990s: A biochemist, Robert Plymate, PhD, developed a patented way to process antibody rich colostrum from cows specific for human diseases. One example: he injected pregnant cows with tumor cells from a human liver cancer patient and then collected & processed the antibody rich resulting colostrum (Nota bene: The cows could not get cancer from the injected human tumor cells but did form antibodies to it). This was purified and injected into the patient who donated the cancer cells resulting in complete remission. I worked for and with Dr. Bob in the early 1990s — Ag lab & hothouse complex outside Lincoln, Nebraska. Given this, taking colostrum from lactating women who are COVID-19+ might be a great way to wind up with antibody rich material for purification & administration to very sick COVID-19 sufferers via IV. Just some (ahem) food — milk of human wellness, as it were– for thought.
Category Archives: OP-ED
Are you feeling obsolete?
How has the dark (and seemingly) neverending night (The pandemic) left you feeling? Confused? Conflicted? Perplexed? Socially alienated? Overwhelmed by fear, anxiety, or even paranoid thoughts? Powerless? Disenfranchised? Hopeless, or worse?
Have you been doing a lot of soul-searching to determine what is worth hanging on to and what is not? Have you quit a job, or walked away from a relationship, routine, or place of worship as a result of this? If not, are you moving closer to doing so?
Have you found yourself asking why all this “badness” is happening? And is this “activities, passions & priorities” winnowing process necessarily a bad thing?
And has the pandemic made you more aware of the uncertainty and transcience that characterizes life?
Read the rest of this entryAlways trust your car to the man who wears the star*
The photo further down below (juxtaposed with a very recent one of me) is of CSA Gen. William F. Payne — one of my distant paternal bloodline (I am descended on my father’s side from a branch of the Virginia Payne’s that made its way to the deep South and then to Mississippi and Texas, something touched on in this blog entry of mine: When cancer struck family – and what turned things around). Most folks who have viewed photos of me and Gen. Payne were quick to exclaim “You can’t help but see the resemblance!” or “The resemblance is uncanny”. Typically, I would respond by nodding my head and then throw in the fact my great-great-grandfather Richard Payne (Tupelo, MS) served in the Confederate Army (Corporal, CSA Calvary) – and I am a Texan born and bred. I would say nothing about my maternal American Indian ancestry and the fact I am a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) certified (CBID card-carrying) American Indian and a tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Why? I was curious as to how many people would run with what they knew and assume me to be a political conservative, far right-winger, or worse. Some did. Some didn’t. What was sad – and alarming – was the fact some of those who assumed that I had to be a “good old boy” (Southern fried bigot and white supremacist) left no doubt but that they were. Before parting company, I would share the fact that I am (and identify as) an American Indian and also have been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America since 1986! (Albeit I am one of the few DSAers who is essentially pro-life). I would also add that as one whose American Indian ancestors were marched at bayonet point from their homes in various southern states to Oklahoma (Trail of Tears, 1830 to 1905), I know something about the role of racism, white supremacy, and government deception/overreach in US history and its tragic consequences. And, as an American Indian, I put a high premium on the inherent right of all peoples to choose what they believe or don’t, as well as how they will live out these beliefs (Of course actions that violate civil and/or criminal laws can be costly).
In a word, my weltanschauung is far removed from that of my antebellum ancestors, as well as many of my contemporaries in the Deep South and elsewhere. However, as I stated in a 5-5-2016 blog entry:
One of the things I discovered early on in my work as a theorist is that truth, not only in science but in most other areas of life, is arrived at haltingly in the form of what famed astronomer Edwin Hubble characterized as “successive approximations”.
As such, I accept that none of us has truth all wrapped up in any realm, secular or sacred, but instead possess a mix of beliefs, facts, and insights that vary in terms of the degree they approach what is “indisputably true” (in the absolute or final sense).
This way of approaching reality tends to put brakes on becoming so polarized (politically or otherwise) as to stop listening to worthy contrary opinions. And even when a particular belief, conviction, prophecy or what-have-you turns out to have little or no merit, I do not turn my back on the speaker, writer or such and head for the proverbial exit (Unless the speaker, writer, or such consistently doles out material that is so intellectually and/or morally bankrupt as to lead only to error or harmful deception).
Reiterated in this blog entry A false prophet calls out the master purveyor of falsehoods (File this under “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black”) | For Seekers & Other Heretics (wordpress.com)
In light of all this, you would be wise not to “trust your car” to any man (or woman) who wears the star (e.g., QAnon, neo-confederates, Alt-Right, extremists on the left, etc.) With this said I simply could not resist using the old Texaco slogan as the title of this blog entry.
© 2021 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
* Texaco gasoline company ad slogan from the 1960s.
You probably know your IQ and EQ scores (respectively). What about your AS?
https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment-styles.html – A rundown of the various attachment styles (Simply Psychology website)
What is your attachment style? This interactive survey takes about 5 minutes to complete. The questionnaire is designed to measure your ‘attachment style’–the way you relate to others in the context of intimate relationships. When completed, the site will reveal your attachment style, and provide a brief summary of what is known about your attachment style on the basis of contemporary scientific research.
No country for old men
If you are getting older (or “on up in years”) — say, well into your 50s or beyond — then I suspect you have developed a special appreciation of the perceptiveness that informs William Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium” (Video reading below). If you are fairly young and age is a distant concern, then make sure to download the videos below and return to them once you cross into seniorhood.
Yeats wrote:
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick,…
Now, being West Texas-born & bred, I tend to see aged men like myself not in terms of being a “tattered coat upon a stick”, but as tumbleweeds. Yes, tumbleweeds. We start out green and full of life and over time dry up, uproot from the good earth, and begin being blown hither & yon by the winds of memory, nostalgia, and our own unique spirituality.
If this sounds sad or even morose, it shouldn’t be. It’s part of the cycle of life; the journey from the temporal to the eternal and what lies beyond. The only thing incumbent on us is to be prepared for it.
Not surprisingly, I have wholeheartedly embraced Yeats’s “Sailing from Byzantium”, but also….
Sailing to Byzantium – W. B. Yeats (Powerful Life Poetry) – YouTube
A Short Analysis of W. B. Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ – Interesting Literature
And what of you?
Orange and healing
Orange in psychology is associated with healing though this was not the why behind my own affection for orange — particularly orange calcite (See photo on the right). As an amateur geologist since boyhood stones and fossils have always “spoken to me” in both the objective empirical & scientific sense and in the artistic/aesthetic sense. Laying aside the New Age world’s obsession with specific stones and correcting or realigning “out of balance chakras”, I believe the color and texture of specific stones can trigger neurocognitive circuitry in the human brain that is associated with healing & our sense of wellness (So far as I know hard scientific evidence for this is lacking at present though I suspect it will emerge in the future). Orange and red-orange help encourage this IMO. I also can’t help but think that holding a rough stone in some way links us to ancestral hominins such as Homo erectus populations in Africa (and beyond) who fashioned crude choppers and such from rocks (Oldowan technology). They can also serve as a focus for releasing faith (To this end I pray the Shema Israel & Lord’s prayer three times daily while holding 2 or more orange calcite stones. Nature’s rosary as it were).
Shaul of Tarsus (St. Paul) had “handkerchiefs” he prayed over and distributed to believers in need of healing, deliverance, and such, I have my orange calcite stones which I freely gift to those who express a desire to use them to help facilitate or release their faith.
From the journal Nature (31 March 2021): Innovative Homo sapiens 105,000 years ago collected calcite crystals: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0
© April 2021 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
A UFO/UAP story for you
What do you believe is the origin of most UFOs/UAPs which have been reported down through the years? And what of those captured on film and then digital technology? (I have a UFO/UAP story for you, but I will not delve right into it. First some background and then the account).
Now the possibility that advanced lifeforms on a faraway world had developed spacecraft capable of interstellar travel seemed possible to me as a young man, but (I had to ask myself) was it probable that one of these civilizations had not only achieved this but also located earth and was visiting it? What bothered me about a lot of UFO accounts was the fact the occupants of these advanced spacecraft behaved, well, kinda strangely. By this I mean they did not seem to do a good job of hiding their presence or even at times their intentions (i.e., to gather data or samples from earth and sometimes its people), and yet they seemingly had made no attempt to communicate with any of the pilots or law enforcement people who encountered them or with any military or civilian ground communications facilities. Surely aliens capable of constructing and flying spacecraft which had been observed violating/circumventing the known laws of physics would have no problem figuring out how best to communicate with humans and who best to send some kind of message to.
I was around when Sputnik was launched and never failed to be fascinated by newspaper and TV stories on all the satellites, spacecraft, and robot landers that followed. The same could be said of all the UFO stories and photos I came across in the media.
But what did I know? I was just a kid with a lot of unanswered questions who might have missed something somewhere. This however didn’t deter me from reading material and watching TV news stories which showcased what both skeptics and those convinced UFOs were alien contraptions had to say.
Read the rest of this entryTime to jump ship, Prof. Bailey! (Off course church, out — messianic, in)
On 2-8-2020 Newsweek ran this op-ed piece by Davidson College professor of public policy, Isaac Bailey: I’m Struggling with My Christianity After Trump | Opinion (newsweek.com)
Here are some excerpts (I bolded certain especially hard-hitting sentences)
And I am constantly wondering if I am indirectly complicit because I dedicated my life to the same Jesus the insurrectionists prayed to in the Capitol building after ransacking it and promising to kill those who didn’t do their bidding.
If Christianity can convince so many to follow a man like Trump almost worshipfully—or couldn’t at least help millions discern the unique threat Trump represented—what good is it really?
I say this as someone who has been Christian all my life, who spent two decades praying in a white evangelical church. How could our faith have allowed this, encouraged it, enabled so much violence, so much death?
……….
Many pro-life Christians have never accepted that complex reality, which made them susceptible to a man like Trump. That’s why the death and destruction left in Trump’s wake didn’t horrify them the way it has the rest of us: They could always claim they were saving babies from evil Democrats, even though they weren’t.
You know who understands that complex reality? Christian people of color. The embrace of Trump was largely a white Christian phenomenon. Because we don’t have the luxury of seeing things in black and white.
……….
But I’m struggling. I don’t want to be a part of any organization that would support those at the highest levels who demonize and belittle the vulnerable, that would look the other way in order to hold onto power.
The body count left in Trump’s wake is immense. Add to the list my faith in the white church.
Read the rest of this entry
University of Birmingham scientists introduce a carrageenan-based nasal spray for COVID-19 eleven (11) months after I showed my readers how to make their own spray at-home (Fancy that!)
The spray is a combination of an antiviral agent called carrageenan, commonly used in foods as a thickening agent, and a solution called gellan a gelling agent selected for its ability to stick to cells inside the nose.
The photo is one of the many bottles of saline/iota carrageenan/polysorbate 20 (antivirus) nasal spray I processed on 3-17-2020 in my lab. Giveaways, yes, to family, friends & volunteers.
Here is my step-by-step guide to making up the spray at home:
Comment: I began seeing a large number of downloads of my nasal spray creation guidelines from people in the UK beginning shortly after March 22, 2020.
Familiar pattern perhaps?
Ependyma & CSF & stem cells & ALS: Connect the dots | For Seekers & Other Heretics (wordpress.com)
Getting stem cells to target using magnetic means | For Seekers & Other Heretics (wordpress.com)
There are many other similar “coincidences” down through the years but in the final analysis, what counts is folks get the help they need to combat acute & chronic diseases & conditions.
Copyright 2021 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
UNREST & SOCIAL UPHEAVAL: Could a daily dose of Li (3) help blunt the anger, depression, and angst Americans are wrestling with?
In light of all the problems, anger, and unrest that permeate America, it is tempting to regard “the city on a hill” as “the reality TV show gone slugfest on the Hill”. I can’t help but think we have somehow yanked the November 1988 episode of Geraldo in which “self-described racists, white supremacists, and Nazi lovers” got into a free-for-all with other Geraldo guests and audience members and wound up (among other things) breaking Geraldo Rivera’s nose, and relived it a grander (and more threatening) scale on January 6. Click to watch the Geraldo episode in its entirety.
If life ever did imitate art, this moment in American history must surely be it.
I’m sure you have a spin on how we landed in a situation in which the outgoing one-term President has been impeached for a 2nd time based on his alleged role in the recent orgy of violence on Capital Hill carried out by a determined and militant gang of what I’d characterize as “true Trump believers” (Trumpeters?) Consider these recent news items:
Read the rest of this entryReaching people: a better way of doing PR, marketing & advocacy
https://biotheorist.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/a-better-way-of-doing-public-relations5ej-marketing-5e0-advocacy-by-dr.-anthony-g.-payne-2021.pdf
Unholy Hype: Many churches & religious organizations are following the playbook of Madison Avenue & Dr. Goebbels | For Seekers & Other Heretics (wordpress.com)
Sandpiles & prophecy
Back in 1988, I began to come across both lay and professional works on self-organized criticality (SOC). This concerned a phenomenon in nature we probably all observed as children, namely how stacking rocks, pebbles, grains of rice or sand, or just about anything goes along smoothly until a “critical point” is reached in which the whole thing collapses (I often did the “stacking game” using small fossils I fished out of huge gravel piles at home construction sites close to the house where my family and I lived in Alexandria, Louisiana in the mid-1960s). A physicist, Dr. Per Bak, and two of his colleagues published a paper in 1987 which gave mathematical form and expression to this phenomenon, which like most successful explanatory works in science spread quickly and was applied to all kinds of “sandpiles” including neuronal networks in the human brain and the societies and civilization we have created. One academic, University of Melbourne professor of archeology, historical & philosophical studies Dr. Louise Hitchcock applied SOC to the collapse of societies and civilization. On 12-29-2020 an article came out titled Unprecedented’ new crisis coming: Covid-19 pandemic could be a warning for civilization – NZ Herald which looks at what lies ahead for us all in 2021 and beyond and includes input from Prof. Hitchcock.
Read the rest of this entryA false prophet calls out the master purveyor of falsehoods (File this under “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black”)
This is simply too good to pass up:
Read the rest of this entryYou know, with all his talent and the ability to be able to raise money and grow large crowds, the president still lives in an alternate reality,” Robertson said [Bolded emphasis mine]. “He really does. People say, ‘Well, he lies about this, that, and the other.’ But no, he isn’t lying; to him, that’s the truth.” He said Trump has “done a marvelous job for the economy, but at the same time he is very erratic, and he’s fired people and he’s fought people and he’s insulted people and he keeps going down the line.” With Trump, “it’s a mixed bag,” Robertson said, “and I think it would be well to say, ‘You’ve had your day and it’s time to move on.'”
Tax cuts for the rich didn’t trickle down, new study shows
Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says – Bloomberg
By Craig Stirling December 15, 2020, 4:01 PM PST
- Paper looks at fiscal policies in 18 countries over 50 years
IS THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT OVER?🤔 | For Seekers & Other Heretics (wordpress.com)
Volvox or paramecium: which are you?
Are you a Volvox or a paramecium? Drop down and you’ll see pictures and a description of each below. Put simply, a Volvox is a colony of green algae. A paramecium is a unicellular organism. If you are a Volvox then you tend to be more social than a loner. If you are a paramecium, then you tend to thrive on your own (Not necessarily isolated though you do quite well as a loner) I’m oversimplifying things I know but my biology-based dichotomy makes about as much sense as some personality tests and the neat categories it sorts people into (e.g., extrovert, introvert, ambivert, etc.)
I appreciate and celebrate both the Volvox and the paramecium including their human “incarnations”. A world filled with only Volvoxes or paramecia would be impoverished and very likely dystopian IMO.
If you are a Volvox then you already know how well received you typically are. You are showcased and applauded in books, movies, games, plays, and so much more. Volvoxes tend to be the protagonists or heroes and heroines.
The paramecium — the loner — well, they tend to be portrayed as dysfunctional or at least not enviable. How many sci-fi movies can you name in which a lone wolf mad scientist or inventor is the antagonist or anti-social anti-hero? Nuff said.
Thankfully, there is an antidote. No, not to being a paramecium but rather to being misjudged and even vilified for being one: a book titled “Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto” (2003) by Annelia Rufus.
Above all, be ye Volvox or paramecium…. or even a hybrid (Volmecium?)….you belong.
| Description | English: volvox aureus colony (green algae) photographed at 400 magnification under the optical microscope in the dark field. SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES |
| Date | 25 January 2015, 16:43:41 |
| Source | Own work |
| Author | Massimo brizzi |
| Description | .English: Paramecium aurelia. Optical microscope. Paramecium aurelia, the best known of all ciliates. The bubbles throughout the cell are vacuoles. The entire surface is covered in cilia, which are blurred by their rapid movement. |
| Date | 10 October 2003 |
| Source | Originally uploaded to the English Wikipedia, where it was made by Barfooz. |
| Author | Barfooz at the English Wikipedia. |
| Other versions | Transparent |
Growing your own food
Beginner Gardening Tips for a Successful Garden – Grow Your Own Food! (19m09s video by Rob Greenfield, posted 6-15-2020)
https://www.communitygarden.org/
If you want to want (or need) to begin growing your own vegetables and fruits, the video above and the 2 organizations I provided links to should get you started.
And, for those who want helpful hints on how to do container gardening right, check out https://www.treehugger.com/secret-container-vegetable-gardening-4863889
Program note: I spent my summer vacations and more lending a hand to my Choctaw maternal grandfather who owned & farmed 300 acres north of the rustic Panhandle town of Plainview, Texas. This equipped me with some insights on how to grow vegetables & various kinds of fruit and keep weeds and insects at bay.
I’ve also raised vegetables and dwarf fruit bushes in various types of containers outdoors down through the years (I am doing this right now on the patio of my Japanese wife and I’s abode in SoCal).
And done stints in Ag labs and greenhouses devoted to growing various culinary mushrooms and more.
I say all this to indicate my familiarity with the challenges that face farmers and home gardeners. I will periodically post helpful hints gleamed from my years of work and experimentation.
America is obviously in dire economic shape right now and backyard and community gardening projects will help growers reduce their food bills and also (hopefully) give them surplus to donate to local food banks.
Personally I am in favor of folks pooling their resources and buying land, setting up fire, earthquake & storm resistant homes (off the grid or nearly so), making use of water & land conserving equipment (high tech & intermediate tech) and devoting acreage to growing many different types of vegetables & fruits. Some who go this route might find merit in setting up a nonprofit co-op or such.
Recently I became a VP/CSO with a nonprofit religious university (More on this later on). This school has a school of ecology with many professors who have worked in agricultural projects and communes abroad. You can bet your bottom dollar I will be tapping these highly educated and experienced professionals for tips, insights and caveats for novice “patio farmers” as well as those who have their sights on buying a farmette or such and living off the land.
Readers can contact me at nativescienceguy at gmail.com.
The American experiment: recovery, revolution or resignation (to decline & fall)?
As I put fingers to keyboard (August 2020) it is very evident that America is in very deep trouble. Our chickens have come home to roost. While debates rage about the exact nature and extend of the sins, unredressed wrongs, bad policies, corruption, inequality, racism and xenophobia and such that landed us in such dire straits, and how to address or remedy them, I for one am convinced that neither a left or right wing sociopolitical revolution will have a good outcome. Nor will scraping everything up to and including the Constitution and starting over “from scratch” (The French Committee of Public Safety dictatorship tried their hand at radically reinventing France’s social, economic & political order including introducing a secular Republican calendar and dechristianizing France. These extreme reforms paved the way for the Reign of Terror).
And, mind you, I am a democratic socialist. I’ve been one since 1986. But I also know how often revolutions meant to liberate “the people” – especially those that took place in the last century – wound up suppressing dissent and even eliminating dissenters (and other “undesirables”) by often cruel, inhuman means.
In light of human nature as reflected in history, it is difficult to imagine that any revolution-spawned modern day government, no matter how benign its intentions, will be able to resist relying on sophisticated surveillance, cyber warfare and AI technologies to “manage” its people and fend off its enemies (Real or imagined/contrived).
Read the rest of this entryUsing bacteria in tumors to eradicate them
While bacteria were first detected in human tumors more than 100 years ago, Straussman reported in a paper in the May 29 issue of Science that he found bacteria live inside the cells of many cancer types, and that each type of cancer houses unique populations of bacteria.
Breast cancer, which has a relatively high incidence among Jewish women, has a particularly rich and diverse microbiome.
“We believe we can induce an environment where cancer cannot develop,” she said. “Maybe in the future bacteria that stimulate the immune system can be added to immune therapy, so that the cancer can be eradicated more quickly and efficiently.”
Click to read the entire article: https://www.jta.org/2020/07/27/health/israeli-scientists-identify-new-culprit-behind-cancerous-growths-tumor-specific-bacteria
The Israeli scientists posit one approach to eradicating tumors. In 2005 I proposed using specific bacteria to facilitate the electromagnetic heating of tumors to the point of die-off. A quote from my paper and a link to same follow below.
PREVENTING METASTASIS AND ACHIEVING ONCOLYSIS IN SOLID TUMORS BY INHIBITING SPECIFIC METALLOPROTEINASES AND MANIPULATING KEY METABOLIC PATHWAYS. A. G. PAYNE [2005] MED HYPOTHESES RES 2: 553-565.
One permutation to this approach that might prove of utility: Introduce magnetotactic bacterial vectors in vivo which have been genetically engineered or artificially selected to seek out and bind to specific tumor cell antigens. If achievable, the magnetotactic bacteria might provide sufficient iron once inside tumor cells to make achieving electromagnetic heating more certain.
Ship of fools..or the Titanic?
Back in 2006 New Zealand pastor Andrew Strom pulled no punches in laying out why needed nationwide revival (here in the US) was unlikely to take place then or in the foreseeable future. Well, it’s almost July 2020 and it would seem no genuine revival has taken place or is likely to. Is it too late to get on the right track? Listen to Pastor Strom’s sermon and draw your own conclusions.
Read the rest of this entryAre we fast approaching the end of the age (aka “the last days”)?
Are we fast approaching the end of the age (as prophesied in the Bible and by various believers down through the centuries)?
The Didache – The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations
Chapter 16. Watchfulness; the Coming of the Lord. Watch for your life’s sake. Let not your lamps be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ready, for you know not the hour in which our Lord will come. But come together often, seeking the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your faith will not profit you, if you are not made perfect in the last time. For in the last days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate; for when lawlessness increases, they shall hate and persecute and betray one another, and then shall appear the world-deceiver as Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning. Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but those who endure in their faith shall be saved from under the curse itself. And then shall appear the signs of the truth: first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet. And third, the resurrection of the dead — yet not of all, but as it is said: “The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.” Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.
For those readers who would welcome an authoritative and balanced commentary on the Didache I highly recommend The Way of Life (Didache: A New Translation and Messianic Jewish Commentary) by Toby Janicki (600 pages, Vine of David © 2017).
On the Last Times, the Antichrist, and the End of the World
Dearly beloved brothers, believe the Holy Spirit who speaks in us. We have already told you that the end of the world is near, the consummation remains. Has not faith withered away among mankind? How many foolish things are seen among youths, how many crimes among prelates, how many lies among priests, how many perjuries among deacons! There are evil deeds among the ministers, adulteries in the aged, wantonness in the youths—in mature women false faces, in virgins dangerous traces! In the midst of all this there are the wars with the Persians, and we see struggles with diverse nations threatening and “kingdom rising against kingdom’’ (Matt. 24:7). When the Roman Empire begins to be consumed by the sword, the coming of the Evil One is at hand. It is necessary that the world come to an end at the completion of the Roman empire.
In those days two brothers will come to the Roman empire who will rule with one mind; but because one will surpass the other, there will be a schism between them. And so the Adversary will be loosed and will stir up hatred between the Persian and Roman empires. In those days many will rise up against Rome; the Jewish people will be her adversaries. There will be stirrings of nations and evil reports, pestilences, famines, and earthquakes in various places. All nations will receive captives; there will be wars and rumors of wars. From the rising to the setting of the sun the sword will devour much. The times will be so dangerous that in fear and trembling they will not permit thought of better things, because many will be the oppressions and desolations of regions that are to come.
We ought to understand thoroughly therefore, my brothers, what is imminent or overhanging. Already there have been hunger and plagues, violent movements of nations and signs, which have been predicted by the Lord, they have already been fulfilled (consummated), and there is not other which remains, except the advent of the wicked one in the completion of the Roman kingdom. Why therefore are we occupied with worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of worldly business, and why is our mind held fixed on the lusts of the world or on the anxieties of the ages? Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world? Believe you me, dearest brother, because the coming (advent) of the Lord is nigh, believe you me, because the end of the world is at hand, believe me, because it is the very last time. Or do you not believe unless you see with your eyes? See to it that this sentence be not fulfilled among you of the prophet who declares: “Woe to those who desire to see the day of the Lord!” For all the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins. And so, brothers most dear to me, it is the eleventh hour, and the end of the world comes to the harvest, and angels, armed and prepared, hold sickles in their hands, awaiting the empire of the Lord. And we think that the earth exists with blind infidelity, arriving at its downfall early. Commotions are brought forth, wars of diverse peoples and battles and incursions of the barbarians threaten, and our regions shall be desolated, and we neither become very much afraid of the report nor of the appearance, in order that we may at least do penance; because they hurl fear at us, and we do not wish to be changed, although we at least stand in need of penance for our actions!
When therefore the end of the world comes, there arise diverse wars, commotions on all sides, horrible earthquakes, perturbations of nations, tempests throughout the lands, plagues, famine, drought throughout the thoroughfares, great danger throughout the sea and dry land, constant persecutions, slaughters and massacres everywhere, fear in the homes, panic in the cities, quaking in the thoroughfares, suspicions in the male, anxiety in the streets. In the desert people become senseless, spirits melt in the cities. A friend will not be grieved over a friend, neither a brother for a brother, nor parents for their children, nor a faithful servant for his master, but one inevitability shall overwhelm them all; neither is anyone able to be recovered in that time, who has not been made completely aware of the coming danger, but all people, who have been constricted by fear, are consumed because of the overhanging evils.
Whenever therefore the earth is agitated by the nations, people will hide themselves from the wars in the mountains and rocks, by caves and caverns of the earth, by graves and memorials of the dead, and there, as they waste away gradually by fear, they draw breath, because there is not any place at all to flee, but there will be concession and intolerable pressure. And those who are in the east will flee to the west, and moreover, those who are in the west shall flee to the east, and there is not a safer place anywhere, because the world shall be overwhelmed by worthless nations, whose aspect appears to be of wild animals more than that of men. Because those very much horrible nations, most profane and most defiled, who do not spare lives, and shall destroy the living from the dead, shall consume the dead, they eat dead flesh, they drink the blood of beasts, they pollute the world, contaminate all things, and the one who is able to resist them is not there. In those days people shall not be buried, neither Christian, nor heretic, neither Jew, nor pagan, because of fear and dread there is not one who buries them; because all people, while they are fleeing, ignore them.
Whenever the days of the times of those nations have been fulfilled, after they have destroyed the earth, it shall rest; and now the kingdom of the Romans is removed from everyday life, and the empire of the Christians is handed down by God and Peter; and then the consummation comes, when the kingdom of the Romans begins to be fulfilled, and all dominions and powers have been fulfilled. Then that worthless and abominable dragon shall appear, he, whom Moses named in Deuteronomy, saying: Dan is a young lion, reclining and leaping from Basan. Because he reclines in order that he may seize and destroy and slay. Indeed (he is) a young whelp of a lion not as the lion of the tribe of Judah, but roaring because of his wrath, that he may devour. “And he leaps out from Basan.” “Basan” certainly is interpreted “confusion.” He shall rise up from the confusion of his iniquity. The one who gathers together to himself a partridge the children of confusion, also shall call them, whom he has not brought forth, just as Jeremiah the prophet says. Also in the last day they shall relinquish him just as confused.
When therefore the end of the world comes, that abominable, lying and murderous one is born from the tribe of Dan. He is conceived from the seed of a man and from an unclean or most vile virgin, mixed with an evil or worthless spirit. But that abominable corrupter, more of spirits than of bodies, while a youth, the crafty dragon appears under the appearance of righteousness, before he takes the kingdom. Because he will be craftily gentle to all people, not receiving gifts, not placed before another person, loving to all people, quiet to everyone, not desiring gifts, appearing friendly among close friends, so that men may bless him, saying, he is a just man, not knowing that a wolf lies concealed under the appearance of a lamb, and that a greedy man is inside under the skin of a sheep.
But when the time of the abomination of his desolation begins to approach, having been made legal, he takes the empire, and, just as it is said in the Psalm:—They have been made for the undertaking for the sons of Loth, the Moabites and the Ammanites shall meet him first as their king. Therefore, when he receives the kingdom, he orders the temple of God to be rebuilt for himself, which is in Jerusalem; who, after coming into it, he shall sit as God and order that he be adored by all nations, since he is carnal and filthy and mixed with worthless spirit and flesh. Then that eloquence shall be fulfilled of Daniel the prophet:–And he shall not know the God of their fathers, and he shall not know the desires of women. Because the very wicked serpent shall direct every worship to himself. Because he shall put forth an edict so that people may be circumcised according to the rite of the old law. Then the Jews shall congratulate him, because he gave them again the practice of the first covenant; then all people from everywhere shall flock together to him at the city of Jerusalem, and the holy city shall be trampled on by the nations for forty-two months, just as the holy apostle says in the Apocalypse, which become three and a half years, 1,260 days.
In these three years and a half the heaven shall suspend its dew; because there will be no rain upon the earth, and the clouds shall cease to pass through the air, and the stars shall be seen with difficulty in the sky because of the excessive dryness, which happens in the time of the very fierce dragon. Because all great rivers and very powerful fountains that overflow with themselves shall be dried up, torrents shall dry up their water-courses because of the intolerable age, and there will be a great tribulation, as there has not been since people began to be upon the earth, and there will be famine and an insufferable thirst. And children shall waste away in the bosom of their mothers, and wives upon the knees of their husbands, by not having victuals to eat. Because there will be in those days lack of bread and water, and no one is able to sell or to buy of the grain of the fall harvest, unless he is one who has the serpentine sign on the forehead or on the hand. Then gold and silver and precious clothing or precious stones shall lie along the streets, and also even every type of pearls along the thoroughfares and streets of the cities, but there is not one who may extend the hand and take or desire them, but they consider all things as good as nothing because of the extreme lack and famine of bread, because the earth is not protected by the rains of heaven, and there will be neither dew nor moisture of the air upon the earth. But those who wander through the deserts, fleeing from the face of the serpent, bend their knees to God, just as lambs to the adders of their mothers, being sustained by the salvation of the Lord, and while wandering in states of desertion, they eat herbs.
Then, when this inevitability has overwhelmed all people, just and unjust, the just, so that they may be found good by their Lord; and indeed the unjust, so that they may be damned forever with their author the Devil, and, as God beholds the human race in danger and being tossed about by the breath of the horrible dragon, he sends to them consolatory proclamation by his attendants, the prophets Enoch and Elijah, who, while not yet tasting death, are the servants for the heralding of the second coming of Christ, and in order to accuse the enemy. And when those just ones have appeared, they confuse indeed the antagonistic serpent with his cleverness and they call back the faithful witnesses to God, in order to (free them) from his seduction…
And when the three and a half years have been completed, the time of the antichrist, through which he will have seduced the world, after the resurrection of the two prophets, in the hour which the world does not know, and on the day which the enemy of the son of perdition does not know, will come the sign of the Son of Man, and coming forward the Lord shall appear with great power and much majesty, with the sign of the wood of salvation going before him, and also even with all the powers of the heavens with the whole chorus of the saints, with those who bear the sign of the holy cross upon their shoulders, as the angelic trumpet precedes him, which shall sound and declare: Arise, O sleeping ones, arise, meet Christ, because his hour of judgment has come! Then Christ shall come and the enemy shall be thrown into confusion, and the Lord shall destroy him by the spirit of his mouth. And he shall be bound and shall be plunged into the abyss of everlasting fire alive with his father Satan; and all people who do his wishes shall perish with him forever; but the righteous ones shall inherit everlasting life with the Lord forever and ever.
Why Is The Tribe Of Dan Missing From The Book Of Revelation? – February 20, 2017 by Jack Wellman
https://catholicprophecy.org/monk-adso/
The prophecy of Monk Adso dates back to the 10th Century.
“Against the faithful will he (the Antichrist) rise up in three ways — that is, by terror, by gifts, and by wonders; to the believers in him will he give gold and silver in abundance; but those whom he shall fail to corrupt by presents he will overcome by fear, and those whom he shall fail to vanquish by fear he will seek to seduce by signs and wonders…
NOTE: Other prophecies describe the Antichrist as a charismatic ruler whose false miracles will seduce the elect.
“The ruined Temple also, which Solomon raised to God, he shall build and restore to its former state… and he shall circumcise himself, and lie that he is the Son of God almighty… Thereafter shall he send his messengers and preachers to the whole world.
“Then shall all the Jews flock unto him, and thinking they shall receive Christ they shall receive the devil… Coming to Jerusalem he shall be circumcised, saying to the Jews, I am the Christ promised unto you, who have come for your weal that I may gather and defend you that are scattered…
NOTE: This theme is spoken of again and again. The Antichrist will make Jerusalem the seat of his kingdom and will lead the Jewish people into believing that he is their long-awaited Messiah.
“Then shall be sent into the world the two great prophets Elias and Enoch, who shall forearm the faithful with godly weapons against the task of the Antichrist, and they shall encourage and get them ready for the war… But after they have accomplished their preaching, the Antichrist shall rise up and slay them, and after three days they shall be raised up by the Lord…
“The doctors also teach, as saith Pope Gregory, that Michael the Archangel shall destroy him (the Antichrist) on Mount Olivet in his pavilion and seat, in that place where the Lord ascended into heaven…”
BOOKS
Robert Van Kampen’s “The Sign” (1992) and his “The Rapture Question Answered: Plain and Simple” (1997). Van Kampen’s makes a powerful argument for a pre-(God’s) Wrath rapture of believers as opposed to a Pre-Tribulation or Mid-Tribulation rapture See comments below under the link to Marvin Rosenthal’s book)
Prewrath Rapture of the Church Paperback – June 29, 1990 by Marvin Rosenthal My comments: Rosenthal’s thesis and supporting documentation & reasoning parallels a line of thought & various conclusions I came to many, many years ago: Namely that the rapture/parousia (2nd Coming/“catching away”) by Messiah Yeshua of believers will NOT occur before the Tribulation or Great Tribulation but instead will take place immediately prior to the outpouring of God’s wrath. Believers will thus be on the earth to endure Satan’s wrath which transpires during the 3.5 year Tribulation period and most of the 3.5 years long Great Tribulation period.
The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of the Endtime First Edition, First edition (2013) by Carl Gallups. My thoughts: This book tells the story of a revered Orthodox Rabbi who claimed to have seen the Messiah and wrote down his name (revealed at a specific time after his passing per his instructions) as “Yeshua” (Jesus). However, as part of his claim, he stated that the Messiah is physically alive and walking about Israel which suggests he saw a counterfeit Yeshua – possibly the Antimessiah depicted in various prophetic books in the Bible (Yeshua in the Brit Chadashah/New Testament returns in a supernatural way at the end of the Great Tribulation and is not born a 2nd time physically into this world).
This short video by AofC Network lines up with what I wrote above in May 2020.
The Rabbi, the Secret Message, and the Identity of Messiah by Carl Gallups (2019)
VIDEOS (Free)
Beware False Prophets (Identifying the Anti-Messiah) – Messianic Rabbi Steve Berkson
I Will Shake All Things – Part 1: The Nations – Derek Prince
I Will Shake All Things – Part 2: The Church – Derek Prince
“Exploring the Mid-East Wars of Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38” by Bill Salus
I Saw the Tribulation .. Ken Peters .. 2000
In 1980 Peters, a nominal Catholic at the time had a super vivid prophetic dream in which he saw how the Tribulation will unfold in the US and across the world. As Peters himself shares in the video, he was a Catholic had never heard or read anything about the “end times” or the Antimessiah and had also never heard any priest do a reading or preach from the book of Revelations. So he went into his prophetic dream with no prior exposure to the things he saw unfold and transpire.
According to this documentary posted in 2018 Peters described 14 things in his dream — most technological in nature – -which have been developed in the 30 years since his 1980 experience: Ken Peters saw 14 End Times prophecies 30 years ago now fulfilled in the news. (New Edited Version)
One of the things Peters (now a nondenominational evangelical pastor) described is blue-helmeted & blue ball cap-wearing police on patrol in partially destroyed American cities (He later realized he was being shown UN forces). The UN had no blue helmets or ball caps when Peters had his dream.
In the wake of the police murder of George Lloyd, an African-American gentleman, on May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis (Minn.) and the ensuing unrest, looting, and riots in many major US cities, it is rumored that some government officials have bandied about the idea of having UN forces help keep or restore order in some American cities. If true, it is highly unlikely that UN troops will be mobilized now or in the foreseeable future anywhere in the US. However, the mere fact anyone in any official capacity would entertain asking the UN to deploy troops in America to deal with the current spate of protests, looting, and such, suggests that if and when a major breakdown in civil order occurs across the US — perhaps precipitated by a massive natural or human-made calamity or series of calamities — lawmakers might ask the UN to mobilize some of its troops to help police areas plagued by intense unrest, chaos, and crime.
Concluding remarks
No matter what conclusions you reach about our place as a world on the prophetic timeline, one of the most important things you can do to prepare for whatever lies ahead is to “get on God’s page”:
“Here’s what matters most in the Covid-19 pandemic”
Everything you ever wanted to know about post-death decomposition (“Body Farm” video)
© 2020 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Old solution revisited: COVID-19 antibody rich human milk (or colostrum)
She’s examining whether the antibodies lingering in human milk can protect babies — and perhaps even adults one day — from coronavirus.
She’s examining whether the antibodies lingering in human milk can protect babies — and perhaps even adults one day — from coronavirus.
Anthony G. Payne Perversely funny and oddly apropos for our times. Just picture COVID-19 as Mr. Hands and the world as Mr. Bill.
Making pancreatic cancer cells too acidic to survive
Pancreatic cancer blocked by disrupting cellular pH balance (Medical Express) by Sanford Burnham (Prebys Medical Discovery Institute) April 7, 2020
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys have found a new way to kill pancreatic cancer cells by disrupting their pH equilibrium. The study, published in Cancer Discovery, reports how depleting an ion transport protein lowers the pH to a point that compromises pancreatic cancer cell growth.
“Our study suggests that interfering with cellular pH represents a new therapeutic avenue to treat pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers for which there is currently no effective treatment,” says Cosimo Commisso, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Sanford Burnham Prebys’ NCI-designated Cancer Center.’
“A new therapeutic avenue..”? Not exactly (Granted, the SBP scientists have their own unique way of lowering tumor cell pH). Check out this blog entry of mine: Exploiting a vulnerability in some forms of cancer: the Warburg Effect revisited
This particular blog entry contains a link to a paper by “yours truly” from 2005: PREVENTING METASTASIS AND ACHIEVING ONCOLYSIS IN SOLID TUMORS BY INHIBITING SPECIFIC METALLOPROTEINASES AND MANIPULATING KEY METABOLIC PATHWAYS (Medical Hypotheses & Research, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 2005)
From the abstract section of my paper:
By artfully manipulating key metabolic anaerobic biochemical pathways, it should be possible to increase lactate and block its excretion, resulting in lethal reductions in intracellular pH. Compounds are advanced for accomplishing this as well as helping eradicate non-hypoxic regions of tumors, based on predecessor methods which results in long term remissions in per sons with a host of solid tumor malignancies. A number of measures are also introduced for inducing oncostasis and preventing metastasis.
This approach to effecting tumor cell die-off was dubbed by me “The Metabolic Oncolytic Regimen” and was first bandied about by me in 1989 (My original paper on this was posted online in 1989 followed by a revised spin in 2011).
Its use by various oncologists in the US and abroad has put many patients with advanced and sometimes end stage metastatic cancer into partial and even full remission
This body of work attracted the attention of various staffers at the Office of Alternative Medicine (later reborn as the NCCAM) including NIH post-doc toxicologist Li-Chuan Chin which resulted in my being funded by the NIH to attend the historic Practice Outcomes Monitoring and Evaluation System (POMES) cancer conference held in Bethesda (in 1996). A few years later the faculty senate and president of a integrative medical school in Sri Lanka (Open International University of CAM) recognized the promise of the MOR by bestowing an honorary MD degree and 2 medals in science on me.
The revised Metabolic Oncolytic Regimen (MOR) is sometimes prescribed by MDs abroad who are also utilizing another of my brainchildren: Donor granulocyte therapy for advanced cancer (NCIM)
© April 2020 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
COVID-19: Lots of easy to access posts on my FACEBOOK page
I post many news articles & such on COVID-19 (and much more) along with my comments in many instances on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DrAGPayne.choctawdoc
My posts are almost always accessible by the public (This way you do not need to become a “Facebook Friend” of mine to access and read them).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
MAKE A VENTILATOR AT HOME
https://www.youtube.com/watch…
youtube.com
Anthony G. Payne Dr. Dennis is a professor of bioengineering at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and worked for NASA as a research scientist. I actually have been evaluating the efficacy of his unique M1 PEMF technology to remediate pain & stimulate cartilage and bone regeneration in volunteers. We seem to share a passion for equipping people with the know-how to help themselves. Check out this this <5 minute video in which Dr. Dennis explains how to make-a ventilator-at-home.
Anthony G. Payne PS I sincerely hope you NEVER have to make & use this homemade ventilator on a COVID-19 stricken spouse, relative, friend, or such!
Antivirus nasal spray you can make at home (Git-R-Done)
The fish tank cleaner contains the same active ingredient as the drug, but in a different form that can poison people.
washingtonpost.com
The fish tank cleaner contains the same active ingredient as the drug, but in a different form that can poison people.
Anthony G. Payne The toxicity of even the right drug – chloroquine — as well as hydroxychloroquinine — and the lack of substantive evidence that they actually produce benefits outweighing the risks — are prompting many scientists and docs to hit the pause button on them. However, back in the mid 1980s while dealing with a handful of AIDs sufferers (Dallas) I had them try a specific compound that was nontoxic — showed activity against certain parasites and viruses — and which actually had an positive impact of their condition. This whole chloroquinine discussion got to me to reflecting on this. Now I am arranging to obtain my old chemical friend and combine it with the other nontoxic antiviral compounds to see if it will make a dent in COVID-19 in the lab (I do not work with the actual virus but have a pipeline to researchers who are and who are seeking novel solutions to test against this insidious virus). Ever forward….
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Idiot pastor in Ohio holds Sunday service in his megachurch
In Warren County, Ohio, a state where the governor has issued a stay-at-home mandate to slow the spread of coronavirus, Solid Rock Church pastor Lawrence Bishop invited worshippers yesterday to his…
boingboing.net
In Warren County, Ohio, a state where the governor has issued a…
In Warren County, Ohio, a state where the governor has issued a stay-at-home mandate to slow the spread of coronavirus, Solid Rock Church pastor Lawrence Bishop invited worshippers yesterday to his…
Anthony G. Payne I suspect the pastor of this megachurch has trouble distinguishing presumption from faith. It is an intellectual defect I’ve seen at work in many congregations down through the years, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Anthony G. Payne Thankfully it appears most megachurch leaders have already wised up……https://slate.com/…/its-a-big-deal-that-megachurches…
-
-
slate.comIt’s a Big Deal That Megachurches Are Canceling Live ServicesIt’s a Big Deal That Megachurches Are Canceling Live Services
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Something Amiss
Skewed: Bias, Corruption & Hypocrisy in Contemporary Science & Medicine
HARM: Side & adverse effects of conventional medicine & hospitals vs. natural (alternative medicine or CAM) health care practitioners and supplements & Side & adverse effects of natural & wholistic health care practices & supplements (A Compendium)
http://www.something-amiss.org/pdf/SKEWED&HARM-10-2016.pdf
To company owners & hiring managers: Do the human thing
Back in the early 1980s, while working towards a graduate degree in biological anthropology, I held down a full-time job as EDP (Electronic Data Processing) Operations Manager for a major portable oil rig manufacturer in Dallas (Texas.) When I joined this firm, I had two computer operators and two data entry operators helping run a two (2) shift data processing operation. Our IBM computer was state-of-the-art for its time (see photo below) and was primarily used to process financial, accounting, inventory and engineering data for company divisions throughout the US and overseas.
As the firm grew my department got busier and as a result needed to hire additional personnel. I made a point of seeking out qualified people who basically had been passed over by local businesses. In the span of a year or so my staff grew from four to thirteen with most being minorities (like myself.) The systems engineering group that interfaced with those of us in operations were almost exclusively middle-aged white men and women, most of whom did not readily welcome my diverse crew into the fold as-it-were.
Did I hire people of color simply because I was a minority myself (American Indian)? Not at all. The fact is I felt what I was doing would in some small way help offset unwritten policies that had constrained the hiring of qualified minorities.
Read the rest of this entryWe are all explorimentalists by nature
On 6-16-2018 Rev. Bert M. Farias posted the request below on his very popular Facebook page. A number of replies followed including one comment from a Miss Alice. I responded to her comment, Rev. Farias to mine, and so it went back & forth between us. We did not exactly stay on topic but did kibitz on things that might, just might prove of interest to some of you.
Bert Farias
For those who have the time and interest:
I’d like some feedback on this comment to my recent article. I’m constantly searching my heart on these issues, never wanting to be high-minded about these things, but to remain teachable. I guess the core question I found myself asking after reading this comment is this: What are some indicators of preachers who teach the gain is godliness message, and that financial prosperity equates to spirituality? (the article is on my timeline as I didn’t want to repost it).
READER COMMENT: “There are some things worth considering in this article but it is hard to judge someone’s heart and steweardship (sic) based only on their wealth. I will say that it seems extreme to compare someone like Joyce Meyer 35 million in estimated net worth to Bill Gates 91 billion, (A 2600 times difference) If I followed this logic, a typical minister in the USA might have 200k in net worth, while many poor have only debt. This is worse than 2600 times. Should ministers be allowed to have two cars when much of the world does not have a bike? Using the same standard, such relativism could apply the label false teacher to any Western Christian that has a skilled occupation. No, fortunately, God looks on the heart. Are you ruled by money or are you ruled by God? There is no certain dollar standard, lest all Westerners be guilty. Never mind that it takes LARGE Christian donors to move policy to the right..such as what occurred in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital.”
THOUGHTS ANYONE?
Alice: And one more comment: I once had a lady ask me why God didn’t let Christians win things like PCH millions of dollars prizes. My answer, without evening thinking about it, was that to many Christians can’t /won’t tithe on a $1,000, how can God trust them with millions. I believe God will bless obedience. It’s not just money, but in everything that concerns us. I don’t believe in all this “give $49.52 and God will multiply it 100 fold” stuff. That is just manipulation. But the Word does say that we are blessed with faithful Abraham. Again, that’s not JUST money.
Anthony G. Payne Right on, Miss Alice. I would add: If God rigged drawings & lotteries to favor specific Christians or others winning he would be guilty of engaging in a form of cheating (When chance is violated in such lotteries by people who profit from it or do so to profit others this is a crime. Of course, human law is not binding on God in instances in which it violates his articulated rules and ways, but he does respect these when they spring from or dovetail with his rules & ways, i.e., his prescribed laws/instructions & ethics).
Bert Farias Anthony G. Payne Dr. Payne! Nice of you to chime in. 😁
Anthony G. Payne I’ll be sending you something from my laboratory shortly, Herr Reverend (It took a while, yes, to process it). Oh vey! Oh, and here’s a link to my “What’s Up, Doc?” fill-in-the-blanks video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zdIRLuTTgU (Do I know how to have fun or what?!?!)
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/275281155″>Eh, what’s up doc?</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user86267628″>Dr. Anthony G. Payne</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
Bert Farias Not only do you know how to have fun, but you are brilliant! To God be the glory! While you’re putting the finishing touches on your lab work, I’m gonna need about a gallon of that hair stuff! 😂
Bert Farias I’ll pay for it!
Bert Farias And if both of these things work for me I will spread the good cheer and joy and market it in my circles.
Anthony G. Payne As a boy I was smitten by astronomer Edwin Hubble’s writings including this beautiful, powerful gem….
“The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination.”
Later on, as an adult, I got into explor-i-menting and discovered firsthand how my own musings & handiwork are but “successive approximations”. Sometimes a hypothesis or idea or invention will pan out quickly, while at other times it needs retooling & retesting or, worst case scenario, proves an irredeemable dud (And, yes, sometimes an invention or product creation will work for some or a few and not the many). But above all I strive to question my own findings & conclusions. The alternative tends to birth dogma which is anathema for the theorist as well as the experimentalist.
Bert Farias Anthony G. Payne Our God of wonders and selection put this in your heart at a young age. You not only have to have an acute sense of fascination but incredible patience to explore such things.
Anthony G. Payne Most of us are natural born explor-i-mentalists, Herr Reverend. We are all engaged in testing this against that and weighing the preponderance of evidence & logic for and against things (albeit to varying degrees). The sad part if that so many folks have had their curiosity and willingness to question & test certain beliefs & such constrained or eroded by dogmatic teachers or preachers or family or others who prefer to dole out pat answers & solutions that are never to be questioned (The truth is these people should actually welcome such questioning and even argumentation as it might just compel them to closely examine, revise and even discard that which is unfruitful or useless). IMO we should all take to heart the approach of scientists and rabbis who question almost everything and take nothing as absolutely settled or final (Which is to say any claim, pet theory, finding or even law of nature can be overturned by sufficient contrary evidence).
________________________________________
What will you let life do to you this year?
When you were a young lad or lassie how many times were you asked, “What will you do in life when you grow up?”
I have a different spin on this which is not peculiar youth or young people: What will you let life do to you?
“What do I mean?”, you ask. It’s really quite simple: Every person, influence, work of art and music, hobby, passion, group, tribe and such is writing paragraphs and chapters in the unique storybook which is your life. Your very being may even form a dynamic circuit with select others.
Picture your life as a huge whiteboard. Now walk along and read the entries on it — “the good, bad and ugly”, if you will. As you look around you see the various people in your life writing on your “lifeboard”. What kind of story has emerged? Are you happy with it? If not, how many “bad content writers” can and should be banned from writing on your lifeboard in 2015?
Dr. Anthony G. Payne
The loss of civic virtue and the fall of the Roman Empire (and perhaps America as well)
Who among you has not read an editorial, op-ed piece or commentary that points out alarming parallels between America and the Roman Empire in decline? Do you believe America’s sun is setting? And if so, why? Is it the shift from democratic republic to oligarchy and/or plutocracy? Loss of our moral bearings? Rampant fear and paranoia? Racism? Xenophobia? Religious intolerance? Other evils? I’m sure you have your own pet theory. Is loss of civic virtue on your list? If not, why not? Need convincing that this belongs there? Then drop down, click the mp3 link under Rabbi David Wolpe’s name, and listen to his powerful sermon.
| January | |
| Mishpatim : Why Rome Fell and We Might, Too | |
| keywords: Anton Chekhov, Benjamin Guggenheim, Christianity, civic virtue, Constantinople, Edward Gibbon, Egypt, Herman Cohen, John Jacob Astor, John Lukatz, lead, Mishpatim, physician Roman Empire, Rome Titanic, Tucson | |
| January 29, 2011 | |
| Rabbi David Wolpe | |
 mp3 |
|
| drash – Rabbi Nicole Guzik | |
| mp3 |
|
What to do with militant extremists in our midst? It’s a question Americans have faced before
A lot of people are wrestling with how this country should deal with militant Muslims in our midst. I think most of us have no issue with American Muslims who do not advocate for anything at odds with our US civic virtues and democratic traditions and practices. Concerns naturally arise with US-based Muslims who post, preach and otherwise advocate for the things we hear being said by members of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) and other radical Muslim groups. Many advocate deporting anyone who engages in this sort of thing. Of course, we have homegrown militants in our midst, among them neo-Nazis and Klansmen who preach things that inspire hatred and sometimes violence on the part of their members and sympathizers. One could argue are they are citizens and enjoy certain legal and constitutional protections which renders deportation or “quarantine” a nonissue, but then some extremist Muslims in the US also are citizens (Some born here). Deporting a US citizen to the country their ancestors came from might be emotionally satisfying to some folks but it would open a door that could quickly be abused by the state.
Déjà Vu: Muslim extremist evils should sound familiar
Few reading this, I dare say, have any qualms about seeing religious extremists who believe they please the Almighty by dealing with nonbelievers, sinners, so-called apostates and “infidels” with intolerance and especially cruelty and butchery, contained and even eradicated (Mandated when an armed response is the lesser of 2 evils — kill or else have more innocents killed).
At the moment (October 2014) a coalition of nations including many predominately Muslin ones are involved in rolling back the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) whose atrocities and wanton evil are regularly showcased and discussed on TV and in newspapers, not to mention web, blog and social media outlets galore worldwide.
In the midst of all this most justifiable righteous indignation with extremist violence and monstrous wickedness, there is also a growing hostility towards Muslims in countries throughout the world in which peaceful, law-abiding ones are not only suspected of being sympathetic to Islamic extremists like IS/ISIS/ISIL but are thought to be fellow travelers, even members of planted “sleeper cells” who lurk in the shadows awaiting conditions to favor their popping out and engaging in terrorism.
And, even though Muslims including scholars have come out and denounced the extremist evil of IS including their cherry-picking of the Quran to support their beliefs and actions (Examples: Here & here), this is oftentimes ignored or eclipsed by our all-too-human in-group/out-group sentiments (wiring?) which in many instances has given rise to xenophobia and then paranoia. There is something both ironic and paradoxical in the fact that many who decry the intolerance and acts of cruelty championed by extremists began to treat anyone or anything that “smacks of the enemy” with intolerance and cruelty (ranging from subtle ostracism to physical violence).
It is also tempting to filter out contrary evidence within the Islamic world and conclude that IS/ISIS/ISIL actually reflects the heart and soul of Muslim beliefs and heartfelt convictions. It doesn’t help that stories and accounts come out of how many Muslims actually do believe that certain Islamic extremist groups, often dominated by clerics, are an antidote for deviating from a literal interpretation of the Quran or “creeping liberalism”. This sort of thing is naturally seized upon by those who argue that Muslims who bomb, shoot, crucify, bury alive, behead and otherwise dispatch “infidels” in bestial ways represent the real Islamic McCoy. Here is one of many posted articles on the Web that take this position (This one claims that the Oklahoma Muslim who beheaded an ex-coworker represents the “real Islam”): http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/oklahoma-beheader-represents-real-islam/
If this doesn’t should familiar, you’ve either forgotten your high school history lessons or slept through them. How so? At one time the Christian world, especially many of its leaders both religious and secular, sanctioned draconian measures against “infidels” which included torture, imprisonment, exile and cruel executions. What did these “defenders of the faith” base their actions on? They certainly didn’t need to make up scriptural justification for this sort of thing. The Bible provided them abundant material that when taken literally and narrowly applied, sometimes out-of-context and sometimes not, justified the cruelest imaginable treatment and horrific execution of gays, occultists, nonbelievers, heterodox believers (heretics), infidels (non-Christians) and more. Click to read a rundown of such verses.
Historic examples? Thankfully, a chap by the name of Mark Humphrys saved me having to dig out all the applicable historic incidents and practices and such, as he researched, organized and posted this to http://markhumphrys.com/christianity.killings.html (Readers are also encouraged to peruse what’s posted at http://www.heretication.info/_heretics.html).
Of course, most modern (Western) Christian believers and organizations including churches and denominations would never entertain taking verses such as Leviticus 20:10 as (ahem) gospel and acting on them: If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death (Albeit some especially aggrieved wives or husbands might wish this was the law of the land)
But ask yourself: What stopped the waves of church-sanctioned persecution, torture and cruel execution of heretics and those declared apostates, sinners or such who would not repent or otherwise bend their knee to those who held their lives in-the-balance? History reveals no sudden turnabout. However, over time a number of shifts and changes occurred that gradually undermined and eroded intolerance and forced conformity to orthodoxy: Among these, the church lost secular power and influence while Biblical literalism and militant, extremist Christian policies and actions lost steam as more moderate views won the day (And these because to a great extent religious scholars and others critically examined archaic beliefs and practices and even the scriptures themselves in light of contrary or mitigating factual evidence and reasoning).
This is viewpoint is reflected in comments made by Southern Baptist Theological seminary faculty member Dr. Timothy Paul Jones to the Baptist Press which were incorporated in a July 2014 article titled “Why Christians killed and why Muslim violence continues” by David Roach:
“Christians used to kill with some frequency over matters of doctrine. There was the Spanish Inquisition, Calvin’s Geneva, England’s notorious Bloody Mary, the drowning of Anabaptists, the Crusades and more.”
Dr. Jones, the author of “Christian History Made Easy“, also stated that “it was the intermingling of church authority and civil authority that made it possible for persons who claimed to be Christians to have the state execute others who also professed Christ.”
But,…and this is a big but…..this shift was not without acrimonious debates, calls for a return to “that old time religion” (i.e., a church with secular power that punished heretics and others), fist fights and open warfare, and worse, in various quarters at various times.
Now ask yourself: Does all that’s happening in the Middle East — the theocratic Islamic governments who rely on oppression and cruelty and public executions to hold the pot lid down on dissent, the pitched battles (literal and figurative) between proponents of a Muslim religious worldview that is exclusivist literalist, and radically fundamentalist and those who champion the opposite, etc. — represent the kind of “Future Shock” cultural, social and religious clashes and upheavals that arose from and signaled the transition from a Europe that was ruled by clerics and which burned heretics to one of nations largely democratic and essentially tolerant? (But not without periodic lapses into darkness when conditions favored the eclipse of reason and tolerance by fear, hatred and bigotry). I tend to think so.
The question of whether such a complete transition will occur may not be one of if but when. But at what cost to the Muslim world and Israel, the EU, America, and other countries before the dust settles?
Beyond containing militant/radical Muslim extremists, there are other variables at play that could up the ante and the “dust” that gets kicked up before it settles to the ground. Assume for a moment that those who warn that Iran is dead set on building nuclear weapons — something underscored by alarming developments such as this — are right and they do. What happens if a major offensive is launched by one or more Arab countries against Israel and Iran joins this? If so, it is not inconceivable that Russia, which has longstanding ties to Iran (not to mention Assad’s Syria), might seize the opportunity to support such military adventurism. This would surely result in America rightfully jumping into the fray to help Israel repel this armed assault and intended invasion. Bingo, WWIII or, if not something this dire, surely a major regional conflagration that will come awfully close to unleashing it.
A major war in the Middle East, too, seems less a matter of if but when. Certainly a great many Jewish and Christian believers view this as inevitable based on prophecies in the books of Daniel and Ezekiel (Among others). Read my blog entry on this by clicking this link.
However, whether a great war hits the Middle East in the near future, later on or not at all, we can all expect a lot of craziness and bloodshed not only there but in Europe, the US, Canada, and elsewhere before the Muslim world breaks free of the forces of extremism, oppression and such.
Our challenge here in the US lies not just encouraging and waiting out the hoped for transition among Muslim countries, but also in preventing terrorist acts by Islamic extremists and their sympathizers in our midst, while at the same time avoiding letting their occasional successes drive us into the arms of authoritarian solutions…or worse.
Dr. Anthony G. Payne (Br. Anthony of the Resurrection)
Additional/supplemental reading penned by “yours truly”
Dark times and the allure of evil
How do you kill 12 million people? Evil then and now: Recognizing & containing it
Of PQQ, Nutcracker Man & Tiger Nuts (PQQ as radioprotective with heart & nervous system benefits)
Pyrroloquinoline quinone – Wikpedia
I have worked with a coenzyme called pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) for quite a while now and think it is worth a “look see” by physicians and others for its preventative and therapeutic potential. Let’s dive into this now:
First, let’s “do the time warp, now”: During 1994-5 I worked in an Ag lab and large greenhouse complex outside Lincoln, Nebraska (Which was devoted to the testing of various nature-derived growth accelerants on culinary & medicinal mushrooms). One of the principle consulting researchers who rubbed elbows with me was Andy Anderson, PhD, who discovered a radioresistant bacterium back in 1956 while irradiating food at the Oregon Agricultural Experimental Station in Corvallis (As I recall from our chitchat, he was irradiating canned foods to see if this would reliably preserve them against spoilage). The bacterium was subsequently dubbed Deinococcus radiodurans and is indisputably the most radioresistant organism discovered to-date.
Sexting, Sex Tapes & Sexual Exhibitionism: Why have so many folks thrown caution to the wind?
Time flies. If you were around to see the debut of the classic comedy “Animal House” 35 years ago you are likely feeling a tad old. But like so many great movies, Animal House managed to both reflect and illuminate certain aspects of our culture. And in light of today’s headlines one is tempted to think some of our political leaders have been running their lives as though they live in the Delta Tau Chi fraternity house.
Who can forget Dean Vernon Wormer’s pointed comment to Faber College freshman & Delta Tau Chi member Kent Dorfman that “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son”.
Given the middle-aged shenanigans of more than a few prominent politicians just in the past few years one can’t help but picture them standing in front of Dean Wormer and hearing:
“Old, horny and reckless is no way to go through life, son”
State sanctioned executions: What’s wrong with “Hang ’em high!”?
Hardly a month passes without one US state or another putting a convicted murderer, rapist or what-have-you to death (It’s 7-26-2013 and Reuters just ran an on-line article titled “Alabama executes man advocates said was mentally ill” at http://reut.rs/13h21aj). While I understand where folks who view this as closure for the victim’s family or “just deserts” are coming from, I quite honestly detest the idea of the state possessing the power to terminate a life under any circumstances. History clearly shows how easy it is for governments to slip into abusing this sort of thing in the name of national security, the war on this or that real or imagined nemesis, or what-have-you. Accordingly,…:
Proposed Prime Directive: The (Seig!) State should never be able to take from anyone that which it can’t later restore if required or compelled, for whatever reason.
If you think this “excessively liberal”, imagine yourself awaiting execution in one hour’s time. Or what if your daughter, son, nephew, niece or other blood relative were to be executed shortly?
© 2013 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Neither a “Roman at the games” nor a supporter of those who play at this be
High detailed spartan, roman, greek helmet in laurel wreath badge with rings and stars. sports military fighting badge icon, 3d rendering isolated on black background.
Where you have competition, you have losers and those who seem to revel in their loss. Pretty much everyone reading this knows how the Romans flocked to the Amphitheatrum Flavium better known as the Coliseum (starting around 80 CE) and were thrilled to see gladiatorial contest losers being dispatched and were reportedly especially happy when enemies of the state were served up to the Angel of Death in the goriest way possible. Today this competitive impulse is vented and satisfied in sports stadiums and contests of every description. And….on TV and in movies, in science and medicine, in academia, and in pretty much every endeavor or undertaking you can name. It is almost as if the road up is paved with the wounded, fallen, and discarded.
I personally think we all get more mileage out of cooperation than competition, which is actually a cardinal expression of our social nature. But we still compete. In academia, the term “publish or perish” wasn’t coined as a joke but as a reflection of the cutthroat competition that researchers, scholars and professors keenly feel. Today it is almost commonplace to read about retracted papers whose underlying studies include fraudulent or plagiarized data or information, which I suspect arises when researchers and others feel the only way to “stay afloat” is to take “shortcuts to glory” (Something that when exposed oftentimes sinks the very careers the perpetrators hoped to sustain and grow). The website “Retraction Watch” is actually devoted to airing these kinds of failings from the world of published research.
What concerns me isn’t that people make bad choices, we all do at one time or another after all, but rather that some folks seem to revel in seeing the “perpetrators” thrust into the spotlight and made to endure a seeming unending barrage of shame and denunciation. Some even anticipate bad times for not only people who wonder off the straight & narrow, but for those who are unconventional or are doing things that could be perceived or interpreted as crossing some real or imagined legal or regulatory line by the powers-that-be. Some seem to salivate at the very prospect that an ill wind will blast those they disagree with or oppose into obscurity…or worse.
Those who take this particular low road are IMO the modern day equivalent of those Romans who clamored for the destruction of those who had violated Imperial law.
So why do people, especially cultured, educated souls, seem to thrill in what amounts to an exercise in cruelty? Has their sense of competitiveness and the need to be right taken on a pathological dimension? Do they find that the only way they can feel better is by stepping on and then over the careers and lives of those they feel duty bound to hurl stones at? Do they have little or no empathy, at least for those they disagree with or oppose? Is it intolerance or ignorance at work…or both? Maybe it is all of this and more, at least in some instances. Let me share what I think motivates at least some of these “professional stone throwers”.
It is my contention that the mechanism (if you will) at work in those who either predict doom for their real or perceived nemeses (“worthy targets”) or who work towards this end, is the same one that animates the cruel actions of terrorists who behead their helpless victims. In 2005 I touched on this in an analytic article I titled “Terrorist beheadings and other forms of inflicted, violent death: Are victims aware of what is happening around them after their heart and lungs have stopped working?” (which you can access at https://biotheorist.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/terrorist-beheadings-and-other-forms-of-inflicted-violent-death-2009.pdf)
It will take only a few salient lines to spell out my spin on this:
…there is an element of “enlightened self interest” in our curiosity and even fascination with dying and death. When we ask “What did that poor soul experience?”, we are in some way seeking in the death of others some idea of what we might sense or think or visualize as we go through our own final, irreversible “systems failure”.
So there you have it. As I see it some, perhaps many “stone hurlers” – I refer specifically to those who engage in ad hominem attacks on people or classes or groups of people instead of challenging faulty or flawed ideas, or who make suppositions with regard to what underlies poor or bad choices as though they are privy to seeing into their being (quite a feat when you consider most mental processes beneath consciousness and are not accessible to us) – do so (in part) to both existentially anticipate and experience the suffering they predict or facilitate for those they oppose. Of course, if their target winds up in hot water, rehab, prison or the cemetery, there is the ego-gratification of being able to say (either bluntly or ever so diplomatically) “See, I told you so”. By virtue of this they feel justified in the rightness of their particular stone hurling activities and encouraged to continue doing so. Society is not better for it, for successful cruelty has a way of attracting imitators and supporters and then of being further reinforced until it becomes “a self-evident truth”.
How should we deal with stone hurling and other forms of depersonalizing cruelty? The faulty thinking, choices and ideas that underlie such actions should be brought to light, dissected and challenged. But under no circumstance should this include attacks on the character or worth of people who have “played a Roman at the games” or supported those who do so. And, last but not least, we should strive mightily to meet and supplant heartless, cynical or even cruel actions on the part of others with exceeding kindness, cooperation, forgiveness and mercy whenever possible.
© 2013 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Recommended Supplemental Reading
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen
The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will by Heidi M. Ravven, Ph.D.
The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity by Bruce Hood, Ph.D.
The Illusion of Conscious Will by Dr. Daniel M. Wegner
How do you kill 12 million people? Evil then and now: Recognizing & containing it
Color photo from TIME, Inc.
My good friend Jim Haverlock recently asked, “How do you kill 12 million people?” He was, of course, referring to the Shoah or Holocaust. He wasn’t asking about the nuts & bolts of pulling off mass executions but, rather, how did so many ordinary and even extraordinary men and women willingly take part in Hitler’s Endlösung (Final Solution). This is a question that has intrigued and haunted me since early boyhood actually. In fact, as part of my quest for answers I read all of Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels diaries as a young man plus vol. 1 of “Mein Kampf” (Vol. 2 was unknown when I was a youngster), watched archival film of the Nuremberg & Doctor’s trials, and read just about every substantive book on Hitler, the Nazis and fascism that existed at the time (And everything worth reading on the subject since as well). As anyone reading this who ever took a course in World History knows, both Hitler and Goebbels stressed the use of propaganda and the “big lie” as integral to the creation and sustainment of the Greater Germania they envisioned. And both were extraordinary in their zeal and abilities to forge a monolithic state predicated on a shared national myth, and induce the German people to embrace it via lies, artful use of imagery and symbols, fear, rewards and appeals to entrenched biases that went back not just decades but centuries (Particularly in the case of antisemitism which sadly had its roots in early Christian teachings especially the Hellenized spin on Jesus and his message crafted & promulgated by Saul of Tarsus aka St. Paul. Learn more by reading Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity by scholar & historian Dr. James D. Tabor).
One place to turn for insight is historian Dr. Daniel Goldhagen’s books plus those of psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo. They do a smashing good job of laying out the historic, sociological, psychological and economic forces, currents and mechanisms that set the stage for the rise of the Nazis and then sustained them once they were in power.
But, even after you’ve read and mastered these works and others like them you likely find yourself still perplexed by the fact so many people down through the millennia and especially during the heyday of fascism could ignore and in many instances take an active hand in wanton cruelty. After nearly a lifetime of studying human cruelty and complicity in cruelty and evil I know there is no simple answer to “why”. Certainly lack of empathy or reduced or impaired empathy for targets/scapegoats is vital to evil and, yes, lies play a powerful role as well, but there is so much more that works to foster wickedness than lies and people’s failure to detect them or act on them or neglect to search them out and deal with them. However, with this said it certain behooves Americans to be vigilant and to call out wrongs and evil as soon as they come to light.
Things are complicated by the fact that evil and good rely on similar mechanisms and tools to govern (God, too, relies on these – see my op-ed piece on this subject titled “Hitler & HaShem at http://www.healingcare4u.org/hitler-hashem.pdf). Heaven knows our government has used lies of varying magnitude to govern across the years of our country’s existence. Probably Nixon and his “Imperial Presidency” took this to a whole new level and set certain wickedness in motion that has grown in scope to this day. In theory, yes, a super crisis or series of crises could lead to martial law and suspensions of Constitutional guarantees. During the Civil War (or as it is better known where I came from, “The War for Southern Independence”) Abraham Lincoln threw many folks who questioned his administration and policies into jail and kept them there, thanks to his having suspended the writ of habeas corpus. However, people rebelled, the press raised hell and the Supreme Court ultimately undid some of the more egregious acts of hegemony. I think any move to contain social disorder by imposition of a police or ultra-authoritarian state would, at the very least, result in the formation of tens of thousands of militias and resistance groups across the land that would make keeping the lid on the pot problematic if not impossible.
Naturally, best to act now and prevent a quasi-police or full-fledged police state then try to overthrow one that is in-place. Keeping our representatives working and honest is certainly part of that.
While no one has knows the full rhyme and reason behind human evil and its various incarnations, it helps to be aware of and reject ideas, movements, and acts that arise from and feed evil: Among them being intolerance, the marginalization and dehumanization of others especially minorities and other vulnerable groups, and unquestioned belief in authority figures and an unwillingness to call them out when they violate the very civil virtues and Constitutional guarantees they are charged with upholding.
I would add this: Although I’ve been a democratic socialist since the mid 1980s I find some ideas and notions articulated by conservatives and even some right wingers of merit. As a Southerner whose ancestors go back to Revolutionary War times (and beyond) in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, and whose paternal and maternal forbearers lived under the Stars & Bars (Confederacy) and in some instances fought for the C.S.A., I inherited a mix of ideas and notions, some worthy of consideration if not embrace, others that had no substance when they were articulated long ago and never will. Of those that I deemed worth hanging onto was the longstanding Southern distrust of a powerful central government running everything including many aspects of people’s everyday lives. Although you might think a democratic socialist would welcome an all powerful centralized government, I emphatically do not. History shows all too clearly that the concentration of power in the hands of strongmen leads to abuses and skullduggery of the worst sort. Actually there are at least a few liberal thinkers who would prefer to see a decentralization of power in the US and other countries, and even the break-up of powerhouse countries into small nation-states (Especially those that are unstable or might become so and with this attempt to retain order and stability by imposition of a police or authoritarian state). I’m sure a world comprised of small, less powerful nations, say, the size of Switzerland, would by no means avoid many of the ills that plague major powers today, but I can’t help think they would have less influence and thus less ability to work evil in the world. And for those that do, their neighbors could form temporary confederations and impose various kinds of sanctions or, when regrettably necessary, military containment (Hey, sometimes the only way to stop a thug is send in the police).
But until power shifts from Washington to the states (if it ever does), best to keep an eye on the politicians on Capital Hill and do everything possible to keep our representatives working, honest and limited in the evil they can do. The same applies to the press and other so-called sacred American institutions.
Dr. Anthony G. Payne (waxing philosophic from his porch swing)
RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
My spiritual watering hole website: http://summerclouds.weebly.com/
Why does God allow evil (Theodicy)? See Are you an atheist, religionist, deist, fideist or ???
CBN video presentation “God & Hitler”: http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/churchhistory/godandhitler/index.aspx
Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose by Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D.
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen
Copyright 2013 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
Abortion: Is there a point at which it becomes a moral or ethical “misstep”?
If you belong to a faith tradition or religious perspective that views the fusion of sperm and egg as marking the advent of a human life, you are probably very unlikely to modify your stance. As one who grew up in the Bible belt among Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals (upwards of 90% of my family), I know where you are coming from. There is black & white, with grey being a species of unacceptable compromise that is akin to bedding down with evil incarnate.
If you happen to belong to the “B & W’ contingent, perhaps you buttress your antiabortion convictions like many aspects of your most cherished religious beliefs with borrowings from the world of science and medicine, however tenuous some of these may be. As you may know or at least have heard, many religious beliefs are not testable and thus lie outside the purview of science. For example, the religious concept that every human has a soul or spirit imputed by the Almighty at conception or thereafter is not something that can be tested and verified or refuted using the tools of science. There is no laboratory assay that will disclose or measure something that is held to have no material substance as we know it and which is not physically manifest in cells or tissues or such.
For believers who hold that ensoulment (i.e., spirit is imputed) occurs at conception, and (who) refuse to consider even slightly modifying this perspective in light of contrary biblical reasoning, there exists an impasse that cannot be readily breeched (If at all). When enough people embrace such a spin on what constitutes viable human life, their collective influence on the direction state and even federal legislation takes is felt (Some would argue disproportionately so). Of course, the courts have weighed in to keep even majority sentiment from what they conclude impinges on or overrides the Constitutional rights of the minority.
Many scientists regard the convictions of those who hold that viable human life begins at conception or during the very early stages of development as both presumptuous and naive. Many religionists and theologians agree. Among those who happen to hold fast to a belief that a fertilized egg is entitled to full status as a viable human, the use of blastocytes or very early stage embryos constitutes a species of murder. Some even go so far as to decry those who take exception to their faith-based beliefs as being immoral or amoral.
Does the truth lie somewhere between the strictly secular and the sacred? Most of us probably harbor a feeling that somewhere in all this – lurking in the facts of biology and the world of polemics and logic, ethics and religion – there is an answer that will win the day. If this is the case, it is quite obviously going to take time for such a truth to fully emerge.
Many have asked me, “What is your spin on what constitutes viable human life?” Being as I have a foot in both worlds – which is to say religious belief and science – it seems logical to suppose that I would be able to offer up a “faith and science-friendly” opinion as to when viable human life begins. Well, yes, I do have something to offer up for consideration though the only thing I can be 100% certain of is that my opinion will be contested by people on both sides of the “great divide”. With this in mind, here is my spin – informed by biology, of course.
The heart begins beating at three weeks of gestation and the first neural reflex is manifest at eight weeks (and consists of hand withdrawal in response to stimulation of the fetal lip region). During weeks 9-13 the first brain waves appear and are discernible using special medical instrumentation.
Given that death is defined (in part) as a cessation of both heart and brain wave activity, one could argue conversely that to be alive in any meaningful sense beyond mere biological existence (A petri dish bearing a cell culture has biological existence, after all) begins when both heart and brain are operational – week 9 onwards.
Interestingly, in my own faith tradition which is informed by lines of moral & ethical reasoning in Rabbinic Judaism, the fetus generally becomes a viable human life after day 40 of gestation. In the ancient Jewish context, the fetus is deemed to be little more than water until “quickening” occurs, about 40 days after insemination. “What Do Orthodox Jews Think About Abortion and Why? By Judith Shulevitz – Orthodox Jews on Abortion. If we take week 9 as our bench mark — the heart and brain being recognizably functional – then the fetus would be deemed viable from about day 63 onward.
Applying this definition of when human life becomes viable, it follows that embryos from conception to week 9 or so are “pre-viable” or “proto-viable.”
Now is this to say that embryos prior to week 9 are “fair game”? Say, that we can create embryos strictly for the purposes of harvesting their tissue and/or stem cells for medical research or other applications? These embryos aren’t viable, so why not? Well this brings us full circle to religious and ethical concerns. Rather than belabor that in this op-ed piece, I would direct readers to an excellent treatment of this subject in this posted article: Jewish Virtual Library – Abortion
OK, so we don’t create embryos to harvest, how about using intentionally aborted fetuses as a source of tissues or embryonic stem cells for research or medical application? As one fellow actually said to me, “Hey, Doc, they are going to die anyway, so why not get some good out of them for sick and ailing people”. To my mind, this comes uncomfortably close to the arguments advanced by physicians and scientists who performed hideous experiments on human subjects in Nazi concentration camps. This very line of reasoning was, in fact, used as a defense by some of the physicians being tried for war crimes in the 1946 “Doctor’s Trail” in Germany). Granted, there is a world of difference between elective abortion and the intentional dispatch of life at the hands of doctors (such as the late Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr. Josef Mengele and his ilk) who abandoned universally acknowledged medical ethics in the service of the state. But even so, harvesting aborted fetuses from any source does strike many folks in America as constituting a form of callous utilitarianism that can’t help but bring to mind some of the most egregious polities and activities in the Nazi bio-state – or perhaps the fear that our country is headed in the direction of making prophecy of the classic sci-fi film “Soylent Green” – or both. And even if the intentional abortion of a fetus before week 9 were universally embraced as morally and ethically acceptable – in no way offensive to humankind or the Almighty – there remains something hauntingly “predatory” about utilizing material from intentionally terminated “pre-viable” human material.
All things considered, it seems unlikely that access to abortion will prove a genie that can be returned to the proverbial bottle (This side of the US becoming an authoritarian or police state run by pro-life factions at all levels, that is – something the majority of Americans would vehemently oppose). And while restrictions on the direction embryonic stem cell research and use takes will likely continue to be a legislative and ethical tug-of-war between various factions, a return to an outright ban on government provided/sanctioned embryonic stem cell lines seems unlikely. This leaves what is being played out now at the political level: That is, the fact many state legislatures such as my own native state of Texas in 2013 are leaning towards placing considerable restrictions on access to abortion services. This gambit may succeed especially in states dominated by a traditionally conservative majority although I predict any such this legislation will be eventually overturned by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional.
Perhaps my life-at-9-weeks-on criteria should be thrown into the abortion access deliberations mix. Let’s revisit it:
Given that death is defined (in part) as a cessation of both heart and brain wave activity, one could argue conversely that to be alive in any meaningful sense beyond mere biological existence (A petri dish bearing a cell culture has biological existence, after all) begins when both heart and brain are operational – week 9 onwards
Of course, I am not actually advocating that my definition (above) be transformed into new legislation or such that is imposed on all women across the land. But for women who come out of conservative faith traditions what I have laid out might help them in deciding at what point-in-time during a fetuses’ development abortion constitutes an ethical or moral misstep. For those who find my approach reasonable, use of a “morning after” pill constitutions no sin nor does an abortion prior to week ten (10) post-conception.
In the final analysis, the whole matter comes down to personal choice informed by the unique constellation of social and life factors & players that characterize each woman’s life.
________________________________________________________
© 2013 by Dr. Anthony Payne. All rights reserved.
EXTENDED BEING: Connective-dynamic circuits twixt thou and emotionally significant others
FROM DR. PAYNE’S “EXTENDED BEING” (previously posted to the now defunct Examiner.com website)
“The quiet punctuated by the flow of water in that aqueduct made it possible to experience not just quiet and relaxation but more so (for me anyway) a unique situation in which conscious thoughts and awareness dipped and other things came to light. One of these was a dynamic running “mental clip” (representation) of Kaoru that was interacting with me at a very subtle level. There was a spoken and unspoken dialog going on. I realized that part of her was alive within me but not solely as memories and warm associations; there was a dynamic sort of circuit at play which was influencing not only my thoughts and mood but also some elements of my personality, i.e., I was being influenced by specific personality traits she exhibited that I found appealing and was even internalizing some of them (And while mirroring and mimicry mechanisms were undoubtedly involved in this process, there was seemingly more to it than this). She had become part of the “we” that is “me”!”
EXCERPT FROM DR. PAYNE’S MORE DETAILED INTRODUCTION TO “EXTENDED BEING”:
“Extended being involves the creation of dynamic, largely affective neuro-subroutines that are, in effect, a form of dynamic connectedness or connective circuit between individuals; circuits that incorporate the other, their image (sighted people), mannerisms, attitudes and other significant aspects of their person and conduct; circuits that are fed by as well as facilitate and enhance certain aspects of socialization, behavior and self-awareness as well as distinctly human consciousness; circuits that predominately operate in our pre/unconscious and influence judgments and choices and etc. made there, as well as conscious thought flow and content, mood, and actions. But circuits, too, that mean that part of our being is operating external to our bodies (It is not that this circuit exists in the sense it can be detected and measured outside us but, rather, that our emergent sense of being, the “we” that us, includes the other and experiences him or her as both an internal reality and an external, connected one. This circuit is reinforced and additional content added while in the other’s presence and may be diminished during their absence, but is unlikely to be extinguished entirely even when the emotionally meaningful other ceases to be a part of our life for whatever reason).”
Click this link to read “Extended Being” in its entirety: https://biotheorist.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/extended-being-by-dr-anthony-g-payne.pdf
EXTENDED BEING WEBSITE: http://extendbeing.weebly.com/
Dark times and the allure of evil solutions
Rare German vintage cigarette card from the 1933 “KAMPF UM’S DRITTE REICH” album.
https://biotheorist.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/dark-times-and-the-allure-of-evil.pdf
Alienation: Pervasive and insidious
Take a moment and kindly read through the eight book quotes below.
“Today, concern about man’s alienation is expressed by many: by theologians and philosophers
who warn that advanced in scientific knowledge do not enable us to penetrate the mystery of Being, and do not often widen the gulf between the knower and the reality he tries to understand…”
“Man is alienated from reality, as the result of a split between subject and object which detached knowledge does not heal but deepens. He is estranged from himself…”
“Therefore individuals must be stripped of their individuality and treated as materials”
“Although in the last centuries of the Middle Ages it was made hard for him to improve his status within the guild, he did not experience the isolation from his fellow man which has become the fate of the individual living in the
atomized society of today”
“Often it is coupled with an attitude for which the object of faith or belief is not God, but rather the utility of faith of belief”
“…which has led many people to consider God to be mainly a way to achieve personal happiness or peace of mind, a mere tool, as important for our spiritual health as technological gadgets may be for our physical welfare”
“We are, most of us, not intellectually tolerant, we are only gullible; we are not skeptical, we are only suspicious; not sophisticated, only apathetic; not humble, only confused….Worst of all we are not at all enthusiastic, curious or even interested…”
“There are many indications that education, far from creating new attitudes, primarily reflects the values and tendencies pervading the existing society. One of the basic goals of our period seems to be development of the adjusted man, who gets along with people and whose thinking does not differ from the generally accepted values and norms”
Do these comments reflect themes and concerns that strike home with you? Perhaps you are thinking these are recent quotes from some in-the-know psychologist or political commentator, right? Prepare to do the “Time Warp” now: These quotes are from “The Alienation of Modern Man” by Fritz Pappenheim, Ph.D., copyright 1959. It is very telling that in the more than half century since Dr. Pappenheim wrote about the pervasive reality of alienation in modern society – things have only gotten worse not better.
http://monthlyreview.org/2000/06/01/alienationin-american-society – Monthly Review
This lecture was presented to a student conference on “Socialism in America” held at
Yale University in 1964
“I personally believe it is a mistake to separate Marx’s theory of alienation from his theory of exploitation. Alienation and exploitation condition each other; they are linked to each other. It is the very essence of Marx’s insight not to isolate man’s alienation from economic conditions and trends—as Hegel and the followers of philosophical idealism had done—but to trace alienation to the basic structure and development of capitalist economy and society. In the second part of this lecture, I will attempt to show this. But first I want to examine with you what people mean when they talk about alienation, and in what way the frequent use of this term reflects the American scene at mid-century.
“If we want to try to understand alienation, we must ask: Alienation from what?
“There are three types of alienation. First, there is man’s alienation from himself. Modern man often finds it hard to be himself; he has become a stranger to himself. At the same time, he has become estranged, or alienated, from his fellow man. And finally, he experiences alienation from the world in which he lives.
“These three forms of alienation—from ourselves, from other men, and from our world—are interlinked. They actually represent three phases of one process. Marx particularly emphasized the connections between them. This is the very core of his approach to the problem of alienation.”
Copyright 2012 by Dr. Anthony G. Payne. All rights reserved.
For Seekers & Other Heretics 