How Do conservatives and Liberals see the world?

http://billmoyers.com/episode/how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-world/

Bill Moyer's Interview with Jonathan Haidt

There’s a transcript of the vimeo below here.

Here's a particularly interesting section:

JONATHAN HAIDT: Obama is such a great orator and wowed so many of us in the campaign. But then, once he was elected, you know, he's been focusing on the terrific, terrible problems that he's had to deal with. But I think he has not made the moral case that would back up the arguments from the politicians in Washington.

I think the Democrats need to be developing a credible argument about fairness, capitalism, American history. They need to be developing this master narrative so that when they then have an argument on a particular issue, it'll resonate with people. And they're not doing that. But the Republicans have.... if you imagine each of our righteous minds as being, like an audio equalizer with six slider switches, and the first one is care, compassion, those sorts of issues, liberals have it turned up to 11. And we have this on a lot of different surveys. Liberals really feel. When they see an animal being mistreated, they're more likely to feel something than conservatives, and especially than libertarians, who are very, very low on this one.

JONATHAN HAIDT: The next two, liberty and fairness, when liberty and fairness conflict with care, are you going to punish someone, or are you going to be compassionate? Liberals are more likely to go with care.

JONATHAN HAIDT: In other words, care trumps liberty and fairness, even though everybody cares about all three of those. The next three, loyalty, authority and sanctity, what we find, across many questionnaires, many surveys and analyses of texts and sermons, all sorts of things, is that liberals don't talk a lot about loyalty, you know, group loyalty. They don't talk a lot about authority and the importance of order and authority, maintaining order. They don't talk a lot about sanctity. Conservatives on the other hand, what we find is that, they value all of these more or less equally.

And I think this is part of the reason why conservatives have done a much better job of connecting with American morality and convincing people that they are the party of moral values

(Much of what he is saying is what Alasdair MacIntyre wrote about in 1989, in his "Whose Justice, Which Rationality?" and in 1991 in "Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition."  Rationality is relative to communities. As Tom Morris writes, "The concept of rationality derives its usefulness from its ability to demarcate some beliefs off from others, separating the sheep from the goats, or the wheat from the chaff." There seems, therefore, to be a conservative rationality and a liberal rationality. What's important to remember, though, is that rationality is not the same thing as truth. Rationality  is a means of attaining moral and metaphysical truth. Would I be mistaken in concluding that Haidt is saying that liberals go narrow and deep, while conservatives go broad and shallow? )

Faith and The Theory of Everything

A friend alerted me to this article: 

"Lent and the Science of Self-Denial"

I was with the author until his final paragraph: 

 The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires — and gives rise to — deep feelings of faith. Lent — and Ramadan and Yom Kippur — teach both.

I think he got things backwards. It is faith which is certain; science can never be, because in order to achieve certainty, science needs to be able to overcome the problem of induction.

If the ultimate goal of science is a Theory of Everything, Stanley Jaki thinks that it will be impossible to achieve because it will always be incomplete:

(via Wikipedia:) He was also among the first to claim that Gödel's incompleteness theorem is relevant for theories of everything (TOE) in theoretical physics.[3] Gödel's theorem states that any theory that includes certain basic facts of number theory and is computably enumerable will be either incomplete or inconsistent. Since any 'theory of everything' will certainly be consistent, it must be either incomplete or unable to prove basic facts about the integers.

[In 1966, Jakii writes in his "The Relevance of Physics," Chicago Press. p. 129] “ It is on the ultimate success of such a quest [for a TOE] that Gödel's theorem casts the shadow of judicious doubt. It seems on the strength of Gödel's theorem that the ultimate foundations of the bold symbolic constructions of mathematical physics will remain embedded forever in that deeper level of thinking characterized both by the wisdom and by the haziness of analogies and intuitions. For the speculative physicist this implies that there are limits to the precision of certainty, that even in the pure thinking of theoretical physics there is a boundary present, as in all other fields of speculations. ”

Faith is where certainty happens. I like J.B. Phillips version of Hebrews 11:1-3

1-3 Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see. It was this kind of faith that won their reputation for the saints of old. And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God’s command—that the world which we can see has come into being through principles which are invisible.

The Truths of Science require Belief

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." -- Neil DeGrasse Tyson
I've only just seen this snippet of a quote circulating on Google+, so I don't know its context and what Tyson intends by it. However, many of those circulating it are wishing to contrast faith and reason, religion and science, and are using it to denounce faith/religion. They seem to think anything which requires belief is a subjective construction, and that somehow science/reason is a surer route to truth.

The status of many theoretical entities and laws that science postulates depends upon belief in the scientific theory from which they come. How many of us now think that it is true that combustible materials contain phlogiston? That Baer's laws of embryology is indeed the case? The celebrated scientist, Isaac Newton held that light is transmitted at a finite speed by the "Luminiferous Aether Wind," but no one holds that to be true anymore. Why not? Because no one believes that theory anymore. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

Furthermore, science requires some very basic epistemological commitments: for example, the belief in the uniformity of nature and the belief that our perceptions match reality.

"Credo ut intellegam," whether it is to understand God, the world, or myself.

Virtual Immortality: A Google+ Conversation

PIRATE:  RIP, Hitch

ME:  Ah, but would Christopher Hitchens really want us to wish him "rest?" After all, as a naturalist he did not believe in spiritual realities like "souls." Hence, he is no more. Gone. Kaput. Finished. Nada. Dead meat. Extinct. Flatlined. Snuffed. Stiff. He returns to the material from which he was constituted, and his "personality" lives on only in the firing of the neurons in the brains of those of us who remain. And when we are gone, he will have really disappeared. Unless... ; )

PIRATE: I'm sure Hitch would hope that his name would be a watchword for The Informed

Let's continue to use Hitch-slap for a delivery of prose that leaves the recipient slack-jawed :-)
ME:   Smile. Yes, as I said, that's his only hope: millions of followers of Hitchianity, who worship their idol by the sacred rite of Hitch-slapping! : ) Just what Hitch would have wanted!

PIRATE: You polemicist.
Do you worship Jobs, if you use a MAC, oops, bad analogy...
Do you worship Gates if you use Windows, oops, another...
Do you worship Linus if you use Linux, HA!

I see Hitch as a good stop-gap until I can get my own renown for Moleslaps.

If the only way I can keep an open mind is to worship a rational Humanist.
Then, so be it!
CABIN BOY: There's a bit of a difference between admiration and worship as well. Perhaps there is someone out there who sings songs of praise and prostrates themselves in prayer before Hitch, but I've yet to see it, and somewhat doubt that a person such as this would exist without some sort of mental disability.

EDIT: Grammatical error.

PIRATE to CABIN BOY: Wrote me a book on Mental Instability

You wanna pigeon-hole me, fine.

I've found most people, when asked about me say.
"Yeah, he's a bit mental!"

I'm a one-eyed man...

;-)
CABIN BOY  -  I'm not saying that you do worship him...unless you sing him songs and pray to him. In which case... yeah.

Admiration is one thing, but worship is another.

ME: worship, honor, admire, whatever...it's still the same...he's dead, and the only "life" he has now is in human memory, which isn't a very stable thing.
PIRATE to ME:  You in a bad mood today?
CABIN BOY: and the internet. There's a ton of recordings of him. Great thing about living in the technological era is that, when people die, others still get to experience them as they were, in addition to his writings and such, you can actually see his talks, hear him speak, etc. for years and years to come.
  
PIRATE to ME : Ah'mein ( ;-)  

ME to PIRATE Ahoy, matey, just as a pirate must sail where the wind leads, I'm just following reason where reason leads! It's a fact that Hitch is dead, and that he drank his reality neat. No diluting it with any sentimental talk of personal survival!
PIRATE to ME: He never said he was perfect.

As my dad would say
'noone is perfect, 'cepting our Lord Jesus'
with masses of Irish Catholic Irony ;-)

ME to CABIN BOY:  that's a fascinating idea: virtual personal survival! It's a rift on what 18th century Bishop George Berkeley wrote, "esse est percipi.'' (To be is to be perceived.) The difference, though, is that instead of God holding things in existence by His perceiving, we become gods, granting immortality to the deceased by perceiving them thru technological means.
Yes, I might live on insofar as someone downloads me, but my "existence" will be at their mercy. So how will I ensure that I am continually perceived online? I can imagine groups in the future devoting themselves to Mormon-style genealogical searches in order practice ongoing perception of the deceased --a virtual "perpetual adoration" of sorts--resulting in a a sophisticated version of ancestor worship. Can you imagine all the money to be made there? ; ) "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm an Observer. I maintain 1387 persons in continuing perceptual immortality."

As Woody Allen said: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.. I want to achieve it through not dying."

So there are those who wish to escape the physical bonds of their bodies entirely, even before death. If Kurzweil is correct, we'll enjoy virtual immortality in just another 17 years. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html . But what happens if I catch a virus? What happens if my files get corrupted? Are nanobots eternal? What happens if they fail? Is that the "second death?"

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Forgive me if I'm skeptical of technology on this score.

Virtual Immortality: A Google+ Conversation

PIRATE:  RIP, Hitch

ME:  Ah, but would Christopher Hitchens really want us to wish him "rest?" After all, as a naturalist he did not believe in spiritual realities like "souls." Hence, he is no more. Gone. Kaput. Finished. Nada. Dead meat. Extinct. Flatlined. Snuffed. Stiff. He returns to the material from which he was constituted, and his "personality" lives on only in the firing of the neurons in the brains of those of us who remain. And when we are gone, he will have really disappeared. Unless... ; )

PIRATE: I'm sure Hitch would hope that his name would be a watchword for The Informed

Let's continue to use Hitch-slap for a delivery of prose that leaves the recipient slack-jawed :-)

ME:   Smile. Yes, as I said, that's his only hope: millions of followers of Hitchianity, who worship their idol by the sacred rite of Hitch-slapping! : ) Just what Hitch would have wanted!

PIRATE: You polemicist.
Do you worship Jobs, if you use a MAC, oops, bad analogy...
Do you worship Gates if you use Windows, oops, another...
Do you worship Linus if you use Linux, HA!

I see Hitch as a good stop-gap until I can get my own renown for Moleslaps.

If the only way I can keep an open mind is to worship a rational Humanist.
Then, so be it!

CABIN BOY: There's a bit of a difference between admiration and worship as well. Perhaps there is someone out there who sings songs of praise and prostrates themselves in prayer before Hitch, but I've yet to see it, and somewhat doubt that a person such as this would exist without some sort of mental disability.

EDIT: Grammatical error.

PIRATE to CABIN BOY: Wrote me a book on Mental Instability

You wanna pigeon-hole me, fine.

I've found most people, when asked about me say.
"Yeah, he's a bit mental!"

I'm a one-eyed man...

;-)

CABIN BOY  -  I'm not saying that you do worship him...unless you sing him songs and pray to him. In which case... yeah.

Admiration is one thing, but worship is another.

ME: worship, honor, admire, whatever...it's still the same...he's dead, and the only "life" he has now is in human memory, which isn't a very stable thing.

PIRATE to ME:  You in a bad mood today?

CABIN BOY: and the internet. There's a ton of recordings of him. Great thing about living in the technological era is that, when people die, others still get to experience them as they were, in addition to his writings and such, you can actually see his talks, hear him speak, etc. for years and years to come.
  

PIRATE to ME : Ah'mein ( ;-)  

ME to PIRATE Ahoy, matey, just as a pirate must sail where the wind leads, I'm just following reason where reason leads! It's a fact that Hitch is dead, and that he drank his reality neat. No diluting it with any sentimental talk of personal survival!

PIRATE to ME: He never said he was perfect.

As my dad would say
'noone is perfect, 'cepting our Lord Jesus'
with masses of Irish Catholic Irony ;-)

ME to CABIN BOY:  that's a fascinating idea: virtual personal survival! It's a rift on what 18th century Bishop George Berkeley wrote, "esse est percipi.'' (To be is to be perceived.) The difference, though, is that instead of God holding things in existence by His perceiving, we become gods, granting immortality to the deceased by perceiving them thru technological means.
Yes, I might live on insofar as someone downloads me, but my "existence" will be at their mercy. So how will I ensure that I am continually perceived online? I can imagine groups in the future devoting themselves to Mormon-style genealogical searches in order practice ongoing perception of the deceased --a virtual "perpetual adoration" of sorts--resulting in a a sophisticated version of ancestor worship. Can you imagine all the money to be made there? ; ) "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm an Observer. I maintain 1387 persons in continuing perceptual immortality."

As Woody Allen said: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.. I want to achieve it through not dying."

So there are those who wish to escape the physical bonds of their bodies entirely, even before death. If Kurzweil is correct, we'll enjoy virtual immortality in just another 17 years. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html . But what happens if I catch a virus? What happens if my files get corrupted? Are nanobots eternal? What happens if they fail? Is that the "second death?"

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Forgive me if I'm skeptical of technology on this score.

Faith and Facts: A Google+ Conversation

"The Pirate" in one of my  Google+ circles posted the above. He's the Englishman who claims to be a
naturalist pantheist.

 This is my response: 

Bertrand Russell, logician, mathematician, philosopher and author of "Why I Am Not a Christian," wrote:

"There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago".
BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Analysis of Mind

In other words, he posed a radical hypothesis concerning the past. Philosophers have called it "The Five Minute Hypothesis." It is the idea that "the entire universe sprang into existence from nothing five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, apparent fossils in the ground, wrinkles on people's faces, and other signs of age all instantly formed and thoroughly deceptive."

Now here's the fun part: can anybody PROVE -- using evidence, logic and reason only--that the Five Minute hypothesis is false? Russell thought not. Of course, he didn't believe the Five Minute Hypothesis to be true; but his skepticism poses an interesting problem. How can we KNOW it-or even reasonably believe it, to be false?

"Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
-- G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"

Hmm. Maybe reason needs faith in something if it is going to proceed. Maybe in tossing out faith, we cut off our nose to spite our face.

The Pirate wrote: 

I say:-
It is easy to construct a perfect argument that supports the theists and the anti-theists. That only breaks down at the level of fact!

But, if both sides can agree on a scientific method to dispel to notion of an omnipresent being, that would be a good start.

You ask the theists,
if [s]he's there, how do you contact h[im]|[er]?

Then you measure brain activity and point out the fact they are either:-

Not present in their own mind during the process.

or

Faking their piety.

It's becoming as measurable as heart/lung function.

I responded: 

I've just finished listening to Wagner's version of ragnarök, the Metropolitan opera's radio broadcast of "Götterdämmerung." Mighty fine conclusion, there, with the Rhine overflowing and all Valhalla collapsing in flames! Thought you'd appreciate that image. ; )

Now to business: Reason depends on axioms which cannot themselves be proven. An axiom that separates theists from naturalists is their refusal to agree that the only things that are real are those which can be quantified, measured, predicted and controlled. Thus,theists would agree that scientific method is necessary but not sufficient for knowing things...while naturalists insist that it is necessary and sufficient.

You do realize that if the naturalists are correct, then self, emotion, intention and other minds are reducible to matter in motion. I become a machine, operating within a closed system of cause and effect (i.e., the universe) and any ideas I might have about being "free" or "choosing" or "having meaning" must be illusory. It's certainly possible that that is the case. However, if it is, why should I bother to do science? Why wonder? Why enjoy the beauty of the natural world? Why communicate with the intention of persuading someone of something they don't already hold to be true?

On the other hand, one could claim that things are not determined, but are totally random, and that that explains my sense of "freedom." But I don't find that to be any more helpful, because then how can I expect anything to follow any sort of order (which is what science assumes to be happening.) If everything is ultimately random, then anything is possible, and everything becomes absurd.

This is why I cannot agree to the scientific method being the only way of knowing. I enjoy art and music and nature too much to reduce them only to light and sound waves. Not to mention me corsair...he's a fine hunk of a fellow who's captured me heart...and what we have together is more than meat in motion, I daresay! ; )

The  Pirate's friend, AA wrote:

But faith isn't dependent on fact. Remember the shroud of Milan? The faithful just didn't care that forensic experts were claiming it to be a 13th century forgery. The spiritual and physical are worlds apart, literally. Using physical processes to determine spirituality presents us with the same problems. They could argue that divine intervention prevents changes to brain function :)

Then I wrote:

Adrian, I disagree. Faith and fact are intimately bound! 

1.The very reason the Vatican never claimed the shroud to be authentic is because there hasn't been enough proof to establish its authenticity. That is, there weren't enough facts toc onvince them that it was indeed the actual burial cloth of Jesus. (At any rate, the shroud is a rather poor example to use. Better to go for the jugular,like Christ's resurrection. The truth status of the shroud makes no difference to many Christians; but the truth status of the resurrection does.)

2. Modernists and fideists claim that faith isn't dependent on fact; but not all theists are fideists!  There are many of us who think that some propositions can be held to be true, either by faith or by "reason,” and that faith doesn’t have to mean “blindly, apart from facts” but rather “on the basis of factual testimony or authority. ”

Grandma always told me I had cousins in Sweden. I trusted her, accepting her testimony. That is, I took the statement, "You have cousins in Sweden" on faith.   Grandma had immigrated to the U.S. when she was a young woman, and had a reliable memory. I wouldn’t have entertained that proposition were it not on her authority. That is, I did not accept it blindly.I trusted her to be making that statement based on fact.

But one day, I flew to Stockholm and met my cousins. We spent a week together and I dipped my toe in the Baltic when we visited my grandma's birthplace on Gotland. At that point, it would have been strange for me to take the statement, "You have cousins in Sweden" by faith, when I KNEW them.

So the truth of that  proposition, "You have cousins in Sweden" can be established either by faith (testimony, reliance on authority) or by reason (memory, sense perception.)

Now say that someone had asked me, before my trip, if I had Swedish cousins. Would it have been epistemologically wrong of me to say, "yes," simply on the basis of testimony? Should I have said, "I don't know" because I could not yet provide my own sensory verification of that statement? The latter seems a bit extreme. Of course, Grandma could have been lying to me, or she could have been delusional. But I assessed the chances were greater that she was not a liar or delusional. Thus, I would be justified in responding "yes," on the basis of her testimony.  

That was pretty simple. We could consider further scientific examples, like "Antigens may be proteins, carbohydrates, glycoproteins, or glycolipids, depending on the blood group system” or “About 79% of the universe is dark energy.”  Do you take these to be true? Yes? On what grounds? Have you ever seen an antigen? Dark energy? If not, you are taking them on faith. 

Please don't waste your time fighting straw men. It seems that there are two kinds of “faith.” One is blind faith, which cares nothing for facts. That is the faith of Kierkegaard and fideists, which many theists reject. The other is the faith that is intimately bound with facts, because it relies on testimony. That is the faith of the Apostles (“Doubting” Thomas in particular, see John 20:19-31), of Thomas Aquinas, Alvin Plantinga and countless Christians. 

So you see, there is a faith that DOES depend on facts,  just as what we take to be fact depends on faith (see previous message;  we cannot prove the axioms we use in our reasoning.) It’s not an either/or. It’s a both-and.

"Naturalistic Pantheism?" A Google+ Conversation

PIRATE  wrote 

This panders to my Naturalistic Pantheist roots  http://kopimistsamfundet.se/english/

ME:  um, can you please define what you mean by "naturalist" and "pantheist?" Isn't that sort of like a square circle?

 

PIRATE  (shakes head)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_Pantheism

ME:  Sorry to annoy you. I was taking "pantheism" to mean that the universe and God are identical, as in the broad definition offered in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy below in (1) and (2): http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/

"Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that (1) “God is everything and everything is God … the world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature” (Owen 1971: 74). Similarly, it is the view that (2) everything that exists constitutes a “unity” and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine (MacIntyre 1967: 34).

But it seems that you do not accept those definitions. Would you also disgree with this one? (also from SEP)

"A slightly more specific definition is given by Owen (1971: 65) who says (3)“‘Pantheism’ … signifies the belief that every existing entity is, only one Being; and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.” Even with these definitions there is dispute as to just how pantheism is to be understood and who is and is not a pantheist. Aside from Spinoza, other possible pantheists include some of the Presocratics; Plato; Lao Tzu; Plotinus; Schelling; Hegel; Bruno, Eriugena and Tillich. Possible pantheists among literary figures include Emerson, Walt Whitman, D.H.Lawrence, and Robinson Jeffers. Beethoven (Crabbe 1982) and Martha Graham (Kisselgoff 1987) have also been thought to be pantheistic in some of their work—if not pantheists" .

J:ust trying to figure out your position...sorry, the Wikipedia Pantheistic naturalism article is confusing.

PIRATE:  Well  to some it up in 4 words.
NO GOD, JUST STUFF
Is my understanding of the Wiki definition.

Being an English Native I accept that your [different since 2006 legally ] language may lack some of the understandings on mine.

But, I do accept it is a slightly strange type of Theism and that my understanding of the world may be so disparate from your own that I would have to try and be magnanimous in such an encounter.

How can we agree on something, and work from there?

ME:  um, again, I'm not being judgmental, just curious! : ) I agree we are speaking different languages! That's why I need to understand what you mean when you use the word "God" and what you mean by the word "theism."
P.S. Thanks for your magnaminity toward me, sir.

  Oh, and what does "sacred" mean, for a pantheistic naturalist or kopimist? From what I can figure, it must mean "what I approve of" or "what a certain group approves of." Would that be incorrect? Please advise.

PIRATE:  It's nice to be right, but, it's righter to be nice :-)

In this case you take the former and I'll take the latter.
I misunderstand theism, the actual definition.
I'm a Naturalistic Pandeist.

I can ramble, I checked, it's my thread, lol

So, a little bit of back-story.
Bulletpoints (I hope you don't mind)
+ Born to Irish Roman-Catholics (lapsed but pious til I was 8) in England.
+ Told to say C of E (protestant) when asked.
+ Confirmed Atheist until 5 years ago.
+ Have read 6 different ver. of Christianity
+ Can quote some Koran.
+ Is mostly pro planet over in-human people.
+ Has adopted the stance that there is an absence during prayer/meditation (a scientific stance)

Only adopted the NP position 3 weeks ago, I'm,hunting for a position on spirituality, so I can get on with the rest of my life, but, have questions, and I need to talk to Humans

 Sacred I would suppose is synonymous with inviolate!

ME-  Isn't it a shame that we can't talk face to face? I'd like to be right AND nice... I fear that text makes you think I am an ogre, and smileys don't seem to be helping. Sigh. Maybe the only way to be nice to you is to agree with you? : o

Oh well, I'm still confused...(not unusual, I admit!) I hate to try your patience, but as an American, having been schooled in Anglo-American analytic philosophy, when I hear the word "naturalism" or "naturalist" what immediately comes to mind is what one reads here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_%28philosophy%29

I know I'm thick....but hang in there with me...so when you call yourself a Naturalistic Pandeist, are you saying you believe that there is nothing supernatural/spiritual, that everything that is real is material/physical, and that what is material/physical is god/worthy of worship/sacred? Or what?

You see, in these parts, naturalists tend to be atheists or agnostics, so that's why I made the "square circle" remark.

 

PIRATE:  I type all this with a gentle note. My language may seem sharp, I wasn't schooled at all so schooling means little to me, this is brand new area to me.

I am nearly 42 and went to school (they made me) and listened to what interested me and sometimes knitted at the back off class when I wasn't (nice hat and scarf 1 term of geography).

Now, accepting that I am a man I think why?

NB I have worked with Horses, and they get schooled if you know horses, schooling is mostly forcibly trainied.

I do indulge in polemics at times. But, your picture endeared me to you, and my usual harsh treatment of racially tender subject material with me was allayed.

Here, have a pirate to lighten the mood =]:¬_) 

ME:  Ahoy, and I appreciate yer kindness and patience! Ye can see how me mind's been twisted. : ) I be needin' to get back to our conversation, though. Can ye see where I be comin' from? Why I say it be a matter of a square circle?

 I be needin' t'go fix grub for me corsair...fair winds fer now, and Godspeed!

PIRATE  Yar, ye gots me o'er a barrel 'n' no mistakin' AH-HAR ;-)

As I have said before...

I'm never wrong, only misinformed

Thx 4 t info :-D

The Courage to Say No

Ordinary people. The courage to say no.

The photo was taken in Hamburg in 1936, during the celebrations for the launch of a ship. In the crowed, one person refuses to raise his arm to give the Nazi salute. The man was August Landmesser. He had already been in trouble with the authorities, having been sentenced to two years hard labour for marrying a Jewish woman.

We know little else about August Landmesser, except that he had two children. By pure chance, one of his children recognized her father in this photo when it was published in a German newspaper in 1991. How proud she must have been in that moment.

The More of God, the More of Me!

The more of God does not mean the less of me. Jeremy Begbie argues that music provides a key way to understand how we can follow God and be more free than ever. "God wants to re-humanize us, not de-humanize us."

Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1

Sir Adrian Boult conducts Ralph Vaughan Williams - Norfolk Rhapsody


"There's something about VW's work, that I can't quite put my finger on, but, its that indefinable quality of making you feel bigger inside than outside, the music is THAT good, its almost too much to listen to, this piece, fantasia on a theme by thomas tallis, lark ascending, the wasps etc etc, they all have 'it' beautiful" --fauxsham