Bible Study, rivers:
Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars,
if thou be able to number them:
and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
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And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark,
behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
In that same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying,
Unto thy seed have I given this land,
from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphra'tes
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Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!Isaiah 18
All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
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And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.Isaiah 32
And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry; and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.
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By the rivers of Babylon,Psalm 137
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom
in the day of Jerusalem;
who said, Rase it, rase it,
even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones.
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And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.Genesis 41
And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favored kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-favored and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.
And the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favored and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.
And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.
And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.
Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day:
Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, both me and the chief baker:
and we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream.
And there was there with us a young man, a Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.
also: Genesis 31
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AMY GOODMAN: This latest story, the Anti-Defamation League calling on Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges to apologize for a memo distributed under his name that says the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools, because it is a religious deception stemming from an ancient Jewish sect. The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools, because it's "a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen."Democracy Now! 19.Feb.07
CHRIS HEDGES: And there's a bill now in the Texas state legislature that will abolish all mention of evolution in school textbooks and make Bible study mandatory in public schools. And the role of creationism is extremely important in this movement. It's not just wacky pseudoscience. It is really a war against truth. It is not about presenting an alternative. It's about saying facts are interchangeable with opinions, that lies are true, that we can believe whatever we want. And once they successfully elevate creationism, which, of course, is a myth - I mean, teaching creation out of the Book of Genesis is an absurdity. The writers of the Book of Genesis thought the earth was flat with rivers of above and below us. But what it does is destroy the possibility or sanctity of honest, dispassionate, intellectual and scientific inquiry. And when they do that, they have made a huge step towards creating a totalitarian state.
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"Tomorrow is zero hour"
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I'm still having trouble integrating the rational scientific world-view with my admittedly vestigial but still-functioning moral sensibilities.
Why exactly is fascism wrong? From a scientific p.o.v. I mean. I can see where it would be a problem for individual scientists, it's hard to imagine Einstein or Huxley campaigning for Dick Cheney or his chosen successor, but Joseph Mengele's a fine example of adaptation and mutual benefit to a fascist government by an amoral investigator of life's mysteries.
Also who can forget stunning Sidney Gottlieb, hero of applied behaviorist methodologies, right in there cheek by jowl with the big guns of the American Herrenvolk, making the world better for good people.
Asking science to weigh in on moral questions like totalitarianism v. democracy is like asking a biologist to make a moral distinction between two species competing for the same niche.
This makes it a task of religion, or some humanist analog of religion, to decide and resolve moral questions.
But Hedges says, correctly, that the Christian right is itself the wide fuse through which the black flower of theocratic fascism is being driven. And there doesn't seem to be much possibility of a united humanist anything to oppose it, let alone convincing moral dogma with an enforcement arm capable of withstanding that God-given nightmare of children-of-the-corn style hive-mindedness. Better maybe to tear it down and build something from what's left. Tear it all down, and hope enough gets through to carry the dream.
And that's where we go back to Genesis, and Hedges' all-too-common facile dismissal of what's there. The first thing rational minds trip on is the compare-and-contrast between our perceptual array now and theirs back then, along with their respectively inferior processing capabilities. Bunch of grubby sheep-herders living in tents and making up stories about what little of the world they can see from where they are, without instruments or anything but the most rudimentary records, versus our near-occult grasp of the stellar firmament, and the tiny building blocks of everything nearly under our control, and hundreds of years of detailed research and painstakingly recorded minutiae. Their world-view compounded of ignorance, superstition, wishful thinking, and a smattering of the undeniable, ours the constantly refining evidence from our constantly refining instruments. The parallel would be that both systems are investigating something infinite and eternal, and in that context they're far more equal than not. Plus the writers and credulous believers of Genesis insist it's coming from out of the infinite and eternal.
What I'm trying to say there is the simplicity of the people back then doesn't preclude them having access to dreamtime instruction, input from outside the system, which it is purported they do, though they mask it, dress it up as communication from the one and only deity before which all others must fall, and the inconsistencies of that deity make it look intellectually indefensible - so rational minds discount the entire message.
But it's only irrational, and therefore inferior, in some abstract discourse. On the ground, science tells us, nature favors what works and disregards what doesn't. Rationality's only a generally superior method, not always - just most of the time.
Maybe theocratic fascism works, just not for you. Or maybe humanist fascism, or ethnic fascism, or some new form that coalesces unaffiliated mindless around the need to live as a big functioning kick-ass thing.
Then what? It would help to have a few thousand years of religious dogma telling you you're the chosen people of the one true ruler of everything, but that would be the Jews, not fundamentalist Christians, unless it's a mistake and the message was actually intended for the Christians and was just intercepted by the Jews. But either way you can see how that would help with the problem of foundational premise. Because what's needed is assertion not explanation. Out there past logic and morality, out where it's nothing more or less than the will to be that keeps you here. That's the issue all around, isn't it? People feeling like somebody else wants them gone? Some of that's true.
It could be more a question of replacing one kind of theocracy with another. Get the Christian right-wing to build the theocratic super-state, then step in quietly and take it away from them. Hostile takeover on the q.t.
Maybe that's what we should do, instead of opposing everything and not having much to offer in return. Easier than tearing down the biggest security apparatus the world's ever seen. Much easier than getting an alternative moral system up and running in the little bit of time we have. Replace the Judeo-Christian moral shipwreck with one that defends more than its own desperately collapsing self. One that says nobility is more valuable than anything, even survival, that integrity is worth sacrificing everything for, that those who choose craven acts to ensure their own squalid lives, who choose to sacrifice integrity and nobility for mere survival will always bear the mark of that flaw, numberless as the stars though they may be.
