What a bunch of headlines

They are from the Washington Post.

As some online are arguing, Trump is employing the "madman" theory of international diplomacy, and his cult followers and apologists are all "trust us, bro, it's just negotiation":  as if we are all supposed to be comfortable with a world leader threatening to kill and harm civilians because their leadership won't do in trade what the world leader wants.    

It's an incredibly shallow and ridiculous argument, and one rejected not just by all Democrats (and probably most independents), but also the Pope, and weirdos like Tucker Carlton and (my God!) Alex Jones.  

Oh, and I saw on a podcast this morning an extract of Megyn Kelly (critical of the Iran war) saying that nonetheless, she will always vote Republican because while their president might want to destroy another country, Democrats wanted to destroy American (claiming "open borders" and transgender kids!)   

This is so pathetic - but perfectly illustrates the Republican party as morally bankrupt and living in a fantasy land of their own creation as to Democrats true intention to destroy the country.    

The unserious Right wing media

Reaction to Trump's rant on Iran over the weekend included this:

Yes.  The Right wing "journalist"/influencer job is one for completely unserious people.

Update:

Happy post-Easter

The book I was thinking of at the end of my last post was Christology in the the Making by James DG Dunn.  It is still on my shelf, but I didn't skim through it again over the weekend, although I should have given the holiday.

Instead, I got distracted by listening to a Tricycle podcast about tantric (or esoteric) Buddhism, which was a little dull actually, but led me to check about Shingon Buddhism in Japan, and the famous monk Kukai (or Kuukai, or Kobo Daishi) who established it there.   

Long story short:   esoteric Buddhism from Tibet and China has some dubious elements of "transgressive" rituals, but it would seem not to be the case for the version that ended up as Shingon Buddhism.  Shingon seems to be about the third largest sect in Japan, and I didn't know much about it (or had forgotten what was said about it in the book on Pure Land Buddhism I read a couple of years ago.)

The home of Shingon in Japan - the temple complex at Mount Koya (or Koyasan) is in a pretty looking mountainous area not that far from Osaka, and it's now on my list of places to visit in Japan.   This video gives a good short introduction to the place, and the sect.

But, back to Kukai:  he's had brief mention at this blog before because of the (almost certainly not true) belief that he was responsible for introducing monk and young acolyte sexual activity as a legitimate or normalised monastic activity on his return from China.   (Now that I understand more about how his type of Buddhism was of the esoteric branch, I guess might help explain why he got the blame for this.)   

But what I didn't realise was how culturally significant he was to Japan in ways other than those involving just religion. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy introduces him this way:

 Kūkai (774–835CE) is one of the intellectual giants of Japan, who ought not to be ignored in any account of the history of Japanese thought. Among the traditional Buddhist thinkers of Japan, and perhaps even of the whole of East Asia, he is one of the most systematic and philosophical. He is most famous for being the founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism in Japan. But he is also remembered not only for his contributions as a teacher and scholar of religion, but for his accomplishments and innovations in social welfare, public education, lexicography, language, literature and poetry, literary theory, calligraphy, art, painting, wood-carving, sculpture, music, civil engineering, architecture, etc. during a period when Japan was undergoing rapid change.

The Wikipedia entry about him goes into more detail on his very busy life, including his participation in the state sponsored visit to China to further investigate parts of Buddhism there.   (I find it intriguing to think that Japanese governments once paid for such expeditions in pursuit of knowledge - not just in search of land or stuff for material profit of the kind European monarchs later became famous.)

This paper, though, argues that some of Kukai's achievements outside of religion might be more legendary than real.   But still, he left behind lots and lots of writings (including poems):  there is no doubt he was a smart and important man in history.

So much so that there is cult-ish belief about him in Shingon:

Kūkai's mausoleum (the "Gobyo") at Mount Kōya is at Okunoin (奥の院) temple and it is the main site for devotion to Kūkai. Offerings and prayers to Kūkai are made around the year at this site. He is believed by the faithful to still be alive, having entered a deep samadhi (meditative absorption) until the arrival of the next Buddha Maitreya.  

On videos, they show monks carrying the twice a day meals towards his mausoleum, but videos and photos are not allowed past a bridge leading up to the building (which you can't see clearly from the bridge.)  This gives all the more incentive to visit the place in person!

  

Revisiting atonement - an Easter religious post -

I'm not entirely sure if I should be slightly worried about how often this has started to happen,  but one feature of having written this blog for so long is that when I search for old posts on a topic, I'm quite often finding ones which I have forgotten about, but are still really interesting.   (I'm leaning towards it being a good thing - I've been keeping these notes for more than 20 years, for goodness sake, and quite a lot has happened over those years to crowd out some memories.  And, well, I quite like re-discovering the quality of some posts! 😏)

Anyway, that's a preamble to talking about the topic of atonement in religion, and Christianity in particular.   

I have forgotten about this post, and this one, both specifically talking about the origins of atonement.  And then I was recently re-reading this very old post about the divide between "realist" and "non-realist" views of Christianity in particular (a post of which I had some memory), but had forgotten that my old friend Geoff had turned up in comments and questioned what I thought of atonement.      

The reason I'm talking about this at all is due to a podcast video I watched recently by biblical scholar Bart Erhman called "The surprising reason Luke removed atonement from his gospel".   (Ehrman is quite a likeable person to listen to, and has followed the not uncommon path of being a believer when he started his formal studies, but later moving to what might be called non aggressive agnosticism/atheism - in contract to the Hitchens/Dawkins brand of atheism.)

Ehrman's argument about Luke is not one I was previously aware of:  that Luke did not use clear "atonement" passages that appear in Mark, and the one passage in Luke that is taken as incorporating the atonement doctrine is probably a later addition to "fix" this problem.  

I see that Ehrman has proposed this for some years, as it is discussed in a 2017 entry on his blog, which I have just visited for the first time.)  This is him explaining the view that Luke had a completely different understanding of the point of Jesus' death:

....it is a striking feature of Luke’s portrayal of Jesus death — this may sound strange at first — that he never, anywhere else, indicates that the death itself is what brings salvation from sin.  Nowhere in Luke’s entire two volume work (Luke and Acts), is Jesus’ death said to be “for you.”  And in fact, on the two occasions in which Luke’s source Mark indicates that it was by Jesus’ death that salvation came (Mark 10:45; 15:39), Luke changed the wording of the text (or eliminated it).  Luke, in other words, has a different understanding of the way Jesus death leads to salvation from Mark (and from Paul, and other early Christian writers).

It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number of speeches in order to convert others to the faith.  What is striking is that in none of these instances (look, e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13), do the apostles indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement for sins.  It is not that Jesus’ death is unimportant.  It’s extremely important for Luke.  But not as an atonement.  Instead, Jesus death is what makes people realize their guilt before God (since he died even though he was innocent).  Once people recognize their guilt, they turn to God in repentance, and then he forgives their sins.

Jesus’ death for Luke, in other words, drives people to repentance, and it is this repentance that brings salvation.  But not according to these disputed verses which are missing from some of our early witnesses: here Jesus’ death is portrayed as an atonement “for you.”

Originally the verses appear not to have been part of Luke’s Gospel.  Why then were they added?  In a later dispute with Marcion, Tertullian emphasized:

Jesus declared plainly enough what he meant by the bread, when he called the bread his own body.  He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed in his blood, affirms the reality of his body.  For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh.  Thus from the evidence of the flesh we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood.  (Against Marcion 4, 40).

It appears that the verses were added in order to stress Jesus’ real body and flesh, which he really sacrificed for the sake of others.  This may not have been Luke’s own emphasis, but it certainly was the emphasis of the proto-orthodox scribes who altered their text of Luke in order to counter docetic Christologies such as that of Marcion. 

Some of the comments following are interesting too:

caesar September 24, 2017 at 5:36 pmLog in to Reply

Since Paul and ‘Luke’ seem to have contradictory ideas about the atonement–and Luke seems to contradict some of Paul’s claims about his own life–does this suggest that the writer of Luke probably wasn’t an associate of Paul’s? Does this make the traditional authorship claim less likely?

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  BDEhrman September 25, 2017 at 2:54 pmLog in to Reply

  Yes, for me that’s an important argument that he was not Paul’s close companion.

  • 

    kadmiral September 25, 2017 at 3:38 pmLog in to Reply

    Also relevant seems to be Luke’s and Paul’s different understanding of the Holy Spirit–Paul includes a kind of
    “indwelling salvation” doctrine (Romans), so to speak, where Luke only ever refers to the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence (there’s not a hint of any “indwelling salvation” doctrine in Acts).

  • 

    SidDhartha1953 September 26, 2017 at 9:10 amLog in to Reply

    Do the biographical contradictions lead you to believe Luke had not read some of Paul’s letters?

    • 

      BDEhrman September 27, 2017 at 7:08 amLog in to Reply

      Yup!

There are quite a few other interesting comments in the thread.

I am not at all sure how more widely this has been discussed, beyond Erhman.   It's perhaps something I should look into.

It's also a reminder that I still have a book about New Testament views of Jesus that was quite influential on me when I read it in my 20's, but it's been so long since then that I am struggling to remember fully the argument it made.  Sounds like something to revisit on Good Friday, and perhaps to write a note here to remind myself in future...

 

 

A tricky issue

The Washington Post notes that the Supreme Court's decision against a ban on "gay conversion therapy" had a big majority:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday found that a Colorado law banning “conversion therapy” for gay and transgender minors probably violates free speech rights, the latest in a string of decisions by the high court rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ people and expanding the rights of the religious.

In an 8-1 ruling, an ideologically diverse majority ruled for an evangelical therapist who argued the state prohibition infringed on her First Amendment rights. Kaley Chiles said she wanted to counsel religious teens dealing with sexual orientation issues and gender dysphoria in ways consistent with biblical teachings.

Australia has some of the strongest bans on such therapy, it seems.

The whole problem I have always felt about it is whether it's a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  

Sure, the great majority of such therapy offered is going to be from a conservative religious viewpoint and is quite understandably likely to be psychologically damaging.  And, obviously, some of the methods they use are entirely objectionable:

Conversion therapy is a pseudoscientific practice whereby an LGBTQI+ person is subjected to methods of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment which is instigated by individuals with the aim of changing their sexual orientation and / or gender identity. Some of the methods used include beatings, rape, electrocution, forced medication, confinement, forced nudity, verbal abuse and aversion therapy. The most extreme methods include lobotomy, castration and clitoridectomy.  

(That last link goes to an article that says those methods are historical - and it's a bit of a stretch to include that in an article about banning modern psychotherapy.)   

But....shouldn't there be some room for psychological help to be available to stop unwanted sexual attractions (or acting on them), whether it be directed towards the opposite sex, or the same sex?   Seems to me that the outright bans put an unwarranted absolute cordon around a whole area that some people might legitimately want reasonable, and secular, help with.   (Probably very few people do seek such help, but still...) 

 

Heinlein was probably right...

I watched a video about the Artemis II manned flight around the Moon that might launch this week, as (along with many people, I assume), I just didn't know all that much about how the entire Artemis project was going.  (Musk's explodey Starship has sort of sucked all of the oxygen out of new space ventures.)  

For those who haven't read about it, the New York Times has a graphics filled article explaining.

My overall impressions are these:

*    The four main engines really are just shuttle era engines?   While I know nothing about how the shuttle engines performed, seems questionable to be sticking to such an old design.

*   That crew module really looks small and claustrophobic for missions of "up to" 21 days.  Seems not that much bigger than Apollo standards, to be honest; although this one does have enough space for the astronauts to hide in a storage locker in the floor in the event of a major solar storm causing dangerous radiation levels.   (That's where the claustrophobia could really set in.)

*   This is my main point:   the coming complexity of lunar missions to get significant payload weight on the ground there really gives me the impression that the solar system is never going to be significantly colonised with chemical rockets. 

If anyone remembers Robert Heinlein's "young adult" novel (when they were called "juvenile" titles) The Rolling Stones, it opens with a chapter in which the main characters are having an in depth discussion of the used nuclear rocket models available for purchase on the Moon (where they live.)     And I am pretty sure that nuclear powered rockets were a standard feature in his future universe.   

I see that The Rolling Stones was written in 1952 - making it pretty prescient given that the actual development of potential nuclear rockets wasn't started then. Wikipedia says the NERVA progam didn't get underway til 1955, although it also says that papers circulated in the late 1940's proposing nuclear powered rockets, and I presume this is how Heinlein knew about it.

As a child and teenager who was very keen and excited by the then manned space program, it feels odd to now feel pessimistic about its development because it has followed something of a technological dead end for significant further advance.  But that is how it seems to have gone...

 

More "Let them fight"

Things are still going well on the American Right, I see....

Meanwhile....

An unusual psychosis story

There's another good "The Great Read" article up at the New York Times about a guy who developed schizophrenia and tried to kill his father.   He has since got it under control, and holds down a job, has a baby and is reconnected to his father.   

It's quite unusual to read a "success story" that solid for someone who did something so drastic.

Not so unusual to read this part leading up to his breakdown:

Cohen’s story began with an ordinary disappointment his senior year at SUNY College at Geneseo: An injury had ended his career as a distance runner. Freed from that regimented life, Cohen began smoking pot daily. That spring he sensed something changing about the world; it shimmered before him. He glided around campus, his senses exquisitely heightened.

Signals began to jump out at him in the form of colors; red meant danger, blue meant safety. Sitting in his humanities classroom, he saw — or thought he saw — his professor climb up to the podium and announce that he, Cohen, was a prophet. 

Turns out the father really should have know better (to recognise a problem developing in his son) but he had his own history of mental health issues:

 Sitting in the room where it happened, Randy explained: He had not realized his son was psychotic. He had listened to Cohen’s discourses about Einstein’s theory of relativity, his fear that the sun was liquefying rocks deep inside the Earth. But Randy was a blue-collar guy. Cohen was an intellectual, the first person in his family line to go to college.

“I thought, man, he’s smarter than me, so he probably knows more than me,” he said.

There had been warnings, it turned out. A month before the attack, after buttonholing a professor to share his rapturous ideas, Cohen was detained by the local police and committed to a psychiatric hospital for five days for observation.

But Randy was skeptical of psychiatry; when he was Cohen’s age, he had been prescribed medication after a suicide attempt, but he stopped taking them as soon as he could. His attitude, he said, was “more pick up your bootstraps and do what you got to do.” On the way home from the hospital, Cohen admitted he had lied about his symptoms to get out. The two of them discussed whether Cohen should take the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, and decided it wasn’t necessary.

 Anyway, seems to be a case of all's well that ends well.  The guy needs to watch his baby's mental health in future, though.... 

A worrying thought

Further to my last post:  I can just imagine that nutjob Defence Secretary Hegseth getting excited about the idea of a ground invasion on Iran on Easter Sunday - that'll really show the Muslims about the triumphant power of Christianity (would be his thinking).  

No one has any idea what will happen

With a rambling President caught between his own history of avoidance of military service indicating he may genuinely not be a fan of putting soldiers on the ground in enemy territory for any length of time; the self serving urgings of Israel and (apparently) Saudi Arabia to "finish the job" in Iran (so to speak);  other Middle Eastern countries who have shovelled him money and gifts panicking about economic and social ruin if it doesn't end soon (because of the very real threat of strikes on their oil and water infrastructure if it escalates); a slew of Christofascist idiots in the White House and social media who think this is God's war of justice or some such BS; Republican seats in special elections being lost already by big margins; not to mention scores of other countries unhappy that he has probably started a global recession for everyone for no good reason - it is impossible to tell how this is going to end.

I personally think that it is more likely than not the current talks of negotiations going well is a delaynig tactic and that the ground troops he is moving into the area will indeed end up trying to do something inside Iran.   I don't think it will be anything as hard as trying to access nuclear material - I think it might be more like trying to take Kharg Island and telling Iran they can have it back if they  keep the strait open.  But the enormous risk in doing that is probably more drone strikes causing mayhem in the other neighbouring countries....

    

Who knew? Hermit crabs are for life...

I would never have guessed this, which I learn from a pretty fascinating article in the New York Times about a woman who is a tad obsessed with hermit crabs and how people don't care for them properly:

Often treated as throwaway pets, hermit crabs can live 50 years. Mary Akers, a self-taught expert, wants people to appreciate them as much as she does. 

Go have a read at the gift link:  it's one of those nicely done multi-media-ish stories that the big mainstream media can do quite well. 

Stitched by Claude

Just wanted to note again that Claude is pretty good at photo correction.  I gave it two photos I took from the hotel at Toyama on my recent holiday, and it stitched them together pretty well for a panorama type shot:

 

It also then creeped me out by telling what a good photo of Toyama it was, when I hadn't mentioned where it was taken.

 

Update:  now that I see it on a bigger screen, I think it could do a better job of evening out the sky colour.  Let me ask if it can, and I will update! 

Who do children prefer, the soulless intimidating automaton, or the robot on the left?

I know, I know: there's probably a thousand variations of the same joke attempted by the title of this post on social media already!

The antimatter truck

Well, what do you know?   Nature reports that a truck has taken some antimatter for a ride:

On 24 March, a team at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, transported 92 antiprotons in a specially designed bottle that traps the particles using magnetic fields. The bottle travelled on the back of a truck, for a 30-minute journey around the lab’s site outside Geneva, Switzerland.

The experiment’s ultimate goal is to take the antiparticles to a location free from experimental noise, where antiprotons can be studied in greater precision than is possible in the CERN “antimatter factory” where they are created.

CERN is the only place in the world that produces antiprotons in usable quantities. Many staff turned out with their phone cameras to capture the truck as it travelled more than 8 kilometres around the site, reaching a maximum speed of 42 km per hour.

“It is something humanity has never done before, it is historic,” says Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), in Germany, and member of the team. “We bought a lot of champagne, and we invited the entire antimatter community to celebrate with us today.” 

Explaining 100% support

Jim Geraghty in WAPO makes a decent enough point:  we shouldn't be surprised if polling shows virtually 100% support for Trump from MAGA, because people who stop supporting Trump don't count themselves as part of MAGA :

For most Americans, “Do you identify as MAGA?” and “Do you support the president?” are essentially the same question.

If you’re a Trump supporter who is upset or wary about the Iran war or the resulting impact on gas prices … maybe you’re not as inclined to identify as MAGA to a pollster lately.

When Trump came to power, some voters who always thought of themselves as Republicans found that their party changed dramatically. It became more protectionist and skeptical of free-market economics, more noninterventionist in foreign policy, less focused on traditional values and even libertine in social policies — all under the leadership of a bombastic and erratic casino owner who kept having temper tantrums on social media.

Some of these people stopped describing themselves as Republicans when pollsters called but still held fairly conservative views. Nevertheless, they landed in the “independent” bucket — where many of them remained throughout the Biden years.

Other than a burst of support at the start, independent voters were never that enthusiastic about Joe Biden’s presidency. After beginning with a job approval rating around 60 percent among independents in a Gallup poll, by September 2021 Biden was at 37 percent, and thereafter he rarely exceeded 40 percent. One reason that independents soured on Biden so quickly and irrevocably? A sizable chunk of them were former Republicans.

That’s why we shouldn’t expect to find many MAGA supporters expressing their opposition to Trump’s decisions on Iran or much else. When people in this demographic disagree strongly enough, eventually they just stop calling themselves MAGA.