Aliens and atheism

For a few decades now extra terrestrial life has been a common area of conflict in the dialogue between Theism and Anti-theism / Atheism.
It is an absurd but somehow interesting back and forth; even if only because it deals with angels, aliens, demons, and extra dimensional entities.
It's a fun, spooky, weird topic.
A good fit for the Faustian, methinks.


On a friend's recent blog post at EGNORANCE (about the subject of the new RC Pope Francis, of all things) this was brought up (once again).
So, I thought a word or two was due on the subject:

The argument so far....

Atheist/Materialists/Positivists in 1970's: The apparent lack of life in our solar system makes the idea of (a) God absurd. Why would He create such a massive universe just to leave it empty? Obviously the answer is: God is not there.

Theists in 1970's: With the Lord God, all things are possible. We believe in intelligences other than mankind. They are self evident. These intelligences may or may not be little green men living on Mars or some other local planet, but they are here with us in our universe. Life is part of God's plan.


Atheist/Materialists/Positivists in 2010's: The possibility of abundant life in the universe is a clear indication that the religious teachings about God, and even belief in His existence, are dangerously delusional. Life beyond our earth would be final proof than mankind is just a random, accidental, unexceptional, run of the mill organism on a tiny, insignificant (?)  planet on the edge of a unimportant(?) galaxy.

Theists in the 2010's: With the Lord God, all things are possible. We have always believed in intelligences other than mankind. They are self evident.  A discovery of unknown / alien life would no more effect the Abrahamic faiths than the discovery of a new type of animal on earth. God created the Cosmos (the Heavens and the Earth), not just Earth and not just mankind.
ALL life and everything is part of God's plan to us, the theists. 

Final Score:

Materialists 0 / 2 Theists
(Points rewarded for coherence and consistency of position)

So what do we take away from all this besides a chuckle?
Nothing too profound, really.
Nothing that a few minutes thought on the subject would not reveal.
Pretty much the same thing we see with most of these  scientistic / materialistic arguments.

Simply put, we see that  the materialist argument has been force to adapt by means of a reversal of position  (now conceding the distinct possibility of other intelligence agents in our cosmos, in this specific case).

The theistic position, on the other hand,  is consistent: Other intelligences exists in our cosmos.
We see the ideological strand of the atheistic and theistic creeds: Nihilistic 'insignificance' and 'randomness' pitted against wonder, purpose, love and hope. No contest..
And finally we see an effort to prove our experiential reality an illusion, which would of course refute ALL science as subjective experience and render the entire materialistic argument once again (self) refuted. Non coherent and thus nonsensical.

This is contrasted with the entirely coherent position that God's self proclaimed mission in one of life and that the limits are His to set.
Whether or not you're religious or even believe in God I am sure, my dear readers, that you can see the contrast between the totally polar realities that these two world views render.
Choose your truth carefully.
It's quite possibly the biggest choice you'll ever make.... at least in this reality.

The History of Evil: A Series.

One of the reasons for publishing this blog has been to convey some ideas that are not too popular, sometimes a little scary, and often occupy what is known as the 'fringe' of modern science, sociology, philosophy, and mainstream historical or political works.

I have not always been a soldier, or worked in the security apparatus.
I have, however, always been a lover of history. I suspect I always will be.
In fact, I hold several degrees in that field.
Even when I am immersed in duties such as the above, I find release or escape in my studies.
I love my histories. My history therapy.

During the (now) years of academic and private research into various fields of study ranging from  philosophy, to occultism, to anthropological studies of aboriginal island cultures, to medieval military orders, to mesoamerican migrations I have often found myself wondering at the moral nature of man.
The age old question of evil was one of the most intriguing and horrifying at once.
Theodicy, the question of how a good universe or a God could allow for evil to occur became an interest.
Notes were made.
Conversations recorded.
Ideas began to form.

My personal opinions and beliefs began to take shape only after some considerable time in which I tried to stay as 'open' as possible to new ideas and concepts. I wanted truth, not consolation. I wanted to understand, not fall back into the intellectual malaise of apathy.

Sometimes I found myself altering my 'inherited' or traditional forms, sometime reinforcing them.
I was sanely and logically able to rationalize and reconcile evil with just the slightest faith in purpose or meaning.
As long as there was a purpose, evil could safely be .
This was a pretty easy first step.
Without purpose there could be no evil (or good)- just random chance and the lens of perspective.
But purpose is clearly found in many things. Purpose is not only logical, and demonstrable - it is also experiential. And thus with purpose accepted, evil is defined.
We know we have a reason, or purpose for being and it is equally clear to all functional minds that evil is apparently contemptuous of that purpose.
Even, it could be said, counter to purpose.
So in it's opposition to purpose, evil finds itself locked in the paradox : It too is enthralled to purpose. It immediately undermines itself, almost as if in spite of itself.
In seeking to defeat the ultimate purpose, it becomes the arch purpose and the paradox is born.
Here and many times more we seem to encounter a personality(s) associated with evil.
Is this a mirage or projection, or as our traditions suggest is there a Devil?
A tragic court of demonic minds?
This too, will be a common thread in this series of posts.
The nature of evil. The various ideas and ideals associated with it, and some of my own experiences and how they made me view these spooky aspects of a dark subject.
We will see time and again how evil never wastes a chance to diminish and even destroy itself.


Always this evil, this force majeure  or  devil  remained there.
Ever potent, or perhaps more properly 'anti-potent'.
Waiting to rob potential.
To destroy any choice and chance it may destroy.
It stands as a contrast to the purpose.
Like a shadow cast on a bright ridge in the snow.
Even in the blinding light, the shadow defines the ridge.   Despite the dune field of white snow, the deep blue sky and searing sun - we only  see the shadow. It grabs us with it's darkness.

I began to wonder what parameters drove evil.
Why it's shadows are cast? Why are so many of us drawn into them?
Could it be predicted? To what ends it works....

As I had in my more mainstream studies, and indeed in much of my 'security' work, I began to see patterns. To locate outcomes and reverse the flow of events.
To follow the current of evil to the river, and then to it's sources.
To do a sort of 'history of evil'.
A kind of play book for the work of darkness.
By studying it's specifics, I mean to come to understand it's anti-purpose and it's methods.


What I found was a thread of events, personalities, conflicts, and barbarous 'traditions' and 'movements' that permeated the history and mythology of mankind.
Evil seemed a kind of arrogant 'grand work' that seems to flourish and culminate in the destruction of potential, hope, and happiness. It seems to be guided. Intelligent, and incredibly envious.
A kind of project in fear, despair, futility, greed, rage, lust, and sadism.
A projects designed to undermine some other, greater, work.

Follow me then - if you dare- deep into the river of evil.
Find it's source and discover why it winds the way it does.
In understanding it, you may better come to understand what 'work' it seeks to undermine and who it seeks to destroy - including itself and all those that support it.

In understanding learn how to detect, avoid, and reduce evil when it's inky shadow enters your world.
In seeing the shadow, learn the direction of the light.

“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.”

"“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius"

This is a brief review of an excellent polemic work I finished about a week ago.
Late last year I was given the heads up by a blogger friend, Dr Michael Egnor, on an excellent book by philosopher and sometimes apologist Edward Feser. The work  is called " The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism",  and I had tried in vain to get it on my book list. I waited patiently to no avail. I read reviews and several synops, but it never showed. Eventually, sick of my griping about it and no doubt sick of listening to my philosophical rants about Platonic and Augustinian ideas, my wife decided to change the channel and order it in from Amazon. 
What a treat!
It had been years since I rummaged through my inherited volumes of Aristotle and Aquinas (dad was a history/philosophy major/prof)...and I must admit the idea of picking up these HUGE works again was intimidating. Sitting on shelf in what is supposed to be a dining room they loom like Cathedrals next to the comparatively  teeny-tiny shack-like paperbacks by Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Locke and many other 'moderns'. Like comic books next to collection of Wells, Kipling, or Poe, the moderns seem much more accessible, but at the same time obviously less well thought out - even simply judged just by sheer volume of language.
Big ideas take big, long, explanations... and big long times to read. 
Feser came to the rescue. Here is a young, fresh, new take on the arguments that gave us logic and reason - before a few 'enlightened' minds repackaged them clumsily and tied them in ribbons of fallacy and self refutation. 
Feser is what is commonly known as an Aristotelian-Thomistic thinker (A-T henceforth). His logic and reason are OLD school. Like a breath of fresh air, he argues for the objective and common sense approach to science and reality. His purpose is purpose.
Perhaps it would be better to say he is counter-non-purposefulness.
He denies the trendy-hipster nihilism of today's scientific and philosophical elites with a real American flair. 
This wonderfully written work is not for the lazy minded or uninitiated in the works of the philosophical masters, You need a little background - but not much, as Feser does a great job of countering his own arguments, just as Aristotle and Aquinas did. He lists objections and demolishes them with military precision.
Some of the oh-so-hip ideas treated to a damn good tomahawk strike are eliminative materialism, Darwinism (social and dogma), Paleyism (intelligent design), the 'landscape', 'evolutionary psychology' and 'theory of the mind', positivism/scientism, and of course the academic elitism that promotes such pseudo-scientific nonsense as holy writ.  These concepts are shown as lunacy, fallacies, based on fallacy, or just sometimes banal and irrelevant. 
He discusses and dissects the popular arguments of men like Richard Dawkins, Michael Dennet, and Peter Singer. But he also takes on serious academics of the 'Enlightenment' . Hume, Kant, Locke, Descartes, and company. Feser exposes the real motive behind the movement and the costs and effects of that reductive trend.
Naturalism is not spared a very sceptical look, either.  
This is no 'flat earth' type argument or work. Quite the contrary.
Feser seeks to open the mind and expose modern dogma for what it is: Vapid and unguided self refutation in the name of nothingness and randomness; arrogant and very, very silly.
I could not agree on his central premise any more.

We do not, however, agree on every point.
There was some notable team sports-like 'partisanship' that seems to infect every polemic work written in the United States for the last 30 or so years and lumps unrelated issues together to impress a target audiend. Constant references to an extinct 'liberalism' (the American word for 'secular progressive' or collectivism), comparisons between pot smoking and immorality (I am reminded of the Sesame Street segment 'Wich one of these things does not belong here? Which one of these things is not the same') but that can be forgiven considering the charged historical context in which it was written and the very nature  of this work; which is obviously polemic.
Another note of disagreement is the treatment that scholastics like Feser give the animal world. While I completely agree that humans are exceptional beings and that we hold a very special place and purpose in the order of things - I cannot agree that animals have no ability to reason.
Less? Sure.
Different? Definitely.
But I would not concede they do not reason at all. I have far too much personal experience with many types of critters to buy into that line. In all honesty I think the 'right' and 'left' both tell themselves this and include it in their stance with equal measure (ie man is superior to the lowly beast, or man is just another lowly beast) in order to justify the large scale industrial nastiness committed on them as a justifiable comfort or indulgence. I think we, as a people, tend to sleep better at night when we, in our utterly consumerist/materialist society,  imagine the animals we treat so cruelly to stock our meat aisles with cheap cuts as incapable of sorrow and pain and as soulless, or in the case of many scholastics like Feser as lesser souls more or less mortal, single use souls.
Again, the times we live in.
I prefer the guilt and shame of knowing the objective truth: Animals have a different purpose and final causality, but they TOO are God's creatures. They too transcend. I tend to think like the Hebrews of old along these lines.
All that noted, this book is a great work. Not just good, but great. The arguments against a strictly material approach to reality are flawless and inescapable; AND it actually makes you WANT to pick up those massive dusty volumes of the A-T and scholastics in order to get into them.
Over-all I would give his work a 4.5/5. Top notch stuff.
Feser ends his work with the title of this blog-post. He sums up his argument for function, purpose, cause and effect with a brilliant observation by the Eastern Master Confucius.

“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.”
 And with that the finger is raised to new Atheism, who's faithful clergy clearly do not even notice the moon being presented to them. 

Personal note: Thanks for the tip, Mike. Hardcover has been ordered to sit next to my David Berlinsky collection and confuse my children for years to come;  and the "Summa"  and "Causes" dusted off and 'ready to rock'.  The wife will enjoy the change of venue, I am sure :P

The 'educated' elite

Education.
Not many words inspire so much controversy.
It is a descriptive word that means accrued knowledge.
One may be self educated, schooled, home educated, have a field education, be considered under educated, semi educated, or over-educated.
It is often meant as a compliment.
But, it is also a subjective word and often used to insult or demean those it is used for.
'That uneducated, ignorant, fool' or 'get an education' is the modern 'polite' way of saying: You're an ignoramus.
In our self obsessed society, education is seen as a pathway to greatness.
We all want our children to get 'the best possible education', without any thought as to what type or what they will gain from it other than material wealth and social connections.  Students see education as a means to an ends: It will get them a 'dream job' or a 'career they will love'. This, obviously, can be true - but it can also lead to a very real disillusionment. How many grad students change their Major study, for example, only to have to restart or change schools?
How many people really love that 'dream job' they finally land?
Then there is the elitism that our modern concept of education brings with it.
In our largely positivist academies of today, education equates to  understanding the truth of a matter. This is, of course, nonsense. A catalogue of presumptions does not lead one any closer to truth than say a box of comic books, or a decent record/cd collection. It is nice to know, and fun to listen to - but truth?
Nope, sorry Prof, that is objective. It is not something we learn, it is something we experience because it just IS the truth.  I cannot relate how many times I have heard, personally, very educated men make presumptions about the reality we live in - especially war - that are just so unrealistic that they HAD to come from a book and not any real experience.
What's worse is that this educated elite - who's influence is felt in every aspect of our lives from sham economics, to shitty foreign policy - are able to silence the 'under educated' masses like some medieval Pontiff. A wave of the hand and a sneer silences the conditioned peoples of our advanced culture from objecting to obvious violations of common sense and truth. The silence is self imposed (most of the time) by a fear, like some character in the children's story 'The Emperors New Clothes', of seeming 'uneducated'. Like sheep they agree! 'He must be right, look at how educated he is' etc.
These elites take an idea (again a presumption) and run experiments with our lives, as if we were animals in a lab.
Social engineering, for example, from eugenics to communism are direct products of an over educated elite.
OVER educated? 'Cannot be done' you may say. You would be wrong.
There are many people today who think that the answers to all the mysteries and wonders of life can be explained in terms of formulas and chemical acts. These poor souls have been indoctrinated by the elite. They actually believe it is just a matter of looking it up, or doing some research and paradise on earth can be made real. The cost? No matter. The uneducated (the rest of us) don't know what is good for us, in their minds. They will 'free' us of our ideas by EDUCATING us.
Re-education (prison, brian washing) camps are the mainstay of totalitarian regimes historically, and are becoming increasingly accepted by 'free' societies.
Don't feel comfortable around certain people? You need to be re-educated.
Say something in anger? Get in a fight? You need to be educated.
Think 2+2=4? Time for a re-education!

Education is important, it is essential for a advanced and pluralistic society; but it is only a tool.
Tools may be misused, abused, and even weaponized. Education is just such a tool. When held in the right 'hands' it can perform wonders. When misused it creates an elite of Theocratic proportions.
Further education does not equate with intelligence or truth, and certainly does not mean 'good'.

So? Use your (open) mind. Question all you see and hear.  Try your best to be good.
And...if you have time and the inclination, get an education of the type that suites YOU best. Maybe that is a trade skill, maybe agricultural work, maybe academic studies... but, for goodness sake, don't buy into the rubbish of over educated elitists.

I will sum up (har har) this little rant with an all time favourite song by an all time favourite band that has pinned this issue down. Enjoy!

Religion useful for atheists too!

An unusually moderate take from an agnostic/athiest rationalist.

Could this be the end of 'new Atheism' and a return to sober Agnosticism by the intellectual elite? Don't hold your breath!

It is nice to hear, however, the sane approach to this metaphysical mental exercise still exists; that one may still think freely within the 'free thinker' movement.
Kudos to De Botton for taking a stand against negativity and ant-religious bigotry.
A new title for my book list :)

Religion useful for atheists too, author argues (from CTV.ca) 

What if instead of mocking religions, atheists could borrow the very best ideas from? That's the question author Alain de Botton asks in his intellectually challenging but highly readable new book, "Religion for Atheists."

De Botton argues that it's possible for those who don't believe in God to look to religion for insights on everything from how to communicate ideas well, to how to build a sense of community, to how to keep our egos in check.

De Botton, who has published bestselling books on a range of subjects, from the philosphy of love, to architecture, to travel, has little patience for the debate about whether God exists. There will never be an answer to that one, he insists.

But he says for too long, his fellow atheists have wasted so much energy arguing with the faithful about whether the doctrines of religion are "true."

"Atheism has really been put on the map by what I call New Atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. They've been very successful, but at the same time, they've gone a little far with a negative direction. They've identified atheism with a hatred of religion – not just non-belief, but mockery and loathing," de Botton told CTVNews.ca recently when he was in Toronto.

While these "noisy fringes of atheism" -- as he calls them -- have dominated the public debate about atheism, he believes there remains "a silent majority" of atheists who don't necessarily hate religion and don't believe that "religion poisons everything," as Hitchens so fervently believed.

"I think there is a middle who think, ‘Look, maybe the doctrines of religion are not that convincing, but Christmas carols are nice, and religions rites of passage are nice,'" he says.

Those atheists who have been so quick to dismiss religious faith have failed to notice what makes religions as institutions so compelling, de Botton says.

There are a number of things that religion gets right, de Botton argues. The way they use music, religious art, and lyricism to inspire, or example. Or the way that every religion in the world emphasizes time for quiet reflection, to take a step back and to be reminded of our need for humility in a greater universe.

All religions have also always focused on architecture, building worship spaces designed for reverence, says de Botton.

"They know that the space you're in really affects your mood. It can inspire awe or calm, or gratitude, or love. The secular world thinks of humans as just brains that don't need that, and that our eyes are not affected. Whereas, or course, we are integrated beings and the space we're in can influence our ideas," he says.

He writes that secularism has been so concerned with personal freedom that it has missed the opportunity to guide humans on how to live.

"So opposed have many atheists been to the content of religious belief that they have omitted to appreciate its inspiring and still valid overall object: to provide us with well-structured advice on how to lead our lives," he writes in the book.

He writes that "no existing mainstream secular institution has a declared interest in teaching us the art of living." But he says the keys to the art of living can easily be found by sampling a bit of each of the world's religions.

It is that idea that de Botton knows will anger religious believers. Religions are not buffets where you can pick what you like and discard the rest, they protest. But de Botton argues that the downfall of many of the world's faiths is their insistence that followers "must eat everything on the plate."

"I think you can pick and choose morality from different religions," he says. "I know that sounds bizarre and I'm a fan of commitment. But the idea of having to commit to only one faith seems bizarre.

"I understand it if you're a believer. But as a non-believer, it's no more important to stick to one faith than to stick to one kind of novel as a student of literature. Imagine if you said, "I really like Jane Austen." And someone said to you, "Well, I hope you'll only be reading Austen then, and not picking and mixing and reading (Vladimir) Nabokov next." You would think, well why not?"

De Boton says just as we can appreciate different aspects of Austen and Nabokov's writing, so too can we appreciate the Zen Buddhist emphasis on compassion or the Jewish emphasis on forgiveness.

"Why not pick and mix ideas?" he asks.

What is science?

FROM EGNORANCE

What is science?

New atheists invoke 'science' as the pinnacle of methods to find truth.

In fact, atheists of a positivist inclination assert that science is the only way to know truth. By science, they explicitly mean methodological naturalism. Implicitly, they presume philosophical naturalism.

But what is 'science'?

Traditionally, as understood by philosophers from the ancient Greeks to the scholastics, scientia was Latin for "knowing" and "understanding". Scientia was an organized body of knowledge. It did not refer only to knowledge of nature. Theology was scientia. Ethics was scientia. Knowledge of nature was referred to as natural philosophy.

From the early modern period, science came to refer to scientia of the natural world. It has generally been distinguished by the scientific method-- a system of testing hypotheses about the natural world. Science came to mean primarily the acquisition of knowledge about nature that permits the manipulation of nature.

Understanding nature is, of course, still philosophy. It is still a kind of knowing. Scientia of nature, understood classically.

Science is stipulated to be the study of nature. So, of course, it cannot adjudicate the existence of the supernatural. It is a way of knowing tailored to knowing nature. And science understood as metaphysical naturalism does not presuppose natural causes. It presupposes natural effects. Supernatural causes are very much in the purview of natural science, as long as they have natural effects. An obvious example of a natural effect with a supernatural cause (by definition!) is the Big Bang. Nature itself cannot be caused by nature.

The question as to whether nature is all that exists is a question beyond science. It is a philosophical question broadly. It is a metaphysical question specifically.

From metaphysics, the argument that nature is all that exists is extraordinarily weak. Only two metaphysical arguments of any substance at all have been advanced to defend the assertion that nature is all that exists.

Hume proposed that perhaps nature, not God, is the ground of Being. If one must stop in causal regress, why not stop at nature, instead of God?

The reply to Hume preceded Hume. Scholastics had pointed out centuries earlier that the ground of existence must itself contain the principle of its own existence. It must not be contingent. But nature is contingent. It changes constantly, and its components begin and cease to exist continuously. In fact, we now know that nature (the universe) had a moment of beginning. It could not be its own cause of existence because nothing can cause itself to exist. Existence must be caused by Something outside of nature. That Something must Itself have an essence (what It is) that is existence (that It is). The Cause of nature must be outside of nature. Supernatural.

Kant understood the power of this argument, but he denied that we can extend logic to the supernatural. He asserted that all that we can know is the reality presented by our senses- the phenomenal. Reality-in-itself-- the noumenal-- was unknowable to us. he did believe in God, but he believed that God could only be known through the moral law in each of us-- the Categorical Imperative, but not through logic.

There are two problems with Kant's reasoning. The first is that the inference to the Prime Mover/First Cause/Necessary Existence is a deductive argument that extends only through the phenomenal-- through the world as known to the senses. The Ground for Existence is the conclusion of arguments restricted to phenomenal premises. We can validly infer that a Ground for Existence must exist based solely on phenomenal arguments. The nature of the Ground for Existence may be noumenal, but its necessary existence is demonstrable. The argument is phenomenal, and valid.

The other problem with Kant's critique is that if we understand the Ground for Existence as entirely beyond human understanding, including the conclusion that such a Ground exists, then we violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR). The PSR asserts that everything has a reason for its existence. It of course does not assert that we currently know the reason for everything (we obviously don't), but it asserts that a reason for everything does exist.

If the Ground for Existence is Kantian noumenal, and intrinsically unknowable and beyond confirmation of its existence, then the PSR is violated. But is the PSR is violated for the universe, then it is violated for each component of the universe. If nothing in the universe needs a reason for its existence, then science and logic are without foundation. 'It just happened' becomes an acceptable explanation for anything and everything.

If Kant is right, then the reasoning Kant used to arrive at his conclusion is without ground. Kant's argument is ultimately self-refuting.

The atheist may reply that the need for a Ground for Existence must apply to God Himself, and therefore recourse to the supernatural doesn't spare us infinite regression.

The atheist would be wrong. God is supernatural, and therefore not a "thing" in need of explanation. If fact, only a supernatural Ground can stop infinite regress. God's essence is His existence.

Science is the study of nature using the scientific method. It has no traction on supernatural questions.

Metaphysics, which does have traction on questions of ultimate reality, provides a powerful and thus far unrefuted argument for His necessary existence.

The Side Effect of War?

Could it be that war causes a change in the form or soul of a man?
Something physical, even. Maybe pathways in the brain?
Whatever the reason, the effects are undeniable.
There are different wars within wars.
Some men fight a fierce, exhausting, grinding war. Others see action in bursts - intense and utterly world shaking. Some see it from the street level; performing critical and necessary functions. Others must see it partially from a position of command and delegation, for that is their burden.
It is to this last category I wander with my musings today. It is a region very close to home.
So, I ask myself: What is the biggest side effect of this experience on ME?
What has this exposure to raw conflict done to my world-view? I am sure there is probably a book's worth of material in there, but in this post I will focus on a single effect.
Since I was young enough to remember I have been exposed to war.
I grew up in a city still recovering from the bombings of the second world war. Although years before my birth, the economic collapse had prevented the removal and repair of the scars of war. Pill boxes lined the beaches I played on. In town ruined hulks of old buildings still stood, silent and aside. Derelict. Waiting for the wreckers ball.
I can remember a strange smell around those places that I would later come to recognize.
In 2001, after the 911 attack I began to notice an effect. Horrifically I first saw it in the actions of the hijackers. In the weaponization of the planes. I stood among shocked and terrified colleagues utterly UN-AMAZED. The attack seemed so obvious to me. So easy. Why had nobody seen it coming?
Sure I was horrified by the target. It struck VERY deep at my core. The cowardly and EVIL nature of the attack hit me like everyone else....but I was NOT surprised.

'Fallen Comrades'

I realized, at that moment, that for many years I had been assessing the weapon potential of almost everything. Large bodied jets loaded with fuel HAD occurred to me.
I had become so attuned to mapping the potential of a given object, series of events, or persons for making war that the attack made a perfect - and totally Evil - kind of sense. Such a realization left me feeling unclean.

For a while, I began to wonder if it was a curse or madness. A spiritual or physical sickness that made me see ghosts and shadows where there was none. But why was I right, time after time? Why did I see it coming?
In 2002 I wrote a paper advising NATO about the potential of corpse bombs, for example. I had to literally FORCE myself to write it. I knew what the reaction would be. People thought me nuts then - but now they know different.
Since then there have been over 300 such bombs used on civilians, NATO, and Allied troops.
This intuition had been correct, AGAIN.
Stranger still, as I began to bounce these ideas on other veterans of conflict (not just my own wars) I found a similar awareness.
A kind of realization was reached when I finally brought this topic up with a man who helped raise me as a boy, my Grandfather. A veteran of WWII - the full conflict - and a decorated NCO in the RAF, I wondered what his take was. He knew exactly what I meant, and listed his own examples.
It was uncanny. What was this intuition? This ability to sniff out the other guy's nasty plots by analysis? Granddad called it 'reality sickness'. People returning from war, he said, could see the real world in ways civilians refused to. The malady is in the mix of the two worlds. It leads to a series of disconnects. There is not 'unified field' theory of civilization. There is the Newtonian life of Civilians, and the Quantum of War.
Could it be, we wondered toghether, that war awakens a part of a man's soul or mind that allows him to instinctively sense, in an almost prescient way, the Evil wishes of his opponent. That the nastiness of the other guy allows me to 'do unto him' as he would 'do unto me'...or at least prevent any 'doing unto' at all? Is this a real metaphysical and appreciable side effect of war? If so, WHY should it be?
This question haunted many pots of tea and the conversations that flowed from them in the last couple of years before Granddad's stroke and eventual passing.
We would ask: Is it a gift, or a curse, or both?
Whatever it is, it is as real as the sense of smell and as old as the art of War itself.
A strange Side Effect of War....


RIP Granddad, I will always miss the chats.
*Salutes the Old Man*

May God bless and keep you all safe from the madness of war.
PsG ad2011

A dish of Black Death

An article in the UK's Daily Mail outlines a new 'discovery' or find that seems to indicate that researchers have discovered the pathogen responsible for the dreaded black death..and apparently it is still about today!


"DNA taken from the skeletons of plague victims in medieval London has unearthed a shocking revelation – the Black Death is still present today.
Bodies of victims, who were buried in a mass ‘plague graves’ in the capital, show that part of the same sequence of genes still exists, hundreds of years later.
The Black Death claimed the lives of one-third of Europe's population in just five years from 1348 to 1353."


In a rather cocky, and typically Brit-o-scientistic fashion the articles author delcares:
"Scientists have now confirmed that Yersinia pestis which is known to cause cases of the plague today was also responsible for the brutally damaging bubonic plague which almost wiped out Europe."

Not to worry though, because "the modern day bug spreads much more slowly and is far less deadly."

So, while no news is good news....it also means no grants. The question is what becomes of this pathogen now it has been isolated and these scientists have their curiosity satiated (for now).  Sure some history books will be updated and there will be much talk about how the pathogen arrived etc (delivery);But what happens to the nasty little killer bug in a dish when all the rich guys send all the nerds home and close / change the lab?  Should we 'trust' them to eliminate this stuff. Is yet another genie now out of the bottle? Another Pandora's box opened by reckless curiosity?
What happens to the Dish of Black Death?
The soldier and the historian in me say 'weapon'.
The father and uncle say 'not again'.