Free Republic

All I see is a mind applying reason.

My wife is dying of kidney disease, so I’ve had a lot of opportunity to learn how to read medical research papers, to learn how medical scientists really think about their subject matter. Coming back to FR after all these years and seeing this conversation is truly horrifying for me. I never saw this here before. Maybe I was just blind to it.

Palmer is right. The smallpox vaccine started out over 200 years ago as a deliberate infection with cowpox, a weaker version of the human strain. It was a deliberate stimulation of the natural immune system. All vaccines are an attempt to train the immune system to meet and defeat a new pathogen. That’s not remotely controversial.

And certainly not a lie. I once was a Christian. I’m not anymore. This conversation, what I am witnessing here, is one of the main reasons. Disagreements over science are fine. It’s perfectly normal and healthy to debate cause, correlation, effect, etc. Those conversations keep us all honest.

But turning it all dark and sinister, so that anyone who questions your orthodoxy is branded as a liar or a fool or somehow evil is just primitive emotional manipulation that has no place in reasoned discourse. It creates blindness, not illumination. Yet it seems to be essential to Christianity and Abrahamic theism generally. Black and white thinking. We are the good guys and all those others out there are the bad guys and it’s the end of the world anyway, so let’s just go down this spiral of having our apocalypse and signalling how righteous we are by trashing anyone who doesn’t share our ‘vision.’

Which is why I’m out. I’m so, so tired of it all. Sick to death of it. I’ve been into medical science since I was 3 years old. I couldn’t read yet, but I loved looking at the cardiopulmonary diagrams in the old Encyclopedia Britannica, back before the internet. Then I had friends, neighbors living across the street, getting paralyzed with polio, dying from polio. I remember how quiet that house next door became. It could have been me. But we had the vaccine. It was keeping a bad situation from becoming even worse. There was no grand plot. Bad things just happen, and most people try to make things better and help people, even if that help isn’t perfect.

And there isn’t any grand plot now. Human evolution is complicated and risky. We’ve faced down big threats before and hopefully we’ll do it again, and again. This is just life on planet earth. It’s a good and beautiful thing. Why taint it with false accusations of lying etc? Why not just back off for a moment when you hear something that challenges your orthodoxy and ask, is there a way that might be true? Is the evidence for my own position so obvious and bulletproof the other person must be lying? Or am I missing some fact of science or history, which if I knew, I’d actually be in agreement with this person?

Anyway, no, I have no expectation of that happening here. I’ve been among Christians for nearly 70 years. I fully expect a doubling-down. That’s why, for me, this conversation is over.

Consider Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis. The main goal of a demon would not be to scare children like some monster under the bed. The main goal would be to draw intelligent persons by subtle deception down a path where the ‘monster’ appears as a friend and helper, an angel of light, until it is too late to escape. ‘Cool vehicles that inspire you,’ would fulfill that purpose admirably. Unless of course they were really just cool vehicles. So much we don’t know.

lol I suppose it wouldn’t help if I claimed alien abduction??? jk. :)

But yeah, it’s been a while. Still working on my book (a sci fi romance). I have this ‘allowance’ of ‘me’ time, and I used to spend a ton of it here on FR. But after the 2016 primaries, getting handcuffed by JR & Co for not aligning with the group-think, and getting plum worn out from some of the endless cycles of theological debate, I just got completely burned out on FR. Even now, that hasn’t really changed. Sometimes I just have to take a break from my other stuff and snoop in here to see what’s what, and I saw this ping and decided to dip one little toe back in the water.

But as my allowance of free time is pretty small, I do have to spend it wisely. So until the book is done and published, I’ll probably just keep my lurker status for now. But definitely good chatting with all y’all. :D

Peace

There is a both/and approach available here. Christians accept demons as much as we accept angels, God, anything spiritual etc. If one is an absolute materialist, none of that makes any sense. I am not a strict materialist. I believe reality is more complex than the descriptive capability of any current models. So in broad terms, I accept that spiritual beings can interact with humanity. Furthermore, as one who accepts the description of Jesus in the Bible as true, I see that He did interact with angels and demons, and those interactions reveal said beings have means, motive and opportunity to deceive humans for various purposes.

As to why angels and demons might use more material means of interacting with humans than God, it is a misleading question. In Christian theology, God has interacted with humans in very big, physical ways. Jesus as the very real God-man. The feeding of the 5000. Where did the additional mass come from? The resurrection. The parting of the Red Sea. Force field extraordinaire? The great flood. A planned planetary culling? Etc. Given that angels/demons would be much more limited than God, maybe all they can put together at one time are a few scraps of cool looking metal to amaze us with. Just sayin ...

Still, as much as I believe all that, I also know the physical world is a crazy, creative place with lots of possibilities all its own. So for me it’s just not necessary in any given case to assume who or what lies behind such an alleged sighting. I think the jury is out on most of it. For my part, I also accept that God could create life anywhere in the universe, in any quantity, with any technological capability, up to an including solving the thorny problems of high speed space travel.

I also had relatives working deep inside the US aerospace industry who worked on things that could be related to such phenomena. Humanity has produced some truly brilliant minds, and no matter what you think you know about what we have created on our own, you are probably wrong to some degree. And at least some of that is by design.

The upshot? I think we should take each case one at a time. No sweeping generalizations. An object that appears to violate known physical principles or capabilities is in only ever in ‘apparent violation.’ Perhaps the object is indeed physically real but our common understanding of physics is too limited to describe its behavior. Perhaps the object is physical but it isn’t what it seems to be at all because our detection/reporting/perception of it is misleading us for some reason. Perhaps some of these events are purely mental/spiritual in nature, with zero footprint in the physical world. These are all forms of misunderstanding. And the only way you clear up a misunderstanding is with evidence. In the absence of evidence providing a clear answer, I think approaching it with an open mind is useful.

The faith once delivered to Israel by the instrumentality of Moses frequently had to be restored, because it is human nature to corrupt divine revelation. So there should be nothing surprising about restoration movements. It is the whole pattern of divine revelation. The faithful dwindle till almost extinct, till pnly an obscure remnant remains, then God sends a restoration. And yes, of course the enemy tries to plant false restorations. Thats why in the past, restoration has always come back to the original revelation, digging the old scrolls out of the closet in the temple and reading the words God inspired until it broke hearts and brought sinners to repentance snd renewal. Its how God does this, and always has.

LOL. :-D

Great gif. Totally mind blowing. :)

Hey, y’all. Yes, I’m still out here, lurking every now and then. Carry on.

Peace,

SR

Redwood, thanks for the info. Very helpful. What folks here need to know about fiction writing is that it is art, not reality. Reality is boring, most of the time. We use art to condense reality into something with a tremendous capacity to convey meaning in a short period of time. So what I need is just enough reality to give shape to my art, but if I bear down too hard on reality, the audience won’t be interested in the story, because it is too real. There is a place for documentary, but Raiders of the Lost Ark didn’t work because of it’s commitment to reality. Just sayin ...

Having said all that, I don’t want my crash landing scene to turn up someday on mythbusters as a busted myth. So everyone’s input here, even the naysayers, has been very helpful. My thanks to you Redwood, and to everyone who participated.

Peace,

SR

Ok, just looked at the mythbusters summary for that episode. Like they say, it could be done with radio help. But my guy is coming down in hostile territory, so no local radio. But, what if he has a young video game kid call him on his cell and the kid tells him what to do? Certainly better than nothing. There’d be a question of figuring out the controls for that specific type of aircraft, but much more doable, based on what I’ve been hearing here. And he could start out cocky. I already have him saying, how hard could this be. Then he realizes how hard it is, class his friend, theyvland the plane, still rough enough to slide down the mountain abut, but enough force reduction to survive. “Plausible, Jamie?”

Peace,

SR

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, Amazon has their own fleet now. I don’t know if they’re all as big as a 767. If they had a smallish one that would make it a lot easier. Another angle to look at anyway. I just don’t want this someday getting made into a movie and then mythbusters shows it can’t be done. There may only be a 1/100th percent chance of making it, but if there is, it’s my job as a writer to help my character find that tiny little slot and squeeze through it. I just need to know under what combination of variables would there be such a chance.

Peace,

SR

Correction. The pilot has no direct experience flying, but he’s very smart and has a near photographic memory and can call up all kinds of memories, movies, conversations with pilot buddies, etc. Shoot, even total nonpilot me knows about landing gears and flaps. As a passenger I’ve watched the flaps during landing all the time. What I would lack is any skill in using them. But then I’m not a brilliant physicist either. So for purposes of this exercise, assume the agent can figure it out. What would he need to do?

Peace,

SR

I had an uncle who was a genius physics guy. He routinely invented things from pure physics knowledge that ordinary folks would have to learn the old fashioned way. So while I realize experience would help, the character has, in theory, the brilliance to figure it out on the fly. Pun intended. :) So what I’m looking for is what would be the most plausible physical scenario.

Peace,

SR

To the contrary, a jury in THAT case would easily be persuaded her claimed lack of intent was not credible. Her personal, tangible interaction with the body of the child, the manner of treatment, etc., a good prosecutor could easily show mens rea even if the woman denied it. Because mens rea does not rely exclusively on testimony of the person. If it did, you could never convict for murder. But in cases where intent is denied, it may still be found through indicators that are external and objective. "I didn't mean to run him over with the car fives times" will not work as a defense.

Which is why there is no one size fits all easy peezy lazy ass solution for this problem. I know people want it to be simple but it isn't. It'll always come down to specific cases and fact patterns. The jury will hear all the facts, and if a case can be made to the jury that the person lacked the right kind of intent, they won't be convicted of murder. Sorry.

Peace,

SR

Vehicular homicide isn’t enough information to figure out if it’s murder. All we know from that label is one person killed another person with a vehicle. It could be entirely accidental, or there could be criminal negligence, or there could have been a real intent to kill another person without justification or excuse. If there is an absence of intent to kill a person without justification or excuse, you don’t have enough for murder. Manslaughter comes up for the criminal negligence, where you drove under such conditions that you just didn’t care. That gets you much closer to murder, but not quite over the line. And you can still be punished for criminal negligence.

But words have meaning. In legalese, if you don’t have the right kind of intent, you don’t get murder. This is not new, BTW. It’s been like this for centuries. Nobody should be surprised by any of this, least of all Chris Matthews, who to me is just trying to show up prolifers as inconsistent and uncompassionate, so he doesn’t really care about the technical requirements of murder, and he probably knows he can buffalo most of his audience because they sure don’t know.

Peace,

SR

I’m an attorney. You need mens rea to make out a murder charge. If you have a teen who’s being told it’s not a baby yet, by everyone in her world, not just doctor and family, but the entire culture, and you combine that with coercion, no court well-grounded in the traditional view of murder is going to find mens rea (guilty mind).

BTW, it’s not about intellectual capacity. It’s about what your life situation has conditioned you to believe. Some very smart people believe some very stupid things. We see it all the time here on FR.

Peace,

SR

Unless they're not. I personally know of situations where there was intense coercion (her own dad) combined with deliberate medical misinformation, back in the day when the pro-abort lobby monopolized the media narrative. Difficult, maybe impossible, to make a case for mens rea under such conditions. No mens rea, no murder. More like an accidental death. That protection would NOT apply to those who were neither misinformed nor coerced.

Peace,

SR

Hey bro. Good to hear from you again. Yep, TR and Byz are great texts. But no hardcopy for . All my Greek are belong to digital (Logos, e-Sword). :)

Peace,

SR

That’s a great example of a well translated subjunctive. Thanks for keeping on digging. Finding that was worth the effort.

Peace,

SR

I fear you spent a great deal of time and effort not understanding what I said about fear, but worse, I can do nothing more for you at this time. I am sorry.

Peace,

SR