Divine Imperfection

Did gods create humanity to fulfill some divine purpose that we ourselves can only guess at, or did we create gods to explain the things that were beyond our understanding?

This is entirely my opinion, and I realize that people of deep religious convictions may find it offensive. I can’t help that, nor can I change what I believe. Nor would I. Faith is a tricky thing, and any time you challenge someone else’s you’re tap-dancing in a mine field. If you object to what I believe, I’m sorry but that makes no difference to me. If you object to my expressing such thoughts, fuck you.

In the beginning there was imperfection.

From the first moment that we, as a species, became aware of the world we lived in, it was obvious that it was full of imperfections. The world we found ourselves in was imperfectly suited to support us, and we ourselves were far from being perfectly suited to live in it.

In spite of this (perhaps because of it) we have always sought the approval of our deities, beings whose purposes and desires we can only really guess at, beings that we are required to obey nonetheless, beings which may not even exist save in our own minds. We looked around at the world that was trying to kill us and imagined beings that gave us a purpose for being in it, a purpose that we readily admitted that we were incapable of understanding.

There’s a problem with this. We like to believe that our deities are perfect beings, and that we are but pale imitations if that perfection. (Christianity works this way, anyway.) But if we are the creations of perfect beings, shouldn’t we also be perfect? Is a perfect being capable of shoddy workmanship?

That’s an interesting question, and leads to several others. Could we have created our perfect deities, when we ourselves are so clearly imperfect? Clearly not, and that might seem to argue in favor of the existence of a divine creator or creators, but it begs the other obvious question: Are perfect beings capable of creating imperfection? If they and their works are perfect, then how can anything they create be anything less than perfect? And if their works are imperfect, doesn’t that argue against their being perfect? Doesn’t that argue against the very concept of divine perfection?

The usual argument used to get around this dilemma is the “God-works-in-mysterious-ways” argument; the idea that divine purposes are so far beyond our understanding that we shouldn’t even try to comprehend them, but meekly accept their divine wisdom unquestioningly. This idea has the advantage of being impossible to logically argue against; neither can it be logically supported.

One way that the “God-created-all” hypothesis appears to work is if you discard the notion of divine perfection. You can still claim that God (or whatever/whoever) exists, you can even claim a divine creation, but you can’t claim that your god or gods are perfect. That, or you have to abandon “God-created-all” and accept a divinity separate from creation, and the very idea of such a thing is anathema to most people who accept the god hypothesis. Such thinking leads to a more convoluted theology then most people can accept, in any case.

These are difficult concepts that require serious thought, and humanity as a whole has never been terribly keen on too much thinking. We usually create divinities to manage the difficult bits for us, and we never worry because that’s the deity’s job and we just trust that they’re doing it.

If I’m right about that, then our “perfect beings” can be no more perfect than we are. We are forever creating gods that are merely reflections of ourselves, with all of our weaknesses intact; then we give them the responsibility of controlling the aspects of our world, indeed of our very lives, over which we have neither understanding nor control.

I find it ironic that humanity would create divine intermediaries of perfect wisdom and understanding; personifications of concepts that we knew were beyond our own imperfect understanding. It was inevitable that these constructs would possess all the foibles, faults, and inconsistencies that humanity itself is plagued by.

This, then, is the question: Did we, being imperfect beings, create for ourselves divine beings just as flawed, or did flawed deities create us in their own imperfect image? I can only answer that for me: I think that we are imperfect beings seeking perfection that we can never find in ourselves, so we imagine that perfection in beings that exist only in our imaginations. In other words, we are imperfection forever in search of a perfection that we can never understand, about which we can only hypothesize.

None of which really matters. Such beings as we might imagine would be neither more nor less worthy of reverence than we ourselves. Perhaps when we go looking for a powerful being to explain something we cannot understand, the first place we should look is in a mirror. And while we’re at it, it might be a good idea to turn the mirror over to see what’s behind the reflection.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Eternity...what a concept...

Why are we even bothering to talk about “eternity” when we can’t possibly understand the concept?

Eternity is an interesting concept, but little more than a concept. It is our way of referring to a state of being other than the one in which we are now living, and as such is unknowable so why are we even bothering to talk about it?

It’s easy to define this eternal state as one in which we live forever, since one of the obviously true qualities of our existence (as we know it) is its impermanence. The problem is this: How do we accurately define something of which we, as living beings, cannot ourselves have any knowledge?

Shakespeare called death “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns...” and I think he got it right, never mind that it comes from a play with a ghost in a speaking role. I think that, like Hamlet’s father, our ghosts are dredged up from our memories and their actual existence is contradicted by our own reason.

Since we can only speculate about the nature of any state of being other than the one in which we’re living, let’s speculate. Here’s another way to look at eternity. 

Imagine for a moment that what we call “eternity” is simply a state of being in which linear time and temporal relationships do not exist. Eternal beings would see all of existence as happening at once, though “at once” is an entirely linear concept that such eternal beings as I speculate upon could only speculate upon.

These eternal beings would have no native concepts of, nor use for, “before” or “after.” If they possess a finite existence, as we would define such, they would only perceive the part of it that they themselves, individually (assuming that they even possessed a concept of “individuality”) are able to experience. I doubt that they would be able to discuss it other than conceptually, or hypothetically, as I am discussing “eternity” now.

In such a reality, “eternity” would be a state which is neither finite nor infinite, indeed these two concepts would have no meaning in this context. In our perception, existence has a beginning, a middle, and an end; but the eternal being would simply see all things as simply being, having none of these linear points to define them. This is not to say that the eternal being lives forever, but simply to say that concepts such as forever, indeed the ideas of beginning, middle, and end, would have no meaning to the eternal being. As we would perceive them, eternal beings may have finite lives or infinite ones; it would not matter. The eternal being would perceive all things as simply being, all occurrences as just happening. “Before” and “after” would have no meaning to a being that perceived time in this fashion, neither would “beginning” or “end, “now” or “later,” indeed “if” and “then” (as in the familiar argument “If this, then that”) would represent concepts of which the eternal being would be unable to conceive.

Would we even be able to perceive such beings? Would they be able to perceive us? I wouldn’t even speculate on the answers to either of those questions.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut conceived of a race he called the Tralfamadorians who perceive time differently than we do. One Tralfamadorian used a metaphor to describe the Human perception of time to his fellow Tralfamadorians; he compared humans to someone strapped to a moving railcar, wearing a helmet with a permanently fixed (and narrow) viewpoint that only allowed its wearer to perceive the rest of the world as the railcar rushed through it.

Vonnegut was using this Tralfamadorian view of our perception to give the reader an idea of Tralfamadorian perception, and I can think of no better way to describe my own hypothetical eternal beings’ perception of time.

Imagine yourself strapped to that railcar, unable to move or even turn your head, with your vision restricted by a hole in the front of a helmet you cannot remove. Imagine that your entire existence has been that railcar, moving through a landscape that you can only perceive through a small opening that always faces forward. Imagine that the railcar was moving when you were born, has been moving all of your life and will (in all probability) still be moving when you die.

You may have memories of what has passed before the opening, however imperfect they may be, but you can only see what’s right in front of you, and can only speculate on what’s to come. Anything you know, or think you know, about the universe must come through that narrow opening.

As to the nature of the universe that you can’t actually see through that opening, you can only hypothesize. Even if someone is standing beside you on the railcar, unencumbered by the restrictive helmet and eagerly describing the world rushing by, your understanding of their description can only be interpreted according to what you know of the universe, perceived from your limited and restricted viewpoint.

Let’s say that the railcar goes by mountain range, but you are unable to see it because it isn’t in the direction you’re facing. The observer on the car with you may describe it to you, but you've never seen a mountain; without any frame of reference how will you understand what they’re telling you? And if they use a phrase like, “The Earth rises up into the sky!” just how exactly will you interpret that? Levitation, perhaps?

Now let’s say that the observer is dishonest. He might describe fanciful landscapes that cannot possibly exist, and try to excite your belief in them, or he may describe a dull, featureless, barren plan and tell you to never mind the world to either side, that what’s tight in front of you is the best of all possible worlds and you should be content with it.

One other possibility that you might not have considered: Suppose that you yourself couldn’t see the observer? How would you know that they weren’t strapped to the railcar themselves, their vision restricted by an immovable helmet like yours? How can you ever be sure that their vision isn’t as restricted, or even more restricted, than yours? How can you even be sure that they’re looking at the same things you are?

In this case, it comes down to their ability to convince you of their vision. Which you can never check. You have to take it on faith.

Here you have a choice. You can accept what you’re told about the universe, or you can reject it; you can choose to believe it or not.

On a larger scale, you can accept the world either as you see it or as it’s presented to you (it really doesn’t matter which, as long as your own vision is restricted), or you can free yourself from what restricts you. What you’ve been told about the world may prepare you for the world you find once free, or it may not. You can’t possibly know. But just imagine...if you had lived your whole life strapped to that railcar, what wonders might you find once free of your fetters?

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
You're off the Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way! 

 - Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

(One final literary observation: It should be noted that Vonnegut’s “Tralfafadorians” appeared in several of his novels, and that each time their philosophy, their science, their perception of time, even their physicality were altered, sometimes radically, to meet the author’s dramatic requirements of the moment. This in itself is a rather Tralfamadorian concept.)

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.


William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene I  (No Fear Shakespeare)

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five   (Wikipedia)
Slaughterhouse-Five at amazon.com   
“Tralfamador” on Wikipedia

Sr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!  (Full text without illustrations)
Oh, the Places You'll Go! at amazon.com

The Dukes, at hazard...

I thought I was finished with this topic, but stupid memes like the one below keep being posted, and as you know I have trouble ignoring a stupid meme...

This has appeared several times in my Facebook feed:

One thing I’d like to point out to the fool that made this meme:

The Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes were NEVER the good guys. Never. They may have worn the Nazi swastika, and were generally portrayed as clowns (which the Nazis certainly weren’t) but they were NEVER portrayed as heroes.

Nazis were always buffoons in Hogan’s Heroes. Werner Klemperer, who played Col. Klink (and whose family fled Germany in 1935), even had that in his contract. But clowns or not, they were always the antagonists...the bad guys.

Bo, Luke, and Daisy Duke were not played as buffoons or bad guys; they were the “good ol’ boys” that you were supposed to like, supposed to want to be, supposed to lust after. And they proudly displayed the Rebel flag, a symbol that many of us have come to realize symbolizes hate and repression. (Some of us have always thought that.)

Look at it this way. If a television show were produced today that used Nazi imagery in the same way as The Dukes of Hazzard used Confederate imagery, in a modern (non-historical) setting and proudly displayed by the show’s protagonists, you wouldn’t expect that show to remain on the air over commercial stations, would you? You’d expect that show to disappear from commercial broadcast TV, to be relegated to late-night public access cable with the rest of the broadcasting lunatic fringe.

Don’t you think that TV networks have every right, even every responsibility, to respond to changing public opinion? After all, their livelihood is at stake. They have to respond to a changing market.

(All of which begs the point that the technology exists to remove the Confederate flag from the Dukes’ car, electronically. Hell, if every bare boob in Showgirls can be covered by an electronic brazier for commercial TV broadcast, the roof of the General Lee can be electronically painted a solid orange. If the demand to do it is there, the technology is certainly up to it. If you’d still object, either to the removal of the flag or the continued broadcast of the show, then I have to question what is is that you’re really objecting to.)

Perception of the imagery of the Confederate flag has changed in recent years, drastically so over the last few weeks. Whether or not that flag means bigotry to you, it means bigotry to many Americas today, if not in fact most. It’s time for all of us to recognize that many Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate and oppression.

As to any comparison between The Dukes of Hazzard and Hogan’s Heroes, you’re being silly and holding yourself up for ridicule. Which I am happy to provide.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Myth of an Integrated Confederate Army

Did black solders wear gray? Rarely. Very rarely.
So rarely that you could say that they really didn't.

(I will admit that I’m publishing this just as interest in the matter in hand appears to be waning. The research took a while, as did the writing—it’s one of the longest blog posts I’ve written—and then I sat on it for more than a day trying to decide whether to delete it or not. If you’re reading this, then obviously I decided to publish it. If you don’t want to read any more about this, then don’t freakin’ read it!)

One argument I keep hearing in support of the continued display of the Confederate flag goes something like this: “It CAN’T be a racist flag, because there were blacks fighting for the Confederacy!” The argument claims that as many as 30,000 African-Americans might have fought for the Confederacy...a number that, according to my research, is a wild and grotesque exaggeration based on speculation, innuendo, and/or fantasy.

I had originally intended to write an article refuting this argument, but in researching the matter I discovered that there were many articles covering this same issue, and my writing another would be redundant. So instead of writing yet another article on a well-covered subject, I’m just going to provide links to the best such articles that I found on-line, and anyone who wishes to find articles of the other opinion is welcome to use Google, same as I did.

But be warned, you’re going to have a bit of trouble finding anything that qualifies as evidence in support of this pro-Rebel Flag allegation. (Unless you’re willing to count anecdotal evidence, which no serious academic would; myself, I feel that any argument that begins, “Well, I heard...” or “They say...” isn’t worth a damn, and is so close to being an admission of failure to find or even look for evidence that said argument can be given no credence.)

But if you want to make such an argument, go ahead. If you think you can find some authoritative evidence in support of it, I’d love to see some.  But I recommend that you read these articles first, if for no other reason than to see what you’re up against. Please be aware that you’re going to be arguing against (as far as I could determine from my own research) nearly the entire body of evidence and serious scholarship on this subject.

Good luck. I mean that...good luck. If you find any actual evidence or serious scholarship that I missed, I would love to see it.

(I should also note that this is intended to be my last word on the subject, save for responses to any public comments on this article or my research for it. Please see the note at the end of this article.)


Articles on the Near Myth of African-American Confederate Solders:

These links each go to a selected article on the subject. Each listing includes a brief extract from the article.

I’ve selected three links from the first page of results of a Google search; (I Googled, did african americans serve as confederate soldiers? and restricted myself to the first page of 14.5 million results) these pages are representative of what I found. If you question my conclusions or my research, please feel free to do your own and reach you own conclusions. And please let me know what they are, and be prepared to defend them.

The Civil War Gazette – “Did blacks fight in combat for the Confederacy?” March 2008

From the article: “In short, if one sticks solely to the historical record for primary evidence of the black soldier picking up arms and fighting for the South, one can only conclude that the support for such a claim is scanty at best – merely anecdotal – and entirely unsubstantiated at worst. Instead of the widely claimed and purported number of 30,000 fighting black soldiers for the Confederacy, an honest look at the historical record leads one to the conclusion that as little as under a hundred to as many as several hundred blacks may have actually engaged in combat for the South during the Civil War by actually carrying and discharging a weapon. How to interpret that evidence – or lack thereof – is left to the professional and armchair historians to debate.”

Military History Now – “Black in Gray – Did Some African Americans Really Fight for the Confederacy?” June 2012

From the article: “‘But, where’s the proof?’ academics invariably ask. Professional historians maintain that despite the persistent claims, there is virtually zero compelling evidence showing that thousands of blacks took up arms against the very people who fought to set them free, willingly or otherwise.”

The Washington Post – “The myth of the black Confederates” October 2010

From the article: “As a matter of fact, one of Jefferson Davis’s generals did advise him to emancipate and arm slaves at the start of the war. But Davis vehemently rejected that advice. It ‘would revolt and disgust the whole South,’ he snapped. During the first few years of the war, some others repeated this suggestion. Each time, Richmond slapped it down. Not only would no slaves be enlisted; no one who was not certifiably white, whether slave or free, would be permitted to become a Confederate soldier.”

Teachinghistory.org – “Black Confederates” (undated)

From the article: “...the acute resistance of Confederates to arming blacks is understandable. Putting muskets in the hands of enslaved African Americans presented more than simply a concrete threat—embracing the notion that blacks could serve as soldiers in the same fashion as whites threatened deeply-held Southern ideas of race-based honor and masculinity. As Confederate Secretary of State Robert Toombs put it, ‘The day the army of Virginia allows a negro regiment to enter their lines as soldiers, they will be degraded, ruined, and disgraced.’”


“But there was that one article...”

The closest I came to a scholarly dissent came from Harvard historian John Stauffer, who concluded that as least 3,000 Negro troops may have carried arms for the South. This is the highest number I have found in anything approaching a properly researched paper, but how closely it approaches actual scholarship is somewhat debatable. Much of the evidence he cites crosses the line into “anecdotal evidence” territory. For example, he cites a quote from Frederic Douglas as evidence in support of his conclusions, a quote in which Douglas claimed to have heard that some people had seen armed, black Confederate solders at First Bull Run. It should be noted that Douglass never claimed to have seen these himself, and that such testimony is presented entirely without supporting evidence. Stauffer may see this as proper evidence, but no other scholar whose works I have consulted seems to think so; indeed, where the other cited articles mention Stauffer at all it is to refute his claims and/or contest his evidence.

Still, in the interest of fairness:

Harvard Gazette – “Black Confederates” September 2011

(I could not find a direct link to Stauffer’s paper—this link goes to an article on Stauffer’s paper at the Harvard Gazette—and for that reason I am not posting a quote.)


In Conclusion...

I am not a scholar or an academic, nor do I pretend to be, and I really don’t have much of an education. (College dropout, me.) But I respect academics, both the study and the student, and I wish everyone would approach this sort of discussion in a scholarly fashion. I have tried to do that here, and please note that I did not try to author a paper on the subject (though that was originally my intention) but have instead laid out my research and it is up to you, the reader (as it always is, ultimately) to judge its value.

If you’re miffed that I haven’t included many articles of an opposing viewpoint, it’s because (and I do regret this) I wasn’t able to find more than a single dissenting article that met even the most basic evidentiary standards (Stauffer), and even that one had evidentiary problems. Perhaps some of you will fare better.

In any case, my work here is done so now it’s time for me to ride off into the sunset. Happy trails.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expresses here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.


PLEASE NOTE: Articles like this have gotten me into trouble in the past, and I don’t expect that this one will be any different. In particular, they have spawned angry responses from people on the right (some of them old and valued friends) via private email, which limits my responses to private email. Frankly, I find the necessity of defending my reasoning or my writing privately to be tedious, and I’m not willing to do it again; I’m going to ask that any response you wish to make be made publicly, either through my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/michael.rosecrans.5) or through the "Post a Comment" link below. I am no longer wiling to provide responses by private email; in fact, I am not even going to read your comments unless they are made on a public forum. I have gone to the trouble of posting my thoughts publicly...please do me the courtesy of responding in the same fashion. - MSR

“I know you are, but what am I?”

How to lose the “I’m not racist!” argument.



This meme has been appearing on Facebook of late...

I don’t know who made it, or who originally posted it, but there’s a serious flaw in their argument.

Let’s define “racist” first. Quoth dictionary.com:

“1. a person who believes in racism, the doctrine that one's own racial group is superior or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

“2. of or like racists or racism.”

If you’re the one making the argument as stated in the meme, then your point only makes any sense if you accept the Confederate flag as a banner that represents the white race. (At least, I assume you mean the white race...I seriously doubt that Eskimos or Australian Aborigines are lining up to claim Confederate sympathies.)

Think about it...you’re calling me racist, but how can I be racist against a symbol that does not represent a particular race?

If you’re not claiming that the flag represents the white race, then I would ask you this: Just which race is it representing? Because if you’re not claiming that the Confederate flag represents a particular race, then you cannot claim that opposing the display of that flag is at all racist.

The argument then falls apart. You cannot claim that opposition to the Confederate flag is racist unless you assert that the Confederate flag itself asserts a racist ideal, that said flag represents one race to the exclusion of others. In other words, you can’t use this argument to call me a racist and say that the Confederate flag isn’t racist without exposing yourself as a racist and admitting that the flag represents a racist ideal.

Or, to put it more simply, you cannot claim that the flag isn’t racist without asserting that the flag is racist.

Obviously, making such a claim is self-defeating. The sad truth is that this sort of argument is defeated just by the effort of making that argument.

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.