Civil Commotion

Britain still used the Julian calendar in 1642, and according to that calendar it was on Christmas Day that Isaac Newton was born. There is no question whatever that Newton actually existed and, what is more, he did a lot more for human progress, and therefore peace, than Jesus ever did.

So I am celebrating the birth of Isaac Newton — and if you actually want Peace on Earth, rather than the triumph of some discreditable vengeance cult or another, so will you.

Newton’s calculus, and kinematics, are the backbone of an engineering education; there is no such thing as an engineer of any variety who hasn’t solved hundreds, possibly thousands, of permutations of the block-on-an-inclined-plane problem, and the modern world could not exist without Newton’s genius.

Believe it or not, engineers don’t kill each other over Newton’s equations, either. They have been tested, proved, and universally accepted — they work. There are no embarrassing schisms we must pretend never happened, or others we must pretend don’t exist. A Muslim, Christian, Mormon, or Scientologist engineer uses f=ma as confidently and sure-footedly as a Buddhist engineer. An American engineer can look at a Chinese engineer’s calculations and understand them at once.

All civil engineers, regardless of their religion or nationality or ethnicity, agree that the discharge of a full-flowing pipe, Q, equals the product of fluid velocity and the pipe’s area, Va. There are no reformed hydraulics.

Here is the secret: Every bit of it has been tested, tested again, chewed-over, debated, refined, re-tested. Not any of it is … revelation, knowledge mysteriously dispensed to a select few, and in engineering there are no Holy Men.

You want Peace on Earth? Then take to heart the concluding words of Bertrand Russell’s famous lecture, Why I am Not A Christian:

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world — its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

Remember: Y’all are no damn good.

I think it’s supposed to be a lighthearted post, but there is no mistaking that Winter Solstice is not a popular topic over at SBC Voices.

The winter solstice is today at 5:23 PM EST. Shortest day of the year. Bah! Humbug!

If your church even mentions the word “solstice” that would probably put you on the SBC exclusion list. That would be terribly pagan, but many SBC churches these days like to be on the cutting edge of eccelsiastical practice with things like fog machines and zip lines. Can solstice parties be far behind?

Of course, acknowledging Christmas’ pagan, solstice-based origin points toward the systemic dishonesty baked into Christianity — that the entire Christmas narrative is a marketing lie told to compete with all the other solstice stories.

BAH!, indeed.

Donald Trump is citing this morning the support of a former Army general for his decision to remove troops from Syria.

Who, you are probably wondering, is Anthony Tata?

Tarheels know.

Tony Tata’s Army career included phony court order, at least 2 affairs

Tony Tata’s credentials as an Army leader helped him land big jobs as Wake County school superintendent and state transportation secretary, and the retired general continues to trade on his military experience as a TV news commentator and the author of action thrillers.

But after Tata decided in June 2008 to retire from the Army, Pentagon officials were still asking questions about a mysterious, phony court document he had given investigators in 2007. An Army probe found that Tata had committed adultery with “at least two” women during his career, court and military records show.

Here’s a handy rule-of-thumb: If the subject and the First Felon comprise a mutual admiration society, the subject has bad character.

Today is the winter solstice, the day when the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun reaches its southernmost intersection with the earth. Tomorrow, the duration of sunshine will be slightly longer, seed companies will begin to plan the spring catalog mailout, migratory birds will begin stacking-up calories for the long flight north.

If you hear it remarked at all, it will probably be during a weather broadcast, and possibly not even then. Who cares? After all, we’ve got chicken-to-go and humankind no longer watches the sky and the stars and anxiously awaits freshening fields and the return of game. This shortest day of sunshine was once a matter of great importance, though, and ancient societies spent huge amounts of treasure and labor and time to know precisely when the solstice had occurred.

No Southern Baptist yahoo will ever admit it, but Christmas originated as a solstice observance — just one of dozens of pagan celebrations of this most important day. It is not Jesus’ birthday; that is a tale that was made-up long after the crucifixion. Many other religions observe this day, too.

So … whatever tradition you observe, or if you observe no tradition at all, Happy Solstice! to you.