The incoming Trump administration has indicated that it will make reforms to the federal workforce. Here are a few places where the administration may focus its efforts:
Freezing Hiring: Trump’s Contract with the American Voter promised “a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health).” As a goodwill gesture, Trump should also shrink the army of almost 4,000 political appointees in his administration in order to speed agency decisionmaking.
Increasing Firing: Trump is famous for firing people on his TV show, and he will likely support reforms to increase federal firing. On the campaign trail, Trump talked about firing VA executives, and his advisors Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich talked about the importance of civil service reforms to increase firing. Reforms are needed: federal civilian workers are fired at just one-sixth the rate that private-sector workers are. Members of the federal senior executive service are fired at just one-twentieth the rate that corporate CEOs are.
Reducing Retirement Benefits. Federal wages and benefits are higher, on average, than in the private sector, but it is on benefits that federal compensation really stands out. The WaPo has discussed various GOP proposals to reduce federal benefits. My favored reform is to repeal the old-fashioned defined-benefit pension plan. That would leave federal workers with a generous defined-contribution plan, which is the standard in the private sector.
Reforming Federal Unions. One reform was mentioned in the Republican platform: “union representatives should not be allowed to engage in union-related activities while on the public’s time.” Republicans on the Hill have been investigatingthe use and abuse of such “official time” in federal agencies.
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 4: From Cradle to Grave Featuring Milton Friedman Mark J. Perry@Mark_J_Perry July 30, 2016 10:46 am | AEIdeas Happy 104th birthday, Milton Friedman Tomorrow […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 4: From Cradle to Grave Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 5: Created Equal Featuring Milton Friedman Champion of Liberty by Stephen Moore […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Socialism, RIP Tottering European economies prove again the Keynesian model is a failure By Stephen Moore – – Sunday, July 12, 2015 ANALYSIS/OPINION: A few years ago, the […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) What Would Milton Friedman Say? Immigration opponents often try to claim the famed economist as an ally. They’re mistaken. By STEPHEN MOORE Updated May 29, 2013 8:31 p.m. ET One of the fascinating sideshows of the immigration debate within the […]
__ Obama loves the death tax but listen to what Milton Friedman had to say about it!!! Milton Friedman Redistribution of Wealth and the Death Tax ___________ The Obama Administration’s Assault on the Rule of Law September 6, 2016 by Dan Mitchell What’s the worst development in economic policy of the Obama years? The faux stimulus […]
Milton Friedman – Should Higher Education Be Subsidized? Published on Aug 14, 2013 Professor Friedman leads a roundtable discussion with students. http://www.LibertyPen.com Hillary Is Wrong: Subsidies for Higher Education Are the Problem, not the Solution August 24, 2016 by Dan Mitchell “So many bad ideas, so little time.” That’s my attitude about Hillary Clinton. She proposes […]
Milton Friedman – A Conversation On Minimum Wage Published on Oct 4, 2013 A debate on whether the minimum wage hurts or helps the working class. http://www.LibertyPen.com Is Anybody Shocked that Higher Minimum Wage Mandates Are Resulting in Fewer Jobs? August 25, 2016 by Dan Mitchell While economists are famous for their disagreements (and their incompetent […]
Milton Friedman on Medical Care (Full Lecture) Another Grim Reminder that Obamacare Has Made Healthcare More Expensive August 29, 2016 by Dan Mitchell Way back in 2009, some folks on the left shared a chart showing that national expenditures on healthcare compared to life expectancy. This comparison was not favorable to the United States, which easily […]
__________ Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell is right about Greece and the fate of socialism: Two Pictures that Perfectly Capture the Rise and Fall of the Welfare State July 15, 2011 by Dan Mitchell In my speeches, especially when talking about the fiscal crisis in Europe (or the future fiscal crisis in America), I often […]
Milton Friedman on Donahue Show in 1979 Milton Friedman has the two solutions to the Black Teenage Unemployment Problem!!! The solutions would be first to lower the Minimum Wage Amount and second give students the opportunity to have vouchers so their parents can put them in the best schools when they start in the kindergarten […]
I sent a cassette tape of Adrian Rogers on Evolution to John Hospers in May of 1994 which was the 10th anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s passing and I promptly received a typed two page response from Dr. John Hospers. Dr. Hospers had both read my letter and all the inserts plus listened to the whole sermon and had some very angry responses. If you would like to hear the sermon from Adrian Rogers and read the transcript then refer to my earlier post at this link. Over the last few weeks I have posted portions of Dr. Hospers’ letter and portions of the cassette tape that he listened to back in 1994, but today I want to look at some other comments made on that cassette tape that John Hospers listened to and I will also post a few comments that Dr. Hospers made in that 2 page letter.
I have made the point in the cassette tape I sent Dr. Hospers and in the letter I sent him that without God in the picture no one can have a lasting meaning to their life and there is no purpose in life. Here is a portion of Hospers’ June 2, 1994 letter to me that refers to the song DUST IN THE WIND specially to his message that WE ARE JUST DUST IN THE WIND ultimately:
Then follows one of the countless non sequiturs in your missive: IF LIFE HAS MEANING BECAUSE OF RELATIONSHIPS, DOES LIFE HAVE ETERNAL MEANING ONLY IF WE HAVE ETERNAL RELATIONSHIPS?
First, does life have meaning only because of relationships? with whom? are animals included? books? anyway, why should life be MEANINGFUL only because of relationships? A very doubtful premise.
Second, nothing follows from this about ETERNAL RELATIONSHIPS, as any elementary student of logic knows. Why should relationships be eternal? Our lives can have profound meaning thru various activities and relationships; why do they have to be eternal? Why is it so uncomfortable for you to realize that all things pass? They are none the less real and noble because they are temporary. In another couple of thousand years. the earth will undergo another ice age; in another 6 billion years the sun will be extinguished and life on earth no longer possible. That’s just a fact; can’t you face facts? why do you have to spin fancies to feed your wishes, and make things other than they are? Can’t you take reality straight? The child demands the universe to be as he wishes it; I would think we would get over that delusion by the time we become adults.
__________
Now I want to take a look at what our purpose should be with God in the picture.
Why are we who we are? Why do we exist? These are not crazy questions. They are crucial questions, never more so than at the end of twentieth century. But where do we go to find answers? Do we begin with ourselves? Do we start with man as man? No. we must not. Starting with ourselves will never help us to understand ourselves.
Of course, we may ask the question, “Why?” Or we can word it in other ways, “What is the reason for man? What is the person of man? What is the purpose of man? What is the reason for his existence?” Surely this is the cry of twentieth century man, if he is a sensitive man at all. It recalls the reason for human existence. So when people ask me in a discussion what the Christian answer is to the reason of existence, without hesitancy 1 would say the Bible speaks of the purpose of our creation when it says to love God with all our heart and soul and mind. Yet this must be understood in the Scriptural framework. It is not to love God in the concept of a Kierkegaardian (Soren Kierkegaard 1813-55) leap. It is not to love God as though faith were something in itself. The answer, according to the Bible, is not a faith in faith, but a faith in one who, is there and, therefore, it is a living relationship with him. It is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, but definitely in the Biblical sense.
—
“Hear. O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.”
They are to teach the commands not in some external form but they are to be in their hearts. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength … this is not to be an external thing put on like a hat in my religious moments, or for a humanistic reason; but it is rather to be the set of my heart.
This is the Old Testament statement that Jesus quoted in Matthew 22: 34-40; Mark 12: 28- 31; and Luke 10: 25-28. So Jesus” restatement sweeps us back to the beginning of our relationship with God, not ours only but mankind’s, and not only mankind’s but each individual man. This is the basis of the first commandment; this is the reason for Adam’s existence; and it is the reason for your existence, or you have none, or no sufficient one. It is the call of loving, personal fellowship and communication with the God who is here. And, then, with each other – those who are my neighbours in the sense of being the same structure as myself; those who are my kind; those who are in the same circle of creation as that in which I stand, namely people. Consequently. the fulfilling of the purpose of our existence is to have fellowship, communication and love – first to God, and then to those who are our kind – all mankind.
Four points, in conclusion. First: How wonderful, then, is the death of Jesus Christ in space, time and history. What love it shows! How far removed from that soft nothingness, that amoral concept of” modem man’s word, god. How opposite. How wonderful is this love. John 3: 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It is not a universal salvation, but it is for those who. on the basis of their mannishness, accept the gift. Jesus carefully ties this to his historic death on the cross, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. How wonderful is that death on the cross!
Secondly, the command to love God is now meant to be the Christian’s first commandment. We are not saved for an antinomian (lawlessness) end. We are saved to fulfil the purpose of our creation in the first place, and not on merely some offer of our future day in perfection, but now – through the work of the Spirit in our life. Love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. When we do not love God, we are not fulfilling the purpose of our creation. As such, we have returned to the sin of Adam and Eve: to think alone, to will alone, as though we are God. When we fail to do this, the peace of God will die in our hearts; our fellowship with God will wither. Once more we have disobediently presumed upon that tremendous love, fellowship, and communion that God offers us. And it is not only wrong, it is destructive. We will have destroyed the purpose of our creation anew, the purpose for which God has made us. Christians should not expect the peace of God in their hearts while trampling upon the love of God – this is too much, it is not this way. And then we must learn the ever present wonder of the present cleansing of the Blood of the Lamb, to return again, and say we are sorry and have our fellowship restored on the basis of the finished work of the Son of God.
Thirdly, as we yield to the Holy Spirit, there will be fruit. The first fruit is the fulfilling of the command love God with all our heart, soul and mind. But as we yield to the Holy Spirit there will be a fruit to love others and each in his or her proper way. For example, the husband shall love his wife (Eph 5: 25-29). There is to be a love in the home within the legal circle of marriage. There must be a legal circle if we are to live in the universe that has meaning. But inside that legal circle there is to be love. There arc other loves. The Holy Spirit will produce a non-confused loving one’s neighbor, but each in his own place or position. In Acts 4: 32-35 we are told of the sharing that went on amongst the early Christians. This sharing is not to be mechanically administered either by the Slate or the Church or a Christian organization. We cannot make people share things like this together but the call is to share. Loving each other through the work of the Holy Spirit is not some mere emotional feeling al a certain point, but it is the practical outworking from that love into the practical things of life. Rejoice with those that rejoice, weep with those that weep. bear each other’s burdens. This cannot be separated from the bearing of the burdens of the full man – economic, psychological. Emotional, moral, social, etc. among the brotherhood of those who have become brothers because they have a common Father
Fourthly. while the Bible makes plain that threre are two humanities, (those who are saved, and those who are not saved): it equally makes plain that there is one humanity. We are two humanities ethically, morally, in relationship to God, in a fulfilled purpose. But in the structure of what man was made originally, there was a unity of man. We are of the same flesh and bones. If there is to be a fulfilling of the purpose of our creation it will also ne exhibited in this: our love will not stop at ourselves. It will flow out in the most practical of forms tp all those who arc my kind. It will most certainly express the gospel to our lost generation. Here is the context of evangelism. This is the fulfillment of the purpose of our creation at his era and this time of the moving reels of history.
1 This is an edited version .of a lecture given by Dr Schaeffer. The original lecture is available on cassette (number XI60) from: The Manor House. Greatham. Liss. Hants GU33 6HF UK; phone 01420 538436.
I remember another argument we had, concerning censorship. Only government, she said, could be said to censor. I brought up the case of the Catholic Church censoring a book or film. She insisted that this was not censorship. A cardinal or pope may threaten excommunication for reading the book, but if one doesn’t like it one can leave the church that imposes such restrictions. The church can’t take away your citizenship or put you in prison. The government, by contrast, can do these things.
The question was whether these differences were sufficient to entitle us to say that it is censorship in the government case but not in the church case. One could slice that either way, I suggested. But suppose that I grant that the government can censor a film and the church can’t (i.e. what the church does isn’t censorship). What then of the following example? A book is published exposing the practices of certain drug companies and pharmaceutical houses. The drug companies don’t like this, but of course they can’t arrest anyone for buying the book. So they pay the publisher X thousands of dollars to withdraw the book permanently from circulation. The book is then as effectively stifled as if the government had banned it. Is that not censorship?No, not by Rand’s definition. Yet it has exactly the same effect as government censorship; would it really be false, or even unreasonable, to say that the book had been censored? Ayn opposed all government censorship, but she had no objection to the voluntary agreement between the publisher and the drug company.
One other aspect of political philosophy that seemed to bother Ayn as well as me was the problem of imperfect governments. A government that uses force only in retaliation against its initiation by others is entitled to our support. But every government in the world violates this principle (that force may be used only in retaliation). Even the act of collecting taxes is the initiation of force against citizens.
Under what circumstances then is a citizen obliged to do what his government decrees? What if the law says that you can’t use physical force to restrain the person who is in the process of stealing your car (you can’t commit a crime against a person to correct a crime against property)? That is the law in the United States; but supposeyou don’t agree with that law. Must you obey it anyway? More serious still, what if the government itself is a rights-violator? Ayn would not say that the government of the U.S.S.R deserves our allegiance, or that we have a moral duty to obey it (e.g., toreport our friends who criticize the government). But the government of the United States differs only in degree from such a government. Should we obey only those laws that do not violate the retaliatory force principle (that is, only laws in which the government is exercising its proper function, the retaliatory use of force against those who have initiated it, such as murderers and muggers)? But then are we free to ignore all the others, such as laws prohibiting polluting someone else’s property (or is pollution to be called a case of the initiation of force?)? It seems as if the phrase “initiation of force” isn’t very clear, and its application to cases far from obvious.
Suppose you head the government of Spain and the Basques rebel, seeking independence. Should you suppress the revolt or not? One view would be that you should suppress it in order to restore law and order, which after all is what government is all about — you can’t be expected to live in a state of civil insurrection. On the other hand, if you think the Basques have been served a bad hand for these many years, you will think their cause a just one, and if Spain suppresses the revolt then Spain is initiating force against those who only want their freedom. (And the same with Northern Ireland, etc.) I suggested that what you will call initiation and retaliation will depend on your sympathies. You will put down the rebellion if you think the Spanish are in the right; if you think they are not, you will encourage the rebellion in the cause of freedom (and perhaps argue that they are only retaliating against the past aggressions of Spain, in keeping them part of Spain when they wanted only to be independent). Let’s accept the non-initiation of force principle, I said. How to apply it in cases is very, very sticky. Your country may have started the war, but if you are a soldier and another soldier comes at you with a bayonet, you will retaliate (preventatively?) even though your country, or its government, had initiated the conflict.
What justifies government, I wondered, in raising an army and doing other things connected with national defense? Government, she said, is the delegated agent of the individual to act in his or her self-defense. (She described all this in her paper “The Nature of Government,” but that had not yet been written at the time of ourdiscussions. Neither had any of her non-fiction works other than a very few short papers such as “Notes on the History of Free Enterprise” and “The Objectivist Ethics.”)
But this worried me. What about people who don’t want the government to act for them in such a capacity — either they don’t trust the government to do this, or for some other reason don’t desire the government to act as their agent? Ayn’s view (as I remember it) was that the government protects them whether they want the protection or not. (For example, it protects insane people although the insane people can’t give their consent.)
I was also concerned about how such delegation occurred. I don’t remember delegating my right of self-defense to government or indeed to any other person or institution. No contract was signed, nor was there, apparently, even an implicit agreement. But then there was a discussion of what constituted implicit agreement. John Locke, I said, held that continued residence implies consent, but surely this ismistaken — did continued residence in the U.S.S.R imply consent to thatgovernment? Like so many other issues, we played around with this one for awhile without coming to any definite conclusion.
Ayn and I had very different attitudes toward nature. I liked vacations in the mountains, swimming in lakes, tramping through the woods. She cared for none of these things. The city was man’s triumphant achievement; it was not nature but man’s changes on the face of nature in which she reveled. She had (I gathered) broken Frank’s heart by insisting on the move to New York City from their estate in the San Fernando Valley, where Frank had been in his element. But she had had enough of nature. She spoke movingly to me of Russian villages in which anything manmade was treasured. She spoke of having to walk, as a child, with her parents, through the Russian countryside from Leningrad to Odessa, to live with their uncle and escape starvation (her father had been classified as a capitalist by the Bolsheviks, and left to starve with his family in Leningrad). “Why should I help to pay for public beaches?” she once said. “I don’t care about the beach.”
I liked fresh fruit for dessert, and tried to avoid pastries. She, on the contrary, loved pastries; perhaps the fresh fruits reminded her too much of the wild nature of which she had had her fill in Russia. She tempted me with pastries when she and Frank took me to a restaurant, and I of course gave in and devoured as much pastry as shedid.
Other than the details just mentioned, she seldom referred to her early years in Russia. She preferred to discuss principles rather than specifics. But when I mentioned tyrannies and dictators, her voice would become hard and unrelenting. She almost sputtered in indignation at the mention of Khruschev, who was then at the helm in the USSR. I suggested that there has been some improvement there since Stalin, and that people were being invited to write letters of complaint to newspapers, for example about pollution and industrial inefficiency. “So that they can smoke these people out and then arrest them!” she spit out, from as deep a reserve of anger as I had ever heard in her.
She may not have known much about psychology — and she admitted as much — but when it came to the psychology of tyrants, she was a master sleuth of human motivations. She knew, as if from inside, how tyrants think. And her voice, it seemed to me, contained the grim but unspoken residue of years of hurt, disappointment, and anger in being victimized by tyrannical governments and their incompetent anduncaring bureaucracies. (She specifically instructed me to read Ludwig von Mises’s little book Bureaucracy to see why bureaucracies always worked badly, and I did.)
I did not have the unpleasant associations with the wide open spaces that she did. I was concerned with conservation of natural resources, including wildlife, and worried about the deterioration of the soil and the extinction of species. I was concerned too about human overpopulation of the globe and its effect on nature, the animalkingdom, and man himself. She did not seem to share my concern. Nature was merely a backdrop for man. As for overpopulation, she was all for population expansion. She mentioned the vast stretches of Nevada and Wyoming, largely empty of human beings; the United States could double its population and still not be crowded. A capitalist economy could do all this and more. I did not deny that it could, but wondered how all these added people in the wastes of Nevada would make a living, and how they would get enough water, and what room would be left for wildanimals and plants if the human race filled up all the cracks.
But I found no responsive chord in expressing these worries to her; this was a vein that could not be tapped. The most vividly-expressed concerns on my part evoked in her only a kind of incomprehension. Of course one could put this the other way round: that she could find in me no responsive chord by which to move me to the realization that these concerns were of no human importance.
I mentioned to her once that I thought the Europeans who settled America were in some respects more barbaric than the Indians they replaced: they robbed the Indians of their land, they decimated them with guns and smallpox, and robbed them of their food by wantonly killing their buffalo. What made the whites triumph, I opined, was not the superiority of their intellect or even the superiority of their political philosophy, but the superiority of their technology, specifically firearms. We had guns and the Indians didn’t; that was what defeated them, I said.
Native Americans were not among Ayn’s concerns. The greatness of the political ideal of the Founding Fathers overrode all the rest in her view. Not that she wanted Indians exterminated, of course — she wanted them to be a part of a nation operating on the principles of the American Constitution, citizens, voters, entrepreneurs if they chose to be. A proper government would have had a place for all races on equal terms. The shame that I, a descendent of some of these Europeanintruders, felt at what my ancestors had done apparently was not felt by her. And what should have been done if the Indian wanted no part of the white man’s government is a topic that she never addressed; or whether, if the Indian had claimed all of America as his own, since he had been here first, this claim should be honored. That America had a functioning Constitution limiting the power of government andpromoting individual liberty — this, in her view, was such an extreme rarity in the history of nations, and such a unique event on this planet, as to justify whatever trouble it cost. The view of the white man as an interloper on another’s domain was strange indeed to one for whom America had been a beacon of light in a dark world — and which had meant for her the saving of one’s spirit and one’s very life.
On a visit to my parental home in Iowa I stopped to visit a colleague who had just returned from Peru. I had given Ayn my phone number in Iowa, and sure enough, she phoned. I remember asking her on the phone what she would say about the situation in Peru, where a few landowners (descendents of the Spanish conquistadors) owned almost all the land, leaving the native Indians little or nothing. Ayn remarked that if they didn’t use all the land themselves, but let it lie fallow as Idescribed, they could make a lot more money renting it out to the native Indians, and in the course of time the Indians with their earnings could buy portions of it back, so as to own it once again. But that won’t work, I said — the Spanish purposely let the land lie fallow (some of the most fertile land in the nation), as a matter of pride, to show others that they don’t need to cultivate it for profit. Thus the Indians can’t even share-crop any of it, and are forced to settle further up into the mountains on land whose soil is too thin to withstand the plow. I suggested that under such conditions agovernment policy of land redistribution was called for.
Such a torrent of abusive language against compulsory redistribution then came over the wire that my parents could hear it across the room. I could hardly get a word in. I had no idea that mention of compulsory redistribution would ignite such venom. I said why I thought it was usually a bad policy, but that in the conditions described it wouldprobably be desirable, as when MacArthur did it in postwar Japan. But she would not hear of it. Dinner had been set on the table, and I motioned my parents to go on eating without me. But they didn’t, and by the time Ayn’s telephone tirade was over, half an hour later, the dinner was cold.
It was pleasant indeed to be invited to Ayn’s apartment to meet Mr and Mrs Henry Hazlitt and Mr and Mrs Ludwig von Mises. There wasn’t much shop talk, but it was wonderful to meet them and to socialize with them. (I later met with Henry Hazlitt numerous times in connection with his forthcoming book The Foundation of Morality.) I felt honored to be invited to join this distinguished company. I also enjoyed several luncheon meetings with Alan Greenspan.
I learned much more economics from my conversations with Ayn. But once I put my foot in it. She was explaining why, if some industry was to be deregulated, the businessman would have to be given fair warning, he would be unable to make the rational calculations he would have to make at the time.
I said nothing in response on that occasion. But a few weeks later, when she exclaimed that the New York taxicab medallions should be abolished at once, I said “But consider the taxi driver who has bought a medallion for $25,000 just before their abolition. He would lose that whole amount. Shouldn’t the taxi driver be given an interim period also for making his own rational calculations?”
She saw the point. “You bastard!” she exclaimed, and flounced out of the room to prepare tea. I could hear the cups clattering in the kitchen, and Frank trying to pour oil over troubled waters. When she returned to the living room she had partially regained her equanimity, but was still curt and tense.
I learned from that incident that it didn’t pay to be confrontational with her. If I saw or suspected some inconsistency, I would point it out in calm and even tones, as if it were “no big deal.” That way, she would often accept the correction and go on. To expose the inconsistency bluntly and nakedly would only infuriate her, and then there would be no more calm and even discussion that evening. I did not enjoy experiencing her fury; it was as if sunlight had suddenly been replaced by a thunderstorm. A freezing chill would then descend on the room, enough to make me shiver even in the warmth of summer. No, it wasn’t worth it. So what, if a few fallacies went unreported? Better to resume the conversation on an even keel, continue a calm exchange of views, and spare oneself the wrath of the almighty, than which nothing is more fearful.
(Adrian Rogers pictured below)
How can I know the Bible is the Word of God? by Adrian Rogers
Ritchie is about creating randomness and chance in the art.
Matthew Ritchie: “The Morning Line” | Art21 “Exclusive”
Uploaded on Sep 4, 2008
Episode #027: Matthew Ritchie discusses his upcoming exhibition “The Morning Line” (2008) in his New York studio, with animated architectural schematics of the installation. “The Morning Line” will be on view October 2, 2008 – January 11, 2009 at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain, as part of the 3rd Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Seville.
Matthew Ritchie’s artistic mission has been no less ambitious than an attempt to represent the entire universe and the structures of knowledge and belief that we use to understand and visualize it. Ritchie’s encyclopedic project (continually expanding and evolving like the universe itself) stems from his imagination, and is cataloged in a conceptual chart replete with allusions drawn from Judeo-Christian religion, occult practices, Gnostic traditions, and scientific elements and principles.
Matthew Ritchie is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Structures of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
VIDEO | Producer: Eve Moros Ortega and Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Judy Karp. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Matthew Ritchie and Aranda/Lasch. Thanks: Benjamin Aranda.
Matthew Ritchie was born in London, England, in 1964, and lives and works in New York. He received a BFA from Camberwell School of Art, London, and attended Boston University. His artistic mission has been no less ambitious than an attempt to represent the entire universe and the structures of knowledge and belief that we use to understand and visualize it. Ritchie’s encyclopedic project (continually expanding and evolving, like the universe itself) stems from his imagination, and is catalogued in a conceptual chart replete with allusions drawn from Judeo-Christian religion, occult practices, Gnostic traditions, and scientific elements and principles. Ritchie’s paintings, installations, and narrative threads delineate the universe’s formation as well as the attempts and limits of human consciousness to comprehend its vastness. Ritchie’s work deals explicitly with the idea of information being “on the surface,” and information is also the subject of his work. Although often described as a painter, Ritchie creates works on paper, prints, light-box drawings, floor-to-wall installations, freestanding sculpture, websites, and short stories, which tie his sprawling works together into a narrative structure. Drawing is central to his work. He scans his drawings into the computer so that images can be enlarged, taken apart, made smaller or three-dimensional, reshaped, transformed into digital games, or given to someone else to execute. One ongoing work that Ritchie calls “an endless drawing” contains everything he has drawn before. Ritchie’s work has been shown in one-person exhibitions at Dallas Museum of Art; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; among others. His work was also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial (1997), Sydney Biennale (2002), and Bienal de São Paulo (2004).
Matthew Ritchie was born in the suburbs of London, England in 1964. Ritchie received his BFA from London’s Camberwell School of Art, in the years of 1983-86. He also spent a year enrolled at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1982. Ritchie has established himself in the contemporary fine arts scene since the early 90s, and had his first group exhibition in 1990 at the Judy Nielsen Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. Ritchie’s first solo show, “Working Model,” was shown in New York’s Basilico Fine Arts from February 18-March 18 in 1995. This series of paintings, wall drawings, and sculptures introduced Ritchie into the contemporary genre as an artist who “brought together historically and ideologically different belief systems in an attempt to show their common thread.” .”.[2] Regardless of the medium or material Ritchie uses, all of his work collaborates into a complex meta-narrative structure.
Art Process
Ritchie is often seen foremost as a painter, but his work lies mainly in drawing. Ritchie scans his drawings into the computer so he can manipulate them by blowing them up, deconstructing them, and/or transforming them into three-dimensional pieces. He digitally makes his images smaller and larger in order to further develop his ideas beyond paper. In an interview with Art: 21, Ritchie explains his drawing process here: “I start with a collection of ideas…and I draw out all these different motifs, and then I lay them on top of each other. So I have piles of semi-transparent drawings all layered on top of each other in my studio and they form a kind of tunnel of information. Out of that, you can pull this form that turns into the sculpture or the painting. It’s literally like pulling the narrative out of overlaying all of the structures. That’s how I end up with this structure. It’s derived from a series of drawings that I scan into the computer and refine through various processes…and send to the sheet-metal shop down the road where it’s cut out of metal and assembled into larger structures which are too big for my studio.” This method allows Ritchie to reshape his images into sculptures, floor-to-wall installations, interactive web sites, and short stories.
Art-Making Philosophy
Ritchie draws from numerous meta-narratives that explore religion, philosophy, and science in order to create his complicated, yet freshly simple works. “Influenced by everything from the mythic escapades of comic-book superheroes and pagan gods to the meta-narratives of philosophy, religion, and science, Ritchie has developed a mythical narrative or cosmology of his own, and his art is communicated via a variety of art spaces and installations, including galleries throughout the world and the World Wide Web.”[3] In an interview with Art: 21, Ritchie states that he reads Nature Magazine, which is a weekly journal that publishes technical articles about contemporary scientific findings. Ritchie’s pieces have a scientific nature to them, but do not solely represent scientific agenda. Instead, his work investigates the role of science within society, creating a narrative between order and chaos. In Ritchie’s Art: 21 interviews, he explains his interest in science as “a way of having a conversation that’s based on an idea of looking at things than I am in the rhetoric around science.” In other words, Ritchie is not trying to depict scientific data accurately. He uses his research in order to find topics that are important to him, to which he then illustrates in his work. Ritchie’s work tends to include various references that expand into a comprehensive explanation historical experience or knowledge. His meta-narratives combine all of the philosophies that interest him, and place them into a structure of information that can be bombarding, but seem to be able to go on endlessly. His work deals with the theme of information. Ritchie explains this theme with a few rhetorical questions and statements: “…for me the theme of my new structure was information, how do you deal with it? As a person is it possible for you to grasp everything and see everything? You’re presented with everything and all through your life you’re trying to filter out, you’re really just trying to control that flow.” These questions posed by Ritchie rightfully describe his thought process while creating his art, allowing the viewer to better understand his pieces beyond their aesthetic characteristics.
Interactive Work
Aside from the artist’s gallery work, Ritchie’s investigation of New Media has further developed his universal narrative into the interactive realm. In 2001, Ritchie was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to be a part of e.space, which was created to examine art forms that can only exist on the World Wide Web. Ritchie, along with six other artists: Erik Adigard, Lynn Hershman, Yael Kanarek, Mark Napier, Thomson & Craighead, and Julia Scher, created stories that could only be told through the computer screen. Before his collaboration with the SFMOMA, Ritchie developed his first interactive piece in 1996 with the help of äda ‘web, a research and development platform that services artists in order to create online interactive projects. In his piece titled, The Hard Way, Ritchie combines several of his previous projects into an interactive site that allow the viewer to navigate through the website, experiencing the narrative by following Ritchie’s imagined avatars that represent infamous personality traits that can be found throughout our own history. Through his text, drawings, and computer-animated realms, The Hard Way serves as a prequel to his piece with the SFMOMA, titled, The New Place. The New Place was created in 2001, and is entwined with Ritchie’s larger project, Proposition Player. The New Place includes mediums outside the web, using sculpture, painting, computer games, and other forms that are not yet defined in this “very large cross-media plan,” serving as a trailer of sorts, previewing things to come.[4] The Proposition Player was created in 2003 for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. This piece explores Ritchie’s thoughts on gambling and quantum mechanics, and the illusions that come along with the elements of chance and risk. Ritchie explains the motive behind this piece here in his 2005 interview with Art: 21: “It’s about the idea that in the moment between placing your bet and the result of the bet there is a kind of infinite freedom because all the possibilities are there. “You may already be a winner!” It’s fantastic—you’re like a god! Everything opens up.” This exhibition asked the audience to take part, and “play” Ritchie’s invented game. Visitors were given a playing card by the exhibition guard, in which they would use to take part within Ritchie’s proposition game. Outside of the exhibition’s context, these cards could function as a usable deck of cards, since hey attribute all of the traditional suits, even including the joker. But in Ritchie’s context, each card symbolized one of the 49 characteristics that Ritchie used to create a story that described the evolution of the entire universe.
Historical Context
The compositions of Ritchie’s works reference the Expressionist artists at the start of the 20th-century, but differ from his predecessors in their tightness and linearity. His abstracted narrative work fits into the same category of the work of contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney and Bonnie Collura. Like these two artists, Ritchie draws upon philosophical, religious, and scientific narratives to create a complex universe where these theories can be circulated amongst one another. In these artists’ works, webs of data are formed in artistic compositions that reference the questions that society continues to base their meaning of existence on. Ritchie’s work personifies these questions into art.
Connection with New Media
Ritchie’s interactive work is linked to the forerunners of New Media, which began to take shape as an art form in the late 1980s. New Media manipulates the medium of digital art, and uses the technology itself as the medium. Through the writings of individuals such as Lev Manovich, Marshall McLuhan, and Roy Ascott, New Media has been defined, and allotted for artists such as Ritchie to explore and create within the realm of interactive art. The interaction between online databases and meta-narrative structures are discussed in Christiane Paul’s 2004 essay, The Database as System and Cultural Form: Anatomies of Cultural Narratives. This essay sheds further light on meta-narrative structure within the premise of New Media. Paul describes this connection here: “databases do lend themselves to a categorization of information and narratives that can then be filtered to create meta-narratives about the construction and cultural specifics of the original material.”.[5] Similar to past New Media artists, Ritchie’s interactive works originates from his invented meta-narratives, and are then coded into the online database.
________ H. J. Blackham H. J. Blackham, (31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009), was a leading and widely respected British humanist for most of his life. As a young man he worked in farming and as a teacher. He found his niche as a leader in the Ethical Union, which he steadfastly […]
H.J.Blackham pictured below: I had to pleasure of corresponding with Paul Kurtz in the 1990’s and he like H. J. Blackham firmly believed that religion was needed to have a basis for morals. At H. J. Blackham’s funeral in 2009 these words were read from Paul Kurtz: Paul Kurtz Founder and Chair, Prometheus Books and the […]
H. J. Blackham pictured below: On May 15, 1994 on the 10th anniversary of the passing of Francis Schaeffer I sent a letter to H.J. Blackham and here is a portion of that letter below: I have enclosed a cassette tape by Adrian Rogers and it includes a story about Charles Darwin‘s journey from […]
I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age of 92. Who were the artists who influenced […]
__ I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age of 92. Who were the […]
Andy, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Koshalek and unidentified guest, 1980s I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age […]
How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December […]
Today I am bringing this series on William Provine to an end. Will Provine’s work was cited by Francis Schaeffer in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? I noted: I was sad to learn of Dr. Provine’s death. William Ball “Will” Provine (February 19, 1942 – September 1, 2015) He grew up an […]
___ Setting the record straight was Will Provine’s widow Gail when she stated, “[Will] did not believe in an ULTIMATE meaning in life (i.e. God’s plan), but he did believe in proximate meaning (i.e. relationships with people — friendship and especially LOVE🙂 ). So one’s existence is ultimately senseless and useless, but certainly not to those […]
I was sad when I learned of Will Provine’s death. He was a very engaging speaker on the subject of Darwinism and I think he correctly realized what the full ramifications are when accepting evolution. This is the fourth post I have done on Dr. Provine and the previous ones are these links, 1st, 2nd […]
Woody Allen – Concerto Parigi 1996 – Wild Man Blues
Woody Allen & The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band
I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.
REMO CASILLI REUTERS Director Woody Allen looks on during the shooting of his movie “The Bop Decameron” in downtown Rome … Continued
by Michelle Boorstein
REMO CASILLI
REUTERS
Director Woody Allen looks on during the shooting of his movie “The Bop Decameron” in downtown Rome July 25, 2011.
Earlier this year I was sitting at a cafeteria lunch table with evangelical icon Chuck Colson and some of his close faith advisors when the conversation took a turn I hadn’t predicted: Colson started talking about Woody Allen.
In detail.
It turned out Colson and some others at the table, who help him craft theological writings and classes, are hard-core fans of Allen, and were easily able to recite bits of dialogue. A debate launched about the religious subtexts of various Allen films and what were the moviemaker’s own theological conclusions.
It was only when my regular chats with Southern Baptist leader Richard Land began turning to Allen that I got curious — what’s the deal with evangelicals and Woody Allen?
It turned out that I was clueless to a fascination that now makes perfect sense, since Allen marries two things core to modern-day evangelicals: popular culture and religion. Think “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and the symbolism of the rabbi going blind; think “Match Point” and questions raised about the apparent randomness of life.
Many of Allen’s films wrestle in a complex way with core moral themes, such as the nature of forgiveness, what to do with sin, whether life can have any meaning without God. And he does this as an agnostic.
Land is also a huge Allen fan and can rattle off an amazing amout of dialogue. You can’t get the guy off the phone once he starts talking Woody.
This evangelical-Allen thing reappeared the other day when some friends on Facebook started zapping around an amazing piece of vintage talk-show footage — Allen interviewing evangelical leader Billy Graham (it’s in two parts).
I haven’t been able to determine what show Allen was hosting (he declined to be interviewed), but it looks to be the 1960s, with a wise-guy, 30-something Allen engaging the handsome, older preacher about sex, drugs and life after death.
Allen: “If you come to one of my movies or something, I’ll go to one of your revival meetings.”
Graham: “Well now that is a deal.”
Allen: “You could probably convert me because I’m such a pushover. I have no convictions in any direction and if you make it appealing and promise me some sort of wonderful afterlife with a white robe and wings I would go for it.”
Graham: “I can’t promise you a white robe and wings, but I can promise you a very interesting, thrilling life.”
Allen: “One wing, maybe?”
The off-camera audience is cracking up the entire time, and both men are smiling and relaxed through the 10-minute interview even as they clearly aren’t seriously entertaining the other’s views. It’s entertainment, but it’s also sweet, particularly on Graham’s part, which results in a piece of footage that manages to be both deep and silly (this is not easy to pull off).
The primary feeling I had watching the video was one of nostalgia for a time when the subject of religion wasn’t so firmly planted at the center of a culture war, when people of totally different convictions about matters of life and death and morality could agree to disagree. It seemed almost romantic.
It seems impossible to imagine. Can anyone think of a comparable exchange today? I considered The Daily Show but even that seems too slick.
In the interview Allen is dorky and giggly – he almost seems like a teenager embarassed to ask about dating.
Could he have sex before marriage, he asks Graham, to ensure that his betrothed isn’t “an absolute yo-yo?” Graham turns fatherly, but not dogmatic; “that won’t happen to you,” he assures Allen.
Graham’s framing of the role of faith is decidedly secular, perhaps aimed at Allen’s audience. The purpose of the religious doctrine and rules is because God wants you to have “the best of life .. happiness and fulfillment.” The ban on sex outside a committed marriage, he says, is to protect your psychological self, to keep your body free from disease.
I asked Land to look at the videos and he commented that the wise-cracking Woody of the 1960s seemed to have “less swagger in his agnosticism” than the Woody who created the characters of “Crimes and Misdemeanors” in the 1980s, with their agonizing over mortality and purpose.
“I find Woody over the years, and of course this is true of people as they get older, there is more resignation,” he said. “There is a light touch and a confidence in his earlier movies — I’m not dead, I won’t die for a long time so I have a long time to figure this all out. Some of his more recent movies, you can see he’s aware of his own mortality.”
Land is sure he sees an Allen less confident.
“He asks all the right questions, he just doesn’t have the right answers,” Land said with a chuckle.
In trying to find the source of the clip I stumbled on a 2010 interview with Allen in which he seems to reference the Graham chat and shows that he hasn’t changed his mind a bit. He still has no faith in any higher power and says Graham is “delusional.”
Speaking of characters in his new movie, Allen says “sooner or later, reality sets in in a crushing way. As it does and will with everybody, including Billy Graham. But it’s nice if you can delude yourself for as long as possible.”
It’s hard for me to imagine a talk being the two men being as light-hearted today.
More on: 2011, Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, Culture War, Evangelical Leader, Faith, Religion, Religious Doctrine, Richard Land, Woody Allen
Woody Allen about meaning and truth of life on Earth
WOODY ALLEN TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN CELLO MARCHING BAND SCENE
Bananas
1971
Bananas (1971) – Trailer
2
Play it Again, Sam
1972
Play It Again, Sam trailer
1
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I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of […]
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I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of […]
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Glyn Johns, the album’s recording engineer and longtime collaborator of the band, said that Beggars Banquet signaled “the Rolling Stones’ coming of age … I think that the material was far better than anything they’d ever done before. The whole mood of the record was far stronger to me musically.”[5] Producer Jimmy Miller described guitarist Keith Richards as “a real workhorse” while recording the album, mostly due to the infrequent presence of Brian Jones. When he did show up at the sessions, Jones behaved erratically due to his drug use and emotional problems.[5] Miller said that Jones would “show up occasionally when he was in the mood to play, and he could never really be relied on:
When he would show up at a session—let’s say he had just bought a sitar that day, he’d feel like playing it, so he’d look in his calendar to see if the Stones were in. Now he may have missed the previous four sessions. We’d be doing let’s say, a blues thing. He’d walk in with a sitar, which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing, and want to play it. I used to try to accommodate him. I would isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him onto any track that we really needed. And the others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, ‘Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here’.[5]
Jones played sitar[6] and tanpura on “Street Fighting Man”,[7]slide guitar on “No Expectations”,[8][9][10]harmonica on “Parachute Woman”, “Dear Doctor” and “Prodigal Son”,[11] and Mellotron on “Jig-Saw Puzzle” and “Stray Cat Blues”.[12] Jones is sometimes mistakenly credited for playing the slide guitar on “Jig-Saw Puzzle”; both guitars are played by Keith Richards.[13][14] The basic track of “Street Fighting Man” was recorded on an early Philips cassette deck at London’s Olympic Sound Studios, where Richards played a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, and Charlie Watts played on an antique, portable practice drum kit.[15] Richards and Mick Jaggerwere mistakenly credited as writers on “Prodigal Son”, a cover of Robert Wilkins‘s Biblical blues song of the same name.[5] According to Keith Richards the name Beggars Banquet “comes from a cat called Christopher Gibbs“.[16]
On 7 June 1968, a photoshoot for the album, with photographer Michael Joseph, was held at Sarum Chase, a mansion in Hampstead, London.[17] Previously unseen images from the shoot were exhibited at the Blink Gallery in London in November and December 2008.[18] The album’s original cover art, depicting a bathroom wall covered with graffiti, was rejected by the band’s record company, and their unsuccessful dispute delayed the album’s release for months.[5]
Beggars Banquet received a highly favourable response from music critics,[22][23] who considered it a return to form for the Stones.[24][25] Author Stephen Davis writes of its impact: “[The album was] a sharp reflection of the convulsive psychic currents coursing through the Western world. Nothing else captured the youthful spirit of Europe in 1968 like Beggar’s Banquet.”[23] The album was also a commercial success, reaching number 3 in the UK and number 5 in the US (on the way to eventual platinum status).[citation needed]
According to music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, the “political correctness” of “Street Fighting Man”, particularly the ambivalent lyrics “What can a poor boy do/’Cept sing in a rock and roll band”, sparked intense debate in the underground media.[5] In the description of author and critic Ian MacDonald, French director Jean-Luc Godard‘s filming of the sessions for “Sympathy for the Devil” contributed to the band’s image as “Left Bank heroes of the European Maoist underground”, with the song’s “Luciferian iconoclasm” interpreted as a political message.[26]
Time magazine described the Stones as “England’s most subversive roisterers since Fagin’s gang in Oliver Twist” and added: “In keeping with a widespread mood in the pop world, Beggars Banquet turns back to the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country music.”[27]Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone considered that the band’s regeneration marked the return of rock’n’roll, while the Chicago Sun-Times declared: “The Stones have unleashed their rawest, ludest, most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it’s beautiful.”[28]
Less impressed, the writer of Melody Maker‘s initial review dismissed Beggars Banquet as “mediocre” and said that, since “The Stones are Mick Jagger”, it was only the singer’s “remarkable recording presence that makes this LP”.[29] Geoffrey Cannon of The Guardian found that the album “demonstrates [the group’s] primal power at its greatest strength” and wrote admiringly of Jagger’s ability to fully engage the listener on “Sympathy for the Devil”, saying: “We feel horror because, at full volume, he makes us ride his carrier wave with him, experience his sensations, and awaken us to ours.”[30] In his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine’s annual critics poll, Robert Christgau ranked it as the third best album of the year, and “Salt of the Earth” the best pop song of the year.[31]
In a retrospective review for eMusic, Ben Fong-Torres called Beggars Banquet “an album flush with masterful and growling instant classics”, and said that it “responds more to the chaos of ’68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists … the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority.”[33]Colin Larkin, in his Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2006), viewed the album as “a return to strength” which included “the socio-political ‘Street Fighting Man’ and the brilliantly macabre ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in which Jagger’s seductive vocal was backed by hypnotic Afro-rhythms and dervish yelps”.[34] Writing for MusicHound in 1999, Greg Kot opined that the same two songs were the “weakest cuts”, adding: “Otherwise, the disc is a tour de force of acoustic-tinged savagery and slumming sexuality, particularly the gleefully flippant ‘Stray Cat Blues.'”[37] Larry Katz from the Boston Herald called Beggars Banquet “both a return to basics and leap forward”.[32]
In his 1997 review for Rolling Stone, DeCurtis said the album was “filled with distinctive and original touches”, and remarked on its legacy: “For the album, the Stones had gone to great lengths to toughen their sound and banish the haze of psychedelia, and in doing so, they launched a five-year period in which they would produce their very greatest records.”[5] Author Martin C. Strong similarly considers Beggars Banquet to be the first album in the band’s “staggering burst of creativity” over 1968–72 that ultimately comprised four of the best rock albums of all time.[36] Writing in 2007, Daryl Easlea of BBC Music said that although in places it fails to maintain the quality of its opening song, Beggars Banquet was the album where the Rolling Stones gained their enduring status as “the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World”.[40]
In August 2002, ABKCO Records reissued Beggars Banquet as a newly remastered LP and SACD/CD hybrid disk.[43] This release corrected an important flaw in the original album by restoring each song to its proper, slightly faster speed. Due to an error in the mastering, Beggars Banquet was heard for over thirty years at a slower speed than it was recorded. This had the effect of altering not only the tempo of each song, but the song’s key as well. These differences were subtle but important, and the remastered version is about 30 seconds shorter than the original release.
Also in 2002 the Russian label CD-Maximum unofficially released the limited edition Beggars Banquet + 7 Bonus,[44] which was also bootleged on a German counterfeit-DECCA label as Beggars Banquet (the Mono Beggars).[45]
It was released once again in 2010 by Universal Music Enterprises in a Japanese only SHM-SACD version;[46] and on 24 November 2010 ABKCO Records released a SHM-CD version.[47]
On 28 May 2013 ABKCO Records reissued the LP on vinyl.[48]
Brian Jones – slide guitar on “No Expectations”; harmonica on “Parachute Woman”, “Dear Doctor” and “Prodigal Son”; Mellotron on “Jigsaw Puzzle” and “Stray Cat Blues”; sitar and tamboura on “Street Fighting Man”; backing vocals on “Sympathy for the Devil”
Bill Wyman – bass guitar; backing vocals and maracas on “Sympathy for the Devil”
Jump up^Norman, Philip (2001). The Stones. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. pp. 322–23. ISBN0-283-07277-6.
Jump up^Bockris, Victor (1992). Keith Richards: The Unauthorised Biography. London: Hutchinson. p. 116. ISBN0-09-174397-4.
Jump up^Davis, Stephen (2001). Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. New York, NY: Broadway Books. pp. 278–79, 536. ISBN0-7679-0312-9.
^ Jump up to:abDavis, Stephen (2001). Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. New York, NY: Broadway Books. p. 275. ISBN0-7679-0312-9.
Jump up^MacDonald, Ian (November 2002). “The Rolling Stones: Play With Fire”. Uncut. Available at Rock’s Backpages (subscription required).
Jump up^Wyman, Bill (2002). Rolling with the Stones. London: Dorling Kindersley. p. 315. ISBN0-7513-4646-2.
Jump up^Wyman, Bill (2002). Rolling with the Stones. London: Dorling Kindersley. pp. 314–15. ISBN0-7513-4646-2.
Jump up^Uncredited writer (30 November 1968). “The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet (Decca)”. Melody Maker. Available at Rock’s Backpages (subscription required).
Jump up^Cannon, Geoffrey (10 December 1968). “The Rolling Stones: Beggars’ Banquet (Decca SKL 4955)”. The Guardian. Available at Rock’s Backpages (subscription required).
^ Jump up to:abGraff, Gary; Durchholz, Daniel (eds) (1999). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Farmington Hills, MI: Visible Ink Press. p. 950. ISBN1-57859-061-2.
Jump up^“Review: Beggars Banquet”. NME. London: 46. 8 July 1995.
__________ __ The Rolling Stones ~ Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (1968) The Dirty Mac Band (John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards & Mitch Mitchell) | FeelNumb.com John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix ____
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Jimi Hendrix & Eric Clapton Jimi Hendrix & Mick Jagger Jimi Hendrix & Keith Richards Jimi Hendrix & Brian Jones Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin Jimi Hendrix with Cream & Pink Floyd Even “Legends” want to meet a “Legend” Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he […]
Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were good friends!! Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Uploaded on Feb 5, 2012 Hey Joe JIMI HENDRIX live images in 1969, in London! BBC! dedicated to cream”Sunshine of Your Love”. High quality and superior sound. ¡¡¡¡¡full screen!!!!! Everyone wanted to meet or take a picture with […]
RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Michael Mann, UCLA Anthropologist, “My mother was a very loving, warm person who I remember her getting extremely unhappy when I told her at the age of 13 I was an atheist but she was the core of the family”
The following was emailed to George F. Will on 6-27-16: Scott Ableman / Wikimedia Dear Mr. Will, I really enjoyed your You Tube cllip “George Will Keynotes 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner:” If you google ARKANSAS MILTON FRIEDMAN you will be brought to my website http://www.thedailyhatch.org since I have written so many posts on my economic hero […]
Christian Rock Pioneer Larry Norman’s Songs Part 14 I posted a lot in the past about my favorite Christian musicians such as Keith Green (I enjoyed reading Green’s monthly publications too), and 2nd Chapter of Acts and others. Today I wanted to talk about one of Larry Norman’s songs. David Rogers introduced me to Larry […]
On the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Album there were many individuals that were historical figures that changed history. Many of these individuals had died before the release June 1, 1967 of the album. Aldous Huxley was a major figure in the drug culture and he had died on November 22, 1963. Aleister […]
Republican senator says measure to begin process of repealing Affordable Care Act adds too much to federal budget deficit
ENLARGE
Sen. Rand Paul, shown at an event on Oct. 27, says the Republicans’ measure to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act would add $9.7 trillion in debt over 10 years to the federal budget.PHOTO: TIMOTHY D. EASLEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON—Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said Wednesday that he would oppose the budget measure Republicans are counting on to begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act, leaving the effort in danger of derailing if any other GOP senators defect.
The Senate on Wednesday took its first procedural vote on the budget measure, a vehicle that Republicans can use to repeal the 2010 health-care law with a simple majority vote. Republicans now hold only 52 seats in the Senate, where most legislation needs 60 votes to pass.
Mr. Paul said Wednesday he would vote against the budget measure because it adds too much to the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2017.
“I’m a no,” he said in a brief interview. “It adds $9.7 trillion in debt over 10 years.”
Other Senate Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, have voiced concerns about repealing the health-care law before the GOP has settled on a plan to replace it. However, all three voted to advance the budget in an early procedural vote Wednesday, which passed 51-48, allowing the Senate to consider the measure.
Mr. Paul was the only Republican to join the entire Democratic caucus in voting not to move forward with the budget blueprint. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) didn’t vote.
Other senators could still raise objections ahead of the final vote—on either the plan to repeal the health-care law or on the budget itself.
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Capital Journal is WSJ.com’s home for Trump transition news.
Aware of the razor-thin margins, GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida wrote Tuesday in a joint letter to GOP Senate leaders that while they understood the budget was “primarily a mechanism to advance [the health law’s] repeal,” the Senate should still abstain from any budget devices that they oppose.
“Our votes in favor of the ‘Obamacare Repeal Resolution’ do not indicate in any way our support for the revenue, spending, and deficit numbers therein, nor for the use of those numbers as the basis for future federal budgets,” the three senators wrote, using the GOP nickname for the budget blueprint.
The next fiscal year’s budget, expected to pass this spring and help Republicans overhaul the tax code, must balance the federal budget in 10 years, they wrote.
Budget blueprints are nonbinding documents used by political parties to signal how they think federal dollars should be spent. The budget document introduced in the Senate Tuesday also starts the process of repealing the health-care law.
The Senate’s budget resolution directs four relevant committees, two in the Senate and two in the House, to write legislation by Jan. 27 that reconciles spending and tax policy with the budget blueprint for the coming fiscal year. Embedded in the committees’ legislation will be provisions that repeal much of the health law.
Democrats, who have paid a heavy political price for the health law’s unpopularity, said Republicans will now bear responsibility for any attempts to gut and replace it.
“Now, they’re gonna own it, and all the problems in the health-care system are going to be on their backs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Wednesday.
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 4: From Cradle to Grave Featuring Milton Friedman Mark J. Perry@Mark_J_Perry July 30, 2016 10:46 am | AEIdeas Happy 104th birthday, Milton Friedman Tomorrow […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 4: From Cradle to Grave Featuring Milton Friedman Free to Choose Part 5: Created Equal Featuring Milton Friedman Champion of Liberty by Stephen Moore […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) Free to Choose Part 2: The Tyranny of Control (Featuring Milton Friedman Socialism, RIP Tottering European economies prove again the Keynesian model is a failure By Stephen Moore – – Sunday, July 12, 2015 ANALYSIS/OPINION: A few years ago, the […]
Free to Choose: Part 1 of 10 The Power of the Market (Featuring Milton Friedman) What Would Milton Friedman Say? Immigration opponents often try to claim the famed economist as an ally. They’re mistaken. By STEPHEN MOORE Updated May 29, 2013 8:31 p.m. ET One of the fascinating sideshows of the immigration debate within the […]
__ Obama loves the death tax but listen to what Milton Friedman had to say about it!!! Milton Friedman Redistribution of Wealth and the Death Tax ___________ The Obama Administration’s Assault on the Rule of Law September 6, 2016 by Dan Mitchell What’s the worst development in economic policy of the Obama years? The faux stimulus […]
Milton Friedman – Should Higher Education Be Subsidized? Published on Aug 14, 2013 Professor Friedman leads a roundtable discussion with students. http://www.LibertyPen.com Hillary Is Wrong: Subsidies for Higher Education Are the Problem, not the Solution August 24, 2016 by Dan Mitchell “So many bad ideas, so little time.” That’s my attitude about Hillary Clinton. She proposes […]
Milton Friedman – A Conversation On Minimum Wage Published on Oct 4, 2013 A debate on whether the minimum wage hurts or helps the working class. http://www.LibertyPen.com Is Anybody Shocked that Higher Minimum Wage Mandates Are Resulting in Fewer Jobs? August 25, 2016 by Dan Mitchell While economists are famous for their disagreements (and their incompetent […]
Milton Friedman on Medical Care (Full Lecture) Another Grim Reminder that Obamacare Has Made Healthcare More Expensive August 29, 2016 by Dan Mitchell Way back in 2009, some folks on the left shared a chart showing that national expenditures on healthcare compared to life expectancy. This comparison was not favorable to the United States, which easily […]
__________ Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell is right about Greece and the fate of socialism: Two Pictures that Perfectly Capture the Rise and Fall of the Welfare State July 15, 2011 by Dan Mitchell In my speeches, especially when talking about the fiscal crisis in Europe (or the future fiscal crisis in America), I often […]
Milton Friedman on Donahue Show in 1979 Milton Friedman has the two solutions to the Black Teenage Unemployment Problem!!! The solutions would be first to lower the Minimum Wage Amount and second give students the opportunity to have vouchers so their parents can put them in the best schools when they start in the kindergarten […]
I sent a cassette tape of Adrian Rogers on Evolution to John Hospers in May of 1994 which was the 10th anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s passing and I promptly received a typed two page response from Dr. John Hospers. Dr. Hospers had both read my letter and all the inserts plus listened to the whole sermon and had some very angry responses. If you would like to hear the sermon from Adrian Rogers and read the transcript then refer to my earlier post at this link. Over the last few weeks I have posted portions of Dr. Hospers’ letter and portions of the cassette tape that he listened to back in 1994, but today I want to look at some other comments made on that cassette tape that John Hospers listened to and I will also post a few comments that Dr. Hospers made in that 2 page letter.
At the same time, she was an inspiration to me. It was inspiring to talk with someone to whom ideas so vitally mattered. By presenting intellectual challenges she set my intellectual fires crackling in a new way. And she was largely responsible for renewing my spirits. I never got bored with teaching — I always enjoyed contact with students — but I had become discouraged about its results. A class ends, I seldom hear from the students again, and a new crop comes in with all the same errors and unquestioned prejudices and assumptions as the one before. I suppose this was to be expected, but I was often discouraged by the lack of improvement. Doubtless I could have noticed some if I had been able to follow the members of the class after they had had my courses. And as for changing the world from its ignorance and lethargy, there seemed little hope of this occurring; all the combined efforts of high school and college teachers seemed to do little to prevent wars or create happiness or even ease the human situation very much.
So I was surprised when Ayn said, “Yours is the most important profession in the world.”
I responded, “Important, but not very influential.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “You deal in ideas, and ideas rule the world.” (I seldom quote Ayn directly, and do so only when I clearly remember exactly what she said.)
I objected rather lamely that I didn’t see any ideas molding the world, in fact that the world seemed quite indifferent to ideas. But she persisted that it was indeed ideas that ruled the world — and that if good ideas did not come to the fore, bad ones would rule instead. Nature abhors a vacuum, and it is when good ideas are not taught that a Hitler or a Lenin can come in, filling the vacuum, trying to justify the use of force (for example) against entire classes of victims, when even a modest amount of teaching about human rights would have shifted the battle of ideas and perhaps carried the day. She reiterated that it was ideas — specifically the ideas underlying the American Revolution — that had created the greatness of America. Prosperity had been a consequence of the adoption of these ideas; it occurred when physical labor was animated by an economic theory by which the work could be productive.
We came back to the subject many times, and I began to notice a new energy in my teaching, a new bounce in my attitude, as if the intellectual life was not fruitless after all, and as if I might even make a bit of real difference in the world. Not much in the whole scheme of things, to be sure; but later, when ex-students would say to me, “My whole life has been changed by your course,” or “Something you said at the end of your lecture one day years ago changed me forever,” the words not only buoyed me up, but made me aware of a fearsome responsibility. I don’t know whether I ever communicated to Ayn this gradual change in my professional attitude. In a way, she had saved my life. I wondered, much later, whether she ever knew this.
She did not take kindly to any recommended change in her writing, not even a single word. I was strongly in sympathy with this. Even if a word was appropriate in what it meant, it might not fit into the rhythm of the sentence or the idiom of the passage. But there is one occasion on which she gave way to me nonetheless. She showed me the typescript of her forthcoming introduction to Victor Hugo’s novel 1793. I then proceeded to read certain passages of it aloud to her. By this means, I convinced her that some passages were unidiomatic, and that certain words hindered the ambience rather than helping it. She went along with all my recommended changes. “Boy, do you have a feeling for words,” she said glowingly as she made the changes.
She was convinced that on my forthcoming trip to California I should call on her Hollywood producer, Hal Wallis. “He’s a movie producer,” I said; “I would have nothing to say to him. And he’d be about as interested in me as in a hole in the ground.”
Not so, she said. She said I had no idea what an intellectual inferiority complex these people have. “To have a philosopher come to them would be an honor to them,” she insisted.
But I had no idea what I would say if I did go; I would probably stand there with a mouthful of teeth. (And I never did follow her suggestion.) “Well, maybe I could write the script for the movie Atlas Shrugged,” I said, more than half in jest.
But at once she put her foot down, though in good humor. “Nathaniel Branden is going to write the script for Atlas Shrugged,” she said decisively, and that was that.
She reserved her best-chosen curse words for her philosophical arch-enemy, Immanuel Kant. She considered him the ultimate altruist and collectivist. Though not a Kantian, I did not share her extreme view of him. I invited her to read his book on philosophy of law, with its defense of individual rights, and certain sections of hisMetaphysics of Morals in which he discussed duties to oneself. But it was all in vain. She insisted that these were only incidental details, but that the main thrust of Kant’s philosophy was profoundly evil. I did not consider him more altruistic than Christianity, and in some ways less so.
I did get her to acknowledge agreement, I think, with Kant’s Second Categorical Imperative, “Treat every person as an end, not as a means,” even though I tended to believe that the implications of this precept for ethical egoism might be ominous. And I told her that I thought she was also Kantian in her insistence on acting on principle(even though she and he didn’t share the same principles). I even thought that she shared some of his emphasis on universalizability: that if something is wrong for you to do it is also wrong for others (in similar circumstances), and that before acting one should consider the rule implied in one’s actions as it if were to become a universalrule of human conduct. She would praise impartiality of judgment as strongly as any Kantian. Sometimes, when we were discussing another view, such as existentialism, I would twit her, saying “You’re too Kantian to accept that, Ayn,” and she would smile and sometimes incline her head a bit, as if to admit the point before going on with the discussion.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the most fundamental distinction in practical ethics was between individualism and collectivism. Consider the American Civil War, I said. Assuming that it played a decisive role in eliminating slavery, wasn’t the result worth the loss of half a million lives? Yet it may well not have been worth it to the men who were drafted into the army to fight that war. The fact that it “helped the group” (the collective) may not have been much comfort to them.
Or consider the American Revolutionary War. It produced an enormous benefit, the founding of a free America, and was the most nearly bloodless of all major revolutions. Yet was it “worth it” to those who shed their blood fighting in the cause of independence? If you look at the group as a whole, the group was better off because those wars were fought; we’re glad that somebody did it. But if you look at theindividuals, it was a case of some individuals sacrificing their lives so that others could live in freedom and prosperity.
Ayn’s response was that no human life should be sacrificed against that person’s will. If a person believes a cause to be worth it, such as freedom from slavery or oppression, then he may willingly sacrifice his life for that cause; but no one should be forced to do so. The sacrifices must be made voluntarily.
But are you enlisting voluntarily if you do it because you’ll be drafted anyway later? I wondered. Perhaps voluntariness is a matter of degree. And what if the Germans are invading France and the Germans draft all their young men and the French don’t? Then the French would be overrun and perhaps enslaved. To escape this fate, France institutes the draft. But this example didn’t deter Ayn. Then France is overrun, she said. (The principle of voluntariness must not be violated.) And maybe the prospect that this was going to happen would be sufficient to make most Frenchmen voluntarily enlist.
But then, I suggested, there is another problem: what is meant by “voluntary”?
You think about doing something, you deliberate, then do it. Nobody forces you or pressures you. Let’s take this as a paradigm case of voluntary action. On the other hand, someone with a loaded gun at your back says to you, “Your money or your life,” and you surrender your wallet. This is a case of coercion, and ordinarily we’d say you don’t give up your wallet voluntarily.
OK, now the problems begin. What exactly distinguished these cases? Some say that a voluntary act is one of which one can say that just before it one could have done otherwise. Thus the patellar reflex and other reflex actions are not voluntary; you can’t prevent the response.
But all our everyday actions are by that definition voluntary, including our response to the gunman: we could have, just before surrendering the wallet, decided not to surrender it. That was within our power. (Indeed, some would say, “Under the circumstances, you voluntarily chose to give up your money.”) The result of using thisdefinition is that practically all our acts are voluntary, even the robber example used as a paradigm case of not being voluntary. So, I said, let’s take another criterion for voluntariness. With the gunman you can still choose, but your choices are limited by his actions. (You can choose to give your life rather than your money, whereas without his intervention you would have kept both.) The gunman limits your choices. But so does the employer when he fires an employee, or lays him off because the factory is losing money. The employee’s choices are now more limited, limited by the employer’s actions.
But has the employer coerced him? Some would say yes, though he didn’t threaten the employee’s life as in the gunman case. Others would say no, he only limits the employee’s choices. Indeed, the rainfall that prevents you from going to the picnic also limits your choices as to what to do that day. Our choices are limited hundreds of times a day — limited by a wide variety of conditions, human and non-human. (Ouroptions are never limitless in any case.) So that definition won’t distinguish our two paradigm cases from each other; there is something in both cases to limit our choices.
Let’s try another, I persisted: an act is voluntary if it’s not forced. But now what exactly is the import of the verb “force”? Did he force you to give up your wallet, since you could have said no? Is the child whose parents say to him “Kill your pet dog or we’ll never feed you again” forced to kill his dog? Are you ever 100 percent forced, except when you are physically overpowered and literally can’t do anything else?
But very few acts are forced in this sense. When we say “He forced me to go with him,” we need not mean that he physically overpowered her, but rather that he threatened her or even that he “knew what buttons to push” to get her to do what he wanted. Shall we say in that case that she did his bidding voluntarily? No matter which definition we employ, there are cases that seem to slip between the cracks. Thus, saying “He did it voluntarily” doesn’t convey as clear a piece of information as most people think it does.
I concluded that when people say “He did it voluntarily” they usually have no idea of the complexities of meaning that can be plausibly attached to that word; they have no idea which fork in the road they would choose in deciding which meaning of several to take. They just blurt out the word. And that, I suggested, is what philosophicalanalysis is all about — by suggestion and example (“Would you say this is a case of X? No, then perhaps that would be?” etc.) to draw out the meaning behind the words — to pierce the veil of words so as to get a hold on those meanings. But the words constantly obscure this, often in a bewilderingly complex way. Yet it’s important to keep us from blurting out some quick and easy verbal formula. It’s not easy, andtakes a lot of practice; as Brahms said of his second piano concerto, “It’s not a piece for little girls.”
But there it is, the difficulties are there, not only for “voluntary” but for “free” and “caused” and “responsible” and “intentional” (to take a few from just one area of philosophy). These are especially dense philosophical thickets, which require lots of thankless untangling. Most people haven’t the heart or the will to go through with it. I fear my little lecture was pretty much lost on Ayn. Her philosophical aspirations lay in an entirely different area. And in time the tension between these approaches to doing philosophy is what probably marked the beginning of the end for us. — Click here for Part 2 –>
(Originally published in Liberty magazIne, 1987)
When most people talked philosophy with Ayn Rand, the relationship was student to teacher. But with Rand and John Hospers, it was philosopher to philosopher.
Here is a portion of Hospers’ June 2, 1994 letter to me:
Just because I don’t accept your conclusions, do no infer that I have not given these matters deep and profound thought. Why do you ASSUME that I haven’t (which you do when you say “don’t you think it is time to think about spiritual things… etc..)? Why do you start out being so insulting?
_______
From Adrian Rogers’ LOVE WORTH FINDING website we find this devotion and some of these points were on the cassette tape that I sent to Dr. John Hospers:
Why does someone decide to become an atheist? Perhaps they’ve been raised in a home where their parents are atheists. Perhaps they started out in life believing in God, but when they prayed about a situation and didn’t get the answer they wanted—or didn’t get it quickly enough—they said, “Well, there must not be a God after all.” Or they decided the problem of why God allows evil in the world is just too great to overcome.
In his message “No Other Way to Heaven except through Jesus,” Adrian Rogers presents the case for belief in God, the reasons many choose unbelief, and the clear, simple path one can take to know that first, there is a God, and then we can know Him personally.
It’s a comprehensive message, one that cannot be reduced to a short article, so we encourage you to hear it in its entirety on June 6-7, or in the broadcast archives on those dates or afterward at our website, www.lwf.org.
In this article, we take one aspect of that extensive message: looking at the path a person may take when they make the choice to become an atheist.
In Romans 1, Paul says (v. 16-20)
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for itis the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. From faith to faith, as it is written, “the just shall live by faith,” for the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them, for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,even His eternal power and godhead [and here’s the bottom line], so that they are without excuse.
Every Person Has Some Light
All people have been given have some light about the reality and existence of God. Paul makes that clear.
Imagine that the end of time has come, the time we call “the final judgment.” Standing before the throne are all those who’ve never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as those who did hear and rejected it.
The indictment is given,
“For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
Some say, “Your Honor, we’re not guilty! We never heard the Gospel; we never knew how to be saved. We’re innocent by reason of ignorance.”
Then the Apostle Paul will speak up. He’ll point out, “Your Honor, I will prove they’re not innocent because of ignorance or never had an equal chance. I call two witnesses to testify. Witness number one, take the stand. Give the court your name.”
He says, “My name is Creation.”
“You’re the witness that God exists?”
“Yes. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them, for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20).
Creation testifies, “The Heavens declare the glory of God” Psalm 19:1.
If you have a creation, you have to have a Creator. The Bible says that the Creator “is clearly seen by the things that are made.” When I see a finely tuned piano, I know someone crafted and tuned it. When I see a watch running with precision, I know someone crafted it. When I see a building put together in symmetry, I say, “There is an architect.” When I see this mighty creation, I say, “Creator.” When I see order and system, I say, “Intelligence.” That’s the reason the Bible says, “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There’s no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
Then Paul will call his second witness.
“My name is Conscience. For when the Gentiles [those who’ve never heard the Gospel], which have not the law,” [Old Testament law], “do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” Romans 2:14.
Two witnesses all people on earth must face: the outward, objective witness of creation and the inward, subjective witness of conscience. “Unto them” is creation, “in them” is conscience. T
Man has a built‑in knowledge of God. God made man to know, love, serve and have fellowship with Him forever. “Christ is that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9).
Augustine said, “The soul of man is restless until it rests in God.” You cannot get around the two witnesses. Creation and conscience testify that no matter who you are or where you are, every person has some light.
Atheists are not in atheists because of intellectual problems. They’re atheists because of moral problems. It’s not a matter of intelligence.
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Romans 1:22
All of us have a God‑consciousness. It’s not a matter of intellectualism; it’s a matter of morality. “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
An atheist is someone who is uncomfortable with the existence of God, so he says, “If I can get rid of this idea of God, I can get rid of this uncomfortable feeling.”
But he really doesn’t get rid of it—not down deep. He’s like a man who bought a new boomerang and killed himself trying to throw the old one away. The knowledge that God is just there, and the more you try to get rid of it, the more you know subconsciously God exists, because deep in your heart, conscience speaks.
Light Refused Increases Darkness
There is great danger in refusing the light we’ve been given.
“They are without excuse, because when they knew God [by creation and conscience they knew God exists], they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart wasdarkened.”
Darkened.
All mankind has some light. Light refused increases darkness.
You cannot simply take light or truth and put it in your pocket and say, “That’s very interesting, I’ll spend it someday if I need it.” No, when God gives you light, when creation and conscience speak to the heart of any individual anywhere on earth, if they do not glorify God, believe there is a God, and desire to know Him, they do not remain static. They begin to regress. And they lose even the light that they had. Their foolish heart will be darkened.
Watch carefully here. I pray you won’t miss what I’m about to say. In the Bible, the opposite of truth is not error, it is sin. Why does a person refuse truth? Because of the sin in his heart.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodlinessand unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (v. 18)
The word “hold” literally means to resist the truth; suppress, smother, hold back the truth. How do you hold back the truth? Not in error, but in unrighteousness.
Why Does A Person Not Believe In God?
Belief in God means they have to adjust their lifestyle. On the one hand, on one side is the person’s unrighteous lifestyle. On the other side are creation and conscience. Creation and conscience tell him there’s a God. His lifestyle says, “If you admit that, you’re going to have to change how you’re living.”
He’s in a quandary between the two. If he turns toward acknowledging God, he turns from that lifestyle; but if he turns away from truth, he’s free to embrace his old lifestyle. So when he says, “I will resist the truth in unrighteousness,” and turns away, he gets farther from the truth, father from the light, into the darkness, and “his foolish heart is darkened.”
Unbelief Is the Baggage That Comes With Sin
This truth is never more graphically illustrated than in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, a most terrifying passage in the Bible. It speaks of the Antichrist who is coming:
“Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because”—note—“they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.”
Why do they perish?
“For this cause God shall send them strong delusion.” (v. 11)
You say, “Hold it, Pastor! God doesn’t send anybody delusion.” Go back and read verse 11. Why would God send them strong delusion? Verse 11 continues, “That they should believe a lie.”
It’s getting worse, isn’t it? God sends delusion “that they should believe a lie” What is the end result? “…that they all might be damnedwho believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (v. 12)
There in that last phrase is your key: they had the truth, they saw it, yet they chose to “believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
They heard the truth! They knew the truth! They turned from the truth! They pleasure in their sin! They looked at God, they looked at their sin, and they chose their sin.
God responds, “All right. That’s what you want. You want your sin, and the baggage that comes with it is delusion, a lie, and damnation.”
How does this compute with the verse, “God is not willing that any should perish”?
He is not willing. But He also will not violate a person’s free will. I have often observed,
You are free to choose.
You are not free not to choose.
You are also not free to choose the consequences of your choice.
Again, the problem is not in the head. The problem is in the heart. One of the greatest promises in the Bible is John 7:17. People were wondering, “Who is Jesus Christ?” The Pharisees were testing Him, taunting Him, picking at Him. Jesus responded, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” Then He threw out one of the greatest challenges in the Bible:
“If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself,” in other words, “whether I’m just some megalomaniac, some peasant prophet who has a messianic complex, or if I have come from God.”
Do you will to do the will of God? If you do, and if you take up this challenge, then you will know.
How can I know the Bible is the Word of God? by Adrian Rogers
Michael Heizer is a contemporary artist specializing in large-scale sculptures and earth art (or land art). He currently lives and works in Hiko, Nevada.[1]
In the late 1960s, Heizer left New York City for the deserts of California and Nevada, where he began to produce large-scale works that could not fit into a museum setting and could only possibly be displayed through photographs. In 1967, he completed North, East, South, West 1, which included several holes he dug in the Sierra Nevada, the holes akin to the shapes in his paintings.[2] In 1969, Heizer made the series Primitive dye paintings, in which bright big bags of white lime powder and concentrated aniline dyes were spread over the dry desert landscape, covering large areas that, when viewed from the air, formed amorphous, organic shapes.[2] Later that year, Heizer began to create “negative” sculptures by cutting directly into the earth.[1] Made in 1968, Heizer’s Nine Nevada Depressions series of pieces was located primarily on dry lakes throughout the state, comprising a 520-mile earthwork. Jean Dry Lake, south of Las Vegas, has totally absorbed Heizer’s “Rift 1”, a zig-zag trench dug into the lake surface in 1968, as the first of the Nine Nevada Depressions.[3]Dissipate consisted of five small trenches lined in wood, inserted into the playa at the Black Rock Desert.[4]Isolated Mass/Circumflex, the ninth piece, is a circular loop made in a dry lake bed surface at Massacre Dry Lake, near Vya, Nevada.[5] Heizer displaced 6 tons of earth, making a one-foot-wide trench, 120 feet long, with the loop being 12 feet in diameter. This culminated in the production of Double Negative in 1969 and 1970, a project for which he displaced 240,000 tons of rock in the Nevada desert, cutting two enormous trenches—each one 50-feet-deep and 30-feet-wide and together spanning 1,500 feet—at the eastern edge of Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nevada.[6]
Since then, Heizer has continued his exploration of earthworks. His Adjacent, Against, Upon (1976) juxtaposes three large granite slabs in different relationships to cast concrete forms; the 30-50 ton granite slabs were quarried in the Cascade Mountain Range and transported by barge and train to Myrtle Edwards Park.[7] For “Displaced/Replaced Mass” (1969/1977), later installed outside the Marina del Rey, California, home of Roy and Carol Doumani, he planted four granite boulders of different sizes from the High Sierra into lid-less concrete boxes in the earth so that the tops of the rocks are roughly level with the ground.[8] For a 1982 work at the former IBM Building in New York, Heizer sheared off the top of a large rock and cut grooves into the surface before setting it on supports hidden within a stainless steel structure. Designed as a fountain, the boulder appears to float over running water. He called it Levitated Mass, a title he would use for later works as well.[8] Commissioned by the president of the Ottawa Silica Company, the Effigy Tumuli earthwork in Illinois is composed of five abstract animal earthworks reclaiming the site of an abandoned surface coal mine along the Illinois River; the shapes (1983–85)—a frog, a water strider, a catfish, a turtle, and a snake—reflect the environment of the site, which overlooks the river.
Since the late 1990s, Heizer’s work has focused primarily on City, an enormous complex in the rural desert of Lincoln County, Nevada. His work on the project continues to this day, supported by the Dia Art Foundation through a grant from the Lannan Foundation. In 1970, Heizer hired G. Robert Deiro, a pilot from Las Vegas, to help him find the property.[2] In 1972, he acquired land in Garden Valley, near the border with Nye County, and began work on the first part. He finished Complex One in 1974, working mostly alone, using a paddle-wheel scraper a farmer lent him and following plans drawn up by seismic engineers.[9] While working on the first parts of the project, he gradually acquired three square miles, at $30 an acre; the last parcel was paid off in 1997.[2]City is not yet available to the public.
Heizer’s latest project, Levitated Mass (2012), was for LACMA. He tried to build it in 1969 with a smaller boulder, but the crane attempting to lift it snapped.[14] It was not until 2005 that he discovered an appropriate boulder, when a routine blast at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside County, California, produced the piece he had imagined, and the project started coming together.[15] LACMA’s director Michael Govan first visited the site in 1994 as director of Dia:Beacon. Since then, Govan has become Heizer’s greatest ally in the art world, raising $10 million from private donors to realize Levitated Mass and serving as a spokesman for the artist.[8] It took eleven nights, from February 28 to March 10, 2012, to move the 340-ton rock from Jurupa Valley to the museum. The granite boulder (21.5 feet wide and 21.5 feet high) is installed atop a 456-foot-long trench, which allows people to walk under it. The long channel, descending to a depth of 15 feet, is encircled by a lozenge-shaped line of weathering steel embedded in the earth and rusting to a velvety brown. The installation is situated in a field of polished concrete slices, set at a slight angle between the Resnick Pavilion and Sixth Street.[16] Heizer opened the exhibit on June 24, 2012.[17] A feature documentary,[18] also named “Levitated Mass,” was directed and edited by the filmmaker Doug Pray. It details the making of the sculpture as it relates to Heizer’s career, while portraying the boulder’s 105-mile journey through Los Angeles and the public’s reaction to its installation. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June 2013 [19] and opened theatrically at the Landmark’s Nuart Theater in Los Angeles, CA on September 5, 2014.[20] Heizer’s most recent work is Tangential Circular Negative Line in Mauvoisin, Switzerland, commissioned by Fondation Air&Art directed by Jean Maurice Varone.
Heizer has also produced a number of abstract paintings, and his large-scale sculptures, often inspired by Native American forms, can be found in museums and public spaces worldwide.
In 1968, Heizer was included in Earth Works, the influential group show at Virginia Dwan‘s gallery, and then in the Whitney Museum painting annual in 1969, where his contribution was a huge photograph of a dye painting in the desert.[9] For his first one-person show, at the Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich in 1969, he removed 1,000 tons of earth in a conical shape to create Munich Depression. In 1977, he was included in documenta 6, Kassel. Major exhibitions of his work have been staged at institutions such as the Museum Folkwang, Essen (1979), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1984), and Fondazione Prada, Milan (1996).[22]
Land art celebrating the work of michael heizer robert smithson and walter de maria
Early life and education
Michael Heizer was born in Berkeley, California, in 1944, the son of the distinguished University of California, Berkeley archaeologist Dr. Robert Heizer. He spent a year in high school, in France. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute (1963–64) and moved to New York City (1966), where he found a loft on Mercer Street in SoHo and began producing conventional, small-scale paintings and sculptures.
Work
In the late 1960s, Heizer left New York City for the deserts of California and Nevada, where he began to produce large-scale works that could not fit into a museum setting, except perhaps in photographs. In 1967, he completed North, East, South, West 1, which included several holes he dug in the Sierra Nevada, the holes akin to the shapes in his paintings. In 1969, Heizer made the series Primitive dye paintings, in which bright big bags of white lime powder and concentrated aniline dyes were spread over the dry desert landscape, covering large areas that, when viewed from the air, formed amorphous, organic shapes. Later that year, Heizer began to create “negative” sculptures by cutting directly into the earth. Made in 1968, Heizer’s Nine Nevada Depressions series of pieces was located primarily on dry lakes throughout the state, comprising a 520-mile earthwork. Jean Dry Lake, south of Las Vegas, has totally absorbed Heizer’s “Rift 1”, a zig-zag trench dug into the lake surface in 1968, as the first of the Nine Nevada Depressions. Dissipate consisted of five small trenches lined in wood, inserted into the playa at the Black Rock Desert. Isolated Mass/Circumflex, the ninth piece, is a circular loop made in a dry lake bed surface at Massacre Dry Lake, near Vya, Nevada. Heizer displaced 6 tons of earth, making a one-foot-wide trench, 120 feet long, with the loop being 12 feet in diameter. This culminated in the production of Double Negative in 1969 and 1970, a project for which he displaced 240,000 tons of rock in the Nevada desert, cutting two enormous trenches—each one 50-feet-deep and 30-feet-wide and together spanning 1,500 feet—at the eastern edge of Mormon Mesa near Overton, Nevada.
Since then, Heizer has continued his exploration of earthworks. His Adjacent, Against, Upon (1976) juxtaposes three large granite slabs in different relationships to cast concrete forms; the 30-50 ton granite slabs were quarried in the Cascade Mountain Range and transported by barge and train to Myrtle Edwards Park. For “Displaced/Replaced Mass” (1969/1977), later installed outside the Marina del Rey, California, home of Roy and Carol Doumani, he planted four granite boulders of different sizes from the High Sierra into lid-less concrete boxes in the earth so that the tops of the rocks are roughly level with the ground. For a 1982 work at the former IBM Building in New York, Heizer sheared off the top of a large rock and cut grooves into the surface before setting it on supports hidden within a stainless steel structure. Designed as a fountain, the boulder appears to float over running water. He called it Levitated Mass, a title he would use for later works as well. Commissioned by the president of the Ottawa Silica Company, the Effigy Tumuli earthwork in Illinois is composed of five abstract animal earthworks reclaiming the site of an abandoned surface coal mine along the Illinois River; the shapes (1983–85)—a frog, a water strider, a catfish, a turtle, and a snake—reflect the environment of the site, which overlooks the river.
Since the late 1990s, Heizer’s work has focused primarily on City, an enormous complex in the rural desert of Lincoln County, Nevada. His work on the project continues to this day, supported by the Dia Art Foundation through a grant from the Lannan Foundation. In 1970, Heizer hired G. Robert Deiro, a pilot from Las Vegas, to help him find the property. In 1972, he acquired land in Garden Valley, near the border with Nye County, and began work on the first part. He finished Complex One in 1974, working mostly alone, using a paddle-wheel scraper a farmer lent him and following plans drawn up by seismic engineers. While working on the first parts of the project, he gradually acquired three square miles, at $30 an acre; the last parcel was paid off in 1997. City is not yet available to the public.
A campaign to have the Basin and Range area around City designated as a national monument to protect it from development took place, and a group of American museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Modern Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and the Walker Art Center, have joined together to draw public attention to a petition urging preservation of the area. In July 2015, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation (using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906) creating the Basin and Range National Monument on 704,000 acres in Lincoln and Nye counties, an area including Heizer’s City.
Heizer’s latest project, Levitated Mass (2012), was for LACMA. He tried to build it in 1969 with a smaller boulder, but the crane attempting to lift it snapped. It was not until 2005 that he discovered an appropriate boulder, when a routine blast at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside County, California, produced the piece he had imagined, and the project started coming together. LACMA’s director Michael Govan first visited the site in 1994 as director of Dia:Beacon. Since then, Govan has become Heizer’s greatest ally in the art world, raising $10 million from private donors to realize Levitated Mass and serving as a spokesman for the artist. It took eleven nights, from February 28 to March 10, 2012, to move the 340-ton rock from Jurupa Valley to the museum. The granite boulder (21.5 feet wide and 21.5 feet high) is installed atop a 456-foot-long trench, which allows people to walk under it. The long channel, descending to a depth of 15 feet, is encircled by a lozenge-shaped line of weathering steel embedded in the earth and rusting to a velvety brown. The installation is situated in a field of polished concrete slices, set at a slight angle between the Resnick Pavilion and Sixth Street. Heizer opened the exhibit on June 24, 2012. A documentary about the installation process has been made by the filmmaker Doug Pray and premiered at the Landmark’s Nuart Theater in Los Angeles, CA on September 5, 2014. His most recent work is Tangential Circular Negative Line in Mauvoisin, Switzerland, commissioned by Fondation Air&Art directed by Jean Maurice Varone.
Heizer has also produced a number of abstract paintings, and his large-scale sculptures, often inspired by Native American forms, can be found in museums and public spaces worldwide.
Major permanent commissions
Tangential Circular Negative Line (2012), Mauvoisin, Switzerland, an Air&Art Foundation commission directed by Jean Maurice Varone
Levitated Mass (2012), Resnick Pavilion North Lawn at LACMA (Los Angeles, California)
Rift # 1 (1968–72; deteriorated), Nine Nevada Depressions, Massacre Dry Lake, Nevada
Windows and Matchdrops (1969), seven small rills in the floor in front of the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf entrance, Germany
Double Negative (1969–70), located near Overton, Nevada
City (1972, unfinished), Lincoln County, Nevada
Adjacent, Against, Upon (1976), Myrtle Edwards Park (Seattle, Washington)
This Equals That (1980), Michigan State Capitol Complex, Lansing, Michigan
North, East, South, West (1967/2002), Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York
Exhibitions
In 1968, Heizer was included in Earth Works, the influential group show at Virginia Dwan’s gallery, and then in the Whitney Museum’s painting annual in 1969, where his contribution was a huge photograph of a dye painting in the desert. For his first one-person show, at the Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, in 1969, he removed 1,000 tons of earth in a conical shape to create Munich Depression. In 1977, he was included in documenta 6, Kassel. Major exhibitions of his work have been staged at institutions such as the Museum Folkwang, Essen (1979), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1984), and Fondazione Prada, Milan (1996).
Homages
Mungo Thomson, Levitating Mass (2012), Aspen, Colorado.
Regis Perray, 340 grammes deplaces… during Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer (2012), Nantes, France.
________ H. J. Blackham H. J. Blackham, (31 March 1903 – 23 January 2009), was a leading and widely respected British humanist for most of his life. As a young man he worked in farming and as a teacher. He found his niche as a leader in the Ethical Union, which he steadfastly […]
H.J.Blackham pictured below: I had to pleasure of corresponding with Paul Kurtz in the 1990’s and he like H. J. Blackham firmly believed that religion was needed to have a basis for morals. At H. J. Blackham’s funeral in 2009 these words were read from Paul Kurtz: Paul Kurtz Founder and Chair, Prometheus Books and the […]
H. J. Blackham pictured below: On May 15, 1994 on the 10th anniversary of the passing of Francis Schaeffer I sent a letter to H.J. Blackham and here is a portion of that letter below: I have enclosed a cassette tape by Adrian Rogers and it includes a story about Charles Darwin‘s journey from […]
I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age of 92. Who were the artists who influenced […]
__ I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age of 92. Who were the […]
Andy, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Koshalek and unidentified guest, 1980s I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December 27, 2015 at the age […]
How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation I featured the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly on my blog both on November 23, 2015 and December 17, 2015. Also I mailed him a letter on November 23, 2015, but I never heard back from him. Unfortunately he died on December […]
Today I am bringing this series on William Provine to an end. Will Provine’s work was cited by Francis Schaeffer in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? I noted: I was sad to learn of Dr. Provine’s death. William Ball “Will” Provine (February 19, 1942 – September 1, 2015) He grew up an […]
___ Setting the record straight was Will Provine’s widow Gail when she stated, “[Will] did not believe in an ULTIMATE meaning in life (i.e. God’s plan), but he did believe in proximate meaning (i.e. relationships with people — friendship and especially LOVE🙂 ). So one’s existence is ultimately senseless and useless, but certainly not to those […]
I was sad when I learned of Will Provine’s death. He was a very engaging speaker on the subject of Darwinism and I think he correctly realized what the full ramifications are when accepting evolution. This is the fourth post I have done on Dr. Provine and the previous ones are these links, 1st, 2nd […]
Paul Gauguin, now regarded as a French Post-Impressionist artist, was not received well by his old painter friends while living. And having abandoned his wife and children he had no options or resources for getting by. He never found artistic success, either critically or financially in his lifetime.
However, there is one painting he completed that has stood the test of time.
This painting, completed with great fever and intention just days before his sad ascent to death, was intended as his final testament to the world. It is a massive three panel scape – painted on whatever materials the impoverished Gauguin could cobble together – depicting Tahitian women of all life phases engaged in various everyday activities and inactivities. Moving from right to left, it shows the beginning of life depicted in an infant and the end of life in a sad old woman with various stages in between. Art historians and the common observer struggle to figure out what his actual testament might be. The painting doesn’t seem to really communicate much of anything. And perhaps that is the message itself.
While the meaning of the actual images might remain elusive, the title of the painting speaks volumes. It captures three of the most searching questions any human soul can ponder. The title is comprised of questions that most of us have asked at one time or another:
D’ Ou’ venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou’ allons-nous?
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Why are these questions significant? What do they have to do with our exploration of the family?
Where do we come from? asks… What is the source of our being?
What are we? wants to know… What is our nature? What are we made for?
Where are we going? probes …What’s our destiny? What is our existence, and everything else, moving toward?
These are the questions that are at the core of what it means to be human; they are natural to all of us.
The good news is that there are answers – true and beautiful answers – found in glorious places. They are found in an exceedingly profound and breathtaking story. Where this story takes you and how it answers these questions will likely surprise you.
Can you think of three more important questions that any soul can ask? Have you ever considered them yourself?
Materialistic Humanism: The World-View of Our Era
What has produced the inhumanity we have been considering in the previous chapters is that society in the West has adopted a world-view which says that all reality is made up only of matter. This view is sometimes referred to as philosophic materialism, because it holds that only matter exists; sometimes it is called naturalism, because it says that no supernatural exists. Humanism which begins from man alone and makes man the measure of all things usually is materialistic in its philosophy. Whatever the label, this is the underlying world-view of our society today. In this view the universe did not get here because it was created by a “supernatural” God. Rather, the universe has existed forever in some form, and its present form just happened as a result of chance events way back in time.
Society in the West has largely rested on the base that God exists and that the Bible is true. In all sorts of ways this view affected the society. The materialistic or naturalistic or humanistic world-view almost always takes a superior attitude toward Christianity. Those who hold such a view have argued that Christianity is unscientific, that it cannot be proved, that it belongs simply to the realm of “faith.” Christianity, they say, rests only on faith, while humanism rests on facts. Professor Edmund R. Leach of Cambridge University expressed this view clearly:
Our idea of God is a product of history. What I now believe about the supernatural is derived from what I was taught by my parents, and what they taught me was derived from what they were taught, and so on. But such beliefs are justified by faith alone, never by reason, and the true believer is expected to go on reaffirming his faith in the same verbal formula even if the passage of history and the growth of scientific knowledge should have turned the words into plain nonsense.78
So some humanists act as if they have a great advantage over Christians. They act as if the advance of science and technology and a better understanding of history (through such concepts as the evolutionary theory) have all made the idea of God and Creation quite ridiculous.
This superior attitude, however, is strange because one of the most striking developments in the last half-century is the growth of a profound pessimism among both the well-educated and less-educated people. The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all.
Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with:
… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way.
Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere. The humanist H. J. Blackham has expressed this with a dramatic illustration:
On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility.79
One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has existed forever and ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form. Thus, Jacob Bronowski says in The Identity of Man (1965): “Man is a part of nature, in the same sense that a stone is, or a cactus, or a camel.” In this view, men and women are by chance more complex, but not unique.
Within this world-view there is no room for believing that a human being has any final distinct value above that of an animal or of nonliving matter. People are merely a different arrangement of molecules. There are two points, therefore, that need to be made about the humanist world-view. First, the superior attitude toward Christianity – as if Christianity had all the problems and humanism had all the answers – is quite unjustified. The humanists of the Enlightenment two centuries ago thought they were going to find all the answers, but as time has passed, this optimistic hope has been proved wrong. It is their own descendants, those who share their materialistic world-view, who have been saying louder and louder as the years have passed, “There are no final answers.” Second, this humanist world-view has also brought us to the present devaluation of human life – not technology and not overcrowding, although these have played a part. And this same world-view has given us no limits to prevent us from sliding into an even worse devaluation of human life in the future.
So it is naive and irresponsible to imagine that this world-view will reverse the direction in the future. A well-meaning commitment to “do what is right” will not be sufficient. Without a firm set of principles that flows out of a world-view that gives adequate reason for a unique value to all human life, there cannot be and will not be any substantial resistance to the present evil brought on by the low view of human life we have been considering in previous chapters. It was the materialistic world-view that brought in the inhumanity; it must be a different world-view that drives it out.
An emotional uneasiness about abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and the abuse of genetic knowledge is not enough. To stand against the present devaluation of human life, a significant percentage of people within our society must adopt and live by a world-view which not only hopes or intends to give a basis for human dignity but which really does. The radical movements of the sixties were right to hope for a better world; they were right to protest against the shallowness and falseness of our plastic society. But their radicalness lasted only during the life span of the adolescence of their members. Although these movements claimed to be radical, they lacked a sufficient root. Their world-view was incapable of giving life to the aspirations of its adherents. Why? Because it, too – like the society they were condemning – had no sufficient base. So protests are not enough. Having the right ideals is not enough. Even those with a very short memory, those who can look back only to the sixties, can see that there must be more than that. A truly radical alternative has to be found.
But where? And how?
Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can […]
In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]
In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]
Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald left the prohibitionist America for wet Paris in the 1920’s and they both drank a lot. WINE, WOMEN AND SONG was their motto and I am afraid ultimately wine got the best of Fitzgerald and shortened his career. Woody Allen pictures this culture in the first few clips in the […]
In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen the best scene of the movie is when Gil Pender encounters the SURREALISTS!!! This series deals with the Book of Ecclesiastes and Woody Allen films. The first post dealt with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and it dealt with the fact that in the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon does contend […]
In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen is really looking at one main question through the pursuits of his main character GIL PENDER. That question is WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT? This is the second post I have […]
I am starting a series of posts called ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” The quote from the title is actually taken from the film MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT where Stanley derides the belief that life has meaning, saying it’s instead “nasty, brutish, and short. Is that Hobbes? I would have […]
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
Ahmed was appointed a faculty member of the Engineering Department, Cambridge in 1963 and worked there for 20 years before moving to the Physics Department where he was promoted to Professor of Microelectronics and was the Head of the Microelectronics Research Centre until his retirement in 2003. He is a former Fellow, Director of Studies in Engineering, and Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is now an Honorary Fellow.
Ahmed has published a large number of papers in scientific and engineering research journals on microelectronics, micro and nanofabrication, electron and ion beam lithography, semiconductor single electron devices and related topics.[3][5][12]
He established a number of major collaborations between industry and the University including the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory in the Microelectronics Research Centre. He is the author with P.J. Spreadbury of Electronics for Engineers (CUP 1973) and An Introduction to Physical Electronics with A.H.W. Beck (Elsevier, 1968, out of print). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1990.
He has served as a Syndic of Cambridge University Press, as Non-Executive Director of the Addenbrooke’s HospitalNHS Trust, as President of the Philosophical Society, as a member of the MacRobert Committee which awards a prize annually to the most innovative engineering company in the UK and is currently a member of the Development Board of Imperial College. He has also worked as a consultant to several major electronics industrial companies. He was elected a Fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1967, became Warden of Leckhampton (the College’s Graduate Campus) in 1993 and Master in 2000, succeeding Professor Sir Tony Wrigley and resigned in 2006 to advise the Government of Pakistan on Higher Education matters.
He was the College’s 48th Master since its foundation in 1352. In his time as Master the College celebrated its 650th anniversary, the Taylor Library project was implemented, the Conservation Centre for manuscripts was built and the project on the digital imaging of the College’s Parker collection was started.
Below is a letter I wrote to Dr. Ahmed and in this letter I respond to his quote from You Tube:
March 27, 2016
Professor Haroon Ahmed, The Old Schools,
Dear Dr. Ahmed,
Since you an avid golfer I wanted to tell you a couple of my golf stories that I thought you would find interesting.
In 1977, two huge events made national news at the now titled “Danny Thomas Memphis Classic.” First, President Gerald Ford made a hole-in-one during Wednesday’s Celebrity Pro-Am. That event is now referred to as the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” Two days later, Al Geiberger shocked the golf world with his record low round of 59 on Friday of the tournament. The 13-under-par round still stands as a PGA TOUR record. (Chip Beck and David Duval have since tied the mark.)
Entertainer Danny Thomas cheers former President Gerald Ford’s hole-in-one at the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club’s fifth hole on June 9, 1977.
I had the chance to hear the roar that came from the crowd that day that President Ford hit the hole in one (on hole #5 at Colonial Country Club in Cordova, TN). Just a few holes later I saw Danny Thomas walking around saying with slurred speech, :”This is the ball, this is the ball” while he held up a golf ball. I thought he was going to fall on me as he passed by.
Al Geiberger’s 59 in 1977
Danny Thomas Hugs Al Geiberger after famous 59 in 1979
__
Then just two days later I saw the last 5 holes of Al Geiberger’s 59. He was walking around with this silly grin on his face because almost every putt was going in.
I learned much from your in-depth interview with Dr. Alan MacFarlane. Since you have studied science all your life I thought you would be interested in the subject of this letter today and when I heard your interview with Dr. MacFarlane that that prompted me to send you two CD’s today. Recently I had the opportunity to come across a very interesting article by Michael Polanyi,LIFE TRANSCENDING PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY, in the magazine CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS, August 21, 1967, and I also got hold of a 1968 talk by Francis Schaeffer based on this article. Polanyi’s son John actually won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. This article by Michael Polanyi concerns Francis Crick and James Watson and their discovery of DNA in 1953. Polanyi noted:
Mechanisms, whether man-made or morphological, are boundary conditions harnessing the laws of in animate nature, being themselves irreducible to those laws. The pattern of organic bases in DNA which functions as a genetic code is a boundary condition irreducible to physics and chemistry. Further controlling principles of life may be represented as a hierarchy of boundary conditions extending, in the case of man, to consciousness and responsibility.
James Watson (1928-) and Francis Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004)
Michael Polanyi, FRS[1] (11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976)
John Charles Polanyi, (born 23 January 1929)
I am sending you this two CD’s of this talk because I thought you may find it very interesting. It includes references to not only James D. Watson, and Francis Crick but also Maurice Wilkins, Erwin Schrodinger, J.S. Haldane (his son was the famous J.B.S. Haldane), Peter Medawar, and Barry Commoner.
John Scott Haldane (2 May 1860 – 14/15 March 1936)
Erwin Schrödinger (12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961)
Sir Peter Medawar ( 28 February 1915 – 2 October 1987)
Barry Commoner (May 28, 1917 – September 30, 2012)
In the You Tube video “A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1),” you asserted at the 32 min mark in the interview:
32:54:00 When I was in the refugee camp I asked my father why we were there and why were they trying to kill us; he told me these were riots between people of the Hindu religion and people of the Muslim religion, so the conflict was religious; I decided then as a thinking child that religion was not good for one; I abandoned it then; my mother was aware and scolded me sometimes, but my father had been completely honest with me and accepted that I would not have any religious belief after that; that has remained the case, although I have sat through many religious services; before becoming Master of Corpus Christi College I went to see the clerics in the College and talked about my lack of religious belief although strongly supported the right of others to hold them; one of them said, “Well, Master-Elect, if you are prepared to do your duty we will not hold that against you”; I was rather moved and thought that if they had that sort of trust in me I would go to Evensong; I was fortunate that I was married to a Vicar’s daughter; long before I went to Corpus I had learned a great deal about the Anglican faith; her father was at Christ’s and grandfather at Corpus Christi, and her great-grandfather, all became vicars, so I was very supportive of other people’s religious beliefs; when I went to Evensong I didn’t know the hymns but my wife knows them without even looking at the hymn book; so we went into Chapel and I read the lesson when asked to; I did it as my duty and some were constrained to say that I did it well; I was President of the Philosophical Society; I certainly don’t think that religion has been destroyed by science, and I wouldn’t dream of being critical about people’s religious beliefs; I have a great interest in cathedrals and I look with awe at them; they started to build them in the eleventh century, and what powerful forces had moved the people who then built these marvellous buildings; if you look at their history, they were built, torn down, built again, destroyed by fire or invaders, and yet there they rise above the sky; look at the mosques in Islamic countries; what wonderful buildings are created for the love of God; I just have a strong personal view that religion is not for me, and that religion taken to any extreme is very dangerous; however, my religious beliefs were coloured by the effect of Partition and have remained with me ever since; I have brought my children up to believe that they have to be extremely tolerant, to have strong principles.
I am going to answer you in an indirect way. Today is Easter and sometimes a song will just minister to a person in a special way and I heard this song at church today and I wanted to share it with you. It is called MAN OF SORROWS and it can be found on You Tube Man Of Sorrows – Hillsong Live (2013 Album Glorious Ruins) Worship Song with Lyrics and here are the lyrics:
“Man Of Sorrows”
Man of sorrows Lamb of God By His own betrayed
The sin of man and wrath of God
Has been on Jesus laid
Silent as He stood accused Beaten mocked and scorned
Bowing to the Father’s will He took a crown of thorns
Oh that rugged cross
My salvation
Where Your love poured out over me
Now my soul cries out
Hallelujah
Praise and honour unto Thee
Sent of heaven God’s own Son
To purchase and redeem
And reconcile the very ones Who nailed Him to that tree
Now my debt is paid
It is paid in full
By the precious blood
That my Jesus spilled
Now the curse of sin
Has no hold on me
Whom the Son sets free
Oh is free indeed
See the stone is rolled away Behold the empty tomb
Hallelujah God be praised He’s risen from the grave
We sang that song at our Easter service.
On Easter morning March 27, 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH our teaching pastor Brandon Barnard delivered the message THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING based on I Corinthians chapter 15 and I wanted to share a portion of that sermon with you today.
This day is the day that changes everything. The resurrection changes everything and that is why we are gathered here today to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ because it changes everything.
Some of you are going to be blown away by the opportunity before you this Easter morning because the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands at the very heart of Christianity. If what we we are gathered here to celebrate did not happen then people need to pity us as believers. They need to feel sorry for you and me more than anyone on earth because we have set our hopes firmly on a lie.
But if the resurrection really did happen, then we need to repent and we need to believe in Jesus and we need to rejoice that we have hope in this life and the life to come.
Paul wrote this to the believers in Corinth.
1 Corinthians 15:3-6, 13-21 English Standard Version (ESV)
3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
_____
If Christ hasn’t been raised then these facts are true:
PREACHING AND FAITH ARE IN VAIN.
WE ARE FALSE WITNESSES
WE ARE STILL IN OUR SINS.
THOSE WHO DIED IN FAITH ARE STILL DEAD
WE ARE TO BE PITIED MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD.
Verse 20 says, “but Christ has been raised!!! Therefore, these things are true:
Our faith is significant, valuable and eternal.
we are truth tellers!!
we are forgiven of our sins.
death is not our final stop.
don’t pity us but join us in believing in Jesus Christ.
You said above that you are an agnostic. However, would you agree that if the Bible is correct in regards to history then Jesus did rise from the grave? Let’s take a closer look at evidence concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
I know that you highly respected Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and he co-authored with Francis Schaeffer the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Below is a piece of evidence from that book.
Francis Schaeffer (30 January 1912 – 15 May 1984[1]) and his wife Edith (November 3, 1914 – March 30, 2013)
Two things should be mentioned about the time of Moses in Old Testament history.
First, consider the archaeological evidence that relates to the period. True, it is not of the same explicitness that we have found, say, in relation to the existence of Ahab or Jehu or Jehoiakim. We have no inscription from Egypt which refers to Moses being taken out of the bulrushes and removed from the waterproof basket his mother had made him. But this does not mean that the Book of Exodus is a fictitious account, as some critics has suggested. Some say it is simply an idealized reading-back into history by the Jews under the later monarchy. There is not a reason why these “books of Moses,” as they are called, should not be treated as history, just as we have been forced to treat the Books of Kings and Chronicles dating 500 years later.
There is ample evidence about the building projects of the Egyptian kings, and the evidence we have fits well with Exodus. There are scenes of brick-making (for example, Theban Tomb 100 of Rekhmire). Contemporary parchments and papyri tell of production targets which had to be met. One speaks of a satisfied official report of his men as “making their quota of bricks daily” (Papyrus Anastasi III vso, p.3, in the British Museum. Also Louvre Leather Roll in the Louvre, Paris, col ii, mentions quotes of bricks and “taskmasters”). Actual bricks found show signs of straw which had to be mixed in with the clay, just as Exodus says. This matter of bricks and straw is further affirmed by the record that one despairing official complained, “There are no men to make bricks nor straw in my area.”
We know from contemporary discoveries that Semites were found at all levels of Egypt’s cosmopolitan society. (Brooklyn Museum, New York, no. 35, 1446. Papyrus Brooklyn). There is nothing strange therefore about Joseph’s becoming so important in the pharaoh’s court.
The store cities of Pithom and Raamses (Rameses) mentioned in Exodus 1:11 are well known in Egyptian inscriptions. Raamses was actually in the east-Delta capital, Pi-Ramses (near Goshen), where the Israelites would have had ample experience of agriculture. Thus, the references to agriculture found in the law of Moses would not have been strange to the Israelites even though they were in the desert at the time the law was given. Certainly there is no reason to say, as some critics do, that these sections on agriculture were an indication of a reading-back from a latter period when the Jews were settled in Canaan.
The form of the covenant made at Sinai has remarkable parallels with the covenant forms of other people at that time. (On covenants and parties to a treaty, the Louvre; and Treaty Tablet from Boghaz Koi (i.e., Hittite) in Turkey, Museum of Archaeology in Istanbul.) The covenant form at Sinai resembles just as the forms of letter writings of the first century after Christ (the types of introductions and greetings) are reflected in the letters of the apostles in the New Testament, it is not surprising to find the covenant form of the second millennium before Christ reflected in what occurred at Mount Sinai. God has always spoken to people within the culture of their time, which does not mean that God’s communication is limited by that culture. It is God’s communication but within the forms appropriate to the time.
The Pentateuch tells us that Moses led the Israelites up the east side of the Dead Sea after their long stay in the desert. There they encountered the hostile kingdom of Moab. We have firsthand evidence for the existence of this kingdom of Moab–contrary to what has been said by critical scholars who have denied the existence of Moab at this time. It can be found in a war scene from a temple at Luxor (Al Uqsor). This commemorates a victory by Ramses II over the Moabite nation at Batora (Luxor Temple, Egypt).
Also the definite presence of the Israelites in west Palestine (Canaan) no later than the end of the thirteenth century B.C. is attested by a victory stela of Pharaoh Merenptah (son and successor of Ramses II) to commemorate his victory over Libya (Israel Stela, Cairo Museum, no. 34025). In it he mentions his previous success in Canaan against Aschalon, Gize, Yenom, and Israel; hence there can be no doubt the nation of Israel was in existence at the latest by this time of approximately 1220 B.C. This is not to say it could not have been earlier, but it cannot be later than this date.
Christ came and laid his life down to die for our sins and there is evidence that indicates the Bible is true!!!!! Some 400 years before crucifixion was invented, both Israel’s King David and the prophet Zechariah described the Messiah’s death in words that perfectly depict that mode of execution. Further, they said that the body would be pierced and that none of the bones would be broken, contrary to customary procedure in cases of crucifixion (Psalm 22 and 34:20; Zechariah 12:10). Again, historians and New Testament writers confirm the fulfillment: Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross, and his extraordinarily quick death eliminated the need for the usual breaking of bones. A spear was thrust into his side to verify that he was, indeed, dead.
Psalm 22 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
A Cry of Anguish and a Song of Praise.
For the choir director; upon [a]Aijeleth Hashshahar. A Psalm of David.
22My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? [b]Far from my deliverance are the words of my [c]groaning. 2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but [d]I have no rest. 6 But I am a worm and not a man,
A reproach of men and despised by the people. 7All who see me [g]sneer at me; They [h]separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, 8 “[i]Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.”
12 Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 13 They open wide their mouth at me, As a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within [l]me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me [m]in the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded me; [n]A band of evildoers has encompassed me; [o]They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; 18 They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.
Francis Schaeffer ended HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Episode 7 with these words:
When we think of Christ of course we think of his substitutionary death upon the cross when he who claimed to be God died in a substitutionary way and as such his death had infinite value and as we accept that gift raising the empty hands of faith with no humanistic elements we have that which is real life and that is being in relationship to the infinite personal God who is there and being in a personal relationship to Him. But Christ brings life in another way that is not as often clearly thought about perhaps. He connects himself with what the Bible teaches in his teaching and as such he is a prophet as well as a savior. It is upon the basis of what he taught and the Bible teaches because he himself wraps these together that we have life instead of death in the sense of having some knowledge that is more than men can have from himself, beginning from himself alone. Both of these elements are the place where Christ gives us life.
The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]
______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]
The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]
__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]
_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
Between the Buttons is the fifth British and seventh American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released on 20 January 1967 in the UK and 11 February in the US as the follow-up to Aftermath. It was the beginning of the Stones’ brief foray into psychedelia. In 2012, the American version of Between the Buttons, which included “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together“, was ranked #357 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[1]
Sessions for the album began on 3 August 1966 and lasted until the 11th at Los Angeles‘ RCA Studios during the Rolling Stones’ 1966 American Tour. David Hassinger was the engineer for the album. Several songs were worked on; the backing tracks of six songs that would appear on the album were recorded, as were those of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Who’s Driving Your Plane?”, B-side of “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?“, released as a single in late September. During this time, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys was invited down to RCA Studios during the recording of “My Obsession”, which remains one of his favourite Rolling Stones songs.
The band returned to London and sessions continued at IBC Studios from 31 August until 3 September. “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?” was completed to be released on 23 September before the Stones embarked on their seventh British tour which lasted into early October and was their last UK tour until 1971.
The second block of recording sessions for Between the Buttons began on 8 November at the newly opened Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes, London, alternating between Olympic and Pye Studios until 26 November. During this time the bulk of the album was completed including vocal and other overdubs on the previously recorded backing tracks and mixing. “Ruby Tuesday” was also completed.
Around the same time producer Andrew Loog Oldham was also preparing the US-only live album Got Live If You Want It!, a contractual requirement from London Records that contained live performances from their recent British tour as well as studio tracks overdubbed with audience noise. After that album’s release on 10 December, a final overdubbing session for Buttons was held at Olympic Studio on 13 December 1966 before Oldham took the tapes back to RCA Studios in Hollywood for final mixing and editing.
The album was recorded using 4-track machines, with the initial sessions pre-mixed to make room on the remaining tracks for overdubs. Mick Jagger felt this process lost the clarity of the songs, commenting during an interview that “we bounced it back to do overdubs so many times we lost the sound of it. [The songs] sounded so great, but later on I was really disappointed with it.”[2] He commented further: “I don’t know, it just isn’t any good. ‘Back Street Girl’ is about the only one I like.”[3] In an interview with New Musical Express, he even called the rest of the album “more or less rubbish.”[4]
Between the Buttons was the last album wholly produced by Oldham, with whom the Stones fell out in mid-1967 during the recording sessions for Their Satanic Majesties Request.
The photo shoot for the album cover took place in November 1966 on Primrose Hill in North London. The photographer was Gered Mankowitz, who also shot the band photos for the cover of Out of Our Heads. The shoot took place at 5:30 in the morning following an all night recording session at Olympic Studios. Using a home-made camera filter constructed of black card, glass and Vaseline, Mankowitz created the effect of the Stones dissolving into their surroundings. The goal of the shoot was, in Mankowitz’s words, “to capture the ethereal, druggy feel of the time; that feeling at the end of the night when dawn was breaking and they’d been up all night making music, stoned.”[5]Brian Jones‘ dishevelled and ghostly appearance on the cover disturbed many of his fans, and critic David Dalton wrote that he looked “like a doomed albino raccoon.”[2]
“Brian [Jones] was lurking in his collar,” Mankowitz commented years later, “I was frustrated because it felt like we were on the verge of something really special and he was messing it up. But the way Brian appeared to not give a shit is exactly what the band was about.”[6] Outtakes from this photo session were later used for the cover and inner sleeves of the 1972 ABKCO compilation release More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies).
The back cover of Between the Buttons is dominated by a six-panel cartoon accompanied by a rhythmic poem drawn by drummer Charlie Watts. When Watts asked Oldham what the title of the album would be, he told him it was “between the buttons”, a term meaning “undecided”. Watts gave the phrase to the title of his cartoon which in turn became the title of the album.[2]
Between the Buttons, like many British long-players, differed between its UK and US versions. The UK edition (in the form Oldham and the Stones intended it) was issued on 20 January 1967 (Mono, LK 4852; Stereo, SKL 4852) on Decca Records, concurrently with a separate single, “Let’s Spend the Night Together” b/w “Ruby Tuesday.” As was common in the British record industry at the time, the single did not appear on the album. Between the Buttons reached #3 in the UK.
In August 2002 both editions of Between the Buttons were reissued in a new remastered CD and SACDdigipak by ABKCO Records.[11] Almost all reissues of the album since 1968 have been in stereo; in 2016, the album’s mono release was reissued on CD, vinyl, and digital download as part of The Rolling Stones in Mono. While most reissues have used the US track-listing to maximise profit by featuring the two hit singles, the UK version was re-issued by ABKCO in 2003 on 180 gram vinyl in the US.
According to Robert Christgau, Between the Buttons was “among the greatest rock albums”,[12] and AllMusic‘s Richie Unterberger hailed it as one of the Rolling Stones’ “strongest, most eclectic LPs”.[7] In a retrospective review for Entertainment Weekly, David Browne called the album “a cheeky set of sardonic Swinging London vaudeville rock”,[8] while Billboard magazine’s Christopher Walsh wrote that “it’s brimming with overlooked gems, the band delivering a captivating blend of folky, Beatles-esque pop and tough bluesy rockers.”[11] Tom Moon wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) that the album was “lighter and thinner” than Aftermath and, “having belatedly discovered pop melody, Jagger and Richards were suddenly overdosing on the stuff.”[10]Jim DeRogatis included Between the Buttons in his 2003 list of the essential psychedelic rock albums.[13]
In the US, the album was released by London Records on 11 February 1967 (mono, LL 3499; stereo, PS 499). “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” were slotted onto the album while “Back Street Girl” and “Please Go Home” were removed (these would be included on the following US odds-and-ends release, Flowers, in July 1967). With “Ruby Tuesday” reaching #1, Between the Buttons shot to #2 in the US, going gold.
In 2012, the American version of the album was ranked #357 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[1]
^ Jump up to:abcDavis, Stephen (2001). Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones. Broadway Books. ISBN978-0-7679-0956-3.
Jump up^Torres, Ben Fong (1981). The Rolling Stone Interviews: 1967-1980. New York: Rolling Stone Press. pp. 48–49. ISBN0-312-03486-5.
Jump up^Bronson, Fred (2003). The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits (5th ed.). New York: Billboard Books. p. 1301. ISBN0-8230-7677-6.
Jump up^Craske, Oliver (2004). Rock Faces – The World’s Top Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographers and Their Greatest Images. Rotovision. p. 89. ISBN978-2-88046-781-4.
Jump up^Woolridge, Max (2002). Rock ‘N’ Roll London. Singapore: New Holland Publishers. p. 72. ISBN0-312-30442-0.
__________ __ The Rolling Stones ~ Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (1968) The Dirty Mac Band (John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards & Mitch Mitchell) | FeelNumb.com John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix ____
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Jimi Hendrix & Eric Clapton Jimi Hendrix & Mick Jagger Jimi Hendrix & Keith Richards Jimi Hendrix & Brian Jones Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin Jimi Hendrix with Cream & Pink Floyd Even “Legends” want to meet a “Legend” Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he […]
Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were good friends!! Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Uploaded on Feb 5, 2012 Hey Joe JIMI HENDRIX live images in 1969, in London! BBC! dedicated to cream”Sunshine of Your Love”. High quality and superior sound. ¡¡¡¡¡full screen!!!!! Everyone wanted to meet or take a picture with […]
RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Michael Mann, UCLA Anthropologist, “My mother was a very loving, warm person who I remember her getting extremely unhappy when I told her at the age of 13 I was an atheist but she was the core of the family”
The following was emailed to George F. Will on 6-27-16: Scott Ableman / Wikimedia Dear Mr. Will, I really enjoyed your You Tube cllip “George Will Keynotes 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner:” If you google ARKANSAS MILTON FRIEDMAN you will be brought to my website http://www.thedailyhatch.org since I have written so many posts on my economic hero […]
Christian Rock Pioneer Larry Norman’s Songs Part 14 I posted a lot in the past about my favorite Christian musicians such as Keith Green (I enjoyed reading Green’s monthly publications too), and 2nd Chapter of Acts and others. Today I wanted to talk about one of Larry Norman’s songs. David Rogers introduced me to Larry […]
On the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Album there were many individuals that were historical figures that changed history. Many of these individuals had died before the release June 1, 1967 of the album. Aldous Huxley was a major figure in the drug culture and he had died on November 22, 1963. Aleister […]
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