It’s difficult to have the albums created by the most important band in the history of music ranked from worst to best. After all, it’s unlikely that you’ll find any band or musical artist unwilling to share their admiration for the Fab Four. Their fingerprints are over everything created in popular music.
The Liverpool quartet recorded albums at a significant pace between 1963 and 1970. Many of these are classics that redefined what pop-rock could be. Most of these are tremendously experimental, adventurous affairs.
Still, which one’s the best? Is there any one album worth avoiding?
I’ve looked at the evidence and listened to the whole discography once more, and I think that I have an answer or two.
For simplicity’s sake, I have only included official UK releases. That means that the early US-released records aren’t on here. Neither are compilations such as “Anthology,” “Rarities,” or “Hey Jude.” “Yellow Submarine” is included as it included mostly unreleased material and was crafted as a studio album.
With this in mind, here’s a quick initiation into the musical world created by John, Paul, George, and Ringo, The Beatles albums ranked.
10. “Let It Be” (1970)
The final release from The Beatles, “Let It Be,” serves as a fitting swan song for the band. Of course, while “Abbey Road”was recorded weeks after this project, it was released to the public before it.
It features some of their most introspective and personal tracks. These include “Let It Be” and “Across the Universe.”
“Let It Be” does a wonderful balancing act. It showcases the band’s growth and evolution as songwriters. It also lets the band members shuffle through influences and even attempt to record some of their earliest songs.
Paul McCartney is, perhaps, the Beatle most present on the record. He provides the uplifting title track and the ballad “The Long and Winding Road.” Furthermore, “Get Back,” another McCartney-driven composition, became the record’s lead single.
In 2021, it would provide the title for Peter Jackson’s sprawling documentary about the making of the album.
John Lennon is not highly present on “Let It Be,” one aspect on which Jackson’s documentary focuses. He does deliver on yet another mantra song, the terrific “Across the Universe.”
George Harrison contributes the 12-bar blues of “For You Blue” and the anti-materialistic, anti-Macca, “I Me Mine.” Jackson’s doc, however, also reveals Harrison’s frustration. Much of this is due to the other group member’s relative disinterest in his own compositions.
“Let It Be” is a good record. However, its greatest importance is as a historical document. It showcases the direction in which The Beatles would go on as solo artists. Still, it lacks the power of some of the other albums that they released around this time.
Come Together – John Lennon (Live In New York City)
Come Together – John Lennon (Live In New York City)
George Harrison – Here comes the sun Subtitulada en Español
Because of our family’s missionary work in Haiti, I know a number of children who, due to conditions of extreme poverty, are very far behind academically, if they have access to education at all.
One day I gave a little boy a pen and some paper. I told him to write me something. I had a Bible and a little notepad sitting between us with a bunch of notes and numbers visible on an open page. He proceeded to just write a collection of random letters and numbers as he copied them from my notes and from the cover of the Bible.
I realized the little boy had no knowledge of numbers or letters and didn’t even know the difference between them. They were all just indiscernible symbols and characters. He had no knowledge of their meaning.
He had created a bunch of content that pointed nowhere. He was proud of what he thought he had accomplished, but he hadn’t accomplished anything.
I think that’s what a lot of spiritually minded people are doing today. They use words like “God” without any distinct comprehension or concrete idea of who God is or how He may have expressed himself in ways knowable.
A lot of us today have spiritual content that lacks any meaning. We worship a god we don’t know in ways God has not commanded us to worship.
In his 1976 book, “How Should We Then Live,” Francis Schaeffer uses the 1970 Beatles song “My Sweet Lord” to illustrate this point. When the song was released a number of people believed that George Harrison may have accepted Jesus. But in the background when the song plays you can hear the words “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna.” Krishna is just one Hindu name for god.
Is our concept of God any clearer? Are we speaking God’s language or just smushing a bunch of spiritual and religious ideas together?
Harrison was not revering a personal God that can be known in Jesus Christ or in the Bible or in any other tangible way for that matter. He was using the vaguest sentiment of religion, which is sentimentality only.
A lot of us have spiritual feelings in our hearts, but those spiritual feelings are little more than jumbled letters and numbers and symbols on a page if they are not tied directly to some knowable expression of an existent God.
You and I are not children of God because we “feel” that we are. We are children of God to the extent that we come to Him speaking His language.
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John 3:3 NLT)
He either is or He is not, and if He is we must approach Him on His terms. Spiritual sentiment isn’t enough. We must be born again. We must learn to speak His language to understand His ways. We can’t just smash symbols together on a page.
Chris Surber is the pastor at Liberty Spring Christian Church in Suffolk. Email him at chris@chrissurber.com.
“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings…” Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). We take a look today at how the Beatles were featured in Schaeffer’s film. How Should We then Live Episode 7 small On You Tube […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged peter max | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)
At the 53:00 mark of the following 1963 talk by Francis Schaeffer on the 1962 paper by J. Robert Oppenheimer are these words:
Meaning is always attained at the cost of leaving things out. …We have freedom of choice, but we have no escape from the fact that doing some things must leave out others. In practical terms, this means, of course, that our knowledge is finite and never all-encompassing.
For all the pre-release speculation about how analog epic-maker Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” would re-create the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the film’s most spectacular attraction turns out to be something else: the human face.
This three-plus hour biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a film about faces. They talk, a lot. They listen. They react to good and bad news. And sometimes they get lost in their own heads—none more so than the title character, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons team at Los Alamos whose apocalyptic contribution to science earned him the nickname The American Prometheus (as per the title of Nolan’s primary source, the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman). Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema use the large-format IMAX film system not merely to capture the splendor of New Mexico’s desert panoramas but contrast the external coolness and internal turmoil of Oppenheimer, a brilliant mathematician and low-key showman and leader whose impulsive nature and insatiable sexual appetites made his private life a disaster, and whose greatest contribution to civilization was a weapon that could destroy it. Close-up after close-up shows star Cillian Murphy’s face staring into the middle distance, off-screen, and sometimes directly into the lens, while Oppenheimer dissociates from unpleasant interactions, or gets lost inside memories, fantasies, and waking nightmares. “Oppenheimer” rediscovers the power of huge closeups of people’s faces as they grapple with who they are, and who other people have decided that they are, and what they’ve done to themselves and others.
Sometimes the close-ups of people’s faces are interrupted by flash-cuts of events that haven’t happened, or already happened. There are recurring images of flame, debris, and smaller chain-reaction explosions that resemble strings of firecrackers, as well as non-incendiary images that evoke other awful, personal disasters. (There are a lot of gradually expanding flashbacks in this film, where you see a glimpse of something first, then a bit more of it, and then finally the entire thing.) But these don’t just relate to the big bomb that Oppenheimer’s team hopes to detonate in the desert, or the little ones that are constantly detonating in Oppenheimer’s life, sometimes because he personally pushed the big red button in a moment of anger, pride or lust, and other times because he made a naive or thoughtless mistake that pissed somebody off long ago, and the wronged person retaliated with the equivalent of a time-delayed bomb. The “fissile” cutting, to borrow a physics word, is also a metaphor for the domino effect caused by individual decisions, and the chain reaction that makes other things happen as a result. This principle is also visualized by repeated images of ripples in water, starting with the opening closeup of raindrops setting off expanding circles on the surface that foreshadow both the ending of Oppenheimer’s career as a government advisor and public figure and the explosion of the first nuke at Los Alamos (which observers see, then hear, then finally feel, in all its awful impact).
The weight of the film’s interests and meanings are carried by faces—not just Oppenheimer’s, but those of other significant characters, including General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), Los Alamos’ military supervisor; Robert’s suffering wife Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), whose tactical mind could have averted a lot of disasters if her husband would have only listened; and Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.), the Atomic Energy Commission chair who despised Oppenheimer for a lot of reasons, including his decision to distance himself from his Jewish roots, and who spent several years trying to derail Oppenheimer’s post-Los Alamos career. The latter constitutes its own adjacent full-length story about pettiness, mediocrity, and jealousy. Strauss is Salieri to Oppenheimer’s Mozart, regularly and often pathetically reminding others that he studied physics, too, back in the day, and that he’s a good person, unlike Oppenheimer the adulterer and communist sympathizer. (This film asserts that Strauss leaked the FBI file on his progressive and communist associations to a third party who then wrote to the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover.)
The film speaks quite often of one of the principles of quantum physics, which holds that observing quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the results of this experiment. The editing illustrates it by constantly re-framing our perception of an event to change its meaning, and the script does it by adding new information that undermines, contradicts, or expands our sense of why a character did something, or whether they even knew why they did it.
That, I believe, is really what “Oppenheimer” is about, much more so than the atom bomb itself, or even its impact on the war and the Japanese civilian population, which is talked about but never shown. The film does show what the atom bomb does to human flesh, but it’s not recreations of the actual attacks on Japan: the agonized Oppenheimer imagines Americans going through it. This filmmaking decision is likely to antagonize both viewers who wanted a more direct reckoning with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those who have bought into the arguments advanced by Strauss and others that the bombs had to be dropped because Japan never would have surrendered otherwise. The movie doesn’t indicate whether it thinks that interpretation is true or if it sides more with Oppenheimer and others who insisted that Japan was on its knees by that point in World War II and would have eventually given up without atomic attacks that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. No, this is a film that permits itself the freedoms and indulgences of novelists, poets, and opera composers. It does what we expect it to do: Dramatize the life of Oppenheimer and other historically significant people in his orbit in an aesthetically daring way while also letting all of the characters and all of the events be used metaphorically and symbolically as well, so that they become pointillistic elements in a much larger canvas that’s about the mysteries of the human personality and the unforeseen impact of decisions made by individuals and societies.
This is another striking thing about “Oppenheimer.” It’s not entirely about Oppenheimer even though Murphy’s baleful face and haunting yet opaque eyes dominate the movie. It’s also about the effect of Oppenheimer’s personality and decisions on other people, from the other strong-willed members of his atom bomb development team (including Benny Safdie’s Edwin Teller, who wanted to skip ahead to create the much more powerful hydrogen bomb, and eventually did) to the beleaguered Kitty; Oppenheimer’s mistress Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh, who has some of Gloria Grahame’s self-immolating smolder); General Groves, who likes Oppenheimer in spite of his arrogance but isn’t going to side with him over the United States government; and even Harry Truman, the US president who ordered the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (played in a marvelous cameo by Gary Oldman) and who derides Oppenheimer as a naive and narcissistic “crybaby” who sees history mainly in terms of his own feelings.
Jennifer Lame’s editing is prismatic and relentless, often in a faintly Terrence Malick-y way, skipping between three or more time periods within seconds. It’s wedded to virtually nonstop music by Ludwig Göransson that fuses with the equally relentless dialogue and monologues to create an odd but distinctive sort of scientifically expository aria that’s probably what it would feel like to read American Prometheus while listening to a playlist of Philip Glass film scores. Non-linear movies like this one do a better job of capturing the pinball-machine motions of human consciousness than linear movies do, and they also capture what it’s like to read a third-person omniscient book (or a biography that permits itself to imagine what its subjects might have been thinking or feeling). It also paradoxically captures the mental process of reading a text and responding to it emotionally and viscerally as well as intellectually. The mind stays anchored to the text. But it also jumps outside of it, connecting the text to other texts, to external knowledge, and to one’s own experience and imaginings.
This review hasn’t delved into the plot of the film or the real-world history that inspired it, not because it isn’t important (of course it is) but because—as is always the case with Nolan—the main attraction is not the story, itself but how the filmmaker tells it. Nolan has been derided as less a dramatist than half showman, half mathematician, making bombastic, overcomplicated, but ultimately muddled and simplistic blockbusters that are as much puzzles as stories. But whether that characterization was ever entirely true (and I’m increasingly convinced that it never was) it seems beside the point when you see how thoughtfully and rewardingly it’s been applied to a biography of a real person. It seems possible that “Oppenheimer” could retrospectively seem like a turning point in the director’s filmography, when he takes all of the stylistic and technical practices that he’d been honing for the previous twenty years in intellectualized pulp blockbusters and turns them inward, using them to explore the innermost recesses of the mind and heart, not just to move human pieces around on a series of interlinked, multi-dimensional storytelling boards.
The movie is an academic-psychedelic biography in the vein of those 1990s Oliver Stone films that were edited within an inch of their lives (at times it’s as if the park bench scene in “JFK” had been expanded to three hours). There’s also a strain of pitch-black humor, in a Stanley Kubrick mode, as when top government officials meet to go over a list of possible Japanese cities to bomb, and the man reading the list says that he just made an executive decision to delete Kyoto from it because he and his wife honeymooned there. (The Kubrick connection is cemented further by the presence of “Full Metal Jacket” star Matthew Modine, who co-stars as American engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush.) As an example of top-of-the-line, studio-produced popular art with a dash of swagger, “Oppenheimer” draws on Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” late-period Terrence Malick, nonlinearly-edited art cinema touchstones like “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” “The Pawnbroker,” “All That Jazz” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock“; and, inevitably, “Citizen Kane” (there’s even a Rosebud-like mystery surrounding what Oppenheimer and his hero Albert Einstein, played by Tom Conti, talked about on the banks of a Princeton pond). Most of the performances have a bit of an “old movie” feeling, with the actors snapping off their lines and not moving their faces as much as they would in a more modern story. A lot of the dialogue is delivered quickly, producing a screwball comedy energy. This comes through most strongly in the arguments between Robert and Kitty about his sexual indiscretions and refusal to listen to her mostly superb advice; the more abstract debates about power and responsibility between Robert and General Groves, and the scenes between Strauss and a Senate aide (Alden Ehrenreich) who is advising him as he testifies before a committee that he hopes will approve him to serve in President Dwight Eisenhower’s cabinet. But as a physical experience, “Oppenheimer” is something else entirely—it’s hard to say exactly what, and that’s what’s so fascinating about it. I’ve already heard complaints that the movie is “too long,” that it could’ve ended with the first bomb detonating, and could’ve done without the bits about Oppenheimer’s sex life and the enmity of Strauss, and that it’s perversely self-defeating to devote so much of the running time, including the most of the third hour, to a pair of governmental hearings: the one where Oppenheimer tries to get his security clearance renewed, and Strauss trying to get approved for Eisenhower’s cabinet. But the film’s furiously entropic tendencies complement the theoretical discussions of the how’s and why’s of the individual and collective personality. To greater and lesser degrees, all of the characters are appearing before a tribunal and bring called to account for their contradictions, hypocrisies, and sins. The tribunal is out there in the dark. We’ve been given the information but not told what to decide, which is as it should be.
Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.”
UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA AP
Cillian Murphy, center, in a scene from “Oppenheimer.”
UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA AP
On Science and Culture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue, was the best article that he ever wrote and it touched on a lot of critical issues including the one that Francis Schaeffer discusses in this blog post!
(53:00)
OPPENHEIMER:
Meaning is always attained at the cost of leaving things out. …We have freedom of choice, but we have no escape from the fact that doing some things must leave out others. In practical terms, this means, of course, that our knowledge is finite and never all-encompassing.
(53:12)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: What he is saying here that we stand and confront the total thing that confronts us, objective reality and including man himself and because we are finite we always have to leave out something in our studies, we can’t study the whole, and this of course becomes more and more specialized. Can’t you see that now you can read it the other way: Only somebody who is infinite can start from his own starting point point and come to absolute knowledge. Oppenheimer is perfectly right. It is a tremendous article. Everything I study I got to exclude something else and this is because we are finite as he points out, consequently beginning with one’s self, one would have to be infinite to come to any absolute meanings. So it is no wonder that he says that science isn’t going to give us a conclusion. Science can’t give us a conclusion. In a sense since we are confronting by such a tremendous thing, the more you study the less of a conclusion you can have, because the more you study the more you have to exclude. Now this isn’t just foolishness this is one of the great scientists of our day, and he is absolutely right.
You know more and more, but every time you choose a field, for instance, if you go from one area of physics to a narrower area of physics, and then a narrower area of physics, and then a narrower area of physics, and then a narrower area of physics, and in each case you exclude something and you exclude and exclude and consequently beginning with a point of finiteness you can never expect to come to the end of the search.
(56:00)
I am not saying anything against the scientific method. I am all for it. I believe the edifice that science is building is valid.
Now then is there a possibility of knowing something really though? We as Christians think there is. We think there is an infinite God that does know things really and who has ultimate meaning really and because of our relationship with God, He can tell us that which will have real meaning. But now what have I have I have said?
Mr. Oppenheimer there is a solution to the dilemma, but in order to come to it you have to shift gears, and not shift gears from 320 to 321, but from one side of antithesis to the opposite of an antithesis. You are absolutely right Mr. Oppenheimer you are not going to arrive at real solutions concerning man. You are not come to this from a humanist starting point, because beginning from a finite viewpoint, never mind infinity, just face to face with the massive stuff you face, every time you make a choice to really study something in detail you have to reject the study of something’s else, so you never get off the ground in a sense. I am not saying anything against the scientific method. I am all for it. I believe the edifice that science is building is valid. As a Bible believing Christian who believes that God has made all things and all truth is one I am a friend of real science.
Oppenheimer is pointing that you are not going to arrive to a final solution concerning man beginning with your own finite starting point. We as Christians agree, but we do believe though that there is one that does things absolutely because He is not limited and He is not finite and He didn’t begin facing a mass of stuff that He couldn’t comprehend and had to reject certain studies in order to grasp others. It is God. And because man is made in the image of God, this God if He wants to can tell us some things in communication that tells us the thing absolutely. Now there have been scientists that believe that. Who is one of them? Hooray it is Isaac Newton. And Newton didn’t fit in to the Newtonian concept. Remember (the liberal theologian) Richardson? Richardson said he was very appreciative of Newton but he rejected Newton’s cosmology and his view of history. This is exactly what Oppenheimer is touching on here when he said Newton was not Newtonian. So therefore Oppenheimer has a deep grasp of the dilemma, and now he is to the end. ON SCIENCE AND CULTURE is the article, but so far all he has told us is the dilemma from a purely scientific viewpoint. We can read on here:
(59:46)
OPPENHEIMER:
There is always much that we miss, much that we cannot be aware of because the very act of learning, of ordering, of finding unity and meaning, the very power to talk about things means that we leave out a great deal.
Ask the question: Would another civilisation based on life on another planet very similar to ours in its ability to sustain life have the same physics? One has no idea whether they would have the same physics or not. We might be talking about quite different questions. This makes ours an open world without end.
(1:00:21)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Why? Because their physics might be on different choice they studied and what they left unstudied. In other words they might make an entirely different start and because our physics is not based on the totally reality but it is based on what we decided to study rather than what we have left unstudied. Of course in the terms of old classic physics this wouldn’t make sense, but Oppenheimer is taking about the physics we now understand. So he says you just can’t talk like this.
So Oppenheimer only has a page left and he hasn’t given us the solution of culture yet.
(1:01:24)
OPPENHEIMER: THE THINGS THAT MAKE US choose one set of questions, one branch of enquiry rather than another are embodied in scientific traditions. In developed sciences each man has only a limited sense of freedom to shape or alter them; but they are not themselves wholly determined by the findings of science. They are largely of an ~esthetic character. The words that we use: simplicity, elegance, beauty: indicate that what we grope for is not only more knowledge, but knowledge that has order and harmony in it, and continuity with the past.
(1:02:09)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now what is he talking about in line with our lectures on the intellectual climate? He is saying that if you live downstairs you don’t find meaning because this isn’t just in the area just of knowledge. This is in the area of the esthetic. Now these words listen: esthetic character, elegance, beauty, order, harmony, on the basis of everything in the area of science that he has set forth or modern man has set forth in his downstairs so called scientific are, WHAT DO THESE WORDS MEAN? And the answer is absolutely nothing. Don’t you see what he has done. Here is J. Robert Oppenheimer with all his brilliance. He must be a fine man. I have known some men who have known him and they say he is a fine man. With all his brilliance and being a fine man he is really despite of all this really playing a trick under the table on us. He has talked about science, and now he hasn’t built any bridge between science and what he is talking about, he just jumps. That is all. I don’t mean he is dishonest at all. I imagine he is a very honest man, but there is no other way to think in his framework. There is no where else to go. The very words he uses are meaningless based on everything that has proceeded in this article. He says they are of an ecstatic character. In other words they are like a song. For instance, elegance and beauty, what do these words mean in the area he has been talking? Nothing absolutely nothing. Order and Harmony in these areas as he moves over into culture, the words are meaningless. Down a little further.
(1:04:11)
OPPENHEIMER: I am not here thinking of the popular subject of “mass culture.” In broaching that, it seems to me one must be critical but one must, above all, be human; one must not be a snob; one must be rather tolerant and almost loving.
(1:04:23)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: What do these words mean? Nothing in the area he has given us. He hasn’t given us any framework for these words to have any meaning. Human, tolerant, almost loving, he has moved entirely into a new area. He has gone upstairs. Now we aren’t calling names. I have said I am sure he is a fine man, but on the basis of his own presuppositions he has nowhere else to go. This is the amazing factor. I am sure he is a man of goodwill, but with all his goodwill he has no where else to go. Down at the bottom of page 9 and running page 10.
(1:05:09)
OPPENHEIMER:
Rather, I think loosely of what we may call the intellectual community: artists, philosophers, statesmen, teachers, men of most professions, prophets, scientists.
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: It is interesting. It is prophets now not ministers you see. Prophets, prophets, it is a scary word. Here are the mediators coming. The mediators of the symbols, he doesn’t say this of course, but that is what scares me to death.
(1:05:33)
OPPENHEIMER:
This is an open group, with no sharp lines separating those that think themselves of it. It is a growing faction of all peoples. In it is vested the great duty for enlarging, preserving, and transmitting our knowledge and skills, and indeed our understanding of the interrelations, priorities, commitments, injunctions, that help men deal with their joys, temptations and sorrows, their finiteness, their beauty. Some of this has to do, as the sciences so largely do, with propositional truth, with propositions which say “If you do thus and so you will see this and that”; these are objective and can be checked and cross-checked; though it is always wise from time to time to doubt, there are ways to put an end to the doubt. This is how it is with the sciences.
In this community there are other statements which “emphasise a theme” rather than declare a fact. They may be statements of connectedness or relatedness or importance, or they may be in one way or another statements of commitment. For them the word “certitude,” which is a natural norm to apply in the sciences, is not very sensible–depth, firmness, universality, perhaps more–but certitude, which applies really to verification, is not the great criterion in most of the work of a philosopher, a painter, a poet, or a playwright. For these are not, in the sense I have outlined, objective. Yet for any true community, for any society worthy of the name, they must have an element of community of being common, of being public, of being relevant and meaningful to man, not necessarily to everybody, but surely not just to specialists.
(1:07:29)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now here you see is the total dilemma. Emphasizing a theme
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
At the 42:11 mark of the following 1963 talk by Francis Schaeffer on the 1962 paper by J. Robert Oppenheimer are these words:
EINSTEIN ONCE SAID that a physical theory was not determined by the facts of nature, but was a free invention of the human mind. This raises the question of how necessary is the content of science–how much is it something that we are free not to find–how much is it something that could be otherwise? This is, of course, relevant to the question of how we may use the words “objectivity” and “truth.” Do we, when we find something, “invent” it or “discover” it?…We are free in the start of things. We are free as to how to go about it; but then the rock of what the world is, shapes this freedom with a necessary answer.
Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.”
UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA AP
Cillian Murphy, center, in a scene from “Oppenheimer.”
UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA AP
Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.”
NEW YORK — Christopher Nolan has never been one to take the easy or straightforward route while making a movie.
He shoots on large-format film with large, cumbersome cameras to get the best possible cinematic image. He prefers practical effects over computer-generated ones and real locations over soundstages — even when that means recreating an atomic explosion in the harsh winds of the New Mexico desert in the middle of the night for “Oppenheimer,” out July 21.
Though, despite internet rumors, they did not detonate an actual nuclear weapon.
And as for the biography that inspired his newest film, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s riveting, linear narrative “American Prometheus” was simply the starting point from which Nolan crafted a beguiling labyrinth of suspense and drama.
It’s why, in his two decades working in Hollywood, Nolan has become a franchise unto himself — the rare auteur writer-director who makes films that are both intellectually stimulating and commercial, accounting for more than $5 billion in box office receipts. That combination is part of the reason why he’s able to attract Oscar winners and movie stars not just to headline his films, but also to turn out for just a scene or two.
“We’ve all been so intoxicated by his films,” said Emily Blunt, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty. “That exploration of huge themes in an entertaining way doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. That depth, the depth of the material, and yet on this massive epic scale.”
In the vast and complex story of the brilliant theoretical physicist who oversaw the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, Nolan saw exciting possibilities to play with genre and form. There was the race to develop it before the Germans did, espionage, romance, domestic turmoil, a courtroom drama, bruised egos, political machinations, communist panic, and the burden of having created something that could destroy the world.
And then there was the man himself, beloved by most but hated by enough, who, after achieving icon status in American society, saw his reputation and sense of self annihilated by the very institutions that built him.
“It’s such an ambitious story to tell,” said Matt Damon, who plays Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. “Reading the script, I had the same feeling I had when I read ‘Interstellar,’ which was: ‘This is great. How the hell is he going to do this?’”
It’s not so disconnected from Nolan’s other films, either. As critic Tom Shone noted in his book about the director, “Looked at one way, Nolan’s films are all allegories of men who first find their salvation in structure only to find themselves betrayed or engulfed by it.”
Nolan turned to Cillian Murphy to take on the gargantuan task of portraying Oppenheimer. Murphy had already acted in five Nolan films, including the Batman trilogy, “Dunkirk” and “Inception,” but this would be his first time as a lead — something he had secretly pined for.
“You feel a responsibility, but then a great hunger and excitement to try and do it, to see where you can get,” said Murphy, who prepped extensively for six months before filming, working closely with Nolan throughout. “It was an awful lot of work, but I loved it. There is this kind of frisson, this energy when you’re on a Chris Nolan set about the potential for what you’re going to achieve.”
It would be an all-consuming role that would require some physical transformation to approximate that famously thin silhouette. A complex, contradictory figure, Oppenheimer emerged from a somewhat awkward youth to become a renaissance man who seemed to carry equal passion for the Bhagavad Gita, Proust, physics, languages, New Mexico, philosophical questions about disarmament and the perfectly mixed martini. But Murphy knew he was in safe hands with Nolan.
“He’s the most natural director I’ve ever worked with. And the notes that he gives to an actor, are quite remarkable. How he can gently bring you to a different place with your performance is quite stunning in such a subtle, low-key, understated way,” Murphy said. “It can have a profound effect on the way you look at a scene from one take to another take.”
Nolan wrote the main timeline of the film in the first person, to represent Oppenheimer’s subjective experience.
“We want to see everything through Oppenheimer’s point of view,” Nolan said. “That’s a huge challenge for an actor to take on because they’re having to worry about the performance, the truth of the performance, but also make sure that that’s always open to the audience.”
The other timeline, filmed in black and white, is more objective and focused on Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a founding member of the Atomic Energy Commission and a supporter of the development of the more destructive hydrogen bomb.
“Oppenheimer” is Nolan’s first R-rated film since 2002’s “Insomnia,” which after years of working exclusively in PG-13, he’s comfortable with. It fits the gravity of the material.
“We’re dealing with the most serious and adult story you could imagine — very important, dramatic events that changed the world and defined the world we live in today,” Nolan said. “You don’t want to compromise in any way.”
Much of the filming took place in New Mexico, including at the real Los Alamos laboratory where thousands of scientists, technicians and their families lived and worked for two years in the effort to develop the bomb. Nolan enlisted many of his frequent behind-the-scenes collaborators, including his wife and producer Emma Thomas, cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, composer Ludwig Göransson and special effects supervisors Scott Fisher and Andrew Jackson, as well as some newcomers like production designer Ruth de Jong and costume designer Ellen Mirojnick to help bring this world to life.
“It was a very focused set — fun set as well, not too serious. But the work was serious, the sweating of the details was serious,” Blunt said. “Everyone needs to kind of match Chris’ excellence, or want to.”
When it came to recreating the Trinity test, Oppenheimer’s chosen name for the first nuclear detonation, art and life blended in a visceral way.
“We wanted to put the audience there in that bunker,” Nolan said. “That meant really trying to make these things as beautiful and frightening and awe inspiring as they would have been to the people at the time.”
Though no real nukes were used, they did stage a lot of real explosions to approximate the blindingly bright atomic fire and mushroom cloud.
“To do those safely in a real environment out in the nighttime desert, there’s a degree of discipline and focus and adrenaline and just executing that for the film that echoes and mirrors what these guys went through on the grandest scale in a really interesting way,” Nolan said. “I felt everybody had that very, very tight sense of tension and focus around all those shooting nights.”
The weather also “did what it needed to do, as per history,” Murphy said, as the wind picked up and whipped around the set.
“I’m rumored to be very lucky with the weather and it’s not the case. It’s just that we decide to shoot whatever the weather,” Nolan said. “In the case of the Trinity test, it was essential, central to the story that this big storm rolls in with tremendous drama. And it did. That really made the sequence come to life.”
He added: “The extremity of it put me very much in the mindset of what it must have been like for these guys. It really felt like we were out in it.”
Then, of course, there is the experience of watching “Oppenheimer.”
“When you’re making a movie, I feel like you’re on the inside looking out,” Blunt said. “It’s really overwhelming to see it reflected back at you, especially one of this magnitude. … I just felt like my breastplate was going to shatter, it was so intense.”
The hope is that when “Oppenheimer” is unleashed on the world, audiences will be as invested and will seek it out on the biggest screen they can find. The film has a run in IMAX theaters around the country, not something often afforded serious-minded, R-rated movies in the middle of the busy summer season. But this is also the essential Nolan impossibility. As more and more auteurs have had to compromise — to either go smaller or team with streamers to get the kind of budget they might once have had at studios, like even Ridley Scott and Martin Scorsese have had to do this year — Nolan continues to make his movies on the grandest scale.
“Each of his films has been revolutionary in their own way,” Murphy said. “It’s an event every time he releases a film, and rightly so.”
On Science and Culture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue, was the best article that he ever wrote and it touched on a lot of critical issues including the one that Francis Schaeffer discusses in this blog post!
EINSTEIN ONCE SAID that a physical theory was not determined by the facts of nature, but was a free invention of the human mind. This raises the question of how necessary is the content of science–how much is it something that we are free not to find–how much is it something that could be otherwise? This is, of course, relevant to the question of how we may use the words “objectivity” and “truth.” Do we, when we find something, “invent” it or “discover” it?
The fact is, of course, just what one would guess. We are, of course, free in our tradition. and in our practice, and to a much more limited extent individually to decide where to look at nature, and how to look at nature, what questions to put, with what instruments and with what purpose. But we are not the least bit free to
settle what we find. Man must certainly be free to invent the idea of mass, as Newton did and as it has been refined and re-defined; but having done so, we have not been free to find that the mass of the light quantum or the neutrino is anything but zero. We are free in the start of things. We are free as to how to go about it; but then the rock of what the world is, shapes this freedom with a necessary answer.
(43:45)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: I want to point out something. We are totally free in the beginning of things, the only time we are not free according to Oppenheimer, is when we come up to the rock of reality and we therefore can measure our previous statement by that which we know enough about to make an exact element of measure. In other words, you put forth a theory and you are free as the wind, as free as the Greek philosophers. Many of the Greek philosophers were not really interested in truth. They were interested in making a nice system in which the balance of the system was more important than what it touched in a certain sense and we haven’t got past this in men’s thinking today. Now the scientist is in the same lovely position. He can step into nature and choose what he wants to study and what he is going to let go unstudied. He can choose what instruments he is going to use. He has tremendous freedom. However, as soon as he proceeds he hits the rock of reality and as he finally comes into the area of reality gradually there shapes up an element of measure whereby he can measure his theories. But he says we are free in the start of things, but if you have a theory hasn’t come down to the hard rock stuff that is sharp enough and clearly enough seen and observed to make an accurate element of measurement then you are still free.
What am I talking about? I am talking about the stuff that is thrown against Christianity is largely still in this area. The Darwinian theory is not yet in the area where it lacks freedom. Simply because it hasn’t come up against enough hard stuff to be measured nor then to act as an element of measurement. Therefore, it is perfectly true that you are only free in the beginnings, but it also true that something like Darwinianism , and especially when one projects the question of evolution beyond organic evolution into the general philosophy of evolution, say social evolution, their men today are as free as the wind because they are in the beginning of things. They are only prolegomenon . We would say the things that are supposedly science that are being thrown at scripture and the Christian view are all in the beginning of things or the start of things. Consequently there all in the area of the philosophy that have shaped them. The presuppositions in these things are still the basic things.
Men for generations held to spontaneous generation and they held to it because they didn’t want the face the question of God. In this they were as free as the wind. A haystack produces mice, slime produces bacteria but then when you came to the time Louis Pasteur, they are no longer are free because they have found enough stuff by this time so their freedom is past and they have to give up the theory spontaneous generation which they held against the concept of a personal God such as the biblical God. They were free for many centuries, but they are no longer free so what do they do? They just push the whole thing into the more sophisticated theory of evolution which is philosophically the same as spontaneous generation which the theory had to give up previously. But now they have pushed evolution back into the start of things. Oppenheimer sets forth that the philosophic presuppositions are the things that shape it but that there is a limitation on this that it is only in the start of things but we would answer yes but modern man, especially at those places where he claims that science is making it untenable to believe the scriptures, this is always in the start of things.
Now we say that is true in archaeology and true in other areas of absolute science and true in something like the critical theories. So when people bring you something called scientific which seems to be against Christianity, then ask a very simple question: IS IT IN THE START OF THINGS OR IS THERE HARD STUFF HERE WHICH IS LIKE A ROCK WHICH THEY HAVE HAD TO CAREFULLY DETERMINE THE REALITY OF THEIR THEORIES IN THE LIGHT OF THE REALITY THAT THEY ARE NOW WORKING IN? If it is just the prolegomenon or in the start of things then it doesn’t cut any ice. Oppenheimer is absolutely right. Back in this area man is free. Back in this area you can’t tell if he is inventing something or discovering it. Back in this area it is the FREE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN MIND and not the facts of nature (quoting Albert Einstein). Now this isn’t running down science and its method. It is all very worthwhile We are for it. You have to put forth theories before you can operate. Keep Oppenheimer thing in mind. When it is in the start of things it is free as the wind to take any direction without limitation based on a man’s presuppositions. It is only when it is in the hard stuff of truth on the basis of experimentation that he is no longer free to use the thing for his own ends philosophically. I am not saying anything against the scientific method. I am all for it. I beleve the edifice that science is building is valid. I would quote Dr. Barnes again that there is a lot of junk in it, but the edifice it is building in valid. I am for it. I am for it. But let’s notice that a man like Oppenheimer puts forth this proposition and it enters into our debate with modern man.
It isn’t a question that the method is wrong. The method is alright. It is that the philosophy of those who hold to the philosophy of the Newtonians against Newton himself, it is the use they make of it. And the use they make of it is without limitation in the start of things.
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
At the 22:36 mark of the following 1963 talk by Francis Schaeffer on the 1962 paper by J. Robert Oppenheimer are these words:
The next step in the article and from a man like Oppenheimer it is of great significance, he is going to say that we can’t look to science for the solution of our problems.
———-
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On Science and Culture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue, was the best article that he ever wrote and it touched on a lot of critical issues including the one that Francis Schaeffer discusses in this blog post!
The first teaser for Christopher Nolan’s wildly anticipated Oppenheimer is here, promising one of Nolan’s sweeping epics about the life of the man whose most remembered contribution to the world is providing it with the means of its own destruction. The movie, starring Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh and most every other actor who’s not starring in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (opening on the same day!) has a lot of thematic meat on the bone. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a fascinating person with a terrific mind and a complex sense of morality.
Memorably, he is said to have quoted the Bhagavad Gita upon the first detonation of atomic bomb: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” So clearly he had spirituality on his brain. But was he religious?
Oppenheimer was raised in a secular Jewish family in New York City, and showed a keen, early interest in not only science, but also art, philosophy and literature. A group called the Ethical Culture Society provided Oppenheimer with much of his earlier moral framework, a nuanced and complex moral code that would remain with him through much of his life and study. Though he believed the use of the atomic bomb was justified in World War II, he regretted his involvement and spoke of the blood on his hands, blaming himself and his colleagues for the arms race that followed and growing skeptical that humankind would ever use nuclear power for good instead of evil.
He grew deeply interested in religion as he grew older, reading a wide variety of spiritual texts from many different faith traditions. He admired the ethical teachings and poetry of Hinduism but did not ever subscribe to it as a spiritual belief system. The Bible and other religious texts also became part of his diet. He was not conventionally religious, but religion shaped his view of the world and deeply informed his thoughts on his extraordinarily consequential role in it.
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OPPENHEIMER and EINSTEIN
(22:36)
OPPENHEIMER:
The knowledge that is being increased in this extraordinary way is inherently and inevitably very specialised.
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now then the outline of this article is as follows. Without telling you he is going to present you with a dilemma he starts with a dilemma. Secondly he tells you what great strides science has made. He mentions in passing the unity Now he comes to the fact however, and this is the next step in the article and from a man like Oppenheimer it is of great significance, he is going to say that we can’t look to science for the solution of our problems. This is what he is about to deal with. And he takes off on this by emphasizing that the knowledge is specialized and increasingly specialized.
(23:34)
OPPENHEIMER:
The traditions of science are specialised traditions; this is their strength. Their strength is that they use the words, the machinery, the concepts, the theories, that fit their subjects; they are not encumbered by having to try to fit other sorts of things. (page 7)
…in its terminology it is most highly specialised, almost unintelligible except to the men who have worked in the field. …It cannot be formulated in terms that can reasonably be defined without a long period of careful schooling.
(24:37)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: In other words, not only are the disciplines in a smaller and smaller area, but less and less people know what you are talking about, but you have to have a long schooling not only to understand the subject but to understand what the man is talking about. Still on page 7
(24:49)
OPPENHEIMER:
This is comparably true in other subjects.
ONE HAS THEN in these specialisations the professional communities in the various sciences.
…The specialising habits of the sciences have, to some extent, because of the tricks of universities, been carried over to other work, to philosophy and to the arts. There is technical philosophy which is philosophy as a craft, philosophy for other philosophers, and there is art for the artists and the critics. To my mind, whatever virtues the works have for sharpening professional tools, they are profound misreadings, even profound subversions of the true functions of philosophy and art, which are to address themselves to the general common human problem. Not to everybody, but to anybody: not to specialists.
(25:39)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now we are coming into the dilemma. He says the scientists that are making these tremendous progresses, are scientists in an ever greater specialization and even in communication concerning the truths given by these scientists, less and less people understand what you are talking about because the language is more and more technical and needs more and more education to even know the terminology. Now he says because these things are thrown together in the tricks of the universities this same mentality sometimes is brought over and often is brought over in the areas. For example a philosophy in the arts, and he says there may be a place for this, for philosophers to talk to philosophers and artists to talk to artists but he feels this is a mistake in general. These subjects shouldn’t be more and more specialized but they should be for everyone who is educated. Why is he saying this? Well because science isn’t going to come up with the answers that man needs as man. That is where he is taking us.
He is saying stop art and stop philosophy from going the same way as science. Hooray for science going in this direction but don’t let philosophy be dragged in this direction. H Oppenheimer continues on page 8.
(27:19) OPPENHEIMER:
IT HAS OFTEN BEEN held that the great discoveries in science, coming into the lives of men, affect their attitudes toward their place in life, their views, their philosophy. There is surely some truth in this.*
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now he is saying there is some truth that great discoveries affect men’s philosophy. Then he has a very remarkable note at the bottom of the page.
(27:55)
OPPENHEIMER: (FOOTNOTE: Examples that are usually given include Newton and Darwin. Newton is not a very good example, for ~vhen we look at it closely ~ve are struck by the fact that in the sense of the Enlightenment, the sense of a coupling of faith in scientific progress and man’s reason with a belief in political progress and the secularisation of human life, Newton himself was in no way a Newtonian. His successors were.)
(28:41)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: A most remarkable note. Isaac Newton is a case apart. Newton does not fit into this category. A little further down Oppenheimer says:
Some of the great discoveries of this century go under the name of Relativity and Uncertainty, and when we hear these words we may think, “This is the way I felt this morning: I was relatively confused and quite uncertain”: this is not at all a notion of what technical points are involved in these great discoveries, or what lessons.
(29:34)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Now he started by saying IT HAS OFTEN BEEN held that the great discoveries in science, coming into the lives of men, affect their attitudes toward their place in life, their views, their philosophy. There is surely some truth in this.* Then he has a footnote that says Examples that are usually given include Newton and Darwin. Newton is not a very good example, Now he comes in the next paragraph and says don’t be overwhelmed by this because really you have to be careful when you say this.
For instance, if you carry relatively and uncertainty and this is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Einstein’s relativity theories, if you carry this over to what men think of relativity and uncertainty in other areas of life then you miss the whole point. There absolutely is no relation between these things. He said at the beginning IT HAS OFTEN BEEN held that the great discoveries in science, coming into the lives of men, affect their attitudes toward their place in life, their views, their philosophy. But now he is disengaging himself. Oppenheimer says it isn’t so with Isaac Newton, and he says it isn’t so you people in our generation often think it is so when they think the words Relativity and Uncertainty in the scientific fields carry over into a sense of personal Relativity and Uncertainty. He says there is a chasm between these two points. One would quickly say that no one notice better than Oppenheimer and he is certainly right.
Einstein’s relativity theory doesn’t mean it is really relative. It’s of only one area. It does all the area of physics. It doesn’t even begin with absolute relativity, you still have the speed of light in a vacuum to begin. Heisenberg’s uncertainty Principle has nothing to do with absolute uncertainty. It only has to do with appearance of a particle in a limited field. It has nothing to do with absolute uncertainty.
He said first of all IT HAS OFTEN BEEN held that the great discoveries in science affect …philosophy but really now what he is doing by first disengaging Newton and now by disengaging this you feel he is moving the other direction.
(32:20)
OPPENHEIMER:
Thus I think that the great effects of the sciences in stimulating and in enriching philosophical life and cultural interests have been necessarily confined to the rather early times in the development of a science.
(32:30)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: This is extremely important. In other words what he is saying is if there is any impact on men’s worldviews in a philosophy sense or a common view by the sciences it necessarily comes in the first blow of a discovery because it is only at that point that the common people can understand what it is all about. After that it becomes so detailed, so specialized and so technical , that it really doesn’t have an impact except on a small segment of society. The only way the Darwinian theory has an impact, and Oppenheimer brings this in, is as a simple statement, and then it has an impact but when it gets down to the hard stuff of technical research and findings it passes out of the place of general affect on people’s thinking simply because you move into highly technical areas that really don’t touch on the normal things of life at all. Really what Oppenheimer is saying here is tremendous. Just what you would think from a man like this. It is tremendously perceptive. He goes on in a rather long section on page 8. In my marking on this article, I have put A. The fact that he says there is some truth in the fact great discoveries of science affect their philosophies, but by the time you come to the next paragraph he has disengaged himself and he is saying the absolute other, that it is men’s philosophies that are basic to their scientific discoveries. Let me read this to you.
(34:32)
OPPENHEIMER:
The hunger of the Eighteenth Century to believe in the power of reason, to wish to throw off authority, to wish to secularise, to take an optimistic view of man’s condition, seized on Newton and his discoveries as an illustration of something which was already deeply believed in quite apart from the law of gravity and the laws of motion. The hunger with which the Nineteenth Century seized on Darwin had very much to do with the increasing awareness of history and change, with the great desire to naturalise man, to put him into the world of nature, which pre-existed long before Darwin and which made him welcome. I have seen an example in this century where the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr found in the quantum theory when it was developed thirty years ago this remarkable trait: it is consistent with describing an atomic system, only much less completely than we can describe large-scale objects. We have a certain choice as to which traits of the atomic system we wish to study and measure and which to let go; but we have not the option of doing them all. This situation, which we all recognise, sustained in Bohr his long-held view of the human condition: that there are mutually exclusive ways of using our words, our minds, our souls, any one of which is open to us, but which cannot be combined:
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(36:37)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: If only our Christian brethren could understand what is being put forth here then what a different position we would be in. Oppenheimer first of all states that there is some truth in the fact that great discoveries affect men’s philosophies but by and large it is the other way. The reason that men grasped on Newton’s discoveries and made out of them what they did had nothing to do with the law of gravity and the law of motion, but what it had to do with basically was the 18th century was hungry to believe in the power of reason and wish to throw off authority, wish to promote secularism, to take an optimistic view of man’s condition.
Newton’s discoveries as to gravity and the laws of motion didn’t necessarily produce what they made out of it. It produced what they made out of it because their mind was already set in this direction because of their already held philosophy. This is tremendous. Newton didn’t make out of these discoveries what they made out of them because Newton had a different philosophy and that is why that footnote is so important. Newton as a Christian didn’t take a Newtonian position because he held a Christian philosophy, a Christian worldview. The reason his discoveries led to the later Newtonian viewpoint had nothing to do with the discoveries, it was because of the previous philosophy.
The same things is true about Darwin. What has brought forth the acceptance of Darwin? It is the great desire to naturalize man. There it is. To man merely a part of uniformity (Darwin doesn’t use the word but that’s what it is), to put man right in the middle of uniformity of natural causes and that is the end of it. Therefore, when Darwin came along and of course, Darwin held the opposite view that Newton held in his personal view of life, yet nevertheless, what Oppenheimer is pointing out here is that though Darwin may have been in the direction of what men made of his position, which wasn’t true of Newton, yet nevertheless the reason Darwinism was so readily accepted was because the philosophy was already there which was the proper seedbed for what Darwin is planting.
Now then this thing of Niels Bohr is a highly sophisticated statement of the same thing. As Niels Bohr laid hold of the quantum theory, why did he lay hold to it? He laid hold to it according to Oppenheimer, because it sustained his view of the human condition, that is with man being confronted with the whole of reality, man must make arbitrary choices of what he will touch and what he won’t touch and he must let the rest go. That is exciting!
That is exacting where we are left with quantum position. Now then let us quickly notice, just because Niels Bohr laid hold of it with such graft because of his previous view doesn’t prove the quantum theory is basically wrong. It doesn’t say that. Of course the quantum theory really doesn’t answer anything but just jumps over the problem. But it doesn’t say it is necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t say it is right!
What Oppenheimer is laying down here is the acceptance of the quantum solution rather the acceptance of something else was because of the previous philosophy of Niels Bohr. The reason according to Oppenheimer that Niels Bohr laid hold to this solution rather than let’s say a more classical one was because Niels Bohr had decided that is all there is to life anyway. This is the way that must act in all the areas of life. Now then regardless what we think of his illustration of Niels Bohr, but I find it maybe the must intriguing part of this, but this whole paragraph is overwhelmingly intriguing. In other words instead of the great discoveries of science particularly being the things that affect philosophy, it is the other way around. Men make out of the discoveries what they want to make out of them, men choose what they want to deal with and what they don’t want to deal with on the basis of their previous philosophical presuppositions. (43:00)
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
On Science and Culture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue, was the best article that he ever wrote and it touched on a lot of critical issues including the one that Francis Schaeffer discusses in this blog post!
At the 7:00 mark of the following 1963 talk by Francis Schaeffer on the 1962 paper by J. Robert Oppenheimer are these words:
The world will not be the same, no matter what we do with atomic bombs, because the knowledge of how to make them cannot be exorcised.
Christopher Nolan is a visionary filmmaker renowned for his mind-bending narratives and masterful storytelling. He has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique blend of intellect and spectacle. From Memento to Inception andInterstellar, Nolan’s films challenge conventional boundaries and explore the complexities of time, memory, and identity.
His attention to detail, innovative cinematography, and immersive sound design create a cinematic experience like no other. Nolan’s ability to craft intricate plots and his love for practical effects have earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase. Now, an actor has claimed that Christian Bale’s The Dark Knight trilogy movies aren’t Nolan’s best anymore.
Cast Member Calls OppenheimerChristopher Nolan’s Best Work
Christopher Nolan, renowned for his ventures into superheroes and mind-bending science fiction, will soon unveil his interpretation of the historical genesis of nuclear power. The highly anticipated film boasts an ensemble of remarkable talent, delving into the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, revered as the father of the atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer
Benny Safdie, a notable member of the film’s ensemble cast, took to his personal Instagram to offer an exclusive sneak peek of his initial thoughts. Safdie raved about the highly anticipated project, declaring it as Nolan’s most exceptional work to date.
“I got to see the movie recently, and I can tell you with certainty: This is Chris’ best movie by far. It’s got everything firing on all cylinders.”
Benny Safdie, portraying the Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Edward Teller in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer,astounded fans by sharing his early impressions of the film on social media. Accompanied by a captivating image of his character, Safdie’s first reaction arrived well ahead of the official review embargo for Oppenheimer.
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OPPENHEIMER and EINSTEIN
On Science and Culture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue
Francis Schaeffer comments in 1963 on 1962 article “On Science and Culture” by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue
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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: (Henderik Roelof) “Hans” Rookmaaker sent me this article “On Science and Culture” by J. Robert Oppenheimer, which it appeared in Encounter (Magazine) October 1962 issue, which is very, very recent. I would say it is an important article and it shows a great deal of perception, and for that reason I think it worth a lecture. Here is a little more than the first page:
We live in an unusual world, marked by very great and irreversible changes
that occur within the span of a man’s life. We live in a time where our knowledge and understanding of the world of nature grows wider and deeper at an unparalleled rate; and where the problems of applying this knowledge to man’s needs and hopes are new, and only a little illuminated by our past history.
Indeed it has always, in traditional societies, been the great function of culture to keep things rather stable, quiet, and unchanging. It has been the function of tradition to assimilate one epoch to another, one episode to another, even one year to another. It has been the function of culture to bring out meaning, by pointing to the constant or recurrent traits of human life, which in easier days one talked about as the eternal verities.
In the most primitive societies, if one believes the anthropologists, the principal function of ritual, religion, of culture is, in fact, almost to stop change. It is to provide for the social organism what life provides in such a magic way for living organisms, a kind of homeostasis, an ability to remain intact, to respond only very little to the obvious convulsions and alterations in the world around.
To-day, culture and tradition have assumed a very different intellectual and social purpose. The principal function of the most vital and living traditions to-day is precisely to provide the instruments of rapid change. There are many things which go together to bring about this alteration in man’s life; but probably the decisive one is science itself. I will use that word as broadly as I know, meaning the natural sciences, meaning the historical sciences, meaning all those matters on which men can converse objectively with each other. I shall not continually repeat the distinction between science as an effort to find out about the world and understand it, on the one hand, and science, in its applications in technology, as an effort to do something useful with the knowledge so acquired. But certain care is called for, because, if we call this the scientific age, we make more than one kind of oversimplification. When we talk about science to-day, we are likely to think of the biologist with his microscope or the physicist with his cyclotron; but almost certainly a great deal that is not now the subject of successful study will later come to be. I think we probably to-day have under cultivation only a small part of the terrain which will be natural for the sciences a century from now. I think of the enormously rapid growth in many parts of biology, and of the fact, ominous but not without hope, that man is a part of nature and very open to study.
The reason for this great change from a slowly moving, almost static world, to the world we live in, is the cumulative character, the firmness, the givenness of what has been learned about nature. It is true that it is transcended when one goes into other parts of experience. What is true on the scale of the inch and the centimeter may not be true on the scale of a billion light-years; it may not be true either of the scale of a one hundred billionth of a centimetre; but it stays true where it was proven. It is fixed. Thus everything that is found out is added to what was known before, enriches it, and does not have to be done over again. This essentially cumulative irreversible character of learning things is the hallmark of science. (Page 3)
T H I S M E A N S that in man’s history the sciences make changes which cannot be wished away and cannot be undone. Let me give two quite different examples. There is
much talk about getting rid of atomic bombs. I like that talk; but we must not fool ourselves. The world will not be the same, no matter what we do with atomic bombs, because the knoxvledge of how to make them cannot be exorcised. It is there; and all our arrangements for living in a new age must bear in mind its omnipresent virtual presence, and the fact that one cannot change that. A different example: we can never have again the delusions about the centrality and importance of our physical habitat, now that we know something of where the earth is in the solar system, and know that there are hundreds of billions of suns in our galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies within reach of the great telescopes of the world. We can never again base the dignity of man’s life on the special character in space and time of the place where he happens to live.
(7:16)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Beginning at this particular place you notice that he makes the point there is something irreversible in what has been learned by science, and even if you want to get rid of it, you can’t. Then you notice that he also says that we can no longer base the dignity of man’s life on the special character in space and time in place where he happens to live. Now in reality the rest of the article centers in this. You won’t know it at this particular point, but it is the case. The question “If we can not base the dignity of man’s life upon the special character in space and time where he happens to live,” then what can you base it on? Now this is what this article deals with.
I would say that Oppenheimer’s observation has to be limited in one sense, and that is men can forget knowledge. For instance, one can find things in the old Egyptian culture that men can not do today. Just as a passing thing there is evidence that the Egyptians could temper bronze where you could shave with it. No living person today that I know can temper bronze so you shave with it. Consequently, his statement is a good statement, but with this limitation, and that is men can forget the knowledge that they have.
If something happened and everyone living forgot that the atom had been split then you would return to a time when the atom bomb could be forgotten. This is just an illustration. I am not saying that it will take place.
(10:00)
At the end of the next paragraph he makes a contrast between the scientific knowledge of which he has been speaking and moral progress. Oppenheimer says,
“Moral regress, as we have seen in our day, is just as possible. Scientific regress is not compatible with the continued practice of science.“
Now actually I suppose he means the continued practice of the science at hand, and not forgotten, but he would point out that in our day we have learned that moral regression is possible. Now he has drawn a comparison. Scientific progress or knowledge is not possible and on the other hand moral regression is.
But I would point out that the distinction is not final. #1 that scientific knowledge can be forgotten and has been. #2 Moral knowledge can be forgotten. Now where is the conflict here? I think the whole article points out the conflict here. He has said that scientific knowledge stands. Never again can you act as though you don’t have it. I have pointed out that men can lose knowledge. However, he seems to be talking about science moving in a straight line (knowledge of a certain area) so we can accept this. But I have added something else. Just as scientific knowledge has been and can be forgotten, moral knowledge has been and can be forgotten. But immediately we have a clash with the sharp distinction he has made. Now I will leave that fro the moment and we will come back to it closer to the conclusion. Next we go on PAGE 4:
(12:08)
OPPENHEIMER:
]t is not a simple question to answer why the scientific revolution occurred when it did. It started, as all serious historians would agree, in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and was very slow at first.
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Oppenheimer now talks about the origin of the scientific Revolution.
(12:50)
OPPENHEIMER:
No great culture has been free of curiosity and reflection, of contemplation and thought. “To know the causes of things” is something that serious mtn have always wanted, a quest that serious societies have sustained. No great culture has been free of inventive genius. If we think of the culture of Greece, and the following Hellenistic and Roman period, it is particularly puzzling that the scientific revolution did not occur then. The Greeks discovered something without which our contemporary world would not be what it is: standards of rigour, the idea of proof, the idea of logical necessity, the idea that one thing implies another. Without that, science is very nearly impossible, for unless there is a quasirigid structure of implication and necessity, then if something turns out not to be what one expected, one will have no way of finding out where the wrong point is: one has no way of correcting himself, of finding the error. But this is something that the Greeks had very early in their history. They were curious and inventive; they did not experiment in the scale of modern
days, but they did many experiments; they had as we have only recendy learned to appreciate a very high degree of technical and technological sophistication. They could make very subtle and complicated instruments; and they did, though they did not write much about it. Possibly the Greeks did not make the scientific revolution because of some flaw in communication. They were a small society, and it may be that there were not quite enough people involved.
In a matter of history, we cannot assign a unique cause, precisely because the event itself is unique; you cannot test, to see if you have it right. I think that the best guess is that it took something that was not present in Chinese civilisation, that was wholly absent in Indian clvilisation, and absent also from Greco-Roman civilisation. It needed an idea of progress, not limited to better understanding for this idea the Greeks had. It took an idea of progress which has more to do with the human condition, which is well expressed by the second half of the famous Christian dichotomy–faith and works; the notion that the betterment of man’s condition, his civility, had meaning; that we all had a responsibility to it, a duty to it, and to man. I think that it was when this basic idea of man’s condition, which supplements the other worldly aspects of religion, was fortified and fructified between the 13th and i5th centuries by the re-discovery of the ancient world’s scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians, that there was the beginning of the scientific age.
(16:00)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: A very remarkable statement. He is saying that the scientific Revolution began when it did by the bring together of two factors: Christianity and he would say the works part of the Christian dichotomy, the dichotomy being faith and works as he expresses it, with the knowledge that had been previously at hand. In other words, the secret of the thing is not knowledge but a certain viewpoint that brought it forth and we would agree with this. We won’t say faith and works, we would put it in a different framework. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to me that he senses this, feels this and says it strongly. It reminds us of the historian Arnold Joseph ToynbeeCHFBA (/ˈtɔɪnbi/; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975), who would see the same kind of thing without himself being a Christian. On the same page 5 we go on.
(Page 5)
(17:20)
OPPENHEIMER: ONE CAN MEASURE scientific growth in a numberof ways, but it is important not to mistake things. The excellence of the individual scientist does not change much with time. His knowledge and his power does, but not the high quality that makes him great. We do not look to anyone to be better than Kepler or Newton, any more than we look to anyone to be better than Sophocles, or to any doctrine to be better than the gospel according to St. Matthew. Yet one can measure things, and it has been done. One can measure how many people work on scientific questions: one can count them. One can notice how much is published.
These two criteria show a doubling of scientific knowledge in every ten years. Casimir calculated that if the Physical Review continued to grow as rapidly as it has between i945 and 1960 it would weigh more than the earth during the next century. In fifteen years, the volume of chemical abstracts has quadrupled; in biology the changes are faster still. To-day, if you talk about scientists and mean by that people who have devoted their lives to the acquisition and application of new knowledge, then 93 percent of us are still alive.
(19:07)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: Just think of the impact of this. Of all the scientists under this definition as far as Oppenheimer would know 93% are still alive. Of course this begins to bring something into focus here. The tremendous understanding and uniqueness of our own generation and the impact that science has on our own generation.
I skip page 6.
(19:41)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: On page 7 he begins to talk about the unity of science, and he has this paragraph.
OPPENHEIMER:
The unity consists of two things: first and ever more strikingly, an absence of inconsistency. Thus we may talk of life in terms of purpose and adaptation and function, but we have found in living things no tricks played upon the laws of physics and chemistry. We have found and I expect will find a total consistency, and between the different subjects, even as remote as genetics and topology, an occasional sharp mutual relevance. They throw light on each other; they have something to do with each other; often the greatest things in the sciences occur when two different discoveries made in different worlds turn out to have so much in common that they are examples of a still greater discovery.
(20:33)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER: This is a tremendous paragraph because it not only brings together the unity of science but it also brings together the unity of the thing being studied. Also you have a tool put forward and it is a tool. It is a tool for testing what is true. The tool for testing what is true is that which in the total circle is not playing any tricks on any parts. Now do you all follow this because it is of great importance. In the world of science there is a tremendous unity he is pointing out, but it is not the unity of the disciplines, but it is the unity of the thing being studied and the final test then as one moves across the field of science is that no tricks are being played in the whole by any of the parts that are established. Do you remember About a year ago we pointed out Yang Chen-Ning statement. Yang’s statement that they were observing an unity of the universe not because they came to it from a philosophic background but by observation they were forced to see this here and this is what Oppenheimer is referring to. Incidentally, Oppenheimer at Princeton works with Yang. I don’t if this has any connection or not, but anyway they are talking about the same thing.
An unity of the thing being studied and an instrument to test what you are doing. In other words, no tricks played by the things you are working with or the unity of the thing you are working with, no tricks played with the laws of any of the disciplines that are established such as physics and chemistry. Yang in 1957 below:
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted concerning Hugh Hefner that Hefner’s goal with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.” I have made the comparison throughout this series of blog posts between Hefner and King Solomon (the author of the BOOK of ECCLESIASTES). I have noticed that many preachers who have delivered sermons on Ecclesiastes have also mentioned Hefner as a modern day example of King Solomon especially because they both tried to find sexual satisfaction through the volume of women you could slept with in a lifetime.
Ecclesiastes 2:8-10 The Message (MSG)
I piled up silver and gold, loot from kings and kingdoms. I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song, and—most exquisite of all pleasures— voluptuous maidens for my bed.
9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
1 Kings 11:1-3 English Standard Version (ESV)
11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”
Excellent letter on love, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, archaeology
Pauline and Ernest on their wedding day. Hemingway
Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Piggott, Arkansas
July 15, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion 10236 Charing Cross Road Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
Recently I read an article by Cathleen Falsani entitled HUGH HEFNER: MAN OF GOD? and here is some of that article:
Hef says, “I think I am a spiritual person, but I don’t mean that I believe in the supernatural. I believe in the creation, and therefore I believe there has to be a creator of some kind, and that is my God. I do not believe in the biblical God, not in the sense that he doesn’t exist, just in the sense that I know rationally that man created the Bible and that we invented our perception of what we do not know.”
HUGH, you don’t believe in the Bible or in the idea that we were created by God and put here for a purpose, but Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and that changes everything. Mark Twain himself felt this tension too.
Mark Twain with family in Bermuda.
I know that you are good friends with Woody Allen and that you love to watch his movies. Woody’s movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS has a plot line that shows this tension in Gil Pender’s life because he believes the universe is “cold,violent, and meaningless,” but then he falls in love!!!
You may remember some of this dialogue from MIDNIGHT IN PARIS:
HEMINGWAY:You like Mark Twain?
GIL PENDER:I’m actually a huge Mark Twain fan. I think you can even make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.-
Ernest Hemingway actually lived in Piggott, Arkansas when he wrote some of his best works and Mark Twain was from neighboring Missouri.
Also in the film we find this exchange:
ADRIANA: I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.
GIL PENDER: No, you can’t. You couldn’t pick one. I mean,I can give you a checkmate argument for each side.You know, I sometimes think,”How’s anyone gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony or a sculpture that can compete with a great city?”You can’t, ’cause, like,you look around, every…every street, every boulevard is its own special art form.And when you think that in the cold,violent, meaningless universe,that Paris exists, these lights…I mean, come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune,but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafe’s, people drinking, and singing…I mean, for all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
(You got to remember that the character Gil Pender that Owen Wilson was playing was speaking the words that Woody Allen wrote!!!)
God created us so we can’t deny that we are created for a purpose and when a person falls truly in love with another person then they have a hard time maintaining this we are only just a product of evolution and our lives have no lasting significance.
Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this worldand many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”
Mark Twain admitted:
It is the strangest thing, that the world is not full of books that scoff at the pitiful world, and the useless universe and the vile and contemptible race–books that laugh at the whole paltry scheme and deride it…Why don’t I write such a book? Because I have a family. There is no other reason. – Notebook #29, 10 November 1895
The Clemens family from left to right: Clara, Livy, Jean, Sam, and Susy. Photo courtesy of the The Mark Twain House
Francis Schaeffer noted in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT:
So just as all men love even if they say love does not exist, and all men have moral motions even though they say moral motions do not exit, so all men act as though they there is a correlation between the external and the internal world, even if they have no basis for that correlation…Let me draw the parallel again. Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love. Men say there are no moral motions, everything is behavioristic, but they all have moral motions. Even in the more profound area of epistemology, no matter what a man says he believes, actually–every moment of his life–he is acting as though Christianity were true, and it is only the Christian system that tells him why he can, must, and does act the way he does (Chapter 4, HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT ).
In his book CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Norman L. Geisler commented on the above Schaeffer quote by observing:
So, if a view is true, it should be livable [as Schaeffer pointed out].
Our concept of worldview comes from the German word WELTANSHAUUNG, which means a WORLD and LIFE view. So a comprehensive worldview in this sense should be something that not only accords with good reasons and fits the facts, but it should be one that fulfills our spiritual need as well. In short, it should SATISFY both the head and the heart. Of course, one should not bypass the head on the way to the heart. Hence, we have an extended discussion of the rational and factual basis for one’s acceptance of a worldview. But once we do this, then we should not stop at the head and never reach the heart. As Pascal said,“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” (Emphasis mine in this paragraph) (Taken from Chapter 10)
Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible. This comes from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? co-authored by Dr. C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer:
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnotes #97 and #98)
A common assumption among liberal scholars is that because the Gospels are theologically motivated writings–which they are–they cannot also be historically accurate. In other words, because Luke, say (when he wrote the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts), was convinced of the deity of Christ, this influenced his work to the point where it ceased to be reliable as a historical account. The assumption that a writing cannot be both historical and theological is false.
The experience of the famous classical archaeologist Sir William Ramsay illustrates this well. When he began his pioneer work of exploration in Asia Minor, he accepted the view then current among the Tubingen scholars of his day that the Book of Acts was written long after the events in Paul’s life and was therefore historically inaccurate. However, his travels and discoveries increasingly forced upon his mind a totally different picture, and he became convinced that Acts was minutely accurate in many details which could be checked.
What is even more interesting is the way “liberal” modern scholars today deal with Ramsay’s discoveries and others like them. In the NEW TESTAMENT : THE HISTORY OF THE INVESTIGATION OF ITS PROBLEMS, the German scholar Werner G. Kummel made no reference at all to Ramsay. This provoked a protest from British and American scholars, whereupon in a subsequent edition Kummel responded. His response was revealing. He made it clear that it was his deliberate intention to leave Ramsay out of his work, since “Ramsay’s apologetic analysis of archaeology [in other words, relating it to the New Testament in a positive way] signified no methodologically essential advance for New Testament research.” This is a quite amazing assertion. Statements like these reveal the philosophic assumptions involved in much liberal scholarship.
A modern classical scholar, A.N.Sherwin-White, says about the Book of Acts: “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming…Any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must not appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken this for granted.”
When we consider the pages of the New Testament, therefore, we must remember what it is we are looking at. The New Testament writers themselves make abundantly clear that they are giving an account of objectively true events.
(Under footnote #98)
Acts is a fairly full account of Paul’s journeys, starting in Pisidian Antioch and ending in Rome itself. The record is quite evidently that of an eyewitness of the events, in part at least. Throughout, however, it is the report of a meticulous historian. The narrative in the Book of Acts takes us back behind the missionary journeys to Paul’s famous conversion on the Damascus Road, and back further through the Day of Pentecost to the time when Jesus finally left His disciples and ascended to be with the Father.
But we must understand that the story begins earlier still, for Acts is quite explicitly the second part of a continuous narrative by the same author, Luke, which reaches back to the birth of Jesus.
Luke 2:1-7 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
2 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all [a]the inhabited earth. 2 [b]This was the first census taken while[c]Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. 4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. 6 While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a [d]manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
In the opening sentences of his Gospel, Luke states his reason for writing:
Luke 1:1-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things[a]accomplished among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those whofrom the beginning [b]were eyewitnesses and [c]servants of the [d]word, 3 it seemed fitting for me as well, having [e]investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellentTheophilus; 4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been[f]taught.
In Luke and Acts, therefore, we have something which purports to be an adequate history, something which Theophilus (or anyone) can rely on as its pages are read. This is not the language of “myths and fables,” and archaeological discoveries serve only to confirm this.
For example, it is now known that Luke’s references to the titles of officials encountered along the way are uniformly accurate. This was no mean achievement in those days, for they varied from place to place and from time to time in the same place. They were proconsuls in Corinth and Cyprus, asiarchs at Ephesus, politarchesat Thessalonica, and protosor “first man” in Malta. Back in Palestine, Luke was careful to give Herod Antipas the correct title of tetrarch of Galilee. And so one. The details are precise.
The mention of Pontius Pilate as Roman governor of Judea has been confirmed recently by an inscription discovered at Caesarea, which was the Roman capital of that part of the Roman Empire. Although Pilate’s existence has been well known for the past 2000 years by those who have read the Bible, now his governorship has been clearly attested outside the Bible.
PS:This was the 43rd letter that I have written to you and again I was reacting to a quote by you. This time you asserted that the Bible was created by man. However, I gave evidence that indicated that the Bible is true and I also gave an illustration from both Mark Twain’s life and the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS that Schaeffer may have been correct when he observed, “Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love.”
Bryan Zanisnik was born in 1979 in Union, New Jersey and currently lives and works between New York and Stockholm, Sweden. Dealing with both autobiographical and social subject matter, Zanisnik creates videos, performances, installations, and photographs, often with elements of the absurd and the abject as he investigates the dynamic between performer and audience.
During graduate school, Zanisnik realized that the home videos he made as an adolescent—casting his family in Stanley Kubrick- and Martin Scorsese-inspired dramas—were an important part of his beginning as an artist. He later re-cut these home videos and incorporated them in his work.
His projects have included staging a boxing match with his childhood bully, exploring and documenting New Jersey’s Meadowlands, and creating The Philip Roth Presidential Library from hundreds of second-hand copies of books by and about the author. Having created more than thirty performances in collaboration with his parents, Zanisnik, in the New York Close Up film “Bryan Zanisnik & Eric Winkler’s Animated Conversation,” discusses his life and practice following the loss of his mother in 2015.
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Former President Barack Obama effectively came out in defense of porn in school libraries, adopting the false “banned books” narrative and claiming that parents oppose certain books because authors are black or LGBTQ+. Pictured: Obama and President Joe Biden laugh it up in the East Room of the White House on April 5, 2022. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Sure, the former president didn’t say that outright. He released a letter lamenting the supposed trend of “banned books” and standing with school librarians as if they were under siege.
“In a very real sense, you’re on the front lines — fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone,” Obama wrote in a public letter Monday. “Your dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas, and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with.”
Obama’s letter emphasized a core American value; namely, the idea that the solution to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. Yet, as with so much of Obama’s soaring rhetoric, the real message appears between the lines. Behind the effusive praise for librarians—who help “us understand each other and embrace our shared humanity”—Obama’s letter rebukes the concerned parents who dare to question why school librarians defend sexually explicit books.
“Today, some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives,” Obama wrote. “It’s no coincidence that these ‘banned books’ are often written by, or feature, people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—though there have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ words or scenes have been targets for removal. Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.”
Obama has mastered the appearance of political neutrality while advancing his agenda. He likely knows the “banned books” talking point is false—that the real debate involves whether sexually explicit books belong in school libraries.
Xxxxxxxxx
To the dedicated and hardworking librarians of America:
In any democracy, the free exchange of ideas is an important part of making sure that citizens are informed, engaged and feel like their perspectives matter.
It’s so important, in fact, that here in America, the First Amendment of our Constitution states that freedom begins with our capacity to share and access ideas—even, and maybe especially, the ones we disagree with.
More often than not, someone decides to write those ideas down in a book.
Books have always shaped how I experience the world. Writers like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and James Baldwin taught me something essential about our country’s character. Reading about people whose lives were very different from mine showed me how to step into someone else’s shoes. And the simple act of writing helped me develop my own identity—all of which would prove vital as a citizen, as a community organizer, and as president.
Today, some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives. It’s no coincidence that these “banned books” are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—though there have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing “triggering” words or scenes have been targets for removal. Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.
I believe such an approach is profoundly misguided, and contrary to what has made this country great. As I’ve said before, not only is it important for young people from all walks of life to see themselves represented in the pages of books, but it’s also important for all of us to engage with different ideas and points of view.
It’s also important to understand that the world is watching. If America—a nation built on freedom of expression—allows certain voices and ideas to be silenced, why should other countries go out of their way to protect them? Ironically, it is Christian and other religious texts—the sacred texts that some calling for book bannings in this country claim to want to defend—that have often been the first target of censorship and book banning efforts in authoritarian countries.
Nobody understands that more than you, our nation’s librarians. In a very real sense, you’re on the front lines—fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone. Your dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas, and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with.
That’s why I want to take a moment to thank all of you for the work you do every day—work that is helping us understand each other and embrace our shared humanity.
And it’s not just about books. You also provide spaces where people can come together, share ideas, participate in community programs, and access essential civic and educational resources. Together, you help people become informed and active citizens, capable of making this country what they want it to be.
And you do it all in a harsh political climate where, all too often, you’re attacked by people who either cannot or will not understand the vital—and uniquely American—role you play in the life of our nation.
So, whether you just started working at a school or public library, or you’ve been there your entire career, Michelle and I want to thank you for your unwavering commitment to the freedom to read. All of us owe you a debt of gratitude for making sure readers across the country have access to a wide range of books, and all the ideas they contain.
Finally, to every citizen reading this, I hope you’ll join me in reminding anyone who will listen—and even some people you think might not—that the free, robust exchange of ideas has always been at the heart of American democracy. Together, we can make that true for generations to come.
With gratitude,
Barack
In supporting his argument, Obama shared a link to an American Library Association project, “Unite Against Book Bans.” The American Library Association, echoing the organization PEN America, also released a list of the 13 “most challenged books of 2022.”
Even ALA admits that every single one of the “most challenged books” faces challenges because they are “claimed to be sexually explicit.”
Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, and Madison Marino, a research associate with the center, analyzed PEN America’s report claiming to identify 2,532 books banned in public schools during the 2021-2022 school year. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
PEN America’s claim is “simply false,” Greene and Marino write. They “examined online card catalogues and found that 74% of the books PEN America identified as banned from school libraries are actually listed as available in the catalogues of those school districts. In many cases, we could see that copies of those books are currently checked out and in use by students.”
PEN America’s report claims that certain school districts have banned some classic works—such as the diary of Anne Frank,“Brave New World,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”—yet Greene and Marino found each of those books listed as available in the card catalogues of the respective school districts.
Greene and Marino failed to find some books in the card catalogues of school libraries, however. They noted that those books “would strike most reasonable people as unlikely to be age-appropriate for school libraries.”
“Works like ‘Gender Queer,’ ‘Flamer,’ ‘Lawn Boy,’ ‘Fun Home,’ and ‘It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health’ either contain images of people engaged in sex acts or graphic descriptions of those acts,” the Heritage analysts wrote.
Parents don’t oppose those books due to racism or animus against those who identify as LGBTQ+—they raised concerns about sexually explicit images and passages in the books. “Gender Queer,” for example, contains pictures of sexual acts between a boy and a man. “Lawn Boy” contains long sections in which a boy reminisces about explicit experiences he had at 10 years old. “All Boys Aren’t Blue” contains sexually explicit passages. (Warning: Explicit passages quoted in the link.)
The sainted Obama would not dare to write, “I support sexually explicit pictures and passages in school libraries,” but that is the ultimate message his letter conveys.
Obama’s letter references classic authors like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, but also includes Toni Morrison, whose book “The Bluest Eye” (on the ALA list mentioned above) reportedly features incest, pedophilia, a graphic description of a married woman’s distaste for intercourse with her husband, and more.
Contrary to the rhetoric of “book bans,” parents are not calling for the government to purge these tomes from existence. They’re complaining about students in elementary schools and middle schools having access to sexually explicit materials in their school libraries.
I remember when school was about education, leading children out of ignorance and equipping them with basic math, language, and writing skills to face the world around them, not indoctrinating them into a hypersexualized identity.
Rather than agreeing with the moms and dads who are rightly outraged about porn in schools, Barack Obama stood with those falsely claiming that concerned parents are trying to suppress minorities.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Since April 17, 2023 when this resolution was passed you would think that something horrible had happened if you read the local press reports!!! Read it for yourself:
SALINE COUNTY RESOLUTION NO. 2023-_______
A RESOLUTION REQUESTING THE SALINE COUNTY LIBRARY ENSURE THAT MATERIALS CONTAINED WITHIN THE CHILDREN’S SECTION OF THE LIBRARY ARE SUBJECT MATTER AND AGE APPROPRIATE.
WHEREAS, the Saline County Library (“Library”) has been an integral part of the Saline County community for decades; and
WHEREAS, the Library is visited by individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs; and
WHEREAS, the Library currently has many children visit who may be exposed to materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, such as sexual content or imagery, that their parents or the public do not deem to be appropriate; and
WHEREAS, the Library Board of Directors and Library employees have a responsibility to ensure that materials contained at the Library, particularly within the children’s section, regardless of the legal definition of obscenity, are age appropriate for children; and
WHEREAS, while the Arkansas Legislature passed Senate Bill 81, now Act 372 of 2023, which may have an impact on the Library, and the Library should proactively take steps to ensure that materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate, such as those that contain sexual content or imagery, are not located in areas where children’s materials are located; and
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SALINE COUNTY QUORUM COURT THAT:
SECTION I: The Library should enact policies to relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.
SECTION II: That this Resolution shall be in full force and effect from and after its passage and approval.
THIS RESOLUTION adopted this 17 th day of April 2023 APPROVED: ______________________ SPONSORS: JIM WHITLEY, CLINT CHISM, EVERETTE HATCHER
Saline County justices of the peace approved a resolution “requesting” the Saline County Library to relocate certain material “due to their sexual content or imagery” on Monday evening.
The resolution, titled “A resolution requesting the Saline County Library ensure that materials contained within the children’s section of the library are subject matter and age appropriate,” is listed as “Exhibit ‘E’” at the 6:30 p.m. quorum court meeting. Its sponsors are Jim Whitley, a justice of the peace representing District 10, and Clint Chism, a justice of the peace who represents District 11.
The resolution states, “The library should enact policies to relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.”
During discussion by the justices of the peace, Whitley said he wanted to dispel “rumors and innuendo” surrounding the resolution. He said that people have accused the resolution of being related to defunding the library system.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Whitley said, emphasizing that there was no intent to defund the library in the resolution.
He also rejected claims that the library wanted to remove sexual material from the library at large. Instead, the resolution is “very specific to the children’s section of the library.”
Whitley said children are “inundated daily with sexual language, imagery content that is really inappropriate for them.”
Literature is at the core of America’s democracy, the justice of the peace said, adding that he supports the library system.
However, he said he doesn’t want children to come to the library and “read things they’re too immature to process.”
Chism said that, in the past three days, “I’ve come under a lot of anger.” He read a prepared statement, in which he expressed surprise at their response.
Laws already “do that sort of thing,” he said, adding that movies are rated, and that games and music have warning labels.
“I don’t understand why it’s even being a debate,” Chism said. “Why would you want your children to look at something like that?”
Keith Keck, a justice of the peace representing District 13, proposed an amendment that states “parents or legal guardians are ultimately responsible for the children’s use of the library and for determining the appropriate library materials for their children to have access to.”
After discussion, the amendment was voted down 9-4.
Keck also recommended an amendment that would add an additional reference to Act 372, but withdrew the motion after discussion.
The effort from Whitley and Chism references Act 372, a state law signed March 30 that exposes library personnel to criminal charges for “knowingly” distributing material found to be obscene. Such efforts add to the wave of recent pressure placed on Arkansas libraries to remove children’s books that address sexual subjects.
Act 372 removes existing language from state law that shields library personnel as well as school employees from prosecution for disseminating obscene material.
A person who loans out from a public library material found to be obscene could be charged with a Class D felony under the law. The legislation also creates a new Class A misdemeanor offense for knowingly furnishing a “harmful item” to a minor.
LIBRARY DIRECTOR RESPONDS
In an interview before the quorum court meeting, Saline County Library Director Patty Hector, Saline County Library said she didn’t believe the county resolution was necessary.
The library board has already voted to update standards for Act 372, and their books are in “the appropriate age section,” according to Hector.
Act 372 establishes parameters for citizens to challenge the appropriateness of material available to the public that is held in school or public libraries. Successful challenges could result in material being relocated to an area not accessible to minors.
Decisions not to relocate the challenged material could be appealed to a school district’s board, in the case of a school library, or the governing body of a city or county, in the case of municipal or county libraries.
Anyone wanting to make an official challenge over a book should fill out a form and speak with Hector, the director said. If the complainant wants to continue with their challenge, their complaint will go to a committee of library staff, who will discuss the book. After the committee reports back to the complainant, that person can choose to take the challenge to the quorum court.
However, Hector said that, in the seven years she has been director of the system, “I haven’t had a book challenge in all that time.”
According to the director, library staff read professional reviews of books to determine whether the works are “right” for the library. Staff in the children’s section get together if they feel “the least bit concerned” about a book for kids, she said.
Hector said the library system also doesn’t buy books from groups pushing self-published works, or works that aren’t from a well-known publisher.
“We want things that are vetted by a publisher.”
Hector said she doesn’t think anything will need to be moved or relocated, because she believes her staff bought appropriate books.
OTHER EFFORTS
In addition to Act 372, Hector pointed to other similar efforts to regulate the availability of certain books in Crawford County, Siloam Springs, Craighead County.
A late September post on the website of the conservative education and research group Family Council lists libraries with children’s and young adult books containing what it calls “graphic sexual content.” Crawford County is listed among them, though neither the Saline County Library nor the Craighead County Jonesboro Library systems are mentioned.
The post states that people can take steps to remove material they find objectionable by using a form that asks libraries to remove offensive materials and call on their elected officials to pass laws that regulate “objectionable material” in libraries.
In February, Crawford County Library System Director Deidre Grzymala announced her resignation following criticisms of the inclusion and public display of children’s books with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning themes at the library.
The Craighead County Jonesboro Library lost half its revenue in November, after residents voted to decrease the library’s 2.0 mill tax to 1.0 mill.
The Siloam Springs Library has had at least 10 of its books challenged.
Similar efforts have also been taking place in other states.
Attempts to ban books “nearly doubled” in 2022, compared against the previous year, a March 22 news release from the American Library Association states. Nationwide, there were 1,269 “demands to censor library books and resources in 2022,” according to the association.
In Saline County, other new business on the quorum court’s Monday agenda included a “resolution recognizing public safety communicators as first responders,” a “resolution authorizing continuation of ICJR grant,” an “emergency ordinance designating planning services as professional services,” an “emergency ordinance establishing Saline County Litter Control Fund” and an “ordinance amending the 2023 Saline County budget ordinance 2022-36.”
Information for this article was contributed by Will Langhorne of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Doug Thompson of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.
Dan Barker is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.
On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:
Thanks for the insights.
Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.
Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.
db
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In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:
Think about sexuality. The bible says that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). It is assumed that Adam and Eve were heterosexual, because they were commanded to “replenish the earth.” Jesus made the same assumption: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (This is also sexist, from the male point of view.)
Sexiest? Sounds like you are modern day woke and you will end up turning on your buddy Richard Dawkins?
TRANSGENDERISM SEEN BELOW
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After Life 2 – Man identifies as an 8 year old girl
During a recent interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkinsdeclared, “there are two sexes, and that’s all there is to it.”
He added that LGBTQ activists looking to discredit the reality of two biological sexes are pushing “utter nonsense.”
Dawkins further noted that those going after Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling for her commitment to the reality of two sexes are “bullies.”
Famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins strongly defends the reality of biological sex during an interview with Piers Morgan.(Screenshot/Piers Morgan Uncensored)
The famous critic of religion spoke with Morgan during a recent episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” The host prompted Hawkins by mentioning how “extraordinary” it is that LGBTQ activists and woke ideologues “want to what they call, de-gender and neutralize language.”
Piers was referring to a recent list of problematic words put out by the “EBB Language Project,” a collection of academics looking to police words that could potentially be found to be politically incorrect. The proposed list contained gendered words, such as “male, female, man, woman, mother, father,” U.K. outlet The Telegraph reported.
Dawkins had commented on the project last month, telling the paper, “The only possible response is contemptuous ridicule. I shall continue to use every one of the prohibited words. I am a professional user of the English language. It is my native language.”
During their interview, Morgan trashed such language policing and the idea there aren’t two sexes, He declared, “I mean, it’s incontrovertible. There’s no scientific doubt about this.” He also noted that a “small group of people have been quite successful actually in reshaping vast swathes of the way society talks and is allowed to talk.”
Dawkins immediately discredited the entire movement, saying, “It’s bullying.” Mentioning famous people who have been demonized for going against these activists, the renowned researcher added, “And we’ve seen the way J.K. Rowling has been bullied, Kathleen Stock has been bullied. They’ve stood up to it. But it’s very upsetting the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse and really talk errant nonsense.”
Richard Dawkins rose to fame for his books on religion and biology, but he has locked horns with woke orthodoxy over issues such as gender ideology. (Mark Renders/Getty Images)
Upon Morgan asking Dawkins how to combat the “nonsense,” Dawkins simply replied, “Science.”
He then said, “There are two sexes. You can talk about gender if you wish, and that’s subjective.” Morgan asked him about people who claim there are “a hundred genders,” though Dawkins claimed, “I’m not interested in that.”
He said bluntly, “As a biologist, there are two sexes, and that’s all there is to it.”
Subsequently, the host mentioned how Dawkins has had his career and reputation dinged for simply asking questions about inconsistencies in the left’s dogmas on gender and identity.
Morgan said, “You had a humanist award stripped in 2021 because of your comments about of this kind of thing.” He cited the tweet that cost him, which stated, “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of the NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”
Morgan mentioned, “You had your award stripped because you were effectively doing what J.K. Rowling and others have said – you were just espousing a biological fact.”
Dawkins shot back, “I wasn’t even doing that. I was asking people to discuss. Discuss! That’s what I’ve done all my life in universities.”
Demonstrators protest in support of rights for transgender youth. (Fox News )
Morgan asked Dawkins why society has “lost that ability to actually have an open and frank debate.”
The scientist replied, “There are people for whom the word discuss doesn’t mean discuss, it means you’ve taken a position, which I hadn’t… I thought it was a reasonable thing to discuss.”
Gabriel Hays is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.
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I was referred this fine article by Robyn E. Blumner in defense of her boss at the RICHARD DAWKINS FOUNDATION by a tweet by Daniel Dennett.
As an evangelical I have had the opportunity to correspond with more more secular humanists that have signed the Humanist Manifestos than any other evangelical alive (at least that has been one of my goals since reading Francis Schaeffer’s books and watching his films since 1979). Actually I just attended the retirement party held for my high school Bible teacher Mark Brink of EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL of Cordova, Tennessee on May 19th and he introduced me to the works of Francis Schaeffer and it was Schaeffer’s works that eventually help topple ROE v WADE!!! Ironically Mr Brink had a 49 year career that spanned 1973 to 2022 which was the same period that ROE v WADE survived!!!
Let me make a few points about this fine article below by the humanist Robyn E. Blumner.
Robyn is trying to use common sense on people that “GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind.” Romans 1 states:
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil,
Identitarian:A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit.(Source: Urban Dictionary)
“The Affirmations of Humanism”:We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.(Paul Kurtz,Free Inquiry, Spring 1987)
The humanist project is at a dangerous crossroads. I fear that our cohesion as fellow humanists is being torn apart by a strain of identitarianism that is making enemies of long-standing friends and opponents of natural allies.
Just at a time when it is essential for all of us to come together to work arm-in-arm against Christian Nationalism and the rise of religious privilege in law, humanism is facing a schism within its own movement. It is heartbreaking to watch and even more disheartening to know that the continued breach seems destined to grow.
The division has to do with a fundamental precept of humanism, that enriching human individuality and celebrating the individual is the basis upon which humanism is built. Humanism valorizes the individual—and with good reason; we are each the hero of our own story. Not only is one’s individual sovereignty more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation, but fighting for individual freedom—which includes freedom of conscience, speech, and inquiry—is part of the writ-large agenda of humanism. It unleashes creativity and grants us the breathing space to be agents in our own lives.
Or at least that idea used to be at the core of humanism.
Today, there is a subpart of humanists, identitarians, who are suspicious of individuals and their freedoms. They do not want a free society if it means some people will use their freedom to express ideas with which they disagree. They see everything through a narrow affiliative lens of race, gender, ethnicity, or other demographic category and seek to shield groups that they see as marginalized by ostensible psychic harms inflicted by the speech of others.
This has given rise to a corrosive cultural environment awash in controversial speakers being shouted down on college campuses; even liberal professors and newspaper editors losing their jobs for tiny, one-off slights; the cancellation of great historical figures for being men of their time; and a range of outlandish claims of microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and other crimes against current orthodoxy.
It has pitted humanists who stand for foundational civil liberties principles such as free speech and equal protection under the law against others on the political Left who think individual freedoms should give way when they fail to serve the interests of select identity groups. The most important feature of the symbol of justice is not her sword or scales; it is her blindfold. Identitarians would pull it off so she could benefit certain groups over others.
Good people with humanist hearts have been pilloried if they don’t subscribe to every jot and tittle of the identitarian gospel. A prime example is the decision last year by the American Humanist Association (AHA) to retract its 1996 award to Richard Dawkins as Humanist of the Year. The man who has done more than anyone alive to advance evolutionary biology and the public’s understanding of that science, who has brought the light of atheism to millions of people, and whose vociferous opposition to Donald Trump and Brexit certainly must have burnished his liberal cred became radioactive because of one tweet on transgender issues that the AHA didn’t like.
Apparently decades of past good works are erased by 280 characters. Just poof. No wonder a New York Times poll1 recently found that 84 percent of adults say it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem that some Americans do not speak freely because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.
This is what identitarians have wrought. Rather than lifting up individuals and imbuing them with autonomy and all the extraordinary uniqueness that flows from it, identitarians would divide us all into racial, ethnic, and gender-based groups and make that group affiliation our defining characteristic. This has the distorting effect of obliterating personal agency, rewarding group victimhood, and incentivizing competition to be seen as the most oppressed.
In addition to being inherently divisive, this is self-reinforcing defeatism. It results in extreme examples, such as a draft plan in California to deemphasize calculus as a response to persistent racial gaps in math achievement.2 Suddenly a subject as racially neutral as math has become a flashpoint for identitarians set on ensuring equality of outcomes for certain groups rather than the far-more just standard of equality of opportunity. In this freighted environment, reducing the need for rigor and eliminating challenging standards becomes a feasible solution. The notion of individual merit or recognition that some students are better at math than others becomes racially tinged and suspect.
Not only does the truth suffer under this assault on common sense, but we start to live in a Harrison Bergeron world where one’s natural skills are necessarily sacrificed on the altar of equality or, in today’s parlance, equity.
Of course, the identitarians’ focus is not just on racial issues. Gender divisions also play out on center stage. I was at a secular conference recently when a humanist leader expressed the view that if you don’t have a uterus, you have no business speaking about abortion.
Really? Only people with female reproductive organs should be heard on one of the most consequential issues of the day? Such a call, itself, is a form of lamentable sexism. And it seems purposely to ignore the fact that plenty of people with a uterus are actively opposed to the right to choose, while plenty of people without a uterus are among our greatest allies for abortion rights. Why should those of us who care about reproductive freedom cut fully half of all humanity from our roster of potential vocal supporters and activists?
As has been said by others perplexed and disturbed by such a narrow-minded view, you don’t have to be poor to have a valid opinion on ways to alleviate poverty. You don’t have to be a police officer to have a valid opinion on policing. And, similarly, you don’t have to be a woman to have a valid opinion on abortion rights.
If the Affirmation quoted at the beginning of this article that rejects “divisive parochial loyalties” based on facile group affiliations isn’t a rejection of identitarianism, I don’t know what is. In his 1968 essay “Humanism and the Freedom of the Individual,” Kurtz stated bluntly:
Any humanism that does not cherish the individual, I am prepared to argue, is neither humanistic nor humanitarian. … Any humanism worthy of the name should be concerned with the preservation of the individual personality with all of its unique idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. We need a society in which the full and free development of every individual is the ruling principle. The existence of individual freedom thus is an essential condition for the social good and a necessary end of humanitarianism.
The individual is the most important unit in humanism. When our individuality is stripped away so we can be fitted into prescribed identity groups instead, something essential to the humanist project is lost. Those pushing for this conception of society are misconstruing humanism, diminishing human potential and self-actualization, and driving a wedge between good people everywhere.
Robyn E. Blumner is the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason &, Science. She was a nationally syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) for sixteen years.
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER LGBTQ+ SCHISM
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Francis Schaeffer later in this blog post discusses what the unbelievers in Romans 1 were rejecting, but first John MacArthur discusses what the unbelievers in the Democratic Party today are affirming and how these same activities were condemned 2000 years ago in Romans 1.
Christians Cannot And MUST Not Vote Democrat – John MacArthur
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A Democrat witness testifying before the HouseJudiciary Committee on abortion rights Thursday declared that men can get pregnant and have abortions. This reminds of Romans chapter 1 and also John MacArthur’s commentary on the 2022 Agenda of the Democratic Party:
25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…26 For this reason (M)GOD GAVE THEM OVER to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm.
I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”
Romans 1 is not politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live….it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.
Dem witness tells House committee men can get pregnant, have abortions
‘I believe that everyone can identify for themselves,’ Aimee Arrambide tells House Judiciary Committee
A Democrat witness testifying before the HouseJudiciary Committee on abortion rights Thursday declared that men can get pregnant and have abortions.
Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of the abortion rights nonprofit Avow Texas, was asked by Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., to define what “a woman is,” to which she responded, “I believe that everyone can identify for themselves.”
“Do you believe that men can become pregnant and have abortions?” Bishop asked.
“Yes,” Arrambide replied.
The remarks from Arrambide followed a tense exchange between Bishop and Dr. Yashica Robinson, another Democrat witness, after he similarly asked her to define “woman.”
Aimee Arrambide testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on May 11, 2020. (YouTube screenshot) (Screenshot/ House Committee on the Judiciary)
“Dr. Robinson, I noticed in your written testimony you said that you use she/her pronouns. You’re a medical doctor – what is a woman?” Bishop asked Robinson, an OBGYN and board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“I think it’s important that we educate people like you about why we’re doing the things that we do,” Robinson responded. “And so the reason that I use she and her pronouns is because I understand that there are people who become pregnant that may not identify that way. And I think it is discriminatory to speak to people or to call them in such a way as they desire not to be called.”
“Are you going to answer my question? Can you answer the question, what’s a woman?” Bishop asked.
Donna Howard and Aimee Arrambide speaks at Making Virtual Storytelling and Activism Personal during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 14, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Hubert Vestil/Getty Images for SXSW)
“I’m a woman, and I will ask you which pronouns do you use?” Robinson replied. “If you tell me that you use she and her pronouns … I’m going to respect you for how you want me to address you.”
“So you gave me an example of a woman, you say that you are a woman, can you tell me otherwise what a woman is?” Bishop asked.
“Yes, I’m telling you, I’m a woman,” Robinson responded.
“Is that as comprehensive a definition as you can give me?” Bishop asked.
“That’s as comprehensive a definition as I will give you today,” Robinson said. “Because I think that it’s important that we focus on what we’re here for, and it’s to talk about access to abortion.”
“So you’re not interested in answering the question that I asked unless it’s part of a message you want to deliver…” Bishop fired back.
Wednesday’s hearing, titled, “Revoking your Rights,” addressed the threat to abortion rights after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion signaled the high court is poised to soon strike down Roe v. Wade. John MacArthur explains God’s Wrath on unrighteousness from Romans Chapt…
18 For (A)the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who (B)suppress the truth [a]in unrighteousness, 19 because (C)that which is known about God is evident [b]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For (D)since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, (E)being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not [c]honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became (F)futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 (G)Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and (H)exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [d]crawling creatures.
24 Therefore (I)God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be (J)dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for [e]a (K)lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, (L)who is blessed [f]forever. Amen.
26 For this reason (M)God gave them over to (N)degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [g]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, (O)men with men committing [h]indecent acts and receiving in [i]their own persons the due penalty of their error.
28 And just as they did not see fit [j]to acknowledge God any longer, (P)God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are(Q)gossips, 30 slanderers, [k](R)haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, (S)disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, (T)unloving, unmerciful; 32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of (U)death, they not only do the same, but also (V)give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm. What God punishes, they exalt. Shocking, really. The Democratic Party has become the anti-God party, the sin-promoting party. By the way, there are seventy-two million registered Democrats in this country who have identified themselves with that party and maybe they need to rethink that identification.
I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”
Romans 1 is not politics. The Bible is not politics. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s not about personalities; it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.
WHAT HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REJECTED? THE ANSWER IS THE GOD WHO HAS REVEALED HIM SELF THROUGH THE BOOK OF NATURE AND THE BOOK OF SCRIPTURE!
God Is There And He Is Not Silent Psalm 19 Intro. 1) Francis Schaeffer lived from 1912-1984. He was one of the Christian intellectual giants of the 20th century. He taught us that you could be a Christian and not abandon the mind. One of the books he wrote was entitled He Is There And He Is Not Silent. In that work he makes a crucial and thought provoking statement, “The infinite- personal God is there, but also he is not silent; that changes the whole world…He is there and is not a silent, nor far-off God.” (Works of F.S., Vol 1, 276). 2) God is there and He is not silent. In fact He has revealed Himself to us in 2 books: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. Francis Bacon, a 15th century scientist who is credited by many with developing the scientific method said it this way: “There are 2 books laid before us to study, to prevent us from falling into error: first the volume to the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the creation, which expresses His power.” 3) Psalm 19 addresses both of God’s books, the book of nature in vs 1-6 and the book of Scripture in vs. 7-14. Described as a wisdom Psalm, its beauty, poetry and splendor led C.S. Lewis to say, “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world” (Reflections on the Psalms, 63). Trans. God is there and He is not silent. How should we hear and listen to the God who talks? I. Listen To God Speak Through Nature 19:1-6 God has revealed himself to ever rational human on the earth in two ways: 1) nature and 2) conscience. We call this natural or general revelation. In vs. 1-6 David addresses the wonder of nature and creation
Helen Pashgian on Georges de La Tour | Artists on Art
FEATURED ARTIST IS DE LA TOUR
GEORGES DE LA TOUR (1593-1652)
The influence of Caravaggio is evident in De la Tour, whose use of light and shadows is unique among the painters of the Baroque era.
—
Francis Schaeffer
How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 7 | The Age of Non-Reason
How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 8 | The Age of Fragmentation
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human D…
1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]
At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
In this post we are going to see that through the years humanist thought has encouraged artists like Michelangelo to think that the future was extremely bright versus the place today where many artist who hold the humanist and secular worldview are very pessimistic. In contrast to Michelangelo’s DAVID when humanist man thought he […]
_________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]
This post is the third in a series and the first and second deal with my response letter of January 10, 1996 to Carl Sagan and this post quotes from the letter and makes some conclusions about both Carl Sagan and Charles Darwin’s common views.
Lynn Alexander married Carl Sagan when she was 19 years old. The happy couple at their wedding. Dorion Sagan, their first son, was born two years later
Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)
Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan both could not accept that humans are not special and just a product of chance. They philosophically believed that we are the result of chance but Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan had to live in the world that God made with the conscience that God gave them. This created a tension. As you know the movie CONTACT was written by Carl Sagan and it was about Dr. Arroway’s SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) program and her desire to make contact with aliens and ask them questions. It is my view that Sagan should have examined more closely the accuracy of the Bible and it’s fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament in particular before chasing after aliens from other planets for answers. Sagan himself had written,”Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death…If some good evidence for life after death was announced, I’d be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere antedote”(pp 203-204, The DemonHaunted World, 1995).
Sagan said he had taken a look at Old Testament prophecy and it did not impress him because it was too vague. He had taken a look at Christ’s life in the gospels, but said it was unrealistic for God to send a man to communicate for God. Instead, Sagan suggested that God could have written a mathematical formula in the Bible or put a cross in the sky. However, what happens at the conclusion of the movie CONTACT? This is Sagan’s last message to the world in the form of the movie that appeared shortly after his death. Dr Arroway (Jodie Foster) who is a young atheistic scientist who meets with an alien and this alien takes the form of Dr. Arroway’s father. The alien tells her that they thought this would make it easier for her. In fact, he meets her on a beach that resembles a beach that she grew up near so she would also be comfortable with the surroundings. Carl Sagan when writing this script chose to put the alien in human form so Dr. Arroway could relate to the alien. Christ chose to take our form and come into our world too and still many make up excuses for not believing.
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Lastly, Carl Sagan could not rid himself of the “mannishness of man.” Those who have read Francis Schaeffer’s many books know exactly what I am talking about. We are made in God’s image and we are living in God’s world. Therefore, we can not totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity. In my letter of Jan 10, 1996 to Dr. Sagan, I really camped out on this point a long time because I had read Sagan’s book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTON ANCESTORS and in it Sagan attempts to totally debunk the idea that we are any way special. However, what does Dr. Sagan have Dr. Arroway say at the end of the movie CONTACT when she is testifying before Congress about the alien that communicated with her? See if you can pick out the one illogical word in her statement: “I was given a vision how tiny, insignificant, rare and precious we all are. We belong to something that is greater than ourselves and none of us are alone.”
Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Francis Schaeffer said unbelievers are put in a place of tension when they have to live in the world that God has made because deep down they know they are special because God has put that knowledge in their hearts.We are not the result of survival of the fittest and headed back to the dirt forevermore. This is what Schaeffer calls “taking the roof off” of the unbeliever’s worldview and showing the inconsistency that exists.
Now let us look at Charles Darwin, and let me start by quoting Francis Schaeffer from his talk In the spring of 1968 which centered on Charles Darwin’s autobiography:
Darwin in his autobiography Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters[abridged edition]. London: John Murray, and in his letters showed that all through his life he NEVER really came to a QUIETNESS concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem. Darwin never came to a place of satisfaction. You have philosophically ONLY TWO possible beginnings. The first would be a PERSONAL beginning and the other would be an IMPERSONEL beginning plus time plus CHANCE. There is no other possible alternative except the alternative that everything comes out of nothing and that has to be a total nothing and that has to be a total nothing without mass, energy or motion existing. No one holds this last view because it is unthinkable. Darwin understood this and therefore until his death he was uncomfortable with the idea of CHANCE producing the biological variation.
Darwin, C. R. to Graham, William3 July 1881 (letter written less than a year before Darwin’s death and less than 40 years before your birth, Dr Barlow):
Nevertheless you have EXPRESSED MY INWARD CONVICTION, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is NOT THE RESULT OF CHANCE.* But THEN with me the HORRID DOUBT ALWAYS ARISES whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Francis Schaeffer comments:
Can you feel this man? He is in real agony. You can feel the whole of modern man in this tension with Darwin. My mind can’t accept that ultimate of chance, that the universe is a result of chance. He has said 3 or 4 times now that he can’t accept that it all happened by chance and then he will write someone else and say something different. How does he say this (about the mind of a monkey) and then put forth this grand theory? Wrong theory I feel but great just the same. Grand in the same way as when I look at many of the paintings today and I differ with their message but you must say the mark of the mannishness of man are one those paintings titanic-ally even though the message is wrong and this is the same with Darwin. But how can he say you can’t think, you come from a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s conviction, so how can you trust me? Trust me here, but not there is what Darwin is saying. In other words it is very selective.
Evidently Darwin was telling his friends that he was an agnostic and that he did not think that God had anything to do with it but it was all left to the hands of chance. Is that the way you are reading this?
What two pieces of evidence did Darwin wrestle with?
(Charles Darwin)
If you want evidence then you will only be given the same evidence that Charles Darwin had. I am going to quote 2 passages, and they both have a common message. That message has 3 points: 1) The conscience tells us of God’s existence. 2) Creatioon tells us the same. 3) If we reject both of those then God will eventually remove conviction from our hearts.
Don’t hold this against me, but I got this first passage out of the current issue of CREATION MAGAZINE:
At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep [#1] inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons...Formerly I was led by feelings such as those…to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that [#2] whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. [#3] But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind…(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. a, page 29).
Romans 1:18-21 Amplified Bible:
18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is [#1] evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them. 20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, [#2] being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense. 21 For even though [a]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [b]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their [#3] foolish heart was darkened.
Charles Darwin became an agnostic because he chose to reject the two pieces of evidence God gave him. Take a minute and read the enclosed letter to the editor of THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE. Where did our conscience come from if not from God? In your book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS you quote Darwin’s wife warning him of the dangers of scientism on page 47. Wouldn’t it be wise to heed her advice????
Darwin and Sagan both realized just like modern man that humanism leads to meaningless. Francis Schaeffer in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? makes these points below concerning this:
Section 3 The humanist base leads to meaningless
An overwhelming number of modern thinkers agree that seeing the universe and man from a humanist base leads to meaningless, both for the universe and for man—not just mankind in general but for each of us as individuals. Professor Steven Weinberg wrote these words in his book THE FIRST 3 MINUTES: A MODERN VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE while he was looking down from an airplane:
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. … It is very hard to realize that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
(1993), Epilogue, p. 154
When Weinberg says that the universe seems more “comprehensible,” he is, of course, referring to our greater understanding of the physical universe through the advance of science. But it is an understanding, notice, within a materialistic framework, which considers the universe solely in terms of physics and chemistry—-simply machinery.
If everything “faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat,” all things are meaningless.
Section 4 Tension results when you have an inadequate worldview
The greatest dilemma for those who hold an inadequate worldview is that it is impossible to live consistently within it. The playwright Samuel Beckett can “say” that words do not communicate anything—and that everything, including language, is absurd—yet he must use words to write his plays, even plays about meaninglessness. The list of contradictions can be extended endlessly. The truth is that everyone who rejects the Biblical worldview must live in a state of tension between ideas about reality and reality itself. If a person believes that everything is only matter or energy and carries this through consistently, meaning dies, morality dies, love dies, hope dies. Yet! The individual does love, does hope, does act on the basis of right and wrong. This is what we mean when we say that everyone is caught , regardless of his worldview, simply by the way things are.
Section 5 The Bible is God’s revealed truth and it tells us about our origin.
The scriptures tell us that the universe exists and has form and meaning because it was created purposefully by a personal creator. This being the case, we see that, as we are personal, we are not something strange and out of line with an otherwise impersonal universe. Since we are made in the image of God, we are in line with God. There is a continuity, in other words, between ourselves, though finite, and the infinite creator who stands behind the universe as its final source of meaning. Unlike the evolutionary concept of an impersonal beginning plus time plus chance, the Bible shows how man has personality and dignity and value. Our uniqueness is guaranteed, something which is impossible in the materialistic system!!!!!!
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
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:
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
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CARL SAGAN interview with Charlie Rose:
“…faith is belief in the absence of evidence. To believe in the absence of evidence, in my opinion, is a mistake. The idea is to hold belief until there is compelling evidence. If the Universe does not comply with our previous propositions, then we have to change…Religion deals with history poetry, great literature, ethics, morals, compassion…where religion gets into trouble is when it pretends to know something about science,”
______________ 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 […]
Former President Barack Obama appeared in what’s expected to be the first in a series of TikToks to promote reading books that defy “profoundly misguided” restriction efforts.
The Kankakee Public Library in Illinois debuted a video that featured a series of people reading books that have faced controversy, such as Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give.” The video ended with Obama reading from a book himself while drinking from a Kankakee Public Library mug.
The Washington Post reported that Obama has filmed multiple videos in libraries throughout the country to support library services and access to books.
“To have someone like President Obama appreciating the work that we do, and also sharing our mission for intellectual freedom, it just couldn’t come at a better time,” Harris County Public Library system program director Linda Stevens said.
Former President Barack Obama filmed a series of TikTok videos in libraries all over the country. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The video is a response to efforts to restrict school libraries from carrying books considered political or containing explicit material. According to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists, nearly 1,500 books were banned from schools in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year.
Obama attacked these efforts in a letter posted on his Twitter account Monday, highlighting how most of them target “people of color, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
“Today, some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives. It’s no coincidence that these ‘banned books’ are often written by or feature people of color, Indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—though there have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ scenes have been targets for removal,” Obama said in his open letter to librarians.
Xxxxxxxxx
To the dedicated and hardworking librarians of America:
In any democracy, the free exchange of ideas is an important part of making sure that citizens are informed, engaged and feel like their perspectives matter.
It’s so important, in fact, that here in America, the First Amendment of our Constitution states that freedom begins with our capacity to share and access ideas—even, and maybe especially, the ones we disagree with.
More often than not, someone decides to write those ideas down in a book.
Books have always shaped how I experience the world. Writers like Mark Twain and Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and James Baldwin taught me something essential about our country’s character. Reading about people whose lives were very different from mine showed me how to step into someone else’s shoes. And the simple act of writing helped me develop my own identity—all of which would prove vital as a citizen, as a community organizer, and as president.
Today, some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives. It’s no coincidence that these “banned books” are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—though there have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing “triggering” words or scenes have been targets for removal. Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.
I believe such an approach is profoundly misguided, and contrary to what has made this country great. As I’ve said before, not only is it important for young people from all walks of life to see themselves represented in the pages of books, but it’s also important for all of us to engage with different ideas and points of view.
It’s also important to understand that the world is watching. If America—a nation built on freedom of expression—allows certain voices and ideas to be silenced, why should other countries go out of their way to protect them? Ironically, it is Christian and other religious texts—the sacred texts that some calling for book bannings in this country claim to want to defend—that have often been the first target of censorship and book banning efforts in authoritarian countries.
Nobody understands that more than you, our nation’s librarians. In a very real sense, you’re on the front lines—fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone. Your dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas, and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with.
That’s why I want to take a moment to thank all of you for the work you do every day—work that is helping us understand each other and embrace our shared humanity.
And it’s not just about books. You also provide spaces where people can come together, share ideas, participate in community programs, and access essential civic and educational resources. Together, you help people become informed and active citizens, capable of making this country what they want it to be.
And you do it all in a harsh political climate where, all too often, you’re attacked by people who either cannot or will not understand the vital—and uniquely American—role you play in the life of our nation.
So, whether you just started working at a school or public library, or you’ve been there your entire career, Michelle and I want to thank you for your unwavering commitment to the freedom to read. All of us owe you a debt of gratitude for making sure readers across the country have access to a wide range of books, and all the ideas they contain.
Finally, to every citizen reading this, I hope you’ll join me in reminding anyone who will listen—and even some people you think might not—that the free, robust exchange of ideas has always been at the heart of American democracy. Together, we can make that true for generations to come.
With gratitude,
Barack
Xxxxxxxx
He continued, “Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own. I believe such an approach is profoundly misguided, and contrary to what has made this country great.”
In a followup tweet, he referred people to the Unite Against Book Bans campaign from the American Library Association to “support librarians and defend the right to read.”
In Florida, the Parental Rights in Education prohibits educators from distributing classroom instruction about “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” (Jefferee Woo/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
At the forefront of book restrictions in school libraries is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education Law which prohibits school employees or third parties from distributing materials on “gender identity” or “sexual orientation” throughout all grade levels.
DeSantis has also criticized efforts by mainstream media to paint his law as an outright ban against books rather than a response to parental objection.
“They are doing that to try to create a narrative, they’re not doing that because Florida has a law,” DeSantis said. “They’re doing it because they know there is enough people in corporate media who will just take that, and run with that… if it is explicit and pornographic, parents have the right to object.”
The Washington Post reported that 75% of picture book challenges focused on LGBT content. (Duval County Public Schools)
The Washington Post reported 75% of children’s picture books that have been challenged involved “titles with LGBTQ characters and storylines.”
Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.
Library board chair resigns, ordinance to give County Judge powers over library makes it out of committee
Caroline Robinson, chair of the Saline County Library Board turned in her resignation, County Judge Matt Brumley announced at a Public Works and Safety Committee meeting Monday night.
Brumley said Robinson had turned in her resignation earlier that afternoon.
Robinson’s resignation comes after months of controversy surrounding the contents of the local public library.
Brumley submitted Jamie Clemmer as his recommended replacement for Robinson. The Quorum Court will vote to approve Brumley’s appointment at its regular meeting on June 19. At the library board meeting on April 22, Brumley spoke and told the members he had lost confidence in the leadership of the Saline County Library, and he reiterated those feelings at Monday night’s meeting.
Brumley again pointed out that the Saline County Library was out of compliance with several parts of an ordinance from 1978. Brumley said the library staff had not provided quarterly reports to the county judge and the justices of the peace. He asked the library board to send him the quarterly reports by May 31 which they did. The library leadership also provided Brumley with an organizational chart of library staff.
This comes after the county’s legislative body passed a resolution in April requesting the library move what many have deemed as “sexually explicit” content from the children’s section of the library. Brumley and members of the Quorum Court have expressed their frustrations with the library’s response to the resolution.
The committee also approved a new ordinance on Monday which amends several parts of the ordinance which created the Saline County Library board in 1978.
The amendments give the County Judge oversight of the library board in several areas, including oversight of the management and operations of the Saline County Library.
The ordinance states “The Saline County Library Board created by this ordinance shall have full and complete authority, subject to oversight Saline County Judge, to manage, operate, maintain and keep in a good state of repair any and all buildings.”
The amendments remove language from the ordinance which gave the library board power to employ and remove all employees of the Saline County Library, instead opting to give that power to the county judge.
The original ordinance simply required the library go through an annual audit, the new language states the library should submit an annual audit conducted by a third-party, non-governmental accounting firm. This ordinance passed committee and now goes to the full quorum court for final approval at its next meeting on June 19.
Bailey Morgan, organizer of the Saline County Library Alliance, spoke critically of the Saline County Republican Women, Brumley and the Quorum Court during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Morgan referenced several social media posts from the Saline County Republican Women which target books because of LGTBQ+ content and racial issues content, not sexual or explicit content.
“I get it, that some of these books have content that you are uncomfortable with and that’s fine, you can be uncomfortable, no one is forcing you to read it. The reality is, you might think this is about protecting children, they don’t. This is about so much more,” said Morgan.
He said that the SCRW had shared social media posts leaking the personal information of library staff and supporters.
“You might not be doing that, but the people pushing this here are,” Morgan added. “If you think this is where it stops, you are so off base.”
Kari Lapp, community engagement manager for the library, issued a statement via email Tuesday morning.
“The Saline County Library would like to thank the community for attending and showing support at the Quorum Court committee meetings on June 5th,” the statement read.
“The library is continuing to seek guidance from the Quorum Court on the definition and guidelines of the resolution passed in April as well as researching state library law and court rulings to make sure the actions taken remain constitutional and best fit our community.
“We are sad to see our Library Board Chair, Caroline Miller Robinson, resign but look forward to meeting the new board member who will be appointed later this month. We will continue to keep communication open and cooperate with the County Judge and Quorum Court to do what is best for the entire county.”
Ahead of board meeting, groups keeping up pressure by Paige Eichkorn | Today at 7:30 a.m
The Saline County Republican Committee billboards decrying “x-Rated library books” stand on display over I-30 in Benton near the local Walmart on Friday, May 26, 2023. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Stephen Swofford)
The Saline County Library board delayed a vote earlier in the month that would grant the county judge power to relocate or remove “controversial” books from youth sections in the Benton and Bryant locations.
The board’s meeting was the first since the quorum court approved a resolution in April recommending the library system “relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.”
Director Patty Hector has voiced that the library is already in compliance with Act 372, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, changing the way libraries handle challenges to content that members consider “obscene” and making librarians liable for disseminating such materials.
Hector mentioned that she hadn’t received any material reconsideration forms until the past week before the board meeting.
County Judge Matt Brumley argued that anyone should be able to go into the library and ask a staff member to reconsider a book without having to fill out a form.
But the two locations hold thousands of books, Hector said, and there’s no way her staff could possibly know and read them all.
“The county has no control over books in the library, the county can’t compel a library to do something,” Hector said. “A book has to be declared by the courts that it’s obscene and then if you don’t take it off shelves, that’s when it’s a felony. There’s a lot of chances to meet to avoid a charge on a librarian.”
A total of six Freedom of Information Act requests with 44 questions about the library’s assets and how it spends its money in a very detailed manner were submitted to the library recently, Hector said.
“I’m not sure why anyone would want such detailed information,” she said.
Bailey Morgan, an organizer for the Saline County Library Alliance, speculates that defunding efforts are brewing for the library.
“The GOP social media presence is confusing, and the judge said it’s about moving them from downstairs to upstairs but Saline County Republican Women said it’s about removing them entirely, but then other folks are saying it’s about removing tax dollars to the library,” he said. “Every time a member of the [Saline County Republican Women] or GOP are asked about defunding they say no, but at the same time they’re doing this, and it’s a little like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing type of thing.”
A billboard along Interstate 30 toward Benton near the local Walmart, put up by the Saline County Republican Committee, has also brought confusion to residents.
It reads: “WARNING: X-RATED LIBRARY BOOKS” and “SalineLibrary.com.”
Chairman of the county Republican committee David Gibson said a number of “like-minded Christians” got together to get the word out so individuals and families can look at the information and decide whether they want their children exposed to such materials.
The website, which is not the actual library’s homepage, gives a “small sample of the hundreds of inappropriate, sexually explicit books being marketed and distributed to minors at the Saline County Library,” it states at the top.
Gibson emphasized that the books are pornographic and should be moved to an adult section.
“The library has been spinning this, but let’s just deal with the facts: these books are sexually explicit and they’re in the children’s section,” he said. “Why do library directors think this is necessary or appropriate? [Hector] has to understand that she’s placing herself and her staff at risk when the law is implemented on August 1.
“They’re upset because we drew attention to the truth. Sex education has nothing to do with these books, these books discuss rape, how individuals were exposed to sex acts; there’s no education here, it’s hypersexualizing children,” Gibson said.
Gibson said the content on the billboard and website is “intended for the average adult voter.”
“I don’t think many children driving down the road will take the same interest,” he said. “The library has said this material is acceptable; the problem is, they redefine what an adult is, and they said it’s 12 years old, but the law decides that.”
Morgan said he got some feedback from a community member who had to explain to their child who was in the car with them what “x-rated” meant.
“It blows my mind that children could be exposed to ‘sexual materials’ and then parents are having to explain what ‘x-rated’ means because of their billboard, when children generally going to the library would never be exposed to that anyway,” he said.
The library alliance now has two billboards of its own, proclaiming “KNOW THE FACTS. FIGHT THE LIES. STAND WITH THE LIBRARY” and “SalineCountyLibraryAlliance.com.”
“General feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and people are happy there’s a group trying to publicly advocate for the library,” Morgan added. “Our website leads folks to the fight for the first page, explains who we are and what our goals are and dispels misinformation that’s been spread about the library.”
Those who regularly visit the library have let Hector and staff know that they are on their side, Hector said.
“We’ve gotten support from our patrons. Every day someone says that they support us and they appreciate that we’re not trying to censor anything,” she said.
The next library board meeting will be on July 10 at the Bob Herzfeld Memorial Library.
Print Headline: Saline County library facing more scrutiny
Stephanie Duke holds a book she claims is pornographic and available at the Saline County Library during a meeting of the Saline County Quorum Court. She spoke in favor of a resolution that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery.” The county governing body adopted the resolution.
The Saline County Quorum Court on Monday recommended that the county’s libraries “relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.”
A state law signed in March allows people to challenge library materials they consider “obscene” and makes librarians legally liable for disseminating such materials. The Saline County resolution says the two libraries, one in Benton and one in Bryant, should “proactively take steps” to ensure children cannot access certain content in light of the new law. Resolutions do not create policy but are meant to guide future policy decisions.
The 13-member, all-Republican quorum court passed the resolution with two votes against it after an hour and 20 minutes of public comment from Saline County residents. Fewer than 30 people spoke out of the 50 that signed up to speak, and several more people gathered on the lawn outside the county courthouse and watched the livestream of the meeting on their phones.
Supporters of the court’s resolution said content pertaining to racism, sex and the LGBTQ+ community is “indoctrination” that should not be accessible to anyone under 18 years of age. Opponents said that the content in question reflects the community and that trying to restrict access to it is censorship.
“Let the library board do its job,” said Bailey Morgan, a former Democratic candidate for the quorum court. “Let librarians do their jobs. Nobody’s handing out inappropriate content to your kids. I promise you, this is a non-issue.”
The quorum court would likely be responsible for the final say on whether to keep challenged materials on Saline County library shelves or “relocate” them under Act 372 of 2023, which will go into effect 90 days after the session officially ends in May.
Act 372 opens the door for school and public librarians to be prosecuted “for disseminating a writing, film, slide, drawing, or other visual reproduction that is claimed to be obscene.” Arkansas’ definition of obscenity is “that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest,” with prurient meaning overtly sexual.
A committee of five to seven people selected by school principals or head librarians will be charged with reviewing the “appropriateness” of content challenged under the new law. The committee would vote on whether to remove the material after hearing the complainant’s case in a public meeting. A complainant may appeal the committee’s decision if the majority votes no; appeals at public libraries would go to the county judge or the county quorum court for a final decision.
Employees of public or school libraries that “knowingly” distribute obscene material or inform others of how to obtain it would risk conviction of a Class D felony, the law states. Knowingly possessing obscene material would risk conviction of a Class A misdemeanor.
Act 372 did not pass the House Judiciary Committee until it had been amended to say books would be relocated, not removed, if elected officials find them to be “obscene.”
Garland County librarians Katie Allen (second from left) and Tiffany Hough (second from right) watch the livestream of the Saline County Quorum Court meeting on April 17, 2023. Hough’s children, Maggie (left) and Molly (right), brought protest signs to the county courthouse lawn. The quorum court adopted a resolution encouraging Saline County libraries to relocate books that might be inappropriate for children, and the resolution drew more spectators than could fit in the meeting room. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Representation vs. propaganda
Other states have seen similar conservative-led pushes for “inappropriate” content to be removed from libraries so children cannot access them. In late March, Missouri’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a budget that would cut funding from all libraries in the state, a response to pushback against a 2022 law that made it a Class A misdemeanor for librarians or teachers to provide “explicit sexual material” to a student.
A county library system in Texas nearly closed due to a lawsuit over its refusal to remove books, some of which are about systemic racism, but system administrators decided earlier this week to keep the libraries open.
Here in Arkansas, the Crawford County Quorum Court has heard public opposition to the inclusion of LGBTQ+ content in the county’s five library branches, and the Farmington School Board restricted two books to readers age 17 and older after a parent voiced concerns.
On Monday, Sarah Griffiths held up a sign that said “Censorship disguised as moral outrage is still censorship” on the Saline County Courthouse lawn. She lives in the county and is a children’s programmer at a library in Little Rock.
Griffiths said she has seen firsthand how much children appreciate seeing members of their own communities in the stories they are told.
“I’m old enough to remember when there weren’t people of color introduced in mainstream storytelling, and we have that now, and it’s a very good thing,” she said. “Everybody needs a hero that they can recognize, no matter what age you are.”
Retired high school librarian and English teacher Marcia Lanier said she did not want her grandchildren to “live in a bubble.” Her decades of education experience meant she knew all kinds of students, including some from other countries, some that were gay and some that had experienced abuse and violence.
“Many of these students came to me, especially when I was a librarian, and asked me to help them find a book about someone else who experienced similar situations,” Lanier said.
The quorum court’s resolution states that Saline County libraries “are visited by individuals of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs.” Relocating books would “alienate” some of these individuals, said Olivia McClure, who spoke against the measure.
“Many of the books that have been listed [by supporters of the resolution] … are considered political based on their nature and representation of a community that some people don’t agree with, and that is in fact censorship that you are promoting today,” McClure said.
Books representing a diverse range of communities should not be considered propaganda, as some supporters of the resolution said, because they are not “biased or misleading” or “used to promote a particular political cause or point of view,” McClure added.
She and Edith Baker both said several of the books that have been considered inappropriate for minors do not contain any sexual content and instead simply acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
“I am a queer woman, and if I was old enough to experience homophobia, then children should be old enough to read about it,” Baker said.
Dr. Sam Taggart holds his Saline County Library card while speaking against a resolution proposed by Saline County Quorum Court members that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery.” The court adopted the resolution. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Dr. Sam Taggart holds his Saline County Library card while speaking against a resolution proposed by Saline County Quorum Court members that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery.” The court adopted the resolution. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
One book under conservative scrutiny is Bathe the Cat, a children’s book about a family doing chores. McClure pointed out that a rainbow flag in the illustration of the family’s refrigerator is the sole reason anyone has had a problem with the book.
Sam Taggart, a historian and retired physician, also spoke against the resolution and said people should only be allowed to make decisions about library content if they have library cards themselves. He said his family, teachers and librarians taught him the value of knowledge from a young age.
“These delightful people … taught me how to think, not what to think,” he said.
Child protection debate
Supporters of the resolution said it would increase parents’ ability to decide what their children read. Both sides agreed that parents have the right to know what their children are reading, but those against the resolution said it would infringe on parental rights instead of enhancing them.
“We can’t protect our children from every single dangerous idea,” said John Goff, a math teacher at Bryant Junior High School. “What can we do? We can be their parents.”
Goff added that the Bible has scenes of rape and other forms of violence in it that would likely come under fire if the same topics in other books were challenged.
Shannon Everett disputed this claim.
“I support this resolution that protects our children from being told their identity comes from anything but Jesus Christ,” he said.
Stephanie Duke said she is “not so proud” that her family donated the land where the library in Benton is located. She said she finds it difficult to go to bookstores with her grandchild, whom she said is a “voracious reader,” because so many books aimed at her grandchild’s age group are about “gayness, LGBT, transgender or anti-white” subject matter.
She held up a book she called “pornographic” — Sex: A Book for Teens: An Uncensored Guide to Your Body, Sex, and Safety by Nicol Hasler — that she said she found in the young adult section of the library.
Carl Hyel, who opposed the resolution, said he believed those in favor of it were sincere about wanting to protect children from harm.
“There are lots of experts that say knowing correct sexual education and correct anatomy terms is the best way to protect kids from abuse,” Hyel said.
However, Duke said she and other Saline County residents plan to challenge the Hasler book and others they consider “anti-Christian” and bring them before the quorum court under Act 372.
“It’s that serious to keep our rights as Christians,” Duke said, to which an audience member said “Amen.”
McClure said she had a different perspective as a Christian.
“I know that the first commandment from God is to love all [people], and when we understand who they are, we can actually do that,” she said.
Children are going to learn about the existence of LGBTQ+ people one way or another, said Grayson Hartz, a transgender teenager who works at a daycare. The children he supervises have accepted him and adjusted to his new name since he transitioned, he said.
“Most of the kids there completely understand that I went from being a girl to a boy,” Hartz said.
A crowd lines up to attend the Saline County Quorum Court meeting Monday evening at the Saline County Courthouse in Benton to discuss a resolution that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery”. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
A crowd lines up to attend the Saline County Quorum Court meeting Monday evening at the Saline County Courthouse in Benton to discuss a resolution that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery”. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
“Slippery slope”
Two of the four state legislators who sponsored Act 372 attended Monday’s quorum court meeting: Rep. Mary Bentley of Perryville, whose district includes part of Saline County, and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro, which is more than two hours away from Saline County.
The public libraries in Craighead County, which includes Jonesboro, saw its funding cut in 2022 after protests over an LGBTQ+ book display and a transgender author’s visit to the library within the past couple of years.
Monday’s debate was the first step to Saline County’s libraries experiencing the same thing Craighead County’s libraries did, several opponents of the resolution said. Some, including Hyel, Fred McGraw and Dana Block, added that they did not believe any quorum court members intended to defund libraries now or in the future.
“I think you have good intentions, but my goodness, think about what you’re doing,” McGraw told the quorum court. “This is a slippery slope.”
Block is a mother of four and a children’s programmer in the Saline County library system. She said the library does not have “a secret adult section” where challenged books could be placed.
“We are not trying to indoctrinate your children,” Block said. “We are members of your community. We live here. Our children are being raised here. We go to church with you.”
Scott Gray disagreed and repeated comments he made in March when the House Judiciary Committee first heard Act 372. He said he did not believe taxpayers should fund the availability of sexual content from “leftist librarians,” a statement that made the audience laugh.
Gray was not the only one who claimed librarians have an agenda.
“It’s time, in my opinion, to not only look at the books that are in the libraries but to investigate the people that are placing them there,” Brian English said. “There are too many sexually explicit books available to our children for this to be an oversight or a mistake.”
Jon Newcomb speaks for a resolution before the Saline County Quorum Court that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery”. He holds a copy of “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which he claims is pornographic. The court adopted the resolution, which strongly recommends the county library board take “proactive” steps to keep such books out of the view of children. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Jon Newcomb speaks for a resolution before the Saline County Quorum Court that would restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery”. He holds a copy of “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which he claims is pornographic. The court adopted the resolution, which strongly recommends the county library board take “proactive” steps to keep such books out of the view of children. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Jon Newcomb claimed getting children interested in sex is “the first rule of a communist revolution.” He was about to read a passage from All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson when Saline County Judge Matt Brumley told him not to read it.
County civil attorney Will Gruber said he agreed with Brumley that those attending or watching the meeting should not have to hear things that are “profane or obscene.” Newcomb and other supporters of the resolution said this proved their point.
“I’m all for the resolution, but in my opinion, it’s not enough,” Newcomb said. “I want this crap out.”
Quorum court discussion
Brumley said he supported the resolution and compared the availability of certain library content to the availability of cigarettes.
“Smoke ‘em up if you can buy them legally, but please don’t place them next to the Play-Doh at our local store,” he said.
Libraries have multiple sections of books aimed at minors, divided into different age groups, Saline County librarians Chelsea Simon and Jordan Sandlin both said. The children’s section is for children 7 and under, the juvenile section is for children between 8 and 12 years old, and the young adult section is for those 13 and up, Simon said.
Sandlin added that parents and guardians must sign library cards for children 12 and under and must be present with them in the library.
Justices of the Peace Carlton Billingsley of District 3 and Keith Keck of District 13 said the quorum court should have received input from local librarians in advance. They were the only members to vote against the resolution.
“If I’m going to a game, I want to make sure all the players are involved,” Keck said. “…We’ve got to do our job and do our due diligence.”
Three justices co-sponsored the resolution: Everette Hatcher of District 2, Jim Whitley of District 10 and Clint Chism of District 11.
Saline County District 10 Justice of the Peace Jim Whitley of Benton talks Monday about a resolution he sponsored that asks the county Library Board to restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery.” The county Quorum Court adopted the resolution after a two-hour discussion. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Saline County District 10 Justice of the Peace Jim Whitley of Benton talks Monday about a resolution he sponsored that asks the county Library Board to restrict children’s access to books that contain “sexual content or imagery.” The county Quorum Court adopted the resolution after a two-hour discussion. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
Chism said he was wary of the fact that “making rules leads to more rules,” and he acknowledged that what is appropriate for children at different ages is not up to him to decide, but he also said it mattered to him that anyone under 18 is legally considered a child.
He quoted a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
The court rejected an amendment Keck proposed to add a statement in the resolution that parents are responsible for their children’s use of libraries. Whitley said he would only support the amendment if it specified that parents must give permission for their children to check out certain content.
Gruber said this requirement “could go down the wrong road.” In 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas decided the Cedarville School District violated the First Amendment by requiring signed permission slips from parents allowing their children to read the Harry Potter books.
Whitley was one of nine justices to vote against the amendment.
“If we can’t require parental permission in order for them to access these materials, it makes this resolution moot,” he said.
Justice Pat Bisbee of District 1 said he did not think he had “ever struggled more” on an issue before the court than whether to support the resolution. He used to be the court’s appointed liaison to the county libraries, and he has kept acting in this role even though it is no longer an official position, he said.
“I am always in support of the library,” Bisbee said. “As both a father and as a believing Christian, I strongly feel that the library needs to continue to strive to use common sense when placing books that may contain questionable content.”
The Saline County Quorum Court earlier this weekpassed a resolution to remove inappropriate books from the county public library’s children’s section. Saline County Public Library director, Patty Hector shared with KATV why they do not plan on following the court’s recommendation.
According to Hector, it’s been a tearful few days since the resolution passed. She said the court’s recommendation does not parallel that of the recently passed ACT 372.
“There’s goes a step further, they’re just saying in any children’s book that any parent objects to; actually it’s any parent or person, so anybody in the community whether they have a child or even have a library card,” she said.
ACT 372 is a law concerning libraries and obscene materials; to create the offense of furnishing a harmful item to a minor; to amend the law concerning obscene materials loaned by a library.
Hector said the Saline County Republican Womenhave a list of books they want to be removed but haven’t shared what’s on that list.
“I don’t believe that there endgame has anything to do with books, especially not sexual content,” Hector said. “I think that’s the wedge that they used to get to libraries. I think they want to erase people of color and marginalize LGBTQ people.”
KATV reached out to the women’s group for an on-camera interview, but they weren’t available on Wednesday for comment. One of their members, Mary Lewis made a public comment during Monday’s quorum court meeting.
“We need to make sure they have a solid foundation of goodness not things that are not to be,” Lewis said. “Because you open the door to that and that’s just opening up every single kind of evil in this world.”
According to Hector, they updated their policy to that of ACT 372. She also said they do not have any obscene materials in the children’s area and that they have no plans on removing any books. Hector said her concern if books are removed from the children’s section is a lawsuit could be filed. Hector told KATV such an action could infringe on freedom of speech.
An official with Saline County said the library will not be punished if they do not follow the resolution.
Saline County justices of the peace approved a resolution “requesting” the Saline County Library to relocate certain material “due to their sexual content or imagery” on Monday evening.
The resolution, titled “A resolution requesting the Saline County Library ensure that materials contained within the children’s section of the library are subject matter and age appropriate,” is listed as “Exhibit ‘E’” at the 6:30 p.m. quorum court meeting. Its sponsors are Jim Whitley, a justice of the peace representing District 10, and Clint Chism, a justice of the peace who represents District 11.
The resolution states, “The library should enact policies to relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.”
During discussion by the justices of the peace, Whitley said he wanted to dispel “rumors and innuendo” surrounding the resolution. He said that people have accused the resolution of being related to defunding the library system.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Whitley said, emphasizing that there was no intent to defund the library in the resolution.
He also rejected claims that the library wanted to remove sexual material from the library at large. Instead, the resolution is “very specific to the children’s section of the library.”
Whitley said children are “inundated daily with sexual language, imagery content that is really inappropriate for them.”
Literature is at the core of America’s democracy, the justice of the peace said, adding that he supports the library system.
However, he said he doesn’t want children to come to the library and “read things they’re too immature to process.”
Chism said that, in the past three days, “I’ve come under a lot of anger.” He read a prepared statement, in which he expressed surprise at their response.
Laws already “do that sort of thing,” he said, adding that movies are rated, and that games and music have warning labels.
“I don’t understand why it’s even being a debate,” Chism said. “Why would you want your children to look at something like that?”
Keith Keck, a justice of the peace representing District 13, proposed an amendment that states “parents or legal guardians are ultimately responsible for the children’s use of the library and for determining the appropriate library materials for their children to have access to.”
After discussion, the amendment was voted down 9-4.
Keck also recommended an amendment that would add an additional reference to Act 372, but withdrew the motion after discussion.
The effort from Whitley and Chism references Act 372, a state law signed March 30 that exposes library personnel to criminal charges for “knowingly” distributing material found to be obscene. Such efforts add to the wave of recent pressure placed on Arkansas libraries to remove children’s books that address sexual subjects.
Act 372 removes existing language from state law that shields library personnel as well as school employees from prosecution for disseminating obscene material.
A person who loans out from a public library material found to be obscene could be charged with a Class D felony under the law. The legislation also creates a new Class A misdemeanor offense for knowingly furnishing a “harmful item” to a minor.
LIBRARY DIRECTOR RESPONDS
In an interview before the quorum court meeting, Saline County Library Director Patty Hector, Saline County Library said she didn’t believe the county resolution was necessary.
The library board has already voted to update standards for Act 372, and their books are in “the appropriate age section,” according to Hector.
Act 372 establishes parameters for citizens to challenge the appropriateness of material available to the public that is held in school or public libraries. Successful challenges could result in material being relocated to an area not accessible to minors.
Decisions not to relocate the challenged material could be appealed to a school district’s board, in the case of a school library, or the governing body of a city or county, in the case of municipal or county libraries.
Anyone wanting to make an official challenge over a book should fill out a form and speak with Hector, the director said. If the complainant wants to continue with their challenge, their complaint will go to a committee of library staff, who will discuss the book. After the committee reports back to the complainant, that person can choose to take the challenge to the quorum court.
However, Hector said that, in the seven years she has been director of the system, “I haven’t had a book challenge in all that time.”
According to the director, library staff read professional reviews of books to determine whether the works are “right” for the library. Staff in the children’s section get together if they feel “the least bit concerned” about a book for kids, she said.
Hector said the library system also doesn’t buy books from groups pushing self-published works, or works that aren’t from a well-known publisher.
“We want things that are vetted by a publisher.”
Hector said she doesn’t think anything will need to be moved or relocated, because she believes her staff bought appropriate books.
OTHER EFFORTS
In addition to Act 372, Hector pointed to other similar efforts to regulate the availability of certain books in Crawford County, Siloam Springs, Craighead County.
A late September post on the website of the conservative education and research group Family Council lists libraries with children’s and young adult books containing what it calls “graphic sexual content.” Crawford County is listed among them, though neither the Saline County Library nor the Craighead County Jonesboro Library systems are mentioned.
The post states that people can take steps to remove material they find objectionable by using a form that asks libraries to remove offensive materials and call on their elected officials to pass laws that regulate “objectionable material” in libraries.
In February, Crawford County Library System Director Deidre Grzymala announced her resignation following criticisms of the inclusion and public display of children’s books with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning themes at the library.
The Craighead County Jonesboro Library lost half its revenue in November, after residents voted to decrease the library’s 2.0 mill tax to 1.0 mill.
The Siloam Springs Library has had at least 10 of its books challenged.
Similar efforts have also been taking place in other states.
Attempts to ban books “nearly doubled” in 2022, compared against the previous year, a March 22 news release from the American Library Association states. Nationwide, there were 1,269 “demands to censor library books and resources in 2022,” according to the association.
In Saline County, other new business on the quorum court’s Monday agenda included a “resolution recognizing public safety communicators as first responders,” a “resolution authorizing continuation of ICJR grant,” an “emergency ordinance designating planning services as professional services,” an “emergency ordinance establishing Saline County Litter Control Fund” and an “ordinance amending the 2023 Saline County budget ordinance 2022-36.”
Information for this article was contributed by Will Langhorne of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Doug Thompson of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.
Dan Barker is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.
On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:
Thanks for the insights.
Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.
Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.
db
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In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:
Think about sexuality. The bible says that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). It is assumed that Adam and Eve were heterosexual, because they were commanded to “replenish the earth.” Jesus made the same assumption: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (This is also sexist, from the male point of view.)
Sexiest? Sounds like you are modern day woke and you will end up turning on your buddy Richard Dawkins?
TRANSGENDERISM SEEN BELOW
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After Life 2 – Man identifies as an 8 year old girl
During a recent interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkinsdeclared, “there are two sexes, and that’s all there is to it.”
He added that LGBTQ activists looking to discredit the reality of two biological sexes are pushing “utter nonsense.”
Dawkins further noted that those going after Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling for her commitment to the reality of two sexes are “bullies.”
Famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins strongly defends the reality of biological sex during an interview with Piers Morgan.(Screenshot/Piers Morgan Uncensored)
The famous critic of religion spoke with Morgan during a recent episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” The host prompted Hawkins by mentioning how “extraordinary” it is that LGBTQ activists and woke ideologues “want to what they call, de-gender and neutralize language.”
Piers was referring to a recent list of problematic words put out by the “EBB Language Project,” a collection of academics looking to police words that could potentially be found to be politically incorrect. The proposed list contained gendered words, such as “male, female, man, woman, mother, father,” U.K. outlet The Telegraph reported.
Dawkins had commented on the project last month, telling the paper, “The only possible response is contemptuous ridicule. I shall continue to use every one of the prohibited words. I am a professional user of the English language. It is my native language.”
During their interview, Morgan trashed such language policing and the idea there aren’t two sexes, He declared, “I mean, it’s incontrovertible. There’s no scientific doubt about this.” He also noted that a “small group of people have been quite successful actually in reshaping vast swathes of the way society talks and is allowed to talk.”
Dawkins immediately discredited the entire movement, saying, “It’s bullying.” Mentioning famous people who have been demonized for going against these activists, the renowned researcher added, “And we’ve seen the way J.K. Rowling has been bullied, Kathleen Stock has been bullied. They’ve stood up to it. But it’s very upsetting the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse and really talk errant nonsense.”
Richard Dawkins rose to fame for his books on religion and biology, but he has locked horns with woke orthodoxy over issues such as gender ideology. (Mark Renders/Getty Images)
Upon Morgan asking Dawkins how to combat the “nonsense,” Dawkins simply replied, “Science.”
He then said, “There are two sexes. You can talk about gender if you wish, and that’s subjective.” Morgan asked him about people who claim there are “a hundred genders,” though Dawkins claimed, “I’m not interested in that.”
He said bluntly, “As a biologist, there are two sexes, and that’s all there is to it.”
Subsequently, the host mentioned how Dawkins has had his career and reputation dinged for simply asking questions about inconsistencies in the left’s dogmas on gender and identity.
Morgan said, “You had a humanist award stripped in 2021 because of your comments about of this kind of thing.” He cited the tweet that cost him, which stated, “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of the NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”
Morgan mentioned, “You had your award stripped because you were effectively doing what J.K. Rowling and others have said – you were just espousing a biological fact.”
Dawkins shot back, “I wasn’t even doing that. I was asking people to discuss. Discuss! That’s what I’ve done all my life in universities.”
Demonstrators protest in support of rights for transgender youth. (Fox News )
Morgan asked Dawkins why society has “lost that ability to actually have an open and frank debate.”
The scientist replied, “There are people for whom the word discuss doesn’t mean discuss, it means you’ve taken a position, which I hadn’t… I thought it was a reasonable thing to discuss.”
Gabriel Hays is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.
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I was referred this fine article by Robyn E. Blumner in defense of her boss at the RICHARD DAWKINS FOUNDATION by a tweet by Daniel Dennett.
As an evangelical I have had the opportunity to correspond with more more secular humanists that have signed the Humanist Manifestos than any other evangelical alive (at least that has been one of my goals since reading Francis Schaeffer’s books and watching his films since 1979). Actually I just attended the retirement party held for my high school Bible teacher Mark Brink of EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL of Cordova, Tennessee on May 19th and he introduced me to the works of Francis Schaeffer and it was Schaeffer’s works that eventually help topple ROE v WADE!!! Ironically Mr Brink had a 49 year career that spanned 1973 to 2022 which was the same period that ROE v WADE survived!!!
Let me make a few points about this fine article below by the humanist Robyn E. Blumner.
Robyn is trying to use common sense on people that “GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind.” Romans 1 states:
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil,
Identitarian:A person or ideology that espouses that group identity is the most important thing about a person, and that justice and power must be viewed primarily on the basis of group identity rather than individual merit.(Source: Urban Dictionary)
“The Affirmations of Humanism”:We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.(Paul Kurtz,Free Inquiry, Spring 1987)
The humanist project is at a dangerous crossroads. I fear that our cohesion as fellow humanists is being torn apart by a strain of identitarianism that is making enemies of long-standing friends and opponents of natural allies.
Just at a time when it is essential for all of us to come together to work arm-in-arm against Christian Nationalism and the rise of religious privilege in law, humanism is facing a schism within its own movement. It is heartbreaking to watch and even more disheartening to know that the continued breach seems destined to grow.
The division has to do with a fundamental precept of humanism, that enriching human individuality and celebrating the individual is the basis upon which humanism is built. Humanism valorizes the individual—and with good reason; we are each the hero of our own story. Not only is one’s individual sovereignty more essential to the humanist project than one’s group affiliation, but fighting for individual freedom—which includes freedom of conscience, speech, and inquiry—is part of the writ-large agenda of humanism. It unleashes creativity and grants us the breathing space to be agents in our own lives.
Or at least that idea used to be at the core of humanism.
Today, there is a subpart of humanists, identitarians, who are suspicious of individuals and their freedoms. They do not want a free society if it means some people will use their freedom to express ideas with which they disagree. They see everything through a narrow affiliative lens of race, gender, ethnicity, or other demographic category and seek to shield groups that they see as marginalized by ostensible psychic harms inflicted by the speech of others.
This has given rise to a corrosive cultural environment awash in controversial speakers being shouted down on college campuses; even liberal professors and newspaper editors losing their jobs for tiny, one-off slights; the cancellation of great historical figures for being men of their time; and a range of outlandish claims of microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and other crimes against current orthodoxy.
It has pitted humanists who stand for foundational civil liberties principles such as free speech and equal protection under the law against others on the political Left who think individual freedoms should give way when they fail to serve the interests of select identity groups. The most important feature of the symbol of justice is not her sword or scales; it is her blindfold. Identitarians would pull it off so she could benefit certain groups over others.
Good people with humanist hearts have been pilloried if they don’t subscribe to every jot and tittle of the identitarian gospel. A prime example is the decision last year by the American Humanist Association (AHA) to retract its 1996 award to Richard Dawkins as Humanist of the Year. The man who has done more than anyone alive to advance evolutionary biology and the public’s understanding of that science, who has brought the light of atheism to millions of people, and whose vociferous opposition to Donald Trump and Brexit certainly must have burnished his liberal cred became radioactive because of one tweet on transgender issues that the AHA didn’t like.
Apparently decades of past good works are erased by 280 characters. Just poof. No wonder a New York Times poll1 recently found that 84 percent of adults say it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem that some Americans do not speak freely because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.
This is what identitarians have wrought. Rather than lifting up individuals and imbuing them with autonomy and all the extraordinary uniqueness that flows from it, identitarians would divide us all into racial, ethnic, and gender-based groups and make that group affiliation our defining characteristic. This has the distorting effect of obliterating personal agency, rewarding group victimhood, and incentivizing competition to be seen as the most oppressed.
In addition to being inherently divisive, this is self-reinforcing defeatism. It results in extreme examples, such as a draft plan in California to deemphasize calculus as a response to persistent racial gaps in math achievement.2 Suddenly a subject as racially neutral as math has become a flashpoint for identitarians set on ensuring equality of outcomes for certain groups rather than the far-more just standard of equality of opportunity. In this freighted environment, reducing the need for rigor and eliminating challenging standards becomes a feasible solution. The notion of individual merit or recognition that some students are better at math than others becomes racially tinged and suspect.
Not only does the truth suffer under this assault on common sense, but we start to live in a Harrison Bergeron world where one’s natural skills are necessarily sacrificed on the altar of equality or, in today’s parlance, equity.
Of course, the identitarians’ focus is not just on racial issues. Gender divisions also play out on center stage. I was at a secular conference recently when a humanist leader expressed the view that if you don’t have a uterus, you have no business speaking about abortion.
Really? Only people with female reproductive organs should be heard on one of the most consequential issues of the day? Such a call, itself, is a form of lamentable sexism. And it seems purposely to ignore the fact that plenty of people with a uterus are actively opposed to the right to choose, while plenty of people without a uterus are among our greatest allies for abortion rights. Why should those of us who care about reproductive freedom cut fully half of all humanity from our roster of potential vocal supporters and activists?
As has been said by others perplexed and disturbed by such a narrow-minded view, you don’t have to be poor to have a valid opinion on ways to alleviate poverty. You don’t have to be a police officer to have a valid opinion on policing. And, similarly, you don’t have to be a woman to have a valid opinion on abortion rights.
If the Affirmation quoted at the beginning of this article that rejects “divisive parochial loyalties” based on facile group affiliations isn’t a rejection of identitarianism, I don’t know what is. In his 1968 essay “Humanism and the Freedom of the Individual,” Kurtz stated bluntly:
Any humanism that does not cherish the individual, I am prepared to argue, is neither humanistic nor humanitarian. … Any humanism worthy of the name should be concerned with the preservation of the individual personality with all of its unique idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. We need a society in which the full and free development of every individual is the ruling principle. The existence of individual freedom thus is an essential condition for the social good and a necessary end of humanitarianism.
The individual is the most important unit in humanism. When our individuality is stripped away so we can be fitted into prescribed identity groups instead, something essential to the humanist project is lost. Those pushing for this conception of society are misconstruing humanism, diminishing human potential and self-actualization, and driving a wedge between good people everywhere.
Robyn E. Blumner is the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and the executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason &, Science. She was a nationally syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) for sixteen years.
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER LGBTQ+ SCHISM
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Francis Schaeffer later in this blog post discusses what the unbelievers in Romans 1 were rejecting, but first John MacArthur discusses what the unbelievers in the Democratic Party today are affirming and how these same activities were condemned 2000 years ago in Romans 1.
Christians Cannot And MUST Not Vote Democrat – John MacArthur
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A Democrat witness testifying before the HouseJudiciary Committee on abortion rights Thursday declared that men can get pregnant and have abortions. This reminds of Romans chapter 1 and also John MacArthur’s commentary on the 2022 Agenda of the Democratic Party:
25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…26 For this reason (M)GOD GAVE THEM OVER to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm.
I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”
Romans 1 is not politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live….it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.
Dem witness tells House committee men can get pregnant, have abortions
‘I believe that everyone can identify for themselves,’ Aimee Arrambide tells House Judiciary Committee
A Democrat witness testifying before the HouseJudiciary Committee on abortion rights Thursday declared that men can get pregnant and have abortions.
Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of the abortion rights nonprofit Avow Texas, was asked by Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., to define what “a woman is,” to which she responded, “I believe that everyone can identify for themselves.”
“Do you believe that men can become pregnant and have abortions?” Bishop asked.
“Yes,” Arrambide replied.
The remarks from Arrambide followed a tense exchange between Bishop and Dr. Yashica Robinson, another Democrat witness, after he similarly asked her to define “woman.”
Aimee Arrambide testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on May 11, 2020. (YouTube screenshot) (Screenshot/ House Committee on the Judiciary)
“Dr. Robinson, I noticed in your written testimony you said that you use she/her pronouns. You’re a medical doctor – what is a woman?” Bishop asked Robinson, an OBGYN and board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health.
“I think it’s important that we educate people like you about why we’re doing the things that we do,” Robinson responded. “And so the reason that I use she and her pronouns is because I understand that there are people who become pregnant that may not identify that way. And I think it is discriminatory to speak to people or to call them in such a way as they desire not to be called.”
“Are you going to answer my question? Can you answer the question, what’s a woman?” Bishop asked.
Donna Howard and Aimee Arrambide speaks at Making Virtual Storytelling and Activism Personal during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 14, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Hubert Vestil/Getty Images for SXSW)
“I’m a woman, and I will ask you which pronouns do you use?” Robinson replied. “If you tell me that you use she and her pronouns … I’m going to respect you for how you want me to address you.”
“So you gave me an example of a woman, you say that you are a woman, can you tell me otherwise what a woman is?” Bishop asked.
“Yes, I’m telling you, I’m a woman,” Robinson responded.
“Is that as comprehensive a definition as you can give me?” Bishop asked.
“That’s as comprehensive a definition as I will give you today,” Robinson said. “Because I think that it’s important that we focus on what we’re here for, and it’s to talk about access to abortion.”
“So you’re not interested in answering the question that I asked unless it’s part of a message you want to deliver…” Bishop fired back.
Wednesday’s hearing, titled, “Revoking your Rights,” addressed the threat to abortion rights after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion signaled the high court is poised to soon strike down Roe v. Wade. John MacArthur explains God’s Wrath on unrighteousness from Romans Chapt…
18 For (A)the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who (B)suppress the truth [a]in unrighteousness, 19 because (C)that which is known about God is evident [b]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For (D)since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, (E)being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not [c]honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became (F)futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 (G)Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and (H)exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [d]crawling creatures.
24 Therefore (I)God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be (J)dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for [e]a (K)lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, (L)who is blessed [f]forever. Amen.
26 For this reason (M)God gave them over to (N)degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [g]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, (O)men with men committing [h]indecent acts and receiving in [i]their own persons the due penalty of their error.
28 And just as they did not see fit [j]to acknowledge God any longer, (P)God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are(Q)gossips, 30 slanderers, [k](R)haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, (S)disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, (T)unloving, unmerciful; 32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of (U)death, they not only do the same, but also (V)give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm. What God punishes, they exalt. Shocking, really. The Democratic Party has become the anti-God party, the sin-promoting party. By the way, there are seventy-two million registered Democrats in this country who have identified themselves with that party and maybe they need to rethink that identification.
I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”
Romans 1 is not politics. The Bible is not politics. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s not about personalities; it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.
WHAT HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REJECTED? THE ANSWER IS THE GOD WHO HAS REVEALED HIM SELF THROUGH THE BOOK OF NATURE AND THE BOOK OF SCRIPTURE!
God Is There And He Is Not Silent Psalm 19 Intro. 1) Francis Schaeffer lived from 1912-1984. He was one of the Christian intellectual giants of the 20th century. He taught us that you could be a Christian and not abandon the mind. One of the books he wrote was entitled He Is There And He Is Not Silent. In that work he makes a crucial and thought provoking statement, “The infinite- personal God is there, but also he is not silent; that changes the whole world…He is there and is not a silent, nor far-off God.” (Works of F.S., Vol 1, 276). 2) God is there and He is not silent. In fact He has revealed Himself to us in 2 books: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. Francis Bacon, a 15th century scientist who is credited by many with developing the scientific method said it this way: “There are 2 books laid before us to study, to prevent us from falling into error: first the volume to the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the creation, which expresses His power.” 3) Psalm 19 addresses both of God’s books, the book of nature in vs 1-6 and the book of Scripture in vs. 7-14. Described as a wisdom Psalm, its beauty, poetry and splendor led C.S. Lewis to say, “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world” (Reflections on the Psalms, 63). Trans. God is there and He is not silent. How should we hear and listen to the God who talks? I. Listen To God Speak Through Nature 19:1-6 God has revealed himself to ever rational human on the earth in two ways: 1) nature and 2) conscience. We call this natural or general revelation. In vs. 1-6 David addresses the wonder of nature and creation
Helen Pashgian on Georges de La Tour | Artists on Art
FEATURED ARTIST IS DE LA TOUR
GEORGES DE LA TOUR (1593-1652)
The influence of Caravaggio is evident in De la Tour, whose use of light and shadows is unique among the painters of the Baroque era.
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Francis Schaeffer
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1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]
At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
In this post we are going to see that through the years humanist thought has encouraged artists like Michelangelo to think that the future was extremely bright versus the place today where many artist who hold the humanist and secular worldview are very pessimistic. In contrast to Michelangelo’s DAVID when humanist man thought he […]
_________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]
It’s difficult to have the albums created by the most important band in the history of music ranked from worst to best. After all, it’s unlikely that you’ll find any band or musical artist unwilling to share their admiration for the Fab Four. Their fingerprints are over everything created in popular music.
The Liverpool quartet recorded albums at a significant pace between 1963 and 1970. Many of these are classics that redefined what pop-rock could be. Most of these are tremendously experimental, adventurous affairs.
Still, which one’s the best? Is there any one album worth avoiding?
I’ve looked at the evidence and listened to the whole discography once more, and I think that I have an answer or two.
For simplicity’s sake, I have only included official UK releases. That means that the early US-released records aren’t on here. Neither are compilations such as “Anthology,” “Rarities,” or “Hey Jude.” “Yellow Submarine” is included as it included mostly unreleased material and was crafted as a studio album.
With this in mind, here’s a quick initiation into the musical world created by John, Paul, George, and Ringo, The Beatles albums ranked.
9. “Please Please Me” (1963)
The debut album from The Beatles, “Please Please Me,” is a classic release. In many ways, this is the moment that the 1960s began in terms of pop music. Songs like “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout” are proof.
Lennon and McCartney were still developing as songwriters at this point. This is reflected in the somewhat raw and unpolished nature of the album. However, it is a promising start for the band and it sets the stage for the great things that were to come.
“Please Please Me”also answers questions about whether The Beatles could transfer their Hamburg sound onto record. They do!
Still, they also add to it. Much of this is the result of George Martin’s mentorship. Another factor is the musicianship that the band members had developed in Hamburg and Liverpool.
The album features a mix of original songs and covers and is notable for its energy and enthusiasm. “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Love Me Do” are extremely catchy pop tunes. “Twist and Shout” brings over some of the rawness of The Beatles’ live shows.
Still, it’s the cover of Burt Bacharach’s “Baby It’s You” that is the finest early Beatles recording. It also showcases Lennon’s excellent, resonant vocal tone.
The album was a commercial success, reaching number one on the charts in the United Kingdom. The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964.
This is widely considered to be a turning point in their career and a key moment in the history of rock music.
Some predicted that The Beatles’ sound and its popularity would merely be a passing fad. Listening back objectively to “Please, please me,” it’s clear to see why this was not the case.
Come Together – John Lennon (Live In New York City)
Beatles members Paul McCartney, left, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr photographed together in April 1969.
My personal favorite is “Here Comes The Sun”
The Bearles most revolutionary song in my view is “A Day In The Life”
I was born in 1961 and only remember hearing two Beatles songs playing on the radio and one of them was “The Long And Winding Road”
The other song I remember hearing on the radio was “Let It Be”
Join us with the Fool on the Hill as we wade through Strawberry Fields (forever), looking through a Glass Onion, in search of the Fabs’ best-ever tune By Mark Beaumont– 21st December 2021
If you ever doubt that The Beatles were the greatest band that ever existed, try ranking their songs. Out of 185 self-penned tunes they released commercially during their initial seven-year run – so not including covers, fan club releases, alternative versions or their 1995 reunion songs – you’ll list well over a hundred tracks before you get to anything you wouldn’t call sublime, and hit 150 or so before anything verging on average appears. Of their entire catalogue, only six or seven songs could be classed as ‘shonky’, and most of those have still got something historic going for them.
Among them you’ll find songs which caused seismic shifts in pop, psychedelia and rock and the formative roots of punk, metal and electronica, amongst a panoply of other styles they pioneered and popularised in such a short time. It’s a feat unmatched by any act before or since, and with Peter Jackson’sGet Backreviving interest in their achievements, let’s pile back in to the most magical mystery tour pop music has ever known, with each track ranked in order of greatness.
‘Wild Honey Pie’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
An experimental ‘White Album’ interlude recorded entirely by Paul, ‘Wild Honey Pie’ had a mild element of redneck Grieg menace, but little else to it.
‘Dig It’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
50 seconds of a far longer studio jam, during which Lennon makes random references to the FBI, the CIA, the BBC, BB King, Doris Day and Matt Busby over a pretty dreary rock’n’roll dirge, ‘Dig It’ only really existed to exemplify the fact that The Beatles cut loose a lot during the ‘Let It Be’ sessions. Now we’ve got seven-plus hours of Get Back, it’s rendered superfluous.
‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ (B-side of ‘Let It Be’, 1970)
“Good evening and welcome to Slaggers…”The Beatles spend an inordinate amount of studio time trying to perfect this frankly silly combo of blues rock, lounge samba, music hall clowning and a bit sung by Crazy Frog’s jazz Granddad. Don’t do drugs, kids.
‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Even before Google Street View, Paul’s uber-horny blues squeal about dogging like a champion was at best inadvisable and at worst just plain creepy. Everyone will definitely be watching you, so stop. Think. Don’t do it in the road.
‘Revolution 9’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Of interest as an avant-garde curio exemplifying the fact that The Beatles had entirely dismissed all sonic boundaries by the ‘White Album’, John and Yoko’s epic sound collage of radio interference, studio chatter and orchestral samples is more notable and influential than it’s often given credit for. But you wouldn’t bung it on repeat.
‘Flying’ (‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
An incidental instrumental to accompany a psychedelic segment of Magical Mystery Tour, ‘Flying’ was little more than 12-bar rock’n’roll played, very stoned, on an organ for two minutes. Some distance from a Welsh male voice choir.
‘Only A Northern Song’ (‘Yellow Submarine’, 1969)
Designed as a piss-taking dig at Northern Songs, the Beatles’ publishing company, which George felt rewarded him pitifully for his songwriting efforts, ‘Only A Northern Song’ is intended to sound weird, wonky and half-baked, even as Harrison came into his own as a songsmith.
‘Ask Me Why’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
A formulaic shake shack ballad of little note other than the sneaking suspicion that Morrissey took his entire vocal style from Lennon’s end-of-chorus flicks.
‘Little Child’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
By-numbers Merseybeat that was one of the few unmemorable originals Lennon and McCartney ever penned.
‘Blue Jay Way’ (‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
Written by George while waiting for houseguests to arrive at the place he was staying on the titular Hollywood Hills street in 1967. They presumably arrived just after he’d perfected the ominous psychedelic organ mood but before he’d really gotten his teeth into the chorus.
‘Not A Second Time’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
A song desperately in search of a hookline, ‘Not A Second Time’ finds John’s voice flapping wildly around the verses as if desperate to find somewhere solid to land.
‘Her Majesty’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
A lightweight folk frippery that sounds particularly throwaway when tacked on the end of ‘Abbey Road’’s monumental side two medley as a secret final track.
‘Run For Your Life’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
As The Beatles shifted away from love songs, John contributed this out-and-out hate song to ‘Rubber Soul’ – a nifty country rocker and arguably the proto-‘Last Train To Clarkesville’, but notorious as The Beatles’ most problematic track. John would claim to regret having written it, calling it his least favourite Beatles song.
‘Don’t Bother Me’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
“I don’t think it’s a particularly good song,” George said of his debut Beatles writing credit, “it mightn’t even be a song at all.” Actually, it’s a pretty nifty homage to the surf rock craze of the time. And definitely a song.
‘For You Blue’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
Standard, formulaic slide guitar blues given a sweetness and light by George’s weightless vocals and exclamation, “Elmore James got nothing on this!”
‘What Goes On’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
Honky-tonk pastiche written by John in 1959 and passed over for several albums before landing half-heartedly on ‘Rubber Soul’. You can actually hear the band lose interest midway through.
‘Thank You Girl’ (B-side to ‘From Me To You’, 1964)
Recorded by John with a heavy cold, it’s perhaps understandable that this thank you letter to their fans – a “hack song”, according to McCartney – sounds muddy and under-developed. On this evidence you’d assume EMI Studios doubled as a bomb shelter.
‘One After 909’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
Plucked from the catalogue of early Lennon/McCartney compositions when the band were short on material for ‘Let It Be’, Paul’s locomotive skiffle knockabout had a retro charm but never really escaped the formula.
‘I Me Mine’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
A lovely choral waltz ballad from George, totally ruined by nobody bothering to write a proper chorus and just bawling the title over some 12-bar sleaze rock riffing instead.
‘I’ll Cry Instead’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Bitterness, heartbreak and romantic revenge; Lennon’s dark side was on show even on the skiffly, tucked-away tracks of the Beatlemania era.
‘Yer Blues’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Passionate, characterful and a raw exorcism of John’s harrowed late-‘60s mindset, certainly. But The Beatles were way past by-numbers blues rock by ‘68 and ‘Yer Blues’ stood out as an unimaginative throwback on the ‘White Album’.
‘When I Get Home’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Formulaic Beatlemania fare in which John gets excited at the prospect of telling his wife about all the screaming girls, drugs and parties on tour. Bet she was thrilled.
‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
For some, John’s cabaret pastiche is the very essence of ‘Sgt. Pepper…’, capturing the sepia carnival vibe in its circus poster lyrics and carousel interlude. To these ears, though, it’s club-footed, corny and unnecessary.
‘I’ll Get You’ (B-side to ‘She Loves You’, 1963)
John’s songwriting sparkles on the B-side of their first single, yet lacks the confidence of more head-waggling numbers of the era.
‘This Boy’ (B-side to ‘All My Loving’)
Faithful homage to the harmony groups of the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and a rare example of a Beatles song that could be mistaken for that of any other band.
‘I’m Down’ (B-side to ‘Help!’)
Nifty Little Richard-style rock’n’roller that doesn’t sound all that “down” at all.
‘Love Me Do’ (single, 1962)
Legendary and all that, being the debut single, but let’s face it: a bit of a plodder.
‘Hold Me Tight’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
Even when rehashing some pretty standard rock’n’roll chord progressions and melodic structures on a song that McCartney himself would call “filler”, The Beatles exuded a fundamental magic that set them apart from the Merseybeat horde.
‘There’s a Place’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
Early signs of spiritual and philosophical musings from John as he tries his hand at Motown.
‘She’s A Woman’ (B-side to ‘I Feel Fine’)
Basic, bluesy rock’n’roller notable for some pretty savage guitar work and McCartney clearly working his way up to the sort of full-throated blues bawls he’d let loose once the ‘60s were ready for them.
‘Misery’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
The exuberance of being in a studio recording ‘Please Please Me’ made this shameless homage to the ‘50s crooners sound like the cheeriest song about existential despair ever recorded. No bad thing.
‘I Call Your Name’ (‘Long Tall Sally EP’, 1964)
A pre-Beatles Lennon tune originally given to British popper Billy J. Kramer. The Beatles’ version swung harder.
‘What You’re Doing’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
George’s proto-indie-pop guitar line lifted one of Paul’s less eventful tunes, but not an un-influential one – somewhere in here is the root of The La’s’ ‘There She Goes’.
‘Octopus’s Garden’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Seemingly envisioning a future in children’s entertainment as The Beatles fell apart, Ringo’s second-ever writing credit involved oompah larks and underwater adventure (sound familiar?), adorned with George making bubble noises by blowing into a glass of milk through a straw.
‘Polythene Pam’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
‘Pinball Wizard’ power chords, nifty solo, broad Scouse accent, low-rent S&M; there was so much going on in John’s throwaway 70-second rocker about a bizarre sexual encounter in Jersey in 1960 (involving beat poet Royston Ellis) that you wish he’d written a chorus for it.
‘You Like Me Too Much’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
It’s baffling that The Beatles only really began recognising and appreciating George’s songwriting come ‘The White Album’, since he was displaying solid melodic chops way back on ‘Help!’.
‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
You’ve written some of the finest children’s songs of the century, why the hell shouldn’t you try to make a vaudevillian family singalong from the story of an insane, hammer wielding psychopath? Basically Wes Craven’s ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.
‘Tell Me What You See’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Sometimes The Beatles’ harmonising could carry an entire song alone, as on this shift towards a more contemplative folk maturity. Includes an entire verse nicked from a religious passage that hung in John’s childhood home.
‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’ (single, 1969)
The sorry tale of John and Yoko’s troubled and press-hounded attempts to wed at short notice in various European locales, delivered as impassioned country lament.
‘Sun King’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
The Beatles’ impression of The Beach Boysdoing Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ (in cod-Spanish) fell between two stools on ‘Abbey Road’; not as plush as ‘Because’ nor as melodically bright as ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Lovely, then, but slight.
‘I Need You’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Gorgeous flamenco strumble from George, finding his songwriting feet on ‘Help!’.
‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Macca Marmite: one either adores the cheery Jamaican lilt of Desmond and Molly’s story and considers it pivotal in attuning British pop culture to ska music or, like Lennon, deems it “more of Paul’s granny music shit”.
‘I’m Happy Just To Dance With You’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
A Lennon/McCartney composition given to George to sing. You likely owe your very existence to this dance hall romance, since it probably gave your Granddad the nerve to chat up your Nanna down the Mecca.
‘I’ll Be Back’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Flamenco-flecked and downbeat, the closer of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – rewritten from Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ – was an early sign of The Beatles’ sophisticated tonal ambitions within what were, at the time, strictly regimented ‘60s pop structures.
‘The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
The crackle of boy scout campfire virtually enshrouds this charming tale of bravery and derring-do out on the hunt in the days of empire. Twitter would rip it a new arsehole, mind.
‘Lovely Rita’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Of all of Paul’s outlandish character songs, ‘Lovely Rita’, in which our narrator develops affection for a traffic warden, is by far the least believable, but remains charming thanks to some gorgeous band harmonies and nifty work on the paper and comb.
‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
An energised if one-trick jitterbugger written by Paul on a night out with The Rolling Stones in Richmond. It became The Stones’ second single before The Beatles gave it to Ringo to holler on ‘With The Beatles’.
‘The Word’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
The link between ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘Taxman’, ‘The Word’ added a touch of harmonic funk to ‘Rubber Soul’ as Lennon took a stab at a one-note song in homage to ‘Long Tall Sally’.
‘Old Brown Shoe’ (B-side of ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’, 1969)
George in righteous, piano-thumping boogie-woogie mode. Upstaged its own A-side.
‘Piggies’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Tainted in retrospect by Charles Manson’s murderous interpretations, George’s harpsichord satire of the selfish and gluttonous rich, smothered in porcine snorts and grunts, is a stirring but unsettling listen.
‘Fixing A Hole’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
The pot-fixated ‘Fixing A Hole’ makes great use of harpsichord (played by both Paul and George Martin) to give a psychedelic lilt to a music hall pastiche on which Paul makes the utmost of a one-note chorus.
‘If I Needed Someone’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
This fine Merseybeat evolution offers early indications of George’s Indian influence and of the psychedelic storm the band would later kick up on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
Suitably blustery for a song recorded on a rooftop in January, Paul’s dive into The Band-style bluesy Americana rock is long on feel and passion, short on melodic impact.
‘Think For Yourself’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
Incorporating Motown beats and an open-mindedness gleaned from encounters with Dylan, George’s first major foray out of romantic odes was targeting at society’s regressive and narrow-minded elements, quite possibly in government.
‘You Can’t Do That’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
A tuneful precursor to ‘Run For Your Life’, which also finds John’s jealousy getting the better of him.
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Rocking up the title track, the reprise rips off the neon military blazers to expose the Hamburg leathers beneath.
‘Every Little Thing’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
A marriage of the melancholy and upbeat, this was a rare example of John singing a Paul song.
‘Wait’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
The Beatles as pop toreadors. A certain Mediterranean fire creeps into Macca’s plea to Jane Asher to give him at least until the end of tour.
‘I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
John plays the party-pooping wallflower on this beautifully forlorn skiffle lament and a thematic precursor to ‘How Soon Is Now?’.
‘Tell Me Why’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
An all-barrels harmonic doo-wop assault which Paul, in retrospect, thought might have been a window onto John’s troubled marriage to Cynthia.
‘Doctor Robert’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Perhaps spurred on by The Rolling Stones’ ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and Donovan’s ‘Candy Man’, Lennon penned his own tribute to a drug-supplying medic, rumoured to be Dr Robert Freymann, known for supplying B-12 injections liberally laced with amphetamine. They kick in on the blissed-out middle-eight, clearly.
‘It’s Only Love’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
One of Lennon’s prettiest early-period tunes (he hated it, natch), built around sumptuous 12-string rhythms and a twee but fan-friendly lyric. Working title: ‘That’s A Nice Hat’.
‘The Inner Light’ (B-side of ‘Lady Madonna’, 1968)
Based on a Taoist poem and recorded with Indian musicians in Bombay, The ‘Lady Madonna’ flipside was one of only four Beatles songs with no Beatles playing on it (quiz compilers: the others are ‘Good Night’, ‘She’s Leaving Home’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’), but magnificently emulated the serenity of the Transcendental Meditation techniques the band were learning from the Maharishi.
‘Rocky Raccoon’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Cartoonish Wild West soap opera larks and one of Paul’s better novelty tunes, thanks to a popcorn guzzling plot and George Martin’s honky tonk piano solo tumbling past like a saloon fight.
‘Good Night’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
As reward for getting all the way through ‘Revolution 9’, Ringo turned up with a full Busby Berkeley orchestra to tuck you in with this sleepyhead lullaby. Night night, Ringo.
Central, stylistically, to the pre-war cabaret conceit of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s…’, Paul’s cheery/corny bandstand ode to somehow reaching your 60s without murdering your spouse was among the first he ever wrote, aged 16. Now go on, give Nanna a kiss.
‘Oh! Darling’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Updating 1950s US swing for the psychedelic era, McCartney put his all into ‘Oh! Darling’, even coming into the studio early to have one crack at it every day before his voice lost its edge. The song’s part in getting glam underway has gone woefully unrecognised.
‘Yellow Submarine’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Ringo’s most legendary moment, the quintessential psychedelia ditty and arguably the most overplayed Beatles song of all. You came for the chant-along chorus aged four and stayed until adulthood for the ‘shroom-friendliness and Lennon shouting, “Full speed ahead, Mr Boatswain / Full speed ahead, bop-dibbetty-bip-bop!” Features The Stones’ Brian Jones on ocarina. No shit.
‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
Louche and languid (read: almost certainly on heroin by now), Lennon’s plea to Yoko flits between the vulnerable, optimistic, lovestruck and desperate. Find yourself someone who “does” you like Yoko “done” John.
‘Girl’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
Melding Greek and German music into a mournful mood piece, Lennon pointed the way to The Beatles’ more sophisticated latter period with ‘Girl’, probably the best song ever to have a chorus that’s mostly just inhaling.
‘Dig A Pony’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
One of the more inventive and engaging blues numbers the band worked up for ‘Let It Be’, not least because of Lennon’s acid-fried lyrics. Just exactly how one does “a roadhog” or “syndicate[s] any boat you row” remains unspecified.
‘Things We Said Today’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Idyllic strumbler penned by Paul on a yacht called Happy Days in the Virgin Islands with glamorous new girlfriend Jane Asher. And sounds like it.
‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
Inspired by a song from Snow White And The Seven Dwarves, which John’s mother used to sing to him as a child, the strength of ‘Do You Want To Know A Secret’ was in its childlike simplicity and coy teen naivety.
‘Baby’s In Black’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
Hoedown homage so gorgeous it’ll give you an ounce of sympathy for a man trying to pull a hot widow while her husband isn’t yet cold in the ground.
‘The Fool On The Hill’ (‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
Flutes! Recorder solos! Meditation! The budget for the Magical Mystery Tour TV special was severely stretched when Paul allegedly decided the sequence for his wistful portrait of the Maharishi should be filmed in a beach near Nice.
‘And I Love Her’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Doe-eyed flamenco vibes abound on one of Paul’s early run-ups to ‘Yesterday’.
‘Mean Mr. Mustard’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Blur basically got their entire ‘90s out of John’s engrossing one-minute oompah tune inspired by a newspaper story of a “dirty old” miser – in real life, one John Mustard of Enfield, Middlesex – who hid his money so he wouldn’t be forced to spend it. His level of personal hygiene was unrecorded.
‘Altogether Now’ (‘Yellow Submarine’, 1969)
While ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Octopus’s Garden’ were story time classics, ‘Altogether Now’’s nursery-level track easily stands up as The Beatles’ best children’s song.
‘Hello, Goodbye’ (single, 1967)
Brisk, bright-eyed and boasting one of the best pre-choruses in pop, ‘Hello, Goodbye’ would be the best single in most bands’ careers. It’s the 107th best song The Beatles wrote. That’s how great they were. Strap in: everything from here gets fucking brilliant.
‘Good Morning Good Morning’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
The Beatles did a fine line in rise-and-shine tunes, although John’s compulsive dawn chorus on ‘Sgt. Pepper…’ came with a hearty dollop of cynicism, everyday mundanity and casual adultery.
‘Another Girl’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
The Help! scene set the blueprint for The Monkees‘ entire career, as the band played this Beatlemania cracker on a beach in the Bahamas, with Paul using a bikini-clad girl as a guitar.
‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
The last song all four Beatles recorded together; you can hear the sheer weight of the occasion. At almost eight minutes and smothered in doomy textures and white noise, it would have seen John invent heavy metal if Paul hadn’t beaten him to it with ‘Helter Skelter’. Instead it invents Pink Floyd’s ‘Meddle’ and provides proof, if any were needed, that stoner rock is basically the blues on military grade tranquilisers.
‘Within You Without You’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Probably the ultimate expression of George’s Indian immersion, ‘Within You Without You’ opened many a Western third eye to the wonders of ‘world music’ and Eastern philosophies.
‘I’m So Tired’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
When you shout for ‘Help!’ and nobody listens, this is where you end up. Tortured, wasted, exhausted and desperate. Even three weeks of solid insomnia at the Maharishi’s retreat can’t dampen Lennon’s melodic prowess, as he knocks out the perfect song for day three of the prom night that forgot to finish.
‘The End’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Masterful and historic as the climax of the ‘Abbey Road’ medley, even taken in isolation ‘The End’ is exultant mood-making, from Ringo’s drum solo to the gathering gospel storm and Paul’s thought-provoking orchestral coda.
‘Birthday’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Along with Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’, The Beatles’ impassioned 12-bar well-wishing – written and recorded in one night – is usually the best thing about scratching off another year on this godforsaken hellhole of a planet.
‘All I’ve Got To Do’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
A Smokey Robinson homage aimed at the US market – British teens of the ‘60s would never dream of calling a girl up “on the phone”, Lennon later claimed.
‘It’s All Too Much’ (‘Yellow Submarine’, 1969)
The sheer euphoria of George’s peak acid song, floating through a blissed-out clamour of noise rock, trumpet and disintegrating beats, makes us all yearn for the days before you’d pay 50 quid for a bag of blotting paper soaked in balsamic vinegar off the dark web.
‘Baby, You’re A Rich Man’ (B-side of ‘All You Need Is Love’, 1967; ‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
Because we’re all as loaded as Bezos inside, you dig? Sublimely funky ode to our spiritual wealth that’s still begging the decades-old question: just where in a zoo, exactly, might you stash a bag full of cash?
‘Don’t Pass Me By’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Ringo’s long underrated songwriting debut doesn’t get the credit it deserves for holding its own on ‘The White Album’. The sheer clod-hopping junk shop exuberance (unsurprising, since Ringo had been trying to get it recorded since 1962) makes it an album highlight, along with the fiddle player so drunk he doesn’t realise the song’s finished. A Number One single in Denmark – and don’t think we didn’t consider making it number one in this list too, just for the traffic.
‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Plush, proto-Wings country rocker inspired by a fan breaking into Paul’s house to steal photographs. Key to the ‘Abbey Road’ medley’s impression that the band had melodic wonders aplenty to toss into the pile.
‘Glass Onion’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Woooah! Meta… A Beatles song about The Beatles. Walruses, Strawberry Fields, Lady Madonna and the Fool on the Hill all reprise their roles in Beatles history as Lennon mocks people reading too much into the band’s lyrics to a chamber rock backing that ELO got at least three early albums out of.
‘Carry That Weight’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
It takes a certain classical majesty to slip a grand orchestral reprise of ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ into a stonking great lad rock anthem chorus in search of a song.
‘Yes It Is’ (B-side of ‘Ticket To Ride’)
Effortlessly reinvented the blue-eyed crooner genre on a frickin’ B-side. Just try not playing it twice.
‘P.S. I Love You’ (B-side of ‘Love Me Do’, 1962; ‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
The song The Shadows would have written, had they been the world’s greatest band in the making.
‘Get Back’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
We’ve all seen it chug into life in the documentary of the same name, its simple blues strut brought to life by Billy Preston’s wild-at-heart organ. Still slaps.
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Pre-war nostalgia meets counterculture psychedelia explosion to landscape obliterating effect. And all, the story goes, because Paul didn’t know that the ‘S’ and ‘P’ on his in-flight meal pots stood for ‘Salt’ and ‘Pepper’.
‘Michelle’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
In Parisian mood, Paul tries out some schoolboy French to woo a continental bohemian lass. Originally written as a pastiche of a bloke singing a song in French at an art party.
‘Hey Bulldog’ (‘Yellow Submarine’, 1969)
A masterclass in rock dynamism and melodic tension, and testament to the fact that The Beatles buried genius in all corners of their catalogue, smothered in barking noises, ripe for re-evaluation.
‘Any Time At All’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Trying to write another ‘It Won’t Be Long’, Lennon came up with something a touch more mature – an early sign that The Beatles were on a fast-track out of Merseybeat, bound for somewhere rather more Dylanish.
‘Lady Madonna’ (single, 1968)
Marrying his revived interest in 1920s radio jazz (see also: ‘Martha My Dear’, ‘Honey Pie’) to a dirty ‘50s swamp blues rock’n’roll riot, McCartney imagined a gender-swapped version of Fats Domino’s working man blues rocker ‘Blue Monday’ and came up with a song that rocks until the wheels damn near come off.
‘I’m Looking Through You’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
A fine, fond farewell to the ‘old Beatles’ as they approached their giant leap. And yes, that is the riff from The Travelling Wilburys’ ‘End Of The Line’ at the start – nice recycle, George.
‘I’m A Loser’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
Considered the first sign of Dylan’s influence on The Beatles, and one of John’s early cries for help hidden beneath a storming country-pop melody.
‘I Feel Fine’ (single, 1964)
“I’ve written this song, but it’s lousy,” Lennon said to Ringo one day in the studio. We call bullshit. One of the first deliberate uses of feedback on record.
‘The Night Before’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
“Love was in your eyes, ah, the night before / Now today I find you have changed your mind.”She was pissed Paul, but at least you got a definitive slice of ‘60s pop out of it. Perfect for playing at, um, Stonehenge (if Help! is anything to go by).
‘Eight Days A Week’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
A flippant remark Paul’s chauffeur made en route to John’s house in Weybridge inspired, that very afternoon, a timeless pop demand for more weekly loving than is reasonable or realistic. But then, ‘Twice A Week Unless It’s My Birthday’ wouldn’t have been so catchy.
‘No Reply’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
While Paul was in the Virgin Islands with Ringo writing ‘Things We Said Today’, John was in Tahiti with George, knocking together this tropical tale of an unfaithful and unresponsive partner. “You’re getting better now – that was a complete story,” publisher and Beatles pantomime villain Dick James (sssss!) told John on hearing it.
‘I Should Have Known Better’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1965)
Much harmonica jollity as, with Beatlemania in full swing, John bags himself a good ‘un. Nanna probably thought it was written specifically for her.
‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Ringo’s finest hour. For once nobody stood up and walked out on him when he sang out this aural hug of a tune, acknowledging his eternal debt to the bandmates without whom he might be slogging the clubs with Merseybeat nostalgia acts to this day.
‘Getting Better’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
With George adding Indian tambura drones and John lumping on world-weary falsetto cynicism (“it can’t get no worse”), another of Paul’s optimistic pop bangers gained deliciously dark edges. Much of the magical frisson of The Beatles can be heard in how clearly John doesn’t want to be singing this one.
‘Honey Pie’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
We can blame the widespread malaise of ‘White Album’ fatigue for the back end of the album being under-appreciated for decades. Case in point: Macca’s utterly charming tribute to the jazz age, complete with authentically crackled gramophone clarinets.
‘I Want To Tell You’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
LSD musings and dissonant rock as George comes into his own as a rounded songwriter circa ’66.
‘It Won’t Be Long’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
Effervescent call-and-response “yeah”s. Chord sequences Dylan would call “outrageous”. The promises of imminent romantic reunion. The opener of ‘With The Beatles’ is almost Fabs-by-numbers – but boy, what numbers.
‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
If only all fractious business disputes could be argued out like this. With Paul and John looking to lose control of their stakes in their own songs, Paul penned this sublime multi-style paean to manager Allen Klein that basically boiled down to “show me the mon-aaay!”
‘For No One’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Cracks appear in Paul’s relationship with Jane Asher; hiding in a toilet in a Swiss Alps chalet he writes a lament for “a love that should have lasted years”, his second chamber ballad for ‘Revolver’.
Roll up (hur-hur!) for the trip of a lifetime (pfffft!). This spaced-out rock freewheeler introduced the weirdest Christmas TV special outside of the Grumpy Cat movie. It’s essentially The Who’s ‘Tommy’ inside of three minutes.
‘You’re Going To Lose That Girl’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Worst. Wingman. Ever. Lennon lurks at the edges of a shaky relationship waiting to pounce, with an irresistible two-minute doo-wopper between his teeth.
‘Your Mother Should Know’ (‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
Corny, sure, but McCartney’s vaudevillian Broadway high-kicker was so perfectly crafted it could make the harshest critic want to swing on a sparkly trapeze dressed as a Rockette.
‘Long, Long, Long’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Another undervalued back-end-of-‘The Beatles’ classic, in which George explores the space between drowsy serenity and stark passion and Ringo delivers a dynamic tour de force.
‘Back In The USSR’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
No political comedy Beach Boys pastiche has ever rocked so hard before or since.
‘Savoy Truffle’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
In honour of Eric Clapton’s sweet tooth, George – quite spectacularly – goes full Stax. Mmmm, crème tangerine…
‘Drive My Car’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
Named after an old blues euphemism for shagging – beep beep, and indeed, yeah – ‘Drive My Car’ finds Paul blues-rocking his way to a pretty sweet deal – lifelong partner anddesignated driver.
‘Good Day Sunshine’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
A wonderfully lightweight greet-the-dawn ditty inspired by The Kinks‘ ‘Sunny Afternoon’ and, in turn, inventing ELO‘s ‘Mr Blue Sky’.
‘Love You To’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
George’s first and finest Indian-influenced song, galloping along on compulsive tabla rhythms. Alongside ‘Strawberry Fields…’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky…’, this was the absolute epitome of the psychedelic era. Don’t, however, try to making love while singing songs. Doesn’t go down well.
‘Julia’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
The separations of the ‘White Album’ sessions allowed John to finally broach the subject of his mother in song, utilising the finger-picking style Donovan had taught him in India. “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia,” he sings in stunningly intimate manner, imagining her as a siren lost to the sea.
‘Ticket To Ride’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Said to be about the clean-health certificates received by Hamburg sex workers, ‘Ticket To Ride’ is acclaimed more for its significance than anything – here was where The Beatles left plain old Merseybeat behind to embrace Indian textures, proto-Byrdsian plushness and future-facing drumwork.
‘Day Tripper’ (single, 1965)
Increasingly dabbling with ‘secret’ drug and sex references, ‘Day Tripper’ had a pop at weekend hippies in the shape of a squeaky-clean slice of go-go ‘60s pop. I mean, look how high Ringo is in the video.
‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ (‘Beatles For Sale’, 1964)
Written by Paul at the age of 16. The 1950s clearly missed a trick in not realising there was a school kid in Liverpool surpassing all of its wistful guitar balladry.
‘Revolution’ (B-side of ‘Hey Jude’, 1968)
Delivered as an opiated, horn-blasted shoo-wop shuffle called ‘Revolution 1’ on ‘The Beatles’, the definitive version of Lennon’s most politically direct Beatles number was the ballsy strut on the flip of ‘Hey Jude’. Not saying this is whereMarc Bolan got the idea for glam rock, but, y’know…
‘Because’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Originating from John asking Yoko to play Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ backwards, The Beatles’ merging of Moog synthesiser, harpsichord and triple-tracked harmonies makes for one of the most magical moments of the ‘60s.
‘Please Please Me’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
Second single and the first real sign of The Beatles’ devastating pop brilliance. Lennon originally conceived it as a slow-tempo ballad a laRoy Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’, but a more dynamic version made them superstars.
‘If I Fell’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Lennon’s first ballad attempt turned out to be a crooner masterclass.
‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Lennon sheds his psychedelic satins and rocks out – fire bells and all – around phrases learned during the Transcendental Meditation retreat – only the monkey bit wasn’t taken verbatim from the lips of the Maharishi. The monkey in question, John would later claim, was Yoko.
‘Cry Baby Cry’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Another under-appreciated side-four-of-‘The White Album’ treasure, wherein John twists the nursery rhyme ‘Sing A Song Of Sixpence’ into an eerie vaudevillian rock piece akin to Lewis Carroll going goth.
‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Arguably the Beatles song showing the greatest Dylan influence – Lennon even lands one of Bob’s trademark backflipping “hey”s in the chorus – ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ has been read as either a song about Brian Epstein’s homosexuality or Lennon’s frustration at having to keep his marriage secret.
‘You Won’t See Me’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
More Jane Asher woes from Paul, delivered like a honeymoon serenade.
‘Mother Nature’s Son’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Paul’s balladry could verge on the schmaltzy and sentimental, but the gentle, pastoral tone of this ‘White Album’ favourite about the Maharishi struck a more idyllic note.
‘Sexy Sadie’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
John’s Maharishi tribute, however, wasn’t quite so rosy. The last song he wrote at the retreat in Rishikesh, in the wake of hearing about the spiritual leader’s alleged advances on Mia Farrow, ‘Sexy Sadie’ became a sultry piano-led groover once Lennon had rewritten some of the more expletive-laden original lyrics.
‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Capturing the breathlessness of love at first sight, Paul presumably sang this fantastic bluegrass frenzy while breathing through his ears.
‘I Will’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
“A complete tune,” McCartney said of one of his favourite acoustic ballads, written with Donovan’s help in Rishikesh, throwing back to the rhumba numbers they played in Hamburg and featuring John on maracas.
‘I’m Only Sleeping’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
John Lennon – “the laziest person in England”, according to friend Maureen Cleave – could even turn his lie-ins into melodic gold. Features the first backwards guitar solo in popular song.
‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Instigating a new form of mainstream songwriting in the shape of the multi-sectional song (see also: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Paranoid Android’, all prog music ever, etc.), Lennon himself separated the three parts of ‘Happiness…’ into ‘The Dirty Old Man’, ‘The Junkie’ and ‘The Gun Slinger’. All about shagging Yoko, apparently.
‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
John relates a luxuriantly appointed – if rather short on furniture – one-night stand gone awry to the point of casual arson, while George introduces the sitar to Western audiences.
‘She Loves You’ (single, 1963)
Cue Beatlemania! The band’s best-selling UK single and the song that launched a billion wobble-headed “woooo!”s (though Little Richard got there first).
‘Dear Prudence’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
The Beatles’ time on the ashram was one of their most productive songwriting periods, producing plenty of ‘White Album’ greats, not least John’s superlative pastoral rock plea to Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence to stop meditating for days on end.
‘From Me To You’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1963)
The sheer simplicity and familiarity of The Beatles’ early hits often makes us forget how impactful they were – ‘From Me To You’ is so embedded in the bedrock of popular culture precisely because it hit like a pop revolution, set apart from the skiffle, blues, country and croon, and behind formative rock’n’roll. Almost 60 years on, it’s still breath-taking.
‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
Not a drug song – I mean, what could possibly give you that idea? – Lennon’s psychedelic calling card was apparently actually inspired by a crazy painting his son Julian brought home from school. Still great on drugs, though.
‘She Said She Said’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Definitely a drug song, John’s garbled LSD conversation with Peter Fonda, set to three different tunes and two time signatures, lay the blueprint for acid rock which the noble heads of Haight Ashbury would soon follow.
‘Taxman’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
With George, in surprise breadhead mode, slashing out acerbic chords and biting political lyrics, his song-bomb dropped on HMRC has been considered the first punk track. Certainly inspired The Jam’s ‘Start’.
‘Nowhere Man’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
Here’s another truth for you all: the Nowhere Man was John. ‘Rubber Soul’’s harmonic wonder came to him wholesale during a particularly lost and directionless morning. “I was starting to worry about him,” said Paul.
‘She’s Leaving Home’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
The true story of Melanie Coe running away from home, as read by McCartney in the Daily Mirror, and among the most touching and sophisticated ballads of all time.
‘Here, There And Everywhere’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
‘Soppy Paul’ was never more adorable than on this feather bath of a love song. If Radox made records…
‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (‘A Hard Day’s Night’, 1964)
Its opening chord stopped the world and the rest of the title track from their debut film sent it into a breakneck spin. Not bad for a song written and recorded inside a day.
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (single, 1964)
Getting his priorities straight early on, Paul defined The Beatles as categorically not in it for the money on their jubilant sixth single, a fact that publisher Dick James had already taken advantage of by screwing them on their contract.
‘Rain’ (B-side of ‘Paperback Writer’, 1966)
“Ja, the god of marijuana,” reportedly gifted John this immaculate piece of drone pop that came to him in a spliff stupor – the-first ever reversed section on a pop record was the result of Lennon accidentally playing his tape backwards. You pull a whitey; Lennon invents psych rock.
‘The Long And Winding Road’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
Even with Phil Spector’s syrupy Golden Age orchestra drowning the track, Paul’s grand rambling anthem remains spectacularly powerful.
‘Come Together’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Even slowing his (ahem) homage to Chuck Berry’s ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ down to a sleazy crawl couldn’t stop ‘Come Together’ garnering Lennon a lawsuit. As part of an agreement with the plaintiff, Morris Levy, he’d have to record an entire album of covers (‘Rock ‘N’ Roll’) in 1975 to shake it off. In the realm of dank blues, though, The Beatles were never better. I’d get that joo-joo eyeball looked at though, mate.
‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (‘Please Please Me’, 1963)
At the very start of their very first album, The Beatles essentially summed up all of rock’n’roll to that point, perfected it – and then swiftly moved on.
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ (single, 1963)
Their best-selling single worldwide and the tune that made them the One Direction of their day. Still sounds like a pop revolution in the making.
‘Helter Skelter’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Macca’s depiction of a simple fairground frolic summoned forth heavy metal; the slide must have been built over an ancient burial ground. Written to be as feral as possible in riposte to critics describing him as “the soppy one”.
‘I Am The Walrus’ (‘Magical Mystery Tour’, 1967)
Written to confuse those studying Beatles lyrics, ‘I Am The Walrus’ incorporated three Lennon songs stuck together, lines that came to him during acid trips, an old school song, George’s personal mantra from the Maharishi, references to Lewis Carroll, Hare Krishnas, Allen Ginsberg, Sergeant Pilcher of the British Police’s Drug Squad and a 16-person choir babbling nonsense. Eric Burdon of The Animals has claimed to be the Eggman.
‘Help!’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
John sang it through a smile that was more like a wince – he really was crying for help from the eye of the Beatlemania tornado – but the title track from The Fabs’ second film rattled by with such jubilance that nobody noticed. Also helped instil the belief that John and Paul were so close they could finish each other’s sentences.
‘Two Of Us’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
As The Beatles fractured and frayed during the ‘Let It Be’ sessions, it was heartening to hear Paul and John clearly at the same microphone again, homeward bound, harmonising what sounded like a Simon & Garfunkel style ode to their own friendship: “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead…” (Spoiler: actually about Linda).
‘Let It Be’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
If ‘Julia’, Lennon’s tribute to his mother, was subdued, McCartney spared no bombast in honouring his own. He wrote her one of the greatest gospel ballads ever put to tape, following a dream in which she told him: “It will be alright. Just let it be.”
‘Penny Lane’ (single, 1967)
Describing the scenes that the young John, Paul and George would witness while waiting for buses en route to each other’s houses ‘Penny Lane’, married to its double A-side ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, injected a childlike magic into the psychedelic era.
‘All You Need Is Love’ (single, 1967)
Simplistic by design, in order to speak most directly to the global audience of the first international TV satellite broadcast Our World, John’s definitive flower power anthem proved a striking political statement in the age of Vietnam and Cold War hostility.
‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
An “ode to pot”, as Macca once put it, Motown rocker ‘Get To Get You Into My Life’ was another late-‘Revolver’ statement that, as a studio band, The Beatles of 1966 had discarded any concept of boundary or limitation on their music. Still two-and-a-half of their most thrilling minutes.
‘Across The Universe’ (‘Let It Be’, 1970)
John on a transcendental cosmic trip to the heart of the ‘60s. In 2008 it became the first song ever beamed into deep space when NASA played it at Polaris. Imagine the disappointment of the aliens showing up at the source only to find that LadBaby is Number One.
‘Martha My Dear’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
The best of McCartney’s tributes to the ‘20s on ‘The White Album’, thanks to a string section, marching band and a bit where it forgets itself and almost turns into a sequel to ‘Taxman’. The Martha in question, trivia fans, was Paul’s sheepdog.
‘In My Life’ (‘Rubber Soul’, 1965)
John would call ‘In My Life’ his first major work (although Paul would claim to have written the music) thanks to its reflective and philosophical tone. Inspired a spate of albums featuring harpsichords, despite the solo actually being played on piano, then sped up.
‘Golden Slumbers’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Thomas Dekker’s Elizabethan poem ‘Cradle Song’ had been set to music by four previous composers before McCartney spotted it on some of his father’s sheet music and made up his own epic lullaby to it. Not that it’s too easy to drop off to a 30-piece orchestra going full balls, mind.
‘Yesterday’ (‘Help!’, 1965)
Famously working-titled ‘Scrambled Eggs’, Paul’s most successful Beatles song ($60 million in royalties and counting) came to him in a dream; he spent two weeks playing it to music industry people to try to work out who he’d stolen it from.
‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Lennon dismissed the song as “throwaway”, but it’s George’s molten mercury riffs that elevate ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ into the upper echelon of the Beatles canon. Marianne Faithfullclaimed the song was directed at Mick Jagger,whom she dated in 1966; sadly, the dates don’t match up.
‘Eleanor Rigby’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
Taking loneliness, solemnity and death to the top of the charts, ‘Eleanor Rigby’’s tender, intimate chamber balladry shifted the goalposts in terms of what a pop band could do in 1966.
‘Here Comes The Sun’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
Spotify’s most-streamed Beatles song, written by George in Eric Clapton’s garden during what was, at the time, the sunniest April on record.
‘We Can Work It Out’ (single, 1966)
Paul in optimistic mood amid his increasingly turbulent relationship with Asher, playing off against John’s more pessimistic “life is very short” middle-eight waltz. Damn near to pop perfection.
‘All My Loving’ (‘With The Beatles’, 1964)
Pop perfection, eh? The harmonies coming in on the third verse of ’All My Loving’ did for ‘60s pop what The Wizard Of Oz did for colour cinema.
‘Paperback Writer’ (single, 1966)
Feeling the pain of the world’s wannabe Barbara Cartlands, McCartney penned this fictitious open letter to a publisher, spun into harmonic gold by the staggered – and staggering – vocal intro.
‘Blackbird’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
Paul’s civil rights plea is a ‘White Album’ high-point that remains The Beatles’ most poignant and accomplished folk moment.
‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (‘The Beatles’, 1968)
The ascendance of George. Every bit the songwriting equal of his bandmates by ‘The White Album’, his tour-de-force was a captivating treatise on humanity’s unrealised capacity for love, topped off with Eric Clapton’s sensational, uncredited solo.
‘Something’ (‘Abbey Road’, 1969)
The Beatles’ greatest love song and second-most covered track (after ‘Yesterday’), written for Pattie Boyd and very nearly given to Joe Cocker. Elton John would call it “the song I’ve been chasing for 35 years.”
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (single, 1967)
Even at a time when The Beatles were crushing musical barriers at every session, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was among their most ground-breaking moments. Strapping two different versions of the song together, smothered in Mellotron, tape loops, Indian swarmandal and backwards tomfoolery, they forged a psychedelic masterwork that set the tone and raised the bar for the era.
‘Hey Jude’ (single, 1968)
Won’t somebody think of the children? Well, Paul did, composing The Beatles’ most rousing sing-along to comfort Julian Lennon over the break-up of his parents. Rumour has it that if you put your ear to the ground at Glastonbury’s stone circle, you can hear the “na-na-na” bit from Macca’s set in 2004 still reverberating through the leyline.
‘A Day In The Life’ (‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, 1967)
The internal universe exploded; the everyday made epic. Lennon’s ‘Sgt. Pepper…’ closer viewed a series of newspaper articles – about the death of Guinness heir Tara Browne and road repairs in Lancashire – through LSD specs and came out with a world-beating vision. Includes arguably the most famous crescendo in rock
Tomorrow Never Knows’ (‘Revolver’, 1966)
It’s possible to trace the origins of most modern music, bar rap, back to The Beatles catalogue. But ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was perhaps their most influential track of all. In trying to recreate the sound in Lennon’s head of monks chanting in some cosmic mountain retreat, to accompany lines cribbed from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead intended to emulate a transcendental acid high, the band experimented with loops, sampling, drone and tape manipulation, creating not just the epitome of psychedelia and exposing pop audiences to anti-materialist Eastern ideas, but effectively inventing dance music.
Turn off your mind, relax, and you can hear The Chemical Brothers before The Chemical Brothers were even born…
Carl Sagan. Credit: NASA
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