Dr. Forbush Thinks

It’s Monday morning and the sun came up an hour earlier because we all went back to Standard Time. This was nice, because I came out from my workout this morning and the bright sun hit me in the face with that light California breeze. This is another great California morning promising another great California day.

I thought about the faltering of the Bush administration and their failures last week, which made me smile. I know that the Republican propaganda machine has been working hard over the weekend creating new talking points. I heard some of the Conservative pundits putting forth their version of reality. Its quite funny when you think about the conservative opposition to drugs because they alter the user’s perception of reality. These conservative pundits are either taking some extremely strong medicine or they have a warped view of the world. But, I believe it’s their right to have whatever delusions they have and the government should not take this fundamental freedom away from any of us.

This made me think of an interview I heard over the weekend. A fundamentalist preacher and a Catholic Priest were being asked their views on the literal interpretation of the Bible. The short debate was in response to a teaching document published by Roman Catholic Bishops in the UK that warn Catholics not to read the Bible literally.

Of course, the usual question in this debate begins with the contradictions that already exist in the Bible. The Fundamentalist Preacher was asked about the first contradiction in the Bible, the two different creation stories in Genesis. A literal interpretation of the Bible would suggest that man was created both before and after the animals. So, how could the Bible not be wrong on the question of which came first, animals or man? If you pick one reading, then the other reading must be wrong.

The Catholic Bishops address this problem by saying that the book of Genesis should not be regarded as a science book, but as a story describing God’s love for man. The Bishops tell us that the different books of the Bible are written in different styles and the points of these different books vary throughout the Bible.

Well, in the tradition of Fundamentalist Preachers this guy avoided answering the question directly. He told us that the Bible could not be wrong, because it is the truth. He told us that we can not know how we should understand the Bible, but we must know that it can not be wrong. This response reminded me of the Bush administration. The Bush administration knows what the answer is and the claim is that George W Bush can’t be wrong. We may not understand what George W Bush means when he says things, but that’s only because we are not smart enough to understand George W Bush. It is our failure, not George W Bush’s failure.

This reminded me of another interview. This time a right wing reporter was interviewing Condi Rice. Condi felt comfortable disclosing some of the more intimate details of her relationship with George W Bush. She described meeting with him at Camp David where she was describing some diplomatic details. She told the reporter that the President just amazed her by coming up with comments that didn’t seem to be related to the discussion at all.

Some people might think that this was because the President’s attention was wandering or he just didn’t understand the detail of what the Secretary of State was telling her boss. But Condi interpreted this disconnection as marvelous insight into the process. Well, if Condi assumes that George W Bush can not be wrong, then she needs to do some quick rationalization as to why the seemingly obscure comment has merit. The casual observer might step back and wonder a bit more about the workings of the White House.

This brings me to Matthew’s telling of Jesus healing the blind man. This lesson can be read as a simple story about Jesus healing a man that was born blind because of Jesus being the Son of God. However, the Catholic Bishops might suggest that there is more to this story than Jesus’ healing powers. First of all Jesus tells us that the myth of the day is wrong, the man was not born blind because of some sin of his parents. Sin does not cause malady. Instead, the man was born blind because Jesus needed a teaching example. The metaphor is that we are all born blind and Jesus opens all our eyes. For example, the Fundamentalist Preacher is blinded from the truth that God gave us more than just the Bible. God gave us the entire Universe with all of the clues to its history as well as the Bible. The UK Bishops are saying the same thing that the Preacher said in his answer to the contradiction in the Bible. The Bishops are saying that the clues in the Universe can’t be wrong and the Bible can’t be wrong. The truth is that we don’t know how to reconcile all of this truth, just like the Preacher couldn’t reconcile the contradiction in the book of Genesis. He just knows that the Bible is true.

And, this brings me to my final thought for Monday morning. I heard on the news yesterday that a Preacher in Waco, Texas was electrocuted when he took a live microphone into chest deep water while Baptizing the faithful. My simple thought was those who choose to be ignorant of science are doomed to succumb to its power.



politics, religion, Impeach Bush