Functional illiterates
August 19, 2007 by Bill
“Functional illiterates” is a phrase coined by the late Robert Hutchins, who was dean of the Yale University Law School at age 28. He was appointed chancellor of the University of Chicago at age 32. He was obviously brilliant.
One of the most important events of his life took place when he was a teenager. He never forgot it. His father was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College in Ohio. Hutchins went to his father one day and started to give him his “opinion” on a particular subject. His father stopped him with these words: “Son…let me remind you, before you proceed, that you do not know enough about the subject to even have an opinion.”
Would to God that every Tom, Jane, Dick and Harry going around giving their “opinions” about religion and the bible would take that to heart. As Dr. Fred Denbeaux put it in the Layman’s Theological Library series “the person who is unwilling to study linguistics and literary distinctions and to differentiate between prose and poetry, history and mythology, legend and folklore, will not ever understand the bible.”
There is an enormous amount of confusion as to what it means to be religiously educated. There is a vast, world of difference, between training, indoctrination and education.
Humanism 101
August 12, 2007 by Bill
How individual members of Christian fundamentalism define “Humanism” depends on where they are on a scale of 1 to 10 of brain malfunction.
An example: In a pamphlet produced and mailed out to thousands by a Texas fundamentalist parents group, they described “humanism” in these words: “a concern for the environment…control of energy…the removal of the free enterprise system…working for disarmament…distribution of wealth…the creation and support of peace movements.” The title of this pamphlet was “Is Humanism Molesting Your Child?”
For some of this mentality, attacking humanism means taking great literature out of school libraries. They called that “book burning” in Nazi Germany. It means not exposing our young people to what an element of Christian fundamentalism has decided is “obscene”. By their own standards and definitions they must then ban the bible from school libraries. The bible is full of every obscenity known to the human race…rape…gang rape…sodomy…adultery…genocide…incest…murder…and all in lurid detail…
What fanatics, extremists, the ignorant and illiterate do to magnificent words and ideas is frightening.
A poet laureate and two puppies
August 5, 2007 by Bill
Ah, the lazy hazy days of summer. My Edelen Sunday Symposium at the Palm Springs Tennis Club does not start again until the first of October. My days now are filled to overflowing with intellectual joy and four legged abundant life celebration joy.
I am simply reading and totally absorbing everything written by United States Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz. He was twice appointed to that distinguished position. When he died several months ago at age 100 he was given full page treatment in both the LA TIMES and the N.Y.TIMES. His poetry is breath-taking and his essays on life and writing and meaning and reality and “shoes and ships and sealing wax” are as stimulating as anything I have read in years. When I read his poem “The Layers” to my Symposium the response was without precedent. Everyone present wanted a copy and we made 200 copies to pass out the next week.
On the last Sunday of the Symposium for the summer I started reading to them “The Wellfleet Whale”. It is the story of a sixty three foot finback whale foundered on the beach. gasping for life. I could not finish reading the words and description of the death I choked up. I asked Doug Thompson, one of the most distinguished Marine Biologist in America, to come up and read the poem for me. He also totally choked up and could not finish. Kunitz description of this event leaves me searching for words…brilliant…heart and soul wrenching…furious at the human beings responsible for this tragedy that has become a crisis in the world of whales and dolphins. In addition to reading Stanley Kunitz, you may want to read Doug Thompson’s new book, released this month…”Whales: Touching the Mystery”. Thompson, by the way, is also a world class speaker.
