I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s a very good chance that your classical reading is not what you think it is. What I mean is that many of the presumed classics you may have read are really not classics at all.
You might question my right to make such a claim. After all, my training is in the sciences and there is a lot of good literature that I still haven’t read. Even so, I stand behind my claim. The more I stumble through our so-called modern classics and best-sellers the more I realize their fiction: they just aren’t classics.
What my children are reading in their high school and college English classes are award-winning novels. It is a gross misjudgment to call them classics. I don’t mean they are poorly written; they aren’t. Nor do I mean that their stories aren’t interesting or even important; many of them are. I do mean that they usually lack the key ingredient of a classic: a timeless and significant accounting of the great questions.
Now many of our award-winning novels are thought-provoking stories. Many of them also touch on great themes. But the great questions - sometimes called the Terrible Questions - are almost always absent. These are the questions inextricably associated with religion: Why are we here? What does death mean? How is it possible to find meaning in life?
Not all religions answer these questions alike. In a society that allows for differing religious beliefs, it is inevitable that these questions will be answered differently. But the fact remains that the sacred texts of these religious traditions, insofar as they grapple with the great questions, are classics.
Of course, you might not like your children reading my religious books at school. And I might not like my children reading your religious books either. Or maybe were both a bit more enlightened and are OK with this sort of cultural exchange. Either way we both have to acknowledge that some people would be offended by it. In a free society, it makes sense to keep controversial religious opinions out of public schools.
This doesn’t mean, though, that we should keep the great questions out of public schools. In fact one has to wonder how we can claim to be providing any kind of a quality education without them.
In the past we managed nicely with an accepted bundle of classics from Ancient Greece, Rome and pre-modern Europe (sacred Eastern texts were also included at times). And while these texts were mostly products of Western Civilization, they were suitable for a religiously diverse culture to discuss in a public forum.
Yet very often we look in vain to find them. What has happened to them? I think the answer is a combination of things. An important obvious reason is that there isn’t much money any more for the humanities. Another reason is that the remaining classical courses are only electives anymore. Yet another reason is that we’ve started teaching from award-winning novels instead of from the classics.
Now I don’t mean to be disrespectful of Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, or Harper Lee. In fact I like some of their writing a lot. I’m even happy that my children read them (for the most part). But I’m not at all happy that their books are taking the place of the classics. [I group Mark Twain with the award-winning novelists because I think he would have received an award if they would have been available in his day.]
It’s instructive to consider for a moment how literary awards are given. The important ones are chosen from a panel of representatives from prestigious publishers (of books, newspapers and magazines). One is hard pressed to find religious representatives - or from anybody who is particularly interested in the great questions.
This is really very understandable. Publishing houses along with other media sources (what Richard Weaver called the Great Stereopticon) are the great competitors of religion for the minds of citizens in a free society. I’m not suggesting that this competition is necessarily a bad thing. Yet while it may be true that actively religious people get exposure to the great questions through their participation at church, more people never take the chance to do so.
Instead, we force everyone to read whatever award-winning novel their particular English teacher happens to be familiar with. The great questions about what it means to be human are never considered. And we delude ourselves into thinking that our modern world is all that matters and that the solution to any problem, can be solved by popular vote.
Sadly, we now live in a society reaping the rewards of this myopia. Instead of wise leaders with a moral backing in what really matters, we have figureheads making decisions based on opinion polls. Nobody wants to talk about the important questions in public because we’ve thrown their associated texts out of our schools.
The result of all this is a society that has lost its moral grounding. We’ve pulled anchor and don’t know where we’ve drifted. Even worse, we don’t know where we’re going. Many of us are enjoying the scenery at least for the moment. But there’s a word associated with waking up from a dream and not knowing where you are. It’s called fear. And fear can only be the heritage of drifting souls.
One thing, however, is certain. We’ll never learn how to change this without a good deal of thinking about the great questions. It’s certainly time we stop confusing false classics for the real thing.
References
Weaver, R.M. 1948. Ideas Have Consequences. University of Chicago Press.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Human Nature and Original Sin
Are we by nature good or are we bad? Do we have the capacity for rising above our limitations or are we forever doomed by the biological constraints of our physical bodies? These are the questions thoughtful people ask in every generation and the answers turn out to be fairly consistent: we are both good and bad.
Take Solzhenitsyn, for example, who came to the conclusion while laying in rotting prison straw wishing that evil people could be somehow separated from good people. It isn’t hard to sympathize with him and lament the injustices he endured while in the gulags. But he realized that it wasn’t possible to separate people this way because “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
The Psalmist marveled that God had created man just lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalms 8:5). And yet the wickedness of man has been great and every imagination of his heart evil (Genesis 6:5).
There is nothing very surprising about this. A little honest introspection should be enough to convince each of us of our own dual natures. And yet for all this apparent clarity, we rarely manage to put into practice this truth that seems so obvious. We insist on shaping our societies as if we were just one or the other, as if we could do no good, or as if we could do no evil.
In American history, the Puritans stand out as clear examples of the former. Man inherited their evil natures from Adam and could not be trusted, or so they believed. In Hawthorne’s classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was required to wear a prominent letter A throughout her life as a sign of her degenerate - and seemingly incorrigible - nature.
Yet the very same New England that cultivated this 17th Century bigotry, turned completely around and by the mid 19th Century produced the Transcendentalists who believed that man could do no harm. Emerson’s belief in the greatness of man and in his immense potential has convinced (and still convinces) generations of Americans to trust no one more than their individual native geniuses.
Fortunately, the American founders were wiser in this regard than we have been. They established a government with the expectation that evil and designing men would seek public office. Checks and balances were accordingly put in place and with good effect. Today the United States government is the longest-lived constitutional government in the world. Ironically, it is because of this legal restraint that America has become a land of freedom, a land brimming with self confidence, and a land of realized human potential.
But things are not the same as they used to be. Almost all legislation these days ignores this dual nature of man. Committees are formed and budgets are allocated, but who checks-up on the committees or reviews the success of expensive programs? We write laws that are politically expedient (and self-promoting) while hardly worrying about their abuse once they are passed. Large budgets are created without the care needed to avoid the greed of special interests. Corruption abounds.
Of course we have political parties that carefully watch their corrupt competitors (and eagerly advertise what they find). But concern is much greater over deflecting criticism than it is over partisan character. In truth there is a greater moral divide separating individuals in the same political party than there is between the very issues separating these parties.
It becomes worthwhile asking ourselves how all of this came about. How did we start worrying about partisan causes more than about personal character? No doubt there are many reasons. One important reason that deserves special consideration is the unpopular and timeworn concept of original sin.
Original Sin
No one likes to think about their own faults. In fact only a few strong individuals ever attempt to look at their own failings objectively (as a prelude to personal improvement). Being told that we are sinful is almost certain to elicit a negative reaction on our part. Being told that we are sinful just by the fact of being born isn’t likely to be any more popular. Even so, this is one of the messages of original sin that has been accepted by many Christians as doctrine for centuries. Maybe our ancestors didn’t like it, but its truthfulness seemed self-evident. It was a doctrine that informed who they were and what they thought about themselves.
It was a doctrine that required rulers to accept - even plan for - corruption in their subjects. But it worked both ways. For example, when the barons of 12th Century England began exercising their own political rights, it became obvious to them that even rulers were likely to err and needed to be watched. One of the founding documents of Western freedom - Magna Carta - was forged from this realization.
Yet ironically it was the breaking away from the idea of original sin that empowered the Enlightenment, and ushered in the modern world with its confidence in man and its accompanying idea of progress. Clearly there seems to be an historical give and take here between fallen and enlightened man. For those who were taken in by the addictive fiction of an unpolluted human nature, the French Revolution came as a shock. Rousseau’s doctrine of the noble savage soon matured in to the massacres of thousands.
America, by contrast, experienced her own political upheaval at the same time but with very different results. More popularly called a rebellion than a revolution, her government retained traditional institutions, including a belief in a fallen world and of a fallible human nature.
History seems to be telling us something important here if we only had the wisdom to pay attention. It seems to be our inclination to believe in just one or the other of our dual natures, but not both, at any given time. Either we fail to be suspicious of our rulers and end up in bondage, or we fail to see our potential and live enfeebled lives. Today we are obviously making the first mistake, and in so doing are scoffing (or more likely ignoring) the whole idea of original sin.
Given our historical misunderstanding it would serve us well to consider the doctrine in a little more detail: where it came from and what it has come to mean.
The Doctrine of Original Sin
Both Judaism and Christianity agree (as do other religious traditions) that life on earth, as we commonly experience it, is a fallen or a corrupted place. Both traditions also agree that we experienced a better place prior to mortality from which Adam and Eve (our original ancestors) were driven because of sin. There is, however, a big difference between being a descendant of someone who has transgressed and actually carrying part of the burden for that sin oneself. It is something yet again to be guilty of that sin. These distinctions may seem subtle but they have been at the heart of many religious controversies through the years.
Nowhere in the Old Testament is there any suggestion that mankind is guilty of Adam’s transgression. There are places where the challenges of mortality are admitted and traced back to Adam, but these challenges, by themselves, do not constitute sin.
The New Testament is much the same with one primary exception. Paul’s epistle to the Romans (Chapter 5:12-21) recognizes Adam’s sin and then becomes a bit ambiguous (Tennant indicates that this is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to understand theologically) about human sin. These verses were eventually understood to mean that mankind sinned with Adam’s sin, although originally this was not the case.
The early church fathers have nothing to say about original sin until Origen, who in emphasizing our inherited mortal condition failed to make a clear enough distinction between corruption and sin. To make matters worse, Origen also lived in northern Africa where there had developed the practice of infant baptism. Historians have not been able to show the reasons for this early practice but by the time of Origen, it was widely accepted. It became almost inevitable that the practice assumed a role of mitigating the corruption of the fall, once it was believed that corruption might involve sin.
Sometime later, Tertullian added another piece to the developing doctrine. While rejecting infant baptism, he taught that the spirit offspring of Adam inherited the sin of their ancestor at conception. This complex doctrine (known as traducionism) never became established church doctrine but the belief in an inherited sin did, along with infant baptism and Origen’s corrupted humanity. By the time of Augustine and the important Pelagian controversies, these basic points were fairly well established doctrines.
During the Reformation these doctrines were openly challenged. Some reformers argued that baptism should be done by immersion and not by sprinkling. Others argued that children did not need baptism because they didn’t carry the sin of Adam. An interesting perspective on this that sounds like a wise compromise from the time of Origen is Zwingli’s (16th Century) argument that we are all born with the inborn rapacity of the wolf. This inborn drive often prompts us to tear the sheep. But there is also an implication that we can chose not to act upon these prompting as well.
Latter-day Saint Beliefs
Latter-day Saint beliefs on original sin reject the notion that children can be sinful (either by inheritance or otherwise) before they reach an age of accountability (recognized to be eight years old). Mormon (in the Book of Mormon) writing to his son Moroni taught that, “little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefor the curse of Adam is taken from them in me…” (Moroni 8:8).
And yet human beings are clearly prone to mortal corruption. Nephi (also in the Book of Mormon) lamented, “how foolish, and how vain, and how evil, and devilish, and how quick to do iniquity, and how slow to do good, are the children of men…(Heleman 12:4).
Latter-day Saints do, however, accept an intergenerational responsibility towards sin that is often over-looked. Parents who sin are held responsible for the disadvantages they pass on to their children through generations. In Section 98 of the Doctrine and Covenants, however, it indicates that repentant children can repent and remove this guilt from their parents. This does not mean that children inherit sin, nor does it mean that we are not responsible for our own sins. It does, however, imply that we can inherit disadvantages from our parents. In this sense, Latter-day Saints do believe that we have inherited a fallen world from our first parents, but our agency has not been breached. This is an understanding of human culpability more reminiscent of early Christianity than the normative Christianity of Augustine.
Having this dual understanding of human nature, Latter-day Saints are both suspicious and yet trusting of their leaders. Public figures are known to behave immorally and need to be kept in line. On the other hand, religious leaders are held to a higher standard, and are often revered for having risen above the natural tendencies of fallen man. Nobody is perfect, but for Latter-day Saints, there exists the potential (frequently actualized) of virtuous leadership.
Today
Nobody that has lived more than a few decades can deny that mortality brings with it an ample supply of aches and pains. We don’t need an understanding of the human genome to convince us that our body’s programming isn’t perfect. Some of us believe this is due to our heritage as descendants of Adam. Others argue that our physical imperfections are inevitable artifacts of opportunistic evolutionary change. These opposing perspectives may not agree on the cause of our woes but at least they can agree that we have them.
So why then do we insist on creating our modern societies as if we had no moral limitations? Do we believe that despite our physical imperfections that our mental capabilities are less corruptible? Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe we no longer believe that our moral limitations should color our public policies since we’ve already banished religion from the public square.
Whatever the cause of this moral myopia, it is clearly a dangerous condition to be in. And whether we agree with the Catholic Church or not about the inheritance of Adam’s transgression, we should at least be wise enough to agree that we have inherited an imperfect human nature, subject to the constraints of a fallen world (call it a Darwinian world if you like).
In our pluralistic society, we feel a lot more comfortable talking about criminals in public than we do about sinners. One of the failings of this occurs at election time when we hope to elect public officials that aren’t criminals and yet we have to expect, in all honesty, that they are imperfect (dare we say that they are sinners).
But by abandoning the truth of our dual natures - including the doctrine of original sin - we are leaving public officials free to construct our societies as if they - with their eminent wisdom - were fully capable of the task. Sadly, it is quite apparent that they are not.
If we were smart we would adopt a more realistic perspective. We would start to realize that people (including public people) will fail. In fact they will make the kinds of mistakes that constitute sin. And we should, in spite of our own imperfections, plan accordingly.
References
Tennant, F.R. 1968. The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. Schocken Books, New York. 363 pp.
Schaff, P. 2002. History of the Christian Church, Vol. 8. Hendrickson Publishers. 890 pp. (originally published in 1858). Zwingli’s views on original sin are on pages 94-95.
Take Solzhenitsyn, for example, who came to the conclusion while laying in rotting prison straw wishing that evil people could be somehow separated from good people. It isn’t hard to sympathize with him and lament the injustices he endured while in the gulags. But he realized that it wasn’t possible to separate people this way because “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
The Psalmist marveled that God had created man just lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalms 8:5). And yet the wickedness of man has been great and every imagination of his heart evil (Genesis 6:5).
There is nothing very surprising about this. A little honest introspection should be enough to convince each of us of our own dual natures. And yet for all this apparent clarity, we rarely manage to put into practice this truth that seems so obvious. We insist on shaping our societies as if we were just one or the other, as if we could do no good, or as if we could do no evil.
In American history, the Puritans stand out as clear examples of the former. Man inherited their evil natures from Adam and could not be trusted, or so they believed. In Hawthorne’s classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was required to wear a prominent letter A throughout her life as a sign of her degenerate - and seemingly incorrigible - nature.
Yet the very same New England that cultivated this 17th Century bigotry, turned completely around and by the mid 19th Century produced the Transcendentalists who believed that man could do no harm. Emerson’s belief in the greatness of man and in his immense potential has convinced (and still convinces) generations of Americans to trust no one more than their individual native geniuses.
Fortunately, the American founders were wiser in this regard than we have been. They established a government with the expectation that evil and designing men would seek public office. Checks and balances were accordingly put in place and with good effect. Today the United States government is the longest-lived constitutional government in the world. Ironically, it is because of this legal restraint that America has become a land of freedom, a land brimming with self confidence, and a land of realized human potential.
But things are not the same as they used to be. Almost all legislation these days ignores this dual nature of man. Committees are formed and budgets are allocated, but who checks-up on the committees or reviews the success of expensive programs? We write laws that are politically expedient (and self-promoting) while hardly worrying about their abuse once they are passed. Large budgets are created without the care needed to avoid the greed of special interests. Corruption abounds.
Of course we have political parties that carefully watch their corrupt competitors (and eagerly advertise what they find). But concern is much greater over deflecting criticism than it is over partisan character. In truth there is a greater moral divide separating individuals in the same political party than there is between the very issues separating these parties.
It becomes worthwhile asking ourselves how all of this came about. How did we start worrying about partisan causes more than about personal character? No doubt there are many reasons. One important reason that deserves special consideration is the unpopular and timeworn concept of original sin.
Original Sin
No one likes to think about their own faults. In fact only a few strong individuals ever attempt to look at their own failings objectively (as a prelude to personal improvement). Being told that we are sinful is almost certain to elicit a negative reaction on our part. Being told that we are sinful just by the fact of being born isn’t likely to be any more popular. Even so, this is one of the messages of original sin that has been accepted by many Christians as doctrine for centuries. Maybe our ancestors didn’t like it, but its truthfulness seemed self-evident. It was a doctrine that informed who they were and what they thought about themselves.
It was a doctrine that required rulers to accept - even plan for - corruption in their subjects. But it worked both ways. For example, when the barons of 12th Century England began exercising their own political rights, it became obvious to them that even rulers were likely to err and needed to be watched. One of the founding documents of Western freedom - Magna Carta - was forged from this realization.
Yet ironically it was the breaking away from the idea of original sin that empowered the Enlightenment, and ushered in the modern world with its confidence in man and its accompanying idea of progress. Clearly there seems to be an historical give and take here between fallen and enlightened man. For those who were taken in by the addictive fiction of an unpolluted human nature, the French Revolution came as a shock. Rousseau’s doctrine of the noble savage soon matured in to the massacres of thousands.
America, by contrast, experienced her own political upheaval at the same time but with very different results. More popularly called a rebellion than a revolution, her government retained traditional institutions, including a belief in a fallen world and of a fallible human nature.
History seems to be telling us something important here if we only had the wisdom to pay attention. It seems to be our inclination to believe in just one or the other of our dual natures, but not both, at any given time. Either we fail to be suspicious of our rulers and end up in bondage, or we fail to see our potential and live enfeebled lives. Today we are obviously making the first mistake, and in so doing are scoffing (or more likely ignoring) the whole idea of original sin.
Given our historical misunderstanding it would serve us well to consider the doctrine in a little more detail: where it came from and what it has come to mean.
The Doctrine of Original Sin
Both Judaism and Christianity agree (as do other religious traditions) that life on earth, as we commonly experience it, is a fallen or a corrupted place. Both traditions also agree that we experienced a better place prior to mortality from which Adam and Eve (our original ancestors) were driven because of sin. There is, however, a big difference between being a descendant of someone who has transgressed and actually carrying part of the burden for that sin oneself. It is something yet again to be guilty of that sin. These distinctions may seem subtle but they have been at the heart of many religious controversies through the years.
Nowhere in the Old Testament is there any suggestion that mankind is guilty of Adam’s transgression. There are places where the challenges of mortality are admitted and traced back to Adam, but these challenges, by themselves, do not constitute sin.
The New Testament is much the same with one primary exception. Paul’s epistle to the Romans (Chapter 5:12-21) recognizes Adam’s sin and then becomes a bit ambiguous (Tennant indicates that this is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to understand theologically) about human sin. These verses were eventually understood to mean that mankind sinned with Adam’s sin, although originally this was not the case.
The early church fathers have nothing to say about original sin until Origen, who in emphasizing our inherited mortal condition failed to make a clear enough distinction between corruption and sin. To make matters worse, Origen also lived in northern Africa where there had developed the practice of infant baptism. Historians have not been able to show the reasons for this early practice but by the time of Origen, it was widely accepted. It became almost inevitable that the practice assumed a role of mitigating the corruption of the fall, once it was believed that corruption might involve sin.
Sometime later, Tertullian added another piece to the developing doctrine. While rejecting infant baptism, he taught that the spirit offspring of Adam inherited the sin of their ancestor at conception. This complex doctrine (known as traducionism) never became established church doctrine but the belief in an inherited sin did, along with infant baptism and Origen’s corrupted humanity. By the time of Augustine and the important Pelagian controversies, these basic points were fairly well established doctrines.
During the Reformation these doctrines were openly challenged. Some reformers argued that baptism should be done by immersion and not by sprinkling. Others argued that children did not need baptism because they didn’t carry the sin of Adam. An interesting perspective on this that sounds like a wise compromise from the time of Origen is Zwingli’s (16th Century) argument that we are all born with the inborn rapacity of the wolf. This inborn drive often prompts us to tear the sheep. But there is also an implication that we can chose not to act upon these prompting as well.
Latter-day Saint Beliefs
Latter-day Saint beliefs on original sin reject the notion that children can be sinful (either by inheritance or otherwise) before they reach an age of accountability (recognized to be eight years old). Mormon (in the Book of Mormon) writing to his son Moroni taught that, “little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefor the curse of Adam is taken from them in me…” (Moroni 8:8).
And yet human beings are clearly prone to mortal corruption. Nephi (also in the Book of Mormon) lamented, “how foolish, and how vain, and how evil, and devilish, and how quick to do iniquity, and how slow to do good, are the children of men…(Heleman 12:4).
Latter-day Saints do, however, accept an intergenerational responsibility towards sin that is often over-looked. Parents who sin are held responsible for the disadvantages they pass on to their children through generations. In Section 98 of the Doctrine and Covenants, however, it indicates that repentant children can repent and remove this guilt from their parents. This does not mean that children inherit sin, nor does it mean that we are not responsible for our own sins. It does, however, imply that we can inherit disadvantages from our parents. In this sense, Latter-day Saints do believe that we have inherited a fallen world from our first parents, but our agency has not been breached. This is an understanding of human culpability more reminiscent of early Christianity than the normative Christianity of Augustine.
Having this dual understanding of human nature, Latter-day Saints are both suspicious and yet trusting of their leaders. Public figures are known to behave immorally and need to be kept in line. On the other hand, religious leaders are held to a higher standard, and are often revered for having risen above the natural tendencies of fallen man. Nobody is perfect, but for Latter-day Saints, there exists the potential (frequently actualized) of virtuous leadership.
Today
Nobody that has lived more than a few decades can deny that mortality brings with it an ample supply of aches and pains. We don’t need an understanding of the human genome to convince us that our body’s programming isn’t perfect. Some of us believe this is due to our heritage as descendants of Adam. Others argue that our physical imperfections are inevitable artifacts of opportunistic evolutionary change. These opposing perspectives may not agree on the cause of our woes but at least they can agree that we have them.
So why then do we insist on creating our modern societies as if we had no moral limitations? Do we believe that despite our physical imperfections that our mental capabilities are less corruptible? Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe we no longer believe that our moral limitations should color our public policies since we’ve already banished religion from the public square.
Whatever the cause of this moral myopia, it is clearly a dangerous condition to be in. And whether we agree with the Catholic Church or not about the inheritance of Adam’s transgression, we should at least be wise enough to agree that we have inherited an imperfect human nature, subject to the constraints of a fallen world (call it a Darwinian world if you like).
In our pluralistic society, we feel a lot more comfortable talking about criminals in public than we do about sinners. One of the failings of this occurs at election time when we hope to elect public officials that aren’t criminals and yet we have to expect, in all honesty, that they are imperfect (dare we say that they are sinners).
But by abandoning the truth of our dual natures - including the doctrine of original sin - we are leaving public officials free to construct our societies as if they - with their eminent wisdom - were fully capable of the task. Sadly, it is quite apparent that they are not.
If we were smart we would adopt a more realistic perspective. We would start to realize that people (including public people) will fail. In fact they will make the kinds of mistakes that constitute sin. And we should, in spite of our own imperfections, plan accordingly.
References
Tennant, F.R. 1968. The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. Schocken Books, New York. 363 pp.
Schaff, P. 2002. History of the Christian Church, Vol. 8. Hendrickson Publishers. 890 pp. (originally published in 1858). Zwingli’s views on original sin are on pages 94-95.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Old Notes
He opened up a book today
He hadn’t held in years
And found a penciled margin there
Intelligent and sure
A young aspiring reader with
A penetrating wit
Had managed with un-tempered lead
A calculating writ
He laughed just then and pursed his lips
An understanding hmm
For the wise author now long dead
Was laughing back at him
He hadn’t held in years
And found a penciled margin there
Intelligent and sure
A young aspiring reader with
A penetrating wit
Had managed with un-tempered lead
A calculating writ
He laughed just then and pursed his lips
An understanding hmm
For the wise author now long dead
Was laughing back at him
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Vital Desert
Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldees - a productive agricultural land. It was watered by a large river and enjoyed a predictable growing season. Many people lived there and raised families. Paleontologists tell us that it was a lot greener in Abraham’s time than it is now. It’s easy to imagine that it was a nice place to live.
Abraham, however, was not destined to remain there. When his life was threatened by the city’s priests, he fled, leaving the relatively easy life than an arable land makes possible. He wandered a long time before finding the place God had prepared for him. One might be tempted to think that he deserved a nice place after all the trouble he had experienced. Instead he was given a wild and uncultivated land. He was given a desert.
Many years later, Abraham’s descendents (the family of his grandson Israel) were living in another lush agricultural land. This time it was in Egypt along the Nile River. No place in the world enjoyed a better place to grow crops. Each year the riparian land received a flush of fertility during the annual floods. It was the preeminent place for civilization.
But the Children of Israel were not destined to remain in this abundant landscape either. Over the period of generations, they had changed from being honored guests of the Pharaoh, to being his slaves. They too fled from their homes, like Abraham before, and wandered a long way - not to a fruitful land, but back to the desert.
In the early 19th Century, the young and growing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found itself in the rich deciduous forests of the American Midwest. The handful of early converts had migrated from New York and Pennsylvania to northern Ohio with its rich muck soils. They cleared the land and raised crops. But they were not able to stay. After being forced from their homes they settled again along the fertile lands of the Mississippi River. But they would not remain long there either.
Soon after the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred, the Saints packed up their belongings again and headed west. This time they left their fertile farms behind and pulled their wagons over the Rocky Mountains into the Salt Lake Valley - a high elevation desert.
And so it goes. A Chosen People is forced to flee from their homes. They rely upon the Lord for deliverance and direction, and He leads them to a Promised Land. Only this Promised Land isn’t really all that attractive. At least other people have pretty much left it alone, and for good reason: it doesn’t get much water. The Promised Land, as it turns out, is parched. In a word, it is a desert.
Is this all that a faithful people can hope for - sagebrush and sand? Or maybe this waterless wilderness isn’t meant to be a punishment at all but only the price one pays to be separated from the world. Or maybe - just maybe - there is something more. Maybe the desert is a particularly appropriate place for the People of God.
By definition a desert is a place that doesn’t get very much rain. When rain does fall, it often isn’t very predictable. The driest desert on earth is the Atacama Desert along the Pacific coast of South America. Some weather stations there have never recorded any rain at all. The Sahara and the Arabian Deserts usually get less than 4 inches of rain a year. The Gobi and Thar deserts usually get less than 10 inches. Other deserts get more. The Judean Desert gets less than 4 inches a year, although Jerusalem gets a bit more (averaging 19 inches). The Great Basin averages around 10 inches a year, although Salt Lake City averages around 16 inches.
What this means is that farming in these regions requires a lot of work. Wells have to be dug, or diversion canals have to be made. Yet even this does not guarantee a harvest. Fields have to be graded and then it still takes work to get water to the end of the row. Getting enough to eat is very much a dual effort. It requires a lot of physical work and it requires the bounties of the Creator. Because of this duality, the desert produces eminently practical and hardworking people with faith. And one can begin to see that living in a desert is less chastisement than a merciful gift. It is an opportunity to exchange a relatively carefree life for wisdom.
In its austerity, the desert is a great discounter of luxury and wealth. What matters more is sound judgment - and consistency. The desert may not give you a second chance.
Jacob Hamblin, one of the early settlers of the Mojave Desert, learned this the hard way. He lived along the Santa Clara River in Washington County, Utah during the late 19th Century. He was known for his wisdom in dealing with the Native Americans and learned a great deal from them. He knew, for example, that you could get water from the succulent leaves of a prickly pear cactus. You just had to get rid of the spines.
But one time Jacob found himself on the far end of the Mojave where there were plants he wasn’t familiar with. When he found himself without water he cut open the local variety of prickly pear - one that was colored a little different than he was familiar with - and quenched his thirst. A few hours later he was so sick he didn’t think he would survive. Fortunately for his family, he did, but not everybody is so fortunate.
Living in a desert says something about who you are. It’s like meeting someone at the top of a road-less mountain. You know they didn’t just get there by chance. No-one just happens upon the top of a mountain. You have to want to be there. So it is with the desert.
Even today with the luxuries of air conditioning, electricity and plenty of well water this continues to be true. But if most people are not cut out to live in the dessert, those that are will not be likely to leave it.
Perhaps it’s the magnificent sunsets, the wide open spaces, and the clear air that makes it so vital. Maybe it’s the magnificent carpets of wildflowers that bloom altogether after the rain. Or maybe it’s because of the loneliness or the austerity that broods there. Maybe it’s because the desert, like a mountain, is favored of God.
You might argue differently. After all, a moist forest enjoys a much greater abundance of living things. Clearly the Creator is partial to so much life. No doubt He is. But it is because of its abundance that it is so prone to human impiety. Human beings, after all, can live easily in a botanical paradise. And when things are easy, there is little reason to consider the divine.
The desert is different. Its very austerity is a repudiation of urban greed. There’s a reason the desert has been home for so many centuries to seekers of holiness. It offers itself as a holy place to those willing to work and do without the finer things in life. And in the absence of vainglory we can shed our shells of sufficiency. Then, as dependant sojourners in a harsh land, we find it is more natural to yield ourselves to God. Standing under a desert sky at night it becomes very apparent the He is not so very far away after all.
Abraham, however, was not destined to remain there. When his life was threatened by the city’s priests, he fled, leaving the relatively easy life than an arable land makes possible. He wandered a long time before finding the place God had prepared for him. One might be tempted to think that he deserved a nice place after all the trouble he had experienced. Instead he was given a wild and uncultivated land. He was given a desert.
Many years later, Abraham’s descendents (the family of his grandson Israel) were living in another lush agricultural land. This time it was in Egypt along the Nile River. No place in the world enjoyed a better place to grow crops. Each year the riparian land received a flush of fertility during the annual floods. It was the preeminent place for civilization.
But the Children of Israel were not destined to remain in this abundant landscape either. Over the period of generations, they had changed from being honored guests of the Pharaoh, to being his slaves. They too fled from their homes, like Abraham before, and wandered a long way - not to a fruitful land, but back to the desert.
In the early 19th Century, the young and growing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found itself in the rich deciduous forests of the American Midwest. The handful of early converts had migrated from New York and Pennsylvania to northern Ohio with its rich muck soils. They cleared the land and raised crops. But they were not able to stay. After being forced from their homes they settled again along the fertile lands of the Mississippi River. But they would not remain long there either.
Soon after the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were martyred, the Saints packed up their belongings again and headed west. This time they left their fertile farms behind and pulled their wagons over the Rocky Mountains into the Salt Lake Valley - a high elevation desert.
And so it goes. A Chosen People is forced to flee from their homes. They rely upon the Lord for deliverance and direction, and He leads them to a Promised Land. Only this Promised Land isn’t really all that attractive. At least other people have pretty much left it alone, and for good reason: it doesn’t get much water. The Promised Land, as it turns out, is parched. In a word, it is a desert.
Is this all that a faithful people can hope for - sagebrush and sand? Or maybe this waterless wilderness isn’t meant to be a punishment at all but only the price one pays to be separated from the world. Or maybe - just maybe - there is something more. Maybe the desert is a particularly appropriate place for the People of God.
By definition a desert is a place that doesn’t get very much rain. When rain does fall, it often isn’t very predictable. The driest desert on earth is the Atacama Desert along the Pacific coast of South America. Some weather stations there have never recorded any rain at all. The Sahara and the Arabian Deserts usually get less than 4 inches of rain a year. The Gobi and Thar deserts usually get less than 10 inches. Other deserts get more. The Judean Desert gets less than 4 inches a year, although Jerusalem gets a bit more (averaging 19 inches). The Great Basin averages around 10 inches a year, although Salt Lake City averages around 16 inches.
What this means is that farming in these regions requires a lot of work. Wells have to be dug, or diversion canals have to be made. Yet even this does not guarantee a harvest. Fields have to be graded and then it still takes work to get water to the end of the row. Getting enough to eat is very much a dual effort. It requires a lot of physical work and it requires the bounties of the Creator. Because of this duality, the desert produces eminently practical and hardworking people with faith. And one can begin to see that living in a desert is less chastisement than a merciful gift. It is an opportunity to exchange a relatively carefree life for wisdom.
In its austerity, the desert is a great discounter of luxury and wealth. What matters more is sound judgment - and consistency. The desert may not give you a second chance.
Jacob Hamblin, one of the early settlers of the Mojave Desert, learned this the hard way. He lived along the Santa Clara River in Washington County, Utah during the late 19th Century. He was known for his wisdom in dealing with the Native Americans and learned a great deal from them. He knew, for example, that you could get water from the succulent leaves of a prickly pear cactus. You just had to get rid of the spines.
But one time Jacob found himself on the far end of the Mojave where there were plants he wasn’t familiar with. When he found himself without water he cut open the local variety of prickly pear - one that was colored a little different than he was familiar with - and quenched his thirst. A few hours later he was so sick he didn’t think he would survive. Fortunately for his family, he did, but not everybody is so fortunate.
Living in a desert says something about who you are. It’s like meeting someone at the top of a road-less mountain. You know they didn’t just get there by chance. No-one just happens upon the top of a mountain. You have to want to be there. So it is with the desert.
Even today with the luxuries of air conditioning, electricity and plenty of well water this continues to be true. But if most people are not cut out to live in the dessert, those that are will not be likely to leave it.
Perhaps it’s the magnificent sunsets, the wide open spaces, and the clear air that makes it so vital. Maybe it’s the magnificent carpets of wildflowers that bloom altogether after the rain. Or maybe it’s because of the loneliness or the austerity that broods there. Maybe it’s because the desert, like a mountain, is favored of God.
You might argue differently. After all, a moist forest enjoys a much greater abundance of living things. Clearly the Creator is partial to so much life. No doubt He is. But it is because of its abundance that it is so prone to human impiety. Human beings, after all, can live easily in a botanical paradise. And when things are easy, there is little reason to consider the divine.
The desert is different. Its very austerity is a repudiation of urban greed. There’s a reason the desert has been home for so many centuries to seekers of holiness. It offers itself as a holy place to those willing to work and do without the finer things in life. And in the absence of vainglory we can shed our shells of sufficiency. Then, as dependant sojourners in a harsh land, we find it is more natural to yield ourselves to God. Standing under a desert sky at night it becomes very apparent the He is not so very far away after all.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Adjectives I Have Kown and Loved (Aa-Am)
Abdominous (ab DOM in us) means potbellied, which (for personal reasons) I interpret to be something more than just hefty. This is one of those diplomatic words that you might use in describing a long and difficult flight - sitting next to the abdominous gentleman in coach class.
Abstruse (ab STROOS) means difficult to understand. It’s a valuable word for those situations when somebody’s lecture went over your head and you’re looking for consolation without feeling stupid. “Boy that was a boring class,” you might say, “and it was so abstruse.”
Abyssal (a BIS ul) refers to the deep parts of the ocean. It can also mean unfathomably extreme. Because it is so clearly related to the word “abyss” it can also imply a bottomless pit. Perhaps your boss is making decisions that will have dire - even abyssal - consequences.
Accelerative (ak SELL ur a tiv) is an interesting word that has nothing at all to do with relatives that look like celery. It means speeding things up. It is possible, though, that your Great Uncle Ebenezer is suffering from an accelerative senility.
Acerbic (a SURB ik) means sour, acidic or sharp. Biting into a lemon can cause an acerbic sensation. Biting into your mother-in-law might cause one too.
Achromic (ay CROW mik) means having no color. January near the coast can make for foggy and achromic days. I imagine that spelunking can too.
Aculeate (a KYOO li it) refers to stingers - especially those of bees and wasps. But there is ample etymological (as well as entomological) precedent to use the word in other ways. Maybe you know someone who constantly engages in aculeate conversation.
Adipose (AD i poze) refers to fatty tissue and certainly lends itself to diplomatic descriptions. You might, for instance, describe a guest as a kind and adipose acquaintance. Or then again, you might not.
Adrenal (a DREE nul) refers to the kidneys and is usually restricted to medical usage. One can easily see other opportunities for it however. “I have to go take a wiz,” might be more politely expressed as, “excuse me, there’s been a bit of an adrenal development that I must attend to”.
Adumbral (ad UM brul) refers to shadows or being in a shadow. A forest is an adumbral place. A miser has an adumbral face. A bride can hide in adumbral lace.
Aestival (ES tu vul) refers to the summer, or to passing the hot (and possibly dry) summer in a state of dormancy. Why not take an aestival afternoon nap when its hot?
Affable (AF a bul) means approachable or easy to talk to. Not everyone has the gift of the affable salesman. But we all might become an affable friend.
Affined (a FIND) is an old word not much used anymore referring to an affinity between people or objects. Sometimes the affinity is one of kinship but it doesn’t have to be. It is a useful word that allows for meanings hard to describe in other ways. A good friend, for example, can be an affined brother or sister - implying a sentiment approaching kinship.
Agminate (AG min it) means gathered into clusters. Most people have agminate preferences. We do live in neighborhoods and cities after all. Unfortunately, traffic problems (and accidents) are often agminate too.
Agonistic (ag u NIST ik) means competitive or argumentative. Lawyers have a reputation for being agonistic. Too bad for you if your office-mate is too.
Agrarian (a GRAIR y un) is a rustic word referring to the land and agriculture. An agrarian life is a life of healthy work and simple pleasures. Those of us frustrated by urban frenzy spend the week planning our agrarian escapes.
Agrestal (a GRES tul) means growing wild like weeds. If you like planting things more than weeding, you undoubtedly have an agrestal garden. On the other hand, your teenage son, who may not like gardening at all, may very well have an agrestal bedroom.
Akimbo (a KIM bo) means having the hands on the hips with the elbows turned outward. An akimbo glare from your mother would be imposing, even to the point of being a threat. But if your mother put on a cowboy hat, went out back and stared akimbo at the evening sky you might say she was a romantic.
Alary (AY lu ree) might sound like a sickness of sorts. But in fact it refers to wings. I guess if you’re afraid of heights you might also suffer from an alary ailment of sorts.
Aleatory (AY lee a tor ee) is another audibly confusing adjective. It has nothing to do with wings. It instead refers to luck or gambling. It’s the blackjack dealer and not the stewardess that has an aleatory employment. Maybe you do too and just didn’t know it.
Algological (al gah LOJ i kul) refers to algae, or the study off algae. I admit that this is a technical term used almost exclusively by biologists but it sounds so gutturally pleasing that we must find other uses for it. Say you forget to clean the swimming pool, for example. Why not ascribe your delinquency to algological preferences. Or, next time you go to a Korean restaurant you might impress your date. Instead of asking for roasted laver flakes, ask instead for the algological appetizers. Maybe you like earth tones. You could decorate your room in an algological theme.
Alible (AL a bul) refers to something that is nourishing or full of nutrients. but the ending also gives it a sense of something edible (at least it does to me). You might very appropriately compliment the cook on her alible dinner.
Alliterative (a LIT ur a tiv) refers to words that have the same initial sound. One has to have a certain literary bent to appreciate alliterative phrases. In fact reading these definitions may strike one as being altogether alarmingly alliterative. But what can one do?
Alluvial (a LOO vee ul) refers to the sediment left by flowing water. It’s also an appropriate word for such places. A park by a river is an alluvial park. Make sure you have flood insurance if you buy a house in an alluvial development.
Alpine (AL pine) refers to high mountains. Watch out for the last syllable, though. Alpine environments are above timberline and don’t refer to pine trees (although pines are often nearby). Alpine flowers, however, do have their high altitude charm. And those of us who love mountains and their brilliant night skies are convinced of their alpine inspiration.
Altruistic (al tru IS tik) refers to a concern for the welfare of others. It can also mean valuing the needs of others above your own. Watch out for specious claims of altruistic behavior. People who advertise their so-called philanthropy are not altruistic at all.
Amandine (a man DEEN) refers to almonds. You might see it on the menu of a fancy restaurant (swordfish amandine, for example) and think it is a foreign word. Not so. Chances are you enjoy a crunchy amandine cereal for breakfast, or an amandine granola bar for lunch.
Ambient (AM bee unt) means surrounding. It is a useful word that needs to escape from the rut of always describing conditions. My office, for example, used to overlook a lake and ambient forest. What’s nice about this use is the sense of ambience that comes with it.
Ambrosial (am BRO zhul) refers to a fragrance or taste that is worthy of the gods. Perhaps your mother’s cooking is truly ambrosial. Maybe your boyfriend has an ambrosial preference in perfume.
Ambulatory (AM byu la tor ee) has nothing to do with ambulances or the transportation of the injured. It refers to walking. You might prefer a refreshing ambulatory evening in the park instead of a mindless evening in front of the TV. Maybe you should think about getting a dog if you want an ambulatory friend.
Amenable (a MEE nub ul) means willing to follow advice or accept authority. It can also refer to someone who is open to criticism. It seems like the only place I see this word is in reference to negotiations of one kind or another. But it is possible to have an amenable personality. Believe it or not, it is even possible to be an amenable leader.
Amorphous (a MORE fus) refers to a lack of form or shape. It can also refer to a lack of character. A formless fog might be an amorphous morning mist. Unfortunately it might also be the basis of your favorite senator’s foreign policy.
Abstruse (ab STROOS) means difficult to understand. It’s a valuable word for those situations when somebody’s lecture went over your head and you’re looking for consolation without feeling stupid. “Boy that was a boring class,” you might say, “and it was so abstruse.”
Abyssal (a BIS ul) refers to the deep parts of the ocean. It can also mean unfathomably extreme. Because it is so clearly related to the word “abyss” it can also imply a bottomless pit. Perhaps your boss is making decisions that will have dire - even abyssal - consequences.
Accelerative (ak SELL ur a tiv) is an interesting word that has nothing at all to do with relatives that look like celery. It means speeding things up. It is possible, though, that your Great Uncle Ebenezer is suffering from an accelerative senility.
Acerbic (a SURB ik) means sour, acidic or sharp. Biting into a lemon can cause an acerbic sensation. Biting into your mother-in-law might cause one too.
Achromic (ay CROW mik) means having no color. January near the coast can make for foggy and achromic days. I imagine that spelunking can too.
Aculeate (a KYOO li it) refers to stingers - especially those of bees and wasps. But there is ample etymological (as well as entomological) precedent to use the word in other ways. Maybe you know someone who constantly engages in aculeate conversation.
Adipose (AD i poze) refers to fatty tissue and certainly lends itself to diplomatic descriptions. You might, for instance, describe a guest as a kind and adipose acquaintance. Or then again, you might not.
Adrenal (a DREE nul) refers to the kidneys and is usually restricted to medical usage. One can easily see other opportunities for it however. “I have to go take a wiz,” might be more politely expressed as, “excuse me, there’s been a bit of an adrenal development that I must attend to”.
Adumbral (ad UM brul) refers to shadows or being in a shadow. A forest is an adumbral place. A miser has an adumbral face. A bride can hide in adumbral lace.
Aestival (ES tu vul) refers to the summer, or to passing the hot (and possibly dry) summer in a state of dormancy. Why not take an aestival afternoon nap when its hot?
Affable (AF a bul) means approachable or easy to talk to. Not everyone has the gift of the affable salesman. But we all might become an affable friend.
Affined (a FIND) is an old word not much used anymore referring to an affinity between people or objects. Sometimes the affinity is one of kinship but it doesn’t have to be. It is a useful word that allows for meanings hard to describe in other ways. A good friend, for example, can be an affined brother or sister - implying a sentiment approaching kinship.
Agminate (AG min it) means gathered into clusters. Most people have agminate preferences. We do live in neighborhoods and cities after all. Unfortunately, traffic problems (and accidents) are often agminate too.
Agonistic (ag u NIST ik) means competitive or argumentative. Lawyers have a reputation for being agonistic. Too bad for you if your office-mate is too.
Agrarian (a GRAIR y un) is a rustic word referring to the land and agriculture. An agrarian life is a life of healthy work and simple pleasures. Those of us frustrated by urban frenzy spend the week planning our agrarian escapes.
Agrestal (a GRES tul) means growing wild like weeds. If you like planting things more than weeding, you undoubtedly have an agrestal garden. On the other hand, your teenage son, who may not like gardening at all, may very well have an agrestal bedroom.
Akimbo (a KIM bo) means having the hands on the hips with the elbows turned outward. An akimbo glare from your mother would be imposing, even to the point of being a threat. But if your mother put on a cowboy hat, went out back and stared akimbo at the evening sky you might say she was a romantic.
Alary (AY lu ree) might sound like a sickness of sorts. But in fact it refers to wings. I guess if you’re afraid of heights you might also suffer from an alary ailment of sorts.
Aleatory (AY lee a tor ee) is another audibly confusing adjective. It has nothing to do with wings. It instead refers to luck or gambling. It’s the blackjack dealer and not the stewardess that has an aleatory employment. Maybe you do too and just didn’t know it.
Algological (al gah LOJ i kul) refers to algae, or the study off algae. I admit that this is a technical term used almost exclusively by biologists but it sounds so gutturally pleasing that we must find other uses for it. Say you forget to clean the swimming pool, for example. Why not ascribe your delinquency to algological preferences. Or, next time you go to a Korean restaurant you might impress your date. Instead of asking for roasted laver flakes, ask instead for the algological appetizers. Maybe you like earth tones. You could decorate your room in an algological theme.
Alible (AL a bul) refers to something that is nourishing or full of nutrients. but the ending also gives it a sense of something edible (at least it does to me). You might very appropriately compliment the cook on her alible dinner.
Alliterative (a LIT ur a tiv) refers to words that have the same initial sound. One has to have a certain literary bent to appreciate alliterative phrases. In fact reading these definitions may strike one as being altogether alarmingly alliterative. But what can one do?
Alluvial (a LOO vee ul) refers to the sediment left by flowing water. It’s also an appropriate word for such places. A park by a river is an alluvial park. Make sure you have flood insurance if you buy a house in an alluvial development.
Alpine (AL pine) refers to high mountains. Watch out for the last syllable, though. Alpine environments are above timberline and don’t refer to pine trees (although pines are often nearby). Alpine flowers, however, do have their high altitude charm. And those of us who love mountains and their brilliant night skies are convinced of their alpine inspiration.
Altruistic (al tru IS tik) refers to a concern for the welfare of others. It can also mean valuing the needs of others above your own. Watch out for specious claims of altruistic behavior. People who advertise their so-called philanthropy are not altruistic at all.
Amandine (a man DEEN) refers to almonds. You might see it on the menu of a fancy restaurant (swordfish amandine, for example) and think it is a foreign word. Not so. Chances are you enjoy a crunchy amandine cereal for breakfast, or an amandine granola bar for lunch.
Ambient (AM bee unt) means surrounding. It is a useful word that needs to escape from the rut of always describing conditions. My office, for example, used to overlook a lake and ambient forest. What’s nice about this use is the sense of ambience that comes with it.
Ambrosial (am BRO zhul) refers to a fragrance or taste that is worthy of the gods. Perhaps your mother’s cooking is truly ambrosial. Maybe your boyfriend has an ambrosial preference in perfume.
Ambulatory (AM byu la tor ee) has nothing to do with ambulances or the transportation of the injured. It refers to walking. You might prefer a refreshing ambulatory evening in the park instead of a mindless evening in front of the TV. Maybe you should think about getting a dog if you want an ambulatory friend.
Amenable (a MEE nub ul) means willing to follow advice or accept authority. It can also refer to someone who is open to criticism. It seems like the only place I see this word is in reference to negotiations of one kind or another. But it is possible to have an amenable personality. Believe it or not, it is even possible to be an amenable leader.
Amorphous (a MORE fus) refers to a lack of form or shape. It can also refer to a lack of character. A formless fog might be an amorphous morning mist. Unfortunately it might also be the basis of your favorite senator’s foreign policy.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Review of The Creation by E.O. Wilson
E.O. Wilson’s book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth was published by W.W. Norton & Company four years ago. It is a thin book, nothing like the author’s previous tomes about ants or Sociobiology. Nonetheless, this little book is important. It is Wilson’s attempt (as one of the most respected scientists alive today) to discuss with organized religion the loss of earth‘s biodiversity and to see what can be done about it. It is even an appeal for religion to join hands with science in this important undertaking (certainly no pun intended).
The book is a respectful gesture and an important one considering Wilson’s reputation and distinguished scientific career. It is nice to see an influential scientist acknowledging the need to work with the religious community. Wilson is from the South and his immediate audience is a Baptist Pastor. This, however, should not keep those of other faiths from reading the book. The issues are relevant to many religious groups; and Wilson, no doubt, would welcome all to the table.
Unfortunately, many of Wilson’s arguments will not set well with his intended audience. Not that life on earth isn’t religiously important - it is. The difficulty with Wilson’s approach is that it is too condescending. Even with his best intentions in mind - and it seems that they are genuine - he assumes a privileged position, even a moral high ground that can only distance his audience.
This, of course, is nothing new. It has always been the raw issue in so many disagreements between science and religion. Even so, I don’t mean to diminish Wilson’s contribution. If his book can start serious religious discussions about the importance of saving earth’s rich organic diversity, he will have done us a great favor.
Christian Interest in Natural History
There is a very real need to motivate religious people to take a larger interest in natural history, and Wilson has persuasively listed (in The Creation, The Diversity of Life, and elsewhere) many of the reasons why we should be motivated to do so. These include: economic reasons, medical discoveries, education, pleasure (including Biophilia) etc. There is one motivation, however, that he has missed. It is also the one motivation that is most important if we ever hope to bring about a renewal in religious natural history. This motivation is a desire to learn more about the Creator, by studying the Creation.
I say renewal because there is historical precedent for a Christian fascination with the natural world. (Perhaps other faiths have similar examples that I am not aware of.) Victorian England was so taken by the study of nature that it has come to be recognized as the Heyday of Natural History.
Lynn Barber describes the period thus: “Every Victorian lady, it seemed, could reel off the names of twenty different kinds of fern or fungus, and every Victorian clergyman nurtured a secret ambition to publish a natural history of his parish in imitation of Gilbert White. By the middle of the Century, there was hardly a middle-class drawing room in the country that did not contain an aquarium, a fern case, a butterfly cabinet, a seaweed album, a shell collection, or some other evidence of a taste for natural history…”
One reads about this time with wonderment at how many people were amateur naturalists - and the inescapable question becomes: could we ever regain that level of interest and enthusiasm? Sadly, I think, the answer is no, at least if we are restricted to Wilson’s list of motivations. The Victorian passion for nature was fueled by a combination of pleasure and education - two motivations acknowledged by Wilson. But even more important was the belief that one could understand things about God by studying the Creation. This passion was fueled by the belief that one could fulfill one’s religious duty and have fun at the same time. This combination of factors was strong enough to keep the English canvassing the countryside for natural curiosities for decades.
The reasons for the demise of this “heyday” aren’t all that clear. Part of the reason seems to be that natural history became too complicated for the amateur as more and more discoveries were made. Part of the reason also seems to be that, after Darwin, one could study nature without acknowledging the Creator. And, in fact, many scientists insisted on doing just that. Part of the reason was undoubtedly the inevitable changes of time.
Today the sciences of natural history are much more complicated than they were 150 years ago, and the divide separating science and religion is as great as it ever has been. Economic arguments to save species are laughably futile when it is so much easier to make money by tearing down a forest than to preserve it. Arguments from medicine fare no better. The hopes of decades past of harvesting complex biologically active molecules from nature have proven scarcely practicable. It’s much cheaper to make these molecules in an industrial reactor. Continuing advances in natural-products chemistry will ensure that this continues to be the case.
One can still make appeals to the beauty of the world but only a few people will listen. If there is any lesson for us hidden in the history of Victorian England, it is that we need to find convincing and meaningful lessons about life from nature if we seriously want to preserve her. Science is not able to do this. Religion can.
The Meaning of Life
Perhaps the most obvious difference between Wilson’s worldview and that of his audience is to be found on page 15, where he writes longingly for the time when nature will reveal (i.e. to a scientist) the great mystery of the meaning of human life. Statements like this can do little to solicit sympathy from Wilson’s religious audience.
Wilson is an acknowledged leader in evolutionary biology - a branch of science that is sometimes used to argue that reproductive success is the only meaning in life that there is. Wilson seems to be admitting that this is not enough. This is indeed an interesting admission but it seems naïve to me. Science has never been successful at answering questions of this kind. When it has tried, it has often led to disaster.
Many scientists decide not to go this far, deciding instead to follow the example of Wilson’s colleague at Harvard (the late Stephen Jay Gould) and restrict their research to what they can measure - the “ages of rocks,” say, and leave to religion the search for the “Rock of Ages” (Gould). Gould seems eminently wiser than Wilson on this count. Certainly religion has answered these questions so much more effectively than science has. This is, after all, their very raison d’être.
Asking a religious person to seek for the meaning of life from a scientist is like a sixth grader asking the school cook the value of taking physics - even while the physics teacher is sitting at the next table. It merges on the ridiculous. Wilson would make more friends and promote his agenda much more effectively if he would acknowledge this religious strength. The truth is that our religious faiths have rich traditions that value life, in all of its forms. Wilson’s failure to acknowledge this not only weakens his case, it reveals his lack of understanding about these traditions. He should have more faith in Faith. It has a much greater potential for saving life on earth than science does.
Human Nature
Another diplomatic mistake Wilson makes is his discussion about human nature. One would have expected a bit more sensitivity about this from the man who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, On Human Nature, and who has weathered many heated battles provoked by this controversial subject. His mistake is to believe that religious traditions will gladly accept a scientific explanation about who we, as human beings, are and then disregard their own deeply held beliefs.
To Wilson (a staunch materialist) our genetic make-up limits who we are. It is our culture - including our religions - that can and need to change, in order to save our planet. Wilson should know that religion will never accommodate this presumption in the least. The laws that govern human life - manmade laws, that is - may be arbitrary at times, like changing traffic rules, or public curfews. But religion also recognizes higher laws that do not change, laws that are less changing than the genes we have inherited from our parents.
Wilson wants us to believe that our religious traditions can change. He wisely refrains from saying that our moral codes evolve, but this is what he means. He wants to persuade American Christians that they can change their beliefs to accommodate a controversial agenda. This is a significant misjudgment on his part. Christians in general - and a Southern Pastor specifically - are not about to yield their belief in higher laws to the evolutionary arguments of a scientist. In fact Americans have a long history of refusing to yield the Higher Law to anybody. Call us stubborn if you like, but we based our national existence on this argument in the Declaration of Independence when we refused to yield it to a king. Magna Carta was an instance where we wouldn’t yield it to another king or even to the Pope.
Wilson would have done better if he had done his homework and learned about this commitment and about the rich discussions that thoughtful Christians are having (and have had) about the Creation and the Fall. There is much to be found here about stewardships and basic human responsibilities for the earth. I find these arguments much more persuasive than the economic candy cane that Wilson hopes to entice us with, and which amounts to nothing more than an appeal to our selfishness. The significant effort needed to save life on earth requires a much greater commitment than this. It requires a determination from a free and a devout people committed to a higher law.
Denial
In Chapter 9 Wilson warns us about denying our responsibilities to preserve life. He reminds us of our losses, including the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet. He also minds us of those species we have almost lost: the black robin, the ivory billed woodpecker, the bison. I have examples of my own to add to the list. Several insects that I have discovered myself (species that bear my name as author) are only known from small populations and from limited areas. Many Christians, me included, are keenly aware of the sad history of our environmental neglect, and that we are losing, at an alarming rate, so much of the Creation. But Wilson and his sympathizers need to know that our commitment is different than theirs. If we want to save life we will have to be committed to doing so on our own terms. We will not be persuaded by scientific arguments that lack understanding.
Let me add a little perspective here. Wilson thinks that religion was useful for a while but that science has taken the torch of progress and is lighting the way to a much richer understanding of life on earth. He outlines for us in Chapter 11 what some of these illuminating scientific goals are: the creation of a tree of life, improvements in medicine, knowledge of the chemical and electrical nature of the mind, the creation of life itself in a test tube, etc.
Now some of these are noble goals, but some of them are highly presumptuous. I fail to see here anything close to what a thoughtful Christian sees in the created order: an understanding of the Creator, insight into eternal laws, perspective about human dignity. Wilson has admitted elsewhere (see Consilience) that he can get along just fine without this kind of religious understanding. Yet he also admits that most people cannot. How then does he ever expect to create an army of Christian conservationists with such condescending arguments? One tends to feel either resentment or pity at his misjudgments, hardly agreement.
Intelligent Design
At times Wilson demonstrates a willingness to cooperate with his religious counterparts. Part V begins with a recognition that science does need religion to save the Creation. This is certainly an encouraging concession. Unfortunately it is followed by perhaps the biggest miscalculation in the book: Wilson’s discounting of Intelligent Design.
No doubt Wilson has a bone to pick with Christian Fundamentalists - even with the Pastor to whom he addresses his book. And he is certainly keen to make sure he does not appear to concede anything to their camp. But he should know that, by picking up his pen to write to about the Creation to a Southern Pastor, any cooperation will be impossible unless he is willing to strike a compromise on Intelligent Design - a very sensitive subject in the South.
I don’t mean by compromise that Wilson suddenly adopt creationist tenets. Nobody would believe him if he did. But one can believe in a Darwinian process in the development of Life and still acknowledge our limited understanding about its history. One can still admit that religion represents a valid (even a critical) orientation to the world. Great scientists have recognized this for as long as science has existed. If Wilson cannot concede that Intelligent Design may have its own valuable insights into the creation he has no dialogue with his Southern friends.
This is a shame. Intelligent Design is the most promising development to come along in years for leveraging a Christian ethic of conservation. It’s too bad that Wilson has not been more careful about this. He could have been so much more convincing. We are left waiting for someone wiser to pick up the cause - very likely this someone will be a Christian.
References
Barber, Lynn. 1980. The Heyday of Natural History. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1999. Rocks of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York. (See page 6.)
Wilson, E.O. 1978. On Human Nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience, the Unity of Knowledge. Alfred A Knopf, New York.
Wilson, E.O. 2006. The Creation, an Appeal to Save Life on Earth. W.W. Norton & Company, New York.
The book is a respectful gesture and an important one considering Wilson’s reputation and distinguished scientific career. It is nice to see an influential scientist acknowledging the need to work with the religious community. Wilson is from the South and his immediate audience is a Baptist Pastor. This, however, should not keep those of other faiths from reading the book. The issues are relevant to many religious groups; and Wilson, no doubt, would welcome all to the table.
Unfortunately, many of Wilson’s arguments will not set well with his intended audience. Not that life on earth isn’t religiously important - it is. The difficulty with Wilson’s approach is that it is too condescending. Even with his best intentions in mind - and it seems that they are genuine - he assumes a privileged position, even a moral high ground that can only distance his audience.
This, of course, is nothing new. It has always been the raw issue in so many disagreements between science and religion. Even so, I don’t mean to diminish Wilson’s contribution. If his book can start serious religious discussions about the importance of saving earth’s rich organic diversity, he will have done us a great favor.
Christian Interest in Natural History
There is a very real need to motivate religious people to take a larger interest in natural history, and Wilson has persuasively listed (in The Creation, The Diversity of Life, and elsewhere) many of the reasons why we should be motivated to do so. These include: economic reasons, medical discoveries, education, pleasure (including Biophilia) etc. There is one motivation, however, that he has missed. It is also the one motivation that is most important if we ever hope to bring about a renewal in religious natural history. This motivation is a desire to learn more about the Creator, by studying the Creation.
I say renewal because there is historical precedent for a Christian fascination with the natural world. (Perhaps other faiths have similar examples that I am not aware of.) Victorian England was so taken by the study of nature that it has come to be recognized as the Heyday of Natural History.
Lynn Barber describes the period thus: “Every Victorian lady, it seemed, could reel off the names of twenty different kinds of fern or fungus, and every Victorian clergyman nurtured a secret ambition to publish a natural history of his parish in imitation of Gilbert White. By the middle of the Century, there was hardly a middle-class drawing room in the country that did not contain an aquarium, a fern case, a butterfly cabinet, a seaweed album, a shell collection, or some other evidence of a taste for natural history…”
One reads about this time with wonderment at how many people were amateur naturalists - and the inescapable question becomes: could we ever regain that level of interest and enthusiasm? Sadly, I think, the answer is no, at least if we are restricted to Wilson’s list of motivations. The Victorian passion for nature was fueled by a combination of pleasure and education - two motivations acknowledged by Wilson. But even more important was the belief that one could understand things about God by studying the Creation. This passion was fueled by the belief that one could fulfill one’s religious duty and have fun at the same time. This combination of factors was strong enough to keep the English canvassing the countryside for natural curiosities for decades.
The reasons for the demise of this “heyday” aren’t all that clear. Part of the reason seems to be that natural history became too complicated for the amateur as more and more discoveries were made. Part of the reason also seems to be that, after Darwin, one could study nature without acknowledging the Creator. And, in fact, many scientists insisted on doing just that. Part of the reason was undoubtedly the inevitable changes of time.
Today the sciences of natural history are much more complicated than they were 150 years ago, and the divide separating science and religion is as great as it ever has been. Economic arguments to save species are laughably futile when it is so much easier to make money by tearing down a forest than to preserve it. Arguments from medicine fare no better. The hopes of decades past of harvesting complex biologically active molecules from nature have proven scarcely practicable. It’s much cheaper to make these molecules in an industrial reactor. Continuing advances in natural-products chemistry will ensure that this continues to be the case.
One can still make appeals to the beauty of the world but only a few people will listen. If there is any lesson for us hidden in the history of Victorian England, it is that we need to find convincing and meaningful lessons about life from nature if we seriously want to preserve her. Science is not able to do this. Religion can.
The Meaning of Life
Perhaps the most obvious difference between Wilson’s worldview and that of his audience is to be found on page 15, where he writes longingly for the time when nature will reveal (i.e. to a scientist) the great mystery of the meaning of human life. Statements like this can do little to solicit sympathy from Wilson’s religious audience.
Wilson is an acknowledged leader in evolutionary biology - a branch of science that is sometimes used to argue that reproductive success is the only meaning in life that there is. Wilson seems to be admitting that this is not enough. This is indeed an interesting admission but it seems naïve to me. Science has never been successful at answering questions of this kind. When it has tried, it has often led to disaster.
Many scientists decide not to go this far, deciding instead to follow the example of Wilson’s colleague at Harvard (the late Stephen Jay Gould) and restrict their research to what they can measure - the “ages of rocks,” say, and leave to religion the search for the “Rock of Ages” (Gould). Gould seems eminently wiser than Wilson on this count. Certainly religion has answered these questions so much more effectively than science has. This is, after all, their very raison d’être.
Asking a religious person to seek for the meaning of life from a scientist is like a sixth grader asking the school cook the value of taking physics - even while the physics teacher is sitting at the next table. It merges on the ridiculous. Wilson would make more friends and promote his agenda much more effectively if he would acknowledge this religious strength. The truth is that our religious faiths have rich traditions that value life, in all of its forms. Wilson’s failure to acknowledge this not only weakens his case, it reveals his lack of understanding about these traditions. He should have more faith in Faith. It has a much greater potential for saving life on earth than science does.
Human Nature
Another diplomatic mistake Wilson makes is his discussion about human nature. One would have expected a bit more sensitivity about this from the man who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, On Human Nature, and who has weathered many heated battles provoked by this controversial subject. His mistake is to believe that religious traditions will gladly accept a scientific explanation about who we, as human beings, are and then disregard their own deeply held beliefs.
To Wilson (a staunch materialist) our genetic make-up limits who we are. It is our culture - including our religions - that can and need to change, in order to save our planet. Wilson should know that religion will never accommodate this presumption in the least. The laws that govern human life - manmade laws, that is - may be arbitrary at times, like changing traffic rules, or public curfews. But religion also recognizes higher laws that do not change, laws that are less changing than the genes we have inherited from our parents.
Wilson wants us to believe that our religious traditions can change. He wisely refrains from saying that our moral codes evolve, but this is what he means. He wants to persuade American Christians that they can change their beliefs to accommodate a controversial agenda. This is a significant misjudgment on his part. Christians in general - and a Southern Pastor specifically - are not about to yield their belief in higher laws to the evolutionary arguments of a scientist. In fact Americans have a long history of refusing to yield the Higher Law to anybody. Call us stubborn if you like, but we based our national existence on this argument in the Declaration of Independence when we refused to yield it to a king. Magna Carta was an instance where we wouldn’t yield it to another king or even to the Pope.
Wilson would have done better if he had done his homework and learned about this commitment and about the rich discussions that thoughtful Christians are having (and have had) about the Creation and the Fall. There is much to be found here about stewardships and basic human responsibilities for the earth. I find these arguments much more persuasive than the economic candy cane that Wilson hopes to entice us with, and which amounts to nothing more than an appeal to our selfishness. The significant effort needed to save life on earth requires a much greater commitment than this. It requires a determination from a free and a devout people committed to a higher law.
Denial
In Chapter 9 Wilson warns us about denying our responsibilities to preserve life. He reminds us of our losses, including the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet. He also minds us of those species we have almost lost: the black robin, the ivory billed woodpecker, the bison. I have examples of my own to add to the list. Several insects that I have discovered myself (species that bear my name as author) are only known from small populations and from limited areas. Many Christians, me included, are keenly aware of the sad history of our environmental neglect, and that we are losing, at an alarming rate, so much of the Creation. But Wilson and his sympathizers need to know that our commitment is different than theirs. If we want to save life we will have to be committed to doing so on our own terms. We will not be persuaded by scientific arguments that lack understanding.
Let me add a little perspective here. Wilson thinks that religion was useful for a while but that science has taken the torch of progress and is lighting the way to a much richer understanding of life on earth. He outlines for us in Chapter 11 what some of these illuminating scientific goals are: the creation of a tree of life, improvements in medicine, knowledge of the chemical and electrical nature of the mind, the creation of life itself in a test tube, etc.
Now some of these are noble goals, but some of them are highly presumptuous. I fail to see here anything close to what a thoughtful Christian sees in the created order: an understanding of the Creator, insight into eternal laws, perspective about human dignity. Wilson has admitted elsewhere (see Consilience) that he can get along just fine without this kind of religious understanding. Yet he also admits that most people cannot. How then does he ever expect to create an army of Christian conservationists with such condescending arguments? One tends to feel either resentment or pity at his misjudgments, hardly agreement.
Intelligent Design
At times Wilson demonstrates a willingness to cooperate with his religious counterparts. Part V begins with a recognition that science does need religion to save the Creation. This is certainly an encouraging concession. Unfortunately it is followed by perhaps the biggest miscalculation in the book: Wilson’s discounting of Intelligent Design.
No doubt Wilson has a bone to pick with Christian Fundamentalists - even with the Pastor to whom he addresses his book. And he is certainly keen to make sure he does not appear to concede anything to their camp. But he should know that, by picking up his pen to write to about the Creation to a Southern Pastor, any cooperation will be impossible unless he is willing to strike a compromise on Intelligent Design - a very sensitive subject in the South.
I don’t mean by compromise that Wilson suddenly adopt creationist tenets. Nobody would believe him if he did. But one can believe in a Darwinian process in the development of Life and still acknowledge our limited understanding about its history. One can still admit that religion represents a valid (even a critical) orientation to the world. Great scientists have recognized this for as long as science has existed. If Wilson cannot concede that Intelligent Design may have its own valuable insights into the creation he has no dialogue with his Southern friends.
This is a shame. Intelligent Design is the most promising development to come along in years for leveraging a Christian ethic of conservation. It’s too bad that Wilson has not been more careful about this. He could have been so much more convincing. We are left waiting for someone wiser to pick up the cause - very likely this someone will be a Christian.
References
Barber, Lynn. 1980. The Heyday of Natural History. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1999. Rocks of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York. (See page 6.)
Wilson, E.O. 1978. On Human Nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wilson, E.O. 1998. Consilience, the Unity of Knowledge. Alfred A Knopf, New York.
Wilson, E.O. 2006. The Creation, an Appeal to Save Life on Earth. W.W. Norton & Company, New York.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Butch Cassidy Did Not Die in Bolivia
My Grandfather Wells knew Butch Cassidy as a young man and worked with one of his partners. Below is his account taken from his personal history (copied with permission from my father's (Jerry D. Wells) Samuel Morgan Wells and Minnie Zoe Lisonbee. Brigham Young University Press, Provo, Utah 2003. pp. 13-15) that sheds light on the outlaw's final years. My grandfather was convinced that he did not die in Bolivia. You can read his account below and decide for yourself. I have no reason to doubt my grandfather who was an honorable man.
"I remember several times that Butch Cassidy and Ezra Leigh came and stopped at Alma’s place before they robbed the Castle Gate paymaster. To know them any one would never think they could rob anyone. They were very nice and polite young men. Everyone around there that knew them sure liked them. When we heard that they had robbed the Castle Gate paymaster, whose name was Carpenter, at first people wouldn’t believe it was them, they were such nice and harmless young men.
I have read several stories that was written about the robbers and how many robberies they committed and how many people they killed. Well, Robbers Roost gang weren’t out to kill people. They were out to steal from the rich and help the poor. For instance, Butch stopped at a place one day. There was just an old man and his wife. And the wife was crying. Butch wanted to know what was the matter, The woman told him that there was $500 mortgage past due on their home and the man was coming that day to take the place.
So Butch went out to his horse and in a few minutes returned and gave the woman twenty-five twenty-dollar gold pieces and told the woman to make the man give all the mortgage papers before she gave him the money. Then, when she got all the papers she should burn them right away. And he cautioned her the second time to not lay the papers down but to burn them.
Then Butch left. The man came alright, with the sheriff, to take possession. The lady asked the sheriff if he had all the papers and he told her he did. Then she gave the sheriff her money and he in turn gave her the mortgage papers. Then he gave the man the money. And it was getting late in the evening but the man didn’t get home with his $500.00 in gold. A man stepped out in the road and told him to give him the twenty-five twenty-dollar gold pieces that he had and the man obeyed because the man was holding a 45 on his middle. Then the robber told him to get off his horse and turn it loose and start it home, but to let the horse get a good start ahead of him—then he could walk home.
The sheriff stayed at the ranch with the old couple until dark. He was a little suspicious of where those old people got them twenty-dollar gold pieces. But he didn’t get anywhere with them. So he started home. When he got about a mile from the ranch he met a man coming along the road. And the stranger stopped and asked him if he knew where he could find a place to stop for the night. Butch said he was a stranger in the country. The sheriff told him there was a ranch about a mile back that he was satisfied he could stay and they each went their ways.
But Butch only stopped long enough to leave a note of congratulations and five twenty dollar gold pieces on their doorstep.
Now this story about Butch and the mortgage was told to me by Matt Warner and I believe he told me the absolute truth.
I knew Matt a long time. He was with the outlaw bunch at one time. But he was a man that anyone could depend on. I never heard of him telling a lie. I was with Matt quite a lot one winter. I hauled beef from Victor to Price one winter. He bought beef from Chris Jensen at Victor. My brother Bill, and I would help Matt kill the beef. Then we would load the beef in my car. Then Matt and I would take it to the butcher shop at Price. Matt told me how he came to be an outlaw and he told me his real name. His name was Willie Christensen.
The reason Matt Warner turned to be an outlaw—he got into a fight with the cop in his home town one night and thought he had killed the cop. The cop was in the hospital for a long time but he finally got all right. But during that (time) Matt had joined with a band of outlaws that had their headquarters in Brown’s Hole, which is located on Green River on the line between Utah and Wyoming.
When Matt left, he had a wife and two children, one boy and one girl. He said it was about 1 ½ years before he dared to go see his wife and family. He said then he would have to sneak in after dark and leave before daylight. It was just a few years after that Matt’s wife died. So Matt went to the funeral. While he was there the officers didn’t molest him. But after the funeral they nabbed him and was going to put him in jail. He submitted to arrest peacefully but he made one request of the two cops that had him and that was to let him have ten minutes alone in the house with his children.
So they took his gun and told him to go in and they would stand guard at the door, but for him not to try any tricks or they would kill him. He thanked them very kindly and told them he would always remember them. So he went in the house and closed the door.
But there was one thing the cops didn’t know and that was that, when Matt came home to visit his family, he made a secret getaway by a loose board in the bed room floor and two loose rocks in the foundation by some shrubs that grew behind the house. And they didn’t know that two young men that was to the funeral was in the barn with three saddle horses ready to go. Well, when fifteen minutes rolled around, the cops went in the house and the grandmother was all they could find in the house. And they never did find where Matt got out of the house.
The two strangers that was at Matt’s wife’s funeral was none other than Butch Cassidy and Ezra Lathe. No one knew them in that country at that time.
LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was born and raised in Grass Valley in Southern Utah. He was raised in a Mormon town and attended L. D. S. church regularly. One night when he was escorting his lady friend home from Mutual there was a bully came along and tried to take the girl away from him and they got into a battle and LeRoy knocked the fellow out cold and he supposed that he had killed him. So he left and came to the Granite Ranch, here in Wayne County. Granite Ranch is eighteen miles south of Hanksville. The Ranch was owned by a cattle man by the name of Burr and all the desert between Granite Wash and Poison Spring Wash and the Dirty Devil River is called the Burr Desert.
Well, LeRoy Parker came to Granite Ranch and applied for a job as cowpuncher. Mr. Burr asked him what his handle was and he said it was Butch Cassidy. He stayed there about one year then he came to Hanksville and got a job from Charley Gibbons and worked for him quite awhile. Then he left and went on the outlaw trail and ended up in Brown’s Hole Wyoming.
The story of Matt Warner and Butch Cassidy was told to me by Matt Warner and the story of Butch Cassidy was told to me by Charley Gibbons after I came to Hanksvffle in 1935. And the story Matt and Charley told about Butch was identical so I believe they were true.
Charles Kelly of Fruita, Wayne County, Utah, wrote a book, the title of it is The Last of the Robbers Roost Outlaws, and in the story he had Butch and Ezra killed in South America. But, since I came to Hanksville, Charley Gibbons let me read a letter that Butch wrote him telling Charley that he, Butch had quit the outlaw trail and bought a ranch in Colorado, got married, and was living happy with a beautiful wife and two children. But Charley didn’t let me see what part of Colorado the letter came from."
"I remember several times that Butch Cassidy and Ezra Leigh came and stopped at Alma’s place before they robbed the Castle Gate paymaster. To know them any one would never think they could rob anyone. They were very nice and polite young men. Everyone around there that knew them sure liked them. When we heard that they had robbed the Castle Gate paymaster, whose name was Carpenter, at first people wouldn’t believe it was them, they were such nice and harmless young men.
I have read several stories that was written about the robbers and how many robberies they committed and how many people they killed. Well, Robbers Roost gang weren’t out to kill people. They were out to steal from the rich and help the poor. For instance, Butch stopped at a place one day. There was just an old man and his wife. And the wife was crying. Butch wanted to know what was the matter, The woman told him that there was $500 mortgage past due on their home and the man was coming that day to take the place.
So Butch went out to his horse and in a few minutes returned and gave the woman twenty-five twenty-dollar gold pieces and told the woman to make the man give all the mortgage papers before she gave him the money. Then, when she got all the papers she should burn them right away. And he cautioned her the second time to not lay the papers down but to burn them.
Then Butch left. The man came alright, with the sheriff, to take possession. The lady asked the sheriff if he had all the papers and he told her he did. Then she gave the sheriff her money and he in turn gave her the mortgage papers. Then he gave the man the money. And it was getting late in the evening but the man didn’t get home with his $500.00 in gold. A man stepped out in the road and told him to give him the twenty-five twenty-dollar gold pieces that he had and the man obeyed because the man was holding a 45 on his middle. Then the robber told him to get off his horse and turn it loose and start it home, but to let the horse get a good start ahead of him—then he could walk home.
The sheriff stayed at the ranch with the old couple until dark. He was a little suspicious of where those old people got them twenty-dollar gold pieces. But he didn’t get anywhere with them. So he started home. When he got about a mile from the ranch he met a man coming along the road. And the stranger stopped and asked him if he knew where he could find a place to stop for the night. Butch said he was a stranger in the country. The sheriff told him there was a ranch about a mile back that he was satisfied he could stay and they each went their ways.
But Butch only stopped long enough to leave a note of congratulations and five twenty dollar gold pieces on their doorstep.
Now this story about Butch and the mortgage was told to me by Matt Warner and I believe he told me the absolute truth.
I knew Matt a long time. He was with the outlaw bunch at one time. But he was a man that anyone could depend on. I never heard of him telling a lie. I was with Matt quite a lot one winter. I hauled beef from Victor to Price one winter. He bought beef from Chris Jensen at Victor. My brother Bill, and I would help Matt kill the beef. Then we would load the beef in my car. Then Matt and I would take it to the butcher shop at Price. Matt told me how he came to be an outlaw and he told me his real name. His name was Willie Christensen.
The reason Matt Warner turned to be an outlaw—he got into a fight with the cop in his home town one night and thought he had killed the cop. The cop was in the hospital for a long time but he finally got all right. But during that (time) Matt had joined with a band of outlaws that had their headquarters in Brown’s Hole, which is located on Green River on the line between Utah and Wyoming.
When Matt left, he had a wife and two children, one boy and one girl. He said it was about 1 ½ years before he dared to go see his wife and family. He said then he would have to sneak in after dark and leave before daylight. It was just a few years after that Matt’s wife died. So Matt went to the funeral. While he was there the officers didn’t molest him. But after the funeral they nabbed him and was going to put him in jail. He submitted to arrest peacefully but he made one request of the two cops that had him and that was to let him have ten minutes alone in the house with his children.
So they took his gun and told him to go in and they would stand guard at the door, but for him not to try any tricks or they would kill him. He thanked them very kindly and told them he would always remember them. So he went in the house and closed the door.
But there was one thing the cops didn’t know and that was that, when Matt came home to visit his family, he made a secret getaway by a loose board in the bed room floor and two loose rocks in the foundation by some shrubs that grew behind the house. And they didn’t know that two young men that was to the funeral was in the barn with three saddle horses ready to go. Well, when fifteen minutes rolled around, the cops went in the house and the grandmother was all they could find in the house. And they never did find where Matt got out of the house.
The two strangers that was at Matt’s wife’s funeral was none other than Butch Cassidy and Ezra Lathe. No one knew them in that country at that time.
LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was born and raised in Grass Valley in Southern Utah. He was raised in a Mormon town and attended L. D. S. church regularly. One night when he was escorting his lady friend home from Mutual there was a bully came along and tried to take the girl away from him and they got into a battle and LeRoy knocked the fellow out cold and he supposed that he had killed him. So he left and came to the Granite Ranch, here in Wayne County. Granite Ranch is eighteen miles south of Hanksville. The Ranch was owned by a cattle man by the name of Burr and all the desert between Granite Wash and Poison Spring Wash and the Dirty Devil River is called the Burr Desert.
Well, LeRoy Parker came to Granite Ranch and applied for a job as cowpuncher. Mr. Burr asked him what his handle was and he said it was Butch Cassidy. He stayed there about one year then he came to Hanksville and got a job from Charley Gibbons and worked for him quite awhile. Then he left and went on the outlaw trail and ended up in Brown’s Hole Wyoming.
The story of Matt Warner and Butch Cassidy was told to me by Matt Warner and the story of Butch Cassidy was told to me by Charley Gibbons after I came to Hanksvffle in 1935. And the story Matt and Charley told about Butch was identical so I believe they were true.
Charles Kelly of Fruita, Wayne County, Utah, wrote a book, the title of it is The Last of the Robbers Roost Outlaws, and in the story he had Butch and Ezra killed in South America. But, since I came to Hanksville, Charley Gibbons let me read a letter that Butch wrote him telling Charley that he, Butch had quit the outlaw trail and bought a ranch in Colorado, got married, and was living happy with a beautiful wife and two children. But Charley didn’t let me see what part of Colorado the letter came from."
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