Continuing movement toward vegetarianism

I continue in my efforts to show kindness toward conscious sentient animal lives (as well, of course, peace-seeking toward all humans).

Sometimes, I am still a second-hand vegetarian (gentle humor) like when I am with relatives celebrating. I don’t insist on a vegetarian meal. That would be discourteous.

I just quietly eat only the vegetables, beans, potatoes, etc., skipping bad meats—high conscious animals' lives such as pigs, cows, and sheep, or if there are other animal products, I select an item low on the food chain, a least conscious creature.

For at this late stage in my life, I avoid not only what is wrong to do but also the “self-righteous” rigid attitude of the crusader.
My movement toward vegetarianism isn’t intolerant fundamentalist, but centered in kindness and altruism, aimed toward not only no harm— but toward the Good, the True, the Just, and the Kind-Caring.

Maybe, a gentle witness toward care for all animals will be a stronger witness than an in-your-face veganism.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

LIVE for HOPE, despite...

LIVE for HOPE, despite...

Despite the horrific slaughters, oppressions, abuses going on at the present time by Russian Orthodox Christians, Islamic jihadists of Iran and many other Muslim fanatic regimes,
the immoral and unjust twistings by extreme Left (Democrats) and extreme Right (Republicans) in modern America,

And the past worst of worst 20th century with more than 150 million humans killed in 50 years...
over 150 million pre-born infants executed...

And the endless abyss of history past including the Napoleonic War, 7 Years War, English and American unCivil Wars,
Ottoman-Hapsburg War, 30 Years War, French Religious Wars, Crusades, and back...
DESPITE, all those worsts. And endless common crimes...

BECAUSE of the contrary OPPOSITE WITNESSES
through the ages of what is good, true, caring, kind, just, relational, rational,
sharing, patient, forgiving, humble, meticulously honest, generous, peaceful, protecting, rejoicing, unselfish, altruistic, wise, LET US
follow Transcendence (G-d), moral realism, reason, guided science, and human rights,
working diligently to create a better future.

Listen to the great minds from some ancient Hebrew prophets such as Amos,
Plato and other Greek thinkers,
altruistic versions of Asian and Buddhist thought such as Ashka in the 3rd century BCE, a convert to Buddhism who allegedly freed his slaves, emphasized non-violence, tolerance, hospitals, opposed slave-trading, and supported animal care.

Yeshua, Jewish apocalyptic reformer in the 1st century CE, who emphasized that all humans ought to love others as themselves, even their national enemies! But he was executed by the Romans.

Early Waldensians, Francis of Assisi, Petr Chelcicky and early Bohemian Brethren were opposed to war,
George Fox, William Penn, Swiss Brethren and Menno Simons, all pacifists,
Spanish leader Las Casas, anti-slavery against Native Americans,
peacemaker and abolitionist John Woolman,
19th century Abolitionists including Lucretia Mott,

Elizabeth Fry for prison reform, Leo Tolstoy, Gandh, Catherine Booth and her son Herbert Booth of The Salvation Army, Charles Harrison Mason, Black leader of Church of God in Christ and pacifist in 20th century, early Pentecostal leaders,
and of course MLK,
A.J. Muste, Nelson Mandela, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Muslim pacifist leader,

Dorothy Day, Catholic pacifist and reformer, Catholic Thomas Merton,
Vietnamese Buddhist pacifist and reformer Thich Nhat Hanh, South Afrcan Desmond Tutu, Ronald J. Sider, leader in the Brethren in Christ,
and many more.


In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

In the start of a new year, take a look at the wise reflections of Quaker Howard H. Brinton

Religion, spirituality, social actions, politics, etc.! so often fail.
All human thoughts and actions, seem given to near constant divisive fragmentation--to one extreme or another; almost always leaving us humans unbalanced, often distorted in our quest for truth.

As Quaker Howard H. Brinton insightfully explained in Friends for 300 Years this fragmentation even happens to renewal movements including the Friends who came into being for the very purpose of regaining the wholistic truth.

Yet the Quaker movement itself has swung amongst 4 different poles, seldom seeming to walk in balance and wholeness.

An excerpt by Brinton:
--
CHAPTER 10
Quaker Thought and the Present

"Through the three centuries of Quaker history the four primary elements present in all religion have at different times exerted their influence in varying degrees."

"During the first century and a half mysticism and evangelicalism were in balance in the group as a whole though many individuals tended to stress one or the other;

during the nineteenth century mysticism and evangelicalism were in conflict, each pressing the other to extremes in the group as a whole, though in many individuals the two were in balance;

and during the past half century rationalism and humanitarianism have assumed greater prominence, sometimes becoming dominant, though here again there are some individuals in whom the four tendencies are in balance."

"The best type of religion is one in which the mystical, the evangelical, the rational and the social are so related that each exercises a restraint on the others.
Too exclusive an emphasis on mysticism results in a religion which is individualistic, subjective and vague;

too dominant an evangelicalism results in religion which is authoritarian, creedal and external;
too great an emphasis on rationalism results in a cold, intellectual religion which appeals only to the few;

too engrossing a devotion to the social gospel results in a religion which, in improving the outer environment, ignores defects of the inner life which cause the outer disorder."
"In Quakerism the optimum is not equality in rank of the four elements. The mystical is basic."
--

Brinton goes on to warn against "vitalism which worships the life-force in its biological sense" and the other distortions of true spirituality.

About the only point where I disagree with Brinton is when he says the 4 qualities "each exercise a restraint on the others."

It is rather that when most open to the LIGHT, the 4 parts of true spiritual reality relate/commune, giving a redeeming uplift of each other.

Read Friends for 300 Years (it has been updated to Friends for 350 Years)
and be not only intellectually enlightened, but raised up in the LIGHT!

Daniel Wilcox

Live in the Light--do good actions, reject wrong ways

Here's some of the good ways
versus
wrong ways:


Good Actions and Ways:

kind, care, generous, humble, fidelity, monogamy, meticulous honesty, just,
equality, forgive, share, peace-seeking-creating, compassion, permanent-commitment, authentic,
moderation, help, bless, altruism-love, chaste, fertility, nurture, moral realism


VERSUS
Wrong Actions and Ways:

pride, abuse, promiscuous, group-national egotism, kill-slaughter-war, malice, obscene, greed, idolize what is finite, immorality, lgbtq*dq-actions, kink, fornication, porn, prostitution (sex work) adultery, lust, envy, jealousy, covet, drunkenness, stripper, slander, steal, hate, prejudice, insolent, polyamory, swindle, cheat, boastful, divorce-right, abortion-on-demand, wrath, revenge, hypocrisy, ruthless, sexual assault




In the LIGHT of the Good, the True, the Just..

Daniel Wilcox

7 O'clock News / Silent Night

Not “calm,” not “bright”...

A wondrous Christmas hymn, “Silent Night” was written by a German priest Josef Mohr in ( maybe before) 1816.
Needless to say, northern Europe in the early 1800’s was neither calm nor bright, nor holy, nor at peace, nor filled with love’s pure light, nor redeemed by grace.

There was a high infant mortality rate, crop failures, ravaging disease, and horrendous slaughter. Europe had had almost continuous, calamitous war for 25 years! No “calm” there.
Nothing bright or holy!

Napoleonic troops and anti-French troops had ravaged back and forth. 558,000 French-lead soldiers died during the campaign into Russia. In 1813, over 600,000 soldiers fought in one battle alone at Leipzig, Saxony. As many as 110,000 were killed or wounded.

Approximately 1 million or more civilian died from that war. Total deaths reached between 3 to even 6 million! Then Germany as a confederation was created from parts of the former Holy Roman Empire, but German nationalists assassinated leaders… Speaking of assassinations, that takes us back to the time of Jesus’s birth in Roman Palestine under Herod the Great in about 4 B.C.E.

Not a time of love, peace, goodness, Godliness, or light either.

Nor was Britain at the birth of the Quaker movement in the 1600’s. Strangely, not even the early Quakers waged peace, contrary to many Friends histories and popular understanding! Many of the early Quakers fought in the great slaughter of the English Civil War.

Traagically, George Fox who would later emphasize the Lamb’s War, the peaceful way of Jesus, at first urged the Puritan killer Oliver Cromwell to carry forth his holy war all the way to Rome!! “Let thy soldiers go forth…that thou may rock the nations as a cradle.”

Not at all like the cradled-manger of Jesus.

So much for “silent night, holy night”...

Instead, even with those Friends of Jesus, the Children of Light, there was an ocean of darkness at first...

Nor is there any peace and holiness in the 21st century. Multi-millions of Christian Russian Orthodox soldiers and their leaders continue to invade and slaughter thousands of innocent Ukrainians.


Hundreds of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and taken to Christian Orthodox Russia.

Then there is the endless massacres of Palestine-Israel, the Sudan, etc.

Consider that powerful “Silent Night” meditative song by Simon and Garfunkel back in the 1960’s, also a horrific time of slaughter.

What a paradoxical contrast between the way of Jesus versus how Christians, Muslims, and Jews trash Jesus’ way now.

May we truly witness of the love and peace of God in this often Christ-less, unholy season.

Yet still hoping--despite endless despairing news--

in the Light of Care, Good, True, Just...

Daniel Wilcox

The Difficulties of Thinking that Quakerism is the Truth

Does God exist creating, bringing order and goodness and beauty out of chaos?

One Huge difficulty of the Hope of Quakerism...

“…a caring loving God "could" exist.”
by agnostic Edward T. Babinski

“1) despite the fact that incessant suffering and death appear to have been a necessary part of the very process that eventually brought forth the evolutionary tree of life including the primate and human branches of the evolutionary tree,

"2) and despite billions of years of physical death and increasing awareness of pain and suffering by living organisms, including our stone age ancestors having to struggle just to discover basic comforts like fire, or which plants were poisonous, or the wheel, or agriculture, and a thousand other things that eventually made Randal's (and mine) present time and place on earth seem so wonderful in comparison with past ages.

"Even in our current era of pre-natal medical exams, obstetrical nutrition and exercise science, half of all human zygotes never develop all the way to achieving the birth of another human being, and the woman may not even know she's lost the zygote or early embryo. And prior to the development of vaccines and antibiotics, half of all human beings never made it past the age of eight-years-old.

"3) and despite humans having shown up at the last second of cosmic time, extreme latecomers in the cosmos (who also remain at risk via human-made and natural dangers of becoming extinct the next second of cosmic time, mere flashes in the pan).

“But...

“given that kind of evidence from nature, such evidence makes it appear like whatever "God" may exist, that such a God is at best a distant and aloof figure who simply tossed each generation of "his children" into the water to see if they could swim.

“The children who tread water a bit longer than the rest before drowning are like those organisms in nature who survived long enough to breed the next generation, etc.

“Which is to say that a compassionate God might still exist who pins a medal on everyone's chest, maybe even Koko the gorilla's chest, after they wind their way through their limited lifetime in this cosmos.

“A life where one's knowledge and experiences are limited by one's place of birth and the culture into which one is born, where we each have limited time for study, and limited vision as to what lay on the other side of the metaphysical curtain, as well as living in a world containing a plethora of holy books and an even greater number of books containing rival interpretations of them.

“And one must add to such "less than good" circumstances the countless non-religious obligations one must expend time fulfilling daily just to survive -- in a world already clouded and crowded with ignorance, waves of emotion, headaches, backaches, toothaches, strains, scrapes, breaks, cuts, rashes, burns, bruises, PMS, fatigue, hunger, odors, molds, colds, yeast, parasites, viruses, cancers,

“genetic defects, blindness, deafness, paralysis, mental illness, ugliness, ignorance, miscommunications, embarrassments, unrequited love, dashed hopes, boredom, hard labor, repetitious labor, accidents, wars, PTSD, old age, senility, fires, floods, earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and volcanoes.

“Knowing all such limitations and the full spectrum of suffering and ignorance, I certainly don't see what rational sense it makes....”
Edward T. Babinski

Daniel Wilcox replied,
You wrote, "given that kind of evidence from nature, such evidence makes it appear like whatever "God" may exist, that such a God is at best a distant and aloof figure who simply tossed each generation of "his children" into the water to see if they could swim..."
I agree the view that God of all of the Omnis (most of creedal Christianity, Orthodox Islam, and Orthodox Judaism) seems to drown in inherent contradictions, especially related to the horrific nature of survival of the fittest, seemingly purposeless natural evil, and genocides of humans.

But it seems that Charles Hartshorne, Whitehead, Plato, some Jewish thinkers, Martin Gardner, etc. have made a fairly good case that God may exist in a more limited sense,
that God IS
"becoming" is gradually influencing the somewhat chaotic nature (at least from the viewpoint of humans) of existence toward more and more goodness, justice, and beauty.

It is true that there are huge swaths of "parasites, viruses, cancers, genetic defects, blindness, deafness, paralysis, mental illness, ugliness..."

But math, reason, the scientific method, creativity, purpose, meaning, consciousness, kindness, compassion, generosity, justice, human rights, ecological concern, etc.
Do Exist
too.

The reason I am not an atheist, besides the fact that I don’t KNOW the ultimate nature of Realty, I do not define my view of Reality by a negative definition but by the creative moral and rational positives of Reality.

And, far too many atheists claim that morality isn’t real, that HUMANS HAVE NO INHERENT WORTH, and that even our consciousness is an illusion.

Maybe so, but I strongly doubt it. It makes more far rational sense to think that Reality is TRANSCENDENT, NOT omly matter and energy. That G_D is still creating, bringing order and goodness and beauty out of chaos.

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

The Nature of Human Children

What is an infant?

Don't ask theologians or become entangled in illusions and delusions, long-winded metaphysical splits/spit;-) of religious thinking. Even some Quakers in the U.S. and Britain have been adopting Augustinian untruths about young humans!

Let us, instead, realize each baby is a gift from the Light.

Human beings at birth are neither divine nor depraved. A baby is a natural offspring of a primate species. Uniquely, she has the potential to grow spiritually--to seek the Good, the True, the Just...and to create herself and bring newness and improvements into existence. Human primates have been created with a sense of morality and transcencence.

What a wonder each infant is!
I recently held my 6th new born grandchild. Experientially, the moment was blessed. How perfect her tiny living body. What a true gift from the Light.

But a little later, when she got hungry, wow, what lungs and what a puckered face she suddenly developed!

I must admit, I don't think something called a "soul" enters a baby at conception, or for that matter anytime later.

At conception a new life begins with amazing characteristics from the genes of her/his ancestors. At conception, the life appears to have no awareness. But brain wave activity begins early in the womb.

Even after birth, however, a baby is sort of an eating and pooping blob;-) She has awareness, but probably not much except she wants to be fed, and fed now!

Then gradually her awareness grows month after month. Finally she becomes self-conscious. Then later her sense of conscience develops.

Finally, an awareness of her finiteness and the mystery of existence comes into her consciousness.

No, a baby doesn’t come into the world a walking, talking, mentally active philosopher/theologian/moralist/saint.

On the contrary she is a living breathing consciousness at the most simple level.

As she grows in the next 6 to 7 years in her consciousness, self-awareness, and her moral conscience develops with a sense of ought, then she will become a moral and spiritual individual who acts. Sometimes she will fail, sometimes "miss the mark."

But even then she is still an innocent child struggling to function and to understand and to fulfill needs and desires and hopes, and the demands of the big people in her life.

Is not this the stage that Jesus referred to when he said those who enter the Kingdom of God must do so as a little child? And where he said to people to let little children come to him for of such is the Kingdom?

And this was my own personal experience—when so young. I don’t remember being a sinnig child that many religionists claim all babies and small children are.

Instead, as far back as I can remember, I had very deep desires to do good, to be good, to know God and to love him. And I had a lot of childlike wonder questions about God, life, others…always asking why about everything:-)

Of course the slither of wrong thought, wrong action, wrong living does come to us all, but not yet.

A child's awareness will grow if she is introduced to God and is shown her responsibility to share, to think of others and their needs, even though she still doesn’t voluntarily give outwardly if it is to her own privation.

Finally, the moral consciousness kicks in mid-childhood. At each given moment, there will be a tussle between her babyhood past (all spontaneous need and desire) and her adulthood future (potentially all give and bliss).

At that moment by moment juncture—that possibility moment--she must make continual ethical, spiritual decisions. She is finite and so will make mistakes and fail. She is learning in her emotions, her mind, her conscience, and her body as she moves through time.
Her choices are a much more complicated version of the way she learned to walk and to talk 3 years earlier--by trial and error.

But now a new possibility rears its ugly or saintly head. If she doesn’t continue to develop holistically, widening outwardly her care, her helpfulness, her compassion, then she slows, stalls, or even regresses backward to a total need/want level.

However, since she isn’t an infant but has the outer body and will and growing mental ability of a 6 or 7 year old, her regression hurts herself and others.

To try and fulfill life as a growing child, by returning to the barely conscious self-focused life of an infant actually distorts life and will bring harm to others to varying degrees.

Continued growing, in contrast, takes her through new stages of human development and new challenges. Each developmental advance brings new ethical and spiritual choices—either good or bad, advancing or regressing or a combination of both.

As anyone knows, when climbing a mountain, the higher one goes the more dangerous the climb becomes—not because the action of climbing mountains is evil, or because individuals who climb mountains are depraved sinful beings, but because the very nature of going "higher" also offers more options of choosing.
Some of the ways are wrong, even could cause one to plummet to the bottom. Some of the ways are right, and lead toward the peak.

When a small child cries when she hungry or grabs another child's food that doesn’t show she is sinning.

On the contrary, that is how G_D created children. If a 4-year-old child throws a tantrum and takes her little brother’s bottle because she thinks she isn’t getting enough attention from her parents, while her action is wrong and to be corrected, she hasn't failed because she hasn’t developed enough in her conscious awareness and moral conscience to make altruistic decisions.

However, if at 8, she hides her little brother’s medicine, because she wants all the attention instead, this is very wrong because by then her mental, moral conscience has developed enough to know that her action isn't the right way to get attention.
And, besides, by this point she should be widening her compassion and care for others out beyond her own needs and desires.

If at 18, she steals her younger sister’s boyfriend to build up her own ego, very deep wrong has occurred. By 22, if she joins with her countrymen and demonizes another country and lies, steals, and kills the enemies, we do have actions of evil;
just as if in contrast,
she joins an outreach organization such as Habitat for Humanity or World Vision and sacrifices her time, talent, and money and inspires her younger sister to do so as well; then we have actions of goodness.

Then the two sisters think of a way to get other people in their neighborhood, school, and city to get involved. One such inspired girl, about 13 years of age, raised thousands of dollars for starving, hurting people in a far off country.

See how the moral growth of human beings happens. A human being is in process from simple surviving to becoming the liver of moral truth.

Now that is the beginning of good news. Reminds me of several of Jesus’ moral speeches...

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Guest Post fr.YouTube: "I Think, therefore I'm Trans" speech by Alycia Woods

"The number of people identifying as transgender has risen sharply over the past several years, especially among young girls. This rise has caught the attention of journalists, scientists, and the medical community, many of whom have come to conclude that something is very wrong. Are gender and sex actually linked? What about those that “detransition?” And what about the fact that culture seems to be shifting its view of transgenderism? In this talk, we will look at some of the data that is coming out from various cultural sources as well challenge Christians to think about how we can be Christ to a hurting people."
by Alycia Woods

AWAKE to SEEK

Awake to Seek


Wake
Up and suit yourself,

Into the floundering pattern-mudded
Consciousness of this our finite skin---

Into a being 'berthed' bemused, beseemed morning
So like the proverbial hog, boar or sow of the round ring

Who as life's suitors get caught by our snouted 'knows;'
Beshrewed, besotted, bemired so we instinctively grunt,

Tempted by our sensual, careening awareness
Or our dutiful grindstoned routine,

We press our life's suit 'til evening
Or wallow down

To our suited Wake.


1st pub. in Moria Poetry



--

in the time of Darkness

to commune with the Transcendently Real
in the midst of our utter loss

in the darkened night of alone
to contemplate despite a soon demise,

to live in the Infinite's silence
deafens our wayward heart and leaves

our confused mind bereft;
the Divine answers no pleas

our anguished request left--
Selah

to hope against midnight's despair
to trust in all that is blessedly Fair,

so Beautiful, Right, Good and Just
despite our world history of horror

for naught, and absurd;
we seek

a slight glimmer
of the billion-lighted

meaning shimmering briefly
in our finite reason and creative awareness,

before the cosmos spun into place,
eternally ever always

Ultimate
Becoming.

Selah



In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

Why Be a Quaker? Transcendent open worship--a powerful example from Pacific Yearly Meeting

Our worldwide Society of Friends has seriously splintered in the last 150 years into very different camps, most of whom have very little in common with the early founders of the spiritual movement. Quite a few of us have often pondered over this severe quandary.* Many books and conferences over the years have struggled...

Instead of dwelling in that past, let us be Present now. Here is an actual Transcendent experience of the Light at a Pacific Yearly Meeting for worship in California.

OPEN WORSHIP TRANSCENDS

Drowned in family tragedy, despairing, distraught--
that morning earlier;
thus, down encumbered,
he came to worship meeting, but not speaking
of his family’s severe circumstance, kept hidden;

But in the midst
of open expectant communion, Transcendent Light
shown forth in a stranger’s sudden
a cappella spiritual chorus--
a deep songing deepening within;
intense meaning lifted us gathered in communion--
vivid encouraging Hope;

That sacred chorus didn’t take away our shattered glass
lives, nor end many distraught
circumstances and tragedies--
but
Oh, what Hope fulled within.


In the LIGHT,

Dan Wilcox


In a later article, I could give my own understanding
of some of the complex series of tragic evidences of how it came that the Society kept breaking into contrary groups...
or of the equally troubling 'quietistic' era before that when there were many rigid religious restrictions on Quakers, including that no Quaker could marry a non-Quaker and remain in good standing.

We are in this sometimes disagreeable patchwork/collage called Friends, Quakerism, and
on why to continue to move toward the Light within this small 380-year-old movement.

1. For me personally, I visited a Friends meeting one Sunday and was drawn to its less-ritual, more open experiential worship.
Side Note: Besides the experiential factor that I came to Quakerism because I was a conscientious objector to the VietNam War serving my drafted time working in a mental hospital.

This was with other pacfists in the Fall of 1967 near Philadelphia, PA. I was helping pay the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Trevose, PA. 3 Mennonite/Brethren C.O.'s slept in the bedroom on cots, me on a mat behind the couch in the living room:-).

I greatly valued creativity, openness, experiential spirituality, so one can see why the Society of Friends meeting was a wonderful new experience.

Before being drafted, I had been a Creative Writing major at Long Beach State in California. Now in September 1967, I was newly arrived in Pennsylvania near Washington's Crossing, and wanted to find a new church.

I had admired the Quakers in the news 6 years before back in 1961 for protesting against nuclear weapons, so I decided to give their meeting a visit.
After one Sunday going to a nearly empty meeting for worship near Newtown in September, I eventually began regularly attending worship in downtown Philly at Backbench Young Adult Friends gathering. Though as a mental health worker, I worked 10 days on, 4 days off so could only take the L-Train into downtown Philly 2 times a month.

How powerful those times of OPEN WORSHIP were!
I’m not into forms, not sharply, rigidly, traditionally, ritually-structured forms. As all artists and writers know, “form and freedom” are 2 contrary characteristics of any creative endeavor.

One needs both freedom and form. Not either or. Too much freedom, chaos and havoc and destruction rule, too much form, slavery and rigidity and still-death reign.
Quaker meeting for worship seemed the perfect combination of freedom and form!

2. While actual spiritual experiences--vivid stories that happen to us humans don't prove our views are correct, there is GREAT inherent worth in such transcendent experiences,
as shown with the poetic sharing of the Light-filled worship one First Day at Pacific Yearly Meeting in California.

LIGHT-centered VIEW of REALITY

1. TRANSCENDENT—the GOOD, TRUE, JUST, CARING is the ULTIMATE CONCERN.

2. EVIDENCE based in the scientific method and facts about the cosmos is the authority.

3. DEEP TIME-SPACE is the true story/narrative.

4. MORAL REALISM is the true way of action.

5. LIVING for the ‘oughts’-- the good, true, just, caring--for the future for all humans, other conscious species, and all of nature is the purpose.

Image: Hiker enjoying the night sky at Craters of the Moon. The Monument was designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2017. NPS/Jacob Frank
In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

The Nature of Reality; and why I became a Friend

Most of my life, I have been of the Friend-Quaker lifestance.

In the past, in 1967, during my conscientious objector service in a Pennsylvania hospital for emotionally disturbed teens, I regularly attended BackBench young adult meeting in Philadelphia. Later in California, I (and my sweetheart) became members of California Yearly Meeting and later I was a member of Pacific Yearly Meeting.

One of the main reasons I was drawn to Friends-Quakers in 1967, beside commitment to peacemaking, is because of Expectant meeting. In those open open, transcendent meetings, I experienced the Immanence of the Light--the Good, the True, the Just, the Caring.

Besides that day-to-day Friends lifestance, what view of Reality of billions of humans is closest to the truth?
I am not a philosopher, just a rather average guy who reads a lot of books on cosmology, philosophy, and biology and advocates for human rights.

Here's a brief description of the Process view of Reality which I think is true and try to live up to:

#1 All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited cosmic reality that is becoming. Essential reality is Process influencing matter and energy. This is the view of brilliant thinkers such as philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead.

This cosmic but limited ultimate/transcendent reality--God, the Light--who is far beyond human understanding works toward changing matter and energy and conscious, creative life such as homo sapiens into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose. This is also the view of some liberal Jews.

But where is the evidence for this?
Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, ethics, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, life itself, etc. are the evidence.

We are living in a universe about 27 billion light-years across, and about 13 billion years old and, according to cosmologists, the cosmos will last more billions of years.

This view aligns well with liberal Quakerism, but most of the technical philosophical explanations are BEYOND my understanding. I'm a relatively average teacher and former mental health worker (who got born with a "why" in his throat;-).

But to function, we need to take a stand somewhere in order to live and create.

However if my speculative understanding is incorrect, what are other--many far more popular--views of Reality exist?

#2 All reality came about by cosmic chance. Seemingly the view of the French biologist Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity, a powerful book I read a few years back, and the view of the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.

My take on this as an average person: I think this view is possible. I guess given cosmic time even the "laws" of nature, math, reason, life, ethics, consciousness could all blip into existence.

#3 All reality came about by a cosmic determinism of meaningless matter and energy which is eternal. Everything is lock step. There are no choices, not for what I supposedly ruminate on having for lunch or whether or not to commit murder or what to choose for my career.

Based on our studying this at university, and for many years since, and many times trying to imagine my "I" as an illusion who is only 'done to' by the cosmos, I think this is one of the least likely views of reality. But the view is very popular these days--sort of an atheistic version of Creedal Christianity.

#4 All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.

#5 All reality came about by emergent possibilities in a quantum singularity vacuum or some unknown ultimate reality. But where did the quantum singularity vacuum come from? Here goes "turtles all the way down."
This view seems to posit an eternal physical reality with no "super" reality 'transcending' it.
Humankind is a "fluke," an "accident," a "lucky" break.

#6 All reality came about by an impersonal ultimate reality of cosmic beauty. Scientists such as Albert Einstein stated this was his view, that he thought the impersonal god of Spinoza was true. But this seems similar to a combination of #3 and #4.

The emergent-possibility cosmos isn't meaningless and purposeless, but filled with meaning.
Interesting, but I doubt it.

#7 All reality came about as just one of an infinite number of universes of an infinite multi-verse, the view of some modern cosmologists. What is the ultimate of the multi-verse is unknown or maybe the multiverse itself is ultimate.

Intriguing, but seems too speculative for me. However, I'm not as skeptical as Martin Gardner, one of the co-founders of the modern skeptical movement who wrote a scathing dismissal of this view.

#8 All reality came about by the impersonal Brahma God of Hinduism and some modern New Age leaders such as Ken Wilber with his Integral Theory, and Deepak Chopra, etc.

The impersonal Ultimate, Brahma is conducting a cosmic dance in which it forgets its self and dreams into billions of separated forms including in one minor edge of the universes, thinking humans.

But all is illusion. And all events both good and evil are produced by Brahman. That is why Ken Wilber and other such leaders claim that Brahman caused 9//11, causes all murders, all rapes, etc.

Given that I am a human rights worker from way back, for about 55 years, obviously this isn't my cup of philosophical tea. Also, I still vividly remember as a Gandhi devotee being shocked when a Hindu priest in L.A. tried to persuade me to go to Vietnam to kill (when I was drafted), saying insects are killed all the time in reality.:-(

#9 All reality came about by unknowable factors. Everything beyond and before the Big Bang is such a complete unfathomable mystery that it will probably not ever be solved by finite humans at least not for a very long time.

Allegedly the view of the Mysterians such as the skeptic Martin Gardner, Roger Penrose, etc.

#10 All reality continually comes about by infinite impersonal reality which never had a beginning. No creator god exists. Some forms of Buddhism are atheistic and nihilistic, though other forms are theistic.

--

What do you think?


In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

Side Bio Note: My career for many years was as World and American literature and writing teacher after I dropped out of seminary and quit being a youth minister. However, I've also worked driving a caterpillar on a kibbutz farm in Palestine-Israel, driven a chrome truck, and been an assistant manager of a backpacking-camping store.

What the Sermon on the Mount Got Right, But Christians, Jews, and Muslims get woefully Wrong

What the Sermon on the Mount Got Right, But What the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Religions Get Woefully Wrong

If the 10 Commandments had been practiced with ALL people and for ALL people, they would have been good,
BUT notice that Jews, Christians, and Muslims for thousands of years
only required that enemies NOT violate those commands and that they themselves only needed to practice such moral behavior within their own select religious group.

In contrast, believing that God had ordered them to do so,
the Jews, Christians, and Muslims regularly
lied,
stole,
and slaughtered their enemies.

And still do so even now in the 21st century.

Read about constant Jewish abuse and theft of land, of water, of resources, in Palestine-Israel, etc.

Jews sometimes massacred every man, woman, child, and infant in the Bible because they believed that God ordered them to do so.

David, supposedly the “man after God’s heart, massacred whole villages, killing every person. And he did this to STEAL their loot.

And in the Jewish Bible in Exodus, if after a Jewish slave owner beat a slave almost to death, yet the slave didn't die in less than 2 or 3 days, no Jewish owner was punished because the slave was the Jew's “property”!

Strange isn’t it, that the Hebrews were so thankful that they escaped slavery, but then they enslaved others.
- Muhammad robbed caravans, had at least 500 Jewish men beheaded, and then enslaved all of the women and children:-(

And Muslims have been doing likewise, for the most part, ever since.
Some nations of Islam didn't even ban slavery until the 20th century!

Creedal Christians in history constantly lied, stole, abused, slaughtered..
Read what they did in “Jesus Wars” back in the 4th century--see the historian Philip Jenkins famous book, Jesus Wars.

Other horrific examples include the present Christian war by Russia, who has invaded Ukraine, with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church calling for the war, much as devout Christians 1,000 years ago called for the evil Crusades.

Many others show these same immoral and unjust actions by Christians--the English Civil War, the 30 Years War, the American Civil War, the French Religious Wars, the Great War, Vietnam, the British Opium War against China where they forced that nation to take opium!

So ironic the American un-Civil War where dedicated Christians even vandalized, wrecked Southern churches, stabled their horses in them, etc. Heck, one Union soldier even stole a Southern family's Bible and took it back to New England. These devout Christian soldiers after invading, stole clothes, weapons, horses, food, etc. nearly every day.

See, in all of these historic and modern cases, Christians thought it was only wrong to steal from each other, but that God gave them the “right” and “duty” to steal from the enemies, even if the enemies were also Christians.

In contrast, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, states that humans ought to “love their enemies,” do good to their enemies…

This one reason that the secular writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and the Buddhist monk Thick Nhat Hanh, and many other human leaders consider Jesus' Sermon on the Mount an ethical precept of deep truth.

CAUTION: “Love” here doesn’t mean emotionally like or approve of!

As Martin Luther King Jr. so clearly pointed out in one of his speeches, to “love one’s enemies” means one has benevolence toward them. For instance, King certainly didn't like the KKK who attacked him, who firebombed his home, but he chose to have hope that if cared for, these bad people might come to the truth and change.

Moral truths are universal.
If stealing is wrong between my neighbor and myself, it is also wrong for us to do it to civilians and soldiers of an enemy nation.

This is why war is, by far, the most evil of all human actions. Invariably in every war, humans on both sides regularly lie, steal, abuse, rape, and slaughter, as well as violate the other commandments.

Let us hope and act to proclaim Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.


In the Light of the Good, the True, the Just, and Altruistic Caring,
Dan Wilcox

Reflections--stopped at an intersection and, again, dealing with horrific lifestances

Starbacked

Starbacked night, coffee-drunk sky,
rows of cars meet
at the red orb,
anonymous

a lone skateboarder foot
maneuvers
waiting for the flash to sage green,
his board-wheeler a bill of adding
getting a toehold

from the faceless

hidden in their auto glass
street
fathomless

when all dreams night
into marred perception




connundruming

not dumbing, not plumbed down,
not damn-waiving for godot,
no abstract snare

but rather Transcendent inspired;

no theolgoical smart aleck bolt,
no horrific T.U.L.I.P.S.
of poisonous
calvin's sort

no foreordained inscrutables
no despairing dilemmmas
no fated eternal fire

but
instead that everlasting jolt
of the good, true, and just



--Dan Wilcox

First pub. in poetry magazine,
Clockwise Cat

The Good and Letting Go of Temporaries

For Goodness Sake

Throwing away clogged chests of keepsakes,
Raking out cluttered drawers of dead objects
Including a plastic modeled ’57 Cadillac
In a faded blue hobby shop box,
Wondering why I hoarded all this lifeless stuff

Childhood items, once precious, without memory,
Forsaking cobwebbed, dusty dead things
A colorful but broken beaded neck chain
From where—my mission on the Cheyenne Reservation
Or maybe a childhood week at Nemaha Baptist Camp?

Folders of impersonal letters and receipts
Depleting musty cabinets of shrouded sheets
Showing our past giving to outreach and missions
A gray-scaled photo of World Vision’s child,
Srongkeit who grew to manhood far long ago;

Cleaning out grubby shelves of faded news magazines,
Endless bookcases dead full for too many years;
I thunk-drop foldered objects into the recycle bin
They clutter down to a grayed bottom
Falling from our noisy lessening lives,
Me no longer trying to save our past.

Last, but certainly vaguest of gagged all,
Reluctantly letting go of deceased beliefs
Tightly held doctrines so for wanted shelter
But now proven wrong, my impacted mind
I break open; beliefs slip-slide down, sinking to oblivion;
From my upturned minded tumbler, mental mug.

And finally, too, my senses, gut, left leg, skin and joints
Cycle down unwilling objects soon to be forsaken
Yet trying to hold identity from its final demise
The inevitable forsaken descending into the cosmic ‘has bin’
Of former living; billions gone; nothing ever lasts—

Except for
Goodness
Sake



--Dan Wilcox

First published in Word Catalyst Magazine

Part 2: Living the Questions: Meta-Stories about Reality

Living the questions, without definitive answers--somewhat lost, unlike most humans who seem so sure they know what it's all about.

I’m lost...not lost in the sense of the religious pietistic term, not un-rescued in the moral sense...not blind to ethical and transcendent truths...not existentially estranged in the sense of not having hope in the future, not lost when it comes to moral realism.

No, I’m not lost in those common meanings—nor am I caught in destructive habits or delusions or nontheistic confusions.
Though I often find I don't live as good as I know I ought to do,
I do seek to do what is right. And I do often experience the Light,
have a sense of the Good, the True, and the Just.

In all of those, I am found.
Thankfully.

No, how I am lost is
that I no longer have a vivid meta-story to identify with, a cosmic narrative.
I no longer have a sense why natural evils occur, such as Covid-19, cancer, etc.

About 10-15 years ago, I finally lost all hope in the Christian meta-story.
It turned out to be even at its best, an illusion. So I lost the philosophical
and theological understandings of my Christian worldview that I had thought
was a fairly stable foundation, despite my questions.

But the Christian meta-story turned out to be only many mirages, swirling sand that blew into a shifting Sahara of fading dunes. Besides, there were so many contradictory versions of what other humans claimed Christianity was!

Heck, most Christians claimed that Christians such as myself, who was one for 55 years, actually never were real Christians.

Furthermore, even all of those years as a Christian I never believed in their Creeds or their horrific concept of God.

But, finally, I realized, deeply, that I was trying to live a “true Scotsman” version of Christianity, one completely contrary to what most Christians claim. I realized down to the marrow of my bones that not even the Anabaptist/Quaker version of the Good News can be true.

I’m lost in that sense--from an intellectual standpoint. When in reflection, I step outside of my own personal commitment and try to see Life impartially and accurately, I have to admit that I don’t know the ultimate nature of Reality.

Unlike all of those who support various contrary versions of Christianity, those who claim they know that the meaning of existence is Islam, and those who claim to know that there is no god, etc., I am uncertain; indeed, never was “certain,” but now am very aware how little I know.

This is not the first time, I suddenly woke up lost--doubting my thinking and my perceiving, not knowing as much as I thought I knew when I was young.

Not long ago, about 10 years ago, I was sharing my spiritual struggles, a crisis I was in,
and one of my family joked “Oh Dan’s whole life has been one long spiritual crisis.”

And, in a sense, I suppose that is true as far as it goes:
from my earliest remembrances, I have—more than many—been the living human primate of “questions” far more than “answers.”


in process

REALISTIC HOPE

REALISTIC HOPE
Once one has discovered the fallacious nature of organized religion, its superstitions, denials of verified scientific study, and illusions, where does one turn for new hope?

Definitely not to the nihilism and illusions of many non-religous humans who claim that moral realism is false, that the good, the true, the just, human rights, equality, meticulous honesty, inherent worth, meaning, and purpose are all “myths."

They claim all those values are delusions, not true, and that all humans are incapable of moral choice, are only “biochemical puppets,” and morality is subjective, a mere preference of a human or a society.

INSTEAD, we humans ought to start searching for what is true, good, and just. Study the thinking of the Enlightenment
(though obviously not the darkness of the French Reign of Terror or the hypocrisy of leaders such as Thomas Jefferson).

1. Reason is central to start one’s trek up toward that impossibly difficult climb toward God, Ultimate Reality (using Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary first definition of “God”).

A beginning caution, however, is immediately in order because all of us humans have a way of rationalizing/misguiding our reasoning. Or we start with fallacious presuppositions and thus our brilliantly reasoned conclusions are based upon a foundation of quicksand.

One example of how this happens is Benjamin Franklin’s famous example from his autobiography of how he managed to reason himself into anything that he already wanted to do;-)*

2. A realistic humility is very important through out one’s life. The older I get, the more I realize how little I (and all humans) ‘know’. We live, experience, think, test, hypothesize, revise, repeat… NO ONE KNOWS in the sense of certainty. How could a finite human primate, a brief blip /conscious spark in a cosmos of billions of galaxies, possibly KNOW?

I still am baffled and shocked how many creedal Christians, Muslims, orthodox Jews, and Atheists, etc. are sure--certain--that they ‘KNOW’ the ultimate nature of reality.

Famous scientists including Einstein strongly emphasize humility is the beginning of real learning and wisdom.
For, instance, Einstein wrote, “I am not an atheist...The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages.

“The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God.

“We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”
Albert Einstein
--
BUT billions of humans in the past and the present claim to be certain. Not, that such a certainty wasn’t an essential part of my own childhood faith in non-creedal Baptist religion. We were constantly told and preached at, that everyone can KNOW.

However, I never had such assurance. Though I sought that "assurance, "to KNOW," instead, I always had questions, doubts, could step outside of my genuine hope, and observe Existence and the Cosmos from other contrary worldviews and life-stances.

As I used to joke, I was born with a “why” in my throat, instead of the infamous spoon.

To be continued--


In the Light of the Good, the True, and the Just,

Dan Wilcox

Are Those Opposing Us Corrupt, Vicious, even Vile?

Intensely Popular at present in American politics (as unwell as elsewhere) is the demeaning and name-calling of individuals on the other side. Each side makes extremely negative statements against the character and worth of persons of the opposition, those blanketyblanks----fill in the blanks from the daily news.

For instance, President Trump gives negative names to his opponents, "Crooked Hilary," Wacky and Deranged,” “a crazed, crying lowlife” and comparing another to a “dog.”

And individuals on the other side return the disfavor: Trump is "dumb, "an idiot surrounded by clowns," and so forth. Just read the daily news accounts.

Hmm...I doubt that most leaders on either side of the current huge chasm in American politics between Republicans versus Democrats (or Christians versus Atheists, or of whatever other stripes) are themselves bad individuals, nefarious, destructive, etc.

But here's a few snippets from the media:
Against Trump: "...corrupt politicians deserve no love. They inflict greater harm, death and destruction than any one person calling them a ________[twisted obscenity] will do to them.
Civility is for those who live in a fairy tale dream that somehow you can hope the tyrannical evil will suddenly grow some empathy. It won’t work.
Call him a _________. He deserves worse but will likely get less.
Jesus can love him all he wants. The rest of us can energize righteous anger and use it to oust him and any other mad tyrants who think they can trample on the constitution and the people it’s written to protect."

Against Democrats:
"You don't hand matches to an arsonist, and you don't give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern," Trump tweeted, "Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!"

BUT, what we need to do instead is condemn actions, NOT attack the worth or intent of humans in opposition to what we think is true, good, and right.

Most humans of the historic past--creedal Christians including the ones who slaughtered millions in the Great War (First W.I) the U.S. and British Civil Wars, the 30 Years War, French and German Religious Wars, etc., most orthodox Muslim jihadists in the past and now, many doctrinaire communists, most Napoleonic soldiers, etc. weren't corrupt, vicious, or vile.

On the contrary, most true believers of whatever religion or ideology tend to be almost exactly like all of us! As I recall that was one of the central points of Eric Hoffer's famous book on the true believer.

When I stayed with a Muslim family in Nablus, Palestine, they were very generous, kind, and considerate.
Ditto for the Jewish people on the kibbutz where I worked,
and ditto for the Christian Baptist leader from Jerusalem with whom I spoke,
YET they all were involved in the intentional slaughter of each other because of their religion.

Even some Jewish secularists and Palestinian secularists were in favor of intentionally killing civilians.

Most humans aren't vile. It's their dedication to nation and ideology or religion that is.

Yes, there are sociopaths. When I worked in a mental hospital, I worked with at least one.

But generally most of the evil in history and now comes about because normal, somewhat civilized, humans go to war for their evil beliefs, and abuse, oppress, and slaughter millions in the process.

The most evil in American history (and German, and British, and Russian, etc.), for instance, came from conscientious, dutiful, honorable humans doing their best to serve their nation.:-(

Look at the horror in Syria, where all sorts of ideologies are battling each other--secular Arabs, orthodox Muslims, Shia, Sunni, Russian, American, Turkish, Kurdish, Iranian, Saudi, Gulf States, Israeli (secular Jews and orthodox Jews), etc.
have caused the death of 1/2 million people, the wounding of millions more, and the displacement/refugee status of many millions.

As wrong and destructive as Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Marxism, Hinduism, Atheism, etc. are I doubt that the actual individuals who grow up in those horrific religions and ideologies are they themselves vile, evil in intent. Many of them really believe they are doing what is good and right.

One of the most fanatical creedal Christians I ever met was a very mild, courteous, kind individual who was an airplane steward. If he hadn't happily consigned billions of us other humans to eternal torture--without any sense of guilt or sadness--
I would have never guessed that he would hurt a mosquito.

Vile ideas, not usually vile people.

At least that is my experience and my view.

Remember the essential words of Martin Luther King:
"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh (the Vietnamese Buddhist nominated for the Nobel Prize), Bayard Rustin, and many other moral leaders point out what leads to harm, division, and destruction among humans is the claim of each side to be the good, dutiful, patriotic, honorable side.

But when one side claims to their enemies that they are are the only ones who are tyrannical, corrupt, and they deserve no compassion, no civility, then they have become like those enemies that they condemn.

I saw this when I lived in Palestine-Israel (where both sides demean, harm, and attack the others). And one can read of this lack of civility in American history and world history.

There are many tragic examples from American and world history where both sides held to be righteous and treated the opposite side as not deserving civility, kindness, hope because they were so bad.

However as the Russian great writer wrote, good and evil aren't on opposite sides, but both run through every human heart.

It appears that President Donald Trump bullies, constantly lies, intentionally harms millions, defends a murderous regime, the Saudis, etc.

But it is probably that Trump honestly thinks he is doing what is best, what is good. At least about 80% of Evangelical Christians think he is God's man for this troubled hour!!

Attacking the President personally, calling him bad names, etc. isn't the answer to this time of crisis.

Instead, our moral answer needs to be a very detailed documentation of all immoral and unjust actions. We need to work to bring good change based in human rights, not curse others.

One of the first rules of debate is that no matter how unfair, unjust, even evil the other side's views are, speakers should never attack the opposing speakers' inherent human worth. To do so is a denial of human rights.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

11 Ways to Follow the LIGHT

Follow the LIGHT

1. Cherish the Good, the True, and the Just with all of your emotion, all of your intellect and reasoning, and all of your strength.

2. Never make some finite thing or idea or group a central ought and duty for which you harm others.

3. Be courteous and respectful in your words and thoughts. Don’t ridicule or profane what is of value and worth.

4. Take at least one day and evening a week for mindfulness, recreation, and reflection.

5. Show caring and concern for the elderly, including your own parents.

6. Protect and esteem others. Don’t kill or do violence to them in thought, word, or deed.

7. Commit to one other person for life, in an ultimate sense through intellectual, emotional, and physical union. Be steadfast and loyal.

8. Show generosity; share with other humans in need; don’t take what belongs to others.

9. Speak the truth always in caring and altruism. Be honest and forthright.

10. Simplify; be content with what is good, necessary, and enjoyable; don’t fixate on and long for what others have.

And another commandment: Care for all other humans as much as yourself including those different from you and even your enemies.
And care for other sentient creatures.


--a theistic humanistic version of Jewish ethical commandments in modern language


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

What is True, Not "Politically Correct"

Part #2: What is True?

Honesty, Justice, Commitment, Reason, Goodness, Human Rights, Compassion, Duty, Kindness, Equality, Helpfulness, Peacemaking, Fairness, Patience, Fidelity, Generosity, Sharing, and so on...

What is False?

Dishonesty, Lying, Cheating, Injustice, Irrationalism, Fickleness, Cruelty, Torture, Rape, Enslavement, Abuse, Slaughter, infanticide, Violence, Theft, Racism, Promiscuity, Prostitution, Selfishness, and so on...

Many of these ethical truths, (and their contrary immoral actions) have been discovered by humans through experience, reasoning, and intuition and have been held up as ideals for thousands of years. Some of the ideals have taken much longer to become accepted by most humans than others.

But even way back in 250 B.C. one human leader in Western Asia banned slavery. And many of the virtues and ethical rights were emphasized even before then.

The POINT?

We humans, contrary to what many present leaders claim, don't need to reinvent the moral wheel of civilization over in every generation.

Instead, we reflect on the achievements of past moral leaders, sift and look for ways to improve on their lives and ideals. We finite individuals get to add in our insight and thinking, seeking greater and greater understanding of ethical truth. For instance, one topic that has come up in the last 50 years or so is the question of "animal rights." A deep topic to think about for the future.

CONTRARY to the many naysayers and negaters of the present, who claim that all ethics are "relative" and "subjective," and that no human has inherent value, and that there are no human rights,
we humans can live for
what is true,
what is good,
what is of inherent value.

NOW TO the "politically correct:"

So much of modern media has been touting catch phrases and words that many people adopt in mass, rather than test with previous ethical truths.

For instance:

Everyone is equal and that therefore those humans who have an orientation toward same sexuality ought to have the same right to commit to one other person to become his/her lover, spouse, and life-long partner.

Here's the 'socially and politically incorrect" part:

Terms and descriptions such as "GLBTQI" ought to be abandoned.

Why?

Because not only are such terms politically-charged catch phrases, they often aren't accurate.

#1 Same sexual is a more denotative term than the connotative terms such "gay" and lesbian."

#2 "Same sexual" explains how an individual human is orientated, but it doesn't define him/her in all of his/her complexity as do such popular sexual words such as "gay."

Opposite sexual individuals aren't defined by one term! There are many different sorts of opposite sexual individuals with widely different worldviews, life-stances, and perspectives.

That seems to be true for same sexual individuals, too.

#3 B stands for "bisexual," BUT this ambivalence in some humans ought not to be a defining description of them. If an individual feels emotionally and physically drawn to both sexes, that person needs to reflect deeply to which type of human he/she is most drawn. If it is 50-50, then he/she needs to make a definitive choice to go one way or the other.

If the person does choose, and then lives celibate until meeting his/her true love, and makes a commitment for life with that special person, then that is his/her chosen path.

He/she may still feel ambivalent, like a young adult might still feel torn some years later after choosing his/her career but usually continues with his commitment.

And he/she usually doesn't call themselves in an identifying term, such as I am a "bi-career";-) as if they feel so ambivalent about choosing to be a doctor or an engineer that they need to emphasize it to everybody!

#4 Transgendered is a very new field of study in human nature and ethics. Why do a few humans feel that they are caught in the wrong body? Sometimes the case is that when born, an infant is in the "middle" in his/her private parts and the obstetrician made a misdiagnosis.

This is tragic because it makes it so hard for the child as he/she grows up. However, transgendered individuals are of equal worth and inherent value as opposite and same sexual humans.

Again, why identify themselves centrally by their particular orientation?!

There is so much more to being human than sexuality, as important as that is to everyone of us.

#5 Lastly, another reason to stop using these catchy terms and "politically correct" phrases is that human sexuality ought to NEVER have been the political football it has become, where strident voices on all different sides of the issue yell at each other.

We need to focus on HUMANISM--the ideals, truths, and values that we all share.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox