The Feeling of the Earth: speculative novel starts with Quaker Family on the Oregon Trail, 1842

The Feeling of the Earth

From 1842, when a Quaker family on the Oregon Trail...
till 2066 at MegaLA...includes accurate
American history but from a speculative
angle, where extraterrestrial anthropologists
have hyperdrived here to study this alien race—the human species

1 The 3rd Alien
2 Return of the Tactilization
3 Driven Out
4 Into the Maelstrom
5 Blue Bellies
6 Shut Down
7 The Bushwhackers
8 Orphaned
9 Communion
10 Death and Disunion
11 Down Texas-Messed Way
12 North to Alaska
13 Treasure and Loss
14 1st Flight
15 Boulder Dam High-Scalers
16 Counter Culture
17 Summer of Love in the Haight
18 3 Sons of Abraham, Palestine-Israel
19 Descending Among Us
20 Mars Hub
21 The Limitness of Humanness
22 FeelSire Corporation
23 Epilogue


Chapter One: The Third Alien
Nebraska Territory, 1842

New wheel ruts deeply marred the grassy area near the stream of Clear Creek. The native crouched down and examined long furrows dug deep into the wet ground. Alarmed, he turned to stone and scanned the landscape, holding his breath for a long time. But no human sound.

Only sparrows chittered in clumps of elms hanging over the thin water--rippling, wide and shallow. Pebbles shimmered on its sandy bottom. Eastward, the stream flowed, winding away amongst the grassy loafed hills. No unusual movement. Through tall elms, a flat stone ridge loomed, Table Rock. A squirrel scampered by.

The native bent low and shoved his hand down into one deep mud scar--half a foot deep! He seethed. Those accursed wagons of the pale aliens invading their land, following the wide, flat muddy Nebraskier River westward!

Last year, the invaders had gotten warriors of the Oto drunk on firewater! Stupid tribe, trading beaver pelt for poison drink. Thank you, Great Spirit that my people, the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men), never betray others for drink. We’re not a twisting snake like the Oto.

Only 3 moons ago, lazy Oto thieves had slunk into his village of Weeping Water while he and other warriors were out hunting, the women and children working in their vegetable field. Had stolen his prize ceremonial shirt which his dear spouse had created from large deer hide, a big deer he had shot 3 years ago.

True, I did sell my last catch of beaver to that alien 4 years ago, an ugly2-faced English, but I only did so because we needed supplies, winter early that year. But I won’t sell to those vicious cowards—defilers—ever again!
I, Wore Wolf Teeth of the Chaticks-si-chaticks, swear to it.

He brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then he stood up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at rock out-croppings, and up a few arroyos.

Peering toward the east, Wore Wolf Teeth wondered what other evils lay back there yet to come this way and curse their lives. Last summer, the hairy invaders had slaughtered over a thousand bison near the very wide, flat, muddy Nebraskier River. Crazy aliens, such evil waste! A day of madness.

Stark images filled Wore’s mind. When he and several other warriors had ridden onto that scene, rotting stink had assaulted them. Hundreds of reeking carcasses of bison lay abandoned on the plains--rich meat rotting and bloating, crowded with skin-islands of flies in the hot summer sun. All that meat would have fed his tribe and others for over a year!

But those aliens had only skinned the shaggy hides from fallen beasts, ignoring, abandoning such a wealth of meat; instead, they had piled hundreds of bison pelts high into their moving lodges and left. Only wheel scars and hundreds of carcasses remained for scavengers.
Greedy scum!

On that shameful day, the sun had blazed hot like now today; yes, the season of sweating. Alert again, he quickly scanned the area here. Nothing. But why had these wagons come southerly to Cleer Creek? Who knows what English are about?! Maybe they found the muddy Nebraskier too undrinkable?

Probably stopped here because of this abundant spring. If his tribe hadn’t settled at the falls westward, this brook might be good, But only if it never dried up. Wore walked over to Clear Creek and scooped up a cool drink with his right hand.

He would return to his village, speak in the counsel and, maybe, they would mount a war party to deal with these new wagon-aliens.
He wiped sweat from his brow, grime from his palm, streaking his forehead and brushed one hand through the single ridge of stiffened hair that roostered up from his mostly shaven head. Then, he knelt and scooped up a cool drink with one hand. Wore stood back up and swept his gaze over the terrain once more, peering at out cropping, the Table Rock, and up a few narrow arroyos. No humans.

Suddenly, a covey of quail swarled up from a thicket and winged over the muddy ruts. He dropped flat, then like a bull snake slithered into close brush, listening for the sound of hooves, or boot steps, or even muffled breathing. Nothing! Only the creek’s gurgle.

But then as he peered out through branches, the sky tore open--abruptly, distorting, and bubbling out, a darkness looking at first like a black globbed mass, like dark spittle on a French trapper's beard, but then widening, widening, widening...until Wore Wolf Teeth inched back with dread.

This deadly vision came from the spirits, not from any bodied foe. Yet the horrid sky omen boded nothing like his good quest dream he had received when becoming a brave a few seasons back on the southern plains.

The dark, translucent bubble continued enlarging until it loomed greater than a dozen lodges back at his village of the Weeping Water. What horrendous spirit up above expanding until it gaped far vaster than a huge thunderhead just before a storm?

Wolf Teeth lay still, at one with the many stones under him. Above, the distorted cavern swallowed the sky--endless, coal black, a dark horror, similar to the murky cave he had climbed down into when a scared small boy.

Out of the cavernous maw charged, stormed, a moving drab-gray monster. A monstrous evil spirit?!
Or is it a severe warning omen to him from the Great Spirit?

Wore didn't know, but for the 1st time in his 23 years, he shivered despite the heat. Even when he had counted coup against the Arapahoe, disdaining their warriors and had to pull out a thrown lance from his bleeding arm, while hanging to the stolen horse's mane, even then he had not been afraid.

No fear then, but so alive and glorious, so triumphant, he and his fellow warriors had galloped across the plains. But not now…now fear ate at his gut like a huge vulture. I’m being truly tested. He gripped his medicine bag hanging from his neck, crawled out of the brush, stood and yelled, "I am of the Chaticks-si-chaticks (Men of men)!

Above, the dark gray spirit hovered pulsating, and behind it the sky, endless tar, a smoked abyss.

######################################################

About 3 miles away, horses of an Oregon-bound wagon train skittered and bucked, one large roan knocking its rider to the ground. Men looked up in shock, bewildered by the sudden darkness. Even the chatter of many children ceased. In the 3rd Conestoga wagon, Neil O'Brian stared up into the blackness and held his breath.

One of the scouts shouted a warning, "Halt!"

But then, just as the sudden blackness had come, the abyss of color vanished and the blazing glare of the sun returned. Almost immediately hundreds of voices from wagons rushed to fill the still air. Neil turned to Naomi, his wife who had come up behind him from the back of their wagon, and said, "Strange. What an incongruity! Suddenly that vast thunderhead dominates the sky, confuses us, then vanishes."

"It might be a sign from the Light," she said as she leaned close to him where he sat, reins in hand.

Before Neil could answer, the wagons in front of them began moving again. He turned and flicked the reins. His wife backed into the shade of the covering and lifted up their 6-month old daughter Hannah, singing softly a Quaker melody.

Neil thought about the strange atmospheric phenomenon, remembering a few texts he had read at law school which had mentioned a similar strange sky a few years back. Sounded like superstition to him, but what could have caused such an atmospheric disturbance?
Then Neil returned to contemplating their future, about their chances in the Oregon Territory. He was glad they weren't staying here on endless, treeless plains-- Nebraska Territory. Not that it didn't have potential, but except near creeks, it was too dry. No wonder some commentators called this a vast desert.

What a contrast to last week when they had camped back near the Missouri River where the land stood thick with tall timber—heavily forested bluffs, luxurious.

His horses followed 3 Prairie Schooners in front of their wagon, and there were 13 behind, as they rolled alongside the wide river of the Platte (he knew the word meant 'flat' in French, coined by the early explorers). Also, more and more, the rolling hills of the eastern Nebraska territory now lowered, the land flattening, turning to prairie, seemingly endless plains.

Holding the reins with one hand, Neil took a swig of warm water from his canteen. He momentarily contemplated whether the French term was the best name for the wide river, or if they should have kept the Oto Indian word, Nebraskier, meaning "flat water."

He wiped sweat from his face with his forearm again. So blazing hot! Such a contrast to the downpour of five days ago that had created a muddy mess. This excruciating heat wasn't great either and the air seemed to exude moisture. His shirt clung to his chest and back, utterly drenched as if he had taken a dunk in the nearby river, though the water didn't look deep enough to get baptized in if he was a one of the Dunkers, not a Friend.

The horses plugged along the hoof-punched mud trail; he tied the reins to the post, yanked off his dripping shirt, wiped his face and arms, and wrapped it around his neck to ward off more sunburn there.

Below his left rib, he noticed the large scar from the battle in Tennessee against the Cherokee. It welted livid against his dark tan. Jagged memory--he again saw his partner holding a small bloody scalp, a child’s and whooping with delight, telling Neil how they'd get rid of all of the red vermin, cursed aliens.

Neil cussed! Banished that bloodied memory. He flicked the reins so the horses bounded ahead, pulling him closer to the forward wagon. He could hear the chatter of children inside, and thought of his own baby and Naomi behind him within their wagon. She had stopped singing. Had heard him curse.

Scanning out across the shallow water on his left, he tried to see the far side of the river. Then he turned back and looked to see what Naomi was doing. Their baby, Hannah, lay wrapped tightly in a thin sheet, asleep on a Quaker quilt covering their small mattress that rested on packing crates.

Naomi sat behind the infant, peeling potatoes, her blouse damp against her bosom and pleasingly open at the neck, her long mahogany hair a tumble of wrap on her head, a few wisps clinging to the sweat on her skin.

"Hey Love,” Neil said, “how about bringing me some tea?"

Naomi looked up at her man, and smiled. “Sure, Neil.” She reached down under the side of the mattress and pulled out a large stone jar. Then hefted it up, tipped, and poured out brown tea into a glass mason jar.

Naomi was proud of her man, though sometimes now, she wished she were still in Philadelphia and teaching at Penn Quaker School, not out here on this rough trek, not missing her deceased parents. And that he wouldn’t sometimes curse.

She edged forward holding onto the crates so as to not spill any liquid as their wagon rocked and jostled over uneven ground. One wheel slid into a deep rain-rut and the wagon lurched. But Naomi caught herself with a hand against one of the stays of the fabric cover.

Neil grabbed the reins calming the horses as they righted the wagon and plodded on again. He felt her hand on his bare shoulder, turned and looked down into her luminous eyes, great with kissed closeness. Wanted to swoop her up into his arms, but he only visually caressed her, with intensity into her irises, and took the tumbler from her calloused hands, and turned back to watch the horses.

She let her hand linger on his shoulder, then slid it down his side and mischievously pinched him. He sloshed his tea, some slurping over the rim and landing on his legs. He grabbed for her hand but she had retreated. He hollered back over his head, “Just you wait, you’ve got yours comin’ later you ornery sprite. Is that kind of tomfoolery proper for a school marm?”

Her gentle laughter came to him as she picked up their 6-month-old daughter, no doubt holding her close, probably giving her to breast. And he thanked the God above for his wife.

Then in a lawyer-like moment marveled that he still was using high-falutin’ literary terms such as ‘sprite’ and ‘tomfoolery’ out here in the wild west of Nebraska Territory where so many pioneers and trappers couldn’t even write basic prose, let alone reference allusions.

Should he have stayed in Rhode Island and finished his law courses? But then they wouldn’t have had many exciting times crossing to Missouri! Of course, then they wouldn’t have had to bury her folks and the 216 other dead he had interred in St. Louis, dead from the pox, while waiting for spring to head out west.
And that other death—back in Tennessee, his friend holding that dripping scalp of the little Cherokee savage he had scalped…No! Don’t think of that.

Think of his sweetheart behind him in the wagon. Image him with Naomi; she in her sedate Quaker dress, but all heat and passion hidden within. What a wedding night! He grinned. Created their little one.

Better not dwell on that. Maybe if they hadn’t decided to go west, they could have settled in Providence after their wedding and shown her his small village where he grew up? Gotten her a small frame house, and she could be tending their daughter and walking down to Penn's Dry Goods...

Instead, they had fought Indians in Tennessee--mainly Cherokee; afterward, many corpses of the savages, their lodges burning from their arson, and a child’s dripping scalp in his friend’s hand. Guilt drowned him. Stop it!

Neil looked ahead at the wagon in front of him and wondered how long before they reached low falls of Weeping Water where they would begin to look for a camp site. Hopefully, they wouldn’t encounter any Pawnee or Oto.

A horde of flies circled him and he batted at them. His horses were sweating profusely, too, and these endless flies seemed to have swarmed up from Egypt, compliments of Moses. Speaking of the Good Book, he now heard Naomi singing a scripture passage to their daughter. She was versing something about being kind to the aliens in your midst.

Yeah right! Neil grimaced. Sometimes Scripture was downright stupid! Savage aliens! That’s what these redskins were. They deserved no mercy!
Natives would attack and slaughter families in their farms, even way lay whole wagon trains without warning. Massacring women and children! But his friend’s bloody trophy seared his conscience. Get off my back, God; that only happened because they attacked first!

Furthermore, Indian women would mutilate the bodies worse than their warrior husbands! Neil glanced over toward clumps of box elders by the river; feeling conflicted between his lawyer self and his commitment to the Society of Friends with his wife, he frowned, spit, and tried to think of something else.

Again, Neil swung at the flies swarming around him and their horses. Hmm...well, he supposed if he were a savage, then white folks would seem like aliens, too. Then the small bloody trophy in his laughing buddy's hand, dripped into his conscience, a stark vivid script on the wall of his mind, but he cursed again and argued the guilt down. Why would God emphasize they had to care for alien natives?

He flicked the horses angrily to speed them up as he realized he had fallen back a few yards. What about the German immigrant in the Ohio valley who we had found with his entrails torn out of his body and then his very intestines wrapped all the way around an oak tree, tied there by his own guts left to bleed to death slowly. Savage torture! To hell with the dark aliens inhabiting open land. They deserved whatever they got and more
The wagon in front of him stopped again!

"What now?" Neil asked, wondered as he stood up and stared ahead. If the wagon train kept stopping, they wouldn't make it to Chimney Rock for days, and then they might get caught in early snow before they got to pass over the Rockies.

Neil waited--hopefully not hostile natives. Out here they were likely to attack. Taking off his brown hat, he wiped sweat and grime from his forehead. Then glanced up toward the glaring sun and ran fingers through his damp hair.

He turned back to the hooped opening behind him. Inside, below in muted light, on their mattress sitting on top of kegs and large trunks, Naomi nursed Hannah. Neil grinned wide remembering the rambunctious night only 15 months ago, right after they had seen the justice of the peace and had a small Quaker wedding where they exchanged commmitments. The Friends used no clergy for that.

But then he bit his lip as other images which crowded in--the shallow grave he had dug for her parents, their skin all pocked up, only 2 of hundreds of people who had frenzied to death in the epidemic that had descended on St. Louis for months.

So many thousands crowded together in that town, prepareing for their long journeys across the west on the Oregon and other trails. At least though neither he nor Naomi had gotten the Missouri plague.

Shouts interrupted his remembrances; coming at a gallop, a scout dashed up to the wagon in front, waving his beaver hat to emphasize his shouting.

Quicky, Neil looped the reins on a wagon stay, jumped to the ground, and rushed forward.

The trail guide trotted toward him shouting agin; the short French Canadian, with that trapper's hat. Pulling up, he said again, "We got problems; one of our scouts hasn’t returned. And there’s horse tracks up ahead; probably Pawnee. Some of 'em are passive these days, but they attacked a train a few weeks back. Get out yer rifle ‘n stay eagle-eyed." Before Neil could answer, the Frenchie giddied his horse and trotted on to the next wagon behind.

################################################################

After their tachyon ship flung out of hyperspace, bursting from the bubbled warp into this blue wonder of a world, Uzx mentally felted all this amazing surface water! His own world had none. And grassy undulating plains, bluffs, and real surface streams below. He felt deep inner desire to skxxx in meditation.

"Oh such tactile wealth!" his skin yelled in joyful anticipation. "What luxuriating wonder." He virtually caressed the strange plants growing up from the grassy terrain near flowing streams. "And so much water visible above ground--zzhg!" He smiled; he would tactile for many rotations in skxxx.

So what if this is a small planet rotating a minor yellow sun. True, data feeling into him from the ship emphasized there were also no great technocities here--no extensive statistics to be analyzed and statted; and the conscious inhabitants were only skinny primate, many illiterate, and missing tails! And of a limited intelligence at that.

But still, what a marvel; this world and its main intelligent species showed promise for anthropologizing. He grinned wide and shifted his feel on the instruments. Data came in on one of the primates below. The earth alien was spying up at the ship using only his visual percepters and the aural lobes in his head.

Probably not a threat--obviously incapable of distance-feeling, only has basic self-consciousness, pre-literate, dark-skinned, strong energy level and brave, but strangely overly filled with dread.

The native's four-legged mammal-rider shook itself and hoofed the ground. Not dangerous, but tactilely fascinating, especially the long main of hair on its neck. The horse stopped moving and lowered its head to a shallow stream where it had been drinking. It was restricted by a cord tied to one of a few tall many-limbed plants--ah yes, the term, trees. "Thanks for the identification, data director," Uzx felted to the ship’s computer center.

Uzx virtually skinned the horizon. A few points to the south over the terrain many other primates were vocalizing so loudly, he was surprised that the dark-skinned one couldn't hear them. These aliens seemed to have no inner means of communication. Rather embarrassing--yakking loudly like a bunch of pxzlzs! And they were moving in primitive conveyances.

Neither did these other human aliens have that stiff hair ridge on a shaved head or dark skin like the first earthling. Instead, they wore fiber coverings over their longish hair hair; and some of their male faces sprouted heavy bushed hair below their sense organs and intake orifices. So much bare skin would have been off-putting if he weren't a scientist. Uzx briefly reflected warmly on his many tail brother and sisters, thoroughly covered in luxuriant fur.

Back to work, Uzx quickly accessed 139 different mental states. Most were upset because one of their leaders had found tracks belonging to the lone native's mammal. Now the leader was riding his mammal back along the primitive conveyances shouting out warnings. So much loud clucking!

Rather oddly funny. Uzx's skin laughed. The leading primate hadn't even taken a moment to stick his multi-pronged appendages into feel the semicircular shapes of the tracks in the rich loam of the muddy soil that he was yelling about. What a waste of tactile!

Musing, he considered options; maybe he should quantum those primitive gunpowder tubes attached to their waists or held by some in their hands. Oh, he could do that later after his complete survey and all the data collection finished.

Shifting on his large feet, he adjusted the back support of his tail, still intrigued that the alien primates had no tail and such tiny feet!

Focused again back to the terrain where the first earth being still hid, but ignoring him, Uzx virtual felted many small finning creatures in the surface water of the shallow creek. What would they skin like when he actually touched those primitive life forms? What would his own planet of Orxx be like if it had surface water and such creatures, too?

Uzx touched the data flow and the weird slimy creatures flapped their fins in panic and zipped about in the stream. What a strange amazing world so diffferent from his own and from other planets he had studied. Oh thanks to the All-Ultimate that he had careered as an alienologist. Surely, no other sirehold compared.
Next, he scanned with his skin across the landscape to where thousands of large shaggy four-legged creatures congregated at a much larger body of surface water, a river. Uzx considered feltdentifying into one of the herd for his 1st skxx, but then remembered the bloated carcasses he had accessed from the hiding native's mind. He remembered his own great sire's wise quote: “Forefeeling leads to felthood."

So, cautioning himself--his felting into the large beasts might start a stampeded, Uzx widened the range of his felt-sensing for more input. Thankfully, the scanning ability of their research ship's data director was nearly endless.

Later he would focus on one of the alien families, probably the one of only 3 in the 3rd primitive wagon back in the line of human travelers. Why such a measly-sized family?

Only one infant! And not safe in a maternal’s pouch, because she was a primate, didn’t have one!

Yet her curly-bearded mate and she nursing a tiny infant within under that vegetative gray-white covering intrigued him. Her husband his mate showed more erudition than any of the others--some were illiterate like the native 3 miles away! Her male was conscientious and ardent, and spiritual, yet skeptical--fascinating. A worthy in depth study.

But the alien had a tragic grieving past. Uzx uploaded his brain memories for storage.

Too bad there were no earth marsupials nearby. Later later, he would flash-point down to that southern continent that seemed to have the most, but not one intelligent self-aware; see what genetic similarity they might have to his own species on Orxx, whether the All-Ultimate had created them with the same basic code on this far distant small planet.

Then he brought his star ship into a very low circling pattern, scanning through the possibilities for an enclone via the data director. Eliminating flyers (though very intriguing), and low-intelligent reptiles.

He needed a creature with fur, non-intrusive, maybe even a bit fun--Ah there, he felted a furry, smallish--actually tiny--mammal who tunneled and was mostly ignored except by the winged ones. It would be perfect for his 1st feeling of this planet, despite the creature's stupidity, or rather because that would make the inclone mind-meld less intrusive or difficult.

Below in their burrow, its inhabitants suddenly scurried about sensing an invasion of their sanctuary. A fairly large male collapsed in a tunnel near the surface mound in the tall prairie grass.
Then it awoke a genius.

################################################################

Wore Wolf Teeth lay still like rock even after that demon of dread had vanished from the dark sky above. Now only intensive blue remained and the hot blazing sun. Not a cloud in the sky.

He peered through various holes in the thick brush, and waited and waited, but the monstrous thing didn't return. Nowhere was the huge black tunnel or the dreadful spirit that had come lunging out of it. Slowly, Wore snaked backward ignoring abrasions and cuts on his stomach and legs from shards of rock and thorns.

But then he heard the distinctive noise of slow-moving hooves. He shut from his mind the strange spirit and focused on what he did know. A rider was coming this way, secretively. Not an native. Extricating himself from the heavy thicket, Wore ran silently through the elms to the flat stone ridge of the Table Rock...


To be continued

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Of Moose and Men

Of Moose and Men: Redux

Like moose drool down from his jaw
Liquid drip of much after thought,
The human chews his abstract cud.

Drooling brought-back cussedness

This brainy mammal with his huge
Mental jaw ruminates and masticates
Difficult philosophical concepts.

He chews and chews and chaws
Minding repeatedly, and pondering
Into his daily life for good or ill

Drooling, brought-back cussedness

The meta-conundrums, the ones
He can't stomach, that ethical gristle
Imponderable quandaries.

Like the massive moose of yonder glen,
Man stands as king and all get out
In this damned lake he calls civilization;

Drooling brought-back cussedness

Then walking admidst verbal tall trees, he
Rummages through this forest of ideas,
Philosophical redwoods towering above.

And he peers up searching the heights, but
Stands sludged mired in his soggy morass,
The moral muddle of his shallow bog.

Drooling brought-back cussedness

What festering future, or fertile destiny
Awaits this drooling race of primate
Caught in the quagmire, a hypocrite?


Any St. Bernard dog, as Thoreau said,
Has more basic moral sense than
Most men who swallow gross wrong whole,

Drooling and drooling and drooling...


--Daniel E. Wilcox

First pub.
Dark Energy,
by Diminuendo Press

Part #4: What's the Light got to do with UR and us?

SUBPOINT D: INHERENT WORTH

Every single human being is of inherent worth, and is an end, not a means.

This is very clearly a HOPE statement.

It comes from the philosophy of the Enlightenment and from radical groups such as the Friends, whose modern affirmation has been—“There is that of God in everyone.”

However, there is no way for scientists to show, let alone prove, that every single human is of “inherent worth.”

And, strangely, very often of late, plenty of leading thinkers, both non-religious and religious, are going out of their way to emphasize that homo sapiens don't really have any "inherent worth," at all.

They state that such a phrase is merely "woo," "superstitious," and "stupid."

Instead, these modern thinkers emphasize that on the contrary, humans are only minor specks in existence, only twigs in evolution, and but "bags of chemicals, and are one insignificant, purposeless result of natural selection, etc.

And so many Christian leaders at present are emphasizing that human beings have no value, are “worthless,” and that humans exist only as a means, exist only to give the Christian God glory, etc.

With all of these dismal statements...

What is a human to do?

What to think with so many, in so many ways, ‘counting the ways’ that humans have no value, except what we assign ourselves with our own subjective preferences.

There is hope, light in this philosophical darkness.

Consider the views of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, social and political activist Thomas Paine, and many others. They all emphasized human “inherent worth" and that has been the position in all forms of theistic humanism ever since.

First, this phrase means that humans are MORE than genetically and evolutionarily of the primate class of animals in biology.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary: primate--“3 [New Latin Primates, from Latin, plural of primat-, primas]
: any of an order (Primates) of mammals that are characterized especially by advanced development of binocular vision, specialization of the appendages for grasping, and enlargement of the cerebral hemispheres and that include humans, apes, monkeys, and related forms (as lemurs and tarsiers)”

Full Definition of mammal
Mammal—“any of a class (Mammalia) of warm-blooded higher vertebrates (as placentals, marsupials, or monotremes) that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands, have the skin usually more or less covered with hair, and include humans”

Notice there is no mention of "meaning," "purpose," or essence.

In the science of biology, homo sapiens is only one branch of many on a long complicated bush of Life.

But we humans aspire to live beyond the instinctive, survival level of life. We are life aware, life able to reason, life able to create, life able to seek meaning and purpose and beauty.


Enlightenment leaders and others such as the Friends and Unitarian-Universalists think that humans have so much
more importance, are of great inherent worth, equal, and with unalienable rights!

First, let us take a look at the Quaker statement--"that of God in every person."

The phrase has been widely used in the twentieth century as an expression which signifies the central truth of the Quaker message--that every human, including oppressive enemies have essential meaning and worth beyond their merely physical biological origination.

This phrase is a modern take-off, re-interpretation of 17th century leader George Fox's spiritual statements such as, "This is the true light which doth enlighten every man that cometh into the world..." Works, IV, page 252.

"Three days before he died he wrote to Quaker ministers in America to 'Let your light shine among the Indians, the Blacks, and the Whites, that you may answer the truth in them, and bring them to the standard and ensign, that God hath set up, Christ Jesus'" Journal,II page 502

"The light which everyone that cometh into the world is enlightened with is not conscience, for the light was before anything was made....So the light is that which exerciseth the conscience toward God, and toward man, where it is loved and the voice heard.'"

"George Fox used this phrase, or variants of it, hundreds of times."
Lewis Benson
from Quaker Religious Thought, Vol. XII, No. 2, Spring 1970;
retyped for electronic distribution by Simon Watson
http://www.qhpress.org/essays/togiem.html

The LIGHT is a hope-trust-ratopnal concept that Ultimate Reality is transcendent “beyond” all matter and energy,
and that this essential reality
extends itself into the cosmos through reason, logic, math, ethics, and aesthetics as well as other ways.

It is also the source of the regularities of the universe, sometimes popularly called, natural law.
(The latter is what some famous scientists have spoken of as the “intellectual beauty of existence,”
and why they refuse to agree with the naysayers who claim that reality is “meaningless” and "purposeless.")

Take a look at how Immanuel Kant explained this--

from James Rachels, Kantian Theory: The Idea of Human Dignity
"The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant thought that human beings...
have “an intrinsic worth, i.e., dignity,”
which makes them
valuable’ “above all price.”

"According to Kant, in his Lecture on Ethics (1779)
humans may never be “used” as means to an end. He even went
so far as to suggest that this is the ultimate law of morality."

"Like many other philosophers, Kant believed that morality can be summed up in
one ultimate principle from which all our duties and obligations are derived.

He called this principle The Categorical Imperative."

"In the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals (1785) he expressed it like this:
Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it
should become a universal law."

"However, Kant also gave another formulation of The Categorical Imperative.
Later in the same book, he said that the ultimate moral principle
may be understood as saying:
Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another,
always as an end and never as a means only."
Kantian Theory:
The Idea of Human Dignity
James Rachels
From James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy,
pp. 114-17,122-23. Copyright
1986 by Random House, Inc.
--

This focus on rational theistic-humanism has been carried on by various other groups including some Unitarian-Universalists.

Their 1st Principle is:
"The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person"

“Reverence and respect for human nature is at the core of Unitarian Universalist (UU) faith. We believe that all the dimensions of our being carry the potential to do good."

"We celebrate the gifts of being human: our intelligence and capacity for observation and reason, our senses and ability to appreciate beauty, our creativity, our feelings and emotions."

"We cherish our bodies as well as our souls. We can use our gifts to offer love, to work for justice, to heal injury, to create pleasure for ourselves and others."

“‘Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy,’ the great twentieth-century Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote."

"Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent worth and dignity of each person as a given of faith—an unshakeable conviction calling us to self-respect and respect for others.,”
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann Parker, minister, theologian, and author
from The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, available from inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #2: Ultimate Becoming, Divine Process

INTRODUCTION:
(Skip, if you are in a hurry.)

At birth (that of our species, and individually), we humans awoke into this cosmos and have been asking "Why?" ever since.

What makes this so difficult is that while many of our brilliant scientists can make fairly reliable observations of matter and energy, so many of them disagree on almost everything else.

It does appear that we humans can only make educated guesses about--Ultimate Reality, traditionally called "GOD."

But even the term causes untold arguments, harmful hostilities, and brutal slaughters. "GOD" is the most conudrummed of all semantic jungles.

Unfortunately, it is almost always a 'con' being 'drummed' into other people's consciousness by Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Hindus, and others.

Usually, one needs to spend hours of writing long complicated explanations of why what others think you mean by "GOD" isn't at all what you mean, nor for that matter is it anything like how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the general word.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
God--"1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality"

So without further ado, I am, again, going to move toward using UR, and seldom mention the traditional empty-bucket term.

That way, hopefully, most readers won't be sent down millions of other rabbit holes
chasing after Alice and Humpty Dumpty;-(

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
--





POINT #1:

This article will approach the issue/complexity/conundrum/philosophical WHY from our human 'bottom up' of practical daily living. (For those who want very abstract, more technical discussions, please Google that. There are thousands of such fine sites including http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/, https://philosophynow.org/, and http://plato.stanford.edu/.)

We all have presuppositions that we live with that shape our views and our choices and our actions. Millions of humans are unaware of their central presuppositions in a similar way that a fish wouldn't be aware that he exists in the ocean.

We get "thrown" into our society, culture, nation, family at birth and so grow up seeing the world, time, and reality through those particular glasses. Thankfully, millions of us get a good enough education that we learn to distance ourselves from thinking our own colored glasses are the only real view of reality.

SO HERE WE ARE AT THIS MOMENT!

SUBPOINT A: CHOICES

In order to function from moment to moment, each of us assumes that we can make choices, that we can alter our life, that we are responsible, that we can make a difference in the world, etc.

The only exception to this, of course, are the severely mentally ill--those who have no sense of individual self or who have catastrophic delusions.

In my view this is why determinism/fate/foreordination doesn't work in real life despite the fact that some brilliant thinkers claim that all humans are "puppets" and that "human choice" is an illusion.

But those very same thinkers don't actually put into practice their convinced view in their own lives. In fact, it would seem impossible to do so.

Rather, they mostly use their conclusion as a hammer to smash other worldviews that they disagree with.

For example, here is one very clear example:

Biologist Jerry Coyne states almost weekly on his website that no human has any choice. He agrees with neuroscientist Sam Harris that we have no more choice than the mass murderer in Texas whose brain tumor forced him to kill other people.
(Listen to Harris' interview with Jerry Coyne and to his podcast "Tumors All the Way Down.")

According to Coyne, we can't even choose what we want to eat for lunch. Even worse, he argues that every murderer and every rapist has no choice but to murder and rape because it was determined that they must.

Thus there is no moral responsibility, none at all--according to Coyne.

Yet Coyne repeatedly bans individuals on the Internet if they disagree with him or his views; or if (from his perspective) they choose to be "discourteous."

This makes no rational or scientific sense!
(Which is unusual for such a brilliant scientist.
In contrast, Coyne's book on evolution, Why Evolution Is True,
is a lucid, very rational explanation of biology and life!

Take a look at the contradiction.

Today, on his website, Coyne states this:

"But Penn neglects a serious problem when he says this: 'You’re not allowed to hate people for their ideas.' Now that’s just not right. Excuse me for Godwinning, but are we not allowed to hate Hitler, only his Nazism and anti-Semitism? Are we not allowed to hate Jihadi John, who cuts off people’s heads, but only the religious ideology that promoted that action? Are we not allowed to hate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose “theology” has led to the deaths of thousands?"

"The fact is that people instantiate their ideas through their actions, and holding beliefs that can inspire bad acts is itself reprehensible."--Jerry Coyne

WAIT a minute. Coyne declares that no one can even choose what he would like to eat for lunch. And much worse declares that ALL murderers and rapists
aren't morally responsible for their murders and rapes!

YET now he states that people who hold ideas and actions and beliefs that he, Coyne, disagrees with are "reprehensible."

That doesn't compute!

How can anyone be "reprehensible" if they are "puppets" incapable of choice??!!

According to Coyne and other hard determinists' view of reality,
Nazis, Hitler, Jihadi John, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi don't have a choice, can't even move a finger,
let alone choose
what ideas they hold, what beliefs they choose, and what actions they take.

They are only dust in the cosmic wind determined by the laws of physics; always done to,
never able to choose contrary to what has been determined.

Of course, Coyne has already stated many times, too, that he himself has no choice about anything. Nothing!

So I suppose Coyne would now say that he doesn't have a choice but must "hate" others and must write this article.

But see what a confusing, contradictory, endless loop that gets us all into.

The word Coyne uses is "reprehensible" which means "very bad : deserving very strong criticism," but Coyne at the same time says that no human has any choice but to do what has been determined.

Then Coyne goes onto state, "But what about good people who adopt and act on those bad ideas? Don’t they become bad people?"

HUH? Coyne has already stated that murderers don't have any choice, none at all. Neither do civil people. So how in the world could a "good" person "adopt and act on those bad ideas"?

None of us can do 'nothin'.

Some determinists argue that while "human choice" is an illusion, it is yet practical to assume it in daily life.

But, again, notice that in their argument they have temporarily abandoned their determinism and instead now state that any one can choose to "assume" they have a choice, (which is really an illusion), because it is beneficial.

??

Despite all their brilliance, it seems determinists are wrong about determinism because none of them--none of us--can operate from moment to moment, living as a "puppet" or a "wet robot," not choosing.

Such a view automatically incapacitates my next moment because in order to be human I need to assume that I can choose!

SUBPOINT B: ETHICS

Many atheists and non-religious commentators think that religious people live in illusions. And there is a lot of truth to such a charge.

For instance, consider brilliant scholars like Richard Lyman Bushman, winner of the Bancroft Prize, author of the brilliant biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Latter Day Saints (Mormon).

Bushman is a fine scholar, yet when it comes to analyzing the rampant adultery and promiscuity of Smith, Bushman clearly shades the facts, trying to exonerate Smith, because of his biases, his own faith in Mormonism.

But religious people can also be motivated by objective ethics, not only by illusions and irrational ideas. Many critics of religion fail to realize this.

Neil Carter, a former Christian, and now atheist blogger wrote on his website today, "Your approach to conversation with the devout must also take into account that they themselves are active participants in their religion, continually creating their own personal experience of the divine on a subconscious level, apart from their own awareness."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2016/08/26/what-lies-beneath-the-suit-of-armor/

Evidently this was Neil's own experience and that of the Christians he knew, but I didn't ever experience God in such a way. I never experienced what countless Christian leaders said Christians did--a vivid sense of God's presence--so I thought there was something wrong with me.

In all my years as a Christian, I NEVER once received an answer to even one of my prayers. (These weren't minor prayers or self-centered prayers). But no answer ever came.

Spiritual leaders told me to wait.

I did for years.

I couldn't understand how other Christians were so dedicated to prayer.

And their claims of answers to their prayers appeared to be illusionary, at times very bogus.

So why did I stay with the sinking ship?

My chief reason for being a Christian was always ethical. I was dedicated to human rights, to the good, the true, the just, the equal, and the beautiful, and so on.

Many of those who opposed my faith and hope--
our professors who were secular, (many atheists), other students (at the University of Nebraska, Long Beach State) who were skeptics and anti-religious, and then later other non-Christians--
often supported and participated in unethical behavior.

So even though I found myself constantly doubting my religion, and totally opposed to other parts of it,
I didn't jump ship for a very long time, because of the ethics.

When it became clear that there was another way to be more ethical, one much better than Christianity, then I left.

Some very smart people assert that there are no real ethics, that we humans "construct" ethics, so slavery is really not wrong, but is advantageous to survival and so is correct, though that is only a subjective cultural, societal view. Back in the past, when most humans supported slavery, then slavery wasn't wrong.

This sounds like an atheistic version of how Neil is describing Christian illusion.

If one's ethics aren't grounded, based in, reality, then they would appear to be delusionary.

Besides, if humans have to "construct" ethics, then there is no basis for holding all humans to the same ethical standards. Then morality becomes whatever an society claims it is.

Some non-religious leaders including Bob Seidensticker and Hermant Mehta state that ethics are "programmed" into the human species, but this is clearly denied by nearly all biologists.

1.If there is no programmer, then no programs can be written.

2.Almost all biologists state that evolution has no goals, no purpose, no meaning.

Many of the non-religious biologists go even further and emphasize that homo sapiens aren't better than other species, but only a twig on the bush of natural selection.

3.And even if one decides to think that humans are more important than other species, there is no basis for deciding which traits of natural selection are better, are more ethical than others.

Millions of humans have chosen the very successful behaviors of deception, enslavement, abuse, and slaughter.
Some humans--a minority--have instead chosen honesty, equality, compassion, and non-violence.

If there are no true, real ethics, no actual "oughts" in the sense that philosophers of the past meant such as Immanuel Kant, then how can humans decide which actions are better and which are wrong?

If we humans must "construct" our own ethics, who is to say that it is wrong for parents to mutilate little girls (as over 80% of Muslim parents do in Egypt)?


Or that it is wrong for all women to be in subjection to their husbands and that women can't be leaders (as the vast majority of Muslims, many conservative Christians believe)?

Or that all humans are equal and have unalienable rights (as Enlightenment leaders and human rights organizations claim)?

The whole basis of the Enlightenment, the abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and so forth is that ethics are real and true, and need to be discovered and lived for by everyone.

Some atheists argue that survival is the only true value.

But if there are no true "oughts," then why do they make "survival" an exception?

For many who claim ethics are subjective preferences of human cultures and societies, not objectively real, contradictorily state that the human species "ought" to continue.

But why "ought" we humans to continue if there are no "oughts," none at all?

Besides, a quick glance back down history-way will show the innumerable horrors that the ethics of survival have led millions of humans to commit. Billions of humans have been abused, tortured, and slaughtered including millions of innocent civilians, including many children!

Fairly recently a number of human thinkers have justified the intentional slaughter of many infants, children, elderly, etc. to protect their country and their country's soldiers in the speculative future! This the view of millions of Americans, Palestinians, and others.


Subpoint C

To be continued--


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox



1 Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll