When reading news stories in the media, the devil is often hidden in the details, if they are not spelled out. Read carefully.
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Past Imperfect
For centuries, Western sages have been issuing dire warnings about the hazards of historical ignorance.
“The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children,” cautioned English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in The Merchant of Venice.
This is a real and present danger, because as American novelist William Faulkner noted, “The past is never dead; it isn’t even past.”
All too often we sin, or err, again. “Those who don’t know history,” warned Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797), “are doomed to repeat it.”
As I’ve learned during several years of research for a manuscript, our tendency to re-offend appears to be built-in to our genes and, thus, also our self-defeating behaviors. Which is why I’m an apostate from religion and an apostle of thinking anew. It’s essential that we try to understand our history, both genetic and social, to determine whether what we believe and how it affects our behavior actually makes sense today.
My focus in this blog and in my manuscript is on the history of how human beings, specifically Western Christians, became nearly universally in thrall to invisible beings. With nary an atom of material evidence. It’s a fascinating if somewhat dispiriting history.
To a great extent, it’s unlikely we would have turned out any other way. Which is not to say it’s irreversible.
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