Paraclete, A Novel by Stan Rice, part two. Science in Pre-Scientific Days

This essay follows up on the previous essay  about Stan Rice’s novel Paraclete, about Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France. The question I want to focus on in this essay is, Abélard was a priest and Heloïse a nun, but were they also scientists?

Abélard held most of the beliefs of his fellow scholars. He probably thought the Earth was fairly small and probably flat and looked mostly like Europe. This viewpoint is expressed in the crowning mechanical achievement of ancient times, the astrolabe, which looked like a big wristwatch and was used to keep track of the movement of stars, planets, and the moon. Heloïse and Abélard admired this invention so much that they named their love-child Astralabius after it.

Science, as we understand it today, was very uncommon and hidden before early modern times in Europe. Many textbooks have lists of early scientists, all male, with the acknowledgement that some of the Greek and Roman philosophers had started the process of science. As far as ancient and non-European scholarship was concerned, scholarly thought consisted largely of “I am the Great Conqueror, I say the world is flat, and if you disagree, your head will be on a platter.”

But the “scientific method” is more of an attitude, of seeking evidence to test our beliefs. Not just to confirm them, but to give these ideas a real chance to be wrong, and then if they pass the test, we can honestly believe them. People have always done this, and sometimes have gotten away with it. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Roman philosophers such as Lucretius even speculated about evolution, and they sought evidence for it. You can do science too, even though you may not consider yourself a scientist. See my book, Scientifically Thinking: How to Liberate Your Mind, Solve the World’s Problems, and Embrace the Beauty of Science.

In Abélard’s time, scholars were not allowed to disagree with church doctrine. What Abélard insisted on over and over and over was that scholars ought to be allowed at least to question the authoritative doctrines. Just ask about them, that’s all. This was an essential first step. If scholars ended up confirming the doctrines, then our ability to worship God would have been magnified. Whaddaya say to that, Uncle Fulbert? You afraid we might find evidence against those doctrines?

The Almond Branch: A novel by Stan Rice. Part three. Prophets and Scientists

 

Stan Rice has recently published another novel, The Almond Branch, in the Under the Sun series. This series poses the question, what is it that God is doing in this world under the sun? The phrase comes from Ecclesiastes, which is the almost-agnostic book in the Old Testament. Rice speculates on answers to this question: in the time of Solomon (Among the Lilies); in the last days of Jerusalem (this novel); in the Middle Ages of Europe (Paraclete); and in a modern Amish community (Blue Wild Indigo).

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

In Jerusalem, immediately before its conquest by Babylon, Jeremiah is on his way to succeeding his father as a priest. Even when they are children, Miriam loves Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is clueless about human love even when he grows up. He is borderline crazy and keeps alienating himself from his society. He thinks God speaks to him through puns. Jeremiah’s father has pagan images in addition to Jewish ones, to appease Jebusite neighbors, but Jeremiah destroys them. And it keeps getting worse, until Jeremiah has to live in a cave with the other prophets. Miriam is torn between a marriage proposal from an older but very good man, Saad, and Jeremiah’s invitation for her to join the prophets, though not as his lover.

Even after Miriam marries Saad, Jeremiah still seeks her comradeship. The king counts on Egypt’s help against Babylon, only to be disappointed. A wealthy businessman and his grim brother, modeled after Trump and Pence, cannot save Jerusalem either. While Jerusalem suffers starvation and cannibalism during the Babylonian siege, the king throws Jeremiah into a cesspit, from which he is rescued by a steward modeled after Obama and a court jester modeled after Biden. Jeremiah rejoices when the tension is broken and Jerusalem falls, and all the skilled people, including Saad, are deported. Miriam stays behind and rescues the Old Testament wisdom literature—which is still an embarrassment to conservatives—from being lost.

What could Old Testament prophets and modern scientists have in common? I have two answers for you.

First, both have to be observant of everything, all the time, and to ask questions about why things are as they are. When Miriam and Jeremiah are at a little waterfall, where the water drops create a rainbow, they think about why there are water drops. That is, why does water form into drops rather than just falling down to the earth as lots of individual little packets? This is a question that may never have even occurred to you to ask. You have to watch nature very closely and think about it. Jeremiah’s explanation is definitely pre-scientific, saying that almost infinitely small angels are holding onto one another, and they create the rainbow colors. Before you laugh, consider substituting “molecules” for “angels” and “hydrogen bonds” for “holding onto.” Jeremiah’s theory (as invented by Rice) is more like Newton’s theory (as accepted by modern science) than it is like Goethe’s theory.

But, maybe, Goethe might turn out to be partly correct. To Newton, colors were physical properties of light of different wavelengths, period. To Goethe, there was a psychological component, in which human perception made the colors different. We now know that the stimulation of the three kinds of color receptors in the retina sends signals to the brain to create the illusion of color. There actually is such a thing as psychological color!

Also, when Miriam and Jeremiah were out at the swamp, they saw a bittern camouflaged in the reeds. They almost didn’t see it, until Jeremiah told Miriam what to look for.

Second, a scientist can be a prophet if s/he explains the political and social consequences of scientific discoveries.  Not every scientist does this. Thousands of scientists studied nuclear physics, but only a few (such as Andrei Sakharov and Albert Einstein) have spoken out to political leaders about the dangers of atomic weapons. A prophet might predict, wrongly (so far) that the world will be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. If prophecy is mere prediction, then Sakharov and Einstein were wrong. But prophets open out minds to recognize the possibilities. In this sense, Sakharov and Einstein were true prophets, and though their predictions were wrong their prophecies helped to save the world, at least so far, from nuclear disaster.

Many prophets, ancient and modern, have been hated by political leaders. Those of us who are prophets about environmental disaster are hated by conservative politicians and by the corporate leaders who support them. Though the attacks sustained by Michael E. Mann have been much more mild then what Jeremiah experienced, they were inspired by the same moneyed interests that drove rich Israelites to hate Jeremiah.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. The taste of bread and true love

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

Is true love like fine wine, or maybe whiskey? Or like exquisite candies? In Rice’s novel, true love turns out to be more like fragrant bread.

Gomer is the little woman who bakes the bread and eventually becomes the Head Baker. She wants Eli as her husband and will stop at nothing to get him—even while he still pines for Henna. Elah resists Gomer, until she sacrifices herself to save his life. Eli guards Gomer’s secret: she is a runaway Hittite slave. Eli realizes that Gomer’s love is what he really wants. This love story is as good as the love between Elah and Henna.

Even when Elah says that what he really wants is to die, since he cannot have Henna, Gomer is his ally. She knows desert wildflowers, and Elah has to trust her that she knows the difference between regular lilies and the visually-similar death lilies.

One of Elah’s tasks as head scribe is to find all Israelite folk stories and write them down. These stories, once organized, become much of the Old Testament: the stories of Lot, Barack, Gideon, Jotham, and Samson. Gomer is his comrade in collecting these stories. When Eli is banned from Jerusalem, he joins the rebel general Jeroboam, whom the Israelite people support. Gomer joins him.

But at the end temptation to have Henna is Elah’s downfall. The fact that Henna wants Eli is totally irrelevant to Solomon, who just smiles as she spits in his face.

The Almond Branch: A novel by Stan Rice. Part two. Special Guest Appearances

 

 

Stan Rice has recently published another novel, The Almond Branch, in the Under the Sun series. This series poses the question, what is it that God is doing in this world under the sun? The phrase comes from Ecclesiastes, which is the almost-agnostic book in the Old Testament. Rice speculates on answers to this question: in the time of Solomon (Among the Lilies); in the last days of Jerusalem (this novel); in the Middle Ages of Europe (Paraclete); and in a modern Amish community (Blue Wild Indigo).

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

In Jerusalem, immediately before its conquest by Babylon, Jeremiah is on his way to succeeding his father as a priest. Even when they are children, Miriam loves Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is clueless about human love even when he grows up. He is borderline crazy and keeps alienating himself from his society. He thinks God speaks to him through puns. Jeremiah’s father has pagan images in addition to Jewish ones, to appease Jebusite neighbors, but Jeremiah destroys them. And it keeps getting worse, until Jeremiah has to live in a cave with the other prophets. Miriam is torn between a marriage proposal from an older but very good man, Saad, and Jeremiah’s invitation for her to join the prophets, though not as his lover.

Even after Miriam marries Saad, Jeremiah still seeks her comradeship. The king counts on Egypt’s help against Babylon, only to be disappointed. A wealthy businessman and his grim brother, modeled after Trump and Pence, cannot save Jerusalem either. While Jerusalem suffers starvation and cannibalism during the Babylonian siege, the king throws Jeremiah into a cesspit, from which he is rescued by a steward modeled after Obama and a court jester modeled after Biden. Jeremiah rejoices when the tension is broken and Jerusalem falls, and all the skilled people, including Saad, are deported. Miriam stays behind and rescues the Old Testament wisdom literature—which is still an embarrassment to conservatives—from being lost.

 

Rice uses modern politicians as models for some of the principal characters in this novel. One would have to be blind to miss them.

• One is the angry, red-headed, selfish businessman Trom-panazzer, who at first threatens Miriam’s family with bankruptcy, though their total fortune would contribute insignificantly to Trom-panazzer’s wealth. Later, he is the Babylonians’ local man-on-the-ground to tell the powerless figurehead king what to do, and advises the remnant of Judah to be merciless to the poor and to the sojourners from outside of Judah. This has to be Donald Trump. Trump’s worshipers, I mean, supporters acknowledge that Trump knows and cares little about religion but that God is using him (Him?) to advance the Kingdom of God.
• Another is the unsmiling but quiet gray-headed Pen-sanazzer, who is very religious and who instructs the remaining Jews that it is God’s will to believe and to do whatever Trom-panazzer says. This very clearly refers to the unsmiling but quiet fundamentalist Mike Pence, who gave religious support to Trump, until Trump kicked him off the team in 2022.
• Obiden-elech is the court jester who always had a big grin and waves around a puppet king. Like jesters in the days of eld, Obiden-elech is able to mock the king of Judah by having the puppet say things. He is hardly ever serious, although all of his jokes hit their target. Clearly, this is Joe Biden.
• And finally there is Obama-lech, an Ethiopian (not too different from a Kenyan) who is quiet, thoughtful, sincere, and nice. He is the one who discovers Jeremiah at the bottom of a pit. This is a real story about the Ethiopian Ebed-Melech (Jeremiah 38: 7-9). Unlike the original, Rice’s story has Obama-lech piss into the pit and that is how he discovers Jeremiah is there. The only thing that would make it clearer that this is based on Barack Obama would be a footnote, of which this novel is thankfully free. (See the endnotes, however.)

In these ways, Rice makes this novel relevant to modern political situations. Another way is that politicians like to screw with the meanings of words. The Trump and Pence analogs make it sound, in their speeches, as if the Babylonian conquest is good news for the coming prosperity of Judah. Politicians deliberately miscon-screw the meanings of words to mislead the public.

The Almond Branch: A Novel by Stan Rice, part one. Just Who Were the Prophets Anyway?

Stan Rice has recently published another novel in the Under the Sun series, The Almond Branch. This series poses the question, what is it that God is doing in this world under the sun? The phrase comes from Ecclesiastes, which is the almost-agnostic book in the Old Testament. Rice speculates on answers to this question: in the time of Solomon (Among the Lilies); in the last days of Jerusalem (this novel); in the Middle Ages of Europe (Paraclete); and in a modern Amish community (Blue Wild Indigo).

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

In Jerusalem, immediately before its conquest by Babylon, Jeremiah is on his way to succeeding his father as a priest. Even when they are children, Miriam loves Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is clueless about human love even when he grows up. He is borderline crazy and keeps alienating himself from his society. He thinks God speaks to him through puns. Jeremiah’s father has pagan images in addition to Jewish ones, to appease Jebusite neighbors, but Jeremiah destroys them. And it keeps getting worse, until Jeremiah has to live in a cave with the other prophets. Miriam is torn between a marriage proposal from an older but very good man, Saad, and Jeremiah’s invitation for her to join the prophets, though not as his lover.

Even after Miriam marries Saad, Jeremiah still seeks her comradeship. The king counts on Egypt’s help against Babylon, only to be disappointed. A wealthy businessman and his grim brother, modeled after Trump and Pence, cannot save Jerusalem either. While Jerusalem suffers starvation and cannibalism during the Babylonian siege, the king throws Jeremiah into a cesspit, from which he is rescued by a steward modeled after Obama and a court jester modeled after Biden. Jeremiah rejoices when the tension is broken and Jerusalem falls, and all the skilled people, including Saad, are deported. Miriam stays behind and rescues the Old Testament wisdom literature—which is still an embarrassment to conservatives—from being lost.

Those of us who grew up in a church revere the Old Testament prophets. We are taught that the operation of God’s will took place through prophets, priests, and kings. Prophets had their own divinely-ordained role. But this disguises the truth: kings exercised their will, and priests carried out the religious ceremonies. But the prophets proclaimed God’s will and judgment. They did so quite independently of priests and kings. This means that prophets could openly criticize priests and kings, and they could do so brutally. They often lived in caves or on the street, their words recorded not in the priestly or kingly archives but by their own followers. Just as in Medieval Europe, there were three estates (Kings, the Church, and the people, or third estate), in Israel the prophets were the third estate, serving as the voice of the people against the abuses of both church and state. Prophets were seen as dirty and dishonorable, but people recognized that it was a dirty job that somebody had to do.

The prophets accused the leaders of the business world of oppressing the poor in many ways: taking their lands and livelihood, engaging in dishonest business practices, etc. Business leaders then as now wanted such prophets to just shut the hell up. (Literally; the prophets said that God condemned the dishonest rich people.)

The voice of this novel, The Almond Branch, is a young woman named Miriam, who grew up as the childhood friend of Jeremiah. She could hardly help but love this boy who saw the beauty of God everywhere in the landscape. Everyone assumed Jeremiah would become a priest and Miriam would marry him. The problem was that Jeremiah also saw sin everywhere in society. Jeremiah he started saying and doing things (such as destroying the household pagan god statues and denouncing societal leaders in the marketplace) that were an embarrassment to his family and which threatened the rich people, upon whose donations (then as now) the priests depended.

When it became apparent that Jeremiah would not succeed his father as a priest, Miriam wondered if this would mean Jeremiah would be a prophet. Her father told her, “That’s not a job, Miriam.”

It takes little imagination (Rice has at least a little bit) to depict Jeremiah as socially clueless. How else could he stand in front of the king and denounce him? Jeremiah seemed unaware of his danger. He would croak out his denunciations like a bullfrog in the swamp, even at the risk of revealing his hiding place to a predator. (One cannot help but think of Three Dog Night, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine, I never understood a single word he said but he always had mighty fine wine.” I assume Rice was thinking of this also.) But Jeremiah was also clueless around Miriam. Jeremiah started setting Scripture to music. He sang some of it to Miriam, including the part from Leviticus about women having a discharge of blood. When Miriam made it very clear that he had hurt her by singing this, he still did not understand how anyone could be offended by scripture. Then Miriam made up a song about how Jeremiah woke up one morning and found that his bed was sticky from an unexpected nocturnal emission. Finally Jeremiah understood, but he forgot it all very quickly and went back to being clueless. During a music festival, he sang a song by Isaiah (an earlier prophet), the song to my beloved. Everyone understood this to mean Miriam. It started off very lovey-dovey, but degenerated into rage. Miriam felt humiliated by this. Even when singing a love song, Jeremiah’s rage got in the way.

So, can you be just a friend to a prophet? Miriam discovers that she cannot. She ended up marrying a burly but gentle hunter named Saad.

There is a lot of humor in this novel. There is nothing funny in Jeremiah’s original writings, even as edited by later generations, either in Jeremiah or in Lamentations. Even or especially today, it is hard work to slog through Jeremiah’s scriptures. If Rice had been as downbeat as Jeremiah, literally nobody would read this novel.

But it is not all funny. During the siege of Jerusalem, when the Babylonians trapped the Jews in the city where they starved, Miriam took care of a little orphan girl named Janiletha, who died. This was, the author indicated in the supplementary material, based on the death of a little Mexican girl, Josseline Janiletha Quintero, in the Sonoran Desert as she fled to Arizona. She had decomposed so much that she was recognizable only by her green shoes. Nothing funny about this, or about the tragedy of Central American immigrants at the U.S. border. See The Death of Josseline by Margaret Regan. Whatever I may forget about Rice’s novel, I will probably carry the mental image of Janiletha’s corpse with green shoes to the end of my days.

Miriam, who preserved scriptures for the people who remained in Jerusalem after the Conquest, thought about how scriptural writers suggested that something good comes out of whatever God does, or allows to happen. But Miriam silently screamed what many of us do: Was there something beautiful in Janiletha’s death? IF THIS IS YOUR TRUTH, THEN I HATE YOU (caps and italics in the original).

Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part five. Eternally Suffering Jesus

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Many fundamentalist Christians like to imagine that Jesus will return as a great Conqueror. Indeed, large portions of the New Testament present exactly this image.

Which brings up the question, what is Jesus doing now? Whatever it is, it is not going around and conquering people. The usual theological answer is that Jesus is at the Throne of His Father interceding on behalf of sinners. That is, He is a defense attorney. Dad, please forgive so-and-so. He was a big so-and-so but my blood paid for his sins and by the end of his life he wasn’t such a bad so-and-so. Perry Mason would have had it a lot easier if the judge was his father.

But Christians also like to fantasize that Jesus is infinitely loving. He feels every pain in everyone’s heart. One song said, “I felt every tear drop when in darkness you cried, …and for those tears I died.” Imagine that Jesus, as Christians insist, felt the full weight of human sin upon Himself as He died on the cross.

But fundamentalist Christians believe this will all suddenly change when, at the second coming, Jesus becomes a warrior with a sword coming out of his mouth and he makes the earth run red with literally millions of gallons of human blood. (Rice calculated how much blood it would be in another article in Skeptical Inquirer. It would take blood from 580 million freshly squeezed adult humans.

But in Rice’s novel, Jesus sits and suffers like Job, with dogs coming to lick his wounds. Which Jesus do you prefer?

Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part four. Even in Hell, They Know Racism is Stupid

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

In the Billy Stormfield novel, the only people who were in Heaven were the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, who spent all day every day killing each other, and then they would resurrect and do it again the next day. War is the ultimate good and pleasure for godly people at least according to the fundamentalists of these two monotheistic religions. And the Christian fundamentalists were racists, who required that schools teach that Black slavery was a good thing for everyone, including the Black slaves themselves. (This is not too different from the history requirements that almost got adopted in Oklahoma in 2025.)

In Rice’s novel, one racist (Stonewall) got tired of this and slipped off to find some peace and quiet. He found it in Hell. He also found a former history teacher from Oklahoma, a Black woman named Philomena. As is nearly inevitable in novels (Rice’s novel is clever but is more of a fable than a novel), they realize how stupid it is for the white (and Black) leaders to teach that they should hate the other race, and they fall in love. The climax of the novel is when they get married.

Given what Twain thought about slavery, he could have put a similar scene into his book about the original Captain Stormfield. For whatever reason, he did not.

Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part three. What Would Pete Hegseth Say to Douglas McArthur?

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Pete Hegseth is the American Secretary of Defense or, as he would insist, Secretary of War. To his way of thinking, the Department of Defense is not doing its job unless it is prosecuting a war somewhere. I don’t suppose the war has to have a good reason. One can only imagine that Trump and Hegseth started the Iran War because, well, we need to have a war somewhere. The reasons they gave were either untrue (to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open, but is now intermittently closed) or vague. Well, Pete got his war. Where does the money come from? The answer is, who cares, we will find the money. He spent a billion dollars the first day on bombs. The deficit (on what should be called the Donald J. Trump Federal Deficit Clock) now exceeds forty trillion dollars. The interest on this debt eats up about half of the money the federal government takes in by taxes and other means.

Pete Hegseth is a fundamentalist Christian. This means that he really, really believes that God ordered the Israelites to slaughter entire cities of Canaanite people—every man, woman, child, and animal. Hegseth further believes that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He further believes, without Biblical foundation, that America is God’s Holy Nation. Therefore, if God wanted the Israelites to slaughter all of the Canaanites (presumably, this would include any Canaanites who attempted to surrender), He must want us, today, to slaughter our enemies, even the noncombatants, women, and children. By being Iranian, doctors and nurses deserve death. Bloody, gory death, not quiet executions. At least, he should believe these things, to be consistent with his other fundamentalist beliefs.

One of the most famous military leaders in American history was General Douglas McArthur, who oversaw the Pacific theater of operations in World War II. He gave the order (passed on from President Truman) to use atomic bombs on Japan. So far, Hegseth would make a good McArthur.

But then, McArthur ordered Allied troops to occupy Japan but to do so nondestructively. They were not to rape, pillage, or destroy whatever was left (that is, whatever the Japanese dictatorship had not already destroyed). He even shut down the American-sponsored whorehouses. The self-interest was clear: America wanted Japan to be an economically-strong ally, something that would be extremely expensive if American troops razed Japan to the ground.

The Japanese were astonished that American troops did not kill them all, as Japanese troops had done to their victims in Korea and China. They even began to love the Americans. There is a famous photo of a storefront in Japan that, in response to the announcement that McArthur was considering a presidential bid, “We play for your erection.” (Actually, this is not quite what the sign said.) In contrast, Hegseth would have felt obligated to tell American troops to kill all the Japanese. American history classes should therefore teach that Americans failed to carry out God’s complete will in World War II.

And, according to Rice’s novel, this is why General Douglas McArthur was in Hell.

Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. Noah the Environmentalist

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

 

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Fundamentalists do not necessarily believe that all environmentalists will go to hell. But certainly any “greenies” who would want to spend a lot of money to save endangered species are damned in the eyes of their God.

One of those was Noah. He built an ark (probably subcontracted the work out) that was big enough to hold all of the animal species in the world. The ark was not quite as big as you might suppose, since when the Old Testament was written most of the world, and its biodiversity, was unknown. (See Stan Rice’s article on this subject for Skeptical Inquirer). But the dimensions described in Genesis were huge and required a lot of wood to build. No explanation is given in the Bible for how so much wood could be obtained or who would pay for it.

However you look at it, the ark was probably the biggest financial undertaking the world had ever known and, relative to the poor economy of the ancient world, it might still rank number one in human history by that measure. It certainly cost more than any modern environmental expenditure. A waste of the resources that God has given to His servants? No wonder Noah ended up in hell.

Many of the animal species were economically important. But most of them were not. I can imagine Noah’s wife saying, “Why are you bringing all those snakes?” Maybe Noah was wondering also. But God did not say, just bring the species that you like. So you don’t like skunks? God told Noah to bring them anyway.

As usual, Mark Twain took this further than anyone else. In Twain’s writing, the ark was safely on its way when it had to turn around and pick up a species that had been left behind: the smallpox virus. How can you reconstruct a post-Flood world without smallpox?

Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part one. Communists in Hell

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Well, of course, fundamentalists would think that all communists go to hell. But this novel has some surprises: There are souls in hell that you would never have guessed were communists in human life.

Of course, Karl Marx was there.

But also, it turns out that all traditional Native Americans were communists. There were at least five hundred tribes, different from one another in many ways. One of the few things they all had in common was that they held their tribal lands in common, rather than private, ownership. They individually owned tools and houses, but the land belonged to the tribe. This caused a lot of problems when the American government took away tribal lands (for example, the Cherokees, as described in some of Rice’s other novels) and tried to allot acreages to each individual or family. Besides the fact that this gave the whites an excuse to steal unallotted tribal land for themselves, it was also inconceivable to the Natives. That’s how Joe the Cherokee ended up in Hell.

But the Apostle Andrew? In what way was he a communist? You may recall that, at the beginning of the book of Acts, all the Christians were living together “in an upper room,” and they held all things in common (Acts 4:32). This was the pattern that Jesus had established among his followers. As a matter of fact, a couple of the Christians got in big trouble (God killed them) when they held some of their possessions back from common ownership. That’s how Andrew ended up in Hell.

And Pope Francis. He believed the rich should be required to share their wealth (not necessarily all of it) with the poor. I guess that made him a communist.

This is just the beginning of the surprises you will encounter in this novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell.

 

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part six. How to Argue with a Fundamentalist, or Not

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Here is Rice's summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

One very minor part of Rice’s novel is that the fundamentalist Christian Edd Hicks invites the famous Bible-thumper Billy Sunday to lunch, with Stella’s famous fried chicken. Also present is Edd’s traditional-Cherokee religion brother Frank. Inevitably, they get into a discussion about Frank’s inability to see his way to accepting Edd’s and Billy’s version of Christianity.

Many fundamentalists are just itching for a fight. They want to pounce on you and order God to send you to Hell. Not all fundamentalists, but, I know some and so do you. But this is not the kind of fundamentalist that Edd (or, in Rice’s novel, Billy Sunday) is. One minor part of their pre-dinner discussion is, of all things, about the value of pi. Pi is the mathematical ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.

In case you thought the Bible has nothing to say about the value of pi, well, you would be wrong. Mathematicians know that it is 3.14159… with an infinite number of unpredictable digits. Most of us round it off to 3.1416. This is easy for me to remember because my daughter got married on pi-day: March 14, 2016. Or maybe I remember her marriage date because of pi. Whatever. But the Old Testament says that the Temple of Solomon had a big round basin of water that was three cubits wide and ten cubits in circumference. In the novel, Frank uses this as evidence that the Bible teaches that pi is ten divided by three, which is 3.33, and therefore the Bible is wrong.

What happens next is kind of funny, and illustrates one aspect of Bible-science discussions. Edd says the Bible teaches that pi is three. And it is! To one significant figure, that is. As Edd explains to his brother, the Bible is accurate, but not always precise. The Bible, says Edd, is only as precise as it needs to be for its purposes.

And besides, the Old Testament did not say the basin was circular, but just that it was round.

That pretty much shut Frank up. And this might shut some of the rest of us up who have better things to do than to argue about scientific details from the Bible.

This, however, is simply not good enough for some fundamentalists, including many whom I have known. The Bible, they claim, is correct in every possible way. When the Bible says the Earth does not move, that does not simply mean that it does not move relative to us. It means that it does not move at all, relative to anything. When it says the Flood covered the highest mountains, it means Mt. Everest, not just the local hills in Mesopotamia. When it says that Jacob’s sheep had striped and mottled offspring because they looked at a striped and mottled wall, then that is exactly what it means. Fundamentalists build their entire world of astronomy, geology, and genetics based on an interpretation of the Bible as literal as they can make it.

Though I do not agree with it, I prefer Edd’s version of fundamentalism.