Diary Dec 31, 2023 - Reflections on this New Year's Eve.

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Saying good-bye to 2023.  

Here's a quick year end hello and a note that this blog, ain't dead yet.  Though it is mighty neglected.  

There is hope, this past May was the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation and escape from Burlingame.  Right now, this evening, 50 years ago, I was celebrating at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley, California and at the beginning of my fascinating long and strange and blessed trail of people and experiences.  Considering what a lone wolf character I started as, and what a network of families bind my heart these days it's mind boggling.  Given my crop of recent and (surprise!) future grandchildren, I feel a particular desire, perhaps even a challenge to write something different, and to share some memories with them, tell a few stories like only someone who was there can, before I'm gone. 

As for my Earth Centrism project, it is getting pretty near completion.  Been spending five years digesting the concept and the evidence behind it, I've written long articles and short bullet points, fielded some push and a lot of handwaving - there's only so many ways to refine something so fundamental and straightforward and that elusive final draft of my Earth Centrist perspective summary, is just around the corner, as they say.  

I have been taking the discussion online at CFI Forum (Center for Inquiry) a small discussion board and have been receiving interesting feedback and pushback.  I'm also participating in a college philosophy club.  Then, this past July I wrote up a dialogue with a short book, Buddha Science, by Daut.

It made for a nice contrast to dealing with Don Hoffman's ideas, in that I agree with much that Daut wrote, but I do come at it from a very different evolutionary biological bottom up perspective and I enjoyed this excuse to review and try to enunciate my Earth Centrist concept in a more constructive atmosphere.

Science has learned a great deal about Evolution, our animal biology, and also consciousness across the entire animal kingdom.  Philosophers and the general public would do good to lay to rest old brainteasers and to catch up on the significance of current scientific biological evolutionary breakthroughs.

This Earth Centrist writing project has been dedicated to people who appreciate nature and evolution and scientific understanding about how evolution weaves us together with all other living beings on this planet.  

Which includes a deep appreciation for how our body/brain produces consciousness, as in, the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself (see Dr.Solms) and realizing how that offers keys to better understanding our own endless flesh vs spirit conflicts.

I'm looking to connect with people for whom a notion such as "Appreciating the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide" makes sense and who are unfazed by recognizing themselves as evolved biological thinking creatures, products of Earth's processes. People, who glory in the Pageant of Evolution that created our body and love learning from serious scientific efforts.

These aren't irrelevant trifles, they are keys to a more straightforward understanding of those dogged questions: Who am I?  Why am I here?  Why doesn't my body do what I tell it to?

In Defense of Women

Please

In defense of women, postcard (activism)

I need a little help with postage.

I'm looking at this from 68 years old, having been blessed with all the stages of life starting as a son, brother, husband, father, step-father, uncle, grandfather, friend, with women being intimately interwoven into every phase of my life (and at every level) - I've lived life's personal dramas, loses and successes.  This is my distillation of this facet of my experience - A woman deserves the right to be the jury and judge of her own fate, which by nature includes her fetus.  

Respecting a woman's right to her own self-defense and sovereignty over her body seems to me the least repugnant of all options.  

I made an initial run of a 250 postcards and addressed them to women's rights organizations and key Washington Democrats.  I also starting a thread over at the CFI Forum in case anyone out there wants to join the discussion.  Now I printed another thousand and around 250 addressed and stamped, and it'll be a few weeks before being able to purchase another couple hundred dollars worth of postcard stamp at .53@.  That's why I've decided to see if anyone might be interested in helping with stamps.  Should it go well, I'd love to buy more postcards.  Can you help?

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January 22, 2024

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At CFI I received a good comment worth airing over here:

Lausten:  "Just a quick note, the most glaring; your language specifically weighs one life against another, putting the fully grown human first, the one who CAN make a choice. Their language states “all life is sacred” and claims to defend the thing that can’t defend itself. This hits an emotional note. 

It also avoids the discussion of the trade-off. They claim that most abortions are about a woman choosing to not be responsible, or not caring about the consequences of their actions. Truth is, almost all of them are medical decisions, made with a lot of thought, even prayers.

Even those that are for healthy fetuses, the decision is about how the future person can be cared for, or IF it can be cared for. If the same pro-life person was also taking actions to care for unwanted, unloved, undernourished children, I’d listen to them, but at the policy level, this isn’t happening. ..."

Definitely, perhaps the way to go is to point out this isn’t about the immorality or morality of abortion, nor what name one places on the act.  

This is about the morality of who is making the decision!

My insistence is that:

In the end, it’s the mother who possess the greatest moral "holding” in that fetus, and in the end it’s the mothers who carry the scars of a fetus's death.  Let it be, outsiders don't have a clue, they aren't God, if you believe in God, let God handle it and stay out of other's private lives, as you want them to stay out of your business.

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Do Abortion Bans Violate Jews' Religious Rights?

Lisa Fishbayn Joffe  - June 16, 2022 (1200 words of lucid persuasion)

Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is the director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and director of the Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law which explores the tension between women’s equality claims and religious laws. Her research focuses on gender and multiculturalism in family law and on the intersection between secular and religious law. She is a co-founder of the Boston Agunah Task Force, devoted to research, education and advocacy for women under Jewish family law.

“… there is widespread agreement among scholars and rabbinical authorities that a complete prohibition on abortion is inconsistent with Jewish law and tradition. Under Jewish law, an abortion to save the life of the mother is permitted.

“For this reason, Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, the Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, argues that extreme anti-abortion laws risk infringing on Jews' religious freedoms. Earlier this week, a Florida synagogue made this argument in a suit filed in a state court against Florida's law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. …”

“Are Jews across denominations arguing that anti-abortion laws infringe on their religious freedoms?

“Yes. It's an argument being put forth by advocates like the National Council of Jewish Women. It holds that since Jewish law supports reproductive rights, abortion restrictions violate Jewish people's right to make choices about their lives in accordance with Jewish law.  This position has many strengths. …”

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