Pete Buttigieg tries to define when life begins

Last week, South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said on a radio talk show that he supported abortion on demand right up to birth.

In a September 6 interview on The Breakfast Club, Buttigieg told host Charlamagne Tha God: "There’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath."

A lot? Not really.

Do a search on the words "life" and "breath" (and derivations) on BibleGateway, and you come up with 15 verses. (I used the English Standard Version; other English translations may produce somewhat different results.) Of these, the majority use breath as a figure of speech representing life itself: for example, "Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life [i.e. that was alive] died" (Gen. 7:22). "Breath" also represents the shortness of one's life (e.g. Job 7:7), or the end of it (e.g. Ishmael, who "breathed his last and died" in Gen. 25:17). So we can dismiss these verses, as they neither prove nor disprove when human life begins.

That leaves us with three passages using the word "life" and "breath" that we can infer associate the beginning of life with the first breath.

In Genesis 2:7, "the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Of course, "the man" is not all men: specifically, it refers to Adam, the first man. He was made, not born: God fashioned him out of inanimate matter and breathed life into him. So Adam is a special case; his origin story is not typical of all human beings. We wouldn't argue that all women are made out of a man's ribs, just because Eve was made from one of Adam's, would we?

Perhaps Job 33:4 is more helpful to Buttigieg's argument. Elihu, Job's friend, says to him: "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." Here, at least, Elihu is a normal man, not the prototype of the human race. But note what he tells Job only a moment later: "I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay" (33:6). Neither Job nor Elihu were actually fashioned from clay. He is speaking poetically, not literally, about their common descent from Adam. So it's safe to say verse 4 is also figurative. This passage does Buttigieg no good, either.

We're left with Revelaton 11:11: "After the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet." These are the two witnesses that prophesy to the world before the Beast kills them. Then, three and a half days later, they are miraculously resuscitated and raised into heaven. Revelation is a book of apocalyptic literature, meaning it couches its message in symbolism and metaphor. The whole book is, in fact, a supernatural vision, not something that has literally occurred in the real world. It is not a good idea to establish a firm point of doctrine based on this passage. Plus, like Adam, the two witnesses are a special case, not the norm.

I have seen one other passage used by the Left, for example on the Christian Left blog, in defense of the assertion that life begins with the first breath:

I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army."

However, like the passage in Revelation, this one proves nothing. First, it's a vision: an image Ezekiel was shown that represented the restoration of the nation of Israel following its exile by the Assyrians around 722 BC. Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that these bones had real existence, then again, they were miraculously brought back to life. This is another special case, not the typical birth of ordinary human beings.

Buttigieg, who identifies himself as an Episcopalian, has gone to heroic lengths to rationalize his positions as the only acceptable option for professing Christians. All he does is betray the terrible theological foundations of so-called "progressive Christianity." His exegesis of the Bible is execrable. Worse, it's cynical. He seems to think that Christians are stupid and gullible, and all it takes to "guilt" them into line is to quote a verse or two from the Bible.

The Democratic Party has, for some reason, been labeled the "party of science" over and against, supposedly, the Bible-thumping, climate change-denying, women's healthcare-defunding Republicans. Science tells us when human life begins: a new, genetically distinct human being comes into being at conception. The unborn human organism is undoubtedly alive: it is organizes, adapts to its environment, grows and develops, consumes nutrients, and so forth. And it is incontrovertably human, because it has human DNA inherited from human parents. Why won't Pete Buttigieg and the Party of Science defend life based on scientific definitions? Because i's not about science, but politics. The Leftist political dogma of "reproductive justice"—a euphemism for abortion, which is neither reproductive nor just—trumps objective truth. Simple as that.

And now . . . this - Sept. 10/19

Just seen on Twitter:

An adopted Gentoo chick raised by a same-sex penguin couple will become the world’s first penguin to not have its gender assigned.

At 6.40 am we will be speaking Charlotte Barcas, a Aquarist at the London Aquarium who looks after the penguin #Sunrise pic.twitter.com/tnD7GIwlti

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 10, 2019

The baby penguin also announced that its preferred gender pronouns are "honk" and "squawk."

I'm pretty sure this is not how penguins work. Human beings can choose one of 57 varieties of gender. That's because certain human beings are of below-average intelligence, and believe "gender" is an actual thing that can be chosen by oneself. As stupid as those people are, penguins are birds, and even stupider. They don't even have a concept of gender assignment. There are male penguins and female penguins, and a quick inspection by a qualified and competent zookeeper could determine which it is. (As the youth of today say, I don't make the rules.)

Every now and then I get a little bit terrified

A lightning review of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (New York: Viking, 1959). Ebook.

I'm not a huge reader of horror fiction (Stephen King, of whom I am a devoted fan, being an exception). Occasionally, though, I like a good thriller, and I thought I'd try out a classic ghost story.

Dr. John Montague has heard that Hill House, an isolated mansion with a history of violent deaths, is haunted. Wanting scientific proof of the supernatural, he rents the house and invites a small party of people, who have had some past paranormal experience, to live with him for a summer: Luke Sanderson, the heir to the house, Theodora, a free spirit, and Eleanor Vance, a shy recluse who has lived practially alone caring for her invalid mother. Within only a few days, they begin to experience strange events: mysterious noises, ghost sightings, and writing on the wall. Eleanor herself seems to be particularly targeted by the manifestations. The ghosts, if they exist, appear to be making a specific effort to communicate with her, and the house itself may be trying to possess her.

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic of horror fiction. It's very similar to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, the 1898 gothic novel in which a governess becomes convinced her employer's house is haunted. You're never quite sure whether the haunting is real, psychological, or even some sort of self-inflicted psychic phenomenon. I enjoyed reading the novel well enough, but found myself dissatisfied with the suspensefulness. To be fair, the novel is 60 years old, and what was relatively fresh in 1959 can almost be considered a cliché in 2019. Nonetheless, the story is good, Shirley Jackson's prose is a pleasure to read, and the ending did catch me by surprise.

I was prompted to read this novel by the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, which is loosely based on it. (Apparently the second season will be based on The Turn of the Screw.) So if you like that TV show and want to read the (considerably different) story that inspired it, give it a read. Best of all, if you're in Canada, it's been in the public domain for a few years, and is freely downloadable!

In other news: It appears that the local library no longer has The Storm of War in its catalogue. That's aggravating. Oh, well, on to Plato, I guess.

Science Fiction-Free September XV1

Been a while. When I said I would be updating this blog more frequently, I didn't mean every nine months as opposed to every two years. Nonetheless, there's the letter of the law and there's the spirit . . .

It's September, albeit a quarter of the way through. That means it's again time for Science Fiction-Free September, in which I place a temporary moratorium on reading science-fiction novels, my preferred genre, and generally stretch my boundaries a little bit by reading something I wouldn't normally pick up. Over the past few years, though I haven't blogged about it, I've still held to it, if only by the technicality of happening to be reading something else at the time. Again, there's the letter of the law.

The particular challenge this year is that as part of my planned reading, I'm going through all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels chronologically, starting in 1953 with Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and most recently wrapping up with 1969's Hugo winner, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. It so happens that the next book on my to-read list is Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, the 1969 Nebula winner. Alas for Mr. Panshin, it is not to be.

Let me say in passing, and by way of closing off discussion of SF for the remainder of September: Three of the last five SF novels I've read were boring. The late 60s were, apparently. not good years for science fiction. Well, at least after Panshin comes selections by le Guin, Niven, Farmer, Clarke, and Asimov, so for a time I'll be in familiar territory.)

This month, after wrapping up my current book—The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which is nearly finished and quite short—I plan on tackling something on my backlog: The Storm of War, a 2011 history of World War II by Andrew Roberts. This is a book that's been on my planned list for years. (In fact, if, heaven forbid, you've been paying attention to the sidebar on this oh-so-active blog, you'd have seen it listed as "In Progress," practically for ever, until I decided a book I had returned to the library and never borrowed again for two or three years was not, in any meaningful sense, in progress.) Assuming 700+ pages aren't enough to keep me occupied till October, I'll probably read something by an author I've never read before, to be determined later. (Update: I've settled on Allan Bloom's venerable translation of Plato's Republic.)

And at least I'm posting something rather than nothing. That's also a good start to the month.

Footnotes

¹Well, let's call it that, since I've been doing this since 2004 anyway.

So . . .

-

I just happened to notice that while I've been keeping the reading log on the sidebar up-to-date, more or less, I haven't been too bothered of late to write anything here.

Of course, there was never a conscious decision to give up blogging. Other things just got in the way. In the 18 months and change since my last post, I've returned to school and since graduated with a two-year diploma in computer programming. So I've written hundreds of lines of Java and Python code, if not thousands, but not a line of English for this blog.

In the meantime, since my last post on this blog, I've also discovered the serenity Minecraft. So I've recreationally and virtually laid tens of thousands of blocks of dirt and stone constructing Asian-themed buildings, but not a single block of text for the Crusty Curmudgeon.

Of course, I remain ever hopeful that my personal recreational life will return to its old normal in the new year. I can't promise new posts every day like when the blog was at its peak, but I can probably promise something. Maybe jump-starting Saturday Superman or my lightning book reviews will be the tonic I need. We'll see. Until next time.

And now . . . this - June 2/17

It's a gardener's worst nightmare: Animals or birds have destroyed your prize display.

That's precisely what the team at Memorial University's Botanical Garden discovered on May 18—a moose had eaten most of their Canada 150 tulips.

[Full Story]

I heartily endorse this heinous act of horticultural hijinks.

Do trees make a sound in the forest if no one is there to hear it?

Apparently so, and it's "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Trees are very social beings," says German forester Peter Wohlleben, "the parents, the 'mother trees' look after their offspring…they like to stand close together and cuddle." They also talk to each other, have sex, form friendships and feel physical pain, he told the Canadian documentary series "Intelligent Trees."

[Full Story]

And now . . . this - June 1/17

"Hold muh beer 'n' watch this, Jeb."

Idiot tests whether his steel-toed boot is bulletproof by shooting himself in the foot. (Warning: Result is not pretty.)

It's a good thing he didn't try to test his hard hat in a similar fashion, though I suspect it wouldn't be protecting anything important, anyway.

Roger Moore (1927-2017)

Sir Roger Moore has died at the age of 89.

Moore is best known for playing James Bond in seven films (more than anyone else) from 1973 to 1985. He is the oldest actor to have played the character, and of the six actors to have portrayed Bond, the first to pass away.

Compared to the more serious portrayal by his predecessor Sean Connery--and certainly in contrast with Ian Fleming's brooding, nihilistic secret agent--Moore's James Bond was suave and lighthearted, almost cartoonish. It wasn't the best period for Bond movies. But when Moore played Bond straight, as he did in Live and Let Die or For Your Eyes Only, he was very good indeed, and we can forgive him for Moonraker and Octopussy. Besides, if not for seeing Moonraker on TV as an eighth grader, I would never have sought out the novel, and James Bond may never have become one of my favourite literary characters. I recently finished reading straight through Fleming's Bond books for the third time.

Moore was also well known for his six-season run on television as the Saint, based on another literary favourite of mine, Leslie Charteris' Master criminal.

Goodbye, Mr. Bond.

On the appropriateness of appropriation

A week and a half ago, the editor of Write, the magazine of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC), has stepped down after an article he wrote generated numerous complaints. In this article, Hal Niedzviecki argued that there is no such thing as "cultural appropriation."

This generated numerous complaints from other members of TWUC, which was formed to "promote the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers," leading to a statement from the union in which they apologized "unequivocally," affirmed that the magazine exists to "offer space for honest and challenging discussion," and having been so challenged by Niedsviecki's editorial, bravely threw him under the bus.

I am not a reader of Write nor a member of TWUC. It is clear I could not be, given how they ignore their own mandate in favour of the intellectual Zeitgeist of the day, not to mention their apparent lack of a spine.

Don't believe the hype

In the spring of 1988, while in grade 12, I traveled to Calgary for a high-school band competition. To pass the time en route, in addition to the homework assignments for the days I was away, I had a reading list for the grade 13 English literature course. I would be taking the course the following year, but my then-girlfriend was enrolled in it, and she gave me the list of books (and my teachers were happy to loan me copies).

The required reading included Brave New World, The Stone Angel, and Cannery Row; optional books included Nineteen Eighty-Four, likely one or two titles that I have since forgotten, and, notably, two novels by Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale. The curriculum had a distinctly dystopian edge for some reason. Over the course of the trip, I devoured them all. I distinctly recall reading The Handmaid's Tale in one or two sittings on the return trip somewhere between Calgary and Winnipeg; in my mind, the novel still evokes memories of sunny prairies, grain elevators, and wheat fields seen from a train window, in stark contrast to the novel's actual, bleaker subject matter.