|
 |
|
The Happy Days Ahead
By Robert A. Heinlein
previous page
548
EXPANDED UNIVERSE
…
[The Test of Science]
The test of a science is its capacity to make correct
predictions. Possibly the most respected astrologer in America is a lady who not
only has her daily column in most of the largest newspapers but also annually publishes
predictions for the coming year.
The Happy Days Ahead
549
For ten years I clipped her annual predictions, filed
them. She is highly recommended and I think she is sincere; I intended to give her
every possible benefit of doubt.
I hold in my hand her predictions for 1974 dated Sunday January 13,
1974:
Here are some highlights: "…Nixon ... will ride out the
Watergate storm ... will survive both the impeachment ordeal and the pressures to resign
... will go down in history as a great president ... will fix the responsibility for Pearl
Harbor" (vindicating Kimmel and Short) … "in ... 1978 ... the cure for
cancer will be acknowledged by the medical world ... end the long search." (1974)
"The dollar will be enormously strengthened as the balance of payments reflects the
self-sufficiency in oil production." "The trouble in Ireland will continue
to be a tragic situation until 1978." (Italics added—R.A.H.)
"Willy Brandt" (will be reelected) "and be in office for quite some time to
come. He will go on to fantastic recognition about the middle of 1978." (On 6
May 1974 Brandt resigned during a spy scandal.) She makes many other predictions
either too far in the future to check or too vaguely worded. I have omitted her many
predictions about Gerald Ford because they all depend on his serving out the term as vice
president.
You can check the above in the files of most large newspapers.
e) & f)—no comment needed.
g) & h) need no comment except
to note that they are overlapping but not identical categories—and I should add
"People who allow their children to watch television several hours a day."
(Television, like the automobile, is a development widely predicted ... but its major
consequences never predicted.)[1]
i) The return of creationism—If it suits you to
believe that Yahweh created the universe in the fashion related in Genesis, I won't argue
it. But I don't have to respect your belief and I do not think that legislation
requiring that the Biblical version be included in pub-
550
EXPANDED UNIVERSE
lic school textbooks is either constitutional or fair. How about
Ormuzd? Ouranos? Odin? There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each
with its creation myth—all different. Shall one of them be taught as having the
status of a scientific hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing
to it can drum up a majority at the polls, or organize a pressure group at a state
capital? This is tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill
of Rights.[2]
Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under
religious studies. Cosmogony is the most difficult and least satisfactory branch of
astronomy; cosmologists would be the first to agree. But, damn it; they're trying!—on
the evidence as it becomes available, by logical methodology, and their hypotheses are
constantly subjected to pitiless criticism by their informed equals.
They should not have to surrender time on their platform, space in
their textbooks, to purveyors of ancient myths supported only by a claim of "divine
revelation."
If almost everyone believed in Yahweh and Genesis, and less than one in
a million U.S. citizens believe in Brahma the Creator, it would not change the
constitutional aspect. Neither belongs in a science textbook in a
tax-supported school. But if Yahweh is there, Brahma should be. And how about
that Eskimo Creator with the unusually unsavory methods? We have a large number of
Eskimo citizens.[3]
j) The return of witchcraft—it used to be assumed that
Southern California had almost a monopoly on cults. No longer. (Cult vs.
religion—I am indebted to L. Sprague de Camp for this definition of the
difference. A "religion" is a faith one is born into; a
"cult" is a faith an adult joins voluntarily. "Cult" is often
used as a slur by a member of an older faith to disparage a newer faith. But this
quickly leads to contradictions.
In the 1st century A.D. the Christians were an up-start cult both to
the Sanhedrin[4] and to the Roman priests.
The Happy Days Ahead
551
"Cult" is also used as a slur on a faith with "weird
ideas" and "weird practices." But this can cause you to bite your tail even
more quickly than the other. "Weird" by whose standards?
(Mr. de Camp's distinction implies something about a mature and presumably sane adult
becoming a proselyte in a major and long-established faith, such as Islam or Shintoism or
the Church of England ... but the important thing it implies is that a person born into,
let us say, the Presbyterian Church is not being odd or unreasonable if he remains in it
all his life despite having lost all faith; he's merely being pragmatic. His wife
and kids are there; he feels that church is a good influence on the kids, many of his
friends are there. It's a comfortable habit, one carrying with it a degree of
prestige in the community.
(But if he changes into a saffron robe and shaves his pate, then goes
dancing down the street, shouting, "Hare Krishna!" he won't keep his Chevrolet
dealership very long. Theology has nothing to do with it.)
One of the symptoms of this Age of Unreason, anti-science and
anti-intellect, in the United States is the very prominent increase in new cults.
We've never been without them. 19th Century New England used to breed them like
flies. Then it was Southern California's turn. Now they seem to spring up
anywhere and also are readily imported from abroad. Zen Buddhism has been here so
long that it is usually treated with respect ... but still so short a time (1950) that few
American adults not of Japanese ancestry can claim to have been born into it.
Ancient in Japan, it is still a cult here—e.g., Alan Watts (1915 - 1973), who
moved from Roman Catholic priest to Episcopal priest to Zen priest. I doubt that
there is any count on American Zen Buddhists but it is significant that both
"satori" and "koan" were assimilated words in all four standard U.S.
dictionaries only 16 years after Zen Buddhism penetrated the non-Japanese population.
And there are the Moonies and the Church of Scien-
552
EXPANDED UNIVERSE
tology and that strange group that went to South America and committed
suicide en masse and the followers of that fat boy from India and—look around
you. Check your telephone book. I express no opinion on the tenets of any
of these; I simply note that, since World War Two, Americans have been leaving their
"orthodox" churches in droves and joining churches new in this country.
Witchcraft is not new and never quite died out. But it is
effectively new to most of its adherents here today because of the enormous increase in
numbers of witches. ("Warlock" is insulting, "Wizard" barely
acceptable and considered gauche, "Witch" is the correct term both male and
female. The religion is usually called either "the Old Religion" or
"the Craft" rather than witchcraft.)
The Craft is by its nature underground;[5]
witches cannot forget the hangings in Salem, the burnings in Germany,[6]
the fact that the injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus
XXII, 18) has usually been carried out whenever the Old Religion surfaced. Even
during this resurgence only four covens have come to my attention and, not being a witch
myself, I have never attended an esbat (easier to enter a tyled lodge!).
The Craft is not Devil worship and it is not Black Mass
but both of the latter have enjoyed some increase in recent years.
If witchcraft has not come to your attention, search any large book
store; note how very many new titles concern witchcraft. Most of these books are
phony, not written by witches, mere exploitation books—but their very existence shows
the change. Continue to show interest and a witch just might halfway reveal himself
by saying, "Don't bother with that one. Try this one." Treat him with warm
politeness and you may learn much more.
To my great surprise when I learned of it, there are over a dozen (how
much over a dozen I have no way to
The Happy Days Ahead
553
guess) periodicals in this country devoted solely to the Old Religion.[7]
…
continued… Time Span—The Cancerous Explosion of
Government
|
__________________
-
That is generally true, but Arthur C. Clarke — who for all intents and purposes in
1945 invented the idea of telecommunications satellites — wrote a short story (I Remember Babylon, published in Playboy in 1960)
in which he predicted the corruption of society through the use of subversive programs
being broadcast over telecommunication satellites. In that story he told of a plot
by a power hostile to the US and the western world to flood the western hemisphere with
television broadcasts that were to be extremely subversive, in that they were to exploit
the craving of the western world for material of a pornographic nature and
were to pertain to
many other social aberrations that traditional moral standards ruled out.
Considering today's contents of the
Internet in that respect, which depict human and social abnormalities of any imaginable
kind, it makes one wonder why Arthur C. Clarke held back in his descriptions by merely
insinuating what could happen. His expectations were far exceeded by what has become
commonplace, ever since the religious constraints that Robert A. Heinlein so much desired
to have eliminated were actually cast off.
When I brought my family to Canada in 1962, I was amazed
at the glow of the television screens at night, even in the late hours, in
the front rooms of virtually every household. I maintained ever since
that the most potent weapon that the communist block could possibly design
to destroy western society was not an atomic and biological one but rather a
liberal agenda brought into every family's home via the one-eyed Odin, and
to give all members of the population unlimited access to culturally and
morally subversive and corruptive programs presented to them trough that.
Whether it happened by design or by
accident, the self-destruction of western morals and culture is now an accomplished
fact. It only took thirty years to achieve it. We destroyed
our economy along with it. What else is there to come now?
-
Far be it from me to advocate the establishment of a state religion, but we did finally
achieve general peaceful coexistence of the various factions of Judeo-Christian religions
in western society. By insisting on the constitutional right to freedom of religion
we now have opened the door to calls for the abolition of all of the unifying moral
standards upon which virtually all of our laws were based. What Heinlein is
proposing, apparently facetiously, is that any and all religions have the right of equal
representation in the law.
That is exactly the premise under
which feminists and other factions of modern liberalism are systematically deconstructing
all moral foundations that we once held inviolate. The result is a social and moral
chaos the likes of which have never before existed in any human society, except that this
chaos is being systematically implemented on a world-wide scale under the sponsorship of
the United Nations.
For more details pertaining to this
train of thought see the comments provided in connection with The
First Commandment.
-
Heinlein's wish has become
reality. It is incredible, as practical as he appears to be, that he couldn't
foresee the consequences of the call for equality of all religions. The wish exists
in humanity to rationalize morality in terms of religious doctrine. If we allow all
religions to be equally valid and to have equal representation under the law, then that
opens the door to the introduction of all of these religions into the curriculum.
That is exactly what has increasingly happened during the past twenty years or so.
It would be interesting to see
Heinlein's reaction and comments on the presence of the "old religions" in the
curriculum and in our everyday lives. All that previously held that to some extent
in check were the unified principles of morality that the family-friendly traditional
religions propose. Those constraints now no longer exist. However, instead of
liberating science and the teaching of it from the oppression of Christianity that
Heinlein desired so much, we are now being deluged by uncounted and numerous constraints
of an insane multitude of miscellaneous religious cults that increasingly make their
presence felt at all public educational institutions.
In compiling information for my
comments on The First Commandment I bumped into one web site that
lists an incredible 1350 or so sundry deities
—mostly of the female variety. (See also the definitions
of some of these deities.)
That isn't all. At the UCSC and
other universities the teaching of religious doctrine based on some of these re-invented
deities takes up an increasing amount of space in the curriculum. That's
right! The teaching of information pertaining to these religions doesn't just limit
itself to investigate them from the viewpoint of history, but is has become the teaching
of religious doctrine in an all-out attempt to indoctrinate students in feminist ideology,
all in accord with the new curriculum promoted by the AAUW.
What we appear to face with the call
for the elimination of Christian "science" is a case of The Sorcerer's Apprentice who couldn't rid himself of the
spirits that he summoned. Clearly, the "cure" is far worse than the
ailment.
-
Sanhedrin: …the supreme council and tribunal of the Jews during postexilic times
headed by a High Priest and having religious, civil, and criminal jurisdiction. [Merriam
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition]
-
That is no longer true. Little could Heinlein know that witchcraft would become a
prominent religious persuasion which is increasingly given credibility by talk-show hosts
and the media in general, and that, moreover, is being taught at some
universities. Yet, being the forecaster that he is, it is odd that he
speaks of the emergence of witchcraft and yet failed to extrapolate from that to it's
current prominence in our society.
-
According to Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS in a speech to SS Group Leaders,
1937 02 18: "...We must be clear about this, that the movement, the world-view can
only have existence if it is carried by women, because men comprehend all things by
logical reasoning, whereas the woman grasps things with her emotion. The largest
blood-sacrifices in the persecution of heretics and witches were made by the German woman
and not by the man. The "Pfaffen" [German derogatory term for clerics]
knew exactly why they incinerated 5,000 to 6,000 women, because those clung emotionally to
old knowledge and the old doctrine and because they wouldn't let themselves be changed
emotionally and knew instinctively, while the man had already switched over logically and
rationally: there is no purpose in resisting. We are being submerged politically, I
give in, I'll let them baptise me." [Gudrun Schwarz, "A Wife at his Side: Wives
in the SS Clan-Community," p. 62, ISBN 3-930908-32-8, 1997, original source:
Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, NS 19/422]
It is curious that this chapter in
history is not researched well enough to find much supporting information that agrees even
approximately with Himmler's quote of the number of women burned at the stake. Their
number would have included anyone who could be "proven" to be an opponent to the
Roman Catholic Church and Church doctrine, not just "witches" but in the
majority heretics.
Other estimates I found ranged from
45,000 to 9.5 million victims that were put to death during the persecutions of the middle
ages, with the lower numbers coming from the more reputable sources. It must be
acknowledged that even though most of the sources agree that is was primarily women who
were put to death, most of them also made the point that the majority of the victims were
not witches but rather heretics, in other words: alleged or real political enemies of the
establishment. Some identify that men comprised, depending on country, 50 percent
(France) to 90 percent (Iceland) of the victims.
However, there is something that may
give the number quoted by Himmler considerable credibility.
"Today the Church is accused of being responsible for
the persecution and sentencing of several million "witches" (the numbers
mentioned range from 6 to 9 million). A research institute was especially created
during the Third Reich for the purpose of obtaining evidence desired for the destruction
of the Church. In the search for material, 154 archives and libraries were
researched and considerably lower numbers were found: For Germany, the number is
considerably less than 100,000, and for all of Europe the number is more likely to be
500,000 than one million"
http://homepages.muenchen.org/bm481819/mittel.htm
Here are some of the other claims that I found:
"In the German area (that would have included all
German-speaking jurisdictions) estimates range from 100,000 to 500,000 [victims of all
kinds]. Historians assume that the count of the victims in all of Europe goes into
the millions." (Full
story)
"The opinions are divided on how many people fell victim to this
collective insanity. [Estimates for all of Europe range from] 500,000 up to 9.5
million. At any rate, it was most certainly a considerable number. However, it
should make those who are promulgating the picture of a general persecution of witches
that was ordered and authorized from the top down pause to think that in Rome and in all
of Catholic Italy there was virtually no persecution of any witches."
(That comment came from a web site dedicated to witches
and witchcraft.)
http://www.zauberfee.com/hexen/h-artikel1.html
"The persecution of the witches, which approximately took place
from 1450 - 1792 (in all of Europe) demanded millions of victims, although only 200,000 of
the cases were documented. The apex of the mania was between 1625 and
1630. During these five years almost 1/20th of the European population was
burned at the stake."
http://wwwlehrer.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/~za146/barock/hexen.htm
"Estimates of people who lost their lives as the result of the
persecution of witches since A.D. 1500:
100,000 according to documented cases.
200,000 according to Robbins.
9,000,000" [No reference or qualification of any
kind was given for that last number. —WHS]
http://www.klammeraffe.org/~brandy/hexen/prozess.html
All of those quotations and citations, except for that by Gudrun
Schwarz in A Wife at his Side, have in common that none of them provide
references to sources that can be researched, and to be true, Himmler himself didn't
provide a reference to any specific source in his speech either. However, one must
wonder why someone who assigned a whole government division to ferreting out information
that would be damaging to the Church managed to come up with a figure of only 5,000 to
6,000 women who were executed in Germany during the persecution of the witches.
It would almost make one think that today's propaganda is better at telling
the Big Lie than in was when it was just in its infancy during the Nazi era.
The truth about all of that is identified at at the following.
Witchcraft and the whole-sale burning of witches in the
middles ages — What is the truth with respect to that? If you want to
know, go to:
The Domain of Patriarchy on
the Internet,
by Robert Sheaffer - Chief Patriarch and Oppressor-General
Pseudo-History About Witchcraft
Craving ever-greater Victim Status, Andrea Dworkin and other feminists invented
a pseudo-history of a 'Women's Holocaust' in the Middle Ages. Turning upside-down the
tactics of the 'Holocaust Revisionists', who claim that a real genocide never occurred,
the feminists claim to be the victims of a genocide that wasn't. This myth, complete with
a fabricated pro-feminist Pre-Christian Age, is taught as if it were true in so-called
"Womens Studies" classes (full story)
- I'm sure that
the general prohibition of dedicating TV channels to religious denominations would
enlighten Robert A. Heinlein, but what would he say about today's proliferation of items
in the media that deal with matters of the occult or about the fact that there are
numerous regular TV programs that in their subject matter lend a degree of credibility to
actual witchcraft, mysticism and the paranormal, and that talk-show hosts regularly cater
to and fawn over witches and psychics, but that they virtually never do that with anyone
who is a representative for the traditional religious denominations? Is the active
promotion of witchcraft, witches, Voodooism, and many other cults the social improvement
Robert Heinlein sought? Hardly!
_____________________See also:
_________
Updates:
2001 02 02 (format changes)
2006 03 04 (added link to Feminism for Male College
Students)
|
|
|
