Velikovsky Redux

In Steven Shapin's review of The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe by Michael Gordin (LRB Vol 34, No 21, 35-38, 8 Nov 2012), he concludes:

A rule of thumb for sound inference has always been that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. But there’s a corollary: if it struts around the barnyard loudly protesting that it’s a duck, that it possesses the very essence of duckness, that it’s more authentically a duck than all those other orange-billed, web-footed, swimming fowl, then you’ve got a right to be suspicious: this duck may be a quack.

I think this is great advice for students attempting to collar a few books, collate the ideas therein, and collectivize them into an extended essay or two. Beware the self-proclaimed big ideas that claim to unify or to apotheosize existing ideas. And remember Velikovsky, who was probably better-read than you, had greater scope than you — and was likely more of a duck than you.

Responses 005 (Nov 2012)

The penultimate topic (Question #5) in the list reads: "Habit is stronger than reason." To what extent is this true in two areas of knowledge?

It's a bit of a let-down compared to the other five topics, and that is why mainly two kinds of students will attempt it: the brilliant risk-takers and the unimaginative. What I'm a little irked about is the lack of attribution: if George Santayana did indeed say this, at least attribute it to him as you did for Einstein and Conan Doyle in the same set! That said, the quotation looks horribly boring on first sight.

No doubt, this kind of question is a staple of the 'Theory of Knowledge Diet', of the form [quotation by famous person] + [request to justify with respect to two (or more) areas of knowledge]. But what to make of the 'X > Y' format used also in Question 3 (which has a better quote from Uncle Albert)?

I think that 'habit' must refer to people doing things automatically (as in 'force of habit'), as opposed to thinking about it first (i.e. 'reason'). If that's the case, then how to link it to areas of knowledge? Surely it's a commonly known fact of human existence that people do things out of habit more easily than with the use of reason.

Perhaps a discussion of the topic can be made more substantial by discussing what exactly 'habit' is. The word 'habit', from the Latin, has the original meaning 'to have' or 'to live in a specific state' — hence 'inhabit'. The modern sense is one of being in a constant state of existence, doing the same things and responding the same way to things.

Habits are patterns of life, patterns of behaviour, that have developed from uncritical existence in specific environmental situations. Here, I have craftily inserted the word 'uncritical'. After all, if one were to be critical, one would probably not continue to live the same way all the time. But it provides us with a proper basis for argument — we can now say that reason is critical, and habit is not. (I used a similar trick when handling this older question.)

Now we have a proper epistemological argument. To what extent, in various areas of knowledge, is uncritical behaviour (not necessarily bad, perhaps instinctive or intuitive) more useful or more powerful than critical behaviour (which must involve reasoning and judgement)? This is where it would be good to draw boundaries between disciplines that require more critical thinking and those requiring less. I've discussed this elsewhere. Enjoy...

A Hazy Shade

"Look around, the leaves are brown now; and the sky's a hazy shade of winter," says the old Simon & Garfunkel song. It's an autumnal song, and somewhat unsuitable for the day just past, which was my brother's 40th birthday.

One of the main points of the conversation over dinner was his account of how his new students were unable to say why, precisely, a 'non-traditional security threat' was 'non-traditional'. After all, as he pointed out, piracy and plagues are historically not uncommon.

I laughed and said, "The main thing is that you can't use traditional agencies of state, soldiers and police, to deal with these things, right?"

"Exactly!" he boomed. "But how is it that these young people can't get it?"

That's the problem with the current educational system. Having holy scriptures in the form of the 'Dominant Narrative' (which sounds like The Lord's Prayer, etymologically) of local history, and the 'Ten-Year Series' (which sounds like an analogue of the Decalogue), students don't know things and don't think about ideas that fall outside the spotlit magic circles of their learning. They aren't academics, but pragmatics — doers who do thinking, rather than think.

Of course, there are always exceptions. But these prove the rule (which means they challenge the rule, not that they provide evidence that the rule exists), and in a city-state with a dominant rule, such proving is a perilous task; the tendency to essay such a task is often scythed down by well-meaning friends, relatives and teachers.

Perhaps this year signals a new start. Perhaps those who prove the rule will show it is not proof against criticism. And perhaps we will once again have learners who learn, and thinkers who think.

Otherwise, "Look around, the leaves are brown; there's a patch of snow on the ground."

Elucidation

Critical thinking, contrary to common opinion, is not about questioning. Rather, it is about pursuing clarity. As pointed out elsewhere, 'seeing something clearly' is one of the most common metaphors for understanding.

In this context, questioning with intent to elucidate is merely one of the tools in the armamentarium by which we are illuminated. We must learn to ask the right questions with the intent firmly in mind; a question whose answer will not enlighten further is not as useful as one whose answer will.

My choice of words here is quite deliberate. 'Elucidate', 'illuminate' and 'enlighten' all mean roughly the same thing — they have to do with the quality of making things brighter. 'Elucidate' comes from Latin lux, and 'lucid' means 'clear and bright', or perhaps, 'clearer because/therefore brighter'. 'Illuminate' comes from Latin luminis, the quality of radiance; 'enlighten' is mostly used metaphorically these days, and equivalent to 'illuminate'.

The problem of living in a darkened world dates back to the metaphor of Plato's cave. However, because the post-Enlightenment world has made us more aware of darkness, most people now seek more to enlighten themselves than the rest of the world. It seems, somehow, easier to be responsible for yourself than for other people.

And so, nowadays, criticism has negative connotations. We sometimes do not critique to enlighten, but to cast a shadow over others, or to muddy the waters. It is all a very sad state of affairs. But we are called upon to be a light which cannot be hidden, not a shadow that cannot be dispelled.

How To Read The News

There are three main kinds of news that you might end up reading — and by the way, you might want to reflect on why I am confining myself to text media. The two important kinds are emergent phenomena that are of consequence (i.e. there will be sequelae with impact) and abnormal phenomena that have no consequence unless we are mad enough to assume that they are commonplace (i.e. they influence our actions when they shouldn't). The third kind is quotidian phenomena with commonplace consequences (i.e. stuff like Arsenal beating Fulham 2-1 at home). I am not talking about opinion, debate, or argument; neither am I talking about advertising or humour of any kind.

When reading the news, what we should not do is react to it as if it required immediate action. The time for immediacy is past, and what ought to take place is rapid analysis based on as many data sources as you can get hold of.

Neither should we assume that what has happened is typical or commonplace. If it were, it would not be news material. What follows is a chain of loosely-linked paragraphs on what I thought about while I was reading the local news. It's been modified a bit to protect the useless news organisation involved.

If a person is murdered five kilometres from you, but this has been only the fourth murder reported in a population of five million for the last 3 months, then you live in a pretty safe area. If murders are no longer reported, then either your population is incredibly safe or extremely dangerous, because the alternative is that murders are so common that they're not worth reporting.

When I read about a person who has made $25m since she went bankrupt three years ago, my instinct is to say, "Good for her!" and not "I'm going to do what she did!" Why? Because that would entail me going bankrupt first and then suffering for three years, of course. (There is a direct parallel to those people who claim Biblical promises out of context.) Besides, this is not a normal occurrence. It can't be.

When I read about North Korea firing missiles into South Korean territory, I don't draw parallels between Israel and Lebanon, Pakistan and India, or Singapore and Malaysia. Would we draw parallels between the US and Mexico and the two Koreas? I think not. There is seldom any fitting parallel between events in one part of the world and another, unless extensive historical analysis shows extreme equivalence.

In fact, the larger the body of people involved, the more likely the equivalence, simply because of the statistical regression towards the mean for behaviour of large numbers of humans. So rough parallels between world-spanning empires can be drawn — but only if they have many points of similarity. So far, the best cultural fit is that between the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica. Whether there is a Pax Americana with sufficient points of equivalence is disputable.

So how should we read the news? I will have to disappoint everyone by saying, "Sparingly and with a very ruthless eye. Most events reported have zero impact on readers, except to make them think they know what is happening in the world around them. And the TV news is worse."

Why Student Output Should Be Better (But Isn't)

25 years ago, I was an 18 year old person in senior high. If we did research at all, it was mainly in a reasonably well-stocked library, or from our own collections of material. We sometimes had files of newspaper clippings, sorted by topic and date.

A lot of that (though not all) has now been made redundant simply because most schools now purchase online access to journals and newspapers. Simple search functions linking to any of those databases will produce a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles. In conjunction with Google™ Scholar and Wikipedia, a student can literally research and produce a paper on any topic, running at around 2000 words, in less than 400 minutes, maybe even less than six hours.

25 years ago, this was just barely possible, except that you would have to read piles of material because there was no search function and you'd have to rely on the occasional annual index of topics that kind journal-publishers might produce, or on the experience (and philanthropy) of the person manning the morgue at the newspaper office. If you were fortunate, you had a knowledgeable librarian.

And yet, the quality of student work these days is poor. Each paper is generally poorly referenced, and the references selected are often poor themselves. The argument doesn't hang together, and neither does the structure.

Why is this so?

I have an idea, developed after many years of talking to high school students and asking them about their work processes. It's a pretty sad idea.

I think that students don't read enough.

Search functions identify quotes which they can use in their papers, but they have seldom read the entire book or chapter from which these quotes have been lifted. Because the context has not been read through and analysed, the quotes are unjustified or simply taken out of context in the worst way possible.

Students don't read around the topic anymore, because instead of homing in on their material, they jump straight to it. It's like the subway or MRT. If you pop up in the middle of a neighbourhood, you only know the area around the station, and your knowledge of context and related material diminishes sharply as the distance increases.

Students don't read enough often because their teachers and librarians don't read enough. My personal library consists of about 8000 books. This is small, and in the age of the Internet, it ought to be redundant (and often is). But when I research a paper, I end up with a bibliography; a 25-page paper with perhaps 8000-10000 words in it takes a week for first draft because I have normally read an average of 500 pages from various sources while planning and writing that paper.

If a student comes to me with a topic, I can often recommend books or journal articles or websites because I've seen them, read them, or know someone who has. And if I can't recommend sources, I use Google™ like everybody else, or Wikipedia. But if I do, I take the additional step of trying to triangulate my sources to see if they agree. If I can find only one source, and it is not linked to any other, I can't in good conscience recommend it as an authority unless there are seriously good reasons to do so.

It all boils down to three things: receive a lot of input, think a lot about it, structure it into consistent output. That provides basic quality. Style, grammar, neatness — all this provides extended quality. But any kind of quality requires hard work.

The final bit of hard work is reading your own stuff critically. You need to read it aloud, if possible. This exposes the silly stuff better. Sometimes, under the influence of sleep deprivation or bad environmental pollution, you write silly things. It's best to pretend your paper was written by someone you hate and that you will get a cash reward for finding mistakes in it, arm yourself with a red pen for hard copy or something like those awful comment flags in MS Word™, and attack your own work.

This phase takes a lot of time, for me. I literally read and re-read everything I publish, several times. Unfortunately (as some of you have noticed) I do this less for my blog posts. I don't like making mistakes, though. That means I make some attempt to find mistakes, will amend them as soon as I find them, and will confess them if some poor sod has already been subjected to them.

Students these days claim they haven't enough time. I just wonder how much less time they would have had in the days before advanced search and online databases, before YouTube and Wikipedia, before the ability to download digital versions of key documents within minutes. They have less excuse for mediocrity than I had.

One final rant about reading: why can't students bother to look things up for themselves, given all the online help they currently have? I hate it when students ask me for definitions of things, places, people or ideas. It's all online!

Yesterday, I had coffee with a young man who lamented the difficulty of training educators. He asked how I would go about it. Well, I told him that each person should be educated in a different way, but that there were some key requirements.

I told him that first of all, a person should have read all the fundamental texts (or at least, enough texts to cover the fundamentals) of the subject to be taught. A general educator should have a broader and more difficult reading list than a specialised educator.

Secondly, the person to be 'trained' (I hate that word in this context; it reminds me of dog obedience school) needs to develop the capacity for interacting with people, listening to feedback (verbal or non-verbal) and tweaking the interaction as it progresses. You need to try as hard as you can to understand the people you're teaching, and you need to feel apologetic if you don't quite 'get' them.

Thirdly, the person needs to be able to detect bullshit both in what is taught and in the responses of students. Yes, self-critical as well as other-critical analysis is required. You shouldn't lie to students even by accident. If you don't know something, say so. If you have made a mistake, admit it and apologize.

If students are badly taught, then their role-models of learning are deficient. This is another reason why student output is bad; their input and learning models are bad too. As my grandfather used to say, "Why do children misbehave? Because their parents do!"

In most parts of the world that I've seen, I estimate that perhaps one teacher out of every 20 is a good one. The quality tends to be worse if the organization is larger, unless a lot of money is spent and a lot of research and evaluation is carried out in the attempt to 'buy' good staff. That means students have to be good self-teachers most of the time.

I wish my own students all the best. I try to give them my best, being fully aware that it's never enough. But they should also aim to do better, by reading, thinking, and being self-critical — and by remembering that the best is always yet to be.

Why is Atlantean Education Bad? (Part I)

Numerous posts and much thought later, I've come to realise that to answer this question, you have to think about what you really want from an education system. This means that asking Atlanteans why their education system is bad doesn't work, since most of them give silly reasons. Why so? Because they are products of their own education system.

Here is the key then. A system that produces rational reflection, coherent and critical self-analysis, fair comparison with other cases, and fair consideration of the limitations of a given case, is likely to be a better system than one which doesn't. In the case of typical Atlantean complainants, they are likely to not have spent much time or effort reflecting, produce incoherent but critical self-analysis, some exaggerated comparison with other cases, and unfair consideration of the limitations involved in any case.

On the other hand, the Atlantean-in-the-street is generally happy with it, and the local system is often held up as one of the better ones worldwide. But many of the more vocal ones seem to think it's bad. Why is this?

I think that the more vocal ones are those who have had education outside the system, thus allowing them more scope for the various approaches to criticism. Yet these are often non-participant observers, who have therefore given up part of their right to interpretive accuracy. It's a double-edged sword, this gift of perception; if you stand outside, you might miss the introspective vision, while if you stand inside, you might miss the more objective view.

Writing a TOK Essay (Part I): Before You Begin

TOK, of course, stands for 'Theory of Knowledge'; this is the title of what is perhaps the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme's most notorious element. I used to teach people how to write TOK essays. I still do. I've done it myself a fair number of times. What impels me most forcefully into the writing of this post is the hash that some people make of it (either the teaching or the writing).

It's not a difficult task. It's just one that needs reasonably careful, self-critical and accurate writing, for fewer than ten hours of your time. The TOK essay-writing process can be broken into three general parts: surveying, writing it out, and evaluating your own work. The latter two feed off each other until you reach the final version.

Here is a list of things to do (and questions to ask) before you begin, in the survey phase.

1. Read the list of prescribed essay titles carefully. Do any of them look interesting? Can you outline a five-sentence argument (definition, approach, elaboration, examples, conclusion — or the equivalents, which are many) for one of them without looking up any sources? If so, you can cautiously conclude that this topic is a good candidate for your further attention.
2. Looking at the topic, can you pick out the key words and define them succinctly and exactly to your own satisfaction? If so, you are either very easily satisfied or you are good enough at thinking up definitions. Don't fall back on a dictionary or encyclopaedia; if you need to, you don't know the material well enough.
3. Based on the topic, are there any obvious knower's approaches, ways of knowing, or areas of knowledge that need to be addressed? If so, are you familiar with the issues associated with each of them? Which knowledge issues are implicated?
4. Do you have first-hand experience of anything related to these issues? What were your thoughts and responses like?
5. Based on the definitions you've used, can you trace a thread of argument that links the definitions, key points, and your own responses into a consistent and coherent structure?
6. If so, what conclusion will you probably reach, and is it likely to answer the question you began with?

These are very general points, but I am certain I've addressed specific issues elsewhere in this blog.

For those of you who know who I am and where my public folder is, there are some resources available in the TOK subfolder. Copyright is retained by me for some of those, so please don't abuse your public access. Apart from that, you are welcome to look around and use them to help you plan your line of attack. In the days ahead, I'll look at the writing phase and the evaluation phase. But I won't do that yet, since those of you who need to pick a topic should do that first.

Sinister Dexterity

Over the years, some people have asked me why I seem so critical of 'the system', whether in the general sense of what happens in the world, or in the more specific sense of what happens in the country, or in the even more specific and painful sense of what happens in some institutions. I wonder why this question is asked without the reflection that should logically precede it.

The point is that if 'the system' works, there is at least one clear way to make it work better. That is to look at it critically (from Greek kritias, 'a judge') and evaluate its successes (how can these be improved) and its failures (how can these be reduced or avoided). There are other ways, including changing the system altogether — surely a much more radical (from Latin radix, 'a root') step.

In the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, St Paul warns us against conforming to the patterns of the world. There is a simple reason for this which I've mentioned before: the world is too limited. Excellence goes, almost by definition, beyond the limits of the known world.

This is why I look at things critically. The Good Book also says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." But this injunction is about moral judgement; taken together with the rest of that Book, it warns that the morally flawed should not presume to sit in judgement over the rest of the equally flawed. Here, when I say 'critically' and as 'a judge', I am only applying the simple tests of consistency and reason, just as any analyst might.

It is probably best that we attempt to rectify (from Latin rectus, 'righthanded') anything that is awry while making sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. This allows you to make a two-handed catch, which is normally preferable to a one-handed catch where catching is appropriate. (As the saying goes, "Catch no ball, good if you're not the goalie.") But to do this, one must necessarily appear at least somewhat sinister ('lefthanded').

Furious Intelligence

When I was very young, it irritated me a lot that my relatives would say things like, "You're very smart, you should do better in your studies!" or "You're so clever, how could you do such a stupid thing!" or "You're a genius, why can't you teach other people to be like that!" or "Don't say you didn't do this naughty thing, only you could have done it!"

See, the problem is that terrible spectre of generalised intelligence. If you are good at a few key skills (often cited as "reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic" – three Rs which aren't really all Rs – or the better "comprehension, composition and computation") it is assumed that you are good at all other things, ranging from giving talks to regurgitating facts to criminal activity.

But it's a terribly asymmetric thing, this 'generalised intelligence'. For example, I can always be accused of doing something (say, blogging) as if I were less intelligent, less stylish, less careful with language than I normally show. But someone who is indeed less intelligent or stylish or careful with language could never be accused of blogging like me. The presumption is that you can scale intelligence and other manifestations of skill down, but never up.

To some extent, that is true. But it leads to the idea that to be of outstanding intelligence is to open yourself up to assault from any quarter which can't be bothered to think more deeply into a situation. It is akin to saying, "A crime has been committed, so the instigator must be the most intelligent criminal available, especially since we can't tell whether he was there or not, and there are no traces of him!"

It's called the Macavity Syndrome, and even if it weren't, I would call it that. Macavity's story is told here, but for the benefit of those who might not get there, I have reproduced the source poem by T S Eliot at the end of this post. Essentially, it is the complex of suspicion, paranoia and disregard for evidence that leads people to attribute a crime (or thoughtcrime) to any person who might seem capable even if there is no evidence for it. This is because paranoid metacognition will say at least two things: 1) there is no evidence because the perpetrator is too clever, 2) there is a concealed crime despite the lack of evidence simply because whatever was done was too clever for us to understand.

The pernicious thing about this is that less discerning people will actually believe this. It appeals to the reptilian hindbrain that responds viscerally to fear. Whether there is indeed something to fear is moot – threats, nightmares, vague apprehensions, the unknown, all these things can be there or not; it doesn't matter to the hindbrain. It is the most primitive part of ourselves, and the part most needing control in a higher-level society. I have no doubt that the hindbrain is best in situations of likely violence and immediate danger, but in other situations, it is a poor substitute for considered judgement and reason.

And that is why I feel dire discomfort and even simmering anger when the Macavity Syndrome surfaces. My own hindbrain plays off the fears of my forebrain. My forebrain tries to stay faithful to my mission statement, but wrath and pride threaten to dominate. I feel compromised simply by the fact that my society so readily Macavitises. Ah, me. Alas. But I am no Macavity, and therein lies the rub.

=====

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw -
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air -
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square -
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -
But it's useless to investigate - Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
`It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

Mockery And Judgement

I remember that in late 2004, I was being pilloried for the contents of this blog. Those contents are still there for you to see, if you're wondering why this should be so. At that time, I remember distinctly the phases of emotional sensation that passed through me.

First, I was amused. I could not believe that people were reading it the way they claimed they were. I could not believe that rational people could do that, anyway. It did not help when the Inquisition got its facts wrong. But then, they were the inquisition, and I was being put to the question. Lesson: the Inquisition cannot bear to be wrong.

Secondly, I was furious. I could not believe they were charging me on the basis of their misinterpretations. I could not believe that they were actually taking a line of peculiar interpretation, applying it in defiance of all hermeneutic principles of analysis, and using it to club me over the head and gag me. Lesson: the Inquisition will always claim the higher ground.

Thirdly, I was defensive. Perhaps, this was my undoing. I believed I was perfectly right in what I had said, that there was no wrong in it. And in a technical sense, I was indeed right. However, I learnt something. If the Inquisition could be misled, it must indeed be true that what I had written was misleading. Lesson: the Inquisition are people too.

Fourthly, I was repentant. If I had misled anyone, no matter what they were or who they were, I was guilty. Whether the rational man-in-the-street, so beloved of law and criminal justice, interpreted me correctly or not, the fact remained that at least three people were confused and two angry about it. Lesson: the Inquisition sets the tone, regardless.

And so, I stepped down from any authority of position I held. I could not totally divest myself of personal authority or the authority of skill and knowledge, but I voluntarily and in a spirit of reconciliation stepped down. I apologised to the community, and I meant every word of my apology. And there the matter rested for a while. But in my heart and mind, I remembered one last lesson: the Judgement of Gamaliel.

In Acts 5:17-42, the apostles were arrested for preaching about Christ. I claim no such apostolic status, and neither was I blogging about exalted matters. But the principle of Gamaliel's judgement remains the same for all unclear and ambiguous cases of new social phenomena: "And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God."

I make no such claims, I say again, about apostolic legacy. However, I would put these questions, given the opportunity, to the Inquisition: Did you apply the principle of Gamaliel's judgement to my case? Has my blogging enlightened or darkened the world of men? Why did you think what I said was harmful despite the fact that at least one of you admitted it was truth?

The fact is this: God is not mocked, or deceived about the truth – what a man sows, he also will reap. The whole lesson of this episode, for the Inquisition as well as for myself, can be found in Galatians 6:1-10. I fully expect to be rewarded or condemned accordingly. In the meantime, I also know that this applies to all of us, every man and woman alike. God have mercy on us all.