This week we look at the botched Super League attempt, the end of the Castro dynasty, the first flight on Mars, Lindekin spies, China’s reporting app, Covid and Abortion, the trial of Derek Chauvin, music from St Georges Chapel, Australian Milkshake consent teaching, American Humanists cancel Dawkins, Incest in New York, Neopronouns, Jane Austin’s Racist tea-drinking, Merida and Disney, the apostasy of Abraham Piper, Jordan Peterson on Christ as the Ultimate Mentor, Flowers of the Forest.
You can listen to it here – https://theweeflea.podbean.com/e/quantum-143-football-cuba-mars-china-covid-chauvin-dawkins-neopronouns-austin-merida-jordan-peterson-and-abraham-piper/
Or on Itunes and Spotify.
As usual here are some of the links.
China
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/style/neopronouns-nonbinary-explainer.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/us/abraham-piper-tiktok-exvangelical.html
Catch up here – Quantum 142 – Prince Philip, DMX, Shirley Williams; Martyn Iles, Bill Maher; Mike Jagger, Bluey and Paranoid
Support Quantum here – https://patron.podbean.com/theweeflea
Why bother with A Piper?
Because he is a significant internet presence being used by the enemy to promote what is evil…
Enemy? What enemy are you talking about, David?
The accuser, the father of lies, the evil one….
Sorry , David, still not following you. Who is this ”evil one”?
The Devil
Thanks for sharing that video clip between Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson David. We see both passionately wrestling with the ideas shared. I’m surprised that Brands implicit assumption contained within the question he posed of it being describe to attain something beyond what is good and evil wasn’t picked up on by Peterson. I suppose he was invested in his own polemic about Christianity and went down that path instead.
But yes, the apologetic Peterson offers for the highest attainment for humanity and that being expressed in Christianity with Jesus being mentioned and that bringing God into existence is consistent with Jesus waiting at the door, to be invited to enter into someone’s home.
I see Peterson and Brand as rather like a father / son dynamic. I think Brand is rather teenager or young adult like wiht testing the boundaries, not doubt fuelled by his self – confessed addictive inclinations. And I can see the exasperation that Peterson is experiencing at the forcefulness of Brands question and the way he expresses it. With what they are doing going over Michaela’s head.
As an academic, I can appreciate how its possible to get carried away wiht intellectual rigour to the point of exhaustion and understand how Nietzsche went insane with trying to fill the God sized gap left for him wiht his claim that “god is dead” and “what’s to com of us murderers of murderers”. By the way, doesn’t that sound not dissimilar to the apostle Paul calling himself the “chief of all sinners”?
I digress.
Perhaps both Brand and Peterson might not be exhausting themselves so much if as well as talking about Christianity, they welcomed the peace of Christ that passes understanding, and in so doing practicing what they preach about love and compassion – for their own benefit as much as anyone else.
I’m going to hazard a wild guess that Abraham Piper is just another angry atheist who rejected his heavenly Father because of a breakdown in relationship with his earthly one.
Or perhaps , like the author Graham Greene ( pre conversion to Rome ) , he hated God for not existing.
David, you have shown a welcome warmth towards the Royal Family recently; you’re not in danger of becoming a royalist are you? 🙂
I have a question: in a world in which smallpox has been eliminated (presumably because it kills Westerners as well as the poor); is it humanly ethical to spend $81 million to fly a helicopter on Mars when the poor on Earth die of malaria, dysentery or lack education?
The two are not opposites – so the answer is not as simple as the question…
Hi Peter,
Your somewhat unfortunate rhetorical question shows a lack of understanding of what the space program is about and also the multitude of benefits that continue to be reaped as a result of ”Flying helicopters on Mars”.
It would be nice to be told you were not being serious?
It’s always worth pointing out though, that the money spent on such scientific ventures is paltry when compared to what the US for example spends on its annual defence budget.
It is a similar story in the UK where , according to some, money allocated to upgrade Britain’s missile defence program would have ‘solved’ Britain’s homeless ‘problem’ in one fell swoop.
No doubt there are numerous other examples – the obscene amounts of money involved in the recent Europa Super League fiasco.
Fear is a powerful motivator and Greed is never far behind!
I think that, when the character Jesus apparently said, ”The poor will always be with you” he was more astute than many might feel comfortable with.
Hi Arkenaten, and thanks for some comments. Actually I’m a space enthusiast but questioning the human value of some aspects of what is happening. Space exploration has led to many human improvements and I’m suggesting that this should be the parameter we use in judging value for money. I appreciate space projects also have an element of national pride as well as employment.
I am completely unconvinced about hubristic visions of colonising the Moon or Mars not just from the practical point of view of taking human physiology away from the planet which supports it or bombarding the human body with cosmic radiation. How do these benefit humanity, or are they vanity projects? Satellite technology is a benefit; the ISS has been of great value; even something like Hubble or the James Webb telescope to replace it I think give human benefit. Even exploring asteroids for mining lanthanides might well help humanity technologically.
Defence spending is a difficult one; there are plenty of aggressors waiting to take advantage of a weakness. Providing the poor of the world with clean water and education would make a massive difference. The NASA budget is around $25 billion. It just made me think of priorities as a human race.
Ah the irony that Atheism, based on scrupulous attention to science, now finds itself defending a belief system with no scientific basis.
You may be on to something.
The Pakistani leader , Imran Khan , recently called for a halt to European insults to Islam.
We all know the answer to that.
Science has always sought to present itself as that which is incontrovertible and to be rigorously defended, however time and time again the right amount of pressure (cash, political etc) causes it to cave in
Dawkins appears to find himself skewered by a belief system for which there really only the say so of a few strident voices. The influential voices are making all the noise and turning to the courts to ratify them with the usual threats. We should pray for Maya Forstater, who is currently in a tribunal case over this very issue, being discredited for simply stating fact. There must be heaps of people out there who agree, but they won’t speak up. The latest sleight of hand appears to be to try and insist that gender and sex, which we are told were different concepts, are in fact the same.
Itmay be tempting to feel a sense of schadenfreude against those feminists who were happy to write about narrow christian bigots, who now find themselves on the receiving end. But realistically I just hope this acts as a wake up call to to seriously question their received dogma
the dog eat dog has started
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/04/gary-powell-how-the-new-anti-lgb-fundamentalism-of-gender-extremism-mirrors-the-homophobia-of-the-1980s/
Beloved David, very clever, you were ahead of the times, love it!
Christa