Left Brain, Writing, and Religion

The advent of writing was a death sentence to feminine equality.

Before written literacy, creation stories were dominated by a goddess. Writing, a primarily left brain/right handed activity in men and women, set a course for aggressive patriarchal governance. It was inevitable.

The focused, tunnel-vision of right-handed writing dominance enlarged masculine importance and violence. By the written word humanity has subjugated itself to what history has shown us to be.

The hammer, whether held by a man or a woman inflects masculine traits through its writing—inevitably turning religion into a masculine dominated source of controls. Ultimately replacing the goddess creator with aggressive sky gods. It was as inevitable as handedness and the development of the alphabets.

“Writing involves the muscles of only one side of the body. Pure writing, using stylus, quill, pencil, or pen, engages the dominant hand, which the dominant hemisphere controls. Right-brain participation is markedly reduced. The left hand has no role during this activity. Evolution selected the dominant hand to be the aggressor, the hand that wields the club, swings the sword, and pulls the trigger. Placing the pen in the fighting hand etches aggression into the written word differentiating it from speech, which depends more on a bicameral cooperative effort.” — The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain

Clinging to a book written from the violent hand of a one sided mental framework will forever inspire male-dominated culture and religion. It may as well have been written with a hammer. No matter how soft the writing approached, it’s left brain subtleties are destined to put religious men above the rest. Forged [sic] solely of the masculine principle, the Bible is a trap both men and women who believe it is of god are cursed to remain in its grasp.

Danna Nolan Fewell stated that “the Bible, for the most part, is an alien text (to women), not written by women or with women in mind.” I would argue that it would’ve made little difference since the culprit is writing, not what or who wrote it with very little right brain input.

The left brain handles reading, writing, and calculations. Some call it the logical side of the brain. The right brain is more visual and deals in images more than words.

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Wandering—Chapter 15

Decidin’ which way to go doesn’t really matter when you’re just lookin’ around—Frank

But finding your way home when you weren’t lookin’ may be a bigger challenge. I was wondering if Chloe had just lost her bearings during the chase. Who knows, but hope is in the drivers seat when that’s all you’ve got. Or worse yet, she caught up to whatever she was chasin’ and got killed.

The next day was depressing. We had a schedule to keep and a semi on the road to load cows out from Bazzoli field. There were only two that had to go, the rest could be randoms—it was slow going without the dog. It had been a full day and a half since I’d seen her… More HERE

The Hand of God Withheld—Necessary Restraint

The argument for an inconceivable and unimaginable, all powerful god. One that is without parts of physical matter as we could even comprehend. Consider a character so foreign to our nature, that his eternal compositions could not be seen, felt, or tasted, for our matter is not compatible nor can mix with his attributes (No wonder the psalms are so many) in any way.

All god can do at this point is watch, for historically when he has interfered or tinkered with the deeds of men (parting seas, global floods, Israelite armies laying waste to entire regions) are a horrible affect of mixing his perfect nature with this synthetic world. His attributes and ours—immiscible. Simply looking at the LORD, his foreign composition is too different, too toxic to be presenced by human neurons, optic nerves, or flesh—or are we too toxic to his, in this artificial scape, to mingle outside our petri-dish? A mite of dust cast to the outer reaches of creation as isolated, contained contaminants whose only purpose of matter holds the little interest of an out-of-state trash-dump, where when only goes to visit creates more carnage?

By merely dipping his finger into the stratosphere of our world—cutting stone tablets and etching stone walls. Presenting his hand—regional, if not global catastrophe, churning the elements, like adding ammonium perchlorate to a mixing bowl of “earthly” matter of which we are so crudely formed. That god, by pressing his arm into the ionosphere, simply splits atoms starting chain reactions of global upheaval. Are we but a plant that withers upon touching it? How long will he withhold his finger…his hand? His holy arm? What if he were to present his whole self? The world would melt as a sea of molten glass, where any man-thing that peeks at his composition withers and consumes itself. To this god, the total power in the world is but a firework sparkler, hardly a threat to ourselves, let alone an immortal. Splitting atoms is as natural for him as spearing your flattened, pointed hand into a bucket of air, or water. We are nothing but .02% solid waste, not even worthy of his attention—but to open the lid carefully contaminates our meager world with carefully placed attributes of cataclysm, tectonic shifts, and drought, while we maintain our only sense of order in the heavens by his leaving us alone for a blink of an eye.

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.” Exodus‬ ‭19:21‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Daniel‬ ‭4:35‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.” Daniel‬ ‭5:5‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“That birds may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.” Revelation‬ ‭19:18‬ ‭KJV‬‬

Setting aside your contradictions for the moment to complete this thesis, for what will it matter in a moment or two what we achieve, or what we do when the world will soon be rolled together like a scroll? This man-create has been an interesting exercise, and man has proven quite genius with his teaspoon of dirt and a dash of consciousness. While we have been watched long enough and the experiment nearly over, GOD is ready to roll up his experiment and head off to yonder galaxies to admire his handiwork. It doesn’t matter—our world of refuse unfit will be dispersed when the meeting of the gods conclude, and victoriously he’s showed he can create something living out of a thimble full of hardly anything, as long as it is left alone long enough to generate order. It doesn’t matter that however dismal our minds and actions may seem to him, that our collective consciousness will sit on a shelf for forthcoming eons. It may not matter to him that our struggles and achievements have been fought and won with nothing but handicaps and soulful soil, but it matters to us, the lowliest of life-forms. So, a god of mercy? A god of compassion? A god of love? We shall see.

The Bad Part

“It’s a faulty neuroswitch sir, about a two dollar part from most traders”. “Replace them all forthright”, grumbled the captain. “We haven’t got all day”. “Who’s going to pay for this good sir? It’s nearly eight billion nano’s, not including neurofrequncy modulators for delivery”. “Eight billion“? questioned the captain with surprise. “What have they been doing, or dare I ask? We left the two of them to look around and watch the place a week ago—and all they’ve done is breed? All we warned is they not eat the flowering sildenafil*, and they go ahead and eat everything in sight?”

“Well sir, to them it’s been 6000 years. They are no longer familiar with the paradoxical quandaries of time travel”. The faulty switch has made breeding a priority, and they think we’re gods because if it. It’s really quite amusing, if it wasn’t such a mess, captain. It may be too late if we wait even one more day. That would be another 1000 years sir. We’ll have no planet left the way they’re breeding.

“Something else has gone wrong as well sir”. What is it Cohen? Don’t keep me guessing”. “There are over forty thousand different religions all worshipping gods they’ve created themselves, and to top it all, they fight and war with one another because of it. It’s more than one bad circuit sir—we need to make a call.

*sildenafil

The Bible in the Barrel

Fall, 1988—While surveying nearly 800 miles north of the 49th parallel in Canada’s wilderness, time swallowed an abandoned homestead. Vacant sounds that once teemed the soil and timbers—like a still-shot from a ghost town, a lonely and staggered cabin held on from memories of a past love and dead dreams. No sounds of children nor echoes of ranch-work, only a flutter of birds escaping the hollowed rafters broke the silent still as we approached. The crew, focused and shuffling lodes across the the clearing slowly woke the silent void of near twenty years.

Behind the try, a rusted steel barrel leaned un-statuesque, gently yearning for the earth to bring her home. I loosened the ring and pounded off the rusting lid to look inside.

My survey crew was a pretty rough bunch at the time. José, our resident Latino catholic thought it was left by god—for us”. He said, (in his Mexican accent) “no matter where you go jefe, no matter how far, Dios lo ve todo, mal jefe!” “It’s probably still there because they ran out of matches”, I fired back! Either way (or maybe another) we were in the possession of the holy bible for the night. We made camp and the crew passed a bottle. Chuck had mothering duties for the day, so he got a fire and some food on the grate as darkness fettered us in a cloudy, moonless night. It was cavern black looking beyond the fire—we faded to sleep.

Hoards of black crows broke the morning silence at dawn. We all stumbled around to get our bearings, stoked the fire and coffee’d up for what was supposed to be a long day, but, curiosity piqued us into a more human task, and by chance, or maybe drawn-in by an unsettled past, we started our day with a quick look around the homestead. Chuck, still half unzipped in his sleeping bag, shouted, “hey boss-man, look at this”. He was thumbing through the Bible looking for a good passage to quote me—he liked disingenuous humor at my expense, but this didn’t seem too funny by the look on his face. Flattening the creases he unfolded a paper in his hand and started to slowly read, like a translator.

“This cabin and 40 acres is claimed by me, William Granger. I came here in the summer of 1964 and built this cabin with the tools I could carry. In ’65 I returned with my wife Carol, our son Eli and daughter Caroline. Abandoning my loves and home is cowardly hard to do, but all that is left for me is to save my own life from one last unknown tragedy. My boy disappeared in ’66. We never found him. He would be 14 today, if this is September 14, the day of my departure”.

“We all came here with a trust in god. I and my colleagues convinced my wife of the lords providence—by faith we would thrive. This book you are holding is the last thing on earth I would impart to a decent man. Its only task now is holding this note in hopes it can at least do that until somebody finds it, should I fail to return. While many of the words are poetic and wishful, the promise of healing and signs that follow them that believe with the lords bounties are false premises only an untested fool would believe. You all survive down below because of people. Nothing more. My horse was killed by wolves while he was on the line. Then my hogs. My wife and daughter I love are in deep graves just east of the clearing. I moved them out after the spring thaw to their permanent rest. Look east between the two tallest cedars if they’re still standing. Two small rock piles mark the spots. I leave them here and plan to return as soon as I can. W. Granger, 1970″.

Humanity took over our crew. We looked around for the day, found some odds and ends, toys and tools and tack, but nothing of importance—That, lies between the cedars that stand guard. We cleaned up the grave sites and packed our gear for a short move. Another 20 years it will all be forgotten. I took it Mr. Granger got sidetracked, lost, or died in his failure to return—I guess the road home has forks in it too—I’ll see if I can locate this Mr Granger.

Were Abraham and Muhammad Primatologists?

What distinguishes Abrahamic Religion from the apes? The apes could not write their ideas of territory, food, male dominance, and sex into law. It was all about protecting what they had and staying at the top of the clan.