Sunday, February 12, 2012

Chesterton: the Aristocrat

G.K. Chesterton, from The Catholic Thing:


The Aristocrat 

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t brag himself.

O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What’sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that’s played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn’t keep his word.


"There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain."

The lures of Satan are subtle, often, and he woos with pleasure. Sometimes suffering is healthier, as Christianity has always taught. Chesterton at his best.

36 comments:

  1. Yep, the bogeyman really exists, children. Be good now or he comes get you.

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    1. @Troy
      The Boogeyman does exist! He was a forward/recon rifleman in Gulf I with the US Army. I know him quite well. He's actually a good guy. Misunderstood.
      He and I go a ways back now, and often meet to play games online.

      His daughter (whom we call the boogey-girl) is a gorgeous little thing :)
      He is, however, only a normal human.
      A Pagan/animist, fond of Cartesian philosophy, and nothing like the Devil himself...except that he is a gentleman too!
      The devil on the other hand.... I have met him as well, seen him in the mirror a few times also.
      He/it is real too, though I sometimes wish he were not.

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  2. Childish doggerel, suitable for childish minds.

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  3. Awesome.

    An all time favourite  old fav on Old Nick!
    Cross posted HERE 
    Great post, Mike.

    My thanks and our prayers for a blessed Sabbath for you and for family.

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  4. Crus:

    Thanks. A blessed Sabbath to you and yours as well.

    Mike

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  5. Christianity really isn’t strictly monotheistic at all is it? Sure, God is on the top of the heap with infinite powers, but there are certainly a whole host of characters with various god-like supernatural powers or attributes, the devil, different classes of angels, demons, monsters, etc.

    So today we have the Devil as a sophisticated intellectual elitist. My how apropos when your political agenda depends on mistrust of expertise.

    -KW

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  6. "Sometimes suffering is healthier, as Christianity has always taught."

    Of course Christianity taught that. There's no other way to reconcile the myth of an omnipotent, omniscient god with the reality of random and pervasive suffering.

    "Rest easy, dear mother. Your child's prolonged and agonizing death from cancer is just an expression of God's love, because without such suffering, how could we know joy? Praise Jesus."

    Just another rationalization to maintain the myth - like introducing the Wandering Jew to explain away the fact that both the Son of God and the Apostle Paul screwed up their predictions.

    Religion is wonderful so long as your comfortable leaving your reason and intellectual honesty at the door.

    ---

    Happy Birthday Charles Darwin - major contributor to the greatest revelation in recorded history.

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    1. Ugh! replace "your comfortable" with "you're comfortable".

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    2. @RickK:

      > Of course Christianity taught that
      > [sometimes suffering is healthier].
      > There's no other way to reconcile
      > the myth of an omnipotent, omniscient
      > god with the reality of random and
      > pervasive suffering.

      Context is everything. Absent context, the dentist in everyday practice is reduced to a sadistic torturer.

      From a human perspective, suffering appears random, and ultimately purposeless. But appearances can, and often are, deceiving. If God is both omnipotent, ominiscient and (you omitted) benovolent, then suffering must necessarily be both non-random and purposeful. Think it through. "It hurts, so it must be bad" is right on par with the idea that "If it feels good, it must be good."

      Help me understand what you mean by the Wandering Jew myth, and the failed predictions of the Son of God and the apostle Paul.

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    3. Happy Birthday Charles Darwin - major contributor to the greatest revelation in recorded history.

      A revelation that turned out to be the greatest hoax in recorded history! Charlie's theory has more holes than Swiss cheese and more holes are added daily. Of course if you believe that order can come out of chaos by blind chance given enough time you can believe anything!

      But poor Charlie didn't know any better, so happy birthday to him anyways...

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    4. "A revelation that turned out to be the greatest hoax in recorded history!"

      Saying this over and over again won't make it any more true. Have you looked up what the modern synthesis is yet? Or are you still ignorant and uninformed about reality?

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    5. Kent:

      Premise 1) God mysteriously injects suffering in the world, with apparent randomness, bringing misery to the faithful and non-believers with equal probability, all as part of his grand plan.

      Premise 2) The universe is undirected and what appears to be random actually is.

      Now, explain to me what evidence would differentiate these two premises. How would a world governed by premise (1) differ from a world governed by premise (2)?

      As for the Wandering Jew - Jesus told his audience that some would not "taste death" before the coming of the "Son of Man". Paul repeated something similar. So hundreds of years later, when the Son of Man clearly had not arrived, the only possible explanation was that there was some fellow who'd been in Jesus's audience who was still alive and wandering about. Because, Jesus could not possibly have been just another completely human apocalyptic prophet whose predictions, like those of so many before and after, have failed to materialize.

      There are other origins and legends about a "Wandering Jew", but what I described is one of the ways in which the myth was employed.

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    6. Pepe said: "A revelation that turned out to be the greatest hoax in recorded history! "

      Now, we can believe what Pepe says, or we can believe the story told in his DNA.

      Like any good investigator, judge, or pretty much any honest person on the planet, I'll believe the physical evidence over Pepe's statements.

      But the beauty of it is, the evidence in Pepe's DNA joins all the other evidence for evolution found in: patterns of morphology, co-evolved relationships, convergent evolution, observed speciation, Lenski experiments, shared DNA, inherited ERV markers, molecular biology, vestigial traits, atavisms, genetic mutation, embryology, the fossil record, paleontology, archaeology, transitional species predictions, radiometric dating, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence dating, ice core dating, biostratiography, archaeogenetics, biogeography, plate tectonics, geology, chemistry, and physics.

      Yes, I think that given the choice between agreeing with all that evidence, or agreeing with Pepe, I'll choose the evidence. And I'll put Pepe in the same category with people who believe Hogwarts is real, that our government is controlled by aliens, or that disease is caused by imbalances in The Force.

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    7. Kent, you mentioned "benevolent" God.

      How would human history be different if God was indifferent, or even slightly hostile toward humans? Explain to me how the path of human history would differ from what we see today.

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    8. @RickK:

      Now, explain to me what evidence would differentiate these two premises. How would a world governed by premise (1) differ from a world governed by premise (2)?

      A cosmos governed by premise (2) could never produce intelligence or meaning or purpose of any kind. For example, such a universe could never produce an intelligent free agent who could understand a concept like randomness, or communicate that concept to another intelligent free agent, or employ the concept in an argument.

      In any case, what you call premise (2) is in fact (if I understand you correctly) a conclusion based on observations of the universe. And any premises asserting, or any conclusions predicated upon, the randomness, purposelessness, or undirectedness of the universe are logically self-swallowing. To even attempt to assert such a premise, or to reason to such a conclusion, requires one to borrow from premise (1).

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    9. "A cosmos governed by premise (2) could never produce intelligence"

      Why?

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  7. @Anonymous/KW:

    > Christianity really isn’t strictly
    > monotheistic at all is it? Sure,
    > God is on the top of the heap with
    > infinite powers...

    Yes, Christianity is strictly monotheistic. God is truly in a class by Himself. You seem to imply that the "whole host of [other] characters with various god-like supernatural powers or attributes" merely differ from God in degree: they are intelligent, but God is super-intelligent; they are powerful, but God is super-powerful, etc. But that view glosses over profound category differences. One crucial difference is that the other characters are created beings, and are therefore derivative and dependent. But God is original, ultimate, and self-sufficient. God is independent -- in the strongest possible sense of that term.

    God is like no other being. Christianity (and before that, Judaism) has historically recognized Him alone as supreme deity. So yes, Christianity is monotheistic.

    > So today we have the Devil as
    > a sophisticated intellectual
    > elitist. My how apropos when
    > your political agenda depends
    > on mistrust of expertise.

    Speaking for myself, as a Christian, I have no mistrust of expertise, but I do have a healthy skepticism for those who are self-perceived or self-proclaimed experts. And I am particularly cautious of so-called experts whose world views (personal philosophies) are so fundamentally divorced from reality that their patterns of thought and their great intellectual systems (e.g. naturalistic Darwinism) are often confused, incoherent, and irrational.

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    1. "And I am particularly cautious of so-called experts whose world views (personal philosophies) are so fundamentally divorced from reality that their patterns of thought and their great intellectual systems (e.g. naturalistic Darwinism) are often confused, incoherent, and irrational."

      I'll go with the guys who actually have expertise on the subject of naturalistic Darwinsim over you. And they overwhelmingly disagree with your insipid claims.

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    3. “So yes, Christianity is monotheistic.”

      Be that as it may, you still believe there is another extremely powerful free agent supernatural being working at cross purposes to your one true God, and that this lesser non-god has his own worshipers, devotees, and unwitting accomplices. Not a God, a super bogeyman, the ying to God’s yang. It’s all really quite silly.

      -KW

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    4. @Anonymous:

      > I'll go with the guys who actually
      > have expertise on the subject of
      > naturalistic Darwinsim over you.

      Good luck with your experts. Phlogiston and phrenology had their experts too. Even false theories have their expert proponents.

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    5. @Anonymous/KW:

      > It’s all really quite silly.

      You call "silly" the propositions that a Supreme Being exists, and that He has actually created intelligent beings who in some cases work at cross purposes to Him. But you have given me no rationale for your verdict. Why are these propositions silly?

      Do you believe in the existence of good and evil?

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    6. Kent, THANK YOU for bringing up the examples of Phlogiston and phrenology - two examples where the self-correcting, self-questioning nature of science led us away from falsehoods and toward a better understanding of the truth. The truth can only be found through doubt, through questioning, through admission of error and changes in direction - all those things that religion so strongly discourages.

      Take for example your statement that Christianity is monotheistic. Now, a questioning person who really sought truth would clearly find evidence of other gods in the Bible. In the earliest traditions, Yahweh was one among many. Similarly, God debates with a similarly divine being in the Book of Job - actually making a wager with this being. Finally, at our local church today I listened to the reading of the Nicene Creed, where Jesus sits at the right hand of God. There is Jesus, and there is God, and there is Satan, and there are the other gods of the Old Testament. That's not monotheism, that is a divine pantheon.

      But since religion isn't science. To admit mistake in religion opens the door to the idea that gods are mere human inventions - often useful, comforting, important - but still inventions. And that idea is unacceptable.

      As for good and evil - what was perfectly acceptable in the Old Testament is considered great evil today. One would think it a great evil to destroy humanity, but God does it according to your mythology. Mere verses after handing down the commandment "thou shall not kill", God gives the order to kill.

      So you tell me - which of the evils in your Bible aren't really evil?

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    7. Kent, THANK YOU for bringing up the examples of Phlogiston and phrenology - two examples where the self-correcting, self-questioning nature of science led us away from falsehoods and toward a better understanding of the truth. The truth can only be found through doubt, through questioning, through admission of error and changes in direction - all those things that religion so strongly discourages.

      I don't think I've ever read a more compelling case for the religious character of naturalistic Darwinism. In general, especially in its public face, naturalistic Darwinism is not given to critically examining or doubting its basic tenets; it does not like to question itself; and it seems to have an unhealthy reluctance to admit even the possibility that some correction (let alone fundamental correction) might be required.

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    8. @RickK:

      The truth can only be found through doubt, through questioning, through admission of error and changes in direction - all those things that religion so strongly discourages.

      Truth can also be lost through doubt.

      I deny that Christianity, rightly understood, discourages healthy questioning or doubt. It does teach that there is such a thing as unhealthy questioning and doubt. And it unequivocally condemns any refusal to admit error.

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    9. "Good luck with your experts. Phlogiston and phrenology had their experts too. Even false theories have their expert proponents."

      Yes they did. And the theories were overturned by scientists doing actual science. Thus far, none of you anti-evolution chuckleheads have even posed the tiniest worthwhile challenge to what you call "naturalistic Darwinism".

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    10. @RickK:

      The truth can only be found through doubt, through questioning, through admission of error and changes in direction - all those things that religion so strongly discourages.

      Truth can also be acquired by accepting the word (communication, revelation) of another person -- provided that person is reliable.

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    11. @Anonymous:

      You're missing the point. I find your reliance on the experts to be oddly (but all too characteristically, for Darwinists) uncritical. You seem to be saying, "I'm right, because the experts say so." That may be a compelling argument for you, but it's not for me.

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    12. You;re missing the point. You're saying that thousands of people studying the field for the last century or more are all wrong, and you, a chucklehead with no real training in the subject, are correct. I'm saying that you are unpersuasive. If you had an argument worth making, you'd be making it in a peer reviewed journal, and having your ideas examined critically by people who are experts in the field.

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  8. Kent said: "In general, especially in its public face, naturalistic Darwinism is not given to critically examining or doubting its basic tenets;"

    Complete and utter falsehood, Kent. Science reserves its highest honors for those who overturn the current orthodoxy. But, they have to PROVE it with unshakeable evidence. The scientist that can overturn evolutionary theory will (1) have billions of Christian and Muslim dollars at his/her disposal, and (2) outshine Newton in greatness.

    But, it's a high hurdle, and your ID/Creationism simply can't muster the evidence to clear the hurdle.

    Allow me to offer an analogy: I cannot play in the Superbowl. I'm old, out of shape, and too damned small. I freely admit I can't make the cut. But if I apply the logic you're using, then I can sit back and whine: "The reason I'm not in the Superbowl is because the NFL discriminates against me. Wahhhh!!!"

    Grow up, get some worthy evidence of divine intervention in ANYTHING, and then you can play in the evolution game.

    What DO you believe, anyway, Kent? Young Earth fairy tales? Intelligent Design (God lets the legs of horses and the eyes of eagles evolve naturally, but gets personally involved in bacterial flagella), or some other form of supernatural intervention in the workings of nature?

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    1. @RickK:

      Science reserves its highest honors for those who overturn the current orthodoxy. But, they have to PROVE it with unshakeable evidence.

      What is science, in your opinion? (I'm not being facetious; I'm quite serious.) What are its fundamental operating assumptions and/or principles? Can science only proceed on the assumption that the observable universe is all there is? (I.e. on the assumption that there is no supernatural realm of any consequence to the material world?)

      Are science's basic assumptions part of its current orthodoxy, or not? Or do they transcend its current orthodoxy, so that they remain fixed and constant as the state of scientific knowledge changes -- e.g. when paradigm shifts occur?

      Over time, scientists’ stakes in evolution have become increasingly high. After all, Darwin is purported to have made it possible to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist. It seems to me that a large and prominent portion of the scientific community has a powerful vested interest in maintaining the current (naturalistic) orthodoxy.

      Your Super Bowl analogy is humorous, but hardly apropos. If you think I have any pretensions of being, or any expectations of becoming, a “heavy hitter” in the scientific arena, you are quite mistaken. But I am an interested spectator, with (reasonable, I believe) expectations that science, which claims to hold the high ground as a reality-based enterprise, can give a coherent, logical account of itself in general, and of evolutionary science in particular.

      You said: Grow up, get some worthy evidence of divine intervention in ANYTHING, and then you can play in the evolution game.

      One quite obvious example of God’s intervention is the existence of intelligent free agents who are capable of carrying out the scientific enterprise. And, of course, the universe itself. The psalmist was right: “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

      What would you consider worthy evidence of divine intervention? Just curious.

      What DO you believe, anyway, Kent?

      I will answer your question, not because I think it relevant to the discussion at hand, but to give you some idea where I’m coming from. (Strictly speaking, in the context of this particular discussion, your perception of the credibility of my beliefs is irrelevant. Your beliefs must stand or fall on their own merits.)

      I believe that the universe owes its existence solely to God, who pre-existed it and created it ex nihilo. The universe is secondary and derivative; God is primary and ultimate.

      I believe that God has revealed Himself to us verbally in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

      I believe in the general integrity of mankind’s ability to observe (i.e. perceive by the senses), reason, and communicate. (The latter two imply an antecedent ability to choose, which further implies the existence of human will – a will with at least some measure of freedom.) I acknowledge these abilities are far from perfect, having been marred (from a Christian perspective) by the fall.

      I do not believe that God’s testimony in creation (i.e. what He reveals to us in the physical world) ever contradicts what He reveals in Scripture; hence, when it is possible to harmonize the two without doing violence to either, then we should harmonize. I acknowledge that there are some things difficult to harmonize, and am content, pending further investigation, to withhold judgment – not because I believe that God can ever be mistaken, or proven wrong, but because my own grasp of nature and Scripture is finite and fallible. I believe that God will ultimately be vindicated in all things.

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  9. Kent said: "Truth can also be acquired by accepting the word (communication, revelation) of another person -- provided that person is reliable"

    How does one become reliable? By being demonstrably right. By supporting their assertions with evidence. By making predictions that are accurate. That's how science works.

    The creationist/ID community crumples like a wet tissue every time they enter an evidence-based court. The failure is so spectacular as to be sad. Look at the Dover trial, with presentations so completely awful that the judge pointed out the documented lies in his opinion.

    Evolutionary theory is supported by multiple lines of confirming evidence found in patterns of morphology, co-evolved relationships, convergent evolution, observed speciation, Lenski experiments, shared DNA, inherited ERV markers, molecular biology, vestigial traits, atavisms, genetic mutation, embryology, the fossil record, paleontology, archaeology, transitional species predictions, radiometric dating, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence dating, ice core dating, biostratiography, archaeogenetics, biogeography, plate tectonics, geology, chemistry, and physics.

    Offer a theory that fits all that evidence BETTER than evolutionary theory, and you can play the game. Until then, be happy with the hotdog and the seat in the stands, and watch the continuing play by play as humanity learns more about the NATURAL world in which we live.

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    1. I have no quarrel with evolutionary biology, if it is taken to mean the study of changes in populations over time. It's good science.

      My problem is with the assertion that natural selection "explains" anything, and with the idiot atheist inferences that atheists try to draw out of it.

      Everything in evolutionary biology is consistent with God's existence and His agency.

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    2. @RickK:

      The creationist/ID community crumples like a wet tissue every time they enter an evidence-based court. The failure is so spectacular as to be sad. Look at the Dover trial, with presentations so completely awful that the judge pointed out the documented lies in his opinion.

      The sad failure was on Judge Jones' part. If you wish to bring the good judge forward as an expert witness for naturalistic macroevolution, feel free. But much of the scientific basis for his opinion owes itself not to his special acuity in matters scientific, but to the ACLU. The ruling makes clear that both the ACLU and Judge Jones have feeble and flawed grasps of the facts.

      Michael Behe summarizes his response to Judge Jones' Dover decision) as follows:

      The Court’s reasoning...is [in part] premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; an incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID. The Court has accepted the most tendentious and shopworn excuses for Darwinism with great charity and impatiently dismissed evidence-based arguments for design.

      All of that is regrettable, but in the end does not impact the realities of biology, which are not amenable to adjudication. On the day after the judge’s opinion, December 21, 2005, as before, the cell is run by amazingly complex, functional machinery that in any other context would immediately be recognized as designed. On December 21, 2005, as before, there are no non-design explanations for the molecular machinery of life, only wishful speculations and Just-So stories.


      Well said, Dr. Behe.

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    3. @RickK:

      Evolutionary theory is supported by multiple lines of confirming evidence found in patterns of morphology, co-evolved relationships, convergent evolution, observed speciation, Lenski experiments, shared DNA, inherited ERV markers, molecular biology, vestigial traits, atavisms, genetic mutation, embryology, the fossil record, paleontology, archaeology, transitional species predictions, radiometric dating, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence dating, ice core dating, biostratiography, archaeogenetics, biogeography, plate tectonics, geology, chemistry, and physics.

      And these lines of evidence are inconsistent with design how, exactly?

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    4. @RickK:

      Offer a theory that fits all that evidence BETTER than evolutionary theory, and you can play the game.

      I see. So naturalistic macroevolution is, in principle, falsifiable only in the presence of a better theory? This ("we have a better theory now") seems to be a rather odd criterion for falsifiability. (It is a reasonable criterion for scientific usefulness, of course.) The only tools available to science for self-correction are better theories? I don’t think so.

      Setting aside the “better theory” criterion of falsifiability, the probabilistic challenges still remain. Given our current state of knowledge, and based upon empirical observation, the probability that chemical and biological evolution occurred apart from prior intelligence is vanishingly small. At what point do the statistical challenges begin to seriously discredit the theory?

      Until [a better theory comes along to supplant naturalistic macroevolution], be happy with the hotdog and the seat in the stands, and watch the continuing play by play as humanity learns more about the NATURAL world in which we live.

      During my occasional visits to naturalistic science's little stadium, I will be momentarily content with my meager hotdog, knowing that no better fare is available there. Granted, the game is sometimes exciting to watch, with many “what’s” displayed on-field. But the play-by-play commentary is disappointing, with so few ultimate “why’s” satisfactorily answered. When I tire (as I inevitably do) of both the culinary and explanatory offerings of your stadium, I can resort to a more expansive and generous stadium, where steak and potatoes are served, and the game is far more interesting, and explanations are truly satisfying.

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