Tuesday

                           Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“No problem is a so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.”

Charles Schultz

Trivia question of the day:

In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte ordered and received a beautiful white Arabian stallion born and raised in Egypt. It was 6 years old when he received it. What did Napoleon name this horse? Answer at the end of the blog.

                 This Date in History February 5

1777 On this date the legislature of the state of Georgia abolished the procedure of “primogeniture and entile”. This procedure allowed that the eldest son always got the largest share of his father’s estate. The procedure of entile meant that the eldest son got the majority of the landed estate. This was changed to in the absence of a will; the estate of the father would be distributed equally among the children, men or women. The strange part was that the wife got the same share as the children. It wasn’t perfect but it went a long was toward equality.

1631 A young hell-raiser arrives in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is Roger Williams, a teacher and minister. This colorful guy begins traveling around to the different cities like Plymouth and Salem and began preaching that the civil authorities had no right to administrate religious behavior and not only that the civil authorities had no right to take Indian lands without offering recompense. Well, the local people in the Colony could not stand that kind of criticism and kicked Roger out of the Colony. Roger took a large number or Narragansett Indians and moved over and settles in another section not far away and named it Providence. That’s right if was the birth of the state of Rhode Island. Roger invited those that were unhappy with the civil government administrating an individuals religion and any and all religious sects are welcome, even the Jews and Indians

1865 Union General U.S. Grant orders General David Gregg to go try and break the Confederate lines near Dabney Mill during the siege of Petersburg during the Civil War. Upon arrival, Gregg attacks a dug in and ready Confederates with little or no effect. The next day the battle began anew but the Union added US General Gouverneur Warren and his brigade to the battle. It did not help either because the Confederates just moved to face the attacks and beat the living crap out of both regiments so those Yankees withdrew and went back to the house. The total was 1,000 Confederate casualties to 3,400 for the Union. But no matter, the war was over in April anyway,

1885 On this date the Southern Pacific Railroad completes its tracks on its so called “Sunset Route” This line ran from New Orleans to California. Earlier The Central Pacific had been completed when the tracks coming from California met the tracks coming west from the Great Plains met at Promontory Point, Utah. There were four men that owned the railroads in America at the time and they were Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins. It was Huntington that owned the Sunset Route. He knew he had to hurry to finish the route because the Texas Pacific Railroad was making good progress westbound. Using his superior finances, Huntington was able to tie in with the Santa Fe Railroad on this date first making the Sunset Route a reality.

                                                    Religion

I recently had a rather heated conversation with a person about the existence of God. This person did not believe there is a God and presented a formidable case trying to base it on logic and I did the same thing arguing that there was a God. As you might suspect, we came to an impasse because either side required a leap of faith meaning that a person believes in something that cannot be proven. This person also mentioned some of our founding fathers as being atheist. One of them is one of my heroes and I did some research on him and here are some of his quotes. Guess who it is.

“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.”

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.”

“They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.”

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

“The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

“If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.”

Some of his thoughts lead one to believe that he is an atheist but the fifth paragraph says that he is not. Not only that, he authored a very famous document that contains the phrase “...nature and nature’s God entitle them”. The document is of course the Declaration of Independence and he is one of the most brilliant men this country has ever produced in Thomas Jefferson. From my research I and others believe that he believed in a Creator but not organized religion. That leads the question: Can a person believe in a Creator and not be a Christian (follower of Jesus Christ)? Of course the answer is yes. The Jews, Hindus and dare I say, the Muslims among many other faiths prove it. I believe that it is up to each individual to choose what path to follow and no other individual can say what the right path is and what the wrong because they all require a leap of faith. Logic and Faith cannot co-exist in the same arena. They are fruits of two different trees.

Answer to the trivia question:

Napoleon named his horse Marengo after the battle of Marengo. This horse bravely carried Napoleon through a maelstrom of rifle and cannon fire without hesitation.

                Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow