“When people found out I was a brain surgeon they would always assume I was some kind of a genius,” said Harland Dorrinson, a neurosurgeon in Toledo, Ohio. “Now they are beginning to understand that you can know a lot about brain surgery and virtually nothing about anything else.”
It's stronger than that, you know. It's not that you can know a lot about brain surgery and not much about anything else. It's that you virtually have to know a lot about brain surgery and not much about anything else if you're going to be the guy who is very good at brain surgery. Dr. Carson was amazing as a brain surgeon. His profound intellect was focused like a laser for very many years.
A strong intellect can expand, once the area of focus is left behind. In time he could come to know many things, and be good at many things. He once showed a profound capacity to recognize the areas in which he was weak and needed help. I think only good things about the man. He still has tremendous potential.
Nor do I have much respect for the people who mock him, having none of his achievements nor anything to match them. People mock him for having a taxation plan based on tithing. If these clever guys took time to understand him, they'd see that the thing he says makes sense in his context. I don't doubt that he really does tithe. He's happy with what the church does with the money he gives it. He believes in God, so when he asks why the State needs more than God does, it's not rhetorical. Of course, there's an answer: God can work miracles with his money.
What's going on with people who raise this criticism, though, is worth understanding. It's not that they are simpletons because they believe in God. It's that they willingly give ten percent of what they make to the Lord through their church, and they are pretty happy with what the church does with that money in their community. They unwillingly give much more than ten percent to the State, and what comes of that money? The voluntary given in a way directed at a vision of the divine seems to do good things in their community. The vast sums sent to a distant and alien authority seem to return nothing good.
It's a sophisticated critique generally made by people who aren't always obviously sophisticated. Those who are too clever to grasp it aren't helping themselves. You know what Hank Williams said about putting down what you don't understand -- don't you? If you hang around here, you probably do. You probably even know which Hank Williams it was.
But if you don't, we won't mock you here in the Hall. Maybe you just studied something else. It was Hank Williams, Jr.
He was not just a surgeon, either. Per Wikipedia, he was "the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital," and "at 33, he became the youngest major division director in the hospital's history as director of pediatric neurosurgery. He was also a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Craniofacial Center."
ReplyDeleteSo besides being an eminent surgeon, he had to have mastered, at some impressive level, business administration and management. He had to have read and understood financial reports, and to have promoted initiatives and innovation in his staff to keep JH ahead of its peers.
I have no idea whether he'd make a good president or not, but those who belittle him or criticize him for his seeming unflappable demeanor and calm and measured speech, really more reflect poorly on themselves than Dr. Carson. I think part of it may be that these critics really don't know what to do with someone who, as with Romney, has a sincere & unshakable belief in God. It's outside their realm of experience....
They unwillingly give much more than ten percent to the State, and what comes of that money?
ReplyDeleteDemoncrat controlled Planned Profit uses that money to start human farms where they get women pregnant, abort the children for cash, and then sell the organs of live birth children to the bio medicine start ups.
That's what comes of their money.
And for any Democrat to think they aren't complicit in Demoncrat fund raising for their war chest, is a rather large glaring blindspot there. The Southerners started KKKing people for far less than that. People in the US still hold a flame of emotion for Lincoln and Sherman, who is long dead, yet they are naive enough to think the rest of us will ignore their human atrocities committed in the present time and dime.
Not everyone has forgotten what the feud and the vengeance really means. People might want to remember that one before it hits the fan.
...these critics really don't know what to do with someone who, as with Romney, has a sincere & unshakable belief in God.
ReplyDeleteFor a long time -- since Marx and Neitzsche -- the 'clever' position has been that religion is for suckers. I think a lot of 'clever' people feel that way. It happens that the smartest people I've ever known have universally been believers. They weren't all churchgoers, but they all believed deep in their hearts. Some were Christians, some were Jews, but all of them were without doubts about the existence of God. Many had deep and profound questions about his nature, or about theology, but that God just was in the final analysis there was something they all believed.