Start with Plain Talk

Asheville has had three large-scale shootings in rapid succession, and it's probably not going to get better because the police chief won't even speak the plain facts about the matter. Asked if this was 'gang violence,' she said: 

"This is a group of individuals who know one another... these are groups, again, that are committing acts of violence against one another.... I would say these are two groups of individuals... there are ties to them knowing each other and committing ongoing retaliatory acts against each other." 

Two dead, seven injured, no arrests in that particular shooting. Police say they have identified 'persons of interest,' but won't say who they are. 

They do at least have a suspect in another recent shooting, one Elijah William Poore. Asheville police are asking for help from the community in locating him, but have released no physical description that might help people identify him. Height, weight, hair color, eye color, nothing distinguishing. He's supposed to be eighteen years old, which is all they will say about him other than that he's wanted for the shooting.

On the other hand they had a LOT to say about the firearm used. The mayor herself came out to talk about that alongside the police chief. While apparently it must be politically incorrect to accurately characterize the criminals, the gun was a Glock fitted out with one of those illegal 'switch' sear devices that lets you fire it automatically. Those are on the approved list of political targets, so that was something they couldn't say enough about. Apparently the gun is the guilty party, or something like that.

A Catholic Question

Dad29 is asking about whether exorcists should be featured prominently; he thinks so. In addition to his argument, there's another angle on the question that this survey brings forward:

This 'all religions are mostly after the same basic truth' idea is one that G.K. Chesterton wrote about extensively. For example:

There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach.... They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.

Even if one were not a believer, I think that one could usefully divide religions agnostically into 'ones that might be true' and 'ones that are definitely false.'  Even once you do that, though, eliminating the obvious falsehoods like (say) Mormonism, you're still left with a great deal of difference in what the teaching is. Christianity and Buddhism are two of the more defensible religions, and as Chesterton explored at length they have very different basic claims about reality and what a good soul should desire and strive to obtain -- so different, indeed, as to be 'eternal life united with God' versus 'an end to suffering through extinction'! 

There is no way that both of those claims can be true. Both could be false, but they simply cannot both be true. Likewise Christianity versus Hinduism: is life fundamentally meaningful or meaningless? Is the soul real and loved, or is it just a passing dream that will be forgotten when the Great God awakens? 

Exorcise that, if you can. 

Honky Tonk Sunday

I guess my memory is better than that.