Subtle tricks.

Arsinoe was Cleopatra's younger sister, so history tells us. And Arsinoe was killed on big sister's orders, because she might have been a rival for the Egyptian throne. The same source describes how the boys in Cleopatra's family were disposed of, also. How vile and evil! If you asked most people what they know about Queen Cleopatra, they would probably say she was famous for her beauty and her tragic death after her lover died, not that she was a power-seeking murderer.
We know families don't always get on well, but fratricide is another thing. As we agreed, discussing it after, the society of Ancient Egypt included some dark and evil places.
It's the same elsewhere. The Ancient Greeks, of the Hellenic Age, had a very advanced civilization in the material sense. They learned and deduced some things about the world and our solar system which were later forgotten and had to be rediscovered hundreds of years later. Vert commendable.
They could also be grossly indulgent and entertain some perversions. Several times I've been told that Hellenic men took boys as 'lovers'. That's not homosexuality so much as pederasty, or paedophilia.
The Romans indulged in debauched evil, too. Burning people alive in the Colluseum, or having them set upon by wild animals, was a specator sport for the public at the time.
Yet we were taught at school that these societies were marvellous and admirable. History books and scholars talk about 'the wonder that was Ancient Rome' and 'the Golden Age of Greece', overlooking the Greek practice of keeping slaves. Egypt too is described as a place full of wonders, like the pyramids and Tutenkhamen's tomb.
A young learner could get the impression that the past was a breathtaking place, and it's only the present that is disappointing. And it is a subtle trick, to delude us about human nature and the state of the world. It pretends that human beings are much more admirable and upright than we actually are. I say 'we' because I'm not some exception.
Secular teaching of history therefore conceals an important truth, that a human must know to hear the call of God. Human history does NOT only show us what marvels we have achieved as a race, but also what depths of corruption we have often sunk to.
Teaching history the way we do can be mischieviously misused. Communists teach history to try and sell their ideology, by claiming everything before Karl Marx was bad. And secularists can use history to try and fool us that we don't need God.
This was what George Orwell meant when he said, whoever controls the past controls the present. Tell people that the past was what you want them to believe it was, and you can manipulate them into believing certain things about the present.
The concept of the 'noble savage' comes in here too. The idea was that at some time in the past, a human society existed which was perfectly harmonious and free from evil. If we can get back to it we can re enter the golden age of peace. That idea also tries to show that human creatures can be perfect if put in the right environment - and thus pretends that we are better than we are in fact, when you look at what actually happens.
I can see why the Christian schools movement has grown. There is a need to present knowledge and learing in a clear way, without attempting to idealize it. And Christian truth will show that, but not secularism. Secularism tries to pretend we are better than we are, and deny the need of a Messiah to save us.
I wonder where it will end?

The worship of youth is the fear of truth.

"Where do you go to, Beloved Son,
With your heart harshly troubled, my noble young one?"
"I must go to the world and bequeath hope and warning,
To tell fractured hearts that a new age is dawning,
There's hope, healing and fire, vile sin and great ire,
And a fearful judgement to come."
(Copyright Andrew Clarke)

Yesterday, reading a historical article in the newspaper, I read about Elizabeth Bathory. It's a problem that she had the same given name as my closest companion, my wife, because she has an evil history. Elizabeth Bathory was one of the people on whom the vampire legends are based, along with Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula.
She was a princess in what is now Hungary, born in 1560 and being bricked up alive in a room in 1610. She had killed hundreds of young women, drunk their blood and bathed in it because she hoped it would preserve her own youth and beauty (Beauty? Physical only, by the sound of it!) Once it was discovered what she was up to, her accomplices were put to death but because she was an aristocrat she could not be. So they imprisoned her until she died, instead.
Some reports had it that she was descended from Vlad Dracula, the Impaler, who must be among the vilest and grossest human demon who ever blotted this planet God made.
The underlying thing is trying to cheat death. It's been going on forever. People want to avoid aging, and dying. Youth is made into an ideal state, to be worshipped, idealized and imitated in later life even if it can't be made to last into later life. Well, being human, I don't want to look or feel too old, admittedly. Who does? We want to stay fit, and active, and (I'll be honest) still a bit attractive to look at, for as long as possible. But past a certain point it just becomes an obsession, with results that can be either ridiculous or straight out evil. Some people have multiple face lifts and other surgery, trying to look twenty five when they're nearer fifty five, and can start to look like something Dr Frankenstein did on a bad hair day.
Or it can become a murderous obsession, like Princess Bathory, above.
People want to stay young, partly, because they are vain, or afraid that they will be left out of a society that idolizes youth. In doing that, they are being shallow. All life is part of the human continuum, and all of it is meant to be. I was glad to be young when I was, but now I'm fifty seven I can cope with being fifty seven. In fact, I have no choice, unless it becomes absurd self-deception.
People want to cheat death because they are afraid of what comes next. If there is nothing, then once they die they've got nothing left. If there is something, then what is it, they wonder.
They could find out, if they want to believe God's revelations. But that would require them to be humble, and humility does not come easily to people.
God's Word tells us, we WILL die. But that death is only of the body. And if what comes after is better, then clinging to life at all costs is not only futile but it can be self-destructive. You can cling to life and find out it is not only a fragile straw, but a spiky one that can let you down and pierce you. I wrote once before about people who knowingly laid down their lives because they felt they should die themselves rather than see others killed. They would rather die in good conscience than live in bad conscience. It's easier to talk about than to do, but that is how it is. It really IS better to die in good faith than live in bad. I hope I die painlessly in my sleep at a good age, but if I have to, I pray I can die in good faith rather than live in bad. God help me.
So there is the stupidity and pointlessness of thinking, this life is all there is. You can cling to what you will lose anyway, and behave badly towards others in order to cling to it, and find out it's just a sack of dust. But if you remember the soul, not just the body, then you know your existence does not end when your physical form stops breathing. You know that conscious life goes on. Then it matters where that life will be lived.
I'm very thankful the Lord found and called me. I'm very thankful the Lord found and called my wife and our five children. I can never stop thanking Him for that. Without that, I might be madly trying to preserve youth and life and making a complete fool or villain of myself.
Come again, Lord Jesus

A little learning...

We know how the proverb goes: a little learning is a dangerous thing. That statement needs to be qualified. Learning is a very valuable thing. The difficulty arises when someone who learns a certain amount starts to think they know more than they do. (This includes me, I realize). What can be sad is when someone who learns a certain amount gets to think that they no longer need to show respect for what they once did.
It seems that the human race having learnt much about life and the world, and how to make it safer for them, has lost respect for the Creator. Having found technical understanding of things that once mystified and terrified them, they now think they can set themselves up as the masters of the universe. The analogy might be something like this: you learn to fly when the conditions are good, think you can fly safely at all times and then when you find yourself up in the air during a storm suddenly the shock realization comes that you knew less than you realized.
It gets more complicated than that. A doctor once told me something not everyone realizes. Back in the 1940s, human scientists discovered the use of antibiotics. They're a gift from God. Millions of people are alive today who could not have been without antibiotic cures for diseases. So far, great. The side effect wast this: when those medicines were developed, they greatly reduced the number of bacteria that existed in other life forms - and made room for virus to move into the cleared space. In the way that secondary growth moves when a forest is cleared, viruses moved in when bacteria were reduced in numbers. So now we have illnesses caused by viruses which did not attack so frequently when bacteria tended to stop viruses from being able to occupy a living host. Not that anyone should be blamed for that. What does deserve some reproach is this. Before they realized that, people began to think that they were safe doing things that were once dangerous. Instead of appreciating the blessing, people took the view that they could get away with things they once could not. Indulgent sexual behaviour was supposed to be safe because a cure was available for the diseases it sometimes spread. Then resistant strains began to appear, and we weren't so clever after all. It is too easy to think that science has the answer to everything. It can lead to disaster, thinking we can do whatever we want now that ways have been found to get away with it. In the environment, instead of treating the land and water with care, people exploit them and expect some expert to repair the damage afterwards.
From a slightly different angle, a secular society began to think human intelligence could achieve things that it never has before. A secular society tries to do with secular means what is only possible by spiritual means. My angle on this is education. Schools in Australia, and elsewhere also, are called on to 'process' the students in a certain way and shape them into good citizens, (whatever that means) and something their parents are pleased with (whatever that is supposed to be!). And here is the problem. A secular education can NOT transform and inspire a person in the way that only something spiritual can do.
From a Christian angle, I believe that the Holy Spirit is needed to lift a human above the limits of their fallible human nature. Nothing merely human can do that. In much of the world people demand that teachers take on the responsibility of influencing kids to become what they are supposed to be. They try to devise educational programmes and stragegies to make people brilliant, make them creative, change bad attitudes and behaviour issues - and find it all turns to ashes because nothing merely of this world can do what only things of the Spirit can do. It is a huge folly! Because we've found out so much about how to control the world and alter things for our own use, some people now think we can make ourselves a race of perfect citizens if we apply that knowledge through educational philosophies. They keep thinking this despite seeing some people who went to the 'best' (most expensive?) schools still becoming criminals or drop-outs with issues they're struggling with. Then the bitter complaint is made that 'schools are failing our children'. Schools and teachers should not have been expected to turn out some sort of a perfect product without the parents having to take on their responsibility; and what matter far more is, merely intellectual things should not be expected to achieve what only things of the spirit can.
Secular educationist want schools to evangelize and edify students, but in a secular way. They will not admit or cannot see that their is a spiritual part of a human which needs a spiritual approach. Human nature has become highly corrupted and unreliable. Humans need their second birth, in the Spirit, to become the best they can. That is why we need God. When agnostic or atheist thinkers try to re-invent people by other means, it is like trying to make a glider do what only a powered machine can. This was where the Leninists failed with their attempt to make the 'New Soviet Man'. They claimed that their society and its education would shape people into something better than greedy self-seekers, using Marx's writings as its inspiration. It failed - badly. To a lesser extent though the same thing happens in the West. A secular body of knowledge that does not include God tries to make people into something inspired and alive. It may achieve something in the short term. But ultimately the best that humans can do is like a robot compared to a living person. There is some similarity in appearance and behaviour, but no way can a robot do what a living breathing human can. Human brilliance cannot match the work of God. It is a modern tragedy that so many people have tried to replace God with the things of this world, and find it simply crashes and burns when the conditions become too severe.

Alchemists

In the Australian state of Victoria, it was announced that instruction in atheism will be run alongside the usual religious instruction, or 'school Scripture'. One letter writer to the national press promptly applauded it as a good idea and made the usual comments about all the harm done by organized religion. They referred to the Crusades of the Middle Ages, and other cliched examples.
Another writer replied that just as much or more harm had been done by attempts to run society on atheist lines. They referred to Communist societies, such as what was called "The Peoples Republic Of China"; and the Soviet Union. The blood shed by those regimes in attempting to subdue their populations is at least as horrific as any thing that can be attributed to 'organized religion'. Of course it is worth pointing out that just because a person or faction call themselves Christian does not make them so. "By their deeds you will know them" needs to be kept in mind. But if someone believes that a human community is better run by an atheist philosophy, could they please explain why the attempts to do so ended up in such appalling disaster?
Karl Marx called spiritual faith 'the opiate of the masses'. He admitted, tacitly, that hope of something beyond this earthly life caused people to endure suffering. It was his view that instead those people should struggle to change them. He needed to be told that Christian reformers have been involved in humanitarian reforms and campaigning for centuries. And his idea, of running a society on the idea that 'there is no God' led to the monstrosity that we remember by the deeds of Stalin, the writings of Solzhenytzen, the millions of deaths in prison camps or at the hands of the secret police. More recently the deeds of Mao Tse-tung have been held up to the light, and found to be less ideal than his supporters claimed. China too suffered under a dictatorship in which a mere human tried to take the place of God, and get people to put their faith in humans and their notions.
The alchemists of times past believed that you could turn some elements into others. They spent hundreds of hours trying to turn lead or iron into gold. We now believe that to be impossible. They might as well have tried fishing in a bucket of water. You could try that for centuries and not catch a thing. If this seems like an odd change of subject, here is what I'm trying to say: human beings cannot be made into anything resembling God. They do not have the wisdom, the incorruptible nature and the power. Yet an atheist society tries to put mere human beings in that place, the role of God, as the entire source of authority and guidance in running the world. It really is a form of alchemy - trying to turn something into something else that it never can be. And the results are pure horror.
The course in atheism mentioned above will apparently try to teach people this: there is no evidence for the existence of God. It would be one incredible irony if that backfired! People who had never thought about it before might look at the world and see very good evidence for the existence of God, in the things not made by humans; and good evidence for human sin in the harm done by human beings. But that remains to be seen. The issue is that from one generation to the next the same mistakes get made, and the same bitter outcomes arise.
In the distant past, humans became carried away with their own greatness, built the Tower of Babel and suddenly found themselves all divided. That was only the first attempt by homosapiens to make themselves the greatest thing in the Universe. And it was not the biggest disaster of the lot, either.
If the chief end of Humanity is 'to worship God and enjoy Him always', the most idiotic mistake possible is to try leaving God out of it and enjoy our own achievements. Even if someone does not believe that quote above from the Westminster Confession, can anyone show that human beings have managed to run anything without corruption or blunders when they leave it all to themselves?
God will be known in the same way that gravity causes things to fall downwards. It is inevitable. So here's praying that the bad idea above will be turned against its designers.

What matters?

Did you ever see something like this? Someone who is supposed to come from an under privileged home, but they wear a Stussy cap and other brand name clothes. I can remember seeing that going on. Of course, sometimes it looked as if the brand name shirt was the only bit of clothing they had. It looked as if they slept in it! So instead of a number of clothes, cheaper to buy but not 'cool', they own one item of status gear and nothing else! Something strange is going on here. I know there are people who are hard up, there really is such a thing as poverty. The concern is that people might be compounding the problem because they get hung up on silly ideas about how to spend what they do have. It comes to a question of, what really matters?
Do some people get so caught up on image that they try to get their hands on a few things that are fashionable and supposedly give them status, and go without more important things?
In other words, what are they trying to live for? It could be really cruel if they get made slaves to the idea that without certain accessories, they deserve no respect.
When I was teaching, you never stopped hearing about what terrible problems some kids were supposed to have. Then a woman who had worked overseas, in a rural area where some kids hardly had enough to eat, said that kids in the Western world didn't know when they were well off. Some peoples' idea of poverty is not having cable T.V. It's true, life can be made too easy and people can become indulged, and jaded, like the proverbial spoilt kid crying for the moon. Whatever they have, they still want more. But then: when someone is surrounded by material things, and everybody boasts about what they've got, then having possessions can seem to be the meaning of life. Did we give people reason to think that wealth and trophies are what give them worth, and if they don't have them then life is not fair to them? If it works that way, then the message is: to have any self-respect they've got to have things, and show that they have them. That is the only way to get a life!
This is not original, I know. Thousands of people talk about 'the meaning of life'. But it's a continuing problem, like crimes of violence. So we don't have much choice but to keep thinking about it. What do people live for? Is it just to keep up with the 'trendies', the 'cool group', the smart set or whatever you want to call them? If that's how it is working, then people who fall for it are trapped on a treadmill that won't get them anywhere - because there will always be someone who has more, and it will torment them to know they haven't made it until they've got the same. Deadly!
So how can that be changed? Once again, this is not original. As the Scripture says, "What benefit is it to gain the whole world, and lose your soul?" The human being needs something to live for apart from the material world and its trappings. If that's all they can see, then like the horizon, what they want will always be out of reach. Don't worry, I know we need some material things. I love to eat, and more importantly, my children have to eat so I'd better make sure the food is there. The same goes for their clothes, and more besides. But life is more than that. It has to be! And realizing that is important. Failing to realize that can happen when people try to leave things of the spirit, the factor of God, out of the equation when they try adding up the sum of life. I can't tell everybody else how to live. They have the same right to their views as I have to mine. But is it right or not that, figuratively speaking, "Humanity does not live by bread alone." The body is not all. The spirit too has needs. Is the modern western world seeing that and telling its children in time?
Any thoughts and comments? I'm still learning.

Experience and Innocence

Condescension can be a seriously annoying; and it can be a hindrance to things. Think about what is called 'the generation gap'.Older people get condescended to for being set in their ways, and younger ones get cricisised for not knowing anything. It might be that older people might at least do what they do quite well, because they know it thoroughly. Also it might be that younger ones might come up with some better new ideas because they're less in the habit of doing things in a set way. It is a constant problem.
Some older people condescend to younger ones when they claim to be sticking up for them and their rights. They can be too quick to make excuses for them, or not listen to them, rather than give them credit for knowing what they may well know. It may be kindly meant in some cases. Also it's not right to be too hard on people. And it's not fair or reasonable to expect a 12 year old to know what an adult should know. But it can also be insulting to say that someone 'doesn't know any better' when they do. That can apply to a sense of right and wrong. It can also apply ideas about life and improving the world.
That being said, younger people can also be condescending to older ones. A 60 something man once complained, "I've been through two bankruptcies, a war and a divorce, and my grandson says 'You don't know what life's about!'"
So what can we make of that? Well, the grandson has the sort of things on his mind that you would do at age 12, or 14, whether male or female. I won't try giving too many examples. It's a while since I was that age. A fourteen year old would have a better idea. The point is you can see why the grandson figures life is not about the sort of things that a sixty-year old thinks of. But then, the 60 year old has got past some of the things that the 14 year old is still dealing with. So in a sense neither is wrong. They're at different places. To be fair to the older person, they've had to deal with things their grandchild has not had to deal with yet. But to be fair to the grandchild, they're still having to deal with things that no longer bother the older person. The whole world can't be 60 all at once, and it can't be 14 all at the same time. It needs both. The problem is they don't always realize it.
I read and assessed this assignment once done by Year 12 students, which was to write their autobiographies. Aged about 17 or 18 they set out the history of their live so far. Truly, instead of being a slog that had to be got through it was fascinating. When we gave them back I said, and meant, that it was really good to see the open-hearted way they wrote about things. I wrote my own as well, to demonstrate how to do it; and mine was more edited and guarded, because I was way older than 17; and I'd have to admit, it showed. They were better at thinking 'out of the square' as the saying goes. I was better at putting things in a neat and considered way; but theirs made a more original read.
Some of those younger students had clear cut ideas about right and wrong which could be called 'naive'. But those ideas are also uncomplicated. So if the younger thinker reckons that things are clear cut, the older thinker can make the mistake of complicating the issue because they want to see it a certain way. I've caught myself doing that. It can happen that you overlook certain angles before you learn to see things in greater depth. It can also happen that people become cynical and give up certain principles because it's easier that way. Two mistakes, both of them serious.
I said this before, without repeating myself too much; younger minds can be more wide-ranging and able to look at things as new. So they might see an angle that's been overlooked before. The down side is, that their focus can be short lived, and they may not see a thing through as well as someone older who has decided what things they are interested in, or committed too. It can be a mistake for either to trash the other.
Consider this. Leonardo da Vinci worked out a design for helicopter-type machine back in the 1400s. At the time, it could not be made to work because there was no adequate way to power it. But 500 years later the idea DID work, and very well too! When young Leonardo came up with his idea, did some people think he was a fruit loop full of air-headed ideas that could not work? Possibly, I don't know. The thing is, his idea was a good one. It just couldn't be made to work in his lifetime. It's less known, but an inventor designed a set of gears back in the 1700s that could not work at the time because the right sort of super-hard metals were not available. Now the ideas does work, with steel alloys that have been discovered since.
Centuries ago, some doctors thought of blood transfusion. The idea itself would work, just so long as we know about blood groups and rhesus positive or negative. It's not good to think of some of the failures that could have happened because healers tried to transfuse blood without knowing all that they needed to. But it's a good thing that the whole idea was not rubbished because it couldn't work at the time. When some extra things were found out, the idea did work. Good thing too! Now suppose a young, innovative thinker came up with an idea, but could not make it work until more was known about it. An older, deeper thinker took up the idea and found out the extra needed to make it work in practice. Good outcome, right?
Of course, not every new idea is good. Trust me! I can recall a few of the bright notions I came up with when aged about 13, or even 17, and I just have to admit...no,
it's better to forget that one! There was just too much that I hadn't learned.
Then again, sometimes an idea gets trashed because the wise elders can see the problems, they might have seen the idea come up before and not work - but this time round, it might because we know more than we did last time it was tried. As with Leonardo's helicopter, right?
I hope I know better than to get impatient with someone younger than me,when they get enthusiastic about something that I think is 'old hat'. Also, I hope they understand if I quite honestly think I've seen it before.
Talking about work places, I've heard someone complaining that being the only under 40 in their place of employment was boring. The other ones just talked about different things and thought they had certain issues all figured out. Understood. But then I've been in a workplace where every one was young - and it was like a bottle full of blow-flies. There was plenty of noise and movement, but it didnt' really go anyway. No-one had a clear idea of what to do. Lack of experience meant some of the energy was wasted.
So there's a place for both. As the Bible says, one body with many members, each with their own function. The critical issue is that each sees the others' angle on things. It would quite literally be the end of the world if there were no more young people, renewing things. It could be a hazardous world if their were no steady experience heads who knew certain answers without having to learn them over again, the hard way.
Now for the hard part. How do we get everybody to see things from other peoples' angles and keep the peace?

Three score and ten

It's important to understand what someone means and not be misled over a word. This is the same sort of thing I was getting at in the last post. A cynic or a suspicious mind can mistake what is meant when someone says the 'like' children. It need not have any bad undertones - you can simply be glad that children, and teenagers, and young adults exist because you appreciate them for what they are. I badly wanted to have a daughter. So it was pure joy when Liz (my wife) and I had a baby girl. Now if someone said I was glad because 'I like little girls' that could be misunderstood quite badly. In fact, you can just appreciate little girls, or any young children, simply because they are truly amazing. They are new life, and a renewal of humanity. When a baby is born, their eyes can look clear and bright because they are all new, there's been no wear and tear. None of this means older people are any LESS valuable. I could write just as much about the value of greater age and experience. For me it's easier to have a deep conversation with someone my own age, because we've got more in common. The best friends I have are of my age group. But I won't be one of those people who trash on 'the young' all the time. Then again this is not meant to condescend, either. I hate condescension. But just now, this post is written in appreciation of youth - starting with, but not only about, my own kids.
One time I gave my oldest son and his friends a lift down to the movies, and just watched them all crossing the street; and I really liked just watching all of them and thinking, it's good that they exist. Like any parent, I'm proud of my kids and it gives me a buzz just seeing them. It's good that they've come into the world. The same goes for all of our kids. My daughter too; I see her with some of her friends, and it's a good feeling to know that those girls were born and came into the world. It's got nothing to do with being attracted to them in a sexual way at all.
And feeling that way, I can appreciate other peoples' children as well, not by sticking my nose into their lives but just understanding why other parents are glad of their kids.
You can get the same feeling reading peoples' blogs. Younger ones, they can show a lot of enthusiasm and imagination, and it can keep you interested for hours.
Sometimes young children, or teenagers, can show a resemblance to older family members. It can be a warming reminder that life goes on. Obviously, unless you believe in reincarnation (which I do NOT) then finding that a young girl resembles her beloved and now deceased great grandmother is not the same as actually having that person back. But it can show that what is good in a person does not have to be entirely lost when they pass on.
It can be silly to idealize something right over the top. Pity someone who can't cope with being over 40 and they have to go on with the denial stuff; stacks of money spent on cosmetic surgery and being Ole' Fifty five trying to act twenty five. Getting older usually means you can sort certain things out and not agonize so much over what to do. Things get more decided. It's possible to be quite content when you're over 40. But any age has its good and bad side. Someone once said they wished all people could be born 26 years of age. Mistake! Childhood and youth are part of getting a complete life. What can really upset you is seeing what could be so good, wasted and spoiled. I hate seeing what some narcotics can do to people - such as reduce them to depression and self-destruction! Bad, bad, heartbreaking! But it isn't always that bad. So let's hope we can all get our three score and ten - 70 years.

So we know - do we?

Someone showed me an intriguing mental exercise once. They wrote a shape on paper, basically like the letter H - except the way they wrote it was with plain straight lines, no font or style, and then asked "What is that?" One obvious answer is that it's the letter H. That is, if you use the same Alphabet that we do in English. To someone who spoke and wrote Russian, and used the Cyrillic Alphabet, it would be the letter that signifies the sound 'N' If you write the name "Nicholas" in Russian it starts with what we use as the letter 'H'. Right. So suddenly it's not so simple. Then again, it could be a drawing of rugby football goalposts. It could be a picture of a tree trunk with a piece of rope tied round it. And without going on too long, the point is this: what you make of it depends on what your mind has already been trained to see it as.
If someone said to you, "Ich bin auschlander. Nicht verstehen" then you might not know what to make of it at all - unless you speak German, in which case you know that it means: "I'm a foreigner. I don't understand." (Apologies if my spelling is not perfect in German).
Try this: (and again, the spelling could be a bit wonky) "Shin,a'weel, a'nish."
If it means nothing to you, that's not surprising. I've been told that it is a Gaelic phrase, from Scotland, meaning "That is the way that it is," said as a fatalistic expression of acceptance or exasperation.
You know what it means if you speak the language. The point here is that you have to know some things before you can understand others. And for that reason, it can be quite wrong to say, "The facts speak for themselves." What happens is, the facts speak according to what you already know.
And people can be misled. The people of Ancient Greece were intelligent and inquiring; they sought to find the explanations for things; and they theorised that waste material and rubbish gave rise by spontaneous generation to flies, because that was how it seemed.
More recently, it was believed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress or bad diet, and diet was the only way to correct them. Not long ago, researchers found out that they can be caused by a bacterium, and can be treated with a specific medicine. It was good too, because for years people afflicted with ulcers had to live on this bland miserable diet of things like boiled fish. I can remember one of my aunts having to live that way. Not fun! But here's the point. Very intelligent and qualified people were mistaken in what they believed.
I could admit to some of the dopey mistaken ideas I've had at times, too, but then I'm not an expert who got believed by thousands of others.
It was once believed that if a human being travelled at over forty miles an hour it would kill them.
It was once taught that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. The best minds of the time thought they had deduced that, and it was accepted as knowledge.
Once it a while, what all the best and brightest told us has been found out as incorrect. It's worth keeping in mind. Of course, we have to rely on some things we're told or learn, or we can't get on with life. But sometimes what is "Truth" seems to undergo change.
I wonder if one day it will be shown that the human species did NOT evolve from other life forms?