As God is unknowable, I guess that is the point.

There is an interesting Biblical rabbit hole that I never touched the bottom of. The God, who creates everything from light to humans, in Genesis 1 doesn’t seem to be the same as Yahweh God (per my Catholic Bible) in Genesis 2 who creates man, plants, animals, woman, including the tree of forbidden fruit.

Some scholars point to this as evidence that Genesis is based on more than one source.

There was another part of “cleaning up”. The camps about to be overrun sent the inmates in groups of several hundred with a couple of dozen guards on “death marches” to a camp which was considered to be in a position to take care of business. Grae
Practically on May 9, Infantry units were going up and down forest paths and back roads, looking for the poor left overs–those who couldn’t keep up were shot. Point was to put them in a mattress cover and note on a map for the Graves Registration guys to come along and pick them up. Graves Registration is said to be a great way to make ordinary guys into drunks.
But, as my father said, we used up every mattress cover in the Third Army. And still more of the poor cast offs.

The guards hadn’t seen a German plane in a month. When they got to where they were going, they would likely get something to eat, but they aren’t going to get paid and, presumably, their home unit was, by this time, overrun, so there’s no finance office there any longer. The war was over. Lost. Best thing for them to do would be to go to a civilian house and switch to civilian clothes and head home.
Nope.

I still have an affection for the guy, but to put it in poker terms, I think he bought a lot of pots in debate because he was so fast and formidable.

Many of his 2000s essays were impressive for his ability to pull together quotes and allusions and weave them into some kind of argument, but after a while I concluded there was more than a few shots of Johnnie Walker Black talking.

Nonetheless, “Why Orwell Matters” (2002) by Christopher Hitchens still matters.

Here’s to you, Hitch.
(1949-2011) RIP

I’m reminded of the Controversy with General Boykin one of the original Delta team, from Desert One to other operatiosn in Colombia and Somalia if memory served who was a fervent Christian we can’t have that,

in a different era, they would be pulled Orde Wingates command, because of his Christian beliefs,

This term “messianic” gets slung around by the Israeli leftists quite a bit these days, used in ways which the users must think beneficial to their cause(s).

There’s a few people represented millions of times in family trees, and millions of people hardly represented, and which mix you have is what he’s getting at.

Except maybe in North Sentinel island there’s no population that has a monopoly of certain genes. It’s the genes that tend to be found together that make human populations different.

For example, the genes that make East Asians look East Asian are found everywhere–shovel shaped incisors or epicanthic folds for example–but people who aren’t East Asian have only a small fraction of them among a few people, and people who are East Asian have most of them among most people.

Using Y chromosomes, which only tell you about descent through males, you have about 8% of males descended from Genghis Khan in Asia. In Ireland, about 20% of men descend from the Ui Neill (high kings whose clans were centered in Ulster and Meath).

Given enough time, every one of us will either become an ancestor of everyone alive, or an ancestor of nobody. Some famous and noble lineages seemed awfully prone to die out–though of course violence played its role there.

I have labored to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment; for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to the continuance of a house so illustrious, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to support it. And yet time hath his revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things—finis rerum—an end of names and dignities, and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of de Vere? For where is Bohun? Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more, and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality! yet let the name of de Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t apparently please God all that long; the de Vere claimant died without male heirs.