What’s Killing the Bats of New England....... And why we should care

The bats of New England are dropping like flies. 8,000-11,000 bats in Albany, NY area caves have died, over half the estimated bat population. Bats have been dying off throughout caves in New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

They are victims of White Nose Syndrome, so called because of the white fungus found on the noses of all dead bats. Scientists are not sure what is actually causing the bats’ deaths or how they got the fungus, but speculation is that cavers are perhaps spreading some virus that has caused the infestation. Little brown bats are sustaining the largest number of deaths, but the Indiana bat, an endangered species, as well as northern long-eared, eastern pipistrelle and other bat species are affected.

So why should we care? Well, for one bats are voracious eaters of crop- killing, people-biting insects. Too few bats will throw the whole ecological balance out of kilter.

Then there’s the suffering thing. Can you imagine having something like the bubonic plague. Pain, starvation, rotting innards, mental distress—all to the point of a miserable, lonely death. Now, it’s just a bat you say and nobody did anything to them, they got a naturally occurring disease and that's that.

But this gets to the nature of empathy and just how far we should go with extending it. The rebel Jesus took it to what is a still-revolutionary height by demanding we love not only our neighbor, but our enemy as well. That is, we should walk in the other’s shoes, pray for and extend good will to them, as we would to ourselves. Easy with those we like, devilishly hard for those we, ahem, don’t.

Yet we don't stop with enemies, we also show compassion, humanity, with animals, especially pets, who we tend to treat pretty much like one of the family. But why should we stop there? Why not show the same concern with any and all sentient beings?

Does the size of that being matter, or whither to and fro it flies, crawls or burrows? A little bug of some sort was crawling on my pants as I was sitting one day. I wondered, just what did the world look like from that teeny weeny itsy bitsy body, just larger than a speck of sand. It certainly had awareness. Like every living being I’ve ever seen it would scurry from pain and hurry to pleasure.

If we were that little bug would we want to stay sacrosanct, that is, would we want to stay secure in our body, would we want not to be stepped upon, or go splat on a windshield or be eaten by a bird? Would we want to nourish ourselves, maybe grab a crumb from the fiber off my thigh?

Feelings are feelings regardless of size or type of sentient being. Of course, human feelings are of the highest importance in terms of our earthly priorities, thus our concern for the “sanctity of human life.” But just because Fido looks at us with those big baleful eyes, tongue hanging out, tail wagging wildly should not have us forget that squirrel or snake or sparrow or squiggly little centipede all have the same feelings. It's just that we don’t have the same feelings for them.

But why is that relevant? Like any pursuit, is not our successful expression of compassion made stronger with exercise? Just because some creatures are less susceptible to personification, why should we let our subjective emotion overrule our uniquely human capacity to will empathy for those we find less loveable.

Like the stranger. Like the enemy. And like the bats of New England.


Richard F. Dawahare 2/20/08

Edith, Archie and the (falsified) 22nd Psalm

The following is a true story.

I am working on a book, Jesus vs. Christianity, wherein I hope to share the truth as given me through my life experiences, through prayer and through whatever one can feel as the voice of God, that Jesus, while being God’s most clear light about how we should live to do “on earth as it is in Heaven,” is not God, but God’s most enlightened child, indeed one of the world’s first secular humanists. I have been praying to really know whether this be the truth, and regardless, to know truth, whatever it is.

And so …

Tonight I awoke around 2 am, went to the den, fired up the laptop, turned on the television, and watched All in the Family, which I had loaded in the DVD player.

I was doing some research for another project when this particularly funny episode came on, the one where Edith buys eleven cans of peaches in heavy syrup because it was on sale; the cart gets away and slams into a car. Honest Edith leaves a note and Archie is furious as he assumes they’ll be taken to the cleaners.

Turns out the car owner is a Catholic priest, but Archie thinks he’s a fraud, so he devises a test, asking the priest about the words to the 23rd Psalm. The priest struggles for a minute, and then says, “Oh, your 23rd is the Catholic’s 22nd Psalm.”

Now I did not know if this was true (turned out it was part of the priest’s joke on Archie) so I researched it by Googling “Catholic 22nd Psalm.” I could not believe what I found next: The site, Outreach Judaism http://www.outreachjudaism.org/like-a-lion.html, where rabbi Tovia Singer answered a Lutheran Christian who had asked the rabbi why he did not accept Jesus as the messiah, for “Jesus came not only for the gentiles, but for the Jews as well.”

The Lutheran then said, “Because you are a rabbi, I am particularly perplexed as to why you have not willingly accepted Christ. You surely have read the 22nd Psalm which most clearly speaks of our Lord's crucifixion. Read verse 16. It states, "Dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked has enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet." Of whom does the prophet speak other than our Lord? This Old Testament prophecy could only be foretelling Jesus' unique death on the cross. What greater proof is needed that Jesus died for the sins of mankind than this chapter which was written a thousand years before Jesus walked this earth?”

Rabbi Singer first reviewed the long history of Christian animus towards Jews (the Lutheran had said that those who persecuted Jewish people were not “real Christians” to which the rabbi asked if that meant Martin Luther was therefore not a Christian, for he was one of the most vocal anti-semites).

Then he got to the crux of the 22nd Psalm. The early Christians, it turns out, intentionally mis-translated the original Hebrew Psalm in order to bolster their claim that the Old Testament foretold of Jesus, and only Jesus, as the Messiah. The true, original text, written in Hebrew, the language of David, the author of the 22nd Psalm verse 17, is: “Dogs have encompassed me. A company of evildoers has enclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet,”NOT “Dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet.”

Said Rabbi Singer, “Notice that when the original words of the Psalmist are read, any allusion to a crucifixion disappears. The insertion of the word "pierced" into the last clause of this verse is a not-too-ingenious Christian interpolation that was created by deliberately mistranslating the Hebrew word kaari as "pierced." The word kaari, however, does not mean "pierced," it means "like a lion." The end of Psalm 22:17, therefore, properly reads, "like a lion they are at my hands and my feet." Had King David wished to write the word "pierced," he would never use the Hebrew word kaari. Instead, he would have written either daqar or ratza, which are common Hebrew words in the Jewish scriptures. Needless to say, the phrase "they pierced my hands and my feet" is a Christian contrivance that appears nowhere in the Jewish scriptures.”

Just think about this a moment. Much of the Christian foundation was built upon not only the words of Jesus and work of his followers, but also the high authority of Old Testament prophesies. When a so-called prophecy like the 22nd Psalm is found to be anything but that, the foundation begins to crack. But hey--no problem! To the extent it allows the light of truth to break through, let the sledgehammer of reason and reality pound away.

I tell you, God works mysterious ways to show me truth. Well, maybe not so much mysterious as…freakin’ uncanny, incredible “get your tukus out of bed and watch your tv and I am going to blow your ever-loving mind my son!”

I now want to learn what else in those ancient texts may have been changed for I care not where truth leads, just that it is the truth.

Richard F. Dawahare