Is Science Good Or Bad?

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Whatever makes sense to the individual is OK by me as long as no harm comes of it.

I still myself don't see any sense in an external, "objective" good and bad, and prefer people to own their part in the matter. Morality is commonly defined in an unavailing, tautological way, as "what is right / proper":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/morality

But this source provides something near to the only definition that makes any sense to me, i.e. whatever code of conduct works best to help a group to rub along together:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-morality-5076160

Anyway, I hope the matter of defining good and bad has had enough of an airing now, and we can generally agree what it's supposed to mean for the purposes of answering the OP's question. I largely agree with The Walrus, though when he refers to religionists, I'm not sure whether he means something that had already happened on this thread or in the world generally, or both. I haven't noticed any obvious religious denigration of science here so far, but maybe that's because I'm not very good at reading between the lines. I've seen it in the world of course, and there's a lot of stuff out there about the war between science and religion, some claiming the two are compatible, some claiming the reverse. I suppose it depends on the details of the beliefs of the particular religion.

^ have another look at the OP - the last three paragraphs are all about comparing science to religion and end with a call to reject science and “get on your knees and pray”

Despite what the OP says, one can pray, and still trust in science

Ah, I see what you mean. I have a habit of focussing more on topic titles than on the details in first posts, especially when the latter drifts away from the former as it does here, or when it's relatively long. I expect that's why I missed it. So yes, the opening post very much brings the "war" between science and religion into the matter.

To my mind the genie is out of the bottle. Even if we wanted to go back to religion as the primary source of knowledge, we can't un-know what we've found out, short of burning all the scientific info and all devices based on scientific principles, and pretending there's no such thing for a few generations. I think there'd be a heck of a lot of deaths. I wish it were true that science and religion were 100% compatible, but some religionists are going to carry on attacking science, and vice versa. And also some scientists are going to continue not to exactly attack religion but to put it to scientific test, which some religionists will see as an attack. The two also can and do live peacefully side by side in some cases while all this is going on. In my case they're incompatible and the one that I don't see as working had to leave the room. I don't say that religion has never done any good, just that absolute faith without enough objective, supporting evidence makes no sense to me, so if I had to have a religion, it would have to be one that didn't require faith in its tenets.

I've seen nothing to support the Covid bioweapon theory. Even the theory that it escaped from a laboratory has almost no grounds at all. I remember some Trump supporters proclaiming the lab escape theory had been proved, but when I looked into it, all I found was that somebody had decided to look into it, when previously they'd felt it wasn't worth looking into, and I concluded that there are no bounds to what some people will do to exaggerate things for political purposes.

One can also do science, and still trust in G^D.

Either way, comparing religion to science is like comparing apples to cyclotrons.

---

Suggesting that Science Does Not
Prove A Need For Religion Is Surely

Not Understanding Anthropology And

The Core of What Religion Is; And That is

Similarly How the Literal And Mystic

Continues to
Be Expressing

What Binds And Bonds Human in 'Terms' of Ideology
And 'Totem Symbols' To Keep the Glue of Society in
Order and Meaning And Purpose to Carry on Working Still In 'Real Life' Now...

Meaning and Purpose in Life Brings Actual Feelings And Senses of Sacred And Holy And
Makes Life Worth Living More Than Just Seeing Everything in Life as a 'Materially Reduced Thing'...

SHells Without

Living Sea Creatures

Within; True, Ya Really

Can't Relate Religion Properly

Without Using Poetic or Other Artistic

Metaphors to Discuss it in a Mutual And Consensual

Way Other Folks Understand it; Yet, Without the Kind of

'Right Brain' Metaphor of Intelligence in Larger 'Picture' Views

of Feeling and Sensing Life In Unifying Ways Beyond A Dualistic

Nature of

Seeing

'DarK Separate
From LiGHT, Ya

Lose the Ability, the

Capacity, to Even Get

Involved in a 'Discussion' of
What Religion is And Does to Relate it at all...

And Of course the 'Wrong Planet', By Very Nature

of More Systemizing Minds As Opposed to the Very

Social, Empathic, Artistic, Spiritual Minds i am used to

Through Young Open Minded Women Artists of India Makes A Huge

Difference Now of Who Has the Ability to Understand Every Metaphor

i use through Actual Experiences in Life And Who Does Not; Anyway,

Carl Sagan Admitted He Had to Use Hallucinogenic Drugs To Get Out

of His Restrictive Systemizing Ways of 'Science Thinking', To Gain Greater

Unifying Mind

of Larger

Picture

Viewing

Life Holy
And Sacred
Greater than

"Test Tube Life"...

What 'We' Got Out of that

is the 'Movie Contact' That Pretty

Much Spells Out the Christian Religion

in Connection of "Love One Another" That

Is As Dam Simple Ancestrally as True, Before; Humans

Communicating More By 'Dance' Than Words (Including
Non Verbal Communication of Facial Muscles Powered
By Human Emotions, Feelings, Senses, And of Course More

Limited Than Ever Now

By An Increasingly

Text Related World);

The Upside of 'This' is

The Creative Abilities for
Folks Increasingly to Express

What Might Otherwise Be ineffable
Mystical Experiences of Life; Yet of Course,

For 'The Creme of the Crop', Who Are Able
to Develop Art Enough to Do that With Others
With Minds that Are Able to Relate through Experience too...

Anyway, Basically, 'The Tao' and So Many Other Metaphors like 'Chi',
Satori, Prana, Ka, Ki, Kundalini Rising, Samadhi, And Unlimited Others

Is Expressed Secularly

By Systemizing

Minds In Terms of

Science Empirical
Measures of Autotelic

Flow Of Transient Hypo-Frontality

Escaping The Neo-Cortex A Bit Now

For Greater 'Contact' Within, With the

Rest of the Human Subconscious Mind

That Science Suggests Comprises About

95 Percent of what our Mind is And Does,

Where Creativity Empirically measured Goes up

500 Percent, With Only Several 30 Minute or So Sessions

Of A Meditative Activity of Flow Like This Weekly; And Of course

Even More, For Those Like me, Who Employ This Human Potential

Almost Continuously Through All Waking Hours in Free Verse Poetry

In Meditative FLoWinG Way; And A Mix of Free Style Martial Arts and Ballet in
Flow Now in 15,202 Miles of Public Dance in 95 Months, Along with 9.5 MiLLioN

Words of A Longest

EPiC Free Verse Poem

Ever as i continue to Empirically

Measure What Human Potential Will Bring

This Way, with of course Still Leg Pressing up to
1520 Pounds at Age 61, With So Many Other Measurements
Empirically Associated in my Case Study too; Let's Face it, in

A World of What Science Assesses of the Average Human Now,

With Attentions Spans At Less than a Gold Fish at 3 Seconds,

It's Gonna Be Very Hard

From This Point on

To Develop

Any kind

of Group For

Large Study Size;

Never the Less, i am

Leaving my Empirical Results,

Irrefutable, For All to See Free;

That's Part of This Human Potential for

"Loving One Another'; Its Shown to Work Best

When The Human Condition is Kind, Giving, Sharing,
Caring Freely In Cooperation over Capitalistic Competition Now...

True, i'm More

Like the 'Orangutans'

On the 'Planet of the Apes'

Than the 'Monkey Scientists'

And 'Gorilla Warriors'; Yet of

Course, i Retain and Develop

My 'Ape And Monkey Skills' Still...

See How This Works? If You Do Not; I understand why...

Never The Less, Folks Tend to Trend Alike ALL oVeR As

i've Found Some of the Most Restrictive Left Brain Metaphor Thinking

Folks On Poetry Sites, Who Are only Able to Write By Strict Scientific Poetic Formula...

And It's Not Different Than Religion, You Will Find Very Systemizing, Rigid Folks Who

take all the Words Materially Reduced As Shells on Beach; Totally missing the More

Mystic

Sea

Creature
Living Within

The Human Being Now...

This Ain't Nothing New

In Essence Under the Human
Sun For Tens of Thousands of Years

Now; i'm Just Singing it More Than Dance...

Yet, Of Course, Like Last Night, i Get my

Autograph Requested For Real More for

The Non-Verbal Dance and Euphoric

Smiles of Women in Dancing Selfies

In Numbers of Thousands, Irrefutably too
By The Dopamine Shine In their Big Pupil Eyes...

Students

of Heaven

Willing Case

Studies of Joy

They Are Still Now

Recorded for Further Case Study

Of Connecting Joy of Art The Love
of the Human Dance, Our Smiles...

Meh, It's A Choice; Shell or Sea Creature;

Basically,

Just Leaving

Shells NoW as

Sea Creatures

Behind As Well

As Art Reflecting 'KA',
Our Spirits As Pharaoh's

Sadly Attempted to Do through Others

Expressing Their Art As Artisans in Pharaoh LabelS ONly in Pyramid Art;

No Different REALLY than the Old Bible; Folks Bow Down To Ghost Author
Artisans in Essence of Shells That Are Only Imaginary Labels of Leaders Still Now...

'Writer'

Is 'King';

'Actors' Are 'Shells'...

Really No Different than

The Movie 'Contact', The

Actors Are Relating Carl Sagan's
Soul In A Message in a Bottle Still Breathing...

We Are Made Of Star Stuff; We Are The Cosmos

Breathing; Surely, Carl Still Lives As Part of my Soul True... too...

We Have Traveled

Far And We

Still Have

So Much More to Explore

Or Lay Rot in Books of Before...

Just Spectators, Just Audience Members,

Just on Bended Knee, Worshipping Ghost Authors of Before...

Again, There Is Traditional Religion That Tries to Stay the Same;
There is Mystical Religion That is Living Within Giving Sharing Caring Freely

SPiRiT

HeART

ReaL

SouL

Always

Dancing

New Now

Exploring A New
Frontier As Surely, 'Verily',

So Many Souls Breathe through me too...
Always, Love the Metaphor of the Stone Bust
on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Album

Cover; Stone Rising SoaKinG Up the Souls Still of

All The Crowd of Artists, Scientists, Philosophers Behind

Him; Just

Missing

Warriors

to Complete A
Human Pie As Servant Leader....

Pretty Amazing What A Human
Will Do Earning More Than 3 Seconds of
Focus and Attention; Perhaps Someone
Will even Paint A More Elaborate Sistine
Chapel Ceiling With Whatever New Art Comes Next Free in Autotelic Flow...
Additionally Science Shows Meditation Regenerates Gray Matter in Brains
And Even Listening to 'Gregorian Chant Music' Repairs Human DNA By
Releasing

Growth

Hormone

As A Religion

Of Exercise Arts
Do As Well; Yes in
A Sport An Art of The
Religion of Dance and Song True too
As Yes, Gregorian Chants And Sufi
Dervish Style Spiraling Dances Are Far

From An Only

Path of Heaven

Within Now

To Give Share
Care Freely For All
As This Force oF LoVE
THiS LiGHT OuT oF DarK Now
Nah, We aRe Only Alone As We
Are Not Connecting NoW WiTHiN
Inside, Outside, Above So Below
And All Around Science Is the
Bones Art is the

Flesh

And

Blood to BREaTHE

to LiVE to LoVE Hey
Even Dead Poet Society's Get it
In Some Ways Even in Those Old
Bibles; Hints at Least, Until Science
Comes Connecting Forms Along With Art
Essences to Prove It's Real too... Our Deeper
Stories 'Aligning' Now... For Real, For Real, For Real.

---

I think it's more about how far you can trust in either, whether we're talking about religion or science.

If we're talking about religion, I want to know if there is something that objectively substantiates the faith in question. There is no greater value than human life. Human reason and human life go hand in hand since with human beings it is the reasoning mind that determines our survival rather than unthinking instinct. Without human life there is no mind, without a mind there is no human life. An objective religion points to God as the originator of life, reason, and all the rest of existence. So as long as God supports a religion (as opposed to religion supporting God), it is objective and meaningful. If your religion requires you to somehow support and defend the idea of God as though human beings have some kind of sovereignty over God, it is not an objective religion. Presupposing, on the other hand, that God created everything that has ever and will ever exist and that God has no need for those things he created or creates, it is easy to objectively substantiate what you believe in. That extends to science, too, because then you can know that all knowledge comes from and is revealed by God. Nothing is hidden from God. So if someone comes up with the idea that evolution happens, or the big bang happened, or dark matter/dark energy, wormholes and hyperspace, or make-up-whatever-crap-you want, a religious person doesn't need to worry about how that's going to affect his faith since if God didn't want people to know that stuff, he would never have revealed it. The fear of accepting the big bang, round earth, or evolution is an irrational, unsubstantiated fear because if those things being true are all it takes to shake your faith, I'd wonder exactly what kind of faith you really have. I'd wonder if you are a believer at all because God is responsible for all of creation. If he uses evolution (which is really nothing more than various "kinds" of creatures genetically adapting to the environment through a natural selection process over so many generations) as part of the creative process, so what? Exactly how do you get from that to "man came from monkeys"? This is not a question for scientists, but rather believers, because it is logically possible that man is a special creation and may or may not be subject to the same theories as other creatures. There is nothing "wrong" with science viewed from a point of faith.

Regarding science, well, do we understand what science is and what it isn't? Are there reasonable limits to how far anyone can rely on science? Science is simply sets of conclusions drawn from sensory experience. You see something repeated so many times, you can reasonably assume something about that thing. So you grab your friend and ask him or her if he or she is seeing the same thing you are. That's all science is in its simplest form. So the question I have regarding science is to what extent can human beings rely on their own mind and their own sensory perception? How reliable is verification when you have to rely on other human beings with more or less limited perception or even bias? I believe that conclusions drawn from finite data by fallible human reasoning are inherently limited and faulty, regardless of how good and correct they might seem. I've often said one of the major problems with the scientific method itself is that it makes too many assumptions of conditions being true while testing and verifying as though it is somehow exempt from testing and verification itself. For the scientific method to be a rational method, it must be externally tested and verified outside of itself. This is not humanly possible. If you use any part of the scientific method to test or verify itself, that is circular reasoning. If you demand evidence for something, you must also demand evidence for your evidence. This leads to an infinite regress, which is also not humanly possible, nor is the universe even infinite.

I think you actually need both--not necessarily "religion" in the strictest terms, but at least faith if nothing else. Without faith, there can be no certainty. Without certainty, logical conclusions about the natural world cannot be drawn no matter what you claim to observe. It doesn't really any sense to me why anyone would claim to rely on one, whether religion or science, without also leaning on the other.

^
I would say that a good scientist doesn't conclude anything as an absolute. Even with the best available scientific rigour, there's always at least a crumb of doubt which a scientist respects. But we usually get away with it when we translate pure science into applied science - technology. Inventions tend to work, and when they are found to work they tend to carry on working. If they don't work in the first place, that will show up in the transfer of principles into practice, indeed there's usually 2-way traffic between pure and applied science, so that testing inventions is part of the development of theory.

Do we need anything else but scientific reason? So far, yes. Science isn't yet the last word in emotion or artistic expression and appreciation, and perhaps our sense of right and wrong, which remain to a degree subjective matters. Science can't yet tell me whether I'm going to find a particular work of art beautiful (though it's worth noting that it's already making inroads into that).

Sometimes I make choices based on intuition or instinct, because I don't have the time to weigh up the matter scientifically, and because to some extent I enjoy doing so. But because I've made a subjective emotional decision, in a sense I've taken more of a gamble, I've winged it. Sometimes it turns out I was right, I got there before my reasoning did, the gamble paid off. Other times I turn out to be wrong, and if that causes me to suffer then I wish I'd thought it through properly. Overall, there's still a use for intuition and instinct, and there may always be.

But I don't see any particular need to keep the idea of a deity-driven universe in mind. We discover a scientific principle, a believer might say that the deity put that principle there, a secular person would likely say otherwise. Whether or not a person believes in a causative deity as such makes no practical difference. The discovery is still made in the same way. It's when they decide that the deity's existence means that they must follow different behavioural rules, that there can arise a conflict between a secular life and a religious one.

I'd hate to have to think of humans as somehow sharing no commonality with other life forms. It would severely censor my understanding of myself and others. There are some quantitative differences, such as our relatively low level of specialisation for any particular environment. But the genetic code - the complete blueprint - for humans is remarkably similar to that of a radish, and even more remarkably similar to our "cousins" the apes, and the phenotypes are also remarkably similar. Thinking of humans as "the naked ape" species has given us a lot of insights into human behaviour. And why would a theist need to maintain that we're some kind of different thing, as if we came from another galaxy, unless they felt they had to adhere to some scriptural notion that insists we're not animals? What's wrong with just seeing humans as one of "family" of the world's life forms? From the observable data we have so far, it seems extremely plausible.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'wrong' here, but I'm guessing it's just easier to exploit others when you paint them as something inherently "different" and "worse". So this is more matter of propaganda in human fight for dominance?

By "What's wrong with just seeing humans as one of the "family" of the world's life forms?" I meant "What's the objection to just seeing humans as one of the "family" of the world's life forms?

So I suppose one objection to my proposal would be that it could make it harder to exploit animals, though it's not one that would get much sympathy from me. Interesting. I never thought when that question occurred to me about the human-animal relationship that it could be the root of so much - I was just naively curious as to what the problem was in seeing ourselves as not so different from other life forms.

Luckily science seems to have no objection, at least from what I remember from biology lessons during school. We were taught that humans are very much another species of animals. Hmm, now I'm curious, how did it look when you were a kid, you were not taught something similar in school?

But apart from science, it seems to be normal for humans to think of themselves as something 'better' and separate from those they think as inferrior, even among each other? Take racism for example, isn't it very similar? Sexism? Not to mention rich people definitely don't feel any kind of kinship with poor, we are just another kind of cattle for them to exploit... :3

The necessity of God lies in epistemology. I never say that science is useless. I do understand that certainty is not in the science wheelhouse, and I understand why.

The problem of doubt is there’s really no such thing as absolutely doubt. To commit to doubt in absolute terms, to “doubt everything,” means that you have to doubt everything, including doubt itself. It also means that you must accept doubt itself as a principle that is absolutely certain. Well, if it is absolutely certain that you should absolutely doubt everything, including doubt, then that is a contradiction and absurd.

So…the ideas of subjectivity and doubt aren’t rational. At least something must be certain, and that requires faith.

Human instinct is really just reason working behind the scenes. I constantly struggle with decision-making attempting to ensure every decision is a rational one when the correct decision just “feels” wrong in terms of reasoning. When this happens, I go with the decision that I know already to be the right one, and then I think about it later to try to understand HOW I got it right. It’s not enough to make one good decision for one situation. It’s more important that every decision be correct in every situation. The results of a decision should be consistent and repeatable, and if all I do is go with my gut, how can I know if the results are repeatable in the future? Maybe I only got it right by accident. Understanding why something is so is necessary for discerning which situations a course of action is relevant for. I encourage people to take risks, but there are reasonable risks, calculable risks, and risk/benefit analysis that go into making the best decisions. Gut instinct is fine when an unfavorable consequence is insubstantial, but I don’t see any benefit to making a habit of subjective, instinctive behaviors.

Even something like love… Love is a manifestation of value, nothing more. The ideal man, or a woman devoted to him, will always be the objectively best mate for someone. It is also objectively immoral to sleep with someone you don’t love—and no, you don’t even need the Bible to tell you that. Objective morality is linked to reason. To sleep with someone you don’t love, first of all, reveals your own low value to yourself, and second, reflects a mindless reliance on instinct over reason; a human being lacking reason is not a living human being. Even when selecting someone you may have romantic feelings for and there is a conflict between the heart and the mind, going with the mind will almost always be the best way to go.

Music? Music is the manipulation of sound that explores the depths of texture and timbre. As such, it is not simply any segment of chaotic sound, but rather the ordered arrangement of sounds in such a way as to give it meaning and to communicate effectively to the listener. It is a realization of intangible ideas. To assess music as objectively good or bad will depend on how adept the composer is with arranging tones using the harmonic series as a guide to melody and harmony, skillful use of counterpoint, and generous dynamic contrast. A composer must appropriately leverage silence…

…

…

…to great effect. And composers must also be mindful of natural proportions over the course of a composition using elements such as the Golden Mean, Fibonacci series, and Euclidean algorithm. How well a composer manages these kinds of things objectively demonstrates his skill resulting in music that is not merely good, but is objectively good. I could draw many more comparisons with visual art, but I’m not as knowledgeable in that area. All I can say is that there’s just something “right” about a painting or a photograph. But lacking definite knowledge or appreciation for something does not necessarily indicate that one’s objective assessment for the subject is lacking. It just means a person lacks the language to describe something in objective terms. It’s no different from a person’s visceral experience of anger after being physically attacked or threatened—it is reasonable to feel that way, and thus the response is objective rather than subjective. This doesn’t mean that there’s never any subjectivity with regard to art or music appreciation or even justice. It’s a question of whether it is moral to consume art, music, or seek justice if ones thoughts or feelings are merely subjective. A rational appreciation of such things is always preferred to a subjective, relativistic assessment.

12-tone music, for instance, is the absolute imposition of order and equality on a range of musical elements and typically extends past pitch. The principle that drives 12-tone music is the liberation of dissonant intervals by making all 12 chromatic tones equally important. This creates the problem that when all things in a system are equally important, they are also all equally irrelevant. This means that the naturally-occurring hierarchy of tones is destroyed. Tonic-dominant relationships in music acknowledge the inherent value of some things in nature relative to other things, that some things and even people are more deserving than others. The irony of imposing freedom and value on those who neither earn it nor deserve it is that it results in LOSS of value and freedom. “The People” in collectivist societies are supposedly free despite having very little actual control of their own lives. And it is this same principle of confined and controlled disorder and disfunction that is responsible for the disturbing effect 12-tone music has on most listeners. If you consider the work of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, you’ll note that their use of atonality and 12-tone is purposefully done to evoke pain and despair. Schoenberg himself believed that 12-tone was the future of music and would replace tonality entirely. While attracting a purely academic following and spawning the Perspectives of New Music journal that had its own cult-like following of serial music, serial music never really took off. It’s not by accident, either. 12-tone music is largely unmusical and systematically avoids principles of objective musical beauty. I don’t mean to say that there is no such thing as beautiful 12-tone music (Webern’s Opus 21 is sublime, and many of Schoenberg’s piano pieces seem to echo jazz harmonies), but the general intent of probably most serialists is towards immoral, wanton destruction in music. It’s not a matter of being subjective. It’s intentional. If one wishes to be rational and objective, it would be sensible to avoid this kind of music.

The main difference is that humans can choose to act in their own best self-interest while animals cannot. We confine our cat to our house interior because she’s our cat and we aren’t going to let her run away. Yet she cannot resist the impulse to escape. It’s not a matter of wanting or choosing to escape—she is COMPELLED to escape. If you keep a human being by force, he can reason whether to attempt to escape, to cooperate with his captor, or to kill his captor even at the risk of his own life. Human beings can decide whether to brave the elements or take shelter. Human beings can choose to build any shelter to their liking. Mice are compelled to seek shelter. If mice possessed rational minds, they’d conclude that human dwellings are unsafe for mice because of traps and poison bait. In my former house we had seasonal mice infestations, for which I became an expert in which traps to buy and how and where to set them. I caught too many mice to count. A rational mind would figure that out right away. Mice, of course, are smart and do learn to avoid traps. But they by far have found my baits and traps irresistible and impossible to avoid. Their survival as a species is not in their ability to avoid predators and humans, but rather in sheer numbers. They are driven by an insatiable instinct to feed and reproduce. Humans? Birth control, abortion, dieting…nope, we are defo different from other animals, with the rational mind being the distinctive feature.

Hmm, kind of like you are compelled to believe in religious nonsense? To observe this in practice, you can try to chose to be humble and not religious for a change. My guess is you cannot, you will instead produce many excuses to continue doing whatever you are compelled to do... :3

Last edited by Cornflake on 31 Jul 2021, 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.: Removed a personal attack

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We Can't Eliminate The Effect of Environment

On Animal Behavior; Our Feral Cat Chose My

Wife's Lap Over the Rest of Nature;

Honestly, i Don't

Blame Him...

i Think It's Kind of

Sad Your Cat Feels Compelled

To Escape; Perhaps A Psychotherapist

For Cats Might Help; Sadly, My Wife's
Lap Is Not Available for Rent, It's True

Every Loving Creature Gravitates toward

Her; Those Not Capable of Love; The Actual Energy,
Giving, Sharing, Caring Free From Within FOR REAL,

Not So Much...

It's Funny, Not Really Funny,

For Some Folks Love

Is Like

Garlic

to A Vampire...

Or A Stake in HeART...

---

Ummm…cats are known for being naturally curious creatures. I don’t blame the cat for wanting to explore outside. The problem is that we live in an area that is more dangerous for the cat if she were to go outside. We all play with her, keep her fed, give her Cheristin treatments once a month. She knows our schedule and wakes us up in the morning, snuggles up to me and purrs right in my ear first thing in the morning. We don’t know what happened to her previously, but before we adopted her something happened with her previous owner that broke her tail. It didn’t heal right since no one got help for her, so she looks like Pikachu.

I actually do love cats. I was always very good at taming the feral cats that lived in my grandfather’s barn. It’s dogs I can’t stand. My grandfather’s dogs were great dogs except the last one (grandfather lost his patience with that one after it killed his chickens, so it got the business end of my grandfather’s rifle). A good friend of mine had the sweetest corgis I’ve ever seen. A former neighbor had a pack of dogs that would chase me on one of my running routes. I started bringing treats and even made friends with the dogs. They were scary until you got to know them, but eventually I got a Y membership and had to change my running route, anyway. Dogs are just too high maintenance for me to want to keep one. My kids keep begging me for a dog, but I’ve drawn that line in the sand. They can have dogs when they pay the bills.

My favorite cat was Buffy. Something traumatic happened to her early in life (sometime before I was born), so she rarely went outside. She’d sometimes go chew on grass to get rid of a hairball, but that was about it. I thought that cat would live forever. Broke my heart when she died. We eventually got another cat we named DC. Feral cat that I tamed while he was still a kitten, but he was never overly friendly. He liked to scratch. Our cat now is Reese’s Pieces the Pikachu cat. She likes to bite and rabbit kick, especially first thing in the morning when she’s hyper and wants to fight, but she never hurts or draws blood. Cheristin treatments freak her out, but it beats the flea baths twice a month when we had to keep her in a cage and she got sick.