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Dear Producer and Tony Lavis,

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Sheeple, astrology and intelligent design do, indeed, seem to have something in common.

They have something in common with religion but they are not religion.
Religion, at least the major religions, are quite respectable. They are compassionate, offering solace and comfort to those in distress. They also provide numerous social services, sometimes more effectively and efficiently than the State.

Intelligent design, though perhaps originally a sincere expression of wonder coined by scientists immersed in the marvels of nature during the course of their research, is an idea that has been unscrupulously hi-jacked by a certain number of pernicious political and religious agitators.

These agitators use it as a wedge to cause a division in the education program of high school students, creating confusion by introducing theistic explanations of natural phenomena as a substitute for natural science in official high school curricula.

The proponents of intelligent design are clearly pursuing religious political objectives, not educational scientific objectives.

Tony's conclusion is quite pertinent to our discussion:

"It should be noted that there is no inherent incompatibility between an acceptance of Darwinian evolution and a belief in the supernatural. Darwinian evolution is only incompatible with supernatural explanations for observed biological variability, not necessarily with the supernatural itself".

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Dear David,

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"Jesus Christ was a Jew not a Christian. His followers reject his religion. As the song goes which I wrote and sang to the tune of the old jazz standard on 4zzz ...".
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I'm afraid I'm not familiar with " the old jazz standard on 4zzz". But I'd really like to see that song and dance act, David.

Is it negro-spiritual, Sachmo style, trad jazz or mod jazz , or more in line with Roy Orbison, or perhaps the old Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire jazz dance style ?

If you have a clip or a recording and access to a blog perhaps you could post a link to it here.

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Dear Banjo,

I don't know who Roy Orbison is. I stopped paying attention to pop music at the time of Elvis and the Beatles.

It is Satchmo style mouldy fig jazz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbE9ZAfAvH8 contains a recording of the original song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKBR23d-UDE contains me singing my parody.

I have all the Fred & Ginger movies on disk also a lot of Busby Berkeley movies.

I like the Cyd Charisse - Gene Kelly dance in Singin' in the Rain. I've been in Gene Kelly's room at the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity in the University of Pittsburgh. Big thrill! My oldest granddaughter went to that U. She studied journalism there. With what the net has done to newspapers she's a waitress in New Orleans.

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Dear David,

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That's a great show. I enjoyed that. Thanks.

Sounds like you have had some interesting experiences, a colourful life and also have a colourful family.

I got names mixed up in my previous post. It was not Roy Orbison I had in mind but Paul Robeson.

Sorry about that.

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Banjo – As I have stated before, it is my opinion that practice of all religion is base on nothing more than the human species inability to accept its own ignorance.

I generally religion with few exceptions it is designed to exclude rather than include unless you subscribe to their particular franchise. This has been the root of murder, death, kill, hunger, starvation, racism, misogyny to mention a few plus the continued practice of cultivating ignorance.

It is an indictment on the collective us that religion done some stuff better than the state. It is not that religion does, but the fact we don’t, we should be questioning

Producer - generally religion with few exceptions it is designed to exclude rather than include unless you subscribe to their particular franchise

Same as every man-made institution, established / institutional EVERYTHING is about power / influence / control. In general, the bigger an entity / franchise, the greater its perception of infallibility (power corrupts, and and absolute power corrupts absolutely). The point that needs to be recognized in respect of 'religion' is that its a MAN-MADE event (the concept of 'franchises' is apt), like politics, bureaucracy, law, commerce etc.