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It would not be difficult to come to an agreement as to what we understand by science. Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thoroughgoing an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. But when asking myself what religion is I cannot think of the answer so easily. And even after finding an answer which may satisfy me at this particular moment, I still remain convinced that I can never under any circumstances bring together, even to a slight extent, the thoughts of all those who have given this question serious consideration.
At first, then, instead of asking what religion is I should prefer to ask what characterizes the aspirations of a person who gives me the impression of being religious: a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been described.
For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. On the other hand, representatives of science have often made an attempt to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends on the basis of scientific method, and in this way have set themselves in opposition to religion. These conflicts have all sprung from fatal errors.
Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Though I have asserted above that in truth a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist, I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on an essential point, with reference to the actual content of historical religions. This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes.
Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. It is the aim of science to establish general rules which determine the reciprocal connection of objects and events in time and space. For these rules, or laws of nature, absolutely general validity is required--not proven. It is mainly a program, and faith in the possibility of its accomplishment in principle is only founded on partial successes. But hardly anyone could be found who would deny these partial successes and ascribe them to human self-deception. The fact that on the basis of such laws we are able to predict the temporal behavior of phenomena in certain domains with great precision and certainty is deeply embedded in the consciousness of the modern man, even though he may have grasped very little of the contents of those laws. He need only consider that planetary courses within the solar system may be calculated in advance with great exactitude on the basis of a limited number of simple laws. In a similar way, though not with the same precision, it is possible to calculate in advance the mode of operation of an electric motor, a transmission system, or of a wireless apparatus, even when dealing with a novel development.
To be sure, when the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which case prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity. One need only think of the systematic order in heredity, and in the effect of poisons, as for instance alcohol, on the behavior of organic beings. What is still lacking here is a grasp of connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order in itself.
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task. (This thought is convincingly presented in Herbert Samuel's book, Belief and Action.) After religious teachers accomplish the refining process indicated they will surely recognize with joy that true religion has been ennobled and made more profound by scientific knowledge.
If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.
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"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names." -- Chinese Proverb
It is regularly said that the soldiers of the 20th and now the 21st century fought (or are fighting) to make us free. This is a wonderful sentiment and SHOULD evoke gratitude, if in FACT there was a shred of truth to it.
The END of the "free" era of human progress started in 1914 when WWI erupted across Europe and it has pretty much continued to this day.
If soldiers fought to make us free, we should be FAR MORE free after 100+ years of near universal war. The most empirical test would be whether we are MORE free today than we were in say 1912 or 1913. Let's TEST that theory RIGHT NOW.
In those days, there was NO INCOME TAX. There was no CORPORATE TAX. The federal, national and local governments around the world survived on 6-7% of GDP, raised primarily through excise tariffs and customs duties. There were no papers that anyone had to carry. There were no licenses that anyone had to have. There were NO PASSPORTS. I'll say that again. There were NO PASSPORTS. You could travel from one country to another -- FREELY. One could come to America, sail under the raised arms of the Statue of Liberty and as long as you weren't coughing up a lung, you walked into the country free and clear.
Surely, if the millions of men, women and children in the 20th century were slaughtered like pigs for our freedom we should be even MORE free now than we were before WWI. When there was no Federal Reserve System to destroy the value of our currency, very little goverment meddling in the economy, no Department of Homeland Security. Sorry, but it's just not true. Not in the slightest. It's not even close to true. Frankly, it's the exact OPPOSITE of truth.
And there's this myth that is floating around, that people actually believe, that the way to honor the MURDERS of so many millions of people is to say that humanity acheived some tangible, positive "good" from that. I do not believe in an afterlife, but if I did, there would be a CHORUS of eviscerated ghosts screaming at us and admonishing us that their deaths actually helped to enslave us. To honor their deaths is to actually NAME the TRUTH of what happened to them AND to us as a result of these wars. We can't make their deaths "good". But we can at least try to rescue some virtue from it and we shouldn't be doing it by PRETENDING that they died to make us free because we are LESS FREE -- FAR LESS FREE now than we were before these slaughters began.
Even with all of its problems (slavery, no rights for women, children treated like dogs), the amazing growth of wealth in the 19th century and the industrial revolution was staggering. And almost to a dollar, WWI WIPED OUT all of that progress. All of the accumulated wealth of the 19th century was torched and destroyed by the first world war, where a guy from one country killed a political leader from another country and then, to capture this "terrorist", a war began. DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?
This is how LITTLE progress we've made. And why have we made so little progress? Because for the most part, we don't understand the true nature of violence. We still believe that it's possible to strangle a soul into virtue.
A very brief tour of the 20th century helps us to understand. So, you have this war that began out of practically NOTHING -- a single assassin. So for the sake of one man dying, TEN MILLION died in the trenches and another TEN MILLION died from the flu epidemic that the soldiers spread when they returned from the front to a weakened population. Three years after the war began, the Allies were exhausted and they were going to call an end to it and not screw up Europe. They were going to rewrite the original boundaries and they were all gonna go home. And if they had actually done that, if that had actually been allowed to happen, the 20th century would have been ENTIRELY different than it was.
But Nooooo ... what happened was that sick bastard, Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat), got the U.S. into the war, 100 thousand troops slaughtered, 300 thousand EVADED the draft (back then they still had some REAL sense of "honor") and the entry of the U.S. into WWI prolonged the war by at least a year, causing millions more deaths, and gave the Allies such an upper hand that they could impose the BRUTAL Treaty of Versailles on Germany and the blockade that continued until long after the war ended in 1918. A blockade where no food and no medicine was allowed into Germany, causing the deaths of many more German civilians. Mothers watched their children die of starvation and simple illnesses. And tens of thousands of innocent American civilians died as a result of those sanctions. This leaves a scar and a desire for vengeance,
So the Treaty of Versailles that imposed unbelievable reparations payments on Germany, screwed up its economy, rewrote the borders of Europe in a completely insane way, carving off parts of Germany and Czechslovakia and handing them off to Poland and France, cutting people off from their country in the same way that if Texas and California were given to Mexico, you'd yearn to rejoin the United States.
This set the stage for WWII. The German government ended up printing insane amounts of currency to pay off the reparations, or face another blockade and possible invasion. This caused hyperinflation which spread around the world, destroyed the middle class in Germany and paved the way for a thug like Hitler to come in. And Germany so so desperate to stop fighting this two front war with Russia on one side and the Allies on the other that they sent Lenin in, ARMED AND FUNDED to overthrow the Czarist regime, which is why you had the foundation of the Communist regime in Russia in 1917 that tyrannized huge sections of the world for the next 70 years.
If America had not come into WWI, there never would have been a WWII, or a Cold War, or the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, and Kruschev, and Brezhnev. Hitler would have been a famous artist and vegetarian dietician and not a famous megalomaniac. There wouldn't have been a situation where all of Eastern Europe was swallowed into the caverous maw of the Soviet Union with its disgusting and violent Communism.
These people did not die to set us free. They did not die fighting any enemy other than the one the previous deaths had created. Violence is a genie that attacks everyone. We all want a gun that we can take out and point at someone else, but as was said in "Lord of the Flies", "a spear is a stick sharpened at both ends." You cannot unleash violence upon others without it coming back to you. Think about THAT when you consider WHY four airliners were used as projectiles in September 11, 2001 and all the other repercussions that have come from U.S. Imperialism.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. Soldiers are paid killers. And I say that with all sympathy to men and women who are SUCKERED into a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of "heroic" to a man in costume who kills for money. I say this with all sympathy to the destructive effects of propaganda, which keeps alive the most bigoted aspects of religion, patriotism, the military, a militarized police, and wars. The lies of collective virtue, and the lie that "honor" is accepting ordered killings for money and prestige and pensions. In the 18th century people didn't say that a medieval doctor was a "bad" doctor because he didn't prescribe antibiotics (because they didn't exist). We create the possibility of moral choice by communicating the truth about ethics to people. That, to me, is where REAL heroism and real respect for the dead are found. Real respect for the dead lies with exhuming the corpses and listening for what they would say if they could speak now. And they would say, "If any ask us why we died, tell them because our fathers lied. Tell them because we were told that charging up a hill and slaughtering our fellow man was heroic and noble and honorable." But these hundreds of millions of ghosts who circle the earth in agony and remorse will not be released from our collective unconscious until we lay the truth of their murders on the table and look at the horror that is the lie; that murder for money or prestige can be virtuous.
How do we support the troops? By taking away the ethical support for the evils that they do. These men and women are propagandized into an "undead" ethical status. Lied to about what is noble, virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent and good to the point where they are rolling hand grenades into children's rooms under the illusion that doing so is going to make the world a better place.
We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why they died. They did NOT die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because the world is ruled by sociopaths. They died because collective murder is the moral fantasy of mankind; that guns and violence and bullets can create a better world. The only thing that can create a better world is the truth, virtue and the honor of standing up to the genocidal lies of mankind and actually calling them what they are -- LIES.
People seem to think that if we pour more bodies and more blood into the hole of the mass graves of the 20th century we can build some kind of Cathedral to a better place, but it NEVER happens. You can pour as many bodies and blood into it as you like and it will NEVER be full. It will do nothing but sink and recede further into the depths of human depravity. We can't build peace upon blood.
We need to look back and see the army of the dead and see that every time there was a war, the government grew and GREW, and NEVER went back to its original shape, and that we are still so addicted to this LIE that they died for our freedom and that we honor the dead by ADDING to their number. We need to see that these bodies bury US. This addiction to this ocean of blood drowns us, drowns our children, drowns our future and drowns the world.
When we pour more people into this endless pit of LIES, we follow.
We should be APOLOGIZING to these people for sacrificing their lives for absolutely no benefit to anyone but the sociopaths who rule us and who orchestrate wars for profit.
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Define Your Terms
“If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to the strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (Chapter 2, Aristotle and Greek Science, Part 3, The Foundation of Logic).
I try hard to write consistently and I usually am well aware of how I use fundamental terms and definitions. Many such words are listed and defined below.
I accept that readers might disagree with me. Yet, my definitions provide my foundations and boundaries. If a reader disagrees with me, any subsequent discussion must be within the boundaries outlined by my definitions. If a reader disagrees with my definitions, then all related debates are irrelevant because our starting points are different. The only topic to then discuss is the definitions.
So before writing to me, please be sure you understand my terms and definitions. Thank you.
When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty — Often attributed to Confucius
Accident: unintentional trespass.
Authority: a subject matter expert. Not to be confused with people who operate under the color of law.
Belief: a collection of ideas, conjectures, theories, and knowledge.
Capital: previously produced wealth devoted to producing more wealth. Capital is a feedback mechanism from the distribution of wealth back into the production of wealth. Capital is not to be confused with currency, which is only a potential claim on future capital.
Capitalism: the process of using wealth to produce more wealth. Not to be confused with political processes of privilege.
Color of law: acting under the pretense that a statute or custom, whether or not necessary, provides justification to bypass, evade, or ignore known or accepted boundaries.
Compound interest: with respect to the concept of money, the interest paid on both the unpaid principal and accumulated unpaid interest.
Conflict: a disagreement about interpretations of happiness and trespass. All conflicts are rooted in a desire to survive — both individually and collectively. Conflict might occur in several ways: 1) When an individual believes trespass has occurred; 2) When an individual believes trespass is about to occur and the alleged offender disagrees; 3) When an offender agrees trespass occurred but disagrees about how to resolve the trespass; 4) When an individual is denied an opportunity to pursue happiness and believes no restraints are necessary.
Conjecture: ideas about that which does not exist or has not yet been proven to exist.
Consumption: the process of converting wealth into usable energy and waste.
Credit: The willingness to forego an immediate consummation of an exchange of wealth and to accept debt.
Crime: intentional trespass.
Currency: the physical thing that circulates commonly as a medium of exchange to represent the concept of money. Currency is a token symbol representing an unfinished exchange of wealth (debt), not wealth. Not to be confused with the concept of money.
Debt: an unfinished exchange of wealth. Debt arises when one party in an exchange does not immediately receive wealth in an exchange for wealth.
Economy: utility, the efficient provision of needs and wants, not the study of mercantile or commercial exchange of goods and services. The latter is more correctly labeled chrematistics.
Efficiency: the process of controlling energy flows as close as possible to the source of the energy.
Energy: the capacity to perform work. That capacity exists in the form of atomic, light, mechanical, electrical, magnetic, chemical, and heat energy.
Entropy: unusable energy.
Fact: a reasonably authenticated idea or observation.
Fear: an individual’s emotional reaction to a real or imagined threat expected to interfere with that individual’s pursuit of happiness.
Fiat: a decree, often made under the color of law.
Fraud: an act of purposely failing to provide full disclosure.
Good faith: a desire to deal with other people with honesty and with intent to abstain from fraud, misdirection or other advantage.
Governance: a process of regulating human action peaceably, and a natural outgrowth of human social systems. Not to be confused with statism.
Happiness: an interpreted state of personal existence derived from an individual’s perception of his or her survival and well-being.
Ignorance: a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is not stupidity — ignorance is curable.
Illusion: a false belief.
In rem: a legal fiction where a thing is taxed. Only people can be taxed because only people can pay a tax.
Income: wealth received. The word has meaning only with respect to an individual and has no meaning with respect to the aggregate flow of wealth. The word loses meaning in a true wealth-for-wealth exchange system because people exchange wealth directly and do not use currency as a token symbol for unfinished exchanges.
Interest: with respect to the flow of wealth, the return from leasing capital. Not to be confused with the leasing of currency, the return of which typically is expressed in compound interest.
Justice: a recognition of the concept of rights, a recognition of boundaries to specific actions and claims. Justice is a recognition of a right to self-defense, a right to seek remedy for trespass.
Knowledge: a reasonably authenticated accumulation of interpretations about that which exists.
Labor: the process of humans converting energy into work. Human diligence.
Land: all natural resources, including water, oceans, air, wind, minerals, plants, and animals. All natural resources are forms of energy.
Legal fiction: a contrived assumption in order to operate under the color of law. Legal fictions exist for two major reasons: 1) to provide an illusion of jurisdiction and, 2) to hide the fact that a rule or principle of law has changed.
Liberty: the ability to be self-determining and to control the fruits of one’s labor without force and coercion, and without trespassing against that same ability in others.
License: a social and legal convention whereby the lawful titleholder of property allows other people to use those resources without transferring title. Not to be confused with political permits, which often are misnamed licenses.
Matter: a form of energy.
Monetization: a process of creating debt to immediately receive wealth.
Money: a concept representing any thing that is used as a medium of exchange. Not to be confused with currency.
Myth: an untestable belief.
Perpetual motion: a process of continually maintaining energy flows without further input. Within a closed system, perpetual motion is impossible, as described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Possession: the concept of physically holding or controlling something. Possession does not necessarily mean one is a titleholder to property.
Presumption: an attitude or belief based upon possibility or probability instead of fact; accepting something without evidence or basis in fact.
Privilege: derived from the Latin word privilegium, rooted in the words privis (private) and legis (law); and essentially means “private law” or a law pertaining to a particular person or group of people. The idea of privilege implies a structured relationship within a specific group.
Production: the effort to convert energy from natural resources into a form of energy that is directly useful.
Profit: an ambiguous term describing excess wealth obtained through an exchange of goods or services. The word has meaning only with respect to an individual and has no meaning with respect to the aggregate flow of wealth. The word loses significance in a true wealth-for-wealth exchange system because all exchanges are considered equivalent.
Property: the concept of lawfully holding or controlling something. A concept describing boundaries through which human actions are limited with respect to other humans. Property is ownership of certain rights to an object. All property is associated with the concept of title — recognition of ownership. Title to property is the way people recognize jurisdiction over specific objects and resources. Title can be written and witnessed or simply acknowledged. Title can take the form of a deed, a bill of sale, a cash register receipt, or often, mere possession. The idea of property — jurisdiction — allows people to use resources as they see fit, and necessarily implies power to exclude. The concept itself does not convey how title is obtained or controlled, although the concept of property arises from the economic principle of scarcity. To become property an object must become scarce with respect to an entire population.
Rent: with respect to the flow of wealth, the return received from leasing land. Not to be confused with the general social use of the word, which often is a combined payment of rent, wages, and interest.
Restitution: the act of restoring what was lost through trespass.
Scarcity: a principle that the things humans need or want do not exist abundantly or immediately. Scarcity does not necessarily mean unavailable or nonexistent, only that supply is limited or restricted in some fashion. Scarcity in resources gives rise for potential conflict.
Security: that desire or effort whereby each individual is provided an opportunity to pursue happiness without fear of trespass.
Self-defense: is rooted in the instinct of protection and is the human act of trying to prevent or remedy trespass in order to sustain the pursuit of happiness.
System: a model describing a collection or process of things or variables, all possessing certain interrelated observable characteristics and relationships. Systems are defined by boundaries, elements, and relational rules.
Tax: a forced taking of property under the color of law. Not to be confused with a truly voluntary association fee.
Theft: a form of trespass. Theft can be intentional or unintentional.
Theory: a systematic process of authenticating or testing conjectures.
Trespass: any unsolicited human action against another individual that deprives the offended individual of personal interpreted happiness. Trespasses are acts that violate the property title boundaries of another individual — whether intentional or unintentional.
Vice: an act where no trespass occurs but other people nonetheless find the act undesirable.
Victim: an individual who has been trespassed against.
Virtual wealth: potential wealth to be created through future production and assumed to currently exist for accounting purposes; wealth that could be created provided all requirements for its production existed.[1]
Wages: with respect to the flow of wealth, the return for leasing labor.
Wealth: anything tangible derived from labor that satisfies individual happiness. A form of usable stored energy.
Work: the process of applying physical force to move objects.
Worldview: a system model. A collection of ideas, conjectures, theories, facts, knowledge, beliefs, illusions, and myths attempting to create an understanding about reality, the world, and universe.
Endnotes
[1] Thanks to Dr. Harvey Barnard for this definition.
Finis.
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What is Money?
1. A promissory note is a written promise by one person to pay to another or to bearer a fixed sum of money. See: Davis v. Spencer, 267 Ill 57; 107 NE 826; Jencks v. Rice, 119 Iowa 451; Cherry v. Sprague, 187 Mass 113.
2. As a decree by a court of the U.S. for the payment of money can be made only for the payment of so many dollars of some specie of money that is made lawful money by a statute of the U.S., it follows that a recovery upon such a promissory note or contract must be for some dollars in gold and silver coins. See: The Edith, D.C. N.Y. (1875), 5 Ben. 144, 8 Fed. Cases 4,281; Forbes v. Murray, D.C. N.Y. (1869), 3 Ben. 497, 9 Fed. Cases 4,928.
3. The general rule is that a final judgment for money must specify the amount awarded. See: U.S. v. F. & M. Shaefer Brewing, 356 US 227; 45 Am Jur 2d 81.
4. An act by the legislature of Alabama, September 30, 1920, page 36, providing when a check is presented or forwarded to the payee bank for payment, it may at its option pay or remit the same in money or in exchange drawn on its reserves. However, it is unconstitutional and void as an attempt by the state to make a class of debts payable at the option of the debtor in something other than gold and silver coin. See: Capitol Grain and Feed Co v. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, D.C. Ga. (1925), 3 F.2d 614, 269 US 589, 70 L Ed 427.
5. As bills of credit were entirely abolished, the paper money of the state banks was the only currency or circulating medium to which the prohibition (Art. 1, Sec. 10) could have had any application. See: Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 75 US 533. (What is checkbook credit, lines of credit, etc.?)
6. Congress was vested with the power to borrow money and that the promise of payment having been given, no authority remained to alter or destroy the original promise. See: Perry v. U.S., 294 US 330.
7. The states are not forbidden to issue coupons receivable for taxes, nor execute instruments binding themselves to pay money at a future day for services rendered or money borrowed. See: Poindexter v. Greenbow, 114 US 70; Chaffin v. Taylor, 116 US 567; Houston & Texas Central R.R. v. Texas, 177 US 66. (If this is true, then why do states borrow from banks? States issue bonds and the banks buy the bonds by creating a new demand deposit and nothing is deposited. When it comes time to pay the bonds, the state acts as a collection agent for the bank.)
8. Neither the president nor the cashier of a bank has a right to accept anything but money in payment of an obligation due the bank. See: Aliquippa National Bank v. Harvey, 12 A.2d 409, 340 Pa 223; First National Bank of Mt. Holley Springs v. Cumbler, 21 A.2d 120; Re Bowen 46 F. Supp 631, 16 A.2d 409.
9. "Some years ago a new type of installment credit appeared in banks throughout the country. It became known as check credit or revolving check credit. Basically, it provided that those eligible for such credit be granted a line of credit in the agreed amount. In order to use that line, the borrower needed merely to write checks. The checks were special checks, and were NOT actually checking accounts. The check was merely the instrument by which the loan account was activated. Usually it did not go through all the processes that an ORDINARY check does once it reaches the bank. However, it had the APPEARANCE of an ORDINARY check, and was so used by the customer and the person to whom he gave the check." Source: "The Bankers Handbook" (? edition), page 530. (Does the bank disclose this information to you? It should be quite important for you to know that the bank just created a bookkeeping entry to create the "loan", and that the checks were not actually checks, but had the appearance of checks. This is what is known as a common law cheat and should be in violation of Fair Trade Practices because it gives banks a much greater advantage in business than you or I, or other businesses.) See: Title 15, Sec. 1635 of Chap. 41.
10. Unless there is what the law considers a valuable consideration, it will not be sufficient to maintain an action. And there is a distinction between a valuable consideration, other than money, and a money consideration. While in the "former" case the slightest consideration will support a promise (consideration other than money) to pay the largest amount to the full extent of the promise, in the latter the consideration will support a promise only to the extent of the money forming the consideration. The law leaves the measure of a valuable consideration other than money, for a promise to pay, to the parties to the contract; but money being the standard of value, is not the subject to be changed by contract, and will support a promise to pay money only to the extent of the amount of the consideration. See: Sawyer v. McLouth, 46 Barb 350.