Facts, Feelings, Thoughts, Opinions

While visiting Joe Huffman's blog, I lifted this excerpt because I felt it deserved more comment.

"While I think there is a fair amount of lying going on they don’t think of it as lying. They just don’t understand facts are independent of their feelings. If they feel something then, in their view of reality, it is true. I’ve had people flat out tell me this. I would point out that what someone was saying was in direct contradiction to verifiable facts. And I would get a response of something to the effect, “Well, it’s true to them and that is what matters.” -- Joe Huffman
There is also a very telling anecdote about liberal “research” in this same article:

In 2006 I was at a cocktail party in Arlington, VA, talking to a liberal journalist about his soon-to-be-released book on Iraq when John Lott joined us. John listened for a moment and then said to the author, 

“I’m curious. You say you just finished a book on the Iraq war. I always find it so hard to finish a book. I get so deep into the research I have a hard time stopping to write. I’m guessing you had a hard time leaving Iraq. There is so much to investigate and understand.”  

The author said, “I didn’t go to Iraq.”  

John paused with this quizzical look on his face before asking, “Oh, how did you do your research?”  

The author said, “I didn’t have to do much. I mean, I already know what I think.”

Feelings versus facts. It’s a type of mental disorder.—Joe]

The article quoted above can be found at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2014/09/25/how-bloombergs-million-dollar-desire-for-gun-control-is-backfiring/

What is so revealing in that last statement by the unnamed liberal author is how he thinks about research.  To him, research isn't about gathering facts and using logic to come to a realistic and logical conclusion on a matter.  To him, research is only necessary to confirm what he already thinks, or more specifically, his opinion.  And because he feels he is a member of the anointed visionary class, he owes it to the unwashed masses (which really means anyone who doesn't already think the way he does), to share his enlightened opinion.

Too much about living in 21st century America allows for this kind of lack of rational thought.  Many decades ago when there were no "social safety nets," failure to think logically and act accordingly could get you killed or end up suffering very bad consequences.

Now the modern world is populated by too many people  (dare I say about half of the population) who have raised the right to an opinion to some kind of sacrosanct status.

Oh, but wait!  That's not entirely true when I really think about it.  On closer examination, only opinions that are politically fashionable to the left that are respected, or damn near worshipped.  I use the phrase politically fashionable because there isn't a damn thing correct about "political correctness."  Political Correctness, in all it's verbal forms, is Orwellian newspeak for the highly intolerant soft tyranny of the statists.

Very soon, the unsustainable economic situation in this country is going to collapse, and when it does, modern liberal thinkers will be forced, dragged kicking and screaming, to the reality that all of their wishful but totally incorrect feelings, thoughts, and opinions on how to create a utopian society is all just crap.

That degree in political science, women's studies, international relations, art history, public administration, urban and regional planning, environmental studies or applied sociology, is going to be about as useful to you as a degree in typewriter repair.  It is not going to help you know how to grow or preserve food, to hunt and field dress an animal, take care of domestic animals, make fire without a lighter or matches, find or purify water, or build a shelter.

The last thing to note about the liberal author's final statement above is the subtle arrogance. An arrogance that even he doesn't seem to recognize.  "I mean, I already know what I think,” pretty much tells you that he doesn't think that any more thought needs to be given to the subject.  For a leftist who has made up his mind, facts are inconvenient and sometimes downright confusing.  I guess you could also attribute his statement to over-confidence.

 

 

The low-or-no-information voter never wants to be bothered with questions of epistemology.  The next time a leftist is defending a socialist idea or attacking a tried-and-true conservative one, just ask the question: "What if you're totally wrong?"

 

Remember the pseudo-genius evil character from Princess Bride?  You'll probably hear the answer: "Inconceivable!"



The Bigger Problem

"Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance." 
             -- Francis W. Porretto

Once again I run across a tidbit from Liberty's Torch that becomes the seed for a post here. Francis managed to encapsulate an idea in just seven words.  Sometimes, really great quotes don't get the appreciation they deserve. Maybe this one little sentence struck me so significantly because I have enough worldly experience.

Maybe it set off bells and whistles in my head because I've had to deal with the truth of that statement so much lately.

At the risk of boring my more intelligent readers, I feel like expounding on the quote above. I guess another reason for this is that I've got several decades of experience that growing older does not guarantee growing wiser; at least not in a society that coddles ignorance and stupidity.  Recently I've had to encounter the most egregious sin of stupidity.  Willful ignorance.  While lately I have seen this attitude most irritatingly in people quite older than myself, I try to mitigate my angst by seeing an underlying attitude of: "I'm old, I've paid my dues, and I'm not long for this world anyway."

Believe it or not, I've spent enough time thinking about this that I now have two categories of willful ignorance. In the first kind, the subject is confronted with facts that are so upsetting to his worldview, that he dismisses the new information and quickly moves on to something else that distracts him from having to really ruminate on it.  It may be in the back of his mind, able to resurface later if brought about by another event.  But the subject sort of subconsciously suppresses it because the cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to deal with presently.  In this primary level, at least there is hope that the subject will accept the truth in the future.  When I encounter this in an individual, I can easily smile and drop the subject, thinking to myself, "It's okay, he/she's just not ready yet."

But the second level of willful ignorance is where I have to fight the demons that set my blood to boiling. It's when the subject makes clear and very declarative statements to the effect of: "I don't WANT to know." And more importantly, the statements are made with a smile and a smugness as if delivering divine wisdom from on high.  This is where I DO need grace from the Almighty, because I feel like slapping the ever-loving shit out of the jerk.

Getting back to the main idea; both of the levels of ignorance above are most often born out of miseducation.  Ignorance in its pure form simply means that you don't know, but you have not been indoctrinated in any particular direction, like a juror in a fresh venue with no prior knowledge of the case.  The problem comes from being purposely "educated" to believe things that seem very plausible, have been seemingly accepted by the vast majority, and are typically very difficult and time consuming to falsify or prove on one's own. Amusement of all kinds is the modern American sport. Ignorance is bliss. "I'll take the blue pill."

Why?  Well, as much as I don't like leftist/progressives, I'll quote one here.  Gloria Steinem said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."  Of course, truth won't piss you off until you are forced to come to grips with it.  It's like the child of any age who's parents finally throw him out of the house to go fend for his self. The Eastern Airlines employee or air traffic controller who finds out that the union doesn't really have his best interests at heart. The college graduate who finds out that there is no one looking to hire someone with a masters degree in "Graffiti's Social Importance."
So many more examples I would like to give here, but I'll move on.

People don't cling to false things they believe to be true because of evidence or logic.  They cling to those things because of their emotions.  Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority has many uberposts on his blog, along with some long-running exchanges with hoplophobes that help prove this point.  I remember sifting through long threads on his site as well as others, and being dumbfounded at the extremes to which anti-gunners will go to defend their position against all evidence and logic which demonstrates their position to be blatantly stupid.

One reason emotion is such a big issue is because nobody likes to find out they've fallen for a lie.  Short-term lies on the personal level are one thing. Someone in your personal world lies to you, but you eventually find out. Most of your anger can be righteously directed at them, and once you've calmed down you can at least feel good about yourself for discovering the truth.  But the big lies that will really rock your world are just too painful to deal with for a lot of people. Big lies that you find out you actually talked yourself into because they sounded so good.  But it was wrong.  And in the realization it was wrong you become angry. You are angry because it made you feel stupid.

The bigger the lie, the more stupid you feel, and thus the angrier you get.  The force multiplier to the tune of 10X is the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself.  There's not one individual you can blame for knowingly defrauding you.  If you got taken in by Bernie Madoff, you've got someone you can focus your anger on.  But who are you going to take to court or see in shackles over the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

Nothing perpetuates and protects ignorance as much as believing that you already know the truth. Oh, I believe that there are indeed absolute truths. But they are the things which I am always willing to put to the test.  Any test. Over and over.  But when you've come to the conclusion that "the argument/debate is over," then the only thing you have proven is your ignorance. 



Minor Rabbit Trail:  It's so easy to be like one of the sheep in this parade.  It's cool to feel like you are connected with a popular movie star.  It's so easy to let people like Leo and Algore and Bernie the Commie Sanders do your thinking for you, instead of asking the epistemological question: Are they right? How do they know?  What are the arguments on the other side?  If the argument is over, why the need for the march?  Back to my screed.

The things I am willing to argue passionately for are the things I am sure are true, with the caveat that I know I am human and that there may be information yet that I do not have.  But show me someone who is unwilling to entertain a reasonable and intelligent argument, and I'll show you a willfully ignorant and downright stupid fool.

Water: Part II

I wish I could have thought of a clever title for this post. I thought some were cute, but they all got flushed.

Water is both essential to life and destructive at the same time.  What a paradox.  It's destructive in big tsunami like ways and in small, irritating, rusty ways.  Just the word "leak" can make some people shudder.  And why is that?  Why are there so many substances that do not react well to getting wet?

Electron cloud model of water atom

I started reading again on all the stuff I learned years ago about chemistry in order to bring some great enlightening insights to my readers on this subject.  When it comes to chemistry and physics, I think I would rather try to explain how quantum mechanics works.  I get excited talking about radio isotope decay and the significance of polonium haloes in granite, but water is far more difficult.  That's right.  The substance that should be the most familiar to us in at least two of it's forms is the hardest to explain.

This is because as much as people like to think that science can explain everything, the more you know about what science REALLY knows, the more you realize that they don't explain a lot.

Bohr model of the atom

Let's start with the fact that most atoms are invisible.  Yeah. Those cute illustrations of what scientists believe to be the working models of atoms are just illustrations.  Most people aren't even aware of this, because ever since grade school, we've been subjected to illustrations designed to teach us about the assumed properties of  atoms and even subatomic particles are presented with such assurance that this is "just the way it is."  And while the atomic models we are shown are the best models that can be developed based on the experimental behavior and empirical evidence, they are still just best guesses.

Our best scanning, tunneling, electron microscopes can only see the very largest of atoms, and the pictures are very fuzzy at that.  How many people outside the scientific community even understand that, below a certain size, you can't "see" molecular objects. That's right.  Once you get so far down in size, there is no actual optical resolution that works, because you can't focus wavelengths of light that would have to be so short that you can't create lenses to deal with them.  That's why the electron microscope had to be invented.  When you look at an image from an electron microscope, you are not actually seeing the object the way you would look at a bacterium under a standard optical microscope.  You are looking at an image produced electrically on a monitor that is interpreting the electrons that have been focused to bounce off the object you want to examine.  An analogy would be the image you get from a high quality radar array from many miles up in space looking down at a land mass on earth.

Physicists know that down to a certain point we can't observe what goes on at the atomic or subatomic level. How can we, when the very act of trying to see an object means bombarding it with electrons?  It would be like blind people trying to watch a basketball game by being on the court with the players and touching them and the ball in order to "see" what's happening.  So, always keep in mind that what we "know" about atoms and elements are based purely on observing how they react with other atoms and other molecules on a relatively huge scale compared to their actual size.  Most of what we know about electrons seem very well proven, otherwise we wouldn't have radio, TV, microwaves, etc.

We don't know with absolute certainty that the hydrogen atoms attach at an angle to the oxygen atom in that model you see at the top, but it's the best guess based on how we think water behaves relative to other molecules.  For instance, in the shapes and behaviors of proteins. But this does not explain why water has the extremely high dielectric strength that it does compared to other liquids.  Why is water such an extremely good solvent with so many other substances?  Why does water expand when it freezes, even when in higher density solution such as sea water?  We don't know why.  We only know that it does.  We can speculate that the electron orbital cloud of the hydrogen expands away from the larger oxygen atom, thus making it less dense compared to the surrounding liquid water molecules, but such a change in the spatial relationship would seem to indicate a higher, not lower energy state.  This is because, as some would suggest, the hydrogen bond state in water forms an "open lattice" structure and this open lattice gets bigger at the point of freezing.  Open lattice?  Suggesting that there is empty space between the atomic matter?  But nature abhors any kind of vacuum.  This is an odd mystery.

We don't fully understand how atoms attach to each other. Physics describes three types of bonding between atoms: hydrogen bonding, covalent bonding, and ionic bonding, but these descriptions are only due to observation of behavior at the macro level and based on theories about the electrical charges and numbers of electrons and protons that are in the atoms.  There is overlap in the characteristics.  Most of the bonds in the smallest molecules are covalent in nature, meaning that the atoms are sharing electrons to some degree.  Ionic bonding is more along the lines of purely electrical or "magnetic" type attraction between atoms.

Hydrogen bonding is not completely understood. As of this post, in the year 2011, there is still a call for scientists to come up with a definition for hydrogen bonding. (Note the line just before the contents box at the link.)  How is it that hydrogen bonding is described as being weaker than ionic bonding?  Sodium chloride crystals (table salt) are a simple paradigm of ionic bonding between chlorine gas and sodium metal.  But I can take a pint of pure (distilled or deionized) water and dissolve up to four or five tablespoons of salt in the water.  This demonstrates that the bonds of the crystals have been broken while the physical state of the water has remained unchanged.

The same weak hydrogen bonds that allow you to push your finger down on a plunger and "atomize" water from a spray bottle are the same strong hydrogen bonds that give nylon it's elastic strength.  The same hydrogen bonds that allow water to evaporate off your skin  are the same hydrogen bonds that connect amino acids across the spiral lattice of phosphates that make up the DNA helix, but that can easily be "unzipped" by ribosomes to create RNA or recreate new DNA molecules.  All of the soft tissues of your body are swimming in a sea of water.

The element of water behaves differently with so many other elements, and even behaves differently depending on the amount of the element present.  For example, you couldn't survive if you didn't eat enough salt in order to have sodium ions in your body.  Every nerve cell in your body depends on sodium ions carrying nerve impulses.  But what happens when pure sodium comes in contact with water in an unregulated environment?  Watch the video:



You couldn't do that safely with lithium or especially rubidium.  They are far more reactive than sodium.  If you'd like to see how stupid and spectacular some people can be with sodium, go to this link on YouTube.  The third video in the list is really an example of what not to do.

This is enough for today.  Go ponder what a miraculous substance water really is.  How anybody who understands the little bit we can comprehend about the world around us can be an atheist is beyond my ability to explain.  I will continue to repeat what I've said before.  People will believe what they want to believe no matter what the evidence suggests or proves.  Accepting this has kept me from going crazy when talking to people.

Shalom Y'all

Knowing Is Hard

Seems like Twyla and I are always saying that it is hard to know the truth when there is so much ignorance out there.  We don't live like elite people, don't want to live that way, or seem that way to others. But, dammit, I get really tired of hearing people parrot the propaganda that they've been fed by the dominant media that is just flat-out false.  I don't want to talk down to people or purposely make them feel stupid.  I feel like I did when I was fueling my truck one day and this young girl pulls up to the pump next to me and with a lit cigarette in her hand, proceeds to swipe her card, pull the nozzle, open her tank cap and shove the nozzle in.  She was at first shocked when I started shouting at her, and then giggled when she realized why I was shouting.

And I'm really sick and tired of people not being willing to take the time to actually find out the truth about issues that really effect their lives.  I pause here to interject a quote that I got from Belmont Club:

Part of the problem with politics is the problem of datasets. Soap opera issues — like sex and petty abuse of power — are popular with the viewers and newspaper readers because they are the only issues that everybody down to the least educated can understand. They are discussions at the lowest common denominator of human nature. Death and sex are what the King and the King’s chambermaid have in common. Editors know that if “it bleeds, it leads” because everybody bleeds.
Readers who are unable to grasp complexities of the deficit, the War Powers act, or the intricacies of quantitative easing are still able to comprehend that it isn’t kosher for a California governor to cuckold the maid’s husband, for a powerful banker to chase a chambermaid around a hotel room, for a President to hit on an intern or for a Presidential candidate to maintain a mistress with campaign funds while his wife is dying of cancer. They understand that because they can understand that. It is an available dataset to them. Creepy behavior is something they can grasp without a college degree. The same thing is true for gut issues like gas prices and inflation at the supermarket. People who don’t know how the fiscal system or the financial markets work still sense when their wallet is empty. Having an empty wallet not be the most theoretically important economic issue around but it is the dataset available to the average Joe.

I was talking to a friend the other day at a garage sale.  He and his wife don't have a computer and get all their news from the idiot box.  On most accounts, he sees through the leftist crap and seems like a conservative on most issues. But then he says, with total derision and disgust snarling from his mouth, "And what about that, . . . that . . what's his name . . . Paul guy?"
"You mean Ron Paul?"
"No, no, ah . . . "  Fingers snapping.
"Rand Paul?"
"No, no, uh,  Paul something. . . "
"Paul Ryan?"
"Yeah, geeze, what an asshole!"
"What?  Why would you say that?"
"He want's to get rid of medicare."
"Really?  What do you know about his plan?"
"Something about vouchers."

I won't go on with the conversation mode, but I'll admit to being obviously pissed off in front of my friend and then asking him if he actually read anything about Paul Ryan's plan.  No, he hadn't.  All he knew was what the TV told him as if Jon Stewart had written the script.  And when I explained to him the brief, true, and salient points about Ryan's plan, he agreed that he'd been totally misled and that Ryan's plan made perfect sense.

If you think it's more important to pay attention to who is dancing with who, who's getting kicked off the island, who's going to win a contest, how your sports team is doing, and you just can't be bothered to study some issues because it's boring and not any fun, then you deserve what you get when your quality of life goes into the toilet.  The problem is, such people drag the rest of society down into the septic tank with them.

When it all goes to hell and there are people who either sit around wondering what happened, it's going to be hard to feel any pity for them.  And God forbid I should encounter anyone who will say that it's the fault of Wall Street, or Big Oil, or Big corporations or Wal-Mart or any such nonsense because it will take much restraint to keep from beating the hell out of them.  The people who make the law and hold the badges and the guns are the ones who made Wall Street, Big Oil and all the rest do all the things they did.

And no, it's not all Obama's fault.  In fact, only a small fraction is Obama's fault.  Those of us who have been conservatives for decades have known this all along.  We are the ones who have been railing against the crap that led us to this point ever since Tip O'Niel for crying out loud.  The problem is the voters who buy into the crap about "fairness" and "tolerance" and "social justice" and the amorphous, undefinable "Hopey, Changey" pathway to social and economic collapse.  We real conservatives are pissed off that you didn't want to listen to reason and see through the lies when Bill Clinton slicked his way into the White House.  Now we are even more doubly pissed off that you didn't listen or pay attention when BO told you the unvarnished truth about what he wanted to do as president and you voted for him anyway.

Okay, post is long enough and I have a lot of stuff to do today.

Shalom Y'all

Pursuing Knowledge

Perhaps because there is so much stuff, or garbage, in the world that passes for knowledge, there seem to be many churches in the breathless "charismatic" wing that eschew good scholarship for feelings and for things that can neither be measured for their quality or abundance.  I've been in far too many congregations that avoid scholarship like it's leprosy.

The dumbing down of the modern western world has been going on for decades now.  It used to be fairly subtle because it had to be.  Today, people are so devoid of real knowledge that the vast majority of people not only don't know what to believe, they just don't care.  This is a problem that stems directly from language being hijacked by evil forces.  Whether we care to admit it or not, propaganda is just as important in warfare as bullets or bombs.  The Vietnam war is the most perfect modern example of that.

We live in a world where "science" is now an abused word. The vast majority of people not directly associated with a scientific field don't understand it at all.  It used to be that science was the pursuit of truth.  This is no longer the case.  Today the only time truth wins out in regard to scientific inquiry is if enough hard data gangs up on and beats the living snot out of some guy with a theory.  And the problem there is; if nobody is there to see it happen, did it happen?  Other than reality forcing its way into the mind of some "researcher," stuff that gets referred to as science is really just somebody's agenda being touted with select supporting data.  Any data that doesn't support the story line of the "researcher" get dismissed.  Data that seem to support the idea being pushed get enhanced or worse.

Again, I lament the fact that there was a time when debate was a cherished tool in education.  Back when education meant teaching students not what to think, but rather, HOW to think.  How do you recognize a false premise?  How do you recognize when someone is making a bad argument by sticking two premises together that have nothing to do with each other?  How many adults, let alone children have ever heard of the word syllogism?  What is even worse is that we now have people with graduate degrees in some scientific fields who have graduated without the benefit of being educated in logical thought processes.  If they are in the hard sciences, they may experience the truth of the process in the results, but they would be hard pressed to explain or describe the process.

Another problem is specialization.  So many fields of science are highly specialized. Most people have no idea what a big problem this creates.  Without truly great thinkers to connect the dots, much of scientific knowledge is never put to its best possible use.  The flip side of that coin is the fact that scientists in a particular field can specialize into oblivion, meaning that there is no real value to their research and any knowledge gained is superfluous.  No, I don't buy into the idea that knowledge for knowledge's sake is sufficient.  And yes, let me burst your bubble: There IS such a thing as a stupid question.

Specialization in the world of science has also created the problem of not daring to question.  An ear, nose, and throat specialist will not question the diagnosis of a gynecologist even when common sense might suggest that something isn't quite right.  Meanwhile at the other end of the specialization spectrum we have the broad title of "scientist."  The way this gets abused is when a report comes out telling the world that "Ten thousand scientists have signed on to a resolution calling for reduction in global green house gases," or some such rot.  With some investigation we find out that  among the ten thousand "scientists" a handful have degrees in some hard sciences such as astrophysics or biology, but have no formal training in meteorology or climatology. All the rest are trained in the soft sciences such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc.  Some of them might even simply have advanced degrees in theology.

The vast masses of people who've never been educated beyond high school level, which in the past twenty years means they are barely literate in functioning, have no clue where to begin in questioning what is and is not scientific.  Which means that if the media tells them that "scientists say that if we don't reduce carbon emmissions to X levels by Y time, the planet will suffer catastrophic results," the people will just accept that crap because, well, "scientists" said so.

One of the biggest myths ever perpetrated on the world is the idea that scientists always pursue truth without allowing any other agenda to influence them.  Scientists are fallible human beings with emotions.  They want to be liked as much as anyone.  They also want to get paid and live comfortable lives.  And scientists will believe what they want to believe, even in spite of evidence, just like people without advanced degrees. This is true to the Nth degree when it comes to evolution.

There have been millions of scientists in the world since Sir Isaac Newton, but how many of them have ever stood out?  How many have ever become household names?  Bet you can't name more than three.  I'm sure Einstein comes to mind.  Why?  Because his pronouncements radically transformed the world of physics.  He was lucky enough that his discoveries made so much sense in explaining the physical world and were also provable.  But more importantly, his ideas did not gore anybody's sacred cows.  Had his ideas been too radical compared to the prevailing "accepted" theories, who knows how long it might have taken before his theories caught on.

For those who really pursue truth, it can be extremely lonely out on the edge of the frontier.  Not only is it lonely, it can be downright dangerous.  It was dangerous for the founding fathers to stand up to Great Britain in their day.  It's dangerous today to stand up and say to the ignorant masses in this country that there is no magic ATM behind the capitol building in Washington DC pumping out billions of dollars for us to keep going the way we are going.  It's dangerous to stand up to the union goons who have landed their "secure" jobs in government who believe that the people out there working in the real world should have to struggle to pay their big salaries and benefits.

It's not easy to stand up in a congregation of Christians and say, "You know what?  You just aren't getting this right."

Many times, my lovely wife and I have lamented that we wish we didn't know everything we know now.  It's no fun at all not having anyone to worship and fellowship with because the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians just want to believe what they want to believe and not learn anything more.  I can relate to how lonely the prophets must have been when God gave them a message that made them seem like nothing but doom and gloom party crashers compared to all of their contemporaries who were speaking nothing but positive and pleasant things.

Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus The Christ) said that the end times (ahchereet hayameem) would be like the days of Noah.  Noah had many months to build the ark and preach to the people.  He tried to get them to turn from their wicked ways, but in the end, only he and his sons and their wives escaped.  According to the book of Jasher, about 700,000 people perished in the flood.  (The Bible itself refers to the book of Jasher as being authoritative, and so far, I have found nothing in it that contradicts Scripture.)  This tells me, along with much of Scripture that there are going to be many, many people surprised in the end to find out they weren't really saved at all.

Ever since I became saved and was subsequently disillusioned about the hoaxes of evolution, leaders who are still touted as heroes, and doctrinal heresies in the Church, I have made it my mission to always question.  Question everything.  "Is this really true?"  "Am I willing to suffer the slings and arrows of being called extreme because I won't go along with everybody else?"  "Am I deceiving myself?"  "HOW do I know this is true?"
"Am I willing to give up eternal bliss in the future in order to be liked and popular in this life?"

The vast majority of people simply will not tolerate any challenges to the conventional and accepted tradition in the churches.  "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!"

In His Name

This is the next installment in the series that began with Why I Am Not A Christian.  You can return here to click on the subsequent essays: Two, Three, Four, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10.


Lots of Christian denominations in the breathless "charismatic" wing will go on wild rants about invoking the name of Jesus.  Such rants, er, I guess I mean "sermons" are usually a mile wide and an inch deep.  And since it brings the subject to mind, it usually compares to the practice in many independent congregations to engage in what I call "broken-record" worship.  Now, before someone accuses me of being too critical, let me ask God, right here in front of the witnesses (No, not you JWs) who read this blog, to correct me if what I am about to say is wrong.  I just don't see how taking a little chorus of a song and repeating it over, and over, and over for a thirty or forty minute stretch at 110 decibels is somehow honoring to God.  To me, it invokes images of new age cults engaging in repetitive chants in order to empty their minds and achieve oneness with their navel or whatever.  I'd rather sing some stodgy old hymns that have great and meaningful lyrics that you have to actually think about and tell an important story or attribute of God than to sing the same line, "I am a friend of God" or "Better is one day in Your house" eighty-five times or for thirty minutes, which ever comes first.

If that isn't bad enough, imagine a preacher who spends 40 minutes talking about what the five smooth stones were saying to each other in David's pouch about which one of them get's to kill Goliath.  No, my imagination isn't good enough to come up with a whopper like that.  I remember being stunned by being surrounded by people shouting "Hallelujah!" and "Preach on!"  and wondering for the life of me what could possibly be edifying about any of this.  The reason it comes to mind over fifteen years later is because of the sheer stupidity and spectacle of it.  It wasn't like I walked out of that service (probably long before he was finished) thinking to myself, "Wow, this is understanding that is going to make such a difference in my Christian walk."

In a world that is hurting for answers, the last thing they need is mindless nonsense being associated with the Real God.  People need to hear the evidence for why they can trust the Bible.  They need to hear reasonable answers to skeptics about the Bible being just a bunch of myths invented to enslave people to a religious system.  People need to know that science doesn't conflict with anything the Bible says about history or anything else it addresses.  Real advances in the hard sciences show that the Bible can indeed be trusted.  There are facts and evidence that explain why the universe appears to be so old while the Bible claims an age of about 6,000 years.  People should have the opportunity to hear the logical, systematic explanations for why the atheist position isn't just illogical, but downright stupid.  By the way, I distinguish between atheists who don't really care about the argument, versus those who are militant in their religious fervor against God.

There are many, but not all of those associated with charismatic congregations who have this idea that if they simply attach the name of Jesus to whatever they are doing, and it seems like a good thing, God will bless, condone and sanctify it.  This stems from a serious misunderstanding of what it means from the ancient Biblical concept of "in My name."  We need to have the proper understanding of the phrase.

From the time Yeshua inaugurated His ministry and chose His disciples it was clear that he was no ordinary Rabbi.  But the modern, western, Christianized mind should never make the mistake of thinking that He did not teach in the exact same manner as all the sages who came before Him.  In case you haven't been keeping up with this series, let me pause here to fill in some things and repeat some things because they are well worth making clear.  There are Rabbis and there are Sages.  Sages were the top Rabbis.  They weren't appointed by anyone (unless you want to count the Holy Spirit).  They reached their status because they were recognized by the people as exceptional Torah scholars who practiced what they preached.  Just as a catholic nun would hold up Mother Teresa as a standard for piety and devoutness, a sage was the Rabbi everybody was hoping would be willing to take you on as a disciple, because everybody around knew that this guy had the answers and lived out everything that he preached.  The thing that probably shocks the mind of a modern westerner is the fact that when a Rabbi took you on as a disciple -- from the time of Noah until maybe a thousand years ago, the disciple lived with their Rabbi or Master.  It was nothing new or weird or different that the disciples of Yeshua of Nazareth spent all of their time with the Master.  It was a twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week deal.  They slept in the same houses, they ate all their meals together.  Every waking moment was spent learning how to do everything exactly the way their Master did it and memorizing the words that He spoke. Keeping in mind that you first had to have memorized the Torah and pretty much the Prophets and the Psalms.

That is such a foreign concept to modern people.  Imagine living and learning in such constant closeness that the only things you don't do together are bathing and defacating.  Sorry if that seems too graphic for you, but I want to be faithful to the facts.  No wonder that the gospels tell us that Yeshua spent a lot of time finding a solitary place to pray. So, what does this have to do with the point about "in My name?"

In order for anyone to have any respect for a man invoking the phrase, "in the name of . . ." the listeners would have to know that the person was a disciple in good standing of the Rabbi whose name they were using for authority.  Otherwise, what you were saying had no more importance than the sound of a chicken clucking.  Today, there are people in the churches who use the name Jesus as if there is some kind of celestial voice recognition software floating in the ethersphere and if you just say that name you get some kind of spiritual respect.  But we are given a wonderful real event in the book of Acts which demonstrates that such would be faulty thinking.

In Acts 19, Paul has come to Ephesus, a city in western Turkey and greatly devoted to the worship of Artemis.  Paul used the synagogue as his local base of operations, reasoning from the Scriptures about Messiah with the local Jews who had settled there after the big Babylonian diaspora.  Adonai was giving credence to Paul's message by performing extraordinary miracles through his hands.  Knowledge of this activity naturally spread through the area to the point that even some Jewish exorcists were willing to try using the name of Yeshua "whom Paul preaches."  Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva tried to do this to a man who was possessed by a demon, and with disastrous results.  The demon says to these pretenders, "I recognize Yeshua, and I even know about Paul, but who are you?"  Then this demon-possessed man beats these guys badly enough to send them running, naked and bleeding.

Before I move on, please note the wording by the demon.  "I recognize . . ."  This isn't a casual phrase.  The demon is acknowledging Yeshua's identity in the same way that the demon in the man at the Capernaum synagogue cried out, "I know who you are -- the Holy One of God." (Luke 4:34)  This title is one repeatedly used in the book of Isaiah to refer to the God of Israel.  It doesn't easily translate from the Hebrew because there is no equivalent word "of."  English translators stick "of" in there to make it read better for us, but those Jews in the synagogue on that day heard a demon recognize that they were all standing in the presence of God Almighty.  They all knew what it meant and they were amazed at His power and authority.

Back to Acts 19: Let me give you an analogy.  Let's say a bunch of thugs take over a small town.  A couple of guys from the neighboring town decide to take it upon themselves to go save those poor people from this oppression.  They are outnumbered and out-gunned, but they decide to try to look official and when they ride into town they even announce themselves as being there "in the name of the Law."  Problem is; the thugs already know who are and are not the duly appointed law men in the land and they know that these guys are just playing vigilantes.  The thugs simply make sport of these guys and send them off wounded.  The thugs know that they can get away with this because those guys lacked both the power and authority to get the job done.

There is this passage in Matthew 7 that always bothered me when I was calling myself a Christian.  "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"   Matthew 7:23

What law was he talking about?  He seems to be clearly saying that invoking his name and even doing very good things and even miraculous things is not good enough if I am practicing lawlessness.  Which laws?  Who's laws?

Problem was, I hadn't yet learned to take the Bible as a whole.  The answer was right there all along.  Not even in another book or epistle, but in the very same sermon that the Master was giving at the time.  All I had to do was go back to chapter 5 of Matthew, early in this sermon.  "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law . . ."  Matthew 5:17  So, how do we define those who practice lawlessness?  Those who deny that we need to keep Torah.  If I were to try to define Matthew 7:23 as referring to any other law and especially man-made law, the verse would not just be meaningless, it would be stupid.

By coming to the understanding of Scripture as a cohesive whole, I can see that in order to legitimately operate in the authority of God, I have to follow His rules and guidelines.  Notice in Matt 7:23 the assumption is that, come the judgment, there will be such people.  I don't want to be one of them.  I would rather risk having God say to me at the judgment, "That was nice of you to observe and keep all those commandments and teachings of Mine, but it really wasn't necessary."  rather than hear Him say, "You've got no excuse.  I think I made myself pretty clear  in that sermon on the mount, and in Luke 16:17 and in plenty of other places in My Word."

Choose carefully.  Choose wisely.

In the next installment, we will ponder the meaning of Yeshua's sinlessness.

Proof Positive

Yesterday I posted about making a choice about what kind of society you want to live in.  There is no easy choice because life is a struggle no matter what you do, and choosing the path that's best for you means lots of careful thought and learning to discern between what is real and what is fiction.

Helping to prove my point about how intellectually lazy people can be, I found this post at Bayou Renaissance Man.

Now stop and ask yourself how much more of a delusion you can create if you have a lot more people and a lot more resources to use for your propaganda.  Add to this the factors of complexity of subject matter.

Knowing God: Part 2

This is part 2.  Click here to read Part One.

It was the following day that I took time after class to go to the biggest Christian book store in Tampa.  This place had been in business a long time.  A free standing building about a third of the size of your average Barnes and Nobles, maybe a little smaller.  It wasn't just some little shop in a strip mall.  I figured if any place has some books with the answers to help me with all of the doubts and questions, surely this was the place.

My assumption was totally wrong.  There was a big section that had lots of different translations of the Bible.  At that time, I didn't understand why that was necessary.  Of the most popular translations, you even had different variations: red-letter, chain reference, topical, etc.Nobody to explain why all that was necessary, but it was all there.  Then there's all the different binding, and, oh-my-goodness!,  the selection of very fancy covers or carriers to tote them around in. A whole corner of the book area was devoted to such paraphernalia. Then there was a huge section that had to do with "Spirituality." Then an area about "self-improvement." Biographies took up another section.  There was a section with Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias and other large reference works. Of course there were books about end time prophecy.  Everybody wants to know what's going to happen and when. Smaller sections covered evangelism and church organization, and of course there were lots of books about current events and culture and what was wrong with the world. There were books on single topics or areas that I don't even remember.There was a large section of the store devoted to popular or contemporary gospel music, both recorded and sheet music.  Then there's the clothing.  Tee shirts, jewelry, choir robes.  Sunday school supplies, lesson books, felt boards, posters.  Artwork, paintings, candlesticks, knick-knacks, whatever.

I think I'd spent over two hours browsing the titles and reading the jackets to find something that dealt with just the basic questions I had.  In the reference section there was some fat volume about Bible criticism.  Perhaps it was Gleason Archer's When Critics Ask or some such, but that's the kind of stuff for second and third year seminary students and dealt with internal textual minutia that didn't have anything to do with answering any of my deeply held belief in evolution.  It seemed like I was wasting my time and I was coming to the conclusion that I wasn't going to find anything because there was nothing to find.

Let me back up a bit here.  As I was being made fun of for my new faith, I was asking questions of the priest and the other people I went to church with.  A lot of those people had gone to church all their lives and seemed to have great faith, and for heaven's sake, what's the point of getting a seminary degree and becoming ordained if you aren't going to learn how to answer people's questions about why we should believe in this stuff.  But when I would ask my questions, pointing out the glaring contradictions in what we accepted as fact from science versus what the Bible said, the only responses I got were pretty much one of three kinds:  "What's important is just having faith." "The accounts in the Bible are just parables or allegories, they're not to be taken as literal history."  "Evolution is just God's way of doing things."

The problem is, all of those answers mean that you couldn't trust what the Bible said about anything.  My logical mind wouldn't let me come to any other conclusion.  Especially since the Bible itself claims over and over again that it is the truth. I was not about to buy into any solipsistic nonsense about it.  And if you are one of those idiots who believes in solipsism, you might as well stop reading and go someplace else, because I got no use for you, unless you want to be disabused of that garbage.

Some people can somehow find a way to shut down that part of their mind that demands to know; "How did we get here, and why are we here?"  I really don't understand how someone of even average intelligence can do that, but that's a whole new post.  Those fundamental questions are why we spend trillions of dollars all over the planet,  building superconducting super colliders  and engaging in quantum physics research.  It's why we keep peering farther and farther out into space and launched Voyager and have radio telescopes listening for aliens.  I have a strong suspicion that even the people who claim not to care about the basic issue of human origins really do care when faced with their own mortality or deep personal crisis.

It would also be another thing if the Bible didn't deal with the issue of our origins, but it does.  It doesn't simply tell us, "God just created everything you see, and He really doesn't want to be bothered with telling you how He did it."  Quite the contrary.  It not only tells us the order that certain things were made, but defines what a day is and how long it lasts, and the order in which things were created made no sense according to everything I'd been taught in school.  And that was just scratching the surface of all the problems I had with the stories in the Bible.  I walked out of that store feeling pretty let down.

As I went to pull out of the parking lot the radio was playing something I found very irritating at that moment and so I hit another preset, to land on a station that carried Dr. D. James Kennedy's Truths That Transform just in time to hear that the program was about a book that was full of evidence that countered evolution.  It  seemed to have basic rebuttals to some things that I'd always just accepted as fact: Carbon dating, how primitive early man was, billions of years of geological evidence, etc.

Wow, why hadn't I ever heard anything like that before?  Even so, it sounded like stuff that should be pretty easy to falsify if it was just typical Christian propaganda.  I ordered it.  The book itself was pretty simple and seemed to be written for a general audience, but with lots of references.  I no longer have it in my library, having loaned it out many years ago and never gotten it back, but its footnotes and bibliography got me started on research, and within a couple of months I was spending a lot of money buying books from other sources, and finding out some really amazing things.

Like the fact that some of the best and brightest scientists with advanced degrees, all over the world, not only believed that the Bible was true, but that the earth was very young.  I'm not talking about crackpot, or fringe scientists, but guys with Ph.D.s from major universities and who were well respected and even taught at such places or were doing cutting edge research.  Like Dr. Richard Damadian who invented the MRI., Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith a holder of three separate doctorates in the medical field; Dr. Russell Humphreys who was once the lead scientist in high energy plasma physics.

Those are just modern scientists.  I'm sure nobody cares that Isaac Newton, or Michael Faraday, or Louis Pasteur or most of the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries were devout believers in the Bible and believed that the pursuit of science was, as Faraday put it, "thinking God's thoughts after Him."

All of this information really shook me up.  I read volumes and volumes of material.  I read the criticisms of these men and their research and conclusions and found myself having to agree with them.  I discovered Dr. Robert Gentry's work on polonium radio halos in granite and how none of the evolutionary scientists could find a flaw in his logic of what the implications were.  It actually made me angry for weeks.  I'd been misled for a long time.  I'd been lied to.  I thought "all" scientists were in agreement that evolution was a fact and that there was no mitigating evidence to the contrary. You see, it's one thing to present both sides of an argument fairly and let the audience decide, but that's not what goes on out there.  I would get to experience it first hand for myself, long before Ben Stein would come out with his documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.  I have been in college classrooms and in churches and parties where, once I began laying out evidence that made evolution easily falsifiable, my opponents would say I was nuts, but couldn't produce or cite a single piece of evidence to refute me.

This post, and even this entire blog is not for the purpose of laying out over 24 years of my experience and research into the debate and the evidence.  I've been a subscriber to Creation and now Answers magazine, as well as the scientific, peer reviewed journals of the Creation Research Society, and Answers In Genesis' Technical Journal.  I've listened and read, over, and over, and over to the evolutionists talk about how creationism isn't science, but then they never deal with the science.  Their argument always gets reduced to being about religious people trying to impose their beliefs on everybody else.  This has become so routine, that I have never been afraid to engage in debate with any doctor of any discipline anywhere at anytime regarding creation versus evolution. I'll try to keep to the topic of how the decay theorem proves that radiometric dating is always just a guess, or really a SWAG, and they'll just tell me it's "settled" science, without dealing with the mathematical equation.  They have nothing, and they prove it every single time.  Maybe I should share some of those encounters in other posts, but that's not the purpose of this particular post.  Here, I am just wanting to deal with the idea of knowing God. The background is important, however, because we are not talking about God as just anybody wants to understand Him.  The God that you understand on your terms is no god at all.

Once again, my logical, science loving mind was very concerned with the question of: Which God?  Is there just God and all roads lead to him?  Is the god of the Hindus and Buddhists and the Muslims and even the Mormons all the same entity?  Is religion just this big, complex salad bar that we all slide our tray along and get to pick and choose what we like, but we all end up eating in the same dining room?  All of these religions contradict each other on so many points and so many levels.  They can't all be right.  The universal language of the Universe is mathematics.  All the laws that govern this Universe are very exact and precise.  It stood to reason in my mind that a God who created all of this must have some very well defined rules.  It also made sense to me that any entity or religion that claimed to know God would not reflect any characteristics of a God that were inconsistent with nature.

Being logical, I asked myself: "What if I were God?"  Would I create a universe with very precise and logical mathematical laws, incredible beauty, mind-boggling diversity, then create sentient beings capable of tremendous abstract thought and deep emotional capability, and then leave them to their own devices and not provide a way for them to find out about me?  Maybe it's just me, but I find that line of thinking stupid beyond words.  So, now a big part of my journey was going to be about discovering whether or not I could know if I had the right God.  This would prove to be my journey on the road called epistemology.

I had already had enough experience from as far back as I can remember of experiencing the most asinine and moronic behavior in churches.  It still goes on to this day.  One need only turn on the TV and experience the clownish antics of the prosperity hucksters and simple-minded "evangelists."  Way too much of what the world encounters under the label of "Christianity" on television looks like a combination of Ringling Brothers and Saturday Night Live.  I would have to find out, apart from the "church" that God is not afraid of the toughest questions I can put to Him.  I would also have to learn that the vast majority of stuff done in His name had nothing to do with Him.

The next post on this theme is going to deal with,  "How do we find  the real God?"

You can move to the next post by clicking on Knowing God: Part 3

Knowing God: Part 1

Talk about a tough subject to tackle.  Why even try?

I will try, to a very, very limited degree, because of something that I've heard or read from people over and over, both on one extreme or on the other.  On the one hand, I've heard from people who have said the most outlandish, crackpot stuff while invoking the name or authority of God, at the other extreme are those who, while being correct about human inability to comprehend God fully, seem to believe that we can't know anything about God, so, why even try?  Which leaves them open to create a god in their own image, according to their own likes and dislikes.

This is a subject that actually requires a tremendous amount of background.   Like having a discussion on the fine points of flying an F-18 Superhornet and carrying out a mission involving multiple combat scenarios, you wouldn't attempt to include people who have never flown in a plane, let alone don't know anything about aerodynamics or avionics.  Therefore, I understand that I'm about to talk about stuff that will leave a lot of people in a fog if they happen to stumble on to this blog.  In the religious realm, this is like lecturing on eschatology when some of your audience has never even heard the terms; amillennial, pre-trib, or harpazo.

But this is what I feel led to do, so here goes.

I came to my knowledge of God, not based on some experience.  Thank you, Father.  I don't mean for that to disparage those who have, after all, look at Rabbi (apostle) Paul.  I came to my faith kicking and screaming, battling with my intellect the whole way.  By the time I was 25, I hated all forms of organized religion. But I couldn't shake the gut feeling that there was some kind of "higher power."  That brings up the issue of  being "spiritual, but not religious," but that will be another post.

Here is where you have to pay attention carefully.  I came to God out of desperation and in spite of my mind, while having a crisis of purpose.  He answered me and gave me some personal miraculous confirmation.  But I was a long way from any real knowledge of God and I had lot's and lot's and lot's of misconceptions and doubts.  I spent the first few years of my new life with God getting spanked and corrected in my thinking.  Actually that still goes on, but not quite as dramatically as it did in the first year.

I had a friend who led his family life as though God existed, but admitted to me in private his serious doubts about God's existence. His main problem was that he felt God should make His existence obvious to the point that no one could have any doubts about it.  I finally discovered his "bottom line" after giving him lots of evidence from several years of studying apologetics.  What I also discovered about my friend is that he really just wanted a consensus of  worldly "experts" to simply render a judgment and tell him it was true so he wouldn't have to wrestle with the hard thinking.  He couldn't understand why so many people he knew believed in God, while so much of the world of academe that he put his faith in, didn't.  I've lost touch with him, and don't know if he ever did come to an understanding of what faith really is.

Over time, I've discovered a consistent thread among those who wish to avoid any mental heavy lifting when it comes to theology.  The name for such people is agnostic.  They don't think of themselves as mentally lazy.  Instead they will declare that questions about God or knowing anything about Him or His existence is just too difficult for even the most brilliant intellects, therefore, it is unknowable.  They have decided to take their chance in the hereafter by pleading ignorance.  What's funny to me is the amount of mental gymnastics they employ to avoid the difficult choice. And while such people in the realm of religion are called agnostic, in the realm of politics, I call them moderates. Same thinking process, or lack thereof.  Atheists are a completely different animal and are so illogical as to be silly.  The rules of logic make that clear, and when you confront them with it, it nearly makes their heads explode or they shut down or switch position to agnostic, at least in front of me.

Which reminds me: this is where someone is going to think I'm horribly arrogant.  Showing any confidence at all in an argument is enough to reduce most moderates or agnostics into simply using the "arrogant" epithet and concluding that they don't need to engage the debate any longer.

How is it possible that little-old me has the chutzpah to think that I can really know something or anything about God?  Believe it or not, it is precisely because of my love of science that I came to believe in God.  It is because I like and appreciate logic and reason that  I embrace the existence of God and the pursuit of knowing Him more and more.

I didn't start out that way, as I said.  I had accepted, without reservation, everything that the average secular person believes about evolution, that the Bible was merely written by men who used religion as a way to control others, that miracles were myths, and that science had explained almost everything, and whatever it hadn't yet explained, it was just a matter of time until it would. In the Spring of my 25th year, had you told me that I would one day reject all of that and eventually be teaching creation apologetics and that the Bible was true, I would have said, "Screw you and the horse you rode in on."  But I would have done it in less polite language and with much gusto.

At first, I just wanted this warm fuzzy idea that I could be forgiven for all my shortcomings and that I didn't have to worry about some cosmic justice or judgment at the end of life.  I liked the "idea" of Jesus, but I didn't want anything to do with that Bible stuff.  And I could have gone along like that indefinitely had I only hung around the "Christians," because the vast majority of them were just like me in that regard. (A very sad statement about Christendom) The problem came because I was challenged by the secular world about being simple minded for believing in such a fairy tale as Jesus and the Bible.  That just didn't work for me.  I can't pretend that it's possible to compartmentalize what should be, what is,  the most ultimate question of the Universe from everything else I believe.  My logical mind was not going to let me get away with that.

I was forced into engaging in linear logic, Aristotelian thought, if you will.  Either Jesus is real, or he's not.  And it isn't just enough that he was a real historical figure.  If he simply lived and died, and all the information about him in the Bible is just a bunch of made up stories or embellishments, then it's foolish and self-delusional to think that he can somehow save me or make my life better.  If there is no certainty that there's a life after this earthly one, then I might as well get whatever pleasure I can while I'm here.  What's the sense of playing by a set of rules if the outcome is a guaranteed loss?  The flip side of that scenario is what happens if this Jesus guy is for real and all that stuff in the Bible about him is true?  That would mean that what I stand to lose goes up exponentially.

So, I made up my mind, with a tenacity like I'd never known before.  If I could come up with enough evidence to put to rest this idea that Jesus was anything more than a really charismatic teacher, then I could go on living my life the way I wanted and not have to worry about stories no more valuable than those of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.  All I had to do was prove that the Bible couldn't be trusted.

I said out loud, "Hey God, or Jesus, or whoever you are; if you are real and if this book is really your word, you're gonna have to prove it to me."  No feigned reverence.  No pleading as if I was worried about losing anything.  I was my typical bull-headed, in-your-face punk.

The following day is when things got interesting.

To move on to the next part click on Knowing God: Part 2

Scientific Scrutiny

For so many years now, I have been fascinated with seeing "discoveries" in the periodicals and then the amazing interpretations of them and how gullible people can be about accepting the conclusions therein.

It is amazing what people will simply accept as fact, when it is nothing but pure speculation or in some cases a "SWAG."  Daddy taught me that phrase.

I came across this recent discovery over at Bayou Renaissance Man.  Seems they found a Roman gladiator in York, England.  Now, you really need to click on that link and go there and look at the pictures.

The problem I have, like so many such things foisted on the public, is the idea that they can tell so much from so little material evidence.  Let me just work this problem like a prosecutor.

So, you don't have any bones from anywhere below the lower spine?  No pelvic girdle? No femurs, no tibula, or fibula, or any assorted foot bones, yet you claim that you can extrapolate from that little evidence how tall the subject was?

Based on only wound marks found on rather old and decaying bone, and the total lack of soft tissue, you can tell us he was a swordsman?    How does this tell us what the man did for a living?  Why does he have to be a gladiator?  What if he was simply a victim of stabbing?  How do you know how muscular he was?  Everybody had to work very hard before the advent of welfare states.

Given that the man was buried and not cremated as is the custom of the Romans, and given the wide range of diverse people who traveled the European area in the time frame you choose for this subject, how do you know what ethnicity the man was?  He could have been Nordic or Irish or Moorish or anything.

How many records are available from living subjects which accurately record their biometric measurements to tell us with some degree of certainty what the average height of a person was at that time? How do we know how homogeneous height was at that time.  History records plenty of discrepancies in biometrics going back thousands of years.   Since Roman practice was to cremate their dead, what evidence do we have to go on, that this information is correct?

Given the frauds of Piltdown man and Nebraska man, and the proven unreliability of radiocarbon dating, how do we know when this body was buried?

The number of questions far outweighs any "known" facts.  Yet you get the impression from the story that they know all about the poor bloke.  This is how people get taken in by hoaxes.  Just say that somebody is an expert and has credentials and whatever they say about a given subject must be right.