It still makes me cringe like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear anyone refer to the U.S. as a democracy, but this latest post by a contributor to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler reminded me of a couple of things about our republic, and I thought of something he didn't even mention which I think is more important than all of his points put together.
What if every bill proposed in the House or the Senate had to pass a test to see whether or not the Constitution authorized it?
The 112th Congress is about to convene and the collective mouthpiece for the socialist administration and supporters is just going nuts over the fact that they plan on reading the Constitution. I tend to think it it is only going to be something to laugh at in sad derision since the GOP leadership makes me think it is nothing more than window dressing.
I could be wasting my time writing about this because I don't know how many people come here and read this stuff, but venting about it makes me feel better. I wonder how much Eric Hoffer thought about the impact his writing might have. Since the inevitable crash is upon us, why not try to educate as many people as possible in case we can try to rebuild something out of the ashes and rubble while we are waiting for Messiah to return? Some of my fellow believer's may think I should focus only on winning souls for God, but I think all of this stuff, every aspect of life and living, are interwoven. How you think about certain political issues will quickly tell me whether you are a believer or not. That's just the fact.
I remember when the democrats howled (Hillary Clinton) over the false accusations that Republicans were questioning the patriotism of the left, or according to her own labeling, progressives, even when it wasn't happening. Much to my chagrin. I certainly wish that the GOP leadership did have the gonads to publicly question the left's patriotism. For decades those on the left with the "D" behind their name have been relentlessly and systematically working to destroy the Constitution, and since the Clinton's occupied the White House, we have enough quotes from their own mouths to prove it. I don't have to try to convince you based on a nuanced action here, or some vague reference over there. The cat's been out of the bag in plain view for quite a while.
The reason I think that the reading of the Constitution on the House floor is mostly window dressing is because the only bills that should be coming to the floor for a vote are bills that defund and abolish every federal agency that cannot be justified by a plain reading of the Constitution. In other words, there would be no time on the agenda to take up any new bills regarding non-existing laws for the next five years or more.
Even before a bill is passed that simply states that the previous "Health Care Reform" act is immediately rendered null and void, The House should pass a resolution that freezes all funding to the following agencies, pending further legislation that abolishes the agencies themselves and directs what is to be done with the property and assets of those agencies. I'll spell them out for a reason. This is just the short list.
Environmental Protection Agency. (EPA) They don't exist to protect any environment. They exist to make it prohibitively expensive to manufacture or process any goods, because the main enemy of "progress" for the left is free-market capitalism.
Food & Drug Administration. (FDA) Exists to siphon off billions of dollars from the drug companies in the form of campaign contributions, and at the same time guarantee that drug companies have a virtual monopoly on medicine that can be patented, while at the same time scaring the public into thinking that natural herbs and foods are dangerous. Nanny government must protect you.
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) When's the last time you dressed up and went to a symphony? When's the last time you went to an art museum or gallery? I'm sure you have been throwing lots of disposable income around on various art projects. That's why the federal government sees no problem in taking away your money to fund buying millions of dollars worth of incomprehensible statuary to stand outside of government buildings, to fund performance artists who do things that you not only wouldn't watch, but if your child did them you would beat or disown them.
Department of Education. Created by Jimmy Carter in 1979. Prior to that, there was very little education going on in the United States. Engineering, math and science were struggling along without direction or purpose because there was no centralized government agency to look to. There are rumors that we landed men on the moon using slide rules, because the digital calculator hadn't been invented yet. Can you see how much this country failed to accomplish because we had to wait for a visionary like Jimmy Carter to show up?
Now you can go into many fast food restaurants witness the mathematical prowess of high school graduates making change. You can go on Facebook and read the most stunning literary prose of the average American teenager and marvel.
Department of Energy. While France, a country which has led the way in showing Muslims that their country need not be conquered using conventional arms and warfare, has built enough high technology nuclear reactors that their country safely gets 90% of it's energy that way, our DOE has been regulating what little nuclear capability we have nearly out of existence. At the same time, the DOE has been making any building or modernization of Petroleum processing prohibitively expensive or impossible due to unnecessary regulation. How much energy does the DOE produce? None.
This is how modern government works. It would almost be funny if I could say that you can take the name of a government agency, and whatever that name is, that's what they don't do, or don't produce. But, alas, it is worse than that. Whatever the name of the agency is, that's what they are out to destroy.
Don't believe me? Just look at the list.
Internal Revenue Service. Granted they don't actually write the tax law that taxes income, but they administer the Income Tax. Does the IRS promote income? No. They destroy it.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) How many times have you heard of family farms going under; if not for the cost of regulation of farming, then because of the death tax. How many of you know that Corporations like Monsanto and other huge agribusinesses use their lobbying power to put small competitors out of business? The USDA is all about making life hard for small farms and the people who want their products.
Department of Transportation. Just go talk to any truck driver, especially if he's an owner. The next time you are stuck on a very large expanse of concrete and/or asphalt, knowing that you will never get that time back, or contemplating how much it will cost you to repair the damage that was caused by road conditions that should have been repaired months ago, remember that it's called an expressway because it gives you lots of time and reasons to express yourself.
I could go on, but you get the point. The fact of the matter is that since about 1913, about 90% of all the legislation passed and signed into law has been unconstitutional. Let me restate that. Most of that law has been downright illegal. Congresses have just taken the attitude: "We don't care if the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do this, we want it, and some of our constituents want it, so, there!"
When the people who themselves are supposed to be the guardians of the law become completely lawless themselves, thinking themselves above and outside the law, why should they expect any respect, let alone obedience to their own dictates?
Is there a single person reading this who voted for somebody with the idea in mind that you know that you are just too stupid to decide how best to live your own life; that the supreme law of the land is just too archaic today? Are you the voter who was thinking: "Please, Congressperson, pass whatever law you think best as long as it makes me believe that you will provide housing and jobs and medical care and won't let anybody besides athletes and movie stars make too much money."
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
A Form of Sacrifice
No, this post has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
This post was prompted by a post I read over at Questions and Observations. The post is titled "The major tasks for the incoming GOP House." It might be helpful for you to go read the brief post before continuing on here, but I trust what I have to say can stand on its own.
Before I go on, I need to stop and define who I'm talking to. Conservative voters. All of my instruction and cajoling is directed at you. If you are a leftist drone or someone who has given up on voting, you are welcome to stay, but I can't imagine why.
We the people who are not going to Washington to legislate have this terrible habit of merely showing up at the polls, holding our noses and voting for the lesser of two or three evils, and then doing little or nothing beyond that, other than complaining loudly about how the GOP sucks, and even then, we only do it with others who think the way we do. While at parties or church or any other social setting, with rare exceptions, we will smile and nod and keep to safe topics of conversation for fear of getting that wilting look or sharp elbow from a spouse who doesn't want to risk being thought of badly by anybody in the room.
It has been my experience that the leftist drones and such have no qualms about speaking up at parties. I can't count the number of times I've experienced this personally. I was married to a government school teacher for 21 years and saw it a lot, and most of the time I let her reign me in, and when I didn't "heel" I typically paid for my indiscretion for days afterward. I even remember attending a wedding shower where there was a woman that I had once considered a friend, the wife of an Episcopal priest. This was near the end of Bill Clinton's second term, when it was well established that the man was a womanizer, a rapist, and a pathological liar, and yet here was this woman talking about how great a man he was. Three people who knew me well immediately turned in my direction, I presume to see if I was about to explode. Because it was a wedding shower, and out of respect for the guests of honor, I simply left the room. I was told later that the mother of the bride made it clear she didn't want to hear Bill Clinton's name mentioned again.
There is a time and place for engaging in political debate, but I don't go looking for it where it doesn't belong. Now that we are over the cliff and dropping into the pit of hell known as socialism, the time for showing polite deference to people like my former friend is now well past. Of course I have to admit that I've moved up into the mountains and so my exposure to such people in person is limited. When we go to the feed store or such places as are frequented by folks who cherish freedom and self-sufficiency, it's doubtful that we are going to encounter those who are champions of the involuntary collective. But if it happens, I will NOT be quiet. Most of the people that I share DNA with really won't have anything to do with me for that reason.
How many of you know that the revolution that brought about this once great republic was really only supported by about a third of the population or less? How many know that Benjamin Franklin saw his own son deported to England after the war for being a loyalist to the British crown? Don't you think there was much anguish and tears in that relationship? I can't see how any decent father would find any pleasure in being so estranged by his own son.
If there is to be any hope left that we can still live in a free republic, enjoying individual liberty under a rule of constitutional law rather than the whims of a ruling political elite, those of us who claim to be conservators of the principles that this country was founded on are going to have to shed our desire to be liked by those who would go along with a socialist agenda. We are going to have to speak up. We are going to have to learn to argue and debate and point out the flaws of the collectivist voodoo ideology that insists that a man-made Utopia can be created.
Don't you wait for the Rand Pauls and Marco Rubios to make the case for truth in the media. You get in the fray. Obama instructed his myrmidons to get in the faces of "our enemies." Well, let's take them on where were we can't be edited like so much video on TV. Ask your left leaning friends and family who still seem to have a couple of brain cells to rub together, why they think the methods and ideologies that created the conditions in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and Greece will somehow magically work here.
Don't expect incoming Speaker Boehner to use his position to champion true conservatism. He's already proven that isn't going to happen by how he handled the tax deal he did with Obama. Boehner is just more of the same, lame, ostensibly loyal opposition to the hard left communist democrats. Boehner believes that if he just seems to throw an occasional bone in the direction of the majority of GOP voters, they'll quiet down and go back to watching football or American Idol or whatever. And I fear he may be right.
It isn't just about negative harping either. The new guys that got elected by conservatives need to hear from you as well, because the media is going to constantly demagogue the issues as if to tell them they were wrong about why they got elected. Let them know when they are getting it right.
This post was prompted by a post I read over at Questions and Observations. The post is titled "The major tasks for the incoming GOP House." It might be helpful for you to go read the brief post before continuing on here, but I trust what I have to say can stand on its own.
Before I go on, I need to stop and define who I'm talking to. Conservative voters. All of my instruction and cajoling is directed at you. If you are a leftist drone or someone who has given up on voting, you are welcome to stay, but I can't imagine why.
We the people who are not going to Washington to legislate have this terrible habit of merely showing up at the polls, holding our noses and voting for the lesser of two or three evils, and then doing little or nothing beyond that, other than complaining loudly about how the GOP sucks, and even then, we only do it with others who think the way we do. While at parties or church or any other social setting, with rare exceptions, we will smile and nod and keep to safe topics of conversation for fear of getting that wilting look or sharp elbow from a spouse who doesn't want to risk being thought of badly by anybody in the room.
It has been my experience that the leftist drones and such have no qualms about speaking up at parties. I can't count the number of times I've experienced this personally. I was married to a government school teacher for 21 years and saw it a lot, and most of the time I let her reign me in, and when I didn't "heel" I typically paid for my indiscretion for days afterward. I even remember attending a wedding shower where there was a woman that I had once considered a friend, the wife of an Episcopal priest. This was near the end of Bill Clinton's second term, when it was well established that the man was a womanizer, a rapist, and a pathological liar, and yet here was this woman talking about how great a man he was. Three people who knew me well immediately turned in my direction, I presume to see if I was about to explode. Because it was a wedding shower, and out of respect for the guests of honor, I simply left the room. I was told later that the mother of the bride made it clear she didn't want to hear Bill Clinton's name mentioned again.
There is a time and place for engaging in political debate, but I don't go looking for it where it doesn't belong. Now that we are over the cliff and dropping into the pit of hell known as socialism, the time for showing polite deference to people like my former friend is now well past. Of course I have to admit that I've moved up into the mountains and so my exposure to such people in person is limited. When we go to the feed store or such places as are frequented by folks who cherish freedom and self-sufficiency, it's doubtful that we are going to encounter those who are champions of the involuntary collective. But if it happens, I will NOT be quiet. Most of the people that I share DNA with really won't have anything to do with me for that reason.
How many of you know that the revolution that brought about this once great republic was really only supported by about a third of the population or less? How many know that Benjamin Franklin saw his own son deported to England after the war for being a loyalist to the British crown? Don't you think there was much anguish and tears in that relationship? I can't see how any decent father would find any pleasure in being so estranged by his own son.
If there is to be any hope left that we can still live in a free republic, enjoying individual liberty under a rule of constitutional law rather than the whims of a ruling political elite, those of us who claim to be conservators of the principles that this country was founded on are going to have to shed our desire to be liked by those who would go along with a socialist agenda. We are going to have to speak up. We are going to have to learn to argue and debate and point out the flaws of the collectivist voodoo ideology that insists that a man-made Utopia can be created.
Don't you wait for the Rand Pauls and Marco Rubios to make the case for truth in the media. You get in the fray. Obama instructed his myrmidons to get in the faces of "our enemies." Well, let's take them on where were we can't be edited like so much video on TV. Ask your left leaning friends and family who still seem to have a couple of brain cells to rub together, why they think the methods and ideologies that created the conditions in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and Greece will somehow magically work here.
Don't expect incoming Speaker Boehner to use his position to champion true conservatism. He's already proven that isn't going to happen by how he handled the tax deal he did with Obama. Boehner is just more of the same, lame, ostensibly loyal opposition to the hard left communist democrats. Boehner believes that if he just seems to throw an occasional bone in the direction of the majority of GOP voters, they'll quiet down and go back to watching football or American Idol or whatever. And I fear he may be right.
It isn't just about negative harping either. The new guys that got elected by conservatives need to hear from you as well, because the media is going to constantly demagogue the issues as if to tell them they were wrong about why they got elected. Let them know when they are getting it right.
Monday, January 3, 2011
I Should Have Known
But then again, how could I?
I thought I was going to move on to ELS codes, but after thinking about it for quite a spell, it seems to me that this issue of someone like Paul is what I need to deal with and get it over with.
I didn't chase after Paul. He came to my Blog, I didn't go to his to try and proselytize for my side. I won't go to his blog and comment there, because, quite frankly, I don't see any point. From here on out, I expect there will be those who won't like my tone or some such thing. While my rhetoric will be sharp and uncompromising, and I will not entertain warm and fuzzy methods of persuasion, I am not trying to hurt feelings for the sake of scoring points. Eternal destinies are at stake.
I started out making it clear that I had spent most of my youthful years of development coming to a dedicated belief in evolution. I was so very gung ho about evolution that watching the movie Inherit The Wind was almost a religious experience for me. Watching Clarence Darrow just make an idiot out of William Jennings Bryan had me pumping my fist in the air. I actually grew up believing that the movie was a documentary. Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Bryan, he went into that trial completely unprepared and with little understanding of what he was dealing with. This is very much like most people who claim the title of Christian today. The vast majority of Christians don't understand the importance of having reasoned, logical answers that help prove Christianity.
I thought and pondered, pondered and thought, gathered notes and copied links to websites regarding ELS codes in preparing for my next post, but I couldn't stop thinking about Paul my commenter. In Knowing God: Part 3, I made the point that he reminded me of other people who just seem to be able to pull one part of their brain out and isolate it from the conclusions that logic demands in order to maintain something else they want to believe. I almost started to go back over the scientific evidence and facts to show that Paul doesn't even understand the science, because he simply parrots stuff that he has heard or read and can't explain it in his own words. But there is the rub. If he truly understood the science, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, he would KNOW that the stupid stuff he's been told about energy being added to an "open" system doesn't overcome the chaotic nature of entropy. I can use the simple analogy that if you pour gasoline on a bonfire, it doesn't result in carbon crystallizing into more complex shapes that contain coded information. I dare anyone to take a power supply for a computer and create a voltage and current amplifier system so that you can just vary the current input for days, weeks, or years on end and then explain to me how that will result in more complex, or any kind of programming language being developed inside the CPU. Build yourself a little terrarium and set it out in the sun and then show me how, other than adding heat to the enclosure, you ended up with more complex structures just because of the sun's radiation. No, going over the science again and helping to actually understand how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works is not going to change Paul's mind, because some guy with a Ph.D. who Paul respects more than the Bible is going to tell him that's how it is, and Paul will just accept it.
Now, because I try my best to think logically, and would like to think that anybody who would take the time to read my posts values logic as much as I do, I figured a few responses to Paul would at least send him away thinking for a while. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, that their loyalty is to the Creator and what He has to say about His own creation, and that a follower of Christ understands that man is inherently flawed. Problem is, I forgot that just like in the issue of firearms and hoplophobia, there are people who can seem reasonable at first, but upon further inspection reveal themselves to be happy with a condition of cognitive dissonance. Then again, maybe the human mind is so complex that we'll have to come up with a new label. Or maybe I just don't understand Paul's condition, or the last option is that Paul is just crazy or evil. WHOOAAAAHH!! Did I just say that? Not that I wanted to. To go to Paul's website, you would think he's such a nice guy. Far nicer than me. He has six kids. I'm sure he's a loving father and his kids and his wife adore him. What in the hell is wrong with me for picking on Paul?
You know, I've got other people I like and respect in the blogosphere. Let me use Kevin Baker as an example. Kevin runs The Smallest Minority. Kevin and I think the same about a lot of issues regarding personal liberty, firearms and government. I like Kevin and consider him a friend. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never met him. I feel I know him based on his rather candid writings. Kevin is a self proclaimed atheist. Religiously, he's my polar opposite. How could I possibly like him so much?
I would much rather be in a combat situation with Kevin Baker than with Paul. Kevin is an engineer by trade. A logical thinker. His essays display a deep, thoughtful character. I have read so many of Kevin's essays and the sources he cites to explain how he comes to the conclusions that he does. His writing reflects a deep desire to find real objective truth, regardless of feelings or wishful thinking. Kevin says he is an atheist because as far as he has wanted to search, he has found no reason to believe in a deity. Thus proving that you cannot and will not find something that you are not looking for, even if it is right in front of your face. This is profoundly important. While I may feel regret in the idea that I won't see Kevin in the next life, I understand that the worst thing I could do would be to preach at him about his soul when he sees no need and would merely be irritated by my efforts. If the subject of the afterlife came up because Kevin was sincerely interested, I would have no doubt that his logic and engineering type mind would demand that he make some decision either way, but I can tell from his writings that there would be no sitting on the fence or compartmentalization when it came to deciding on what is real and what makes sense. In that regard, I feel confident that given all the good evidence, Kevin would choose the right way. I respect that about Kevin. Regardless of his decision, I respect that.
Not so with Paul. I wouldn't trust Paul as far as I could throw him. Paul says he's a Christian. He found his way to my blog, and has gone out of his way to defend evolution as if it can somehow be compatible with a belief in Jesus of Nazareth. Mind you, Paul doesn't just speak of some passing, shoulder shrugging acknowledgement of Jesus as a figure of history. I don't get the impression that Paul's Jesus is like that of the Unitarians or the Mormons or some strange cult, but I'm not really sure. According to Paul's blog, he claims to love and glorify Jesus. But when I take in the whole picture of Paul and what he writes on his blog and in my comments section, I have to say, "Nonsense!" Or at least I have to understand that the Jesus Paul worships is a God of Paul's own making and not that of the Bible.
Yeshua HaMashiach who was prophesied about for thousands of years and proved Himself to be God incarnate, referred to the Torah as being Holy and incorruptible. Eternal and transcendant over even the world itself. The very Word of God. The Gospel of John declares that the Word of God and Jesus are one and the same entity. If the Bible is a liar and cannot be trusted, then Jesus is a liar and cannot be trusted. At every turn, Paul would take the words of fallible, sinful men with limited knowledge that they in turn learned from men of limited knowledge about a theory that was dreamed up by men who's primary goal was to explain the world in such a way as to eliminate a Creator. In any argument with me about science or origins, Paul would choose Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Hawkings or anybody else but Jesus Christ to make his case. Yet he tells the world from his blog that he loves Jesus.
I made the points in my earlier posts that Genesis doesn't leave us any room to compromise with evolution. As if He knew that the controversy would arise before and after Charles Darwin, God went to the trouble to define each of the days of creation as having evening and morning, i.e. regular 24 hour days. He went to the trouble of waiting until day four to create the sun, moon, and stars. He specifically made the point that until man sinned in the garden that there was no bloodshed, no death or dying. He created all the land animals and man on day six, so there were no millions of years between them. There is a lot more there that Does all of this sound absolutely bat-$h0t crazy to an evolutionist or someone who has been indoctrinated in the government schools? Of course it does. I don't mind being thought of as crazy to people who think that man knows better than God. I quit worrying so much about that when it dawned on me that over the centuries, science has had to revise its thinking about so many things. At the same time, while man has had to adjust his interpretation of what the Bible means, at no point has anyone been able to point to something the Bible says and say, "We know THAT can't be true, because of THIS." The Bible obviously conflicts with the interpretations and theories of scientists who only allow for a materialistic explanation of the universe, but the Bible doesn't conflict with things we know to be established fact. Believe me, I've pissed off several guys with Ph.D.s when I made them admit that fact.
Evolutionary scientists love to crow about how science is "self-correcting," even though it can spend decades or longer wallowing in whatever the most accepted theory is before they are dragged, kicking and screaming, into a better understanding of the evidence. Problem nowadays, as evidenced by movies like EXPELLED, and even lots of cases I studied before that movie, any heretic who presents hard evidence that goes against the dogma of neo-darwinian evolution is fired and ostracized from mainstream academia, without anybody demonstrating why the evidence is bad. There are perfectly good explanations as to why the creation story of Genesis works with the science we know to be fact today. Creationists don't need to be embarrassed by what the mainstream scientists think they know.
Paul's insistence on defending evolution raises the big question. Why? What's his motivation? To help people accept that they can have a warm, fuzzy, non-judgmental Jesus who doesn't care what they think, regardless of the evidence? In order to do that, you have to dismiss the Bible as nothing more than allegorical stories and poetry and just a tiny smattering of wisdom. The rest just shouldn't be taken seriously. Is he trying to get evolutionists to say, "Hey, I can have evolution and Jesus too!" Why bother? If evolution is true, and it renders the Bible just so much religious nonsense that can be taken or left with or without the salt, then why waste my precious time? Since Darwin's time, and actually even before that, the champions of evolution theory have made the main body of their argument not about scientific evidence, but rather about how crazy creationists are for going against the conventional "thought" of those who accept evolution.
Think of this another way. Imagine this improbable scenario. Paul says he loves his wife. And to everybody who sees the family that seems to be true. But there are some "well respected" people in academe who say Paul's wife is a good for nothing whore and he's wasting his time giving her any devotion or attention. Out in public, Paul doesn't want to be thought of as being less intelligent than the average guy by disagreeing with those "well respected" guys in academe, so he actually defends those guys, while at the same time saying he loves his wife and is completely devoted to her. Does this make sense?
Since Paul would never consider heresy against his beloved champions of evolution by considering anything the Bible has to say as being authoritative, I suppose Paul cannot be offended when I say that he brings to mind the passage where Jesus says that many will come in "that day" and say to Him, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and heal the sick and do this and that in your name." And Jesus will look at them and say, "Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. I never knew you."
You know, I will be very careful to not offend an unbeliever, because my goal should be to bring him to God. However I must do so while being faithful to God and not compromising the truth. There are lots of believers who need to be disabused of errors that have been taught as the traditions of the churches over the centuries. I know I am constantly learning, and have regretted being taken in by some stuff in the past, especially when it comes to keeping the commandments and understanding eschatology. I can be understanding and deferential up to a point, but when someone shows his self to be hell-bent on taking the teaching of man over the teaching of God, I have to draw the line.
I thought I was going to move on to ELS codes, but after thinking about it for quite a spell, it seems to me that this issue of someone like Paul is what I need to deal with and get it over with.
I didn't chase after Paul. He came to my Blog, I didn't go to his to try and proselytize for my side. I won't go to his blog and comment there, because, quite frankly, I don't see any point. From here on out, I expect there will be those who won't like my tone or some such thing. While my rhetoric will be sharp and uncompromising, and I will not entertain warm and fuzzy methods of persuasion, I am not trying to hurt feelings for the sake of scoring points. Eternal destinies are at stake.
I started out making it clear that I had spent most of my youthful years of development coming to a dedicated belief in evolution. I was so very gung ho about evolution that watching the movie Inherit The Wind was almost a religious experience for me. Watching Clarence Darrow just make an idiot out of William Jennings Bryan had me pumping my fist in the air. I actually grew up believing that the movie was a documentary. Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Bryan, he went into that trial completely unprepared and with little understanding of what he was dealing with. This is very much like most people who claim the title of Christian today. The vast majority of Christians don't understand the importance of having reasoned, logical answers that help prove Christianity.
I thought and pondered, pondered and thought, gathered notes and copied links to websites regarding ELS codes in preparing for my next post, but I couldn't stop thinking about Paul my commenter. In Knowing God: Part 3, I made the point that he reminded me of other people who just seem to be able to pull one part of their brain out and isolate it from the conclusions that logic demands in order to maintain something else they want to believe. I almost started to go back over the scientific evidence and facts to show that Paul doesn't even understand the science, because he simply parrots stuff that he has heard or read and can't explain it in his own words. But there is the rub. If he truly understood the science, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, he would KNOW that the stupid stuff he's been told about energy being added to an "open" system doesn't overcome the chaotic nature of entropy. I can use the simple analogy that if you pour gasoline on a bonfire, it doesn't result in carbon crystallizing into more complex shapes that contain coded information. I dare anyone to take a power supply for a computer and create a voltage and current amplifier system so that you can just vary the current input for days, weeks, or years on end and then explain to me how that will result in more complex, or any kind of programming language being developed inside the CPU. Build yourself a little terrarium and set it out in the sun and then show me how, other than adding heat to the enclosure, you ended up with more complex structures just because of the sun's radiation. No, going over the science again and helping to actually understand how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works is not going to change Paul's mind, because some guy with a Ph.D. who Paul respects more than the Bible is going to tell him that's how it is, and Paul will just accept it.
Now, because I try my best to think logically, and would like to think that anybody who would take the time to read my posts values logic as much as I do, I figured a few responses to Paul would at least send him away thinking for a while. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, that their loyalty is to the Creator and what He has to say about His own creation, and that a follower of Christ understands that man is inherently flawed. Problem is, I forgot that just like in the issue of firearms and hoplophobia, there are people who can seem reasonable at first, but upon further inspection reveal themselves to be happy with a condition of cognitive dissonance. Then again, maybe the human mind is so complex that we'll have to come up with a new label. Or maybe I just don't understand Paul's condition, or the last option is that Paul is just crazy or evil. WHOOAAAAHH!! Did I just say that? Not that I wanted to. To go to Paul's website, you would think he's such a nice guy. Far nicer than me. He has six kids. I'm sure he's a loving father and his kids and his wife adore him. What in the hell is wrong with me for picking on Paul?
You know, I've got other people I like and respect in the blogosphere. Let me use Kevin Baker as an example. Kevin runs The Smallest Minority. Kevin and I think the same about a lot of issues regarding personal liberty, firearms and government. I like Kevin and consider him a friend. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never met him. I feel I know him based on his rather candid writings. Kevin is a self proclaimed atheist. Religiously, he's my polar opposite. How could I possibly like him so much?
I would much rather be in a combat situation with Kevin Baker than with Paul. Kevin is an engineer by trade. A logical thinker. His essays display a deep, thoughtful character. I have read so many of Kevin's essays and the sources he cites to explain how he comes to the conclusions that he does. His writing reflects a deep desire to find real objective truth, regardless of feelings or wishful thinking. Kevin says he is an atheist because as far as he has wanted to search, he has found no reason to believe in a deity. Thus proving that you cannot and will not find something that you are not looking for, even if it is right in front of your face. This is profoundly important. While I may feel regret in the idea that I won't see Kevin in the next life, I understand that the worst thing I could do would be to preach at him about his soul when he sees no need and would merely be irritated by my efforts. If the subject of the afterlife came up because Kevin was sincerely interested, I would have no doubt that his logic and engineering type mind would demand that he make some decision either way, but I can tell from his writings that there would be no sitting on the fence or compartmentalization when it came to deciding on what is real and what makes sense. In that regard, I feel confident that given all the good evidence, Kevin would choose the right way. I respect that about Kevin. Regardless of his decision, I respect that.
Not so with Paul. I wouldn't trust Paul as far as I could throw him. Paul says he's a Christian. He found his way to my blog, and has gone out of his way to defend evolution as if it can somehow be compatible with a belief in Jesus of Nazareth. Mind you, Paul doesn't just speak of some passing, shoulder shrugging acknowledgement of Jesus as a figure of history. I don't get the impression that Paul's Jesus is like that of the Unitarians or the Mormons or some strange cult, but I'm not really sure. According to Paul's blog, he claims to love and glorify Jesus. But when I take in the whole picture of Paul and what he writes on his blog and in my comments section, I have to say, "Nonsense!" Or at least I have to understand that the Jesus Paul worships is a God of Paul's own making and not that of the Bible.
Yeshua HaMashiach who was prophesied about for thousands of years and proved Himself to be God incarnate, referred to the Torah as being Holy and incorruptible. Eternal and transcendant over even the world itself. The very Word of God. The Gospel of John declares that the Word of God and Jesus are one and the same entity. If the Bible is a liar and cannot be trusted, then Jesus is a liar and cannot be trusted. At every turn, Paul would take the words of fallible, sinful men with limited knowledge that they in turn learned from men of limited knowledge about a theory that was dreamed up by men who's primary goal was to explain the world in such a way as to eliminate a Creator. In any argument with me about science or origins, Paul would choose Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Hawkings or anybody else but Jesus Christ to make his case. Yet he tells the world from his blog that he loves Jesus.
I made the points in my earlier posts that Genesis doesn't leave us any room to compromise with evolution. As if He knew that the controversy would arise before and after Charles Darwin, God went to the trouble to define each of the days of creation as having evening and morning, i.e. regular 24 hour days. He went to the trouble of waiting until day four to create the sun, moon, and stars. He specifically made the point that until man sinned in the garden that there was no bloodshed, no death or dying. He created all the land animals and man on day six, so there were no millions of years between them. There is a lot more there that Does all of this sound absolutely bat-$h0t crazy to an evolutionist or someone who has been indoctrinated in the government schools? Of course it does. I don't mind being thought of as crazy to people who think that man knows better than God. I quit worrying so much about that when it dawned on me that over the centuries, science has had to revise its thinking about so many things. At the same time, while man has had to adjust his interpretation of what the Bible means, at no point has anyone been able to point to something the Bible says and say, "We know THAT can't be true, because of THIS." The Bible obviously conflicts with the interpretations and theories of scientists who only allow for a materialistic explanation of the universe, but the Bible doesn't conflict with things we know to be established fact. Believe me, I've pissed off several guys with Ph.D.s when I made them admit that fact.
Evolutionary scientists love to crow about how science is "self-correcting," even though it can spend decades or longer wallowing in whatever the most accepted theory is before they are dragged, kicking and screaming, into a better understanding of the evidence. Problem nowadays, as evidenced by movies like EXPELLED, and even lots of cases I studied before that movie, any heretic who presents hard evidence that goes against the dogma of neo-darwinian evolution is fired and ostracized from mainstream academia, without anybody demonstrating why the evidence is bad. There are perfectly good explanations as to why the creation story of Genesis works with the science we know to be fact today. Creationists don't need to be embarrassed by what the mainstream scientists think they know.
Paul's insistence on defending evolution raises the big question. Why? What's his motivation? To help people accept that they can have a warm, fuzzy, non-judgmental Jesus who doesn't care what they think, regardless of the evidence? In order to do that, you have to dismiss the Bible as nothing more than allegorical stories and poetry and just a tiny smattering of wisdom. The rest just shouldn't be taken seriously. Is he trying to get evolutionists to say, "Hey, I can have evolution and Jesus too!" Why bother? If evolution is true, and it renders the Bible just so much religious nonsense that can be taken or left with or without the salt, then why waste my precious time? Since Darwin's time, and actually even before that, the champions of evolution theory have made the main body of their argument not about scientific evidence, but rather about how crazy creationists are for going against the conventional "thought" of those who accept evolution.
Think of this another way. Imagine this improbable scenario. Paul says he loves his wife. And to everybody who sees the family that seems to be true. But there are some "well respected" people in academe who say Paul's wife is a good for nothing whore and he's wasting his time giving her any devotion or attention. Out in public, Paul doesn't want to be thought of as being less intelligent than the average guy by disagreeing with those "well respected" guys in academe, so he actually defends those guys, while at the same time saying he loves his wife and is completely devoted to her. Does this make sense?
Since Paul would never consider heresy against his beloved champions of evolution by considering anything the Bible has to say as being authoritative, I suppose Paul cannot be offended when I say that he brings to mind the passage where Jesus says that many will come in "that day" and say to Him, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and heal the sick and do this and that in your name." And Jesus will look at them and say, "Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. I never knew you."
You know, I will be very careful to not offend an unbeliever, because my goal should be to bring him to God. However I must do so while being faithful to God and not compromising the truth. There are lots of believers who need to be disabused of errors that have been taught as the traditions of the churches over the centuries. I know I am constantly learning, and have regretted being taken in by some stuff in the past, especially when it comes to keeping the commandments and understanding eschatology. I can be understanding and deferential up to a point, but when someone shows his self to be hell-bent on taking the teaching of man over the teaching of God, I have to draw the line.
Did A Donkey Just Fly By?
What in the heck just happened?
My lovely wife has done something that shocks even me. I'm talking about someone who puts extreme effort into the concept of not saying anything if it's not uplifting and positive.
It takes an awful lot to get her stirred up over anything.
Now, I will admit that she has a great restraining influence on me, because had I commented on Katie Couric, it would have been along the lines of snatching that little elitist snob out of her New York apartment and dropping her in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then interviewing her a month later if she had survived the time there.
"So, Katie, how are the bruises healing?"
"How many beatings did you endure until you found a burqua?"
"How many times were you raped as an unescorted female, until you could find some benevolent Muslim family to claim you as one of theirs?" "Oh, you mean it got worse?"
"Gee, Katie, you don't seem very talkative about your wonderful experience among the "peace loving" Muslims."
I will make myself stop now.
My lovely wife has done something that shocks even me. I'm talking about someone who puts extreme effort into the concept of not saying anything if it's not uplifting and positive.
It takes an awful lot to get her stirred up over anything.
Now, I will admit that she has a great restraining influence on me, because had I commented on Katie Couric, it would have been along the lines of snatching that little elitist snob out of her New York apartment and dropping her in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then interviewing her a month later if she had survived the time there.
"So, Katie, how are the bruises healing?"
"How many beatings did you endure until you found a burqua?"
"How many times were you raped as an unescorted female, until you could find some benevolent Muslim family to claim you as one of theirs?" "Oh, you mean it got worse?"
"Gee, Katie, you don't seem very talkative about your wonderful experience among the "peace loving" Muslims."
I will make myself stop now.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
A World Of Insanity
Perhaps the United Nations serves one purpose. It puts all of the idiotic and insane antics of corrupt governments on display in one convenient spot for intelligent people to point to.
I do my best to treat people who think that a UN is a good idea as ignorant little children who just don't have the cognitive ability to know any better; you know, smile benignly, and say something like, "Oh, bless your little heart. I know you mean well." But sometimes I just want to have the ability to take away their keys and their voter registration and tell them when they grow up and start thinking rationally, we'll let them start driving and living amongst rational people again.
I want to thank whoever put this video together to expose the sheer idiocy of the UN.
Hat tip to Moonbattery. And I suggest you watch all five of the top videos if you go there.
I do my best to treat people who think that a UN is a good idea as ignorant little children who just don't have the cognitive ability to know any better; you know, smile benignly, and say something like, "Oh, bless your little heart. I know you mean well." But sometimes I just want to have the ability to take away their keys and their voter registration and tell them when they grow up and start thinking rationally, we'll let them start driving and living amongst rational people again.
I want to thank whoever put this video together to expose the sheer idiocy of the UN.
Hat tip to Moonbattery. And I suggest you watch all five of the top videos if you go there.
New Year Resolutions: Brava!
This was my first stumbling upon this writer, over at David Horowitz's Blog. I'm so glad I did.
I read all eleven of her short pages, and it was a very pleasurable read. Reading about the Fair Tax made me think that I need to do a post on that some day, even though all the economic indicators I can see tell me it's too late for it to make a difference before the collapse and reset comes about. I suppose the only good reason for posting about it in detail is to make sure that we never again make the mistake of allowing an income tax.
Go check it out.
I read all eleven of her short pages, and it was a very pleasurable read. Reading about the Fair Tax made me think that I need to do a post on that some day, even though all the economic indicators I can see tell me it's too late for it to make a difference before the collapse and reset comes about. I suppose the only good reason for posting about it in detail is to make sure that we never again make the mistake of allowing an income tax.
Go check it out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)