Some funny church bulletins

You have to love the folks in the church offices who come up with the announcements.   Some of them should take part time jobs writing for the night time monologues.

smile a bit as I did:

The Fasting and Prayer Conference will include meals.

Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles, and other items to be recycled.  Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

The sermon this morning:  "Jesus Walks on the Water".
This evening's sermon:  "Searching for Jesus".

Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house.  Bring your husbands.

Don't let worry kill you off.  Let the Church help.

Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again", giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

For those of you having children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

Next Thursday, there will be try-outs for the choir.  They need all the help they can get.

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married October 24 in the church.  So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall.  Music will follow.

At the evening service tonight, the seromon will be "What is Hell?"  Come early and listen
to our choir practice.

Eight new choir robs are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.d

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment, and gracious hostility.

Pot-luck supper Sunday at 5:00 P.M.    Prayer and medication to follow.

The ladies of the Church will cast off clothing of every kind.  The may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church.  Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM  Please use the back door.

The 8th Graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM.   The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

Weight watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.  Please use double door at the side entrance.

And lastly,
The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday:  "I upped my Pledge.   No up yours".

Science can be whatever a bunch of people collective decide it is?

Girls (and others)

There's a lot of information in the media today and recent years about the "science" of Climate Change. It's very interesting to me that for several years it was "Global Warming".   But after a few very cold winters, the "powers that be" decided that catch phrase didn't raise much money in the winter months and certainly didn't arouse the attention of the Hollywood activists.

I'd like you to at least consider this article below and to think about the idea that sometimes (oftentimes) science is not really proven, nor scientific. But it is, in fact, the idea that the "scientists" are most vigorously being the proponents of at that point in history.  

Today . . scientists get most of their funding from grants and agencies that are not scientific-neutral but who have an agenda of their own.  Scientists who espouse the most popular-at-the-moment-theories tend to get the best

funding.  And the contrarians tend to be left to work on their own.

I've always told you that the ability to write history is determined

by the victors in battle, and those who rule.  

Someday, as Eisenhower announced when liberating the

concentration camps, history may say . . .and science will

prove . . . that the Holocaust never even happened.

In a sense, science can be written as well from a prescribed

view point by the victors.   

It's only been 100 years, since "scientific" thought and

fund raising was aiming at Eugenics, which is simply "population and gene cleansing" as begun in the early days by Margaret Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, et al, and then carried to it's zenith by Adolph Hitler.   As part of the "science" of Eugenics, you girls would not even be here, because your mother would have been sterilized because of her "imperfection".   If your mom had happened to slip through

the "cleansing" then Coleton and Cade might not have been here, because Bill might not have been here, because of Bob's "imperfections".   And all would have been done in the name of science. 

Science is something that can be proven by experimenting and ALWAYS getting the same result.   Carbon dating, big bang theory, climate change and the X Files are all just  . . . . theories.   Change the funding and you change the theories.

Question everything.  Don't believe a word the rulers or scientists or philosophers tell you just because they are in prominent positions.  Use your mind to examine and determine "is this truth" . . . or is it Mulder and Scully just out there trying to find the truth somewhere?

“Why Politicized Science is Dangerous”

Appendix I to State of Fear

(2004)

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out. This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians, and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don’t mean global warming. I’m talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago. Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H.G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in

states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort. All in all, the research, legislation, and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a

century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected. 

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of this theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people. The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful— and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing— that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well known to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated. The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones—the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates,the unfit, and the “feeble minded.” Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century—“dangerous human pests” who represented “the rising tide of imbeciles” and who were polluting the best of the human race.

The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded—Jews were agreed to be largely feebleminded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks— and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.

As Margaret Sanger said, “Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty … there is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles.” She spoke of the burden of caring for “this dead weight of human waste.”

Such views were widely shared. H. G. Wells spoke against “ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens.” Theodore Roosevelt said that “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.” Luther Burbank: “Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce.” George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind. There was overt racism in this movement, exemplified by texts such as The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, by American author Lothrop Stoddard. But, at

the time, racism was considered an unremarkable aspect of the effort to attain a marvelous goal—the improvement of humankind in the future. It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most forward-looking and enthusiastic—more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America. Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and later by the Rockefeller Foundation. The latter

was so enthusiastic that even after the center of the eugenics

effort moved to Germany, and involved the gassing of individuals from mental institutions, the Rockefeller Foundation continued to finance German researchers at a very high level. (The foundation was quiet about it, but they were still funding research in 1939, only months before the onset of World War II.)

Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where “mental defectives” were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.

Eventually, this program was expanded into a vast network of concentration camps located near railroad lines, enabling the efficient transport and killing of ten million undesirables.

After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist. Biographers of the celebrated and the powerful did not dwell on the attractions of this philosophy to their subjects, and sometimes did not mention it at all. Eugenics ceased to be a subject for college classrooms, although some argue that its ideas continue to have currency in disguised form.

But in retrospect, three points stand out. First, despite the construction of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, despite the efforts at universities and the pleadings of lawyers, there was no scientific basis for eugenics. In fact, nobody at that time knew what a gene really was. The movement was able to proceed because it employed vague terms never rigorously defined. “Feeble-mindedness” could mean anything from poverty and illiteracy to epilepsy. Similarly, there was no clear definition of “degenerate” or “unfit.”

Second, the eugenics movement was really a social program masquerading as a scientific one. What drove it was concern about immigration and racism and undesirable people moving into one’s neighborhood or country. Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.

Third, and most distressing, the scientific establishment  in both the United States and Germany did not mount any sustained protest. Quite the contrary. In Germany scientists quickly fell into line with the program. Modern German researchers have gone back to review Nazi documents from the 1930s. They expected to find directives telling scientists what research should be done. But none were necessary. In the words of Ute Deichman, “Scientists, including those who were not members of the [Nazi] party, helped to get funding for their work through their modified behavior and direct cooperation with the state.” Deichman speaks of the “active role of scientists themselves in regard to Nazi race policy … where [research] was aimed at confirming the racial doctrine … no external pressure can be documented.” German scientists adjusted their research interests to the new policies. And those few who did not adjust disappeared.  second example of politicized science is quite different in character, but it exemplifies the hazards of government

ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a self-promoting peasant who, it was said, “solved the problem of fertilizing the fields without fertilizers and minerals.” In 1928 he claimed to have invented a procedure called vernalization, by which seeds were moistened and chilled to enhance the later growth of crops.

Lysenko’s methods never faced a rigorous test, but his claim that his treated seeds passed on their characteristics to the next generation represented a revival of Lamarckian ideas at a time when the rest of the world was embracing Mendelian genetics. Josef Stalin was drawn to Lamarckian ideas, which implied a future unbounded by hereditary constraints he also wanted improved agricultural production. Lysenko promised both, and became the darling of a Soviet media that was on the lookout for stories about clever

peasants who had developed revolutionary procedures. Lysenko was portrayed as a genius, and he milked his celebrity for all it was worth. He was especially skillful at denouncing his opponents. He used questionnaires from farmers to prove that vernalization increased crop yields, and thus avoided any direct tests. Carried on a wave of state-sponsored enthusiasm, his rise was rapid. By 1937, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet.

By then, Lysenko and his theories dominated Russian biology. The result was famines that killed millions, and purges that sent hundreds of dissenting Soviet scientists to the gulags or the firing squads. Lysenko was aggressive in attacking genetics, which was finally banned as “bourgeois pseudoscience” in 1948. There was never any basis for Lysenko’s ideas, yet he controlled Soviet research for thirty years. Lysenkoism ended in the 1960s, but Russian biology still has not entirely recovered from that era.

Now we are engaged in a great new theory, that once again has drawn the support of politicians, scientists, and celebrities around the world. Once again, the theory is promoted by major foundations. Once again, the research is carried out at prestigious universities. Once again, legislation is passed and social programs are urged in its name. Once again, critics are few and harshly dealt with.

Once again, the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once again, vague terms like sustainability and generational justice—terms that have no agreed definition—are employed in the service

of a new crisis.

I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank discussion of the data, and of the  issues, is being suppressed. Leading scientific journals have taken strong editorial positions on the side of global warming, which, I argue, they have no business doing. Under the circumstances, any scientist who has doubts understands clearly that they will be wise to mute their expression.

One proof of this suppression is the fact that so many of the outspoken critics of global warming are retired professors.

These individuals are no longer seeking grants, and no longer have to face colleagues whose grant applications and career advancement may be jeopardized by their criticisms. In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale.

We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called “the demon-haunted world” of our past. That hope is science.

But as Alston Chase put it, “when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”  That is the danger we now face. And that is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.

From: Michael Crichton. State of Fear. New York: HarperCollins, 2004, pp. 575-580.

Terrorism as Theater

August 27, 2014 | 0855 GMT

By Robert D. Kaplan

The beheading of American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq was much more than an altogether gruesome and tragic affair: rather, it was a very sophisticated and professional film production deliberately punctuated with powerful symbols. Foley was dressed in an orange jumpsuit reminiscent of the Muslim prisoners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He made his confession forcefully, as if well rehearsed. His executioner, masked and clad in black, made an equally long statement in a calm, British accent, again, as if rehearsed. It was as if the killing was secondary to the message being sent.

The killing, in other words, became merely the requirement to send the message. As experts have told me, there are more painful ways to dispatch someone if you really hate the victim and want him to suffer. You can burn him alive. You can torture him. But beheading, on the other hand, causes the victim to lose consciousness within seconds once a major artery is cut in the neck, experts say. Beheading, though, is the best method for the sake of a visually dramatic video, because you can show the severed head atop the chest at the conclusion. Using a short knife, as in this case, rather than a sword, also makes the event both more chilling and intimate. Truly, I do not mean to be cruel, indifferent, or vulgar. I am only saying that without the possibility of videotaping the event, there would be no motive in the first place to execute someone in such a manner.

In producing a docu-drama in its own twisted way, the Islamic State was sending the following messages:

·         We don't play by your rules. There are no limits to what we are willing to do.

·         America's mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay comes with a "price tag," to quote a recently adopted phrase for retribution killings. After all, we are a state. We have our own enemy combatants as you can see from the video, and our own way of dealing with them.

·         Just because we observe no limits does not mean we lack sophistication. We can be just as sophisticated as you in the West. Just listen to the British accent of our executioner. And we can produce a very short film up to Hollywood standards.

·         We're not like the drug lords in Mexico who regularly behead people and subsequently post the videos on the Internet. The drug lords deliver only a communal message, designed to intimidate only those people within their area of control. That is why the world at large pays little attention to them; in fact, the world is barely aware of them. By contrast, we of the Islamic State are delivering a global, meta-message. And the message is this: We want to destroy all of you in America, all of you in the West, and everyone in the Muslim world who does not accept our version of Islam.

·         We will triumph because we observe absolutely no constraints. It is because only we have access to the truth that anything we do is sanctified by God.

Welcome to the mass media age. You thought mass media was just insipid network anchormen and rude prime-time hosts interrupting talking heads on cable. It is that, of course. But just as World War I was different from the Franco-Prussian War, because in between came the culmination of the Industrial Age and thus the possibility of killing on an industrial scale, the wars of the 21st century will be different from those of the 20th because of the culmination of the first stage of the Information Age with all of its visual ramifications.

Passion, deep belief, political protests, and so forth have little meaning nowadays if they cannot be broadcast. Likewise, torture and gruesome death must be communicated to large numbers of people if they are to be effective. Technology, which the geeky billionaires of Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest claim has liberated us with new forms of self-expression, has also brought us back to the worst sorts of barbarism. Communications technology is value neutral, it has no intrinsic moral worth, even as it can at times encourage the most hideous forms of exhibitionism: to wit, the Foley execution.

We are back to a medieval world of theater, in which the audience is global. Theater, when the actors are well-trained, can be among the most powerful and revelatory art forms. And nothing works in theater as much as symbols which the playwright manipulates. A short knife, a Guantanamo jumpsuit, a black-clad executioner with a British accent in the heart of the Middle East, are, taken together, symbols of power, sophistication, and retribution. We mean business. Are you in America capable of taking us on?

It has been said that the murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918 in Ekaterinburg by Lenin's new government was a seminal crime: because if the Bolsheviks were willing to execute not only the Czar but his wife and children, too, they were also capable of murdering en masse. Indeed, that crime presaged the horrors to come of Bolshevik rule. The same might be said of the 1958 murder of Iraqi King Faisal II and his family and servants by military coup plotters, and the subsequent mutilation of the body of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said by a Baghdad mob -- events that presaged decades of increasingly totalitarian rule, culminating in Saddam Hussein. The theatrical murder of James Foley may appear as singular to some; more likely, it presages something truly terrible unfolding in the postmodern Middle East.

To be sure, the worse the chaos, the more extreme the ideology that emerges from it. Something has already emerged from the chaos of Syria and Iraq, even as Libya and Yemen -- also in chaos -- may be awaiting their own versions of the Islamic State. And remember, above all, what the video communicated was the fact that these people are literally capable of anything.

Estonia 43 page tax code prosperity doctrine

In the best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey wrote about abundance vs. scarcity.   With the abundance mindset, people confidently view the world as full of resources and opportunities... that there’s more than enough to share... and that more success is coming soon.

The opposite is the scarcity mindset, where people view everything as scarce and finite. If you’re winning it’s because I’m losing.  The scarcity mindset reinforces that there’s never enough time, never enough money. And since we can never be sure about the future, we have to ration every last possible resource and grab every bit for ourselves.   This ‘scarcity’ mindset pretty much sums up tax policy in most ‘rich’ Western nations.

In the US, tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has been almost exactly 17.7% of GDP since the end of World War II.    It hasn’t mattered how much they’ve raised tax rates; when tax rates go up, overall tax revenue, i.e. the government’s slice of the GDP pie, stays about the same.   For years they’ve been bleeding cash.  Yet rather than say “How can we support abundance? How can we help set the right conditions to make the PIE bigger,” they punish and intimidate everyone.

The Land of the Free is one of the only supposedly civilized nations in the world where you can be criminally convicted and thrown in jail over tax discrepancies.

They maintain one of the LEAST competitive corporate tax rates in the world, and then blame the companies who have a problem paying that much.

They need the money. There’s never enough. So they’re obsessed with bullying citizens for every last penny they can get their hands on.   It’s classic scarcity mentality.

Thousands of miles away, Estonia is one of the few countries that gets it.

Estonia has reduced taxes to a low, flat rate of 21%. And this number has been falling; from 26% in 2004, it hit 21% in 2008 and has remained at this level since.  One major innovation here is that Estonian companies are only taxed when they actually make a distribution.   In other words, a company that reinvests its profits back into the business pays ZERO tax. Not to mention there are tremendous incentives and financing programs available for startups. So building a business here is definitely a great option.

Plus there’s no estate tax-- the Estonian government isn’t looking for its ‘fair share’ when you die. There’s no gift tax or wealth tax either. It’s Paul Krugman’s worst nightmare.

But perhaps most importantly, the ENTIRE tax code itself is just 43 pages, and filing a return can be done online in just minutes. In contrast, the US tax code could fill entire football stadiums. And tax preparation wastes tremendous resources that could otherwise be put to productive use.

But here’s the incredible thing: Estonian tax revenues, GDP, and standard of living have been rising year after year. And at roughly 10% of GDP, Estonia has a laughably low debt. In fact, Estonia has the LOWEST general government debt of any country in the EU.

In Estonia they have truly worked to make the pie bigger. It’s an abundance mentality, plain and simple.

Now, let’s pretend for a minute that you’re flat, crazy, dead broke. And there’s a guy down the street who really has his stuff together. He has a nice house, he’s saved money, he’s conservative, and he’s doing quite well. Wouldn’t it make sense to learn from this person? Wouldn’t it make sense to spend a little time checking out what they’ve done right, what they’ve learned, and see how you could apply that to your own life?

Sure it does.  But not if you’re the US government. Or France, Spain, Italy, etc. Their only approach is to ignore the obvious success of other countries who have figured it out.  Instead their scarcity mentality pushes them to continue confiscating, intimidating, and terrorizing in a desperate, failed attempt to make ends meet.

It’s quite sad. But this is our reality in the broke and broker USA.

Why the Chicken crossed the road. From many different points of view.

SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he's a maverick!

BARACK OBAMA: Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.

JOHN McCAIN: My friends, the chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road.

BUD MCELHANEY: The chicken crossed the road to escape the over-reaching, confiscatory tax policies of an elitist totalitarian government on the other side of the road!


GEORGE W. BUSH: We misunderestimated the chicken's intentions and now we just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun? If the chicken comes to my side of the road he should waterboarded to find out if more chickens are coming and then be killed?

BILL CLINTON: First we need to define the meaning of the words cross and that.   But based on my definition of those two words, I did not cross the road with that chicken.

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white?

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he is acting by not taking on his current problems before adding any new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross the road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a NEW CAR so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

RICK PERRY: That chicken crossed the road illegally and we must put up some barrier to stop any more chickens from crossing. 

 PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way the chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish it's lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2014, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2014. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

The incredible faith of an Atheist

Have you ever considered how much faith it takes to be an atheist?

 

I was just thinking that you'd have to "believe" that the universe was infinite . . .even though it can't be proven?

 

You'd have to believe that at some point an inanimate mass just spontaneously "jumped" into organic living breathing material and then somewhere along the line  "jumped" again into a life form with a soul, and then with a spirit . . . .even though it can't be proven? (note:  the chances of all the proteins and amino acids matching together at one time at one point in space to create life is 1:10with 125 more zeros after it.

 

And then at the beginning . . .you have just take a leap of faith and believe that the first piece of matter that started the whole process . . . just "was".     And believe that something just existed and had a big bang one day and started the whole process. . . .even though it can't be proven.

 

You'd have to believe there was no heaven or afterlife,  . .  .even though it can't be proven.

 

All in all, even an atheist has a set of beliefs.   and beliefs require faith (except for scientifically held beliefs from observable experimentation)

 

It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist, more than I have to have to be a creationist, since I can at least have a written record to believe had a history of what happened (not withstanding also a supernatural inward conviction of God's Love for me that can only be equated to a person "knowing" their parent loves them, even though it's not provable).

creating one after another after another infallible churches?

While spending some time alone recently, I had the great enrichment of watching the movie Luther.  I have a greater respect and admiration for the man who stood up against all that was holy at the time and said "no".  You (the Roman Catholic church) are Wrong.   He went against many issues but the root of them all was the infallibility of the Pope.

After watching it and considering it, and then considering the history of the Church since the reformation, it seemed to me that the Church has been through a series of continuing new efforts of men (leaders) trying to convince the members (followers) that "herein lies the truth.  Seek in Here  (substitute for Here name of any particular faith or assembly).

I wrote this letter to me friend, who is, himself, a pillar of responsibility and character in his own non-denominational church:

Do you go to the church you go to because you believe it correct and pure in it's teachings?  I'd assume so.  I can't imagine that anyone would choose to go to a church where they suspected the teachings were in error? Has your pastor ever stood up and said "we missed it a few months ago" on a matter of doctrine.  I'm sorry"?   I doubt it.   And yet . . .I'm almost certain if I'd ask him if he believed he was infallible, he'd certainly say no.   But then if i said "well, give me a few of the times you've been in error"?   I don't think he'd be able to tell me any.   If he did manage to tell me of a time or two he'd been wrong, I would imagine he had not stood up in the pulpit and said he was wrong or misdirected?  If he/she did so, how on earth could he/she expect the followers to go on following in the future if they were always having to wonder if this point was a right one or not.

I believe that it's the followers fault as much as the leaders, because as followers, we become lazy and want someone else to hear God for us.    Then we can hold them responsible instead of being responsible ourselves.

If you do go where you go, then it probably makes sense that people who go to . . . say . .  a southern baptist, churched feel its the "truest"?   And Methodists feel the same. And others.    If Methodists 'thought" their church was in error . . ..as Luther did the Catholic Church. . .they'd obviously either vigorously try to change it or leave and seek out "truth" wherever they finally found it.

Which leads to the next point . . .if everyone thinks that their own particular religious persuasion is correct . . .then apparently many of them must think (perhaps without saying it) that they "others" are wrong.   And if everyone is sitting in their own particular persuasion, aren't they in effect . . perhaps quietly or subconsciously saying "the truth is here" and the others are just "slightly off".

Do you go to Antioch Baptist . . .and still believe the members at First Assembly are just as much in "correct doctrine" as you . . . .and both places have the "truth"?   Or do you go to Antioch Baptist and say "well probably a lot of what I'm hearing is not true, but I'm going to listen and decide what is and isn't for me?"   What do you do, or what is your moral obligation to do, if you hear something that you decide it not truth or correct?

Or . . if we go to fellowships that we believe are a little bit wrong and a whole lot right, why don't we tell new believers that from the start . . .'come to our church.  it's right a lot of the time".  

Did Luther trade in one infallible figurehead for a system that has given us 50,000 more? 

Greatness through the Eyes of God and 1 second of Not-so-great

This Christmas season of 2013, I began reading a book entitled 7 Great Men and the Secret of the Greatness by Eric Metaxas.     I’d only gotten through the first chapter on George Washington and had skipped through to see the other men that were to be mentioned and I knew this was a book that could be life changing.   I ordered 12 more copies of it and gave to all my children and several friends and business associates.
   

Now I’ve gotten down to finishing it and every other chapter is as good as the first.  In fact, now that I’m finished, I’m re-reading some of the men that made the most profound impact on the world like Jackie Robinson and William Wilberforce.    Yesterday while reading about Wilberforce again and his mission to abolish slavery in England at the turn of the 19^th Century, I was very impressed by one simple goal he had and that was to try and see the world and other men through the Eyes of God.   It sounds simple.  But it’s profound to me.
   

I’ve told my children, and others many times, that it was significant to me to realize that every opinion I had, or would form, and every truth that I held as truth . . . were all influenced, formed and determined by my “world view”.   And since discovering that, I’ve come to see that much of what I see as truth, or fact, or right, is not.   It’s just the determination that personally I had made because of the way I have always filtered information based on my world view.     Yesterday, I spent a few hours wondering how my opinions and vision of truth would be influenced, if I tried to examine everything in God’s view?

Then, today I was re-reading Jackie Robinson’s story and about how much abuse and bigotry he heard and experienced as the first Negro baseball player in the Professional Baseball.   His coach who had hired him,  a Christian man, knew it would be a life changing decision for Robinson, the team, the world, and most of all blacks, if Jackie could break through the wall of racism that had kept major league baseball “white only”.   And he insisted that if it were to work that Jackie would have to “turn the other cheek” to all the insults, and slurs and injustices that would be thrown at him.     Jackie Robinson, himself, a fine Christian man, said he was up to the challenge.  And he was.   And, as the book described what he endured over and over and over in the early years of his career, I wept.    And then I wondered?  Could  I could be a man of such courage and character in the face of such adversity?

I remembered back to how things were back when I was a boy in the 50’s and 60’s, and going to the department store with my mom and seeing three bathrooms:  Men . . .Women . .   Colored.   And two sets of water fountains at Woolworths.  White and Colored.   And seeing two soda fountains at Woolworth’s . . . .One upstairs that was nicer for the whites, and the other in the basement for the Colored.  And blacks on the back of the bus and whites in front.    And so on, and so on.    And then it dawned on me that the blacks who were children when I was a child, can still remember that.  But they remember not from seeing it but from experiencing it.   And those blacks are now my age, and about-to-be-retiring-baby-boomers.    What I remember as a historical fact, they remember as an experiential reality.

I wept inside.   And a bit later was mentioning this to a friend (white-like-me-Christian) and telling him that I find it amazing that 60ish blacks today can find any forgiveness at all for the intolerance and racial bigotry that whites (not like me) hurled at them for generations and generations.    I went on to say that the standard line of whites is that the blacks “just need to forget about it and move on”.    But I realize that seeing your mother or father or siblings, or yourself, mistreated and abused is something that does not just go away with a wish.   There would be scars there that were very deep and might never be completely healed.

A few minutes later in the conversation, I asked my friend to get something for me, and he replied with a grin on his face "yes massah".  And chuckled.   And then I chuckled and said "cut it out", and he told me he was just joking.   I knew he was joking.  My friend is a good Christian man who loves and seeks God.    And I am too.    But I chuckled for just a second.     Only for a filthy second though, because just as quickly, a pain came in my heart that said that part of slavery and history is NOT funny Bud.   And for those whose ancesters experienced the "massah's whip" it wouldn't be funny.  It would be piercing and painful.   I repented and I know that my friend did too.

Now, the pondering goes on inside of me.  "How much more filth is there in that heart", I ask myself?  God's view of life is that it darkness to even "wink at sin"?  I guess a second in time is the equivalent to a wink?   But a second or a minute or an hour or a day, it's all the same to God.

I had a portrait taken this week and told the photographer that I wanted a lot of shadowing in the photo between bright and shadow (light and dark).   I wish . .  .desparately . . .that I could see myself in full-brightness and cheeriness.   But I can't.

We all, each have, our own demons that we battle in some way or another inside this earthly body.  In my own selfish mind, it often seems that I have more than my share, or that I can get rid of.  Many of mine are scars that go back 40 years or more. But none of them come from seeing the world through the eyes of God.   So I want a photo of myself to look at that is different from the picture I see in the mirror in the mornings.  I want a reminder to see that there are two forces at work inside of me.  And each of those forces is battling for the control of this earthly body and the influence my life might have, or have not, on this world is in direct relationship to the light or darkness that controls me.   I caved in to the darkness today for a second.   Maybe I won't tomorrow.

I can see that the only way for there to be more light come forth, and less shadow and darkness, . . .  is for me to "see the world and other men (views, comments, people, actions) through the eyes of God.

I have a long way to go.  Maybe I should have told the photographer to make more shadow on my face than I did?    I'm so thankful that someday I'll get to shed this earthly tabernacle and walk into Paradise and the Lord will see me with His full brightness.