Derivatives of major Banks 2008 and now

It has been said, that unless we learn from history, we are doomed to repeart it.  In the financial industry collapse of 2008, many major banks were almost brought down by having such a large exposure to Derviatives.   The reason they were not brought down, is because the federal government stepped in and bailed them out.

So?  What did they do after getting rescued?

They have gone on and done it again.  Only this time, much larger.   Look at the chart below and see (in millions) how much greater their risk is in derivatives, than their equity.

When the music finally stops there are going to be trillions lost this time.  Not billions.

Sheesh!

In Him I shall Trust. In all things and matters.

 One of my son-in-laws has a problem with high altitudes because of something to do with having the sickle cell gene.  I was approached by a couple of men who were trying to get me to invest in a small coffee plantation in Colombia and had written to my daughter to find out if 5,000 feet altitude would bother him, because I wouldn't even consider such an investment if it wasn't somewhere that she and her family could come for a holiday.    As you can see below, she emailed me back about her concern about the current ZIKA virus and her concern about my possible exposure to it in S. America.     I replied to her:

In a message dated 4/2/2016 10:45:13 P.M. Central Daylight Time, writes:

Dearest One


I do not think about such things as a virus or other illness. I've never given thought to them and at my age I'm not going to worrying bout it now.  I get a physical once a year and that's about all i will do and i really just do that not cuz i am worried but just so i could have some advance notice if there was somr mortal issue so i could hurry up and squeeze in one quick trip to Disneyworld.

I know that it may bother you, or may even seem silly, or not realistic, but I am not afraid of sickness or disease or even death itself.

I trust in God to take care of me and He's all I have. I am not judging anyone else for taking precautions, or having Health Care, but it is just simple fact that I cannot have such things, nor do I really want them. I have even made a personal decision to not accept Social Security or enroll in Medicare.  I have just chosen to put all of my faith in God to take care of me, just as I always expected Him to take care of my family when I was Raising you girls. And after all, what's the worst that could happen? I get the virus? And die? That is no problem at all for me dear Katy. I want you to know, I am ready to go to the Other Side. Anytime, that God chooses to let me come Home, I am ready to be There.

Every day I fall more and more in love with the Lord and want to be with Him.

Not that I don't want to see you, or your sisters, or your children, but I have raised you all, you are good women, good Mother's, good wives, and I have done what I believe God gave me to do. Now I'm ready to go be with Him. In the meantime, He seems to keep me here, I will assume for some purpose. But if I felt He was calling me to Colombia, I would not go with any fear of disease, kidnappings, evil, or anything else that might harm me. He will take care of me.
Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.
He is my Mighty Fortress.

I love you so much. You're so sweet to think of such things about my health and safety. But it's not a concern for me. Goodnight. I love you so much.

Poppy

------ Original message------
From: xxxx xxxxxx @ xxxxx
Date: Sat, Apr 2, 2016 7:03 PM
To: BMcElhaney2350@aol.com;
Subject:Re: altitude

Is ZIKA virus not an issue there? I would be worried about about in south or Central America.

xxxx xxxxx

On Apr 2, 2016, at 3:33 PM, wrote:

I had a couple of men trying to interest me in helping them develop a piece of land to grow coffee in Columbia.   But it's a 5,000 foot elevation and I was going to rule it out if there was no chance it would be a place you could ever visit.

we'll see.   thanks.

i love you.  and miss you always.

poppy

Winston Churchill on Mohammedanism 1899

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy,
which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture,
sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the
Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement,
the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to
some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction
of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may
show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant
and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step;
and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had
vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250 London).

The US Government. The perfect model for the bizarre.

   by Luke Rosiak, Reporter for the Daily Caller.   April 9, 2016

A federal agency apparently interprets union-backed civil service protections to be so strong that employees, and even interns, can’t be fired for work-related misconduct unless they have also been convicted of it in a court of law.

That would mean a federal employee couldn’t be sacked for coming in to work drunk, not showing up at all, or anything else that is not a crime — or is a crime but is unlikely to be independently pursued by criminal prosecutors.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was unable to sustain a firing when its inspector general determined that an intern took two housing project units for herself, one of which she sublet out to someone else, and then lied about it.

The agency said it would be taking strong action, but also cautioned that the union would have a chance to make an argument. Soon after, the intern, Markquonda Mathis, was back at work and promoted to a position overseeing millions of dollars in grants.

 Her misconduct had been fully established by the inspector general, the department’s internal investigators. The only mitigating factor she could have raised at a union hearing is that she didn’t wind up being charged criminally, since Virginia prosecutors said housing authorities’ forms didn’t ask basic anti-fraud questions that would help them prosecute swindlers.

“While HUD does not condone any employee misconduct, federal laws and regulations afford all federal employees due process and privacy rights even if they have engaged in confirmed misconduct,” HUD said in a statement.

“Confirmed misconduct” means that the inspector general officially found that the HUD employee stole benefits. The assertion would suggest that inspector generals’ findings have no weight on their own, unless they serve as a precursor to criminal action.

IGs don’t have the power to discipline, instead leaving that to the agency, so it is a catch-22 to say an employee can’t be disciplined based on the findings of an IG report because she has not already been disciplined by an outside authority. A large portion of IGs’ findings are issues that violate rules but not laws.

And since prosecutors often only bother to take cases that could result in years in prison, the idea that an employee can only be disciplined following criminal sentencing is fairly irrelevant, since if they were in prison, they would be unable to hold their job anyway.

The outcome illustrates the shape-shifting excuses that federal managers and unions use to ensure that federal employees aren’t held accountable. HUD is saying that workplace discipline is inseparably coupled to the results of a criminal trial. Just weeks prior, the Department of Veterans Affairs said the opposite — that discipline and criminal trials have no relation — to explain why an employee who was convicted of a crime after an armed robbery was not disciplined. 

“Criminal prosecution or conviction for off-duty misconduct does not automatically disqualify an individual from federal employment,” VA spokesman Axel Roman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The administrative discipline process for poor performance or misconduct on the job, operates distinctly from the administrative process associated with off-the-job misconduct. Accordingly, one is not necessarily impacted by the other.”

New federal employees are on a probationary period and have drastically fewer protections than tenured employees. As many employees are fired during their initial probationary period as during the subsequent decades combined,  since it is so much easier.

Mathis was only a “student trainee intern” at HUD, and her $31,000 salary was far higher than most interns.  “When this occurred, she was a student intern at HUD,” spokesman Jereon Brown acknowledged. “You obviously haven’t worked in federal service with these unions that we have,” he said.

The fact that the American Federation of Government Employees has become concerned with making sure an intern can’t be fired for stealing from the government indicates that there is virtually nothing a federal employee could do to get the ax.

Federal managers’ perceptions of what they must allow because of the unions are out of whack with actual regulations and precedent, observers say. In this case HUD managers should have been able to fire Mathis, but probably didn’t try hard enough to build a serious case, according to government-wide Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rules.

“If the person is a probationary Federal employee without adverse action procedural rights, instead of taking disciplinary action the agency could terminate the probationer’s services,” OPM said in a statement.

“If a tenured Federal employee engages in misconduct, there are established procedures to discipline the individual … An agency may take disciplinary action for misconduct regardless of whether criminal prosecution occurs.”

In Mathis’ case at HUD, a “notice of indefinite suspension” said “Your access card will be deactivated and the building security was directed to deny you access.” The department “will take the necessary administrative action to preclude the continuation of harm or financial loss to the department,” it said, noting the “notoriety of the offence” and the “impact on the agency’s reputation.”

But the suspension was dependent on factors including the “disposition of possible criminal charges.” And it noted that “your position is a bargaining unit position” and that the union could challenge any punishment.

Even though agencies all operate under the same government-wide personnel rules, HUD managers seem less willing to fire employees than other agencies, casting it as an inability rather than unwillingness. HUD fired only 5 of its 7,400 tenured employees in 2013    –a much lower rate than anywhere else in government.

The Septuagint

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was commissioned by an Egyptian Pharaoh who wanted to promote learning. At the time (3rd century BC), Alexandria was a center of learning, and it would continue to be for several centuries. Alexandria also had a sizeable Jewish population, and so Pharaoh Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned a Greek translation that commenced somewhere around 250 BC.
The story of the translation of the Septuagint is told by some famous people. Philo of Alexendria and Josephus, two famous Jewish writers from the time of Jesus, both tell the story I'm about to tell you. It's repeated by at least Justin Martyr (AD 150) as well as other early Christians.
As the story goes, the Pharaoh wanted an honest, excellent translation, so he sent to Israel to get their best scholars. Seventy-two scholars showed up to translate the Law of Moses, and he put them all in separate cells. Despite the separation, they produced 72 translations that were word-for-word the same.
I'm not telling you this story is true. I'm telling you a lot of people believed it, such as:
By the first century a lot of Jews, especially outside Jerusalem, were more Greek-speaking than Hebrew-speaking. Many of them, like Philo and Josephus, believed the story about the translation of the Septuagint, and thus they thought the Septuagint was an inspired translation. Many early Christians agreed.
By the time of Jesus all the Hebrew Scriptures (the whole Old Testament) had been translated into Greek, not just the Law of Moses, and churches, who were mostly Greek-speaking, used the Septuagint as their primary Bible, considering it inspired.
The term Septuagint means "the translation of the 70," and as a result it is also called the LXX (Roman numerals for 70).
Most of the quotations found in the New Testament are from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew texts from which our modern English Bibles are translated. I found an awesome quote on the internet showing the agreement of scholars, Catholic and Protestant, about how much the Septuagint is quoted in the New Testament. (I'm using asterisks to help set off the quote.)
***Of the places where the New Testament quotes the Old, the great majority are from the Septuagint version. Protestant authors Archer and Chirichigno list 340 places where the New Testament cites the Septuagint but only 33 places where it cites from the Masoretic Text rather than the Septuagint (G. Archer and G. C. Chirichigno, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: A Complete Survey, 25-32).***
This paragraph is found on a Catholic web site (http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/in-which-passages-does- jesus-quote-the-septuagint-and-where-does-the-new-testament-al), and it is written by a scholar who graduated from a Franciscan university. Yet here he is able to appeal to Protestants to justify his statement that it is the Septuagint that is primarily quoted by the New Testament authors.
One notable example is Jesus rebuke of Pharasaic tradition. Part of the quote from Isaiah that he uses is "in vain do they worship me, teaching for commandments the traditions of men" (Mark 7:6-7). That passage is found only in the Septuagint of Isaiah 29:13.
THE LXX AND PROPHECY
The Christians proved so adept at using the prophecies in the Septuagint that Jewish leaders stopped using it and began claiming that it had errors. They switched to a Hebrew text and claimed that it was pure. In return, second century Christians began accusing Jews of changing Scripture to hide the prophecies of the Messiah because they predicted Jesus and his crucifixion too accurately.
The Jews managed to win at least one Christian over to that idea, but not until early in the fifth century (the 400's). Jerome made a Latin translation of the Scriptures in the early fifth century because a lot of the western Roman empire had been speaking Latin primaritly for a couple centuries.
That translation is called the Vulgate, and it managed to become the Bible of choice in the west.
The western empire, including Rome and north Africa fell to Barbarians later in the fifth century. The eastern empire, with a capital at Constantinople, continued for another thousand years, still speaking Greek and still using the Septuagint. To this day, it is still the Bible of most of the Orthodox branches of Christianity.
This article only brushes the surface of the history of the Septuagint, but I do want to cover one more thing.
Somewhere along the line, the Jews began a very careful campaign to ensure the accuracy of their Hebrew manuscripts. A group (or a family?) called the Masoretes began keeping strict rules when they copied manuscripts, even counting the number of characters on a page, making sure they were an exact match.
Nonetheless, the oldest Masoretic text we have comes from the 9th century. Thus, to scholars, when it comes to determining the most accurate text, there is a choice between a Greek translation of a Hebrew text dating to the couple centuries before the birth of our Lord or a Hebrew text that cannot be proved accurate until the 9th century. That's a tough choice.

It's a slow process, but more and more Protestants are moving to reading English translations of the Septuagint. The differences aren't great, but some are important. There are seven different chapters in the book of Jeremiah, and the Dead Sea Scrolls backed up the Septuagint version of that book. One other interesting thing is that the Septuagint of 2 Samuel clears up a difficulty concerning Saul's recognition of David when he volunteered to kill Goliath. 

humor from Will Rogers

Never Squat With Your Spurs On - Will Rogers

Will Rogers, who died in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska with bush pilot Wiley Post, was one of the greatest political country/cowboy sages this country has ever known.  Some of his sayings:

1.  Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.

2.  Never kick a cow chip on a hot day. 

3.  There are two theories to arguing with a woman ... Neither works.

4.  Never miss a good chance to shut up.

5.  Always drink upstream from the herd.

6.  If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

7.  The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.

8.  There are three kinds of men:

The ones that learn by reading;

The few who learn by observation;

The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.

9.  Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

10.  If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.

11.  Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back.

12.  After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring.

He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.

The moral:  When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

ABOUT GROWING OLDER...

First ~Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers.

Not me; I want people to know 'why' I look this way.

I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren't paved.

Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.

Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

Sixth ~ I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.

Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it's such a nice change from being young.

Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable and relaxed.

Tenth ~ Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it's called golf.

And, finally ~ If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old.

An Obama Legacy? Probably not.

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.

Sylvia Thompson on Obama's "legacy"...  THIS IS WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY:

 

To the many gullible souls out there who truly think that Barack  Hussein Obama is "legacy building" in his all-out assault on America, I implore you to bow out of the conversation because you are not seeing clearly.

 

The term legacy carries positive connotations of something bequeath that is to the receiver's benefit. Everything that Barack Hussein Obama does is calculated to destroy America, which he despises. This man no more cares about legacy than he fears being properly prosecuted by the white political leaders whose responsibility it is to remove him from office.

 

I focus on white leaders, because whites are still in the majority and they fill the majority of political offices. If the majority of political operatives were of some other ethnicity, I would lodge my complaint against that group. Ethnicity is an issue only because Obama is half-black and he uses that fact to intimidate guilt-conflicted white people. Otherwise, he would have been impeached and likely in prison for treason by now.

 

Barack Hussein Obama's sole aim has been, since he first entered politics and continues as he winds down this presidency, the complete destruction of America as it was founded.

 

It is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans who must listen to elitist pundits on Fox news and elsewhere, and political drones in either party endeavor to make Obama's behavior fit a pattern of normalcy. Attributing his destructive policies to "legacy building" is either self-delusion on the part of the people who make that claim or cowardliness.

This is my take.

Obama's nuclear deal with Iran has nothing to do with legacy but rather to enable a Muslim nation to wage nuclear war with America and Israel the two nations that he most despises. Does anyone wonder why Russians praise Vladimir Putin despite what the rest of the world might think of him? Putin cares about his country, that's why.

 

Obama despises the American military because traditionally it has been a mainstay of America's strength, and our strength infuriates him.

Imposition of a polluting homosexual, anti-Christian agenda upon the military ranks destroys unit cohesion and literally terrorizes male members with the prospect of sodomy rape. Such rapes have increased since the forcing of open homosexuality in the ranks, against the will of a majority of members I might add. Couple that with an infiltration of women, for whom all standards of strength must be reduced, and Obama attains his goal of emasculating and demoralizing the forces.

 

He could not care less about a legacy of making the forces more diverse. Besides, President Truman diversified the military as much as it should be when he integrated it. Obama's objective is its destruction.

 

Obama reopened relations with Cuba because Cuba is Communist. Legacy is not his concern here either, but rather to scuttle America's attempts to keep Communist influence out of the Americas. That Cuba has major issues with human rights does not matter. Like his Marxist African father before him, he despises the West and all that it represents.

Obama lawlessly declares open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, because he wants to overrun America with third-world people who bring little more than dependency with them. This tactic not only does not ensure a legacy, but rather it guarantees the eventual conversion of America itself into third-world status, if it is allowed to continue.

Bill Clinton started the travesty of increasing the numbers of third-world immigrants at the expense of culturally more suited immigrants from European and European-influenced nations, but Obama has taken the trend to lawless, destructive extremes. He is fully aware that many of these invaders have no intention of assimilating.

 

It is only the outcry of a majority of Americans that holds back this hateful invasion scheme, and Donald Trump's entry onto the political scene to oppose that scheme is a saving grace for our nation.

 

These are but a few instances of behavior that display the loathsome character of Barack Hussein Obama. And he is allowed to roam freely through the American landscape poisoning and polluting as he goes, sure in the realization that no one will stop him because he is "black."

 

The day that we no longer have to hear the prattle about his "legacy building" will not be soon enough for me.

 

Many, many Americans are thoroughly fed up with Barack Obama and the spineless crop of political leaders who ignore his criminality. It is yet unknown whether Republicans will ever garner the backbone to become a true opposition party and hold him accountable. Promising signs are the House conservatives' getting rid of establishment types John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker and Speaker hopeful, respectively, and Donald Trump's entry into the 2016 presidential race with enough money and testicular fortitude to tell the Establishment and the Left where to shove it.

 

Should these positive trends not continue and the 2016 election cycle yield no movement to counter all the harm that Barack Obama has done to this nation, I think there will be massive disruption. Those folks in the National Rifle Association ads currently running on television seem very serious to me, and that is a good thing.    

washing the cat in the washing machine

not sure why I just remembered this, but I used stay with my great grand mother on weekends when I was in elementary school.

then she died.

and then,  in jr. high I would often go and stay with my grandmother and her husband, George, on weekends.

George was her second husband, and he'd had a stroke and couldn't walk and was in a wheel chair.   She called him George.  My mom called him George.  So I did too.

He and I would play checkers for hours.  and hours.

Sometimes, I'd spend time with her in the living room listening to old big band sounds on her collection of records.    Or sometimes I spent time with George playing checkers or reading him his True Detective magazines.  Looking back, I just now realized that they didn't really spend time together, so I didn't either.  It was one or the other and me.

My grand mother, Momma Kathy, was a bit absent minded.  or ditsy.

They had an old front style washing machine.   Now front loaders are modern.  But in the 60's top loaders were modern and front loaders were old fashioned.

I remember that George and I were in the den playing checkers, next to the room where the washing machine was.  and we heard her slam the washer door closed, and start it and then she walked off.

A few moments later . . . .he and I looked at each other.   cuz we could hear this screaching,  gurgle, gurgle, eeeeowwww, screaching, gulp, gulp eeeeoowww, gurgle sound.  

And he yelled . . . .Katherine, you've got the damn cat in the washing machine!!!!! and then just went right back to making his next move.  

omg.  she came running in, and stopped it and opened the door, and I swear . .  .

I saw a flying cat for the first time in my life.  that cat came out of that washing machine like a bullet dragging clothes behind it.   dripping wet.   and tried to run off to the back porch room. But he kept falling down, and then get back up again. I guess he must have had at least a 2 or 3 dozen fast rotations in the time it took her to stop the machine.   plus the water pouring in. It must have made him very dizzy.  

this picture is NOT Butch, but I had to find one to remember what he looked like.

I was laughing so hard at the very-dizzy, wet cat, and George, who didn't like Butch the cat, just looked up like it was a perfectly normal occurrence and said "well.  one down.  eight to go." 

this has gotta rank as one of the funniest things I can remember ever seeing.  And for a 12 year old it was the most hilarious.  and it just randomly popped into my head now.

anyway . . I'm just teary eyed from laughing again so hard.   I had to tell someone.c

Ideas to liven up a dull Christian life group

Here are a few questions for life/lively group discussion that roll around in my mind.

How much of what you believe about God, Jesus, the Christian life is based on KNOWING or revelation to you from the Word  . . .either Logos or Rhema . . .? and how much of what you believe is because you were taught that from the pulpit, family, friends, etc?

If you are taught something from a leader in the church who has many initials after his name are you more likely to believe it as true?   Do you ever hear your own leader say something and think to yourself "mmmmm.  He's off base on that".    

If you think your leadership is "off base" do you feel the freedom to just go up to them and tell them you think they are in error?

How does your world view influence your Christianity view?

How much does your Christianity view influence your worlds view?

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most anxiety . .

what is your immediate level of anxiety at the thought of considering some that some/part/all/most of what you believe might be "not true"?

Is it faith shattering or faith building to question what you've been "taught" versus what you know/feel/sense in your heart?

Does God care if you're wrong about doctrine?

Does God care about doctrine?

What would/could you get a group of ten or 20 Christian friends to sit down with you and write a short "confession of faith" of what things you all collectively KNEW to be true.

Of all the sects/denominations in Christianity today, are you "in" your particular sect/denomination because

you have determined it is the most likely to be doctrine correct?

Martin Luther was a catholic priest.   How much of what he believed did he decide was just taught to him and incorrect?   He didn't seem to object to the idea of many doctrines of the Catholic church.   Just the idea of sanctification.   So was he in error?

When ML reached a point of deciding that much of what he believed was wrong . . .why did God choose him to be a singular voice to raise the 95 points instead of putting it on the minds of the leadership of the church?

What if ML had decided that he could not question points of his "faith" because it would be heresy and did he say to satan "get behind me"  when he first began to have idea he might have been in error?

How did ML know that it was not satan but the Holy Spirit directing him?

If the Catholic church then/now was in deception . . .and ML decided he had seen a revelation of truth and correction . . . how likely then could it be that something truthful could come out of any other organization

that the church today believed in error?   In other words, might a new revelation for the church today come from a Catholic priest or did the Catholic use up their one free "get of Jail free" card with ML?

And then of course . . .if ML was deceived why did he not know it before he did?   What was his illumination?

Does/would/might God still be in the business of illumination?

Am I/you/others open to the idea that illumination might come from a prophet of any source?  Or would we as "enlightened evangelical protestants . . only be receptive to a Word that came forth from another "enlightened evangelical protestant".   '

would the church today be open to the idea of a prophecy coming forth from a donkey for instance?   Why not perhaps me?  Or you reading this?  Is the church today open to the idea of some one person being a modern day Luther?   

Do we attend a fellowship because we believe it is doctrine pure?

And lastly, do you feel very uncomfortable inside of you right now considering these questions?

final note.   might not be a good idea to try and bring up ALL these points in one single night of life group?  :-)

my ideas about where God is and the Kingdom of God

I believe the institution of the church has gotten it all backwards about where God and His Kingdom is.

God is not outside of all.  He is at the center of all.

Even Jesus said "the Kingdom of God is within".

He lives within Us, His Church.  His Body.

I believe it looks like this:

44 Reasons why the theory of Evolution is just a cute fairy tale

44 Reasons why the theory of Evolution is just a cute fairy tale for adults and people wanting a job teaching “science” or getting government grants.

The theory of evolution is false.  It is simply not true.  Actually, it is just a fairy tale for adults based on ancient pagan religious philosophy that hundreds of millions of people around the world choose to believe with blind faith.  When asked to produce evidence for the theory of evolution, most adults in the western world come up totally blank.  When pressed, most people will mumble something about how “most scientists believe it” and how that is good enough for them.  This kind of anti-intellectualism even runs rampant on our college campuses.  If you doubt this, just go to a college campus some time and start asking students why they believe in evolution.  Very few of them will actually be able to give you any real reasons why they believe it.  Most of them just have blind faith in the priest class in our society (“the scientists”).  But is what our priest class telling us actually true?  When Charles Darwin popularized the theory of evolution, he didn’t actually have any evidence that it was true.  And since then the missing evidence has still not materialized.  Most Americans would be absolutely shocked to learn that most of what is taught as “truth” about evolution is actually the product of the overactive imaginations of members of the scientific community.  They so badly want to believe that it is true that they will go to extraordinary lengths to defend their fairy tale.  They keep insisting that the theory of evolution has been “proven” and that it is beyond debate.  Meanwhile, most average people are intimidated into accepting the “truth” about evolution because they don’t want to appear to be “stupid” to everyone else.

In this day and age, it is imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  Don’t let me tell you what to think, and don’t let anyone else tell you what to think either.  Do your own research and come to your own conclusions.  The following are 44 reasons why evolution is just a fairy tale for adults…

#1 If the theory of evolution was true, we should have discovered millions upon millions of transitional fossils that show the development of one species into another species. Instead, we have zero.

#2 When Charles Darwin came up with his theory, he admitted that no transitional forms had been found at that time, but he believed that huge numbers certainly existed and would eventually be discovered…

“Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”

#3 Even some of the most famous evolutionists in the world acknowledge the complete absence of transitional fossils in the fossil record. For example, Dr. Colin Patterson, former senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History and author of “Evolution” once wrote the following…

“I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them …. I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”

#4 Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University, once wrote the following about the lack of transitional forms…

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”

#5 Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley of Johns Hopkins University has also commented on the stunning lack of transitional forms in the fossil record…

“In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.”

#6 If “evolution” was happening right now, there would be millions of creatures out there with partially developed features and organs.  But instead there are none.

#7 If the theory of evolution was true, we should not see a sudden explosion of fully formed complex life in the fossil record. Instead, that is precisely what we find.

#8 Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki, an evolutionist, once commented on the fact that complex life appears very suddenly in the fossil record…

“A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth’s geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin’s hypothetical intermediate variants – instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.”

#9 The sudden appearance of complex life in the fossil record is so undeniable that even Richard Dawkins has been forced to admit it…

“It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and both reject this alternative.”

#10 Nobody has ever observed macroevolution take place in the laboratory or in nature.  In other words, nobody has ever observed one kind of creature turn into another kind of creature.  The entire theory of evolution is based on blind faith.

#11 Evolutionist Jeffrey Schwartz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, openly admits that “the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed.”

#12 Even evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University has admitted that the record shows that species do not change. The following is how he put it during a lecture at Hobart & William Smith College…

“Every paleontologist knows that most species don’t change. That’s bothersome….brings terrible distress. ….They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that’s not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don’t change, its not evolution so you don’t talk about it.”

#13 Anyone that believes that the theory of evolution has “scientific origins” is fooling themselves.  It is actually a deeply pagan religious philosophy that can be traced back for thousands of years.

#14 Anything that we dig up that is supposedly more than 250,000 years old should have absolutely no radiocarbon in it whatsoever.  But instead, we find it ineverything that we dig up – even dinosaur bones.  This is clear evidence that the “millions of years” theory is simply a bunch of nonsense…

It’s long been known that radiocarbon (which should disappear in only a few tens of thousands of years at the most) keeps popping up reliably in samples (like coal, oil, gas, etc.) which are supposed to be ‘millions of years’ old. For instance, CMI has over the years commissioned and funded the radiocarbon testing of a number of wood samples from ‘old’ sites (e.g. with Jurassic fossils, inside Triassic sandstone, burnt by Tertiary basalt) and these were published (by then staff geologist Dr Andrew Snelling) in Creation magazine and Journal of Creation. In each case, with contamination eliminated, the result has been in the thousands of years, i.e. C-14 was present when it ‘shouldn’t have been’. These results encouraged the rest of the RATE team to investigate C-14 further, building on the literature reviews of creationist M.D. Dr Paul Giem.

In another very important paper presented at this year’s ICC, scientists from the RATE group summarized the pertinent facts and presented further experimental data. The bottom line is that virtually all biological specimens, no matter how ‘old’ they are supposed to be, show measurable C-14 levels. This effectively limits the age of all buried biota to less than (at most) 250,000 years.

#15 The odds of even a single sell “assembling itself” by chance are so low that they aren’t even worth talking about.  The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Gray’s book entitled “The Forbidden Secret“…

Even the simplest cell you can conceive of would require no less than 100,000 DNA base pairs and a minimum of about 10,000 amino acids, to form the essential protein chain. Not to mention the other things that would also be necessary for the first cell.

Bear in mind that every single base pair in the DNA chain has to have the same molecular orientation (“left-hand” or “right hand”)? As well as that, virtually all the amino acids must have the opposite orientation. And every one must be without error.

“Now,” explained Larry, “to randomly obtain those correct orientations, do you know your chances? It would be 1 chance in 2110,000, or 1 chance in 1033,113!

“To put it another way, if you attempted a trillion, trillion, trillion combinations every second for 15 billion years, the odds you would achieve all the correct orientations would still only be one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion … and the trillions would continue 2755 times!

“It would be like winning more than 4700 state lotteries in a row with a single ticket purchased for each. In other words…impossible.”

#16 How did life learn to reproduce itself?  This is a question that evolutionists do not have an answer for.

#17 In 2007, fishermen caught a very rare creature known as a Coelacanth.  Evolutionists originally told us that this “living fossil” had gone extinct 70 million years ago.  It turns out that they were only off by 70 million years.

#18 According to evolutionists, the Ancient Greenling Damselfly last showed up in the fossil record about 300 million years ago.  But it still exists today.  So why hasn’t it evolved at all over the time frame?

#19 Darwinists believe that the human brain developed without the assistance of any designer.  This is so laughable it is amazing that there are any people out there that still believe this stuff.  The truth is that the human brain is amazingly complex.  The following is how a PBS documentary described the complexity of the human brain: “It contains over 100 billion cells, each with over 50,000 neuron connections to other brain cells.”

#20 The following is how one evolutionist pessimistically assessed the lack of evidence for the evolution of humanity…

“Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination.”

#21 Perhaps the most famous fossil in the history of the theory of evolution, “Piltdown Man”, turned out to be a giant hoax.

#22 If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and therefore life would not be possible. How can we account for this?

#23 If gravity was stronger or weaker by the slimmest of margins, then life sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would also make life impossible. How can we account for this?

#24 Why did evolutionist Dr. Lyall Watson make the following statement?…

“The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all of the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!”

#25 Apes and humans are very different genetically.  As DarwinConspiracy.com explains, “the human Y chromosome has twice as many genes as the chimpanzee Y chromosome and the chromosome structures are not at all similar.”

#26 How can we explain the creation of new information that is required for one animal to turn into another animal?  No evolutionary process has ever been shown to be able to create new biological information.  One scientist described the incredible amount of new information that would be required to transform microbes into men this way…

“The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus).”

#27 Evolutionists would have us believe that there are nice, neat fossil layers with older fossils being found in the deepest layers and newer fossils being found in the newest layers.  This simply is not true at all…

The fossil layers are not found in the ground in the nice neat clean order that evolutionists illustrate them to be in their textbooks. There is not one place on the surface of the earth where you may dig straight down and pass through the fossil layers in the order shown in the textbooks. The neat order of one layer upon another does not exist in nature. The fossil bearing layers are actually found out of order, upside down (backwards according to evolutionary theory), missing (from where evolutionists would expect them to be) or interlaced (“younger” and “older” layers found in repeating sequences). “Out of place” fossils are the rule and not the exception throughout the fossil record.

#28 Evolutionists believe that the ancestors of birds developed hollow bones over thousands of generations so that they would eventually be light enough to fly.  This makes absolutely no sense and is beyond ridiculous.

#29 If dinosaurs really are tens of millions of years old, why have scientists found dinosaur bones with soft tissue still in them?  The following is from an NBC News report about one of these discoveries…

For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70 million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

#30 Which evolved first: blood, the heart, or the blood vessels for the blood to travel through?

#31 Which evolved first: the mouth, the stomach, the digestive fluids, or the ability to poop?

#32 Which evolved first: the windpipe, the lungs, or the ability of the body to use oxygen?

#33 Which evolved first: the bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or the muscles to move the bones?

#34 In order for blood to clot, more than 20 complex steps need to successfully be completed. How in the world did that process possibly evolve?

#35 DNA is so incredibly complex that it is absolutely absurd to suggest that such a language system could have “evolved” all by itself by accident…

When it comes to storing massive amounts of information, nothing comes close to the efficiency of DNA. A single strand of DNA is thousands of times thinner than a strand of human hair. One pinhead of DNA could hold enough information to fill a stack of books stretching from the earth to the moon 500 times.

Although DNA is wound into tight coils, your cells can quickly access, copy, and translate the information stored in DNA. DNA even has a built-in proofreader and spell-checker that ensure precise copying. Only about one mistake slips through for every 10 billion nucleotides that are copied.

#36 Can you solve the following riddle by Perry Marshall?…

1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.

2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.

3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind.

If you can provide an empirical example of a code or language that occurs naturally, you’ve toppled my proof. All you need is one.

#37 Evolutionists simply cannot explain why our planet is so perfectly suited to support life.

#38 Shells from living snails have been “carbon dated” to be 27,000 years old.

#39 If humans have been around for so long, where are all of the bones and all of the graves?  The following is an excerpt from an article by Don Batten…

Evolutionists also claim there was a ‘Stone Age’ of about 100,000 years when between one million and 10 million people lived on Earth. Fossil evidence shows that people buried their dead, often with artefacts—cremation was not practised until relatively recent times (in evolutionary thinking). If there were just one million people alive during that time, with an average generation time of 25 years, they should have buried 4 billion bodies, and many artefacts. If there were 10 million people, it would mean 40 billion bodies buried in the earth. If the evolutionary timescale were correct, then we would expect the skeletons of the buried bodies to be largely still present after 100,000 years, because many ordinary bones claimed to be much older have been found. However, even if the bodies had disintegrated, lots of artefacts should still be found.

#40 Evolutionists claim that just because it looks like we were designed that does not mean that we actually were.  They often speak of the “illusion of design”, but that is kind of like saying that it is an “illusion” that a 747 airplane or an Apple iPhone were designed.  And of course the human body is far more complex that a 747 or an iPhone.

#41 If you want to be part of the “scientific community” today, you must accept the theory of evolution no matter how absurd it may seem to you.  Richard Lewontin of Harvard once made the following comment regarding this harsh reality…

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

#42 Time Magazine once made the following statement about the lack of evidence for the theory of evolution…

“Yet despite more than a century of digging, the fossil record remains maddeningly sparse. With so few clues, even a single bone that doesn’t fit into the picture can upset everything. Virtually every major discovery has put deep cracks in the conventional wisdom and forced scientists to concoct new theories, amid furious debate.”

#43 Malcolm Muggeridge, the world famous journalist and philosopher, once made the following statement about the absurdity of the theory of evolution…

“I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.”

#44 In order to believe the theory of evolution, you must have enough blind faith to believe that life just popped into existence from nonlife, and that such life just happened to have the ability to take in the nourishment it needed, to expel waste, and to reproduce itself, all the while having everything it needed to survive in the environment in which it suddenly found itself. Do you have that much blind faith?

For years, I have been looking for someone that can explain to me the very best evidence for the theory of evolution in a systematic way.  My challenge has been for someone to lay out for me a basic outline of the facts that “prove” that evolution is true.

Perhaps you believe that you are up to the challenge.

I’ll even get you started…

A)

#1

#2

#3

B)

#1

#2

#3

C)

#1

#2

#3

If you think that you can prove that evolution is true, please leave a comment below with your best shot.

Or if you would like to discuss additional evidence for why you believe that the theory of evolution is false, please feel free to share it by posting a comment below.

For those that would like to learn more, there are a couple of videos that I would recommend.  One is entitled “Evolution vs. God“…

- See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/44-reasons-why-evolution-is-just-a-fairy-tale-for-adults_012014#sthash.9E9pG7SU.A4LJGwBE.dpuf