Category Archives: Philosophy

Atheism, Christian Libertarianism, Cosmology, Dispensationalism, Evolutionism, Faith, Freedom, Genesis, Hedonism, Hell, Hope, Justice, King James Bible, Materialism, Monism vs Dualism, Nihilism, Old Testament, Revelation, Salvation, Sheeple, Theism, There is a God!

Seether: Know Thyself. How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? Part 5.

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Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4

Dawkins is not a quantum ejaculation.
He is far more easily understood as a son of Fallen Adam.

Much of Dawkins own ‘Rationalizations’ may be reflected back upon the man himself.
One way we can look at the Animal Richard Dawkins is as fairly ordinary/ typical specimen of Humanity… nothing particularly spectacular ….
He’s no mystery.
He’s Quite fathomable as a product of Human Nature and 20th century nurturing.
Dawkins, like the rest of us harbors the same basic ‘nature’….the desire to escape the restraints of Moral law. To be our own God’s…etc
What Dawkins hates the most about the Bible is … As The Highlander might say …”There can be only 1!”

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2vs16,17)

Satan: “Yea hath God said…?
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: (Genesis3vs1,4)

I hope to show you that the Book of Genesis appears to have been written to expressly refute the likes of Richard Dawkins.
By the time I have finished this section I hope to have clearly shown that The Bible foresaw the rise of such personalities as Dawkins.
It explains how he was spawned.
It exposes his rationale as that of a man whom professes himself to be wise… when in fact he is a deceived fool…. Caught up in his own craftiness.
The Book of Genesis is written in such a way as to show the proper/ only rational way for man to have a loving relationship with God is to *trust in his good character* and have faith in his word.
*This is wisdom*
It is a simple matter of reason to understand that finite beings like us humans, can never know/ understand everything about The Almighty. And that though we can grow in wisdom, nonetheless it is paramount that we trust in the Goodness of our divine Father beyond our scope of understanding. The basis for this faith is that he has proven himself to be loving, and gracious towards us and therefore has earned full respect.
Life will put this faith to the test.
The deceiver will do his utmost to make you forsake God… to become like Richard Dawkins.

Satan Loves to Bamboozle!
One of the best ‘tricks of the trade’ I have learned as an amateur/ unschooled thinker is that when things get complicated (as with this thorny subject) … it is time to step to the side… and find a simple place to stand.
And it is amazing how well this works to cut through all the Din and confusion.
I want to do this right now.
I want to lay down a few basic ideas which to my mind cut though the ‘Everest of Codswallop’ Sophist rationalists have thrown up against the Good character of God as revealed in the Bible.
This Issue is ideologically speaking ‘The Mother of all Wars’. Satan and His Minions *Cannot allow Faith in the Bible/ faith in Gods word to stand*.
If (By Providence) I can at least succeed in establishing this *Essential point*, Every other Objective spiritual truth follows.
As long as Satan is able to deceive people into disputing the trustworthiness of the Bible, He has them under his Power.

I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. (1john2:14)

Now I am going to go back over the Genesis story.
*Please don’t yawn!*
Put your thinking cap on!
*Pray for God to be your Guide*

Once upon a time, Long ago… God created Adam and Eve.
It is important to realize that before God created Man, Lucifer / the Father of Lies had already rebelled against God. We know this because after a short unspecified length of time, Lucifer entered the Garden *as Satan* to deceive Eve.
Many people (including many Christians/ ‘Young Earther’s’/ Bible skeptics) mistake the First chapter of Genesis as being the Bible story of the Creation of the Universe, and the Planet Earth when in fact this was a restoration of an already pre-existing Universe which God had passed judgment upon/ destroyed due to the Rebellion of Lucifer, and the Earth was laid waste…Flooded and in Darkness.
(Gen 1vs 1,2)
The Biblical account of the actual creation of the Universe is found in the 1st chapter of the gospel of John.

Genesis 1 is the story of God’s restoration the Dry land (Earth) for his new creation Mankind.
There was no death (for man).
He Put Adam in the wonderful Garden of Eden, and because he cared about Adam, he made him his Wife Eve, for company, and for Procreation… to share and enjoy life in the garden and to enjoy the presence and companionship of God their Father.
At this blessed time there were no floods, no earthquakes, no plagues, no pestilences, etc, in the Garden.
According to God’s Determination…*Everything there was ‘good’.*
Yet because God did not want to create clockwork toys, but desired fellowship with beings with which he could truly commune, he made the Earth, and Mankind, in such a way that the potential for Evil and death existed.
Adam was called the Son of God, and it was a Loving trusting relationship which God wanted with Mankind.
God wanted Beings whom could reciprocate true love, could reason and appreciate God’s greatest characteristics, ie his Love, generosity, and Artistic glory, ie appreciate his creative power.
(We shall later see how even the Fall of Mankind allowed God to reveal even deeper parts of his character, and to create even more wonderful beings than Adam and Eve… all perceived in the mind of God before the foundation of the world)

And to established his Sovereignty, and give man opportunity to show his love, trust and respect for his Father, God gave Man one simple prohibition.
The test was to have faith in the Good character of God…
*Though it appeared that he was with holding ‘a good’ from mankind.*
The Test was for Adam to respect Gods Law, and to trust in his goodness.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Genesis 2vs16,17)

I know that all sorts of Pre-conceived alarm bells will have been triggered by the ‘dominos’ I have push over, yet I ask you to switch off your ‘automatic’ security system you mistake for thinking, and actually truly *Contemplate what is going on here*.

Ask yourself… Does God have the right to deny Adam the right to eat that fruit?
Ie Does God have the Right to make a Law that appears to withhold something good from us? And can he do so… and yet still be considered to be absolutely Good?

This is a fundamental question in respect to God’s Sovereignty, and Good character.

Let me state that you take extreme care regarding what rationale you choose to apply to arrive at your judgment in respect to this ultimate moral question, as your choice may have more to do with your inner desires, rather than Objective reason.
You are taking the Audacious step of Standing in Judgment of God Almighty!
We ought to tremble at such a dreadful notion.
The extreme presumption of the act!
That we even dare tells us something about us… something dangerous… something awful about our predicament.

After contemplation, My answer to the above questions is rather simple.
*YES!* God is completely within his Sovereign right to make such a Prohibition.
And because of all the many blessings God had already given to Adam, Adam *Ought* to have trusted and obeyed his Father in respect to the Forbidden Fruit.

It is only via a convoluted Sophistry that my simple affirmative answer may be denied.

…Yet it was exactly via such sophistry that mankind was deceived into dis-obeying God, and bringing death and destruction upon himself. Take note ye Rationalists…

Satan enters the Garden….

Satan was able to rationalize a cunning deception which brought the character of God into question, and convinced Eve that God’s word was untrustworthy.

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
(Gen3vs1-8)

From this we can tell that at the time of Adam and Eve, God, in his wisdom, had not ‘imprisoned’ or annihilated Satan for his rebellion, and so we may reason that God allowed Satan *the Liberty* to continue his wicked ways and to enter the Garden, and to tell lies, in direct contradiction to God’s word.
Satan used a rationale to deceive mankind into distrusting God’s good character by implying God was mean spirited because he was withholding something Good from them, and convinced them into disbelieving God’s word… that they would not die if they ate the forbidden fruit.
What is even more interesting to consider is this:
I have often thought that the forbidden Fruit may have been a ‘poisonous berry’, but not so poisonous as to bring immediate death, but toxic enough to corrupt Adams Genes so as to spoil his physical perfection and ultimately result in his death, and begin the start of Mankind’s hereditary death and genetic degeneration… (the exact opposite direction in the passage of time postulated by the theory of Evolution)… which degeneration is actually scientifically vindicated in respect to the deterioration of the human genome.
I reasoned that if the Fruit was indeed toxic, then we may understand God’s warning that Adam must not eat that fruit lest he die, as being a bona-fide warning of physical danger.
(Question: Is the creation of Poisonous fruit compatible with the notion of a Good God? Ie Doe’s god have the right to make poisonous fruit?)
Yet this Idea that the fruit was toxic is not necessarily so.
I have come to realize a far more plausible yet radical understanding…
*Satan may have indeed been telling the truth when he said ye shall not die!*
Ie The fruit may have indeed been as vs 6 says …*Good for food*… and thus Satan was able to *use the truth* to destroy mankind!

This is Radical. This is Profound!

Satan was able to sow ‘truth’ and into a cunning lie, which presented itself as a valid reason to distrust God.
His Rationale appeared to justify disobeying Gods command.

What this shows is that God was not talking about a physical ‘cause and effect’ scenario, but a purely Moral cause and effect scenario, and Satan was able to get man to focus on the mundane.
Thus Man’s sin, and Fall was purely the act of faithlessness in Gods goodness and his Rebellion via disobedience… and the Fall was a faithless… reason based delusion.
And once Adam had broken his covenant with God, he brought Death upon himself… As God had clearly warned that if he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely die.
The Father of Lies had succeeded to seducing Mankind into rebelling against God and brought death upon them… yet it was Adam who freely chose to follow Satan rather than God.

And thus God cursed mankind, and the ground we walk on (The Earth). We lost our physical perfection and became mortals, and threw them out of the Blessed Garden. (yet still made a promise to send Christ)
Paradise was lost.

Now primarily… Morality is morality because our actions effect not only ourselves, but other people for good or ill.
It is a fact of Nature that Children ‘inherit’ the earth their parents have bequeathed to them… for good or ill. Hardworking and thrifty parents may raise their children in a nice house, with Good clothing, and buy them Books to learn etc, while slothful and vice ridden parents may raise their children in want and squalor. The first parents showing their Good values and love by fulfilling their moral duties and responsibilities, the second Parents displaying wicked irresponciblity. The innocent Children of the first parents reap the benifits of their parants moral virtues, while the innocent children of the second parents wrongfully/ unjustly suffer because of their parents wickedness.
To be able to appreciate this and to grasp the ‘wrongness’ of the second parents shows what it means to be Moral agents inhabiting a Moral Reality. The sence of wrong also exposes a need for Divine judgement and justice to correct this wrong.

There are at least two ‘orders’ of evil which we children of fallen Adam must endue as a consequence of Adams Fall. 1. is the Evils Mankind inflicts upon himself and each other…The bible teaches these evils stem from our fallen nature eg. The first born Man was Cain,. He would go on to murder his younger brother Abel. The 2nd order are what we call the Natural evils, Disease, Floods, earthquakes, etc which the Bible says resulted by God cursing the Earth, and destroying its perfect goodness which Mankind enjoyed before the fall. And God Separated himself from Mankind as well.
Thus were the circumstances which brought about all the evils we suffer today.
The Evils which make many people to think there is no God, esp no Good and loving God.
The order of events is important.
Mankind First sinned… that destroyed the blessings and pure goodness of creation as God had created it , God’s judgment bringing all Natural evils upon us and being true to his word, God passed the sentence of Death upon us.
That’s the biblical order.
God repented making Man…before the flood. He was compelled to destroy mankind because of their wickedness!
What the Fall, and the Curse also tell us is that *things are happening on the Earth that are not Gods will*
The evils we suffer were not how God originally made things.
Mankind’s wickedness….Wars, murders, rapes, thefts, etc are a testimony to the rebellion against God.
*They are a part of the moral continuum*
God has separated himself from us so that this ‘Goddless world plays out it’s charade…yet he has not forsaken us… he sent Christ to save us from Damnation, and gave us his Written word… his revelation so that we can come to a knowledge of the truth.

What is also profound to grasp is just how ‘serious’ was the command not to eat of that fruit!
From what we may consider a very ‘minor’ sin…. All the chaos and destruction followed! Rationalists will no doubt stagger at the implication that from such small origin did all the wickedness and separation from God …of human history.
They fail to grasp the quality of God’s holiness, and that sin is a disease… “a little leaven leveneth the whole lump”.

Question: Ought God have locked up Satan in hell before he made man?
He obviously planed to allow Satan to tempt mankind.
Was this wrong?
Who O man are you to stand in judgment of God?

From the Fall of man we can understand where Atheism came from… where is God?
From the fall we can understand where mans Rebellious nature to moral law comes from… Why must I conform to any Laws?
We can understand where the Rationalist spirit of unbelief and sophistry has its root… in the eternal desire to undermine God’s word, and to deny God’s right to make prohibitions, and to judge… ie Rationalism is the Spirit that denies God’s Sovereignty.

The Bible is not like every other Book.
It is God’s Holy, and Authorotive word.
God’s Preachers and Apostles, and Teachers instruct those whom seek after God to trust the scriptures, and present proofs that the Bible is worthy of adoration.
These teachers are not ignorant men. But skilled also in the Arts, histories, and sciences of Mankind.

On the other hand we have the Children of the Devil… the unbelieving sophists…. the contemptible and spiritually lost/ Ignorant Rationalists.
The rationalists tell us we must not ‘revere’ the Bible.
(They revere nothing but the own interlectual vanity…their own grand delusions!)
They say we ought to treat the Bible the same way as we would the Epics of Homer.
Yet by doing so they have already deceived you!
They Don’t believe it is the true Revelation from God!
They then automatically begin to apply their own Naturalistic anthropology to the interpretation of Scriptures.
All miracles are *automatically* rendered fables.
Any conversations Man is said to have had with God, any Judgments God is said to have visited upon mankind are firstly decried as being monstrous delusions of Barbaric minds, and then relegated to the realms of Myth and allegory etc.
By Rationalist logic, All the Gods of Mankind are Guilty of Cruelty and capriciousness by association.
Why should not Jehovah be compared with Moloch?
That The God of the Bible has visited mankind with deadly judgements is proof enough in their minds that he is a power crazy, melicious, tyranical being.
They make no distiction between the God of Abraham who judged The antideluvians and the Cananites because of their violence and wickedness, from the Blood thirsty Gods of the Azteks whom simply lust after Blood!
This is because it suits the Rationalists purposes to Deny God has any right to pass moral judgements upon mankind.
People like Noah and even Jesus are said to be inventions of Savage minds… like Hercules, Maui, etc. Little sleep is lost over the discoveries which prove many of the ancient personalities were real people.

This short little exposé on Materialistic Rationalism merely points out some of their grand assumptions…all of which can be challenged and exposed as sloppy wishful thinking which does no justice to subject it pretends to master.

Yet the pitiful antics of the Rationalists has been sufficient to convince the scholars studying the philosophy and ‘history’ of religion that he may handle the Bible with no more dread than any other ancient book of folk lore.
It is sufficient to convince the ‘schooled intellectual’ that Bible believers are crackpots, and that creationism should have no place in the education of Children.

This whole business is based upon a single premise… that all religion is merely human invention. If indeed the atheists are correct that there is no God, then it rationally follows that all religion must be born in Human imagination.
Yet if they are wrong… and I say they are… then they are making a huge error…If one of the Great religions of the world is actually true, then this whole business is a giant smokescreen, which is burying the truth amongst a pile of lies!

As a Christian I have no doubt that many religions are pure fiction… the inventions of Human imagination. Others are deviations from an original purity. Others still are half truths derived via Natural theology, moral experience, and consciousness.
Yet it is my testimony to mankind that The Bible is different to every other Religious text in that it is truly the inspired and preserved revelation from Almighty God!
The Bible tells the History of Mankind’…warts and all!
The Bible is not a wishy washy fabrication.
I hope that this post at least hints at how Mankind…including ourselves… can be fully understood… even our passions and rationalizations… our violence, our rebellion, our vanity.
Ie The Bible holds true to reality and experience!

Please understand that I am not trying to shield the Bible from rigorous investigation!
By all means investigate!
What I am saying is take care not to be fooled by the atheist rationalizations…sloppy colectivisations… such as equating Jehovah with Zeus… and fall into the trap of putting both Gods on the same human Pantheon.
As a Bible believer, I have spent 27 years studying religion comparatively, and this is a very rewarding subject, yet I have always taken care to measure up any criticism held against believing the Bible to be infallible, to see if it ‘holds water’… and always… always I find the criticism are full of leaks… full of assumptions, etc and so I always return my eyes to the Bible with reverence and faith… For I always give the benefit of the doubt to God and his precious revelation. And after 27 years my faith in the veracity of the King James Bible is such that I am dedicated to propagating faith in it’s trustworthiness to whomsoever will hear. There are few things that are more worthy of my fleeting moments.

Part 6>>> ‘Good Atheist’s’ and the seriousness of sin. Good God/Evil world. 6 <<< More from me... Nyctophilia: Hiding in the Dark….

“Keep things in the shallow end… because I just didn’t want to know…”

Comfortably Numb : Confessions of a Nyctophilliac.

Gay, Propaganda, Riddles, Semantics

How many legs does a donkey have if you call the tail a leg?

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[Reprised from SOLO, March 2008. Does calling a civil union a gay marriage make it a marriage?!]

The gut notion of objectivity is captured in an anecdote from the life of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and a political colleague were discussing how to get a policy across and the colleague suggested labelling the policy in a certain way; they happened to be near a donkey and their dialogue went like this:

‘Sir, how many legs does this donkey have?’
‘Four, Mr. Lincoln.’
‘And how many tails has it?’
‘Why, just one, Mr. Lincoln.’
‘Tell me, sir, what if we were to call the tail a leg; how many legs would the donkey then have?’
‘Five, Mr. Lincoln.’
‘No, sir; for you cannot make a tail into a leg by calling it one.’

Saying doesn’t make it so.

Lloyd Reinhardt, Warranted Doability

Atheism, Ayn Rand, Bogus Science, C S Lewis, Cosmology, Evolutionism, Faith, Freedom, Genesis, King James Bible, Laws of Nature, Materialism, Monism vs Dualism, Paul, Physics, Science, Theism

God is a Trinity, so is Man.

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St Paul. (2Thes5vs23)
“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

St Paul clearly teaches that we are more than mere Material beings, more than mere machines.
We are Not Robots! We are not Computorised Automations!

Ayn Rand, Propaganda, Semantics, Totalitarianism

Politics and the English Language

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Politics and the English Language is an essay written by George Orwell in 1946.

Here are some excerpts.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying … And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

The present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and … one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

  1. What am I trying to say?
  2. What words will express it?
  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

  1. Could I put it more shortly?
  2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright,

I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.

Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier—even quicker, once you have the habit—to say

In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that

than to say

I think.

If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry—when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech—it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style.

This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. … There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could … be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible … to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable.

If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably chomping at the bit to start applying Orwell’s rules for writing—and thinking!—in clear, fresh, plain language.

Here are a couple of sentences from a well-known political writer.

Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes, or, more precisely, into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of specific units.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to reverse engineer them into plain English.

[Model answers are here.]

Justice, Meta-ethics

The serpent-windings of utilitarianism

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Judicial or juridical punishment (poena forensis) is to be distinguished from natural punishment (poena naturalis), in which crime as vice punishes itself, and does not as such come within the cognizance of the legislator. Juridical punishment can never be administered merely as a means for promoting another good either with regard to the criminal himself or to civil society, but must in all cases be imposed only because the individual on whom it is inflicted has committed a crime. For one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another…

[W]oe to him who creeps through the serpent-windings of utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may discharge him from the justice of punishment, or even from the due measure of it, according to the Pharisaic maxim: “It is better that one man should die than that the whole people should perish.” For if justice and righteousness perish, human life would no longer have any value in the world.

What, then, is to be said of such a proposal as to keep a criminal alive who has been condemned to death, on his being given to understand that, if he agreed to certain dangerous experiments being performed upon him, he would be allowed to survive if he came happily through them? It is argued that physicians might thus obtain new information that would be of value to the commonweal. But a court of justice would repudiate with scorn any proposal of this kind if made to it by the medical faculty; for justice would cease to be justice, if it were bartered away for any consideration whatever.

– Immanuel Kant, The Science of Right

[Reprised from SOLO.]

Cosmology, Easy Listening, Genesis, Iron Maiden, Keep it Metal!, Philosophy of Mind, Revelation

This is now.

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(Suppose, for the sake of argument.) God created the heavens and the earth … the sun, the moon, the stars, the skies, the land, the seas … the plants, the animals … and mankind. All in the space of six days! (By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.)

How did he do it?

To some it may seem presumptuous even to ask how God went about the business of creation. But mankind is a curious creature. His inquiring mind wants to know. Humans (some of them) thirst for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. That’s why we have philosophy and science and why, today (thank God), we live in a technologically advanced age. The gains in scientific knowledge made since the Enlightenment are nothing short of stupendous.

And now we know.

We now know, for example, that the several references in the Old Testament to God “stretching out the heavens” refer to the metric expansion of space which is a key feature of Big Bang cosmology. We now know that the Universe had its origin in a moment of creation some 13.75 billion years ago.

Let it be said, however, that cosmology is a better example of human ignorance than human knowledge. We’re still in the dark about so many of the fundamentals. Dark matter and dark energy are aptly named. But in other branches of science we know a great deal more. We know so much, in fact, that we can, and do, “play God”. To illustrate this point, here is a recent news headline.

In First, Software Emulates Lifespan of Entire Organism

We’ve mapped the human genome. We’ve mapped the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium and run software simulations of the entire organism. We’ve even constructed artificial life (assuming, of course, that a virus can truly be called a living thing), building it from scratch in a laboratory, one RNA molecule at a time. And this is only the prelude to what is to come.

We know how animals (albeit, very small ones) are made. We know how they work. We can simulate them. We can even build them ourselves.

Where am I heading with this? Actually, this post is for my co-blogger, Tim. God made animals, but he also made the human mind. I anticipate that one day we will find out how the human mind is made. We’ll run a simulation of a human mind on the powerful computers of the not-too-distant future.

The time is short.

Ayn Rand, Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Theism

That was then.

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning —the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning —the second day.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. ” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning —the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning —the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning —the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. ”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. ” And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning —the sixth day. (NIV)

So goes the (main) Biblical account of creation. Implausible? Perhaps so. But no more so than the atheistic alternative.

I love the theory of evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution (or the modern evolutionary synthesis, as it’s called these days) is a monumental intellectual achievement. It’s a thing of great beauty and power. Modern biology would be lost without it. (So, too, would modern atheism!) Nonetheless, as creationists never tire of reminding us, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis.

I’ve studied biology. I’ve studied the philosophy of biology. I understand both the theory of evolution, and its philosophical implications. But most people don’t. (Most people haven’t read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.) Ayn Rand didn’t understand the theory of evolution. Or, she understood it well enough, and didn’t like its implications. I suspect the latter. Her one-time lieutenant (and lover) Nathaniel Branden recounts

I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, “After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis.” I asked her, “You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?” She shrugged and responded, “I’m really not prepared to say,” or words to that effect.

Not prepared to say? Isn’t that evasion, Miss Rand? Surely not!

I have serious doubts about the theory of evolution. Because it has serious flaws. (I don’t like its implications, either.) Fatal flaws? I’m really not prepared to say.

Faith, Genesis, King James Bible, Merciful Grace, Monism vs Dualism, Old Testament, Philosophy, Revelation, Righteous Rants, Sheeple

How can a Good God exist when there is so much Evil in the world? (Part 4) Interlude.

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Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.


Tyndale. Myrtred for Translating The Bible into English.

It has taken me several weeks to start writing this 4th part .
I have been stricken with a nasty does of the flu, and also had to take care of my baby boy, whom is likewise afflicted. This affected my ability to focus. And on top of this I have also been pondering how best to proceed , not from lack of material, but how best to systematically present it.
Now that I am over the worst of this Bot, the time for procrastination is over and I will now attempt to build upon the previous posts.
And I must say those previous posts have laid down some very important foundations, and moved the subject onto the heart of the matter.
The difficulty with moving forward is that are at least three main streams of thought which must flow together, and this tests my writing skills.
All hope of keeping this series brief is now in vain.

Those who seek to avoid the just judgment of the Almighty are legion.
They may all attempt divers means of escape, yet they all may be classified as belonging to one club.
The Club of Infidelity.

The members All argue that the Bible ought not to be believed to be the perfect and inerrant word of God.
They attack the existence of God.
They attack the reliability of the biblical claim to be Divine revelation.
And on top of a myriad of other angles, They attack the Moral character of the God it professes to Reveal.
And this series of blogposts is attempting to Defend the character of the God of the Bible, yet it is important to understand that this argument is but one sector of an all round assault on the veracity of the biblical claim to be the infallible word of God.
It is therefore absurd to attempt to discuss this subject of the character of the Biblical Deity in isolation of this greater question.

Now what is both interesting, and very important to appreciate about the above truth is that it separates those who, like myself believe the Bible is 100% reliable, from everyone else.
And thus the Bible believing Christian must be distinguished from those Christians who don’t believe the Bible is 100% reliable.
It is interesting to understand that the attacks upon the veracity of the bible do not merely come from outside the church, ie from atheists and heathens, but that Many/ most Christians have themselves come to accept many of the arguments which undermine faith in the trustworthiness of the scriptures, and thus have join ranks with the atheists and heathen in attacking the Bible believers position.
Furthermore not only do many so-called Christians think the Bible believers position is intellectually untenable, they relish the Idea with as much fervor as the infidel, and for the very same reasons.
Ie They don’t like portions of the scriptures, and seek to justify their rejection of them as authorotive with as much fervor as the infidel.
The main cause of this Christian Apostasy is that they have succumbed to the ‘Logic’ of the rationalist attacks on the trustworthiness of the scripture, and character of the God it describes.

What more this Rationalist skepticism is what hold sway in most of the centers of learning.
Bible believing Faith as I hold has been in retreat for over a century, and with the progression of atheist Materialism there has been a century of Anti-biblical rationalism so that my type of faith is now very rare in Academia, and very unpopular in general.
By shear force of numbers my position is today considered ‘Unenlightened’, Backward, and Barbaric… especially by contemporary Schooled Christian Intellectuals.
And of course the ‘Educated’ will always peer downward at their pitiable ‘uneducated’ fellows like myself.
Thus it is against the weight of the world that my faith must contend, and It is in a pond of utter contradiction and confusion which I must swim.

Why do I bother?
Because to my mind nothing less that the whole Christian faith is at stake, and the hope of Salvation via the Gospel as well!
All this, in my mind hangs upon the veracity of the Bible and it’s accuracy in respect to the character of God.
And to Defend the faith I must thwart the False dichotomy that Faith and Reason are opposites.
Accepting this false dichotomy Academia seek to present my bible believers position as mere superstition… and imply reason, (and all the arts of Learning) are squarely on their side.
And so it is under this incredible weight and ferocity with which faith in the trustworthiness of the Bible is assailed, that has caused the majority of Christians to surrender it, and to even go on the offensive… on the side of infidelity. And by doing this they will today swear by Heaven they are doing Gods work and are defending Christianity… from the block heads like me who trust the Bible!


Thus it may be thought the height of arrogance and futility on my part to dare defy such a universal army!
For Christs sake Tim Nobody believe the Bible anymore!
Not even the Christians are on your side!
Surely Tis a display a suicidal Fanaticism!
A testament to the impregnability of superstitious Ignorance!
Modern evolutionary Psychologists might reason that I, (along with most of the most the Religious whakos of the ages) suffer a deranged mind… a collection of perversely stupid genes…etc
Satan laughing spreads his wings.

It was by getting Adam to doubt God’s character and word, that he convinced his to disobey God and bring Death and separation from God upon himself and his offspring.

It is in the wisdom of apprehending this fundamental error that I refuse to abandon those precious pages which introduced me to my God and Saiour!
I stand upon the Rock!
I defy the Storms of infidelity.
Though the tempest Roars, my position is not moved.
My reputation means nothing.
What matters to me is my testimony to my Children, friends and loved ones, and that when I stand before my God that in some measure my life has made a difference for truth, righteousness, and salvation of the lost.

Though many ‘Credentialed’ fellows will attempt to smear me as being Anti-intellectual …anti-schooling, and therefore dismiss me with a wave of the hand… that is more a testament to their utterly caged minds, and vested interest in maintaining the charade that their schooling gives them a status above ‘rude amateurs’ like myself rather than a valid criticism. It is an Ad Hominem attack, and certainly is not a rebuttal.
I know the power of the rationale which underpins my faith.
It is powerful enough to endure every Fiery dart of Satan and infidelity.
It is my deepest hope that I can transmit this wisdom onto my children, and anyone else who seeks to know God.

“I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” 1 john 2:14)

“Let God be true and every man a Liar” Saith I. (Rom 3:4)

“And he [Abram] believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness..” Gen 15:6

“ Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away” (Mat24:35)

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed; Rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2vs15)

The word of the Lords are pure words,as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever” (Psalms12:6,7)

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:” (1 Peter1vs 19)

“ Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
(2Tim4vs2-4)

In this series I can only present a tiny fraction of the Biblical doctrine about trusting Gods word over Atheist Rationalist doubt, I hope it is sufficient to cement my contention that the moment the Bible is believed to be 100% true that this will force many Christians to re-evaluate their faith in respect trusting in the goodness of God…in spite of the apparent difficulties involved with believing a Good God could destroy the world by flood, or condemn the wicked to eternal damnation.
When presented with the truth… will they still worship God, or will they be exposed as fundamental Infidels and haters of the Lord God, and instead prefer to maintain their position beside Dawkins and others who call Christ and the Father, Moral monsters?
I know by taking the side of infidelity in attacking the word of God All such Christians have sold the farm. I find their convoluted intellectual wranglings which attempt to incorporate the ideas of infidelity into a bastardized/ watered down version of Christianity to be a pathetic exercise in futility. The Infidels laugh along with Satan at the pathetic Christians who today endorse such things as The Theory of Evolution, and do backflips attempting to suggest things like Noah’s flood were never intended by God to be believed as literal. What these fools don’t appreciate is that they have already abandoned the high ground! The forces of Darkness are advancing.
Only a Revival in Faith in the trust worthiness of the Bible can stop the slide into the abyss.

All right then.
I think I can now get back to business…
Tim Wikiriwhi

Part 5 Here…