This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen,” the Lord said.
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. Then I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign Lord said.
This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”
The Theory of evolution is a bloody joke!
Yet it’s fanatical devotees infest our media and schools to the extent that those of us who don’t believe it are considered the Lunatic fringe.
And yet when ever you examine any of the so called evidences or rationale which under girds this Belief, all the thinking man finds is hocus pocus and minuscule facts stretched to their extreme.
The latest findings of the Mars Rover ‘Opportunity’ serve as yet another example of just how devoid of real substance the atheist naturalistic cosmology really is…
In an NZ herald article (pg A25) June 13 2013 a Cambridge Professor of Mineral Physics Simon Redfern talks about The Rover performing an xray on some Mars ‘Esperance’… rock which revealed mineral deposits within which gives plausibly to this rock having been formed via Water borne sedimentary action… muddy clays which absorbed water, rather than Sulphuric acid… as has been the interpretation given to the majority of other ‘hydrated’ rocks examined.
This discovery is in the words of the Professor…
“Powerful evidence that water interacted with this rock…”
Now that is interesting, and I have no reason to believe there is anything wrong with his conclusion… It is the fantastic conjecture which Atheists draw from this sort of thing!
Like squeezing blood from a stone… they then leap to the conclusion that
‘ROCK REVEALS LIKELIHOOD OF LIFE ON MARS’ (see Here)
^^^^ Is it possible to justify that statement … which was the actual title of the whole NZ Herald article… from the mere fact that this rock probably had contact with water of a potable quality?
Lets look at what the article says…
“It’s the strongest evidence yet for a past environment that would have been conducive to life.”
I can live with that Idea… I can conjecture that Mars may indeed have been a far more ‘hospitable place’ that had water… aeons ago.
Where did it all go?
Did Mars fall victem to a capitalist society causing catistrophic ‘Climate change’? 🙂
I digress.
It is at this point in the article we move from what I consider ‘fair’ scientific speculation straight into the extreme realms of Evolutionary Fairytale… The article continues…
“Speculation linking the origins of life on Earth to the presence of clays minerals has been something of a theme since it was suggested in the 1950s.
Swelling clays, like those seen in Esperance, demonstrate the presence of neutral water early in Mars history. But at the molecular scale the inter-layer structure of clay can also act as a template to any organic molecules present and potentially, promote replication of enzymes and proteins, which are necessary for life.
The findings back up earlier theories that the Martian surface once hosted an ocean , covering much of it’s Northern Hemisphere”.
Blar Blar Blar! There you have it!
The Wild and unfounded atheist conjecture as to the origin of life on Earth is used to vindicate further conjecture to Life on Mars!
There is no real science in any of this!
Atheism is a belief in Martian Sea-monkeys!
Just add water… and hey presto ‘Instant Life’…
These claims in fact prove how Baseless and devoid of Science the Naturalistic notion of the origin of life really is!
Their simpleton rationale goes something like this… “… Life needs water… Mars had water… Oh that means the probability of life having existed there ….’once upon a time’…is likely!
They are grasping at straws.
And they are guilty of the very assumption they accuse theism of… ie baseless conjecture.
There is *zero evidence for life on Mars*
End of story
This claim is pure whim! Pure pseudo science!
The latest discoveries of Genetic science explode the idea of a ‘simple cell’.
The Cell is super complex… a super organized structure, and knowing this ought to slay any remaining delusions that Life can spontaneously arise by fortuitous circumstances, and indeed explains why… even here on earth where conditions are perfect for life… abiogenesis/ spontaneous generation has never been observed, in fact Pasteurs Law is absolute… *Life always and only comes from life*… a sterile environment will remain sterile forever… unless ‘seeded’ from an external source.
Math destroys Atheism.
The impossiblility of spontanious generation is Scientific Reality. Abiogenesis is a mathematical absurdity…yet because these facts simply dont fit the irreligious opinions of the professor and his ilk, he chooses to ignore science and to substitute the facts with his own irreligious Bullshit… Blar blar “clays act as templates”, etc….and that folks demonstrates just how and why the theory of evolution keeps it legs and continues to be preached in schools and in the Media.
It is a Wolf in sheeps clothing.
St Paul warned us to beware ‘Science falsely so-called’.
What do the scientist say – John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize and one of the foremost brain scientists in this century speaks of one chance in 1010,000 as being “infinitely improbable…..Carl Sagan and other prominent scientists have estimated the chance of man evolving at roughly 1 chance in 102,000,000,000.34……Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist,calculated the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10100,000,000,000.24…….Dr. David J. Rodabough, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate (even on 1023 planets) as only one chance in 102,999,940.21……scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 X 10191.16…..
Scientist Harold F. Blum, writing in Time’s Arrow and Evolution, wrote that, “The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability.”…..David J. Rodabaugh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, shows the probability that a simple living organism could be produced by mutations “is so small as to constitute a scientific impossibility” — “the chance that it could have happened anywhere in the universe,is less than 1 [chance] in 102,999,942.”7….Moshe Trop, Ph.D., with the Department of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, concludes,”All calculations made of the probability [that life could evolve by chance, lead to the conclusion that] there could have been no possibility of the random appearance of life….(NOTE – All evidence cited orginates from the science community)….(continue)
A discussion of the staggeringly complexity and elegance of the cell, which has been described as a nano-factory full of machinery millenia beyond what today’s brilliant engineers can produce.
Is this all the product of filtered, mindless, purposeless accidents or of brilliant design? You be the judge.
“Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10^-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist
“To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must first magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is 20 kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would see then would be an object of unparalleled complexity,…we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.”
–Michael Denton, Ph.D. geneticist, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, pg.328
^^^^This is quite funny, yet still the subject matter is mind blowing!
Many people probably mistake all this talk of Neurons, etc as evidence of real understanding.
It’s supposed to make Science ‘Poetic’ and profound yet is really a song of ignorance, myth and superstition.
“Our Reptile Brain”.
“It evolved from the inside out”
Quite pathetic.
This is a Materialist Hymn.
Why would anyone believe this nonsense?
The reality is Science cannot fathom how our Conscious Minds, our Self awareness, and freewill are related to our Grey matter.
They must wax lyrical about ‘Collage explosions’… I assume on the ‘Entertainment systems’ in our heads!
The closest these guys get to the Truth is when they call our Brains.. ‘an enchanted room’.
’20 million volumes of information… A very Big place in a very small space’
The confession… “It is the most mysterious part of our Body”.
The biggest questions of Consciousness are well beyond reach, and as long as modern science remains dominated by Monist Materialism they will never be able to understand the Mind/ Brain paradox because they have willfully shut their minds to non-physical spiritual realities.
I laugh at the ‘all to common’ claims these days that mankind has mastered how the brain works, and Technology … that scientists will within the next 20 years have invented ‘Conscious computers’ which will be capable of thinking ‘human’ thoughts, and ‘feeling’ human emotions.
It is mind boggling that materialists can be so Absurd as to be contemplating ‘ethical issues’ of granting Robots ‘rights’!!!
They have traveled so far into materialist fantasy that they have forgotten the reality that *’Robot’ and ‘Morality’* are Oxymorons!
Morality only being possible for Free willed beings which have a choice, and whom exist in a universe governed by Objective Moral laws.
All these necessities are absolutely alien to Materialist cosmology.
I have said many times before that mankind may one day make an imitation mechanical bird which may be able to fly and sing, and that a person may have trouble identifying it as being a fake… none the less that Machine will never be a real bird.
Likewise with a Humanoid Robot.
They may be clever enough to program a machine with human mannerisms, so that when we interact with it we can believe we are dealing with a living, thinking…even emotional and caring *Person*, but in reality that is all just a gigantic Deception… The Robot will not be alive… will not be conscious, will not be moral, will not care… etc etc…
It is staggering to know that these fundamental truths are completely ignored by materialist thinkers.
What is worse to contemplate is just what materialists believe our life and human consciousness is!
Death, the Materialist must believe is nothing more that ‘pulling the plug on your computer’!
And *you* literally ‘vanish’.
Materialism is one of the most powerful Opiates of them all!
It’s stupefying!
Why do they choose to think this way?
Simply because they desire to subject the whole universe …neatly into their own puny… small minded Naturalistic Rationale.
They allow themselves to be dominated by their own primitive theories.
It makes them feel good.
They refuse to be Objective and admit that there are plenty of things in reality which don’t fit at all well with their materialism.
The moment they admit this to themselves, their entire ‘religion’ falls apart… and that is what materialism is… a falce religion.
The moment a person awakens to the idea that there are greater realities than mere Matter and energy is the day that their subjective scales fall from their eyes and they appreciate spiritual truths, Free will, Consciousness, Love, …Good and evil, etc are not properties of matter… nor ever could be… and they are then in a much better position to appreciate the Amazing truth of the Bible.
^^^^ YEAH RIGHT!
Many Modern Atheists are Pompous White horse Riding ‘Moralists’!
They are Religious Zealot’s on a Righteous Crusade, fighting the ‘Evils’ of Religion, and vigously propagating and defending their Faith.
They often get extremely vicious against declarations of Faith in the Christian God, which led one Blogger to inquire…
” I mean, if you truly believe there is no God, why get all worked up over what a bunch of delusional Christians think?”… Valley Girl Appologist.
Pondering upon a post on Richard Goode’s Face book page discussing this Atheist Mentality in respect to why many of them are so militantly Anti-Christ, and so strongly desire to deny God’s existence… I made the following comment…
“There is a psychological reason Richard, They Hide from God in the Dark so as to delude themselves they can do as they please, and yet Pesky Christians keep reminding them that there is a God, and that He sets the Moral Laws… not them, and that one day they will stand before him and answer for their sins. *This is a message they HATE* … to the very pit of their self deluded souls! They simply don’t want to know about God *End of story*
Which Solicited the following response from ‘Atheist Greg’
……… “GARBAGE!”
^^^ Now Greg has expressed an opinion, not a counter argument.
It is no doubt a very common ‘opinion’ among Atheists, yet I don’t think my position as stated above can be so easily dismissed.
😀
Atheist Greg has actually provided me with further opportunity to discourse the arguments for the Theistic vindication for Objective Morality vs Atheist Nihilism, and the origin of Mans innate sense of Good and evil.
Here I employ the basic argument used by the Late great C S Lewis.
My Reply…
If You Greg, and your kin, are nothing more than ‘Space Algae’, well *then* my arguement would be ‘Garbage’, yet you are a Conscious Moral being with a sence of Good and Evil, and you appeal to the ‘Moral law’ governing human actions every day… eg when you get a bill in the mail which overcharges you, you immediately feel a pang of ‘injustice’… and experience emotions of sorrow, and anger…. And begin to make self righteous determinations to see justice is restored. Now this sense of injustice at ‘wrong’ is more than simply being upset that an agreement was broken (social compact)…ie that a mere human convention was violated, It is a sense that *A Real Moral absolute… binding on all humanity has been broken* and that you are within your right to seek justice for your injury.
You are in fact appealing to an objective Moral absolute… a ‘higher Law’ which you implicitly believe underpins all ‘conventional’ human agreements as moral duties/ obligations to fulfil.
Thus I say that You Greg do not/ cannot live as a human being consistently with your claim that the universe is nihilistic/ A moral, or that Mankind is merely ‘Space Algae’.
To do so you would have to loose all sense of moral duty. You would have say to yourself that a person steeling your car… was not doing anything wrong… that even saying the car is ‘mine’ is a moral irrelevance… the universe caring nothing for your claims to ownership.
And you certainly have no basis to think that when a school bus full of children plunges over a cliff that any ‘cosmic injustice’ has occurred… no basis to shake your fist at heaven… the only reason you would do that is if deep within you believe in Moral absolutes, and know that Children *don’t deserve* to die, and that you are angry at God for allowing this sort of thing to happen.
The people who come the closest to the embodiment of Atheism are the Tyrants, Mass murderers, and Serial killers…The Hitler’s, the Ted Bundies… the Hannibal Lecters… The Sociopaths and Megalomaniacs who… like Wild beasts devour and enslave their fellow human beings *as if they are mere Space Algae* .
These are the Atheist ‘Realists’, who live under the conviction that all Morality and Law’s of society are merely Human conventions…and that there is no Real ‘Higher moral Law’ than their own Will.
They are God’s unto themselves.
Thus unless you (Atheist Greg) are prepared to accept that these Killers are absolutely right, and are prepared to drop any sense of Moral consciousness you have, I say
‘Garbage!’… to you!
I say deep within you know there is a real Higher Moral Law… you know that you are a Moral being… and these things all point to the notion of *Universal Justice*… God will judge!
…and as I was saying Atheists hate this Knowledge and seek to hide themselves from it.
They despise Christians for their ‘Pesky declarations’ which puts a tourch light on them…reminding them of their flight from Reality and their knowledge of the Truth.
Thus We witness the Ironic spectacle of Atheists who insist they are Moral, yet deny all Moral Obligation! They are ‘moral’ in their own eyes, and ‘holy’/without sin according to their own standards.
*How Convenient!* 🙂
What Basis is left for Morality if God… the Divine Lawgiver is Obliterated?
Atheist Materialists in the 1800s admitted that Materialism was the end for objective morality, yet the Modern atheist is not so bold, nor so rigorous as to where their premises ultimately lead, and instead pretend that their Atheism makes them *more moral than theists!* and they attempt to utilize Historic atrocities committed in God’s name as evidence that ‘religion is evil’… forgetting they have no ‘higher ground’ upon which to stand to make any such moral judgments, and that in doing so they are applying standards which are not theirs to use!
Such a one eyed approach which only looks at particular negative historic events does not succeed in knocking all religion off it’s perch, or by default add one ounce of objective moral reality to Atheism.
While defending God’s Divine right to execute judgments upon Mankind, Christians themselves are just as rigorous as any atheist in their condemnation of atrocities like 911, or the Salem witch trials…committed in God’s name.
I attended a Debate in Auckland a Few years ago between Matthew Flannagan and Prof Bradley on the topic ‘Is God the source of morality’ in which Dr Flannagan presented the God Command Moral theory, and the atheist Prof Bradley made the statement that he believed that because God does not exist that therefore he cant be the source of morality.
Instead he argued morality can only be founded upon ‘sentiment’!!!
Now ‘sentiment’ is an absolutely pathetic, subjective, and culturally relative foundation without any authority to impose Moral obligations! (and I criticised him for it at question time!)
This is really the subject fit for another Blog post, yet what is interesting about the modern Atheist is that they cannot bear the reality that their belief system is definitively Amoral and De-humanising.
To avoid this they attempt to change the game as to what morality really is.
Important End Note:
The Genesis story of the Fall of Mankind into sin declares that we were transformed from a child-like innocence into a ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’, and It is this inner knowledge of Good and Evil which makes all mankind, in all times and places, accountable and Guilty before God and deserving of Judgment because they all have a knowledge of their own moral responsibilities. Thus I am saying that the Savage whom tortures his neighbor to death *knows he is committing Evil*… even if he has never herd of Jesus Christ. And God will Judge him for it. So too with the Atheist who does not believe Jesus Rose from the dead. This denial does not negate the Atheists own knowledge of sin, and guilt for his immoral actions for which God will hold him accountable.
Thus contrary to what Many atheists assert: The Bible does not deny Atheists cant have any sense of Morality… it insists that everyone does!
What We Christians say is that the Atheist position cannot justify their morality…. That Atheism itself is Amoral, and that it leads to mere cultural relativism, and social arbitrary law.
When Atheists claim to be moral, they a contradicting themselves.
Tim Wikiriwhi
King James Bible Believer, Dispensationalist, Libertarian, Christian.
Does that actually mean anything????
This Meme is supposed to inspire Awe and portray Atheism as ‘an Enlightenment’.
Is this so?
What sort of ‘self’ is ‘discoverable’ via the loss of religion?
It can only be an ultimately worthless self… trapped within a Cold, nihilistic, indifferent universe which will inexorably pulverize and expunge all evidence of humanity’s existence into oblivion … and render our acts of love and kindness as valueless, and indistinguishable as our Acts of Violence and depravity…. When Man looses God… he suffers Eternal death.
He looses everything that makes his Humanity ‘distinguishable’, from the cold indifferent Material reality. He looses his Rights. His Moral compass looses it’s North.
What is left but to Eat, Drink and be Merry…for tomorrow we die?
I pity the man who believes this is ‘Self discovery’!
Yet there is something in all of this which I believe is *Really what such People* seek… and that is that they actually *want* to loose their ‘north pole’…because they are tired of knowing that that is the direction they ought to travel …when all their lusts and their sloth has them looking South!
When they Loose God…and seek to hide from objective moral reality… they abandon their conscience… and travel south ‘free’ of Objective morality…. Now in their new Nihilistic reality they can do as they please…
They have abandoned God to escape Moral accountability.
This is what Pitt means by being ‘Untethered’.
I ask… “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matt16vs26
I do not deny the fact that this is a very ‘Natural’ a very powerful urge’ for The Sons and Daughters of Fallen Adam… Yet it must be resisted at all costs!
This is not an enlightenment, but the very opposite!
It is to Run from the light… into the Dark.
It is pure self Delusion!
It is not an act of bravery, but a cowardly retreat… a defeat from following the High road, and instead to take the Lower, easier path…. with all the rest who cant be bothered living as Human beings…. that is Moral Agents in a Moral reality…
They prefer to run off into the Jungle and live as beasts…
That is their self delusion…. their verdict on humanity.
Yet God is not mocked.
It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the Judgement.
“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
John 3:19
One of the chief reasons many Atheist’s react with Demon-like Tirades and Blasphemies against Theistic declarations of faith in God is because they simply wish to remain hidden in the darkness of their own self delusion. The last thing they need is Pesky Theists… spoiling their Buzz by Being told that one day they shall stand before God and give account for their sins!
This is the very truth they seek to hide from!
It summons the deepest hatred, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
What is truely sad about this is that they will be damned by their own choice.
God has done everything to save us sinners from Damnation if we will but simply trust in Christ and his work of Salvation on the cross.
“But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”
“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved”
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Chriat our Lord”
St Paul.
At tomorrow night’s meeting of the New Inklings, the paper for discussion is Derek Parfit’s classic Personal Identity, first published in The Philosophical Review in 1971.
Parfit uses many examples seemingly inspired by Star Trek and other science fiction, such as the teletransporter, to explore our intuitions about our identity. He is a reductionist, believing that since there is no adequate criterion of personal identity, people do not exist apart from their components. Parfit argues that reality can be fully described impersonally; there need not be a determinate answer to the question “Will I continue to exist?” We could know all the facts about a person’s continued existence and not be able to say whether the person has survived. He concludes that we are mistaken in assuming that personal identity is what matters; what matters is rather Relation R: psychological connectedness (namely, of memory and character) and continuity (overlapping chains of strong connectedness).
On Parfit’s account, individuals are nothing more than brains and bodies, but identity cannot be reduced to either. Parfit concedes that his theories rarely conflict with rival Reductionist theories in everyday life, and that the two are only brought to blows by the introduction of extraordinary examples. However, he defends the use of such examples because they seem to arouse genuine and strong feelings in many of us. Identity is not as determinate as we often suppose it is, but instead such determinacy arises mainly from the way we talk. People exist in the same way that nations or clubs exist.
A key Parfitian question is: given the choice of surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R) or dying but preserving R through the future existence of someone else, which would you choose?
Parfit described the loss of the conception of a separate self as liberating:
My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness… [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
Needless to say, I’m with Parfit on this one. His view is both liberating and … dare I say it, Christian.
(Or, at least, conducive to a Christian way of life.) (But with some startling implications for some Christian views of salvation.)
Here’s the Parfitian question again.
Given the choice of
(1) surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R), or
(2) dying but preserving R through the future existence of someone else,
which would you choose? (Hint: what matters is Relation R.)
Some people try and deny we have any freewill, or control over what we Believe or accept, yet I reject this.
I say that we are responsible for what we believe because we incrementally condition ourselves step by step, via our desire to know, or our desire to avoid knowing, and this grows into such an edifice that it can be a highplace from which the whole world can be Surveyed accurately… seeing it as it really is, or a self imposed ignorance can settle like a heavy fog completely blinding us from the truth.
This latter condition is all too common… the millions who have placed scales upon their own eyes so that the truth seems completely alien… completely ‘unreal’…. then they cry? How can I be blamed for not being able to believe?
They pretend they are the victims of circumstances… instead of being a victim of their own ignorant and foolish choices.
The same can be said of Hardness of heart.
As we go through life we all face times of horror and hurt, and one of the ways people seek to survive on this earth is to ‘harden up’… to stop themselves caring so much about things which they cant control, ..etc, yet this process is very dangerous… It is Dehumanizing, and we can build such ‘A Wall’ about ourselves that we become completely insensitive to the plight of humanity, and incapable of perceiving the real Moral issues and dilemma’s of life. And this hardness also blinds the individual to the need to seek Personal salvation, or to reform the world.
Yet again We are not victims of the world.
Our hard hearts are of our own creation, and we are morally responsible for our own lack of conscience and Narcissism.
We have freely created ourselves.
When you admit this to yourself you can then choose to awaken and walk with your eyes open and your heart restored.
This can be painful and taxing, yet it is the moral thing to do, as opposed to shirking morality and truth.
Dare You stand in the light of day?
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
Being forced to choose the lesser of two evils is never a pleasant experience for an Idealist.
Though done for the right reasons, there is still a sense of compromise with evil.
Yet when I consider certain Moral dilemmas, which at times God allows us mere mortals to face, I am forced to admit that sometimes I would tell a lie rather than tell the truth, esp to protect others from tyranny or other dire evils… Trusting in God’s understanding and Grace.
Up until today I had no literal scriptural vindication for this position, only a trust in God’s Goodness, and Grace.
Yet it is with gratitude to the face book page called ‘if libertarians are crazy, who wants to be sane?… that I can now say a very important scripture in Exodus (Ex1vs15-21) actually vindicates making such a choice, by describing a Historic event whereby some Midwives were forced to choose between obeying a Murderous decree from a tyrant…which they knew was a morally evil command/’Law’, or instead doing what they believed was right… and disobeying it, and covering their tracks with a lie.
15” And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:
16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.
17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.
18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?
19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.
20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.
21 And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.”
(Exodus 1vs15-21)
This portion of scripture is pregnant with Libertarian Ideals!
It is exactly the sort of vindication for my conviction that If I was a Christian Libertarian living in the Netherlands during the 1940’s Nazi occupation, that I would have been fulfilling my Christian duty by Disobeying the Official/ Legal obligation to turn in all the Jews, and instead to help hide them from the Demon Swastka… like many brave Christian Netherlanders actually did during the war… for example those who helped hide … Anne Frank and her Family.
I believe those Good souls were Christians because after the War her Father Otto,who survived the death camps, and though being a Jew, set up a charity to help poor European Christian’s with the money he received from his murdered Daughters dairy… the best selling ‘Diary of Anne Frank’.
Anne Frank.
There can be no doubt that the Exodus story of the Egyptian Midwives, and the story of those whom hid Anne Frank, are perfectly matched, and that God blesses those brave enough to resist evil tyrannies for the sake of doing what is right, and He is prepared to forgive such things as telling lies under these curcumstances.
This does not make these lies ‘Good’. It only makes them ‘better’/ lesser evils than betraying innocent people to murderers, and because the world does throw such moral dilemma’s at us, and we sometimes have little or no time to think of perfect solutions, that God pours out his grace and mercy upon us… exactly as I hoped and trusted he would do… before I became aware of the Libertarian principles in this scripture.
The Apostle Peter before the Sanhedrin.
I have always believed as Peter said when he disobeyed the Authorities command to cease preaching the Name of Jesus… that there is a limit to the obedience the Christian owes to any Human power, Law, or command.
Act’s 4…
13 “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.
14 And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.
15 But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves,
16 Saying, What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it.
17 But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.
18 And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.
19 But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.
20 For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.
21 So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for that which was done.”
And again in Act’s 5 vs 29
29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
There are plenty of verses throughout the Bible which demonstrate this principle, yet Peter did not tell any lie to the Authorities, and was prepared to suffer for his forthright profession.
And this is clearly a different moral circumstance to the one in Exodus or the one facing the Christians in the Netherlands… as these circumstances involved the safety others…
*Oppressed Jews* under Satanic Attack.
God actually promised Abraham that He would “Bless them which bless thee and curse them which curse thee” … the Jew having a special relationship with God.
And the situation of Anne Frank and her family relied on their helpers not being found out or arrested, so that they could continue to aid them, thus Subterfuge is essential.
In such circumstances I am glad to know that God is not an uncompromising Moral Tyrant, but will have mercy upon the Brave soul who makes such a difficult moral decision.
He is indeed Full of Grace, understanding, and mercy.
I would also think this sort of grace is applicable for the Stratagems of the Righteous Commander in the deception required in warfare to overcome the Armies of Evil…eg Operation Mince Meat.
Today has been a great day!
I love it when I learn New Libertarian insights are buried in the Scriptures!
We now have another arrow in our Bow to shoot at those followers of Satan who preach that the Christian cant be a Libertarian, and must slavishly obey all Government decrees no matter how wicked, or that in warfare he must disregard common sence and march straight into cannon fire without devising cunning ways to fool the enemies into error.
Tim Wikiriwhi
King James Bible Believer, Dispensationalist, Libertarian, Christian.
In this video from the 2012 Asia Consciousness Festival, AI researcher Ben Goertzel says
Imagine you had a collective of people, or they could be people and AIs, or some of them could be cyborgs (the people with brains jacked in to the computers), and imagine that they’re concerned with a number of things …
First, they’re concerned with measuring each other’s brain states and making scientific theories about what they observe …
Second, they observe more in the manner of a group of people meditating together, they’re actually subjectively perceiving each other’s consciousness while they’re doing this and so they can both measure each other’s states of consciousness empirically and neurally, or digitally if they’re AIs, and they can subjectively enter into collective mind states …
But there’s another ingredient, human beings have the annoying property that if you cut open our heads and mess with our brains we tend to die or become gibbering idiots or something but a computer program won’t necessarily have this feature and with molecular nanotechnology humans won’t necessarily have this feature either, so …
You can imagine this sort of ashram of consciousness scientists who are studying each other’s brains and minds and experiencing each other’s states of consciousness in a very refined way …
You can imagine this happening in a situation where the members of this community could actually alter and adjust each other’s brains experimentally and dynamically during the collective process…
Now, what you see here is the possibility of some form of collective understanding going beyond science as we have it now and going beyond religion as we have it now. Whether you can get this new form of understanding using humans as we exist now I’m not sure. It’s easy to envision with the AIs and cyborgs in the mix.
Artificial minds will be such that they can readily fuse into a single mind, or fissure into many separate minds. I suppose that in principle fission is easy, but that fusion is more problematic. An artificial mind may fissure into multiple separate minds, with the intent of fusing back into a single mind some time later, but the newly begotten minds, once split off, may have other ideas.
Here‘s what C. S. Lewis has to say about the super-personal God of the Trinity.
A good many people nowadays say, `I believe in a God, but not in a personal God.’ They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.
Again, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be ‘absorbed’ into God. But when they try to explain what they mean, they seem to be thinking of our being absorbed into God as one material thing is absorbed into another. They say it is like a drop of water slipping into the sea. But of course that is the end of the drop. If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist. It is only the Christians who have any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves—in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before.
… The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God. Wrong ideas about what that life is will make it harder. And now, for a few minutes, I must ask you to follow rather carefully.
You know that in space you can move in three ways – to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice :his. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two; you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube – a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.
Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways – in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings – just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal – something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already.
Is the mind of God like that of an AI? When, ultimately, we are “taken into the life of God,” do we become thee- or four-dimensional facets of the multi-dimensional being that is God? When God invaded his own creation, by sending his only begotten son to incarnate as a human being, was that a case of fission? I suggest that the person of Jesus was entirely separate from the person of his father when, on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
