Tuesday, December 25, 2007
---Merry Christmas!
6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,Maybe I'm expecting too much. I should know better by now, having read a fair amount of history. Every government devised by man has been based on some proportion of hanging, flogging, and the willing suspension of disbelief.
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
When I get mad and write or say mean things because my government determines to spend my money to find the most efficient way to mash the words on its founding documents to lay aside its vital promise to stay out of the people's religious business, I am getting distracted from the things that really matter. When I get angry that the government wastes resources and makes decisions that have no basis in any form of sense or the civil welfare, I'm wasting the energy that I should be using to state positive truths.
This is the positive truth, the basis of our hope, the if we hear God's Word, and what His Son said and did, and make the decision that these are the treasure of a lifetime, to be cherished for eternity, to be trusted above everything else in Heaven or on Earth, He will forgive what we have done wrong and send His Spirit to live in us and guide us and teach us His Way. Faith, Hope, and Love are the basis of a Government that will never fail or end. Everything else is a temporary inconvenience.
Oh, and Merry Christmas.
Labels: Bible and Related Commentary
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Sunday, October 14, 2007
---On Science
1 Corinthians 2---Can't make this stuff up....
14The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
My Way News - Techies Ponder Computers Smarter Than Us
I really thought the idea of a "technological singularitly" was just a science fiction thing. My only prior contact with "Singularitarianism" was a recurring gag from the webcomic "Dresden Codak". (The protagonist explicates at length about the “technological singularity”, and the “post-singularity” world, and one of the secondary characters says, “Sounds awfully religious coming from an atheist”. )
But, of course, it couldn’t be that easy. It turns out that the whole “Technological Singularity” thing is a subject of actual debate in the scienterrific community. The “Singularity” is described as a point in human development when our machines get smarter than we are, and the augmented species---or its successor---becomes capable of indefinite “self improvement”.
One of the conference participants in the AP story says that "His greatest fear...is that a brilliant inventor creates a self-improving but amoral artificial intelligence that turns hostile." (He’s right, of course. It would be better—relatively speaking---for any number of rogue states to get nuclear weapons than for anyone on the planet to acquire such a monstrous technology. )
So, are science and technology precursors of our destruction, or the salvation of human-kind enslaved in the darkness of mysticism? (Okay, not a very good rendition of a "steampunk" soliloquy, but I'm not really trying very hard. )
There have been any number of efforts at imagining scientific or humanistic "religions", including Asimov's "Foundation" and Card's "Speakers for the Dead". The computer game “Civilization 4” optimistically renders all the trappings of religion---such as temples and priests----obsolete with the initial advent of the “scientific method”. Less optimistic speculations about the technological “tipping point” include the “Terminator” movies and the various animated “Ghost in the Shell” series (which are so incomprehensible---especially in the English translations---that they are usually at least half explication).
Then there’s the relevant entry from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy---“The Universe”:
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened. [Preface, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” ISBN: 0345418921]All humor aside, the Guide is beginning to seem prophetic. Just look at this stuff! Eeek! Quantum entanglement! Yike! Properties that only exist when you measure them! Ulp! Superstrings! Extra Dimensions! Infinite parallel universes, where infinite yous and mes (okay, I’m also not a physicist, or a grammarian) branch into different realities every time wes (!) make a choice! Glurfle! Oh, forget it.....
Study the Universe intently enough, and it has sprung into bizarre existence from a geometric point, for which we daren’t try to assign a purpose lest we be ostracized for getting “all religious”. Keep staring, and it isn’t just flying apart from a primordial explosion, it’s accelerating away from its origin point faster and faster because of “a whole bunch of stuff we can’t see”!
Huh? Cosmological Constant?! We’re studying this in the first place because our Universe “just happens” to have a CC that promotes the development of biological molecules, complex lifeforms, and finally sentient life? Don’t, however, think to suggest that the Universe was “designed” to produce life, or people will get uncomfortable. Silly “Intelligent Design”-ers!
As long as we contemplate notions about complex, self-aware beings springing into existence (Oh, I forgot about “Boltzmann Brains”, but never mind.) as a consequence of a pseudo-mystical convergence of statistical properties that would make a shaman or a Cargo Cultist roll on the floor laughing at our gullibility, or as long as we jump under a desk or quote obscure Hindu scriptures whenever anyone asks “why?”, we will be wasting time we are going to need to answer The Greatest Question in Science:
Is this stuff for real, or is someone making fun of us?
It wouldn’t be the first time that sentient beings who came to depend on their own capacity for understanding came out looking foolish. This is because the things we have been intensely inspecting and investing in and wasting our lives on are fantasy, while the things of God are reality.
Labels: Bible and Related Commentary, News Commentary
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
---The Religion Market
Exodus16
13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.
31 The people of Israel called the bread manna. [d] It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.
35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.
d. Exodus 16:31 Manna means What is it? ([NIV text note] see verse 15).
Numbers 21
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, [a] to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!"
John 6
30So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" 32Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the True Bread from Heaven. 33For the Bread of God is He who comes down from Heaven and gives Life to the world."
[Capitals and emphases added to the NIV text.]Earlier this year, the History Channel aired an episode of their "Ancient Discoveries" series, entitled "Machines Of The Gods" [The episode summary itself is no longer linked for some reason]. This was pretty provocative stuff. A major conclusion of the presentation is that key foundations of modern engineering, such as the work of Heron in Alexandria in the 1st Century A.D. in pneumatics, hydraulics, and-- amazingly---in the precursors of programmable automata, were sponsored by the religious priesthood of the city for use as "magic tricks" to inspire awe and belief---and contributions---from visitors to their temples.
This is, of course, one of the most fundamental requirements of religion, necessary to prehistoric shamans, Egyptian and Babylonian priests, doubtless unnumbered forms of Eastern and Middle-Eastern religious practice, and the past and present Pontifices Maximae (?) at Rome:
If you want to keep the rubes coming back, you have to bring in a new freak every now and then to freshen up the act.Thus too, the endless modern processions of blood-weeping and milk-drinking statues, images on screen doors and cavern walls, self-flagellations, and so on and on and on.
It seems that Christianity would be at a severe disadvantage in such a “market”. After all:
Hebrews 13And:
8Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Psalm 33The manna was given to Israel day after day for forty years. It never apparently came in flavors, or got a new texture, nor was repackaged in any way, and before long they came to “detest this miserable food” God provided for them. Likewise, the “True Bread from Heaven” will never change, and the requirements of the eternal life it gives will never change with the “times”, fashions, or the collective attention span of the world around us. Real Christianity is just plain boring....
11 ... the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
...unless, like the apostle Peter, you realize:
John 6This faith isn’t part of the “religion marketplace”. It is the eternal, unchanging purpose of God to provide permanent Spiritual sustenance for the soul, joy, and peace, through the ministry of Jesus Christ. The longer you’ve been starved by “showmanship”, and “miracles”, or even by receiving nothing at all, the sooner and more desperately you need to receive this food.
68..."Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Labels: Bible and Related Commentary
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
---Why?!
Revelation 12Everybody already knows the answer. Hatred, exclusion, isolation, slights, insults, injuries, injustices---real or imagined---reprisal, revenge, violence, poverty, genocide....and that monster lurks outside, growing more desperate by the hour, waiting for the right moment, a weak place to enter, exactly the right person, place, and moment to bring Hell to Earth.
12...But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.
I don't even have to check the news to see what goes on in other peoples' minds, just drive down the street. Humans weren't built to move a mile-a-minute, and the first thing we give up when we're trying to cope is our pretense to civilization.
All these things haunt the edges of my consciousness, too, and possibly worse---ideas that might make all of this look like it works until it's too late to escape. But I know these things won't defeat me, nor any of those other evils see the light of day, because God Promised:
John 16As evil as current events have become, they are likely to get far worse, as the imminent end of evil's time drives it to greater outrages, more psychotic destruction, more perversion of law and justice and truth in its desperate, mindless last frantic attempt to avoid a defeat that was completed before any of us were born.
33I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
There is a Way off the road to Hell, an end to evil and a pathway to real justice, the complete Truth, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and peace beyond mere human comprehension.
Romans 8But the "time is short".
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Labels: Bible and Related Commentary, News Commentary
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Friday, April 06, 2007
---The New Passover
Luke 22There is that word again, πληρόω “complete, fullfill”, this time in the passive subjunctive---through Him, the Passover is to “be completed”. In the Passover, God intended to “paint us a picture” of a purpose so vitally important that He ordained a yearly commemoration of it that persists to this day. Now Jesus completes the picture for us, and ordains a commemoration of the Passover of the New Covenant:
14When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15And he said to them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God."
Luke 22As the Passover commemorates God’s deliverance through Moses of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, so the “Lord’s Supper”, as we usually call it, commemorates God’s greatest deliverance through Jesus Christ of all of His children from slavery to sin and death.
19And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." 20In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Our Church's celebration of the Holy Week again this year included a demonstration by Jewish members of our congregation of some of the elements of the traditional Seder observance, to remind us of this connection between the Old and the New.
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