Sheep and Goats

Author: tomsheepandgoats

  • Alan Greenspan Dies at 100–Mentioned in Tom Irregardless and Me

    No ax to grind here. It is no small feat to live to 100 years of age. He was a wit in his day, looked up to by all, until it all crashed. The debacle he presided over made an apt addition to chapter of ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ which I wrote in 2016:

    “An observer might well suppose that the entire purpose of the [2007] meltdown was to chastise Alan Greenspan. As head of the Federal Reserve for 19 years prior to the 2007 economic collapse, did he not, per Ricky Ricardo, have a lot of ‘splainin to do? He attempted it before Congress:

    “‘We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. You, importantly, represent those on whose behalf economic policy is made, those who are feeling the brunt of the crisis in their workplaces and homes. I hope to address their concerns today.’

    “This is the same Alan Greenspan whose voice to the financial community was once as that of God. As chairman of the Reserve, he’d issue statements regularly about interest rate policy. He’d make the statements incomprehensible; it was almost a game. He’d rehearse them in his head. If they could be understood, he’d rework them. Finance people would strain to discern his real intent, but of course, the task was impossible by design. Far from becoming fed up with such obscuration, they took it all for brilliance! Whereas any street person would instantly recognize a con, the bankers hailed it all as wisdom from on high.

    “Mr. Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, left to clean up the mess, was more straightforward in his speech. Mr. Greenspan himself became that way addressing Congress. He dropped the smart-alecky double talk. His words were clear. And not pretty:

    “‘Given the financial damage to date, I cannot see how we can avoid a significant rise in layoffs and unemployment. Fearful American households are attempting to adjust, as best they can, to a rapid contraction in credit availability, threats to retirement funds, and increased job insecurity. All of this implies a marked retrenchment of consumer spending as households try to divert an increasing part of their incomes to replenish depleted assets, not only in 401Ks but in the value of their homes as well.’

    “No more smug cuteness, building indecipherable word castles. For, alas,

    “‘those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself particularly) are in a state of shocked disbelief.’

    “Mr. Greenspan went on to discuss what had triggered the collapse:

    “‘In recent decades, a vast risk management and pricing system has evolved, combining the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts supported by major advances in computer and communications technology. A Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of the pricing model that underpins much of the advance in derivatives markets. This modern risk management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year because the data inputted into the risk management models generally covered only the past two decades, a period of euphoria.’

    “Note the absolute failure of the best and the brightest, the cream of the crop of human experts. A Nobel Prize was even awarded for the economic model that would ruin everybody!

    “Not everybody, Tom,” Mr. Strawman observed. “My portfolio recovered. I held on.” True enough: When Bob Pittance saw his net worth chopped in half, he panicked and sold all his holdings, saying that half is better than nothing. When Billy Banks saw his net worth chopped in half, he said: “Well, I guess if I have to, I can live on a half billion,” and snapped up Bob’s fire sale stocks. (and boasted about it afterward!) With wealth transfer complete, it was ‘pedal to the metal!’

    “Mr. Greenspan’s final statement is breathtaking for its admission of stupidity: Nobody thought to test the model outside of party time,“a period of euphoria.” Nobody thought the real world might differ from the party world. Isn’t there some scripture somewhere about how you can’t trust nobles as far as you can spit?

    “As with the opioids that killed Prince, there is a fatal flaw. It is a flaw that would instantly be spotted by any commoner were the scoundrels not so deliberately intent upon muddying the waters for reasons of greed. The opioid company wanted a grand slam with their new drug. The finance people wanted to party on with other people’s money. They should have had Bible education, but they had only the world’s university education.

    “Does this again not validate how Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t bow and scrape over today’s higher education? They use the world’s education system to acquire the skills necessary to make a living. But as for acquiring wisdom from that source, they’re not keen on it. Within their congregations, they defer to training that addresses the more important moral concerns. For them, that goal is achieved in the context of Bible education.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • ‘The God of Truth Always Fulfills His Purpose’-Part 3

    If the Holy Writings are in the language of poetry, [see Part 2] not the precise critical thinking language demanded by science, why is that? Possibly because poetry reaches a broader spectrum than does science. Jesus reduces the Mosaic law to two commandments, the first of which is “you must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind and with your whole strength.”* (Mark 12:30) The language of science may fully occupy the mind, but it leaves larges swaths of heart, soul, and strength untouched. The ones who so cultivate the mind need to do the same with heart, soul, and strength. But to do so, they need learn a language that many see no point in learning. Call it what Dobzhansky does: the language of poetry. Or call it the language of “spiritual words” by which we explain “spiritual matters.” (1 Corinthians 2:13) Not that the two languages are the same, necessarily, but they dovetail. Moreover, both languages hide many secrets from those who refuse to learn them. It is as the apostle goes on to explain in the next verse: “But a physical man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually.”

    Dobzhansky’s not making that mistake of ignoring needed languages. He knows that often scientific theories are originated in languages that, if you want to capture every nuance of them, be it German, Russian, Chinese, whatever, you make yourself fluent in those languages. He doesn’t just say, “if they can’t explain it in my language, it’s not worth knowing.” No. He explores that new language that so aptly expresses a concept his own language fumbles.

    Scott Solomon, in his Great Courses Lecture Series ‘What Darwin Didn’t Know’ (Don’t worry; it’s not his fault he didn’t know, he just lived too early), who presumably doesn’t speak the new language—if he does, he gives no indication of it—tells of why he’s so enthralled with evolution: “What I think is most exciting about evolution is the why. other sciences, genetics Physiology chemistry, you name it, they give you a how, but what makes Darwin’s ideas and the ideas from the modern science of evolution so exciting is they help us understand why. Why our bodies the way they are? Why are there so many insects?”

    These are not the ‘why’ questions that those who become Jehovah’s Witnesses once tossed and turned over, why questions that even begin with a big what—what is the purpose of life? These are not the questions that did it for Dobzhansky, either, though he explored them. They’re not nothing, but they are definitely not the “more important” things involving God that he highlights in his ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution Essay.’ For the less material person, the ‘whys’ that count might include, ‘Why is there injustice, evil, and suffering?’ ‘Why, when almost everyone says they want peace, is strife such a constant feature?’ ‘Why do we die, when there are trees that live thousands of years and even a tortoise outlives us?’ It could be a symptom that I have been in the faith too long, but any epiphany to the effect that the present life is all there is and that it’s permanent curtains in just a few decades strikes me as Belshazzar pumping his fist ‘Yes!!!’ upon reading the handwriting on the wall that says his goose is cooked.

    Now, it might occur to someone that if “the man of God” ought be “fully competent, [and] completely equipped for every good work,” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) surely that competence will include mastering the “poetic symbols” of the Holy Scriptures. It will not depend upon mastering the precision expressions of those who eat and drink science. He does well to take a stab at those too, probably, for there are a lot of such people around and he wants to relate to them. But it is not essential that he do so.

    In fact, if Christ left us “a model for you to follow his steps closely,” (1 Peter 2:21) surely that model will include learning to speak as he did. His communication tread upon the toes of the precise-minded. He routinely broke their rules. He would answer questions with questions. He did odhominem attacks—if not of individuals, certainly of classes such as Pharisees and scribes. He spun complex parables that he declined to explain—to his disciples he would, but not to his detractors. Let the heart figure it out.

    Go precise if you can but upon perceiving the difficulty lies in challengers refusing to step outside of their narrow language, where they must step out so as to grasp certain points—well, there’s not much to be done about that. Play the game by their rules and you find that their first rule is you can’t move any of your pieces.

    ******  The bookstore

  • ‘The God of Truth Always Fulfills His Purpose’-Part 2

    See: Part 1:

    The article appeals to those who like simplicity, who instinctively know that things reduce to simplicity. The common farmer knows it. The common factory worker knows it. But Einstein also knew it, with his E=mc2. Newton knew it, with his f=ma. Kepler knew it, with his laws on the planetary orbits. Smack dab in the middle of his scientific treatise, he burst out in praise of God, as though one of the psalmists:

    “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity.”

    Even Theodosius Dobzhansky knew it, the fellow who corralled all American education onboard with evolution. His essay for American Biology Teacher (March 1973) titled, ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution’ set the permanent course for those teachers to follow—no ifs, ands, or buts. Yet even in that essay, important though he thought his topic was, it plays second fiddle to one he considers more important. The lesser dominates the greater, of course, since the five page essay is dedicated to the lesser. But that does not change what he considers the greater.

    The problem is that people mistake the Bible (and the Koran—Dobzhansky opens his essay by considering the objections of a sheikh) for primers of natural science. Are they? No. The idea is “ludicrous,” he asserts. (This is not too far from what Watchtower sources have long stated: that the Bible is not a scientific textbook; only that it is accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science.*)

    Instead, those Holy Scriptures “treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God.” Okay? The “meaning of man and his relations to God” is not less important than the considerations of evolution. It is “more important.” Though education since has blown away this aspect of Dobzhansky’s essay, as though a sign of his “irrationality,” it should not be so blown away. Irrationality is on the number line, plain for anyone to see. The hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of 1 is √2, an irrational number. Pi (π) is an irrational number. The Golden ratio (φ) is an irrational number. Irrational numbers are by far the most numerous of real numbers. The underpinnings of science depends upon them. You miss a lot if you blow them off as nothing.

    That is why Dobzhansky states in his essay: “It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives,” before declaring, “I am a creationalist and an evolutionist.” He is not being “irrational” in saying this. He is being real. “Evolution is God’s, or Natures’s method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way,” he afterward states. And again, it is not too different from the Watchtower acknowledging years ago that the creative days of Genesis can be viewed as “epochs,” with the earth and heavens themselves established “eons” ago.

    An important qualification from Dohzhansky follows on the nature of the Holy Scriptures: “They are wrote in poetic symbols that were understandable to people of the age when they were written, as well as to peoples of all other ages.” The first phrase of the sentence is obvious. The second is as necessary, but more subtle; the poetic symbols are also understandable “to peoples of all other ages” (such as ours).

    In stating this, he is assuming people will not make themselves obtuse. He is assuming that people will not ban irrational numbers from the real number line, thus undercutting the science on which they claim to depend. He is assuming that people will not say, “since it is poetry, it is valueless.” Rather, they must incorporate such poetry into their lives if they are to be complete. You shouldn’t have to be a microbiologist to know and serve God—just as you shouldn’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car. It is a specialized field in which not everyone need go.

    Thus, we are in position to tackle the asterisk following the Watchtower statement regarding the Scriptures being accurate should touch upon science, though that be not their specialty. The Holy Writings” are in language “poetic.” Alas, some become so demanding of precision in their language as to be impervious to poetry. Ideally, when they read the exhortation to not “beat around the bush,” they do not go demanding evidence of the bush. When they read the expression “crocodile tears,” they do not conclude that the one so emitting them is a crocodile. But they do take the biblical “pillars of the earth” as literal, “four corners of the earth,” and the “days” of creation. In their own way they are just as dense as religionists who take as literal texts that, if seen in any other context, they would instantly dismiss as figures of speech. Most support for the trinity and hellfire teaching is of this nature. Indeed, most church doctrines are not taught in the Bible. It is the effort to read them in that causes people to abandon the book in frustration, for some, in disgust.

    ******  The bookstore

  • ‘The God of Truth Always Fulfills His Purpose’-Part 1

    The Watchtower Study for June 14 (2026), ‘The God of truth Always Fulfills his Purpose,’ was everything in a nutshell, a good overview of God’s purpose towards the earth. That aspect of living forever on a paradise earth resonates with some. It is a major drawing that few others have. We are to believe that God put humans on an earth tailor-made for them because he wanted them somewhere else? No. For all but a handful, earth is the intended home.

    It is the truth in a nutshell. It doesn’t just happen. In the absence of loyal men to keep one focused, there are too many rabbit holes to veer into. The brotherhood that is JW is refreshed weekly by this regimen. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t muddy the waters. Don’t get consumed with trivia. There may be tees to cross, i’s to dot, and stray items to be uncovered. But the gist of it is simple and should not be obfuscated.

    There is the simple statement (paragraph 3) that God is the Maker of the heavens and the earth and the Source of all life, backed with a few supporting scriptures. Also, that he is the Sustainer of life—yes, capitalized in the article. It is not like when my wife set up a bird house but it blew down in the storm and as she was setting it up again the mama wren was perched a few feet away chewing her out for not doing it right in the first place: “Chip chip chip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip pip!!!!!” No. Unless the human wrens foul their own nest, God’s home for them endures. Alas, they do fowl the nest, in ever-increasing ways, enough for the Bureau of Atomic Scientists to set the Doomsday Clock, not at 10:30 AM, but at 85 seconds to midnight.

    Be that as it may, paragraph 4 relates what God had in mind putting humans on earth. It’s simple. “Jehovah created humans because he wanted to share the beautiful gift of life with them.” That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate it. Then there is the added proviso that “he gave us free will,” and the reiteration of “He created a beautiful home just for us.”

    The free will was abused early on. “Adam and Eve rebelled” is how it is stated, imposing upon themselves “the sentence of death,” throwing a significant wrench into the works. Not to worry. “Jehovah did not create the earth ‘simply for nothing, but formed it to be inhabited.’”—Isaiah is cited. (Para 5) Though “it might have seemed as if God’s purpose were being derailed . . . Jehovah is the Fulfiller of all that he promises”—again Isaiah is cited. That sentence of death is not immediate; it is just a curtailment of the non-ending life they would otherwise have enjoyed. Children are produced (who will also die, having inherited that defect.) In time, God “provided His only-begotten Son as a ransom to save Adam’s descendants and to give them the marvelous hope of living forever”​— and of course, the well-know John 3:16 is cited.

    Then follows a disclosure of the one who caused the problems to begin with, his own ambitions thwarted, and his ultimate outcome: From Revelation: “Down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth.” (12:9) It may be trendy to call those “brainwashed” who stay the Christian course today, but the reality is just the opposite. The Devil misleads, not the Congregation, but “the entire inhabited earth.” It is “the entire inhabited earth” that is victimized, as monitoring news media will suggest to any one of common sense. The ones most virulently attacked will, quite consistently and a few verses on, be those who “observe the commandments of God and have the work of bearing witness concerning Jesus.” (vs 17) Indeed, they are attacked. If they so much as scratch their rear ends, it’s all over the internet.

    Then there was “By preaching the “good news of the Kingdom,” we obey Jesus’ command and, at the same time, fulfill prophecy. (Matt. 24:14; 28:18-20) It’s simple. One need not know everything as to how it all turns out. Take part in the ministry and you know you’re not spitting into the wind because you have a few million spiritual brothers and sisters saying exactly the same thing. If you don’t reach a given person, they will, with the same message. It’s not just everyone giving their own personal testimonies, as though everything was about us.

    Meaningful work to do. Not unduly worried that we don’t know everything. Nobody has to. Most thought the system would have already ended, yet every day is more crazy than the day before. If your wife sails past her due date, that doesn’t mean she’s not pregnant.

    We live in a world where people aspire to be whistleblowers. It is almost a sacred quest, to be a whistleblower and dig up dirt on someone else. Nobody deserves to have the dirt dug up on him more than the Serpent, so in that sense Jehovah’s Witnesses are the greatest whistleblowers of all. When you lead off your presentation observing that ‘the world’s crazy,’ nobody (n the Western world) challenges you on that point. Indeed the intention of the entire article was “This discussion will help us to be bold and fearless Witnesses of Jehovah.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Tartarus: The Fourth Instance of Hell

    Tartarus: The Fourth Instance of Hell

    Sometimes when discussing hell, I open with: “With a single exception, all instances of ‘hell stem from only one of three original language words. Find the meaning of those words, and you’ve found the meaning of hell.”

    Tartarus is the single exception. It occurs just once in Scripture, which is why it is the single exception. For the sake of simplification, one can temporarily shelve it. But so as to be complete, here it is as one of the four words translated “hell”:

    “Certainly God did not refrain from punishing the angels who sinned, but threw them into Tartarus, putting them in chains of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment.” (2 Peter 2:4)

    Some equate it to “prison.” That it should be escalated to “hell” by most translations is purely a matter of interpretation. Better to play it safe, as the NWT does, and just use the actual ‘Tartarus’ word, so as not to insert what is really just interpretation as though it were actual Bible teaching.

    The NWT is not the only translation to recognize this pitfall. Others do it too, though they are in the minority. For example, the NTFE (New Testament for Everyone), which I picked from Biblegateway, reads: “God didn’t spare the angels who sinned, you see, but he threw them into the pit, into dark caverns, handing them over to be guarded until the time of judgment.” It works. One must not assert hell when it’s not there.

    Certainly one must not assert it with terms such as the ‘Lake of Fire’ from Revelation. That passage has never been translated as hell. However, the idea is invariably used to support a fiery hell. It makes no sense. Logically, the Devil would have a summer cottage on the Lake of Fire. We are to believe that fire would trouble him? No.

    Sheol and Hades both mean the Grave, widely recognized today. Whereas older Bible translations would frequently translate these words as hell, newer translations rarely do. When they do, one should not only discount it, but perhaps look askance at the entire translation. The word means Grave, not what they are trying to escalate it too.

    This leaves only Gehenna. It was an actual place, a valley outside of Jerusalem, once the site of child sacrifice. “In later years, Gehenna continued to be an unclean place used for burning trash from the city of Jerusalem” says GotQuestions.org. It “became a place where corpses of criminals, dead animals, and all manners of refuse were thrown to be destroyed.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Gehenna.html)

    That’s all it was: a garbage dump with a sordid past. Nothing more. Just because fires were kept burning there and “the maggot did not die”—there were always plenty of them—does not mean that what was thrown into that place did not die. It would have been dead already. The bodies of ones thought so despicable that they didn’t even merit a resurrection were tossed there. They weren’t buried with respect in tombs. In short, there is nothing about Gehenna to suggest everlasting torment. Closer to the point is final destruction from which there is no return.

    In recent months, I’ve come to think of AI as my research assistant. It sifts through a lot of stuff in a short time. Also in recent months, congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been considering Isaiah, and now Jeremiah, next Ezekiel and so forth, in their weekly Bible studies. AI will direct me to commentaries, sources like David Guzik, who in turn quotes Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) a lot, and some of these sources are very very good, with sublime powers of expression. Not to worry; this is not “cheating” from the JW point of view. The JW app itself will feature an option on all Bible verses to link directly to the internet, usually to Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias.

    Good as these sources are, they are all contaminated by a preexisting ‘eternal torment in hell’ dogma completely unsupported by the underlying original-language words discussed above. Thus, good as they are, many Witnesses will prefer to stay “in-house” where you don’t have to sift through the chaff.

    Why is it there, when the underlying words don’t support it? Even the afore-mentioned GotQuestions asserts that Jesus used Gehenna “as a symbolic depiction of hell: a place of eternal torment and constant uncleanness, where the fires never ceased burning and the worms never stopped crawling.” He didn’t. He used it only as a symbol for what it actually was, a place that destroyed permanently whatever what heaved in there, stretching the word only to include the notion that, if it was people, they must not be deserving of a resurrection if their consigned there.” Jesus could make that judgment. We can’t.

    Got it that also that while Isaac Asimov was a brilliant science fiction writer, his atheist views will be repugnant to those taking their cue from the Bible. Yet, when reviewing the notion of hell, he nailed it. Hell, he said, was the “drooling dream of a sadist, crudely affixed to an all-merciful God.” It is as plain as day to anyone approaching the topic without blinders. What first draws our eye is that is is the “drooling dream of a sadist.” However, equally important is that it is “crudely affixed.” It doesn’t fit. It’s enough to make anyone turn atheist. Not that they all do it for this reason, but it sure is a powerful shove in that direction. They are looking for things that make sense, not for things that are “crudely affixed” and make none.

    Where does it come from? It is an import from Greek philosophy. “The western notion of the soul was a philosophical invention defended by Plato that got integrated into Christian theology by the likes of Augustine [who] studied Plato and liked what he said about the soul and so incorporated it into his Christian theology,” says David Kyle Johnson in his 36-part Great Courses lecture series, The Big Questions of Philosophy. It’s not original! It is “affixed.” Moreover, it is sort of a bolloxed job. Johnson continues: “In fact, belief in the resurrection of the body doesn’t make any sense if you believe in souls. At best it is superfluous. There is no need for a resurrection of the body if the soul survives into the afterlife without it.” Not only is it “affixed,” it is “crudely affixed,” as Asimov said, whose star is rising for this reason alone.

    One can only envision as to how people inclined to be cruel would be attracted to this doctrine. It would even give them license for further cruelty, and the history of the church abounds with cruelty. After all, if you think your enemies are going to a burning hell, there can hardly be an objection to giving them a little foretaste of it now. Perhaps you can dissuade them from carrying on as you don’t like, and if not, well, they’d better get used to the heat.

    It doesn’t help that the master of Matthew 18, provoked to wrath at a slave’s ingratitude (he had forgiven the fellow a million dollars, only to find him beating a fellow slave over the $20 owed him) handed him over to the “jailers.” (18:34) Older translations render that word “tormentors,” for that’s what jailers did back then, especially the ones charged with debt repayment. In some convoluted way that makes no sense, this passage too is taken to support hell, since the Devil is also one who torments those who run up a “debt” of sin. But you can write off anyone who so insists. You know that if they read of “crocodile tears,” they will take it as proof that the one shedding them was a crocodile.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Establishing a Beachhead

    Establishing a Beachhead

    Established a beachhead in enemy territory, they did, like the Allied troops landing in Normandy. It may expand. A younger generation has come along, more savvy with social media. I was surprised to see it.

    On the other hand, it was clearly presented as a trial program. They’re prepared to withdraw if need be.

    Not sure how it will turn out. Will it be as I wrote about the website, then relatively new when I covered it in ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’?

    “Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.”

    The Witness website is today one of the most robust sites in existence.

    “Things will get interesting right about now.” Social media is that raucous place akin to the synagogue of Acts 19:9 where opposers began “speaking injuriously about The Way before the crowd” to such an extent that Paul “withdrew from them and separated the disciples from them.”

    Maybe the greatest takeaway for me personally is that I now assume the tacit go-ahead to keep on keeping on. Alas, long ago “I fell in love with a roller derby queen.” At times it takes me “round and round.” At times she is the “meanest hunk of woman that anybody’s ever seen.” She consumes substantial time. But when a certain Bethel brother spoke of a state of “war,” I told myself that the first thing you do in war is reconnaissance on the enemy. Few will do it. Even in a literal war, not many do reconnaissance. There’s no encouragement to start. But there is a recognition that some are doing so anyway, drawn by the circumstance that 30% of (U.S.) adults today report they spend “all” their time on the internet, and some are using social media for purposes of reaching them.

    There is plenty of opposition, to be sure. But that has always been the case. When Paul reached Rome, he asked at the synagogue whether anyone had been talking trash about him. “They said to him: ‘We have not received letters about you from Judea, nor have any of the brothers who came from there reported or spoken anything bad about you. But we think it proper to hear from you what your thoughts are, for truly as regards this sect, we know that it is spoken against everywhere.’” (Acts 28:21-22)

    Exactly as today.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Macro and Micro-Evolution: From Where do the Terms Arise?

    The terms “microevolution” and “macroevolution” were coined by an evolutionist. They were not coined by a creationist in an attempt to “divide and conquer.” It was an evolutionist who first suggested that you can’t take the abundant evidence supporting micro and assume that it proves macro. The chasm is too wide. The variation it must account for is too great. In short, macroevolution is not fully reducible to microevolution. The two are qualitatively distinct to some degree.

    Russian geneticist Yuri A. Filipchenko (1882–1930) first proposed the terms microevolution and macroevolution, for the above reasons. He was the mentor of Theodosius Dobzhansky who would go on to produce for American Biology Teacher an essay entitled “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” The intent was to get all those teachers on the same page. Make sure none of them go teaching creation. ‘If you teach biology without evolution, it’s like teaching chemistry without the periodic table’ is the parallel he draws.

    Dobzhansky makes no reference to macro and micro as his mentor did; he rams the two together as do most evolutionists today. But, for my money, it is like ramming similar poles of a magnet together. You reach a point where you’re just kidding yourself if you think you’ve done it. They repel. What proves one does not suffice to prove the other. There is abundant evidence of evolution cited Dobzhansky’s essay, but the specifics are all for micro. It is but educated speculation to apply it to the epochs of macro. It will apply to a degree, but to what degree is the question. It’s not likely “all the way,” as modern evolutionists are apt to say, confusing tonnage with substance.

    It will be like when my wife prefaces a question with, “Honey, do you love me?” “To a degree,” I hedge, for I am awaiting to hear what Herculean task she has in mind for me. I think evolutionists should do the same. ‘To a degree,’ they should answer, and then view the JW-authored series, ‘Was it Designed?’ and ask themselves, ‘Just what Herculean mental construction am I being asked to swallow? Am I willing to go that far? I mean, sometimes when my wife surveys the heaviest pieces of furniture in the house and wants me to move them just for the sake of doing so, I tell her no.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Substituting God for Aliens

    Twice aliens have intervened in human affairs, according to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Once they did it to jump-start evolution, to implant the notion in a certain famished apeman that he could weild an animal bone as a club to wallop the daylights out of a competing clan. Put to that use, the struggle to survive leapfrogged countless generations of natural selection in an instant. You might think strict evolutionists would cry foul to a meddling outside race putting its finger on the scales to overcome a hurdle and thereby deprive natural selection of the opportunity. But aliens tend also to be very popular with this bunch. So far as I know, none of them ever raised a peep of protest.

    Presently the head apeman had taught all his fellows to do the same—they just watched hm swinging that bone and did it themselves. Within seconds—the movie compressed it into that short a time—they had won over the water hole and food source from the other clan that hadn’t yet figured it out. Exhilarated with victory, he hurls that thigh-bone skyward. Up and up it ascends, then—(setting change)—it falls as an orbiting spacecraft. Millions of year compressed into a split second! That tiny nudge, though cheating, was all humans needed to evolve to the point of sending craft to the moon! There, they would find another nudge from those same aliens in the form of a beacon, which would send them off to a stargate just outside of Jupiter.

    Question: What if you substituted God for that early alien intervention? Would the same crowd so enthused at the first 1 x 9 x 16 dimensioned obelysk (squares of the first three integers!) upgrading that apeman be equally enthused? Of course, it wouldn’t be God nudging him on to beat up on his fellows. It would be God setting apart a certain one of them, implanting whatever he must to make that one separate and special, planting him with mate in a garden-like surrounding and a commission to spread it earth wide?

    Farfetched? Absolutely. Evidence for it? None. But those drawbacks equally apply to aliens, and they are all the rage today. Nobody calls you stupid if you suggest there must be aliens out there. They are more likely to call you stupid if you suggest there are not.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Critical Thinking Will Not Save Us

    What is today known as “critical thinking” is a product of the mindset that adheres to the Darwinian model. Adherents to that model all but have a patent on the phrase. Misunderstanding this, modifying the term to fit their own ends, even those taking their cues from the Bible will speak of how they, too, employ “critical thinking,” as though they are not to be outdone by skeptics using the phrase. But it is in vain. Critical thinking, by definition, totally denies miracles. The Bible records many of them. They are to be appreciated through what Paul calls “the eyes of faith.”

    “Critical thinking” is not a mere modern manifestation of the “reasonableness” or “soundness of mind” that the Bible recommends for all Christians. It is the skeptic’s means of discarding faith. It is the skeptic’s way of saying those eyes of faith have cataracts in need of removal. I never use the term, though I understand how some Christians might. It becomes like the conniving doctor from The Fugitive advising detectives that they will never catch Richard Kimble because “he’s too smart.” Whereupon, one of those detectives says, “Well—we’re smart, too,” and a cacophony breaks out with his fellows declaring how smart they are. So it is with the skeptics. You don’t want to accede to them a monopoly on smarts. We’re smart, too, even if we don’t accept all of their premises.”

    (From: A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen)

    Elsewhere in the book, there is a section discussing the difficulties in recording history, which is not objective but very subjective. The book adds that, “Historian Allan Guelzo is dubious about the saving value of critical thinking, due to its effect of “cloaking human foible beneath a veneer of science.”

    But I may bang away at this too much, to the point where some all but blow a gasket. It’s just that vast swaths of the world has replaced “All You Need is Love” with “all you need is critical thinking,” and notion that CT is the secret potion that will solve all is so absurd that I just can’t restrain myself. To clarify, I’m not against it if kept in its place. It’s fine insofar as it goes. But it is not capable of going the distance. It is the repairman who shows up for the job with a toolbox stuffed with wrenches when a screwdriver is needed. Worse yet, he is unsure that screwdrivers really exist. Yes, he has heard anecdotally of such things, but how can he be sure they really are valid?

    I should have inserted “in effect” to make it, critical thinking effectively denies miracles, not that it outright does. As Luke Timothy Johnson put it in a lecture regarding the historical-critical method of examining scripture:

    “the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent or the supernatural. Therefore, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead and so forth. Well, fair enough, the historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint . . . very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is the historian can’t talk about these things, therefore they are not real.” 

    So the method embracing critical thinking is okay so long as someone does not suppose their critical thinking is the be-all and the end-all, that it’s fine as far as it goes but it doesn’t go everywhere. But if they DO think critical thinking is the be-all and end-all, then the statement of the book is true as-is: ‘critical thinking denies miracles.’

    …It only becomes a problem when people begin to suppose anything other than critical thinking is not thinking at all. Alas, during these days of exalting science, many people DO suppose that. Elsewhere in that lecture, Johnson likens that historical critical method to a Trojan horse. It is eagerly accepted by schools of theology, for who wants to disdain history? and who wants to be thought uncritical? But once wheeled inside, it releases the troops of faith’s destruction.

    …..I think there are many ways of evaluating information. Who can say the process through which one triumphs over the other in a given situation. There is a character in a certain John LeCarre novel who “believed that facts were the only kind of information and he despised whoever was not ruled by them.” I never want to be that character and I think to restrict oneself to any one way of analyzing information assures that one will be. To that character, “human nature was one vast unsavory quagmire.” At the very least, that statement verifies what I have found in life, that critical thinking is not the optimal tool for comprehending human nature.

    ******  The bookstore

  • How’s it Going with “the Wicked” These Days?

    How’s it Going with “the Wicked” these days?

    There are plenty of passages to show that ‘the wicked’ (the Bible’s terminology, not mine) do just fine these days, so that one must serve God through love for his ways, not through thinking it will set one up pretty in the short term. For example, Job’s complaint:

    Why do the wicked live on, Grow old, and become wealthy? Their children are always in their presence, And they get to see their descendants. Their houses are secure, they are free from fear, And God does not punish them with his rod. Their bulls breed without failure; Their cows give birth and do not miscarry. Their boys run outside just like a flock, And their children skip about.  They sing accompanied by tambourine and harp And rejoice at the sound of the flute. They spend their days in contentment And go down peacefully to the Grave [at least they do not escape THAT bit of inconvenience\].  But they say to the true God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by being acquainted with him? (21:7-15)

    Or Psalm 73, where the carefree ways of those ignoring God almost made the writer stumble:

    As for me, my feet had almost strayed; My steps had nearly slipped. For I became envious of the arrogant When I would see the peace of the wicked. For they have no pain in their death; Their bodies are healthy. They are not troubled like other humans, Nor do they suffer like other men.  Therefore, haughtiness is their necklace; Violence clothes them as a garment. Their prosperity makes their eyes bulge; They have exceeded the imaginations of the heart. They scoff and say evil things. They arrogantly threaten oppression. They speak as if they were as high as heaven, And their tongues swagger about in the earth. So his people turn aside to them, And they drink from their abundant water. They say: “How does God know? Does the Most High really have knowledge?” Yes, these are the wicked, who always have it easy. They keep increasing their wealth.  Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence.  And I was troubled all day long;   (73:2-14)

    Sharing in the ministry helps, I think, for that is where you can showcase what you have to offer. It builds your own faith as you see how people respond. Here in the Bible are answers to the deep questions of life. Some thirst for such answers. Others do not. A statement in the 1968 book ‘The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life’ reads just as true to today as it did then: True, there has been progress in a materialistic way. But is it really progress when men send rockets to the moon, and yet cannot live together in peace on earth?” Some people think it is. Witnesses look for people who don’t. There is even a difference between those who “sigh and groan” over all the “detestable things” and those who bitch and complain because the politicians they don’t like presently have the upper hand. 

    I highly recommend an offer to read a scripture and see if the person has any interest in discussing it. Some will. Often, I start out with an observation that ‘the world is crazy [which nobody disputes in my part of it] and we are people who think the Bible helps: why is it crazy, what hope for the future, how to live in the meantime. I want to read you a scripture, you tell me what you think, and I am gone.’ This way they know immediately the two things Westerners must know: What does this visitor want? and How long will this take?

    Many years ago my wife and I, for our anniversary, attended a high-class cultural function in which everyone was dressed to the nines—impeccably. During intermission, as they were all sipping wine and mixed drinks, I said to her: “Here’s people we don’t hang out with too often: the wicked!” drawing on the phraseology of Psalm 73. I know, I know, completely unfair. No doubt most of them were nice. My wife, who did not yet savor all my sense of humor, looked at me oddly.

    ******  The bookstore