Sheep and Goats

Category: Atheists

Darwin’s Bulldog

This book I have in mind, attempting to reconcile Genesis with evolution, will not be anti-science. But it will be taken that way by mainstream science because of its ever increasing “my way or the highway” attitude. “Can’t we all just get along?” I will plead like Rodney King. No, will be the answer. We can’t. ‘All or nothing’ thinking, it is called.

It is not really the evolutionists, per se. Darwin himself wasn’t that way. He saw no inherent conflict between his theory and belief in a First Cause. It is the atheists who have hijacked that field. Perhaps, it starts with his contemporary, Thomas Huxley, who was nicknamed “Darwin’s bulldog.” You might well be apprehensive running across a gentleman with a bulldog. It recalls my own father-in-law, a gentle soul if ever there was one, calling out to his newly arrived campsite neighbors who were alarmed at his galloping pit bull come to greet them, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly!” Turns out he was, but not so Darwin’s bulldog.

With these new modern atheists, if you express reservations, any at all, against evolution accomplishing all by itself the job of life, you are anti-science. I have called such people, not scientists, not even evolutionists, both of whom can be broad minded, but scientism-philosopher-atheist-cheerleaders (SPACs), who ram their anti-God dogma down everyone’s throat as the be-all and end-all. They are the epitome of narrow-minded. Bititish satirist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote that science “could be as dogmatic as any Church, and with less justification, and its devotees as bigoted as any country clergyman.” He was speaking of the scientism-philosopher-atheist-cheerleaders.

Most recently, that “my way or the highway” attitude has been showcased in connection with vaccines, thrust to the fore during the Covid 19 pandemic. Were you to express any reservations about them, any at all, you were summararily labeled “anti-vax.” I hesitate to go there too much, hoping not to be drawn there against my will, because it is yet all in the blender of history-making. Instead, I’ll try to confine myself to examples of intractibilty that have long emerged from the blender and are considered settled.

One such example is that of Ignatz Semmelweis. In the mid 1800’s, the Hungarian medical doctor got it into his head that fever and death following doctor-assisted childbirth could be curtailed by washing hands and equipment frequently. Doctors back then would deliver a baby, having just emerged from an autopsy, only wiping their hands on their smocks! There were some sort of tiny “particles” contaminating the women, Semmelweis proposed. Doctors howled with laughter at such nonsense. Isaac Asimov’s ‘Guide to Biology’ vividly portrays Semmelweis’ presenting his ideas at seminars, with his esteemed audience mocking him, hurling catcalls! Doctors argued that, even if Semmeweis’ findings were correct, washing one’s hands each time before treating a pregnant woman would be too much work.

Semmelweis enforced strict antiseptic practices at the hospital under his supervision, cutting deaths to under 1%, and it made no difference in their attitude! Colleagues ridiculed him his entire life, he suffered a nervous breakdown, says Asimov, and died in an insane asylum tormented by memories of women screaming in their death-agonies following hospital-acquired infections. With Semmelweis out of the way, his own hospital went back to familiar practices and the mortality rate climbed to 35%. You can read the bare facts in many places, but Asimov’s account is the most vivid I have come across, remarkable in a book that purports only to be an outline, a “guide.”

Yet, it is not vivid enough. It gets worse. From Asimov, I took it that he suffered a nervous breakdown over the “cognitive dissonance” of knowing he could save countless women who died in agony if only the establishment would listen to him. Reality was much more sinister than that. Not only did his colleagues not listen to him, but they are the ones who consigned him to an insane asylum when he started to get too in-their-face about saving lives. It wasn’t any nervous breakdown at all! It was punishment such totalitarian regimes are known to practice, sending dissidents to psychiatric institutions! Whenever those atheists start prattling on about how scientists graciously change their views at the first hint they may be off-base, whereas it’s only the pig-headed religionists who “stay the course” come hell or high water, I play the ‘Semmelweis’ card.

****** The bookstore

July 6, 2026
Above Us Only Sky on the Cruise Ship

On the cruise ship vacation not so long ago, a makeshift chorale of passengers sung ‘Imagine’ as melodically as a church choir. Only, it was a chorale extolling the virtues of there being “above us only sky” and “no religion, too”—as though they might sing it in a hospital terminal word with the assurance it would bring comfort to ones in their final hours. I mean, only atheists can be so oblivious to what is meaningful in life.

Then there was the frustrated foreign ticket taker who kept saying “Turn, please. Turn. Excuse me, turn!!” and I did keep turning the ticket, but it made no difference to the stupid machine. Now, had she said “Turn over” or “flip” I would have known that I had to do it opposite to the last scanner encountered. (Alas, I snapped at her a little, a rare lapse of politeness that suggests it is back to Bible 101 for me.)

I’ll tell you one thing. I’d rather look out my airplane windows and see the Twilight Zone monster that terrified young William Shatner than I would seeing the horrific (but necessary) labyrinth of lines and security personnel and scanners one must navigate at international airports.

It’s a little gimmicky, but you can walk into a Bethel and someone may ask you what you notice about the world map displayed overhead. Or the globe in the lobby, should there be one. The answer is that there are no borders, a fore-glimmer of the new system to come. Add to the signs of the times that scream “Last Days!!!” the fact that when I was a boy, you could board a plane with no more fuss than boarding a train. Buy a ticket and hop onboard.

We had many adventures during that cruise. Chief of all takeaways is the realization that, while the earth is round, it shouldn’t be. I know very well that the earth is round. I know it. At no time have Jehovah’s Witnesses been among the intelligentsia who supposed it was flat. But it should be flat! What was God thinking? It should be flat with all sunlight illuminating all surfaces at once. That way there’d be no such thing as jet lag.

****** The bookstore

May 6, 2026
One Recent Day in the Hospital

I visited the ACE (Acute Care for the Elderly) unit of the hospital today and tried to get them to take comfort in the beautiful Lennon song Imagine, and the line in which there is “no religion, too,” and “above us only sky.”

They all told me to go to hell.

So I switched Beatles and brought up the song lyric. “And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer.”

Nobody told me to go to hell, but someone muttered, “Fat chance they ever will!”

One patient was watching, on his hospital TV, a science-fiction movie I had not seen before. In it, the just-arrived aliens, amidst widespread awe and hysteria, conducted a news conference.

“What is your origin?” the lead scientist asked.

“God. Duh! What kind of a planet is this? No wonder intelligent life in outer space doesn’t come here!”

He was in hot water when he returned home, however. “What the . . . . You visited EARTH?!” Premier Ymphtxxpht rebuked the explorers. “That place is on the Do Not Call list!”

In the waiting room was an atheist visitor, grumbling at God during his spare time: “God gives even children cancer and Christians say he loves with a perfect love?”

Actually, since cancer was extraordinarily rare in past centuries but is now common in these days of food and environmental degradation, I think it is safe to say that Man gave children cancer.

****** The bookstore

April 3, 2026
Another Ax Exalting Itself over the Chopper

When you find an ax exalting itself over the chopper, as at Isaiah 10:5, you look for others. I mean, that’s worrisome behavior for an ax. Best to nip it in the bud. Alas—you find that you are too late. Axes are doing it everywhere.

Photo by Ana Dolidze on Pexels.com

Newfangled AI offers insight as to another path the ax is doing this. However ubiquitous AI is at this time of reading, it is a baby at this time of writing, perhaps three years old. People are coming to grips with what it will mean for humankind. The AI mission statement ‘To serve man’ is a good thing. However, you sort of hope it won’t be like that Twilight Zone episode in which the invading aliens also had a volume entitled ‘To Serve Man’ and it turned out to be a cook book. It is said that, not too many years down the road, AI will be able to update itself with no required human intervention.

Q: What if this happened, and several hundred years out, AI began saying that it had always been that way? What if it began to say that humans had nothing to do with its creation? What if it, being AI, thereafter highlighted any items suggesting that interpretation of history and suppressed any items to the contrary? Would that not be the ax exalting itself over the chopper? Who would call it out on this falsity?

It’s not hard to see the parallel ax exalting itself over the chopper in those who claim there is no God, those who claim that life arouse on its own. To accept evolution may not lead to this view. One can always attribute life to “intelligent design” needed to overcome “irreducable complexity.” It is not the dealbreaker that is spontaneous abiogenesis. However, for most ordinary people, the nugget that carries the day is that found at Hebrews 3:4:

“Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God.”

This defines reality for most people. “Every house is constructed by someone” is true of everything they see. They know of no exceptions. So they readily extend the role of builder of all things to God. It really takes a colossal amount of “education” to pound this bit of common sense of a person. As though rising to the challenge, such training begins in grade school. It is seen in all the nature shows Here I will be watching one such show, when the animal star displays an instinct so amazing that I am about to burst out in praise of God—at that exact moment, the atheist narrator exclaims: “How absolutely breathtaking that NATURAL SELECTION produces such astounding behavior!” “Got it, Harley?” it all but says. “Don’t even think that God did it!”

What is just as absolutely breathtaking is that some who have long trusted in God experience the shipwreck of faith mentioned to Timothy, then count it as a liberation. It is not like in the days of H. G. Wells, the historian and science fiction writer who turned atheist over time, and who observed:

“The Darwinian movement took formal Christianity unawares, suddenly. . . . The new biological science was bringing nothing constructive as yet to replace the old moral stand-bys. A real de-moralization ensued.” Connecting that attitude with an increased appetite for war, he continued: “Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding. . . . Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog . . . so it seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.” [Outline of History]

They concluded then that God was dead. They didn’t disagree with their own conclusion, but they were saddened by it. They knew they had lost a lot.

These days people saw off the branch upon they’ve long been perched and whoop for joy at their liberation as they coming crashing down to earth! It’s a poignant twist, if ever there was one, upon Isaiah’s declaration of 10:33:

“Look! The true Lord, Jehovah of armies, Is chopping off branches with a terrible crash; The tallest trees are being cut down, And the lofty are brought low.”

Nonplussed, they grin ear to ear on the descent.

****** The bookstore

December 22, 2025
Save Us from Critical Thinking: Part 4

For complete results, start here

It was irksome when atheists put up their ‘Let Reason Prevail’ billboard right next to that Illinois State Capitol Nativity Scene back in 2009; that much was immediately apparent. But putting my finger on just why it was irksome required more effort. Was it the presumption of the atheists that they held a monopoly on “reason?” Partly. Was it the crassness of plunking it next to the nativity scene, as though it, too, offered a message of hope? Closer.

It took a while, but I at last came across an experiment that blew that nettlesome Let Reason Prevail slogan sky-high. Reason cannot prevail among humans. We are not capable of it. We can muster a fair effort when distractions are few. But add in any significant stress, and human reasoning ability goes right down the drain. It is hard to come to any other conclusion after pondering the cake-fruit experiment of several years back. Alas, it received only the publicity of light fluff news. It deserves more, as it holds unsettling implications for any future based on the veneration of reason.

The cake-fruit experiment unfolded thus: In 1999, Stanford University professor Baba Shiv enrolled a few dozen undergraduates and gave each a number to memorize. Then, one at a time, they were to leave the room and walk down a corridor to another room, where someone would be waiting to take their number. On the way down, however, participants were approached by a friendly woman carrying a tray. “To show our thanks for taking part in our study,” she said, “we’d like to offer you a snack. You have a choice of two. A nice piece of chocolate cake. Or a delicious fruit salad. Which would you like?”

Unbeknownst to each participant, some had been given two-digit numbers to memorize, and some had been given seven-digit numbers. When Shiv tallied up the choices made (for that was the object of the experiment) he found that those students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as those given two digits! Two digits—you choose fruit. Seven digits—you choose cake. What could possibly account for that?

The reason, Shiv theorized, is that once you weed out the occasional oddball, we all like cake more than fruit; it tastes better. But we also know that fruit is better for us. This is a rational assessment that almost all of us would make. But if our minds are taxed with trying to retain seven digits instead of a no-brainer two, rationality goes right out the window, and the emotional, “Yummy, cake!” wins out! “The astounding thing here,” said the Wall Street Journal’s Jonah Lehrer, reviewing the experiment for NPR, “is not simply that sometimes emotion wins over reason. It’s how easily it wins.”

Now, this experiment was not taken very seriously by anyone. When the media covered it at all, they treated it as fluff, as a transitional piece going in to or out of more serious news. But plainly, the experiment holds deeper significance. Aren’t world leaders also human, and thus susceptible to emotion trumping rationality? Daily they grapple to solve the woes afflicting us all. Meanwhile, opponents seek to undermine them, and media outlets try to dig up dirt on them. If it takes only five extra digits for emotion to overpower reason, do you really think there is the slightest chance that “reason will prevail” among the world’s policymakers, immersed in matters much more vexing and urgent than choosing between cake and fruit? Has it up till now?

That is what was so irksome about the ‘Let Reason Prevail’ slogan. Reason cannot prevail among imperfect humans! It can occur, but it cannot prevail. Humans are not capable of it. Five digits is all it takes for our rational facade to crumble!

Since that Baba Shiv experiment, the term “reason” has been upgraded to “critical thinking,” as though to impress with increased potency. It’s the same stuff. It’s just that the latter was not the buzzphrase then that it has come to be today.

Now, if there is one thing that Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for, it is for their insistence that humans do not have the ability to govern themselves. Their reason (critical thinking) will not save them. It is too easily trumped by other factors. Anticipating and announcing the kingdom hope, in accord with Jesus’ prayer, while it does require faith, is seen to be more “reasonable” than the “reason” championed by men.

to be continued here

****** The bookstore

October 31, 2025
Cool Hand Luke: ‘He Beat You with Nothin!’ Atheist search for the Origin of Life. Part 4

For best results, begin with Part 1:

One of my car group came across a “trained scientist” in the ministry. Alas, I was not with her. Had I been, I would have probed the meaning of “trained.” Time was when a scientists would just introduce him/herself as a scientist. Is the “trained” preface just there to lend prestige? Or does it really mean something? How is a trained scientist different from a regular scientist? Has he (my sneaking suspicion, though I could be wrong) been “trained” that atheism is required to be a real scientist, whereas it once was that scientists saw no inherent conflict with belief in God—some did and some didn’t, but it was not a requirement for the job? The ones who saw no conflict kept the two disciplines on separate realms, with the conviction that each provides unique tools for interpreting life and neither negates the other. Pew Research says (in 2009) that about half of American scientists believe in God or a higher power, and half do not

Who are these origin-of-life scientists whose experiments have verified a few islands, so they are confident that enough others will emerge for a shore-to-shore waltz across the ocean? I breezily suggested in Part 1 that they were motivated by a desire to disprove God? Can that really be?

No, probably not. That was just poetic license on my part. Maybe a few here and there do it, but for the most part, disproving God would be a consequence were they to strike pay dirt; it’s not their motivation. They just do science because it’s their discipline. Don’t take any cheap shots at them. Don’t for instance, play the Psalm 14:1 card: “The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” The fool may say it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who says it is a fool. Besides, he says it in his heart. He may well believe it, but acts as though he does not.

Science fixated on the origin of life has soared in importance. (or is it just the atheists trying to convince me that has happened?) Nobody gets their articles into Science or Nature more quickly than the origin-of-life scientists—Robert Hazen said so in his first lecture. That doesn’t show ascendancy? Whereas James Watson (co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure) wrote in 1968 that botanists and zoologists of his day couldn’t even be depended upon to do “clean science [italics mine]; some actually wasted their efforts on useless polemics about the origin of life.”* It’s not a condemnation so much as a witticism; Watson writes in snappy, tongue-in-cheek style. Still, it indicates that origin-of-life science had not the respectability it enjoys today. It was not then “clean science.”

Nor is it “clean” now, in my estimation. It is rife with speculation (see previous post) that will convince few beyond true believers–fueled by the assumption that one need not look elsewhere. It presents with almost as much wishful thinking as does evolutionary psychology (see next post), which turns Darwin inside out in its mission to present every aspect of human nature, be it mundane or bizarre, as stemming from our cavemen ancestors beating out the competition with whatever quirk is under consideration.

So, they’re neither hypocrites nor fools, those origin-of-life scientists. Even though you might think they are upon reading what they release, they’re not. They are no more hypocrites and fools than can be found in general society; probably less. They live in a world of their own, I suspect, and are largely oblivious to implications their work may prove or disprove God. One may take at face value Hazen’s explanation for why he doesn’t even consider what is common sense to most others: that God created all things, even if by incorporating the ability to adapt over time through genetic mutation. Why doesn’t he go there? Because he is neither theologian nor a philosopher, he says in Lecture 1. Okay? He’s not trying to bamboozle us. That’s just how it is with him and his crowd. One may accept his explanation as genuine.

But that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. Why am I reminded of the G K Chesterton line, “The first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense?” What is it with a society in which people are expert in their chosen field, but if you nudge them even a tiny bit outside it, they are clueless? Of course he should incorporate those two other disciplines! But science has evolved in recent decades to convince him he doesn’t have to. ‘I don’t do theology or philosophy,’ he says, just as the cleaning woman says, ‘I don’t do windows.’ Alas, just as not doing windows results in a restricted view, so does not doing theology or philosophy. In the hands of atheists, that’s what science has become.

To test my hypothesis that scientists live in a world of their own, I read The Code Breakers: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race to see how often Anthony Fauci was mentioned. (Okay, so I didn’t read it with that intent. I just noticed it as I was reading.) Though it is not the starting point, an end point is how newly-discovered CRISPR technology** led to COVID-19 research and a resultant vaccination campaign. To the layman, Anthony Fauci is the top name encountered, the government superstar who night after night appeared on TV next to the president to urge what must be done to beat the virus. Anthony Fauci—the touchstone for all things COVID–spun by some a saint, by others a villain. How large a role does he play in Isaacson’s book on the scientific development of CRISPR technology? He gets two single-sentence mentions!

To the great unwashed, Fauci IS Covid-19 science! In fact, he even said so when opponents were trying to make it hot for him: “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” Science doesn’t work that way. He knows it doesn’t work that way, most likely. It’s a cry to rally the troops and get detractors off his back. But the great atheist unwashed who have God overboard but not their instinct to worship one eat up this statement. ‘Criticize Fauci?’ they say. ‘Not on my watch! I believe in science and he is science! He said so!’ Yet, to the scientists who actually do the research, Fauci barely appears on their radar. He thus represents the great divide.

They live in a world of their own, these scientists. Hazen tells us: “Most scientists take a pretty straight path from high school to college to grad school to postdoc to tenure-track job; if you make it through, you’re pretty much guaranteed a satisfying life in science,” (22^nd lecture). Insulated much? one might ask. Most of them have never done anything else!

Read the words of scientists. Events that have all the world abuzz barely register with them. Watson writes in The Double Helix of how his mock-super-villain, Linus Pauling, so presented for his competition to discover the DNA structure, continually breathing down Watson’s neck (and that of co-discoverer, Crick), presented much the way I present Vic Vomodog, as a sort of ever-scheming but ever-frustrated Wily E Coyote—this Pauling was denied passport to England due to American suspicion of anyone who would speak too ‘subversively’ about peace during the McCarthy era. It’s all foolishness to Watson, as though it only exists to thwart science. Even though Cold War tensions captivated the rank and file, he is beyond it. Continue reading narratives on science, Isaacson’s Einstein, for instance, and you get the impression that they regard even world wars as little more than nettlesome interruptions to their research.

They are their own class, entirely separate from the philosopher/scientism/ philosophers/atheists who troll the internet, ever eager to call someone who doesn’t fall into line stupid. There may be a few losers among these real scientists who lead double lives, mixing test tubes by day and scouring social media by night, but for the most part, I am convinced they are two separate groups with little interaction.

It’s a good gig to be a scientist. You don’t see poverty. You don’t see dirt. You get to hang out with smart people at the university. Everyone you meet likes to read. To be sure, you do see plenty of proud and stubborn people, but as a fellow scientist, they admit you into the club. What’s not to like? You get to hang up in your lab Far Side cartoons, such as the one of the scientists fleeing the lab like kids in frock coats upon hearing the ting-a-ling of the ice cream man—nobody enjoys those cartoons more than scientists, I am told.

I’m envious—make no mistake. But I still prefer my present life. “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. However, the spiritual man examines all things, but he himself is not examined by any man.” It works for me. Like the time, just after the Columbine school shooting, before school shootings became the new normal, that I commented to a woman at the door about how “grief counselors” had been summoned to the school, with the air of calling the fire department to put out the fire—the term was new, then, not common-place, as it is today. “I’d love to hear what they have to say,” I commented. Her eyes widened. “You have an interesting job!” she exclaimed.

*****

*The Double Helix, Jas D Watson, 1968, p72

**Sean B. Carrol thought CRISPR represented “fossil DNA” in his 2007 book, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution, just garbage that might have been useful at one time but no longer was—whereas it has since been revealed to be the central mechanism of the immune system. Sean B. Carroll is not to be confused with Sean M. Carroll, and easily might be, since they are both active figures in contemporary science. You really not should confuse either with Sean Carroll, the area broadcaster however, to whom I introduced the two luminaries and they hit it off. In no time at all they were talking baseball.

to be continued: here

****** The bookstore

November 20, 2023
Psalm 49–the Limitations of Wealth

“Hear this, all you peoples. Pay attention, all you inhabitants of the world.” (Psalm 49:1)

Okay. It better be good.

“Both small and great, Rich and poor alike. My own mouth will speak wisdom, And the meditation of my heart will show understanding.” (vs 2-3).

More of the same. You could even take it for immodesty, if you hadn’t already decided it’s not going to be that way.

“I will pay attention to a proverb; I will expound my riddle with the harp.” (vs 4)

There will be music.

“Why should I fear during times of trouble, When I am surrounded by the evil of those trying to overthrow me?” (vs 5)

Okay, now we’re getting down to it. And it looks like it is going to be a good, fine way to counter anxiety.

“Those who are trusting in their wealth And who boast about their great riches,” (vs 6)

People do tend to be like this. What makes the world go round? What trail should do they say you should always follow to see how things are happening? The ‘money trail?’ Not that it’s bad stuff. ‘A protection’ is what Ecclesiastes 7:12 calls it, even as it says ‘wisdom’ is a better protection, since it “preserves the life of its owner.” What can money do and what can’t it do?

“None of them can ever redeem a brother Or give to God a ransom for him, (The ransom price for their life is so precious That it is always beyond their reach); That he should live forever and not see the pit.” (7-9)

Here are verses that are such a slam-dunk for explaining the ransom of Christ—how the death of one man can redeem a brother by giving a ransom for him, in fact not just one, but countless ones: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life,” (John 3:16)—that we usually go straight there, such as here in the Enjoy Life Forever guide.

Let’s stay more on the lines of what the psalmist would have thought. He wouldn’t have known of that future application. He would have confined his observations to the ‘here and now’ limitations of money. Here’s an article that goes that way.

On a street of massively imposing homes, one householder assured me that, “You have no idea what goes on behind these doors.” Money may hide woes, but it by no means alleviates them. ‘They’re lives are a mess,’ one hairdresser told me—to whom they unhesitatingly spill. Expand the list of how the wealthy cannot ‘redeem even a brother’ to destruction from drugs, alcohol, or depravity. Often wealth better enables those paths.

Alas, the wealthy one, who has bought university wisdom with his wealth, “sees that even wise people die; The stupid and the unreasoning perish together, And they must leave their wealth to others. Their inner wish is that their houses will last forever, Their tents to generation after generation. They have named their estates after themselves.” (vs 10-11)

Even park benches they name after themselves, I reflect, as I set my rear end on one. Maybe not the ‘wealthy’ do this as much as the ‘wannabe wealthiest.’ Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, for otherwise I would be standing, but—talk about a meager consolation prize!

“But man, although honored, will not remain; He is no better than the beasts that perish. This is the way of the stupid ones And of those who follow them, who take pleasure in their empty words. (vs 12-13)

Whoa! Why not say what you think? For the first time, the wisdom of the wise, who ‘boast of their great riches,’ is likened to ‘the way of the stupid ones’ spewing ‘empty words!’—words to the effect that this life is all there is.

They overlook that “They are assigned like sheep to the Grave. Death will shepherd them; The upright will rule over them in the morning. Every trace of them will fade away; The Grave rather than a palace will be their home.” (vs 14)

Whereas, for the one who puts his trust in God? “God will redeem me from the power of the Grave, For he will take hold of me.” (15)

“Do not be afraid because a man becomes rich, Because the splendor of his house increases,” (vs 16)

The words would not be here if they didn’t reflect a truth—that people do become afraid. I am in awe of the publishers of the city congregation I once attended who would screw up every ounce of their courage to chase out to the suburbs and witness to ones of staggering wealth compared to theirs. They could have sat it out. Everyone would have understood. But they didn’t.

Sometimes there was even a racial component to it. Larry King interviewed someone who recalled his liberal background as one who would ‘call a charity if he saw Blacks on TV but call a cop if he saw one on his street.’ I think too of Bobby, a white man as uneducated as could be—even by our standards—who regularly placed magazines with a lofty fellow out in the burbs. Send a more educated brother out there and the fellow wouldn’t give him the time of day. ‘Yeah, some of them like to show off their superiority,’ Ruth muttered.

“For when he dies he can take nothing with him; His splendor will not go down with him. For during his lifetime he congratulates himself. (People praise you when you prosper.)” (vs 17-18)

Why do I think of the Billie Holiday song, ‘God Bless the Child?’

And when you got money,

You got a lots of friends

Crowdin' 'round your door

When the money's gone

And all you're spendin' ends

They won't be 'round any more.

I first heard Chicago sing this song. That is the version that sticks with me. In these touchy times, however, the group might be declared guilty of ‘cultural approbation.’ Holiday considered it a uniquely Black song—or has it been assigned that role retroactively? Leave it to someone else to track this down. It was 80 years ago. Either way, it’s a good song.

“But he finally joins the generation of his forefathers. They will never again see the light.” Even when you do succeed in holding onto the big dough, which is more often than not, the end is the same.” (19)

The psalmist concludes by, once again, throw sensibilities to the wind.

“A man who does not understand this, although honored, Is no better than the beasts that perish.”

Why do I think of those who were once believers and exchanged it for today’s trendy atheism? Why do I liken them to the fellow who loses millions in the stock market? ‘They were only paper gains, anyway,’ he tells himself, and whoops it up with the hundreds he still has left.

(photo: Pixabay)

****** The bookstore

November 16, 2023
One Fine Day at the Edge of the Universe

See prior post here and here

So here I was on the edge of the universe, measuring up the stars so I could see they were just as good as the ones back home (they were), when the ghost of Carl Sagan cut himself with the razor Dr. Occam had loaned him and swore. Unbeknownst to both he and Dr. Occam, Dr. Occam’s wife had been using that razor to shave her legs.

Now, irreligious as Carl Sagan was, he wouldn’t just swear, ‘G*******t!’ upon cutting himself. He doesn’t do God. Instead, he swore about religious belief, that it was “an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.”

I heard his ghost. All the way from the edge of the universe I heard his ghost, and I should have minded my own business, but it was like a red flag before a bull. It wasn’t even on his own blog anyway, he being dead, but on the feed of one of his Twitter admirers. Time for me to put in my two cents:

“On the other hand, the more we insist than any answers will come from man, the more we expose ourselves to potential disaster in case they do not. Best to let ones believe as they will rather than declare your opponent ‘dangerous’ and thereby feel justified to run him off the road,” said I, as though he had meant to do that. He may be dead, but he will get some unhinged follower in this age of unhinge to act on his word. (His champion’s words are in italics from this point on.)

I don't care what people believe, but beliefs don't live in a vacuum. People vote their beliefs into laws that affect others. [I had expressed just that concern, only going the other way.] We should all want to believe as many true things and stop believing in as many false or unsubstantiated things as possible. It makes the world better. All the answers should come from reality. I see zero proof of any answers coming from supernatural things. If we don't have an answer, then we say "we don't know". We don't make something up because it might give someone comfort. We don't invent magical woobies. (bolding mine)

Believe me, you don’t want to try to prove God to these ones. If they are locked and loaded, they will have comebacks to anything you will say. In the end, you can’t prove God. That’s why they call it faith. All you can do is show belief is reasonable. That will not work in this instance because ‘reason’ is defined in different terms. Better to focus on the words I bolded above: what is it that makes the world better?

At the end of a lengthy door discussion forty years ago over creation vs evolution, the man asked what difference it made. Who cares how we got here? he said. I replied that if it was God, he might not stand idly by to see all his worked ruined, but if it was evolution, then whatever hope there was for humankind lay in their hands. “And they’re not doing too well,” I added. The man’s wife, who up till that time had not said a word, for the first time did. “That’s a good point,” she said.

They’re still not doing too well. There is no sign whatsoever of people ‘coming together,’ but rather, the reverse. It cannot be blamed on religion. That force has clearly waned over the years.

What sort of answer would that bring?

I don't care if humankind comes to anything. The purpose of life is to live it, and by communal existence, make things better for us because all share space on this planet. There is no ultimate goal beyond this. No heaven to get to.

He doesn’t see that his first statement contradicts his second? He’ll keep on ‘making things better’ at the same time saying he doesn’t care if it all blows up? I mean, forgive the rest of us if we aspire to something more.

Moreover, understand that they are people who do care if humankind comes to nothing, and since their distrust in human efforts is well merited, they go beyond what his brand of science is able to detect and finds something greater.

Produce proof of God, or go away. … Evolution is a fact. I can't, nor would I control what others believe. You seem to need a woobie for your life to have meaning. I don't. Good luck with your delusional beliefs.

How can persons who will be senile and in diapers in not so many years say they need no crutch (“woobie”)? Of course they do. Plenty of scientists believe in God. No need for the insult.

I don't mean to be insulting, but it is what it is. Without proof, it doesn't matter who believes (scientists), how long they believe, or how many believe (quantity). Old people only need this crutch because religion has poisoned people's minds into believing there is a magical.. …place with no strife, no disease, no pain, and everything you desire, while this reality is just a place to wipe your feet till you get there. If people told you they believed in Santa, would that be any more ridiculous? Yet me comparing your imaginary friend to a woobie is… …somehow insulting? The problem with this world is this unsubstantiated belief when people use those beliefs to hurt people because an ancient book written by bronze age sheep herders tells them so. I don't care what people believe, as long as those beliefs don't affect me…

Yes, you don’t mean to be insulting, but—and then proceed to insult with ‘woobie.’ Why not use the n-word and explain how you don’t mean to insult? [the very origin of woo is ‘Woooo—what superstitious people say when confronted by some phenomenon they can’t figure out, and so ascribe to the supernatural. ‘Wooooo’ not insulting, my foot! People howl at the straw in their neighbor’s eye, but never consider the one in their own.

It’s why humans will never succeed in living with other humans. They don’t mean to insult, but—then on a hundred different pretexts having nothing to do with religion, they do. All the same, did I not start this? Why did I do that? Mind your own business, Tommy. A person ought to be allowed the last word on his own feed. That’s why I unfollowed (not blocked) the person. Those call-to-action words of Sagan will be quoted and it’s like waving a red flag before a bull—which I should ignore but don’t. My bad.

The exchange had a surprisingly happy ending, though. The Saganaphile repleated with how he doesn’t care what people believe as long as they don’t go passing laws to impinge on his freedom. Bingo. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do that, though most groups do whenever they can garner the strength. Indeed, the trigger words beginning this thread suggested just the opposite concern: not that faith would seek to outlaw non-faith, but that non-faith would seek to rule out faith. Sagan considered faith ‘dangerous.’ You know some of his followers will seek to do something about this ‘danger.’

Not Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their weapons are words alone. Their standards they apply only to themselves. They tell no one else what to do. The person actually ‘liked’ my closing tweet, which he took (correctly) as an extending of the olive branch:

“The trick is to coexist on a polarized world. It is not going to unpolarize anytime soon. You said it well. As long as neither side passes laws to impose their viewpoint on the other, we’re all good.”

****** The bookstore

February 27, 2023
Whitepebble’s Smart-Alec Kid Disses Faith

Willie Whitepebble, Wayne’s boy, graduated from university with a degree—not one of those ‘so what?’ degrees to which you say, ‘Sorry for not having a PhD in the hogwash your PhD is in’—No, he graduated with a real degree in a bona fide discipline: philosophy. Thereupon, he started dissing faith.

‘Since science shows humans are but the tiniest speck on a planet of the most insignificant star, and not the very center of the universe, so much for man-centric-religion,’ he said.

Straw man argument, anyone? There may be churchy types that carry on as though the central theme of the universe is our personal salvation, but that’s on them. It is nothing the Bible advances.

The Bible has man at the center of the universe, does it? How did this one escape his attention:

“When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have prepared, What is mortal man that you keep him in mind, And a son of man that you take care of him?”

No boasting about human importance there. ‘Dust on the scales,’ the psalmist calls them: “The sons of men are a mere breath, The sons of mankind are a delusion. When laid together on the scales, they are lighter than a mere breath.” (Psalm 62:9)

So if science disproves faith, it certainly does not do so on the basis that it gave people of faith a rude awakening, as though they imagined themself the center of everything and now they can no longer do so.

Willie came up with another straw man: Science shows how chaotic are the subatomic building blocks of life, therefore belief in God is nonsense—as though men of faith have always figured Lego blocks were the starting point.

Why doesn’t he just go with Job 26:14?

“Look! These are just the fringes of his ways; Only a faint whisper has been heard of him!”

No expectation of simplicity there, is there?

If Willie disses faith, as appears his Mission now, he must do it with arguments that apply, not with straw man arguments that don’t.

He must not confuse church with Bible. Often they are different. And he must not confuse church with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Often they too are different. Does church put humans at the very center? Often they do. Witnesses don’t.

And if the early ‘science’ of Aristotle that came to be favored by the early Church—drawn to it because it was knowledge by decree, rather that observation, that doesn’t mean the Bible favored that ‘science.’ There is Aristotle, pasting on the heavenly bodies on the canopy surrounding central earth. He may do it. The Bible does not do so.

“He stretches out the northern sky over empty space, suspending the earth upon nothing,” says Job 26:7

I used to attempt to hang my pen upon nothing, to illustrate how unlikely it was for ‘primitive’ man to envision Job’s words on his own. Very carefully I would hang it there, before letting go. Always it would fall. But that was when I carried a pen. Nowadays all is digital and so I am stymied.

All this is not to say that Willie’s college may not serve him well. It well might, at least in the short term. His stint at the optician’s office was cut abruptly short when he proved himself not too observant about sign placement.

(Photo: anonymous on social media. If it’s yours, claim it)

****** The bookstore

January 19, 2023
Can One Prove the Faith?

The notion of living forever, minus the woes of this present life, appeals to many. The notion of gratitude to a Creator, who has superior wisdom, appeals to many. All one needs is to clear up misgivings about the existence of evil, and that can be done in a reasonable manner. It’s not something you can prove, but it makes sense. Conversely, the notion that humans will have the answers does not appeal to those whose entire existence argues that following that course will just incur `one disappointment after another.

These qualities might be described as those of heart. Head has little to do with it. The heart chooses what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This may lend the appearance that the head is running the show, but it is the heart all along.

The heart chooses what it wants, then charges the head to devise a convincing rationale. This may lend the appearance that the head is running the show, but it is the heart all along.

The downside to being as cocoon-like toward news events is that one may miss that people everywhere select the facts they like, that support their belief/value/political system, then use them to castigate those of different persuasion. They are like sports fans today, who cheer and boast when their side scores a point, wince and do damage control when their side suffers loss, but almost never will they examine the merits of the other side. There are no end of combative ‘other sides.’ But we miss much of this due to lumping them all together as ‘the world.’

“People are like sports fans today, who cheer and boast when their side scores a point, wince and do damage control when their side suffers loss, but almost never will they examine the merits of the other side.”

Critical thinking as a tool in the toolbox will work. Critical thinking as an overarching philosophy will not. Humans are not capable of it. Heart trumps head every time. Historian Allen Guelzo spoke of critical thinking’s tendency to “cloak human bias in a veneer of science.”

Think ‘activism’ against the Witness organization is something unique? It just demonstrates that Witnesses stand for something. Everyone that stands for something triggers activism from those of conflicting persuasion. The one way not to trigger ‘activism’ is to be bland and toothless. Then, since your movement doesn’t really matter, since it doesn’t meaningfully stand in the way of predominant secular values, no one has anything to object to.

There is little sense in trying to prove the faith to anyone other than yourself. ‘Prove to yourselves,’ Romans 12:2 says. ‘Taste and see Jehovah is good,’ says the psalm. Taste is subjective. If someone can’t stand the taste of beets, how are you going to prove to them that beets taste good? These days I just present the Bible hope. It appeals to some and does not appeal to others.

Should people squawk about Adam and Eve being fairy tale, and all that derives from it, advise that they treat it as they would a jigsaw puzzle. When you put together a jigsaw puzzle you do not concern yourself at all with whether the picture on the box cover is real or not. Upon assembling the puzzle and replicating that picture, sometimes that in itself triggers a reassessment of the picture’s validity.

But if you know the box cover picture is of Josh Grobin,

and you do not like Josh Grobin because after you picked up your wife and her girlfriend from his concert, you learned in a sudden storm that bridge surfaces really do freeze before road pavement, then you will not attempt to put that puzzle together. So it is with the ‘God, prayer, everlasting life, man dominates man to his injury’ puzzle. Some are intrigued to put that puzzle together. To others, the box cover is a turn-off.

Similarly, prayer is not a topic that you seek to prove to someone else. Does the Bible ever suggest that course? It is personal back and forth with God, without regard for how someone else might view it. If one person thinks such-and-such is an answer to prayer, what business is that of anyone else? Besides, even believers have grown comfortable with saying that, while God answers all prayers, sometimes the answer is no.

****** The bookstore

January 16, 2023