Walking around on Resurrection ground
October 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Elysium Laundromats 
When you live alone
It all comes together
At the Laundromat.
Money-grubbing washers,
Flippant dryers,
Crossword puzzlers and
The carnival ride centrifuges waiting for my quarters.
The envoy of filth makes a “final” appearance,
Only to be immersed in the clean waters of
Anabaptism.
O, fountain of youth,
You left me alone and
Benched,
Among the churning kilns.
© Cindy Wity, 2015, All Rights Reserved
September 25, 2015 Leave a comment
The Moral Mixups of an Angry Atheist
“The “New Atheism” movement was launched as a direct consequence of the attacks of September 11, 2001.”
This is the opening statement of the Prologue from Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir D. Aczel, PH.D.
According to Dr. Aczel, religion and the acts of militancy creating the carnage of the 9-11 attacks are the raison d’etre for the New Atheists and for their haranguing believers in a God:
“New Atheism is combative, aggressive, and belligerent against people of belief. Its proponents hold that religion is evil, and they state this belief loudly and clearly. Whether they are scientists or not, the new atheists frequently employ science as their tool.”
If you have listened to talks or read the books by the New Atheists Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, among others, you might come away with the conclusion that science had disproved a need for God.
Restating Dr. Aczel in a familiar art format, the New Atheists have created a collage of “supporting” scientism. First they used bits and pieces of biology and evolution that were familiar to them. Then, they pasted on clippings of quantum mechanics theories. And now they are using a splatter technique, throwing infinite unknown universes with their infinite probabilities at the canvas to finish their collage.
All together I would call this hodgepodge work of Pop Art “The Atheist Delusion”.
The New Atheist’s debate diatribes, their dysfunctional use of science, their avoidance of archeological findings and their animus towards believers in a God are addressed by Dr. Aczel in his book.
From the Introduction, we read of Dr. Aczel’s authenticated cri de coeur:
“The past few years have seen the rapid growth of the idea that God and Science cannot possibly coexist….The purpose of this book is to defend the integrity of science.” (emphsis added)
Dr. Aczel knows first-hand the New Atheist’s agenda via debating with them:
“And these New Atheists—Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett”—are bound together under a powerful common purpose, and continually reinforce each other. The problem with the science in the books and lectures of the New Atheists is that it is not pure science—the objective pursuit of knowledge about the universe.” Rather, it is “science” with a purpose” [I call it “scientism,” as do others]: the purpose of disproving the existence of God.” (emphasis added)
~~~
Something to think about:
What do the ancient Greek “atomist” philosophers (circa 460-270 BC) like Epicurus and Democritus and the On Origin of the Species author Charles Darwin and the New Atheists have in common?
There are at least three issues that frame the writings and dialog of each subset:
1-All of them had the notion that no Supreme Being would exist that would allow judgment and eternal punishment. For example…
Charles Darwin: “I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as divine revelation”; “The plain language of the [biblical] text seems to show that men who do not believe and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” -Chapter Eight, “Triumph and the Reversal of Natural Selection”, Darwin: Portrait of a Genius by Paul Johnson
The New Atheists, speaking as gods, posit that no Supreme Being would ever judge mankind or let evil enter our world. (They are OK, though, with an Epicurean “free will” attenuated by evolution and Social Darwinism and with ignoring murderous dictators, genocide, eugenics, abortion, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc.-all the “damnable” by-products of atheism and Social Darwinism.)
2-All of them used unscientific analogs and personal anecdotes (feelings) to create their “empirical” disavowal and disapproval of God’s existence. There are too many references to list all of them here.
From Paul Johnson’s biography:
“The trouble with [Darwin’s] Descent [of Man] really starts in chapter 5, “On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilized Times.” It is a mass of generalizations.”
According to historian Paul Johnson, Charles Darwin made statements in The Descent of Man and elsewhere that would be considered highly racist, chauvinistic and speculative today.
“Like Dawkins, Hitchens also uses anecdotes from his own life to illustrate the overwhelming viciousness he sees in all religions:” (Dr. Aczel goes on to quote Hitch’s church memories.)
Feelings and sentimentality do not a scientist make.
The New Atheists, from railing on and on about the Crusades and Catholic Priest child abuse to denigrating Mother Teresa to childhood church memories, hope to poison the well of Living Water that a Samaritan women would drink from.
3- None of the above studied anthropology, metaphysics, archeology and mathematics. Instead, they read the tabloids. They wanted to know what people thought about them. Darwin held off publishing On Origin of the Species due to his concern over public opinion.
For your consideration:
Dr. Aczel states that atheism began with the “Atomist” philosophers. This is not so. Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon. The Epicureans mentioned above believed in Roman and Greek deities, to be sure, but they felt that those deities where busy off somewhere else and were always angry with mankind anyway. So, they chose to ignore those gods.
One final note about the book:
Dr. Aczel, as his book clearly reinforces, reasons scientifically that there is a God-in the “broadest possible sense.” But, Dr. Aczel makes no claim saying that God is a personal God or, say, as Francis Schaeffer, founder of L’Abri said in his writings and lectures that, “God is Infinite-Personal”. Dr. Aczel’s book, one could say, is purely academic…and scientifically supports Theism.
Amir D. Aczel holds graduate degrees in mathematics. He is also the author of Fermat’s Last Theorem. In Why Science Does Not Disprove God he notes a significant array of distinguished scientists interviewed in the process of writing his book. And, here are the chapter titles to pique your interest:
Prologue: The Birth of the New Atheism
1-The Coevolution of Very Early Science and Religion
2-Why Archaeology Does not Disprove the Bible
3-The Revolt of Science
4-The Triumphs of Science in the Nineteenth Century
5-Einstein, God, and the Big Bang
6-God and the Quantum
7-The “Universe from Nothing” Deception
8-And on the Eighth Day, God Created the Multiverse
9-Mathematics, Probability, and God
10-Catastrophes, Chaos, and the Limits of Human Knowledge
11-Between God and the Anthropic Principle
12-The Limits of Evolution
13-Art, Symbolic Thinking, and the Invisible Boundary
14-Engaging the Infinite
15-Conclusion: Why the “Scientific” Argument for Atheism Fails
~~~
Added 9-26-2015:
Below, the Hebrew King David (c. 1040–970 BC) speaks about a morally perverse person, an ungodly person, and one who disregards God and any thought of moral adjudication (see above for the modern folly version by the New Atheists). David is not talking about theoretical atheism. The Apostle Paul later references Psalm 14 in his letter to the Roman church (Chapter 3) when talks about the nature of sin:
“For the choir director: A psalm of David. Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!” Psalm 14:1
~~~
Cartoon from: http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-moral-mixups-of-an-angry-atheist-125221/
September 12, 2015 Leave a comment
Darwin’s Myopia, in excerpts:
“Once, Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelly “gave me great pleasure” and “I took intense delight in Shakespeare.” -Charles Darwin
~~~
“In his old age Darwin admitted, “I have lost the power of becoming deeply attached to anyone.” He assured Tennyson that there was nothing in his theories to prevent anyone believing in a supreme being. But he did not think about God or the possibility of an afterlife. He closed his mind to speculation about the infinite and concentrated on worms. One is tempted to feel that he deliberately shut his eyes to the ultimate consequences of his work, in terms of the human condition and the purpose of life or the absence of one.” Paul Johnson (emphasis added)
~~~
“It is hard to believe that Darwin himself would have accepted this huge, bottomless emptiness of life. Or, rather, perhaps because he felt it yawning, he averted his eyes from the big issues and focused them on the small: climbing plants, orchids, insectivorous plants, worms. The truth is long before he died, he had lost control over his own theory. The point at which he lost control can be precisely identified. It was when he decided that natural selection, to be of internally coherent, has to be comprehensive and universal. But if this is so, then there is no essential difference between man and any other animal. The differences, however obvious and seemingly enormous, are of degree and not of kind.”
Paul Johnson (emphasis added)
~~~
Enter the paradox, missed by Darwin: “It can more easily be grasped if we see natural selection as destructive as well as constructive-and not only destructive but self-destructive. Once natural selection had created man, it was in its own danger zone. Human beings think…are conscious, and self-conscious.
It is at this stage in evolution that natural selection falters and ceases to work with all its previous triumphalism and certitude.” (emphasis added)
~~~
The above quotes are taken from Historian Paul Johnson’s insightful biography Darwin: portrait of a genius Copyright © 2015
From Johnson’s concise, detailed and deliberative biography we learn that Charles Darwin inherited genius stock-“a classic case of genetic inheritance”. We read of Darwin’s luminous and wealthy patriarchs-of his paternal and maternal grandfathers and of his father. We learn of Darwin’s moneyed care and education upbringing. Self-education would soon become a way of life for Darwin.
Darwin married a godly wife, Emma Wedgwood, a “clever, educated, equable, hardworking, industrious, economical, and, not least, sensitive” woman. Together they had many children together.
Darwin, a lover of botany and the author of On the Origin of the Species, we are told, never involved himself with the study of anthropology. He also never regarded math to any usable extent. Statistics were never his bailiwick.
It is likely that Darwin never met up with and had never studied the Christian Monk Gregor Mendel’s foundational work, a well-read paper on genetics in 1866 and a writing that would support natural selection. Mendel’s pea hybrid work would give birth to the science of genetics.
Darwin, during his Beagle voyage focused on botany, insects, flora and fauna in general and the facial expression of savages such as those of Tierra del Fuego. At home he read the local press. He was deeply concerned about how other people viewed everyone else, scientists in particular, who differed from what he considered church dogma..
Darwin’s s fear of being ostracized on earth with his published work coupled with his revulsion of any thought of eternal ostracization-punishment in hell forever-kept Darwin spiritually self-ostracized from the Creator. He turned away from God and turned inward with a self-defensive mode of living.
At one point Darwin, we read, became enthralled with Thomas Malthus’ theory of overpopulation, an unsubstantiated and later refuted theory. Malthus’ theory would become lifelong dogma for Darwin. At the same time Darwin also denied any Christian accounting of creation.
“Ever since he became a systematic naturalist, Darwin had been an evolutionist. That is, he dismissed the account of Genesis of the separate creation of the species by Yahweh as symbolic and not to be taken literally. They had some way evolved. There was nothing new, surprising or alarming in this.” Others before him held similar views. See Chapter Three, “The Loss of God.”
In the chapter titled “Evils of Social Darwinism” Paul Johnson postulates, and I agree with his assessment, that a hybrid of natural selection-Social Darwinism-has led to all manner of evil: “Those who studied progress were hugely attracted by Darwin’s notion of natural selection as a relentless self-driving machine, “daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation…silently and insensibly working…at the improvement of each organic being…” Darwin’s words “Struggle” and “Survival” would later be found in the works and placards of atheists and agnostics and of German philosophers. The words would be used to secure featherbedding in the humanist realm of law as well as in sociology, psychology and psychiatry. Culture would make the leap of Social Darwinism.
“Struggle” and “Survival” would be the seed words for the monstrous propagandized outgrowths of Fascists and of Socialists and of a Hitler and Marx and Engels and for the crushing rollout of Stalinist Communism.
These same words were used to foment the works of Francis Galton and his sterilization eugenics program, a program practiced in many nations!
Under such a program it would be decided by someone(s) who was “desirable” or “undesirable”. If a person was found “undesirable”, then that person was “unfit to procreate” and then sterilized. Soon, the same eugenics process would be used to decide which races were “unfit to live.” You can take the thread of thought from here.
Today, Progressives want to define life: who is “fit to live” and who is “unfit to live” (e.g., abortion, death panels); who is to benefit and who isn’t to benefit (class and race warfare). Here’s a sample of the Progressive’s rejection of anything that might rattle their cages, written by an apparent Epicurean atheist:
The website Slate, a website where myopia studies itself in the mirror; where intelligence and moral absolutes proudly go to be reprogrammed into “who’s the bigger hypocrite” moral relativism, has a review of Johnson’s book by Mark Joseph Stern.
Incidentally, Slate provides its sycophantic readers with atheistic Progressive hubristic feel-good dispersions and mostly Turkish Delight.
The article written by “red in tooth and claw” Mark Joseph Stern apparently hoped to incite a circle of atheistic humanist commentator wagons around the theory of evolution by using a well-known electric atheist prod-a rant that desperately wanted make the point that the “Bible is wrong”.
Stern wanted to protect the atheist’s raison d’etre-a material world without moral agency (read accountability) and certainly one without Absolutes. A Darwinian Social scientism in lieu of God is more to their liking, more controllable and less scary.
Though mostly accepting of historian Johnson’s overview of Darwin’s life and work, Stern’s feathers are ruffled by Johnson’s interpolation of Darwin’s natural selection. He ends his piece with reassuring hubris: “But no thoughtful reader could possibly tolerate Johnson’s stunning intellectual dishonesty.” The article:
~~
Well, think again Mark Joseph Stern. In fact read the book again. See that in no way does Paul Johnson dismiss or “smear” evolution or natural selection (you stated this in the subtitle of your article).
At the end of the book, Johnson does extrapolate what he sees as the ideological outcomes (Social Darwinism, humanism, nihilism, eugenics, etc.) of Darwin’s natural selection theory, a theory deliberately configured apart from God-consciousness as it was detached from Mendel’s foundational statistics experiments over time. (By way of information, before Darwin someone else would coin the phrase “survival of the fittest”.)
As can be seen by reading Slate and other smug ideological publications, Social Darwinism is now an applied theory that will abide no reference to mankind as created by God. Instead, Social Darwinism must abide with “the will to power”. Slate readers, I fear, would hate the correlation between God and man as much as they do their own shadows (i.e., Paul Johnson’s revelatory deductions) cast on cave walls.
Our Dilemma:
Do we take to heart and flesh the words of Slate and the Progressives and let Social Darwinism and materialism define our lives? Do we, in the same vein, live like animals and subvert reason while claiming “science made me do it” and continue to make “unnatural selections (e.g., homosexuality, abortion)?
Or, do we return to our Creator?
I commend Paul Johnson’s book to you. Read it and discern for yourself.
I believe in God as a theistic evolutionist.
~~~
Other Christians who think like I do regarding Creation:
“Even before Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, many Christians had already accepted an old Earth. One of the first supporters of evolutionary science in America—Harvard biologist Asa Gray—was a devout Christian. Conservative theologian B. B. Warfield also accepted the science of evolution, and both he and Asa Gray rejected the idea that evolution leads to atheism. Even the authors of The Fundamentals, published between 1910 and 1915, accepted an old earth. It wasn’t until a century after Darwin that a large number of evangelicals and fundamentalists began to accept the combination of flood geology and 6-day creation promoted by Seventh-day Adventists.” –How have Christians responded to Darwin’s “Origin of Species”? (emphasis added) Copyright © 2015 The BioLogos Foundation
“Given the stark difference between evolution and six-day creation, many people assume that Darwin’s theory shook the foundations of the Christian faith. In truth, the literal six-day interpretation of Genesis 1-2 was not the only perspective held by Christians prior to modern science. St. Augustine (354-430), John Calvin (1509-1564), John Wesley (1703-1791), and others supported the idea of Accommodation. In the Accommodation view, Genesis 1-2 was written in a simple allegorical fashion to make it easy for people of that time to understand. In fact, Augustine suggested that the 6 days of Genesis 1 describe a single day of creation. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) argued that God did not create things in their final state, but created them to have potential to develop as he intended. The views of these and other Christian leaders are consistent with God creating life by means of evolution.” –How was the Genesis account of creation interpreted before Darwin? (emphasis added) Copyright © 2015 The BioLogos Foundation
September 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Trees
By Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~~~
Good. I’ve brought you back in time to grade school and to poem recitals mumbled and fumbled on a small wooden stage festooned with branches, hot klieg lights, coaching teachers and anxious whispering parents ready to breastfeed sweet flowing praise into their little sapling.
Snap! Now, follow me to…
Saturday, in beastly 90 degree Northern Illinois late summer heat, I decided to trek once more through my childhood and teenage and adulthood forest. I call it “my forest” because I like to think of it as “my Illinois” before “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
-From Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”
Start the music: As I walked through the “most ancient of conditions” those formative memories of my youth, Joni’s song resounded in some distant glen, somewhere within the silent swish of stately trees and near the stealing bases Blue jays and close to the ever-present droning life support system of the Illinois Toll Way.
A “tree museum”? Now I have to rest from my labors and ponder: after all the recitals and all of the seasons of my life, does my life’s mustard tree end up in the same place as it has for these trees-in a tree museum?
One good thing: it is clear to me that when I die I am recycled. You know, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. But this parking lot to parking lot stuff has got to stop. A bittersweet experience, this “tree museum” business is, on Labor Day weekend.
Encompassing the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois is industry and business of mankind’s doing. I expect that. I just didn’t want all that.
I want Illinois, Northern Illinois back. I want “The Prairie State” back.
So, I came. I saw trees and tall grass. I smelled musty earth and cedar mulch and the decay of rotten wood. I sweated profusely to feel alive once more within the epiphany of nature.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see ’em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And they put up a parking lot
…
Hold on to your charm bracelets! Without further ado, here is a portion of my photographic record of The Trek (looking for Ents, basically, to resolve the pavement problem).
Here’s what a photographer might say: “These photos were taken during hazy midday. I prefer morning or late afternoon lighting because the contrast is more interesting and diffuse.”
As you will see, I’m no Ansel Adams or Elliot Porter but I am a visual learner. So…
… sweat glands and all I focused my attention on flora, glen and meadow, Ash, Maples, Oaks and, well, you go there. And, besides, interior forest pictures are well lit during midday. That’ll be my excuse. (Please forward all complaints about out-of-control pavement to your congressman.) Let’s WordPress on. (No parking lots were abused in this filming.)
The Morton Arboretum’s Visitor’s Center
The Morton Arboretum’s Visistor Center w/restaurant facing Meadow lake
A view across Meadow Lake towards the Visitor’s Center
Interior Forest #1
This little fellow wouldn’t give me his name. He had a mouthful of acorn.
Woodland Trail #1
Acorn on the lookout for squirrels.
Berries du jour
Trail #2
Open prairie meadow
Meadow
Meadow flora
Illinois-Wilderness at Your Doorstep
Woodland Interior #1
Woodland Interior #2
Avant garde tree
Woodland Interior #3
Spot the Spider?
Mushrooms a la dead tree
Forest glen #1
Forest glen #2
Morton Arboretum brochure
Fall fashion?
Forest flora
Wetlands
Homage to Eliot Porter
“No Running”
Bugs have “The Right of Way”
“If a tree falls in the forest…”
Japanese tree? How multicultivating!
Stonehenge Green?
Jesus: “I am the True Vine and you are the branches.”
Tanyosho Pine-Japanese Red Fir
“A Walk In Paradise Garden”
In case you missed plastic during this montage here is a Lego Bird scuplture by Sean Kenney.
More plastic…
~~~
September 4, 2015 Leave a comment
Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, speaking here about SCOTUS:
“And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” (emphasis added)
~~~
Here’s a link to an essay challenging the long-held practice of considering the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of Constitution’s meaning. This theory is not supported by Constitution itself.
Source: http://illinoisconservative.com/t-sup-court.html
The time has come to pass a Natural Marriage Amendment to the Constitution so as to define “Marriage” as between one man and one woman and nullifying unnatural and specious rights.
How do we get laws rectified these days? Certainly, immoral and unjust laws are being enacted and reinforced through Congress and the Judicial and Executive branch.
Do we continue to support abortion because government says it must take money out of your personal taxed income to support Planned Parenthood? At what point do the good people get fed up and rebel against this government? After a trillion aborted babies? After a nation’s moral culture is destroyed by the moral lawlessness of homosexuality? What does it take for good people to act?
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life….” Excerpt of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard, June of 1978, “A World Split Apart”
~~~
The U.S. House of Wax
“The constitution, on this hypothesis [the court seeking public approbation], is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.” Thomas Jefferson (emphasis added)
~~~
~~~
There is a dividing line. There is a heaven and earth difference between man’s image imprinted on man’s laws (and coinage) and God’s image imprinted on man himself. The practice of homosexuality crosses the line. Homosexuality is a sin that defiles the unique imprint of the image of God on you as a person. Homosexuality is a superscription of σάρξ -sárks, properly, flesh (“carnal”), merely of human origin or empowerment.
Man was created with the superscription of God. From the Gospel according to eyewitness Mark, Chapter 12, vs.14-17:
“Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity; you don’t regard anybody as special. You don’t bother about the outward show people put up; you teach God’s way truly.
“Well then: is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? Should we pay it [taxes], or shouldn’t we?”
He [Jesus] knew the game they were playing. “Why are you trying to trap me? He said. “Bring me a tribute-coin; let me look at it.”
They brought one to him.
“This image, “he asked, “whose is it? And whose is this superscription?”
“Caesar’s, they replied.
“Well then, “said Jesus, give Caesar back what belongs to Caesar-and give God back what belongs to God!”
What do you give back to God? Yourself. You give back to God your obedience to abstain from sexual immorality (and its promotion) in any form.
Your created image is inscribed with a God-bound conscience and not with Caesar’s image. Your created image is meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit and not a temple for Eros and Himeros. Your created image is meant to be a tribute back to God.
~~~
Added 9/5/2015:
From “MLK 50 Years Ago: A Just Law Is a Man-Made Law That Squares With the Law of God”:
“One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” wrote King. “The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ (emphasis added)
Unjust laws and unjust rulers, ignoring God and/or claiming supremacy over God, demand obeisance and a bending of the will towards evil:
August 29, 2015 Leave a comment
Do you know the Olympics motto? “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger”)
I bet you know Nike’s motto just from their swipe logo: “Just Do It.”
Why as Americans have we turned from away from meritocracy toward a progressive Disneyland of ‘equal’ ‘happy’ outcomes? Is it because of laziness? Perhaps. Is it due to sociologists and psychologists and therapists promoting untethered self-esteem and dignity? Most likely. Is it due to the politically partisan pandering of materialism by Progressives which demands an unnatural faux-equality to gain votes? Most likely. Whatever the lack of motivation, the Apostle Paul (c. 5 – c. 67) knew that man’s inherent idleness would kick in if he smelled a free lunch:
“And, indeed, when we were with you, we gave you this command: Those who won’t work shouldn’t eat!” Paul’s letter to the church at Thessalonica, 2 Thessalonians 3:10
For the people who have to prove themselves day after day, an athlete for example, the fact is that they have to earn their place on the team. Sports fans take meritocracy as a matter of fact. Why can’t we as an American people not only dream but also train and discipline our lives to create the outcomes that we desire to happen, as a matter of fact?
Every time we let government try to make equal outcomes happen we lose liberty, becoming ever more enslaved.
Do you know Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison’s motto? “Earn it.”
PITTSBURGH, PA – DECEMBER 28: James Harrison #92 of the Pittsburgh Steelers warms up prior to the game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Heinz Field on December 28, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
“James Harrison won’t let his sons accept participation trophies”
Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker:
“[James]Harrison took to social media this weekend to lash out at the idea that his sons should receive participation trophies simply for playing sports, saying that when he found out his sons were given such trophies, he demanded that they be sent back. Harrison believes that a trophy should be something you earn by being the best, not something you receive just for trying.
“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothingmaking them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best…cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better…not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy.”
Harrison concluded with the hashtag, “Harrison Family Values.” In James Harrison’s household, there’s no credit given for just showing up. If you want a trophy, you’d better win.”
James Harrison Instagram
~~~
At the beginning of last year I posted the following article about the futility of utilitarian egalitarianism
“Egalitarianism. Is It Equal To The Task?”
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
Here the Apostle Paul is writing a word of encouragement to the church in Corinth (1 Cor. 9:24). Remember Corinth? It is a city is in Greece, Greece being the birthplace of the Olympics.
Should Olympians ‘race’ when everyone gets the same prize at the finish line?
Egalitarianism = equal outcomes. And equal outcomes are what Progressives want to have happen within our legal system, within our education system-within society as a whole.
Egalitarianism is posited as a means to create the unspoken Utopian bureaucratic island where near-perfect socio-politico-legal systems exist and where no one has advantage over another except for the so-called elite who have been ‘blessed’ with “superior intellect.” Only they know enough to define life for you. (e.g., Cass Sunstein’s recent Nudge book).
In my younger days I was a sprinter. I would run many heats and then the final events. To do so I had to prepare for the weekly track meet. I will use my own ‘summer event’ experience to help you to consider whether egalitarianism is equal to the hard work and discipline required for life’s trials and to decide whether the rise of “egalitarianism” will benefit or hurt our society.
I wrote the following anecdote/moral fable based of my understanding of the “Constrained Vision” and the “Unconstrained Vision” as delineated by Thomas Sowell in his own favorite book “A Conflict of Visions”:
A Tale of Two Foot Races
Race Number One:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height and weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men enter the race knowing that there will only be one winner. It was for this outcome that they had prepared themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years.
Months prior to the track meet the eight men are told of the rules: A runner must run in qualifying heats. If the runner is successful in those heats the runner will then be allowed to compete in the final race with the other qualifying runners; a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will be disqualified as having a “false start”; the commands “Ready”, “Set” and a gunshot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified; runners will be timed and the first runner to cross the finish line will be the winner of the race.
The runners all agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race and after qualifying in the heats eight runners come to the starting line. They know that they must run straight ahead in their own lane to reach the one-hundred meter line. They know that if they jump the gun twice they will be disqualified from running. They know that they must sprint as hard as they can to cross the finish line first. They are knowingly competing for first place. The race before them has now become the culmination of years of exhausting training and dedication to finishing the race and receiving first prize.
When the race is announced the runners shed their sweats and come to the starting line. The track official then announces, “Ready”. The runners will then carefully position their legs into the starting blocks and place their open hands stretched behind the starting line.
Once the runners have settled the track official then snaps “Set”. The runners immediately come up to a “set position”, coiled in their starting block. With the burst of the starting pistol eight men bolt from their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their disciplined bodies will carry them.
The winner of the race is the one who breaks the tape. There is also a second, a third and fourth place finisher. The runners-up each congratulate the winner for his speed and, implicitly, for his fidelity to the rules and his commitment to the sport of racing.
The first three finishers receive medals, adulation and wreaths of honor from the thousands who have come to watch a fair race between those who have so vigorously prepared themselves. The experience of the race has bolstered each runner’s self-esteem. The cheering crowd is also moved by each runner’s self-sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline. This spectacle has confirmed the crowd’s understanding of playing by the rules and aspiring to excel within those rules. Those who witnessed the race that day are stirred, encouraged to excel at what they do.
All eight racers later return home. The runners-up are now more dedicated than ever to prepare for another day of racing and to receiving their own crown of victory. Ciltius, altius, fortius.
Race Number Two:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height, weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men entered the race knowing that everyone will be a winner. It was for this outcome that they saw no need to prepare themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years. They just had to show up.
Months prior to the race the eight men are told the rules. They are told the rules are subject to change at the time of the race based on the current ad hoc articulated reasoning of one superior intellectual with unquestionable virtue. A runner must run in qualifying heats but this will not be a constraint. Whether or not a runner is successful in those heats he will be allowed to compete in the final race with other ‘qualifying’ runners. The heats are basically events created to satisfy the need for more equality.
More rules: a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will not be disqualified from running. Instead he will be given another chance; the commands “Ready” and “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly, though any sincere attempt to cooperate with the official will be accepted; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified unless, of course, their background is such that they have never stayed within the lines; runners will not be timed because such keeping of minutes would be discrimination against slower runners. The first runner to cross the finish line will wait at the finish line so that everyone will be considered a winner of the race. This must be done at any personal cost to the first one crossing the finish line.
The runners agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race all of the runners come to the starting line. They know that they are supposed to run down to the finish line before the outcome-determining patrons. They know that there will be equal prizes and the egalitarian appreciation of well-wishers to look forward to. They are going to run for this reason. This race is now the culmination of years of knowing that the battle is just showing up and doing what you are told.
When all the runners are in their starting blocks and their hands are behind the starting line the track official then says, “Ready”. After a long moment of reasoned judgment the official says “Set”. The runners come up to set position. Then the race official shoots the starting gun. The eight men come out of their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their unfocused discipline has trained them.
At the finish line everyone is a Finisher, even those who left the race due to being out of breath. There are hand-shakes and kudos all around for having shown up for such an event.
At the awards ceremony all the runners receive medals and congratulations. Thousands have come to watch a race between runners who have shown up for a race where the outcome was predetermined to be fair – fair as defined by the few judges of superior intellect and of unquestioned virtue.
Later, all the runners return home and rest for another day of showing up.
August 23, 2015 Leave a comment
August 22, 2015 protest Against Planned Parenthood:
At 9 am the protest begins at the intersection of E. New York St. and Oakhurst Dr., Aurora, IL.
The intersection where you turn right to go get an abortion.
The neighborhood is middle-class ‘nice’ but the majority of residents in Aurora are minorites-hispanics and blacks…
The entrance to hedged Planned Parenthood Compound
Planned Parenthood Detail:
Categories: Hospital & Medical Center, Doctor & Clinic, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Abortion, Pregnancy Information, Infertility Counseling, Abortion Information, Abetting…Mutilation, Eugenics, Selling of fetal body parts, Dr. Mengele’s human experiments, First-degree murder, Human sacrifice, Dehumanization, Atrocities…
~~
Per a previous post…
I arrived at 9 am. By 10 am the protest signs were no longer available. By 10 am the crowd had so increased that there was no estimate count of protestors. Many people were waiting to sign “in” on the Pro-Life Action League contact sheet. I’ll post the count and videos as they become available.
Across from the hedged Planned Parenthood compound protestors were praying and reading Scripture. As protestors walked the sidewalk along E. New York St., many were repeating the Rosary.
Notice the lack of law enforcement? These protestors are Tea Party kind of people; the ones that the Left loves to denounce as they do all their own aborted children.
(I am working/fighting with the WordPress program, trying to get the following .movs to appear as regular videos. In the meantime please click on them.)
“We Protest and We Pray”: https://kingdomventurers.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/pph-protest-8-22-2015-070.mov
“Love is Our Mission”: https://kingdomventurers.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/pph-protest-8-22-2015-074.mov
“Awaken a Nation”: https://kingdomventurers.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/pph-protest-8-22-2015-067.mov
Speaker’s Corner
People signing up for the Pro-Life Action League contact sheet
Looking across an open field from Speaker’s corner toward the Planned Parenthood Compound. Protestors stood across from the compound and also behind me along E. New York Street.
Secure Planned Parenthood Compound (Secure, but not for a child!)
Back of Planned Parenthood Compound w/dumpster
Middle Class ‘nice looking’ neighborhood apartments across from the murderous Planned Parenthood Compound
Main entrance to Planned Parenthood Compound
Across from the main entrance to Planned Parenthood Compound
Psalm 139:19
Planned Parenthood Volunteers and security
Corner of Oakhurst Dr. and E. New York St., Speakers corner on left. Planned Parenthood’s compound is a left turn past an empty field-from where children never come home.
“I Regret My Abortion”
Protestors along E. New York St., walking back from Eola Rd. Intersection.
A family protests together along E. New York Street
“Abortion Babies Lives Matter”
“Planned Parenthood is Bad for Aurora”
“Child Sacrifice for Profit is Demonic” Corner of Eola Rd. and E. New York St., Aurora, IL
Humanists and atheists will kill a helpless child to support their ideology of mortality for some, but not for others. They will call abortion-a death warrant-a “woman’s right”.
Cindy Wity 
Unions, Socialism and RoadKill?
September 19, 2015 Leave a comment
Just the other day I was verbally assaulted with socialism.
Per my usual workday I was taking the morning commuter into downtown Chicago. As I stand in the train’s vestibule I visit with my fellow travelers. Our conversations run the gamut of silly to bordering on the unspoken: politics, religion and money.
Well, just as I mentioned, I was slimed by socialism.
As I was talking with my friends a guy comes into the vestibule to wait out the rest of the ride. He was apparently eager to get off the train and light up a smoke.
Victory cigarettes
Wearing a chartreuse tee-shirt of a union pipefitter (seen around Chicago) and with a pack of smokes in his one breast pocket, this guy proceeded to let us know that he arrived.
One of our group asked him where he worked and what he did. (We usually try to engage everyone who ‘visits” the vestibule.)
The guy mentioned that he was working in a building downtown “putting in 24” pipe.” He spoke with the raspy demonic-sounding voice of a heavy smoker.
Then, without prompting and like striking flint, he said, “I hate corporate America. I hate the rich, highly paid CEOs. Who needs gold toilet seats?!” “You think union workers get paid a lot. You should see what they take out of my paycheck!”
“OK?” I said to myself. Well, here we go again: typical union griping, now on a Thursday morning.
I have heard the same sort of discontent (putting it nicely) from union postal workers, train conductors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, service workers-from all of them. And, whether the gripe is about pay grade, work time, pecking order, vacation time, labor management (a partial list of complaints, to be sure) I have heard it all. Union people have left their destiny in the hands of others in hopes of being insured against unhappiness. Guess again. Socialism takes regular drawdowns on your account of happiness.
I have heard the same sort of morbid discontent as campaign vote pandering. It slips off the politician’s tongues (here paraphrased) as “zero sum anthropogenic poverty caused by the rich and CO2”, “…limited pie…”, “…we need unlimited government…”, and (verbatim) “Fair share”; “The 1%”.
Victory Gin
All such materialism driven policies enacted to “unionize” society, in my estimation, reduce life to a boring unromantic dystopia. In other words these politicians want you to, “go drink your 1984 Victory Gin and be happy. We will take care of you. Do what you were told with what we gave you. There is no romance in Socialism so don’t even think of love, only of sex.” (Hah, imagine Hollywood under socialist financial constraints! Morally, Hollywood is already dependent on the lowest common cultural denominator.)
I decided not to talk to the union guy unless others broached a response and decided to go there. I could tell by his demeanor that this guys’ mind was probably as darkened as his lungs must be.
He went on to speak about his working on and off again depending on … when work is made available to him…through the union. Months would go by until he got a call.
Then he spoke of his heart’s desire: “My precious!”-The long awaited-for pension. With wide-eyed craving he spoke of his retirement: “Only six more years of this stuff left.”
Unions have a unique way of making people ache for the ring of retirement. I’ve seen it firsthand. It comes, I believe, from the on and off nature of union work along with boredom and plenty of worrisome smokes in between, a situation this guy and others let others control. Socialism is losing control of your life while waiting for the day you can retire and live off your meager pension and then, likely, smoke and drink yourself to death within a short time. Union-socialism roadkill. I’ve seen it over and over.
At this point I wanted to ask him who runs his pension and ask if it was invested in something more than a saving account making 0.01% interest or a CD making 0.09 % interest. Or, was his pension invested in equities and bonds, more appreciable (and risky) financial vehicles.
One could easily figure that the “highly paid” union lords control his pension (and get their cut) and that the union pension fund itself is managed by outside financial managers who manage stock and bond purchases of the union’s pension fund.
The “highly paid” overseers of his pension as fiduciaries must look at the composite financials of companies with stock and bond offerings to determine the best option to apply to a conservative pension, to have it grow while minimizing risk.
Obviously this union guy knew pipefitting and welding. But he did not know finances let alone how to find work on his own. He, instead, left others in charge of providing him work and with overseeing his “precious” pension.
Right then and there I wanted to say to this guy that when you leave your life in the hands of others they will charge you for their effort, including “highly paid” labor leaders (e.g., Richard Trumka).
-“Scores of union leaders earn six-figure salaries”
Here’s the arrogant and petty AFL-CIO union thug Richard Trumka tweeting his call for “two minutes hate” directed at Gov. Scott Walker who is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race:
“Highly paid” CEOs are charged with managing a company so as to make its value grow and to make its stockholders happy with the company’s prospects for future earnings. The company’s worth must appreciate in value. And when a company’s stock appreciates in value many people benefit. This includes employees who receive stock as a bonus. Pension funds invested in such a company’s stock also grow in value. Somehow I think any such statement to him would not meld with his union-socialist-collectivist way of life. He would go into Elizabeth Warren override.
I left out this: companies run by “highly paid” CEOs hire people and pay them to function within the company. Together CEOs and the people make the company profitable or otherwise. The people are free to stay or move on depending on their satisfaction with any number of things including pay, management, location, etc. “Highly paid” CEOs increase value. Collectivist governments, socialist governments and unions depreciate value-especially, your value, via coercive egalitarianism.
Those of us in the Kingdom of God must not take the wide way that is offered to us either by a self-described socialist such as Bernie Sanders or by a self-described “Christian” magazine called Sojourners which uses the banner of “social justice.”
Government is not altruistic. Government could never hit the moving “socially just” target without being totally controlling. Government can never offer a hurting person what a Good Samaritan can-one on one help. Government is impersonal, indifferent, insouciant.
And, as we have seen, redistribution of our wealth, filtered through the labyrinth of government funnels, distributes only fractional amounts of money to people government cannot even begin to keep track of and large amounts just to make bureaucracy function. Socialism burgeons while you diminish.
The unions, the Collective, Progressives, liberal “Christians” and even Pope Francis want “Social Justice”. What is this carrot on a stick dangled in front of us?
~~~
I have written elsewhere about this subject before. When I have I’ve turned to the parable of the Good Samaritan to make the point that we need to be involved in one another’s lives personally (like our Savior) and NOT via the million degrees of separation known as bureaucratic “Social Justice.”
The Rev. Robert Sirico, “American Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute”, provides us with clear-cut insight into the bureaucratization of “good intentions” versus the personification of good (good becoming man):
“The Marxist political analysis that remains popular (if now usually disguised) in many universities and even seminaries, tends to pit the poor against the rich—it’s all about class warfare and alienation. The alternative vision that I have been trying to paint in these pages is beautifully distilled in the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has held a persistent fascination for the religious and non-religious readers alike. Of course, like all parables, its primary meaning is Christological and moral, rather than political. But it’s also possible to discern other messages in this story.
In Luke’s Gospel, a Samaritan man (someone on the margins of Jewish society in this period) stops to help a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. When the Samaritan comes upon him, he helps the beaten man from his own resources. Even when the Samaritan has to delegate the care to the man for a time to an innkeeper, he promises to pay the innkeeper back. The Samaritan was on the scene to see and understand the fallen man’s specific needs—he was the man’s “neighbor”—and he went about meeting those needs. From this standpoint, the Samaritan might be justly described as the principle subsidiary in action. Notice, too, that he would have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the injured man if he hadn’t first possessed enough personal wealth to hire services of the innkeeper. Lady Thatcher’s memorable insight about this text is to the point: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”” (emphasis added)
Passage from “Why Smart Charity Works—and Welfare Doesn’t”, “Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for the Economy” by Rev. Robert Sirico
Rev. Sirico recommends reading “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” by Theodore Dalrymple. I have read it and recommend it as well.
~~~
Added 9-20-2015:
It’s “1984” all over again…
“Within the book [George Orwells’1984], the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” (emphasis added)
“Ostensibly, [Emmanuel] Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
Union members, as with so many others of the media-collectivist-“It takes a village…” persuasion make use of the “Goldstein Effect”, a term coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
As mentioned above the effect is a means of scapegoating but it is also a means of psychological distraction and redirection.
The subverted thinking of the union member as revealed in my anecdote above is directed with anger at the “highly paid CEOs” and therefore away from the ”highly paid’ labor leaders and away from the “highly paid” Big Brother candidates those “highly paid” labor leaders support. The “enemies” generalized and amorphous existence is a product of the media’s PC Ministry of Truth, the collective’s means to larger-than–life vilification.
[The] “Goldstein Effect”, [is] described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
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Filed under Culture, Economics, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with 1%, AFL-CIO, CEOs, Goldstein Effect, progressivism, redistribution of wealth, Ricard Trumka, socialism, unions