Friday, December 14, 2012

STOP THE BULLYING - INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE LIES


STOP THE BULLYING
Stop the Lies Campaign
Inclusive Language Lies
#1 Fix the Bible

I thought atheists and agnostics were the biggest challenge to be confronted but have discovered a bigger group. - people who profess to be Christians but demand changes to Christianity.  One example is the call for inclusive language changes to the Bible and church teachings.

Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago has the following statement in its "Inclusive Language Policy" posted on its webpage,

"In terms of gender, it is clear that Christianity was born into a male-dominated society whose language reinforced such discrimination.  In fact, the Christian understanding of God and God’s acts has been dominated by male-oriented imagery and language while ignoring complementary feminine images.  The very survival of this feminine imagery is testament to its importance in the life of the church."

A cursory reading of this paragraph yields 2 immediate observations;
1) The concluding sentence contradicts the premise of the preceding sentences.  If the female imagery was important enough to the church to survive then Christianity wasn't as male dominated as suggested.
2) We are celebrating Christmas as I write this.  Preparations are well underway and have been since Thanksgiving.  Christmas is the birthday of Jesus who is God incarnate, very God and very man.  Mary gave birth to Jesus.  Mary was a woman - A female.  The church celebrates Mary's role in Christianity; some Christian groups go so far as to venerate her.  How much more specific can a group get in demonstrating its admiration for females?  A female gave birth to God's son.  And BUMC is worried about too few 'hers' in the Bible?

Churches like BUMC are engaging in a campaign to bully Christianity into changing.  It is all about a liberal agenda to promote feminism and homosexual rights.

It is time for Christians to stand together to oppose these bullying tactics.

The Bible does not need to be fixed.

BTW, in a future post I will enumerate the number of stories of key women in the Bible.  Far from ignored females played key roles in the history of the Jews and in the development of Christianity.



http://assets.communityspice.com/bumclakeview/assets/misc/Inclusive%20Language%20Policy.pdf

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Richard Kiel's - (James Bond's "Jaws") Christian Testimony.

Richard Kiel
I started out to list actors, actresses and other workers in the entertainment industry who were Christians.   I end up with a totally unexpected revelations.  The first surprise was Richard Kiel.  He is the very tall man who played Jaws in the James Bond movies The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker.

Richard Kiel has his testimony on his webpage.  In it he tells of his deliverance from alcoholism through prayer.

Quote from Richard Kiel's Testimony:
"I had become a Christian when I was about nine years old, reconfirmed that commitment at a youth camp at age 12 and was baptized at the age of twenty-seven.  As a "Christian" I couldn't understand why I was addicted and bound to such a negative habit.*  Early one morning, I was watching a program on one of the Christian networks and learned that the Bible said that I could join  together in prayer with other Christians and God could free me from that addiction.  I prayed along with the guest on the program, and although nothing seemed to happen (there were no bells or flashing lights) I found that I had no more overwhelming desire for, and was no longer addicted to alcohol."

*alcoholism.

If you go to Richard Kiel's web page you can read his full testimony about how prayer delivered him from his addiction to alcohol.

http://www.richardkiel.com/testimony.html



Friday, November 30, 2012

Richard Dawkins Says, "Merry Christmas!"




Deck the halls with* Richard Dawkins,
Fa la la la la la  la la la  la.
And the reason’s truly shocking,
Fa la la la la la la  la la la  la.

‘Cause the famous atheist author,
Fa la la la la la  la la la  la.
Celebrates Christmas true and proper,
Fa la la la la la  la la  la  la

Likes true carols of the Lord’s Birth,
Fa la la la la la  la la  la  la.
Branding secular tunes ‘of  no worth,’
Fa la la la la la  la la  la  la.

So the claim that Nativity scenes offend,
Fa la la la la la  la la  la  la.
Is denied by Richard Dawkins,
Fa la la la la la  la la  la  la.


*with as in helping
Original words by Wayne Stahre

If Richard Dawkins says Merry Christmas, eschews secular Christmas songs in favor of traditional, Christ themed carols, then what is all the nonsense the ACLU and other loser groups are spouting when they try to ban Jesus and Christmas from public displays?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1100842/Why-I-celebrate-Christmas-worlds-famous-atheist.html


Friday, September 28, 2012

How and Why Neil Degrasse Tyson Went Astray

It seems that every generation needs a new prophet of pseudo-science to carry the sputtering torch forward.  This generation it is Neil Degrasse Tyson.  His message seems fresh and appeals to the indoctrinated but it is the same old nonsense which originated in the Vienna Circle n the early 20th Century.



The Vienna Circle was devoted to positivism, the doctrine that physical science, whose ultimate basis is sensory experience, exhausts what can be known, leaving philosophy to police the tendency of thought to pretend to more knowledge than can be delivered by science.
If you google The Vienna Circle be sure you
get the right one.  This is a picture of the founder
of The New Vienna Circle not The Vienna Circle

The odd thing about this is that the modern priesthood of science claims that without this divorce of  'science' and philosophy, 'scientific' progress is not possible.  That concept is just not valid based on the history of said progress.  For most of history science and philosophy were interrelated and progress was not stymied.  So, why was it necessary to rip them apart?  The answer had nothing to do with progress, it had to do with animosity toward religion.  But, the Circle's premise created a problem for itself.

The physical sciences are rigorous precisely to the degree that they were mathematical, yet mathematics is not a physical science. It is immune to the touchstone of sensory experience that forms the basis of physical science. Because of this positivism threatened to crumble under its own weight.

This is a short introduction.  I will post more soon.  I know I didn't answer the Why question yet about Tyson.  That answer takes positivism as a starting place but it has much more to do with other considerations as well.  The main point you should understand is that most of what you have been told about the necessity for pseudo-science to be separated from philosophy is a lie.  That much of what you have been told about The Middle Ages is a lie, much of what you have been told about the objectivity of science is a lie.

Reference to: A World Without Time by Palle Yourgrau
Revoking the Moral Order; The Ideology of Positivism and the Vienna Circle, by David Peterson

BTW, both Einstein and Kurt Godel were participants in the Vienna Circle however Popper and Wittgenstein were not.  The reason makes for an amusing story given the supposed logical bent of the group.  Popper was not invited because he detested Wittgenstein.  Wittgenstein, on the other hand, had refused the invitation.



Thursday, September 27, 2012

Creation in Six Days


Gordon (an atheist) The vast majority of creationists have no idea how and why evolution works. Why we are here is a nonsensical question. To ask that you must first assert that we were placed here  without asking the question who put us here in the first place. Can we know for certain that the spores for life were not sprinkled on earth by a passing alien spacecraft? No, it can not be asserted with certainty, doing so would be foolish. All evidence we have at the current point in time points to the case that life can be created from non-life under the correct conditions*. As for winning the abiogenesis debate, we are not quite there yet, but we are getting closer by the minute.

Arty (Creationist) I might ask you where the creatures in the passing spacecraft came from but I won't belabor that point,  You understand that problem well enough or at least I hope you do.

Gordon:  So, tell me, how many days did it take to create the universe?

Arty: Who knows, the Bible doesn't say.

Gordon: It does so, it says six days in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:1 Before Time Started
Arty: No, Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  That means He created everything in the beginning.  The six days don't start running until verse 4.  To ask when the universe was created in a meaningless question.

Gordon:  No it isn't. Science has identified the creation as having taken place nearly 15 billion years ago.

Arty: Define what a year is?

Gordon: 365 days, 24 hours per day.

Arty: Scientifically speaking of course?

Gordon: Of course.

Arty;  Actually, not scientifically. According to a solution Kurt Godel made to Einstein's field equations time is illusionary and Einstein agreed with him saying, ""For us believing physicists the distinction between the past, the present, and the future is only an illusion."

We can take this further and state that things do not become, they simply are. Time is like space. In traveling to Singapore, I do not bring Singapore into existence. I reach Singapore which was there before I started my trip. In the same sense I reach events in the future by displacing myself in time. I do not bring them into being. And if nothing is brought into being, there is no change. And if there is no change, there is no such thing as real time.

Modern cosmology posits that universe expanded from a primordial explosion called the Big Bang. If time had an origin, and a uniform measure, then we are again within the bounds of Newtonian physics and a universal clock, marking time throughout the cosmos. It is everywhere approximately 14 billion years after the Big Bang, and it is that time now.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey Telescope
But a universe proceeding from nothing to nowhere by means of an enthusiastic expansion is only one possibility. There are others - for example: A rotating universe.  In Gödel's conception everything in the universe goes along for the ride. As the galaxies rotate they drag space and time with them. So, just as an expanding universe blows up space and time, a rotating universe turns space and time around in spirals. In that solution, there is no real time.

It seems to me that the cavalier dismissal of creationists theories of the timeline of creation are upended if not destroyed by the very science which the atheist use to attack creationists.

Einstein and Godel
BTW Einstein once said that he went to Princeton chiefly to spend time with Godel.  His exact words, in the original German quote were, ("Um das Privileg zu haben, mit Gödel zu Fuss nach Hause gehen zu dürfen." The privilege of walking home with Godel.

*TAT will address this in a future post.



This has been a vastly simplified introduction to a complex subject.  We can get into the specifics if necessary.

Reference to:

Einstein and Godel, by David Berlinski,  Discovery Magazine, March 2002.
There's Something about Godel, Francesco Berto, 2009
A World Without Time, The ForgottYurien Legacy of Godel and Einstein by Palle Yourgrau
Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.
Is the Universe Spinning? Ray Villard. Discovery News, July 8, 2011.
[A  sample of over 15,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey* - looking northward, above the plane of the Milky www. found that more than half of the spirals were spinning in a counterclockwise direction. The odds of this being purely due to chance are a one in a million. Further, if the whole universe is rotating, then galaxies on the opposite part of the sky, below the galactic plane, should be whirling in a clockwise direction. And according to a separate 1991 study spiral galaxies in the southern galactic hemisphere do just that.]ample of over 15,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey* - looking northward, above the plane of the Milky www. found that more than half of the spirals were spinning in a counterclockwise direction. The odds of this being purely due to chance are a one in a million. Further, if the whole universe is rotating, then galaxies on the opposite part of the sky, below the galactic plane, should be whirling in a clockwise direction. And according to a separate 1991 study spiral galaxies in the southern galactic hemisphere do just that.]

*Kevin's favorite.