Mechanisms of Evolution are Really Mechanisms of Variation Within a Species or Kind. There is No Such Thing as Evolution from Species to Species

In Bret and Heather's most recent Dark Horse Podcast, #98, they discuss some criticisms of their recently published book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the Twenty-First Century and touch on some basic evolutionary principles that particularly interest me. Since one trend of criticism objects to their supposed failure to adress suchasic principlesthey spend a few minutes on them. it begins at about 41:30:



They give the very basic defintions of evolution which I've tried to address in my arguments against the ToE. I really can't fathom how they apply to their topics which are all about cultural expressions ih human populations, but I'm glad to see that they do make such a connection so that I can accept that they haven't just skipped on to some other whole definition of evolution to make their particular points.

"Evolution is a change in gene frqeuencies in a population over time"

That's the accepted definition, and they list the familiar "mechanisms of evoltuion" that are regarded as the way it all works, staring with Mutation which is of coruse always considered to be the very basis of the creation of DNA.

Mutation
Gene flow
Migration
Selection, which seems to be treated as synonymous with Adaptation

They do mean by this that they are the mechnisms of MICROevolution, which is synonymous with what I mean by variation, but to them it is just the first staage of species-to-species evolution, there being nothing in the theory to keep change from progressing indefinitely. Even the boundaries of the genome don't suggest boundaries to them for some reason.

The first thing I want to say here is that, although I think evolutionary theary is a monumental fraud on humanity, utterly wrong and pernicious, I like Bret and Heather, they often say some of the sanest most reasonable things about today's political situation, and I'm sure that their thinking in their book is also sane and reasonable given their assumptionjs about evolutionary theory, no matter how much I object to the theory. They are also liberals, so they are certainly not in my camp, but it's nice to know there are some sane liberals out there.

As I've addressed these basic principles of evolution I try to show that they simply have nothing whatever to do with evolution in the sense of Species evolving from other Species. What they are describing is not evolution, it's variation within a Species or Kind, and it's an amazing piece of intellectual deception that fuels the whole evolutionary edifice. The deception starts with co-opting the normal variations possible within a genome, through normal sexual recombination at least, to the idea of evolution from species to species. They so automatically subsume all these processes under the ToE I don't know what sort of intellectual bomb might set them free from it, but it would take some such drastic event in most cases.

You need genetic change, real change, not just variation on a theme, to make the theory work, and you do not have anything remotely approaching the sort of change you need. They pin the whole thing on Mutation as the mechanism they assume brings about such changes -- and I emphasize that they do in fact assume it, there being nothing about observed mutation that justifies this article of faith.

But the statement of faith is potent. As Heather puts it, "Mutation is the origin of all change." Mutationon is credited with the creation of DNA, all the genetic material that provides the recipe for the construction of a given organism. It's easy to see how it work. It's a mechanism for genetic change of a sort, the only one really. Most of the time it doesn't bring about change in the phenotype, or the organism itself, only in the chemical sequence of the DNA which apparently has quite a bit of built-in redundancy, and when it does bring about change in the organism it's most often a bad change, a disease to add to the long list of genetic diseases that has been accumulating. And every once in a great great while it appears to make a chanbge that's actually beneficial to the organism. And on this slim basis they erect the whole edifice of the evolution of DNA.

What are these very occasional beneficial changes mutation brings about anyway? When they're not busy destroying the organism. Sorry. Beneficial changes. Hm. Well, they are changes in the sequence of the DNA, and the sequence of DNA is a formula of sorts for a particular protein, and the protein is what somewho or other ultimately translates into a specific trait in the organism a particular genome belongs to. It changeds the expression of a gene in other words. It makes a variation on that gene. if the gene determines the shape of a fingernail, the new sequences will affect the shape of the fingernail. Am I wrong? I guess you could have a sequence that messes up two genes in succession rather than just one, and I'm not sure what happens then, but my guess is that mistakes in replication, which is what mutations are, have made corpses out of the gchanged genetic materio, relegating them to the very large cemetery in every genome known as Junk DNA. Or perhaps zombies in the casae of those that appear to retain some kind of spasmodic function.

But I digress. The point was that even a beneficial change doesn't amount to anything really new, it's just a variation on whatever that sequence of DNA does in the organism. An U wribg? Are such issues even discussed anywhere? isn't all this just assumed and taken for granted and if anyone actually addressed what actually happens the whole shebang would come crashing down?

None of the other "mechanisms of evolution" can be said to make anything but variatqions that are already built into the genome. Gene flow just shuffles the deck of possible variations, so does Migration, they bring about changes in gene frequ3encies in new populations. Changes in gene frequency are in fact ways of shuffling the deck so as to bring out new and interesting variations in a Species or Kind. They don't create anything new, they only make new combinations. And these can be quite interesting and dramatic, which can SEEM like something new although it's nothing but recombination of existing general material. Mutation is the only "mechanism" that changes something genetic which makes it seem like it must be THE agent of change that is capable of fueling evolution. It's all an illusion though.

Then we come to Selection. Around 44:30 they say "Selection is what builds complexity" and that randomness can't do that. This sounds to me like another unsubstantiated article of faith, but I really don't know what they mean. I'm perplexed as to what they mean by "complexity" since it seems to me that randomness is really the main engine of variation.

I have no clue as to how they get from biological evolution to culture through genetics, but on the biological level seletion amounts to the reproductive isolation of a gene pool or set of gene frequencies. Most often this must be a random "selection," the classical Natural Selection being very rare because it's costly. If a predator eats up all the newts except those that are poisonous then the poisonous ones proliferate, but that entails a great loss to the gene pool at large. A loss of what? A loss of genetic diversity. You are losing all the genetic material that belongs to the population of nonpoisonous newts. Actually I argue that the loss of genetic diversity is in fact the main driver of populatiohn change. When a set of gene frequencies, a gene pool, is reproductively isolated over enough generations it will bring about a new phenotypic expression in the populatiohn at large, even a new subspecies. That'has to be how Ring Species develop: each from a small portion of the genetic material from the previous population. This portion is a new set of gene frequencies and as it recombines over some number of generations in isolation from other populations it brings out a new phenotypic character in the new population. In the process it's lost genetic diversity. It has to. Genetic diversity interferes with the development of a new populationj characteristic. Gene flow interferes. It's only when a set of gene frequences is "selected" or reporductivgly isolated that you get a population level change. When a few raccoons get separated from the main population of raccoons they develop a new look as they breed among themselves for generations. that's how you get domensitc breeds. You isolate them from animals with any characteristics you don' want in your breed so that those you do want become characteristic of the breed you are creating As far as I can see, there is nothing more or less complex about a population created from a randomj set of gene frequencies and one created by a strict selection, Seems to me the degree of change in a new breed or new population however originally formed, has to do with the limiting of the genetic divrsity which is what all selection processes do, whether random or more purposeful.

I've argued this to death elsewhere so maybe that's enough for now.

So I'm sure Bret and Heather have written some fine bits of human observation in their book, but in my opinion it can only be in spite of their adherence to the theory of evolution, and lamentably restricted, even crippled by it.

The Destructive Legacy of the 1881 Bible Revision of Westcott and Hort

In a series of talks about the end times by R. C. Sproul he encounters a translational problem that he resolves in favor of the modern versions and against the King James. More than one such problem, and I'll get to the other in a minute.

Ah yes, the vexed Greek word "aeon" which the King Hames often translates"world," as in "end of the world," while the Revision of 1881 prefers "age" as in "end of the age." Sproul compares these different translations in the teaching about the tares amont the wheat in Matthew 13, where the New King James has "age" and the King James "world." He accepts the Westcott and Hort translation of "age" and says the Kiog James translators were wrong to uses "world."

Makes me want to cry. Already been crying about the political situation this morning, also the evolutionist worldview, also some personal stuff, wasn't that enough to cry about in one day? Anyway, it's sad to hear Sproul going along with what I consider to be the biggest hoax on the Christian Church going on today. Not that it's a surprise. Some of the very best preachers, most of them I suppose, have fallen for it.

OK I'm prejudiced. I accept the judgment of my own chosen authorities over those who dominate today's pulpits. The scholarly and spiritual qualifications of the King James translators far outstrip those of WestCott and Hort, and the scholarship of Dean John William Burgon who denounced them soundly rises far above theirs in my estimation. Since I have no official qualificatios to make such judgments myself, feel free to dismiss my opinion and be wrong to your heart's content.

Burgon denounced Westcott and Hort for imposing on their Bible Revision what he knew to be corrupted Greek manuscripts, which now enjoy legitimization as the "earliest" manuscripts to which everyone bows and genuflects, and for their translation into English, which he assessed as "schoolboy" level scholarship.

Their incompetence at Greek led them to prefer the literal translation of "aeon" as "age" to the rendering from the far greater experience with Greek of the King James transaltors. And today's preachers, who probably have even less of an education in Greek than even Westcott and Hort, put their schoolboy rendition above the scholarship of the King James committee, that in those days was developed from childhood immersion in Greek literature.

The same problem has blighted their rendition of the Greek aorist tense as well, or in this case it's more of an inferior tgrasp of English rather than Greek. Greek has this special tense for expressing ongoing action as opposed to one-time action. English doesn't need the awkward phrasing they give for this Greek tense, it conveys it effectively in most cases with the simple past tense, but being klutzes at both Greek and English they bequeathed to today's preachers their execrable unmelodious and stupefyingly babyish literalism.

Oh I suppose I'm being hypercritical. I guess it shouldn't matter all that much that they managed to destroy the English language on top of handicapping the Church with so many absolutely unnecessary versions of the Bible we can hardly talk to each other about any given scripture passage any more, not to mention introducing doubts about the authenticity of the King James based on their heretically corrupted manuscripts. Naa, minor problems at best, and the wonderful increase in a range of possibilities for each word, golly gosh isn't that a boon?

It's "the end of the world." "The end of the age" is an utterly meaningless concept in the Biblical contexts, and it gives a false impression that raises distracting questiohns.

The other time Sproul got tripped up by the modern versions was when he was dsicussing the Beast of Revelation 13 and the meaning of the number "666." Of course he gets lost in the red herring dead end trails this number has inspired, doesn't mention the true meaning that clearly identifies the Pope as the bearrer of that number, and then gets sidetracked by the fact that the "eareliest and best" Greek manuscripts contain the number "616" rather than "666." And we have to take this seriously because Westcott and Hort got away with their hoax and now wellmeaning seminary teachers accept that their currupted manuscripts are really "the earliest and the best" and that the manuscript tradition that underlies the King James is the one we are to doubt.

How well the devil knows his job and the people he wants to mislead.

And all we get as argument against the idea that the Pope is the Antichrist is the mention that the Reformers thought so but "few" today think so. Only too true. Gosh the devil and his Jesuits know their work.

The point of this post was to show that the Westcott and Hort hoax has consequences that are more than small annoyances. It's one of the many ways Protestantism has been undermined and the Roman Church unrecognized as THE great evil in the world that it is. The true Bible's credibility has been underminjed, heresies elevated, the English languages has been deumbed down, cacaphony introduced into the churches and the Antichrist is shrugged off or mistaken for an angel of light.

Signs of the Times

Jan Markell does a great job in this presentation where she lays out ten signs that the Lord's coming is right around the corner, and therefore the Rapture according to the Pre-Tribulation eschatology. Yes I still have a problem with the idea that there could be a group of Christians who leave in the Rapture and another group of believers in Christ who are not considered to be Christians who come to faith during the ensuing Tribulation period, but I perfer for now to accept the Pre-Trib system anyway. Certainly I want it tto be true, I wont to leave this benighted world. And the way things are stacking up in my life I'm readier than ever too.

People are leaving the country, literally leaving America, seeking refuge from the extreme craziness here. I'm going to prepare to leave it as well, but I'm hoping it will mean the country I'm leaving is Planet Earth. One of my grandsons not long ago had a nightmare in which his family of four was taking a trip and their car got caught up in a tornado. I believe God gives some of us prophetic dreams and other prophetic signs that apply to our own situations, nand that nightmare feels like that kind of prophetic message to , the kind of thing my grandson will look back on later and see that Gode was with them even during a very disruptive time. . The Lord gave me a couple of those when I was a child. In one I was entering the door to a dark tunnel with a lion at my side, and I was wearing a miner's light strapped to my forehead. The symbolism is pretty clear but I didn't understand it until much later when I was finally a believer. In the other, which i had when I was yhounger, an angel had hold of my arm and was about to escort me up to heaven.

Both those dream-- the second was more like a vision -- occurred when I was a child and not yet a true believer. So I hope for my unbelieving family that the tornado will carry them to a new life in Christ. We're pretty clearly living in evil times that are moving so fast and disrupting our lives in sudden ways I think the image of a tornado is very fitting.

Anyway here's Jan's talk on The Convergence.

Eegad, They Actually Think This Fallen World is the Way It was Meant to Be?

Oh poor poor fallen humanity. They don't have a clue. There can't be an all-powerful loving God according to them because of... a whole list of things that are wrong with this world. The Problem of Evil for instance. How can there be such misery and suffering, and such evil people in a world made by a loving God? The latest I've heard is how there can't be a loving God because He wouldn't have made things so that it would be hard to keep track of time and the seasons and so on. You know, He made the Solar System wrong.

Well, I must admit I don't know how God originally made the Solar System but I do know that everything in our universe now is not as God originally made it. Even wwe Christians, who are the only ones who could have any grasp of these things at all, don't fully appreciate how the Fall affected the world, and in fact the entire universe. We can be sure that NOTHING is as it was originally created, although we are not in a position to understand just exactly how things are different.

The effect of just one little sin in a perfect universe made by a perfect God is really beyond calculating, but we trivialize it. Sin is the opposition of God, the God who made everything and runs everthing according to His own perfect nature. He can't run it any other way. Everything He does is absolute perfection, exact and precise perfection. One little sin is like tossing a galaxy-sized wrench into a perfectly functioning mechanism. Or something like that.

Of course Satan beat us to it, but he cdouldn't wait to subvert us too. Such ninnies we are, he succeeded only too well.

As we know from the Bible God created us after He created the phyhsical universe and the planet He placed us on. None of that existed before. Angels aren't physical although they have the ability to manifest in physical form. And that includes the fallen angels who have Satan as their leader.

But I digress. The point is that however the Solar Sytem was originally created, it's different now. And it may be different in exactly the way I've heard it complained about. That is, it may once have funcdtioned as a perfect clock, but the Fall damaged it so that it lost its original precision and perfection. The orbits of the planets changed. There is certainly evidence of catastrophe of some sort in all those craters we see on the Moon, all the debris of destroyed objects that also travel in orbit, the comets and meteors that still collide with other bodies and so on.

Poor fallen humanity thinks all that is normal. Same as they think disease and death are normal. Well, what else can the poor dears do but take it all as they find it and make that assumption since they deny God's atttempts to disabuse them of such ideas. Golly gosh He gave us a written document intended to guide us through this fallen universe but we know better than God of course.

I don't know if there's any way sciencew could figure out the history of the Fall but I know they aren't interested in trying. What you see is what you get and all contrary ideas are to them ancient flapdoodle. Oh maybe evolutionarily adaptive in their time and cultural context... Sigh.

Science finally accepted the Wegener observation that the continents must once have been joined together. If they can figure that out maybe they coudl figure out the Fall. Naaa. They can't even figure out the Flood although the evidence is everywhere on this Earth. Well, see, they got this false idea going strong and teach it to everybody so there's no way to object to it without getting yourself dismissed as a crank, but once you've got the Theory of Evolution you need Time, lots and lots of Time, so of coruse the next thing was to find all that Time they need, and they found it in the decay rates of the elements in rocks. Of course nobody can ever find out if the theory holds up because there's no way to go back and find out, but oh well, it works fine on paper and it doesn't need God so we're happy.

Wegener's hypothesis was well evidenced by the match between the fossils on both sides of the Atlantic. Very good evidence indeed to add to the visible match of the shapes of the continents. .But they took their notions of enormous lenths of time, which they'd needed to justify their Theory of Evolution and do away with God, and made the drifting apart of the continents into this long drawn out affair, when in fact it so nicely fits the Flood timing. Yep.

The Flood gives a good reason for the splitting of the continents. Such a planet-wide upheaval would have had all kinds of catastrophic effects. The Bible barely hints at them in giving a few facts about the nature of the pre-Flood world that no longer exist. The earth was watered by mists that came up from the ground, not by rain. Rain apparently occurred for the very first time with the forty days and nights of the worldwide cloudburst that covered the planet in water. Along with the opening of the "fountains of the deep." None of this is easy to understand from our position but if you know that the Bible is God's word you know it describes something that really happened. And we can surmise a few things maybe. Such as that if it rained continuously for forty days and nights there must have been a very thick covering of water-saturated structure of some sort over the earth that was the source of it all.

And when it was finally spent we can surmise that the Earth was exposed to outer space in a way that it had never been before having had an atmopheric cover or "canopy" as the creatinoists refer to it. And why is that important? Because it answers those who say that the Flood and the splitting of the continents at the rate that had to occur if the Flood was the cause of it, would have generated so much heat it would have fried the planet to a cinder, so forget any such fables as eight people surviving in a wooden ark floating on the Flood waters.

But with the canopy of moisture gone the heat could have escaped readily into space, not being held down by those "greenhouse gases" any more. In fct so much heat would have so rapidly evacuated into space it would have brought on the ice age we also know existed and which is only now retreatd to the point that we may have a "global warming" problem. One ice age is quite enough to account for all the phenomena it needs to account for, one ice age with lesser retreats and returns over the centuries, and the markers of the movements of glaciers are detectable in many places. We don't need many ice ages. Only the Ancient Earth hypothesis needs them. But the Biblical timing will suffice.

The catastrophes associated with the Flood on Earth appear to extend to the Solar System, perhaps the entire universe. Meteor strikes for instance. Naa, the meteor Chicxylub didn't kill the dinosaurs, the flood killed the dinosaurs. Haven't you seen those dinosaur beds where they are all tumbled together where they were thrown by the water. Great jumbles of bones. Chicxylub put out a layer of iridium though, that got itself dispersed at the top of the layer of sediment called the Cretaceous Period. It's just one of the layers the Flood deposited over the Earth, it's not a Time Period, but of coruse that's what they call it. So since it is found at the surface of those rocks it is interpreted as being the cause of the mass death of the dinosaurs whose fossils are found in those rocks. Actually all it mans is that this meteor hit during the Flood at the time that layer of sesdiment was being deposited. And a meteor hitting during the Flood fits with the whole catastrophic picture of the Flood with the opening of the atmosphere and the shaking of all the planets out of their orbits and the splitting of the continents and so on and so forth.

God's Judgment on the Earth. It wasn't just the Original Sin of the Fall by that time, but the accumulating of much sin by the human family with the help of coruse of Satan and his angels who turned themselves into "gods" over various people groups. Anyway there's lots of evidence for the Flood. The strata we seen in the Grand Canyon are the most remarakbly preserved example of that kind of evidnece. Elsewhere the strata are twisted and broekn and fallen down, much of the upper layers washed away completely, but there is evidence of this layering worldwide. The upheaval of the splitting of the s continents accounts well for the distortions of the strata, as well as for the mountainbuilding and the volcanism, all of which are the cause of earthquakes. Sorry, the Old Earth explanation for the strata is ludicrous. Do I have to review it again?


I know they are so smitten with their Evolution and their Cosmos is All There Is Or Ever Was Or Ever Will Be mindset everything I'm saying falls on deaf ears. There's another Judgment of God coming though and a lot of us think it's coming very soon. "The Fire Next Time" in the title of a popular book written a few decades ago. Water the first time, fire the last. Just before Jesus returns. That will wake up some people. It would be nice if they'd wake u before it happens though since that's the hard way to do it.

Marxist America

Here's Mark Levin on how America now follows the Communist Manifesto rather than our founding documents:

Still Having Questions about the Timing of the Rapture

Ah well. No, I do't want to debate anyone about anything, but that doesn't mean I don't have questionsa about certain systems of thought, and in this case I'm thinking of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. I just listened to the latest Understanding the Times radio show by Jan Markell which addresses the arguments against the Pre-Trib point of view, and as usual althougj it touches on my questions it doesn't answer them. Are my questions especially odd or what?

I do have this point of view that they don't share, which is that the Antichrist was shown by the Protestant Reformers to have already been revealed when the Bishop of Rome became preeminent over all the other bishops of the Church. That was the begining of institutional Romanism headed by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome. I've made the case for this view of the Antichrist over and over here and don't think I'll make it again in this post, but he was recognized as the Antichrist, meaning THE Antichrist, over the centuries by hundreds of Christians outside the Church of Rome, then by the Protestant Reformers who found the evidence in scripture.

This difference of viewpoint doesn't challenge much in the Pre-Trib point of view as I see it it, all it means is that we already know who the Antichrist is. We also know the history of the Inquisition or persecutions and martyrdoms of believing Christians by that Pope and his Roman Church-Kingdom throughout the Middle Ages. The horrific persecutions of believers we see in the Book of Revelation by this Antichrist person seem to me to be a renewal of that Inquisition of the Middle Ages, only this time with I Islamists as the main executioners. Which i've also argued before.

At least one of the questions that keeps haunting me does come from my having this point of view, but really it comes from actual history, not just a point of view. That is, in the Rapture according to the Pre-Trib system all the martyrs of the Roman Inquistion of the Middle Ages will be included. So when we see a group of martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6, who are waiting for more martyrs to join them, it raises this question in my mind why they are being treated as a different group from the martyrs who were raptured? Martyrs are clearly singled out as a special group, but then why is that group divided d between those already raptures and those to come later? I really don't get it.

And this is of a piece with the other question who the Church could have been raptured but uncountable others become believers during the ensuing Tribulation period and yet not be considered to be part of that Church. The Church raptured but millions more who come to belief not part of that group of raptured believers? Are not believers in Christ all the Bride of Chrfist? How can the Bride of Christ be divideed into two groups, two brides as it were? I don't get it.

And then the fact that passages that refer to the Rapture also refer to the sound of a trumpet, in one the "last" trumpet, raised the question why this rather blatant indicator of the event of the Rapture is never mentioned, or is lightly dismissed, by the Pre-Trib people It's clearly "the last trumpet" in First Corinthians 15, and it's the "trummp of God" in Thessalonians something or other which I'm going to have to look up, so I guess I'll have to come back with that information.

It's the sounding of the trumpet that suggests the Rapture could occur at the midpoint of the Tribulation period, since the Last Trumpet of the sev3enth seal seems to occur at that time, and it herals the seven vials or bowls of God's wrath which finish the Great Tribulation. HOWEVER, there are clearly martyrs to be made after that point, and their trials are going to be more horrific than anything we can imagine, so the question doesn't stop there.

All this is Bible-based, I'm not bringing up anything extraneous to the Bible. The Reformers derived the identify of the Antichrist as the Pope from the Bible, and the trumpet is in the Bible, so I don't think what I'm saying is open to the criticism that it's not biblical.

I don't want to argue it though. If I get a nice clear answer, great, if I don't they will just remain questions.

Here's Jan's show for reference:

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Vaccine Mandates and Biden's Divisive Speech

Tucker Carlson sums up the totalitarian COVID craziness:




Whoever thought it could come to this in the USA. I understand why people are leaving the country. I would too if I could.

He goes on from the COVID nightmare to the California nightmare where they are throwing out votes for Elder against Newsome. This is America? Not any more it isn't.

UPDATE: Adding Chris Pinto's last radio show about COVID as the New World Order:

http://www.noiseofthunderradio.com/noise-of-thunder-radio-show/2021/9/11/notr-9-11-australia-the-covid-new-world-order-91121.html

Evolutionary Worldview Makes for Relative Morality and Relative Everything, All a Function of Whatever You Happen to Think Important

There is no such thing as absolute moral standards from an evolutionary perspective. There is no such thing as cultural institutions that are right or wrong, only adaptive practices that confer some benefit on the cultural or not, according to whatever speculative standard the analyst adopts.

While they may apply some pretty sound moral thinking to particular social issues, as I think Bret and Heather do, their evolutionary perspective undoes any claim to their soundness. It all depends on how you understand benefit, and since that is open to speculation from a variety of points of view you aren't going to get anything like a solid system for understanding much of anything in the sphere of human life.

Just a thought. No pithy critique yet.

Maybe I should try to spell out the Christian worldview. Just for contrast, or frame of rerference.

Hm.

Clashing Worldviews, Two of Them for Now

For a few weeks now Bret and Heather of Dark Horse Podcast have been reading excerpts from their forthcoming book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the Twenty-First Century, and I've listened to some of it, but not all, because I'm appalled at the evolutionary perspective they inhabit. I wish I had a really pithy way of critiquing it but my reaction is too visceral at the moment -- a species of despair that intelligent people actually think along these lines. I'm pretty sure they'd say the same thing about my way of analyzing human history. I could spell it out, which would serve as an alternative model at least but not do much to prove anything.

The evolutionary perspective analyzes everything in terms of its adaptive benefit to the "species" or perhaps even to the culture in the case of humanity. Cultural practices are there because in one way or another, at least when they first appeared, they conferred some important benefit. Marriage, sexual norms and practices, religion of course, name it they have a speculative framework in which to account for it in terms of how it furthered either the survival of the species or the social welfare of the species, human species mostly -- until it seems no longer to have such a benefit and then they speculate about how to go about changing it in the most beneficial way..

Worldviews do have consequences, maybe I could start there. If it's all a matter of trying to shape the society we live in through our knowledge of evolutionary principles, then it's going to depend completely on how well we understand the social forces that impact us that we might want to change. Even the thought that we know that much gives me the willies, but of course that's compunded by my biblical perspective that understands events in relation to spiritual laws outside the purview of a biological framework.

If you're talking about Mayan civiization, for instance, and see the building of temples less in terms of their religious function than their possible creation of social spaces for the people, the fact that they practiced an idolatrous religion that made human sacrifices to feed high quality blood to their gods won't be a big part of your analysis of the rise and fall of the fortunes of the Mayan if they could find a social consequence of the prctice that would count but the idea of an overarching spiritual law isn't going to enter into it.

So when the Antichrist comes to power on the global stage he'll be assessed in terms of whatever social policies seem to facilitate human wellbeing on the planet, at least until his murderous intentions become too obvious to be ignored. The Two Witnesses of Revelation who preach the biblical God may just be annoying, as scripture says they will be to the majority of humanity.

It makes me tired. If I come up with that pithy critique I'll certainly let you know.

Why We Are Never Going to Get Back to Normal. God is Against Us.

CHristians should know the US is under God's judgment, and that this is the explanation for our political disaster that has been escalating faster than usual over the last year and a half. I keep coming back to this like a broken record, sorry about that, but if this isn't understood, all the hopes and efforts to reclaim the nation are futile. Even if it is understood they are likely futile.

I'm not giving up on those effortts and not saying I want them given up. We still have to do what we can, but it is depressing to see the usual explanations that leave out this one essential fact. We can certainly point to the Left as the wrecking ball, we can identify the anti-American ideology of Marxism, we can also discern the diaboligical Jesuits at work in the fake news about America, or so I think thanks to Chris Pinto in particular. But all those are "proximate" causes. They couldn't succeed if there weren't moral and spiritual reasons for the nation's destruction propelling it all.


Mark Levin's radio show is getting heavy with patriotic music and themes these days, and I'm afraid it just makes me cringe. This isn't the America those songs celebrate, we are no longer that America. God can't bless THIS America.

I cringed in the same way twenty years ago when "God Bless America" was sung in response to -- and defiance of -- the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pengagon, twenty years ago tomorrow. The response of many Christians made me cringe: "God had nothing to do with it" Ghey said, God doesn't do such things." Whatever happened to Christians' identity as "people of the Book?"

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. [note: "evil" means disaster or destruction}

Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

Mark Levin's latest book, "American Marxism" is full of good analyses of what we are up against and no doubt excellent recommendations for what we are to do about it. I'm sure they are excellent although I haven't been able to get very far reading the book yet. I hope to eventually, but I'm sure he isn't taking God's judgment against the nation into account and as long as that is ignored not much we can do is going to save America. Cewrtainly in opposing Marxism we'll be at least tacitly supporting elements of God's Law but that isn't the same thing as actively opposing and dismantling what has already been put into law and THAT's the only thing that might get us somewhere.

As usual I'll modify my idea of the finality of our calamity enough to say I don't know that we are actually at the point of maximum offense against God and therefore maximum judmment is all we have to look forward to. I still hope. Of course I don't have a "Word from the Lord" on this, I'm deriving it from the scriptural portrait of the way God works in the world and from our own history, what smatterings of thta history that are all I can claim to have. Just enough to know that we've been violating God's Law with amazing alacrity over the last few decades, and even with an amazing righteous indignation. Yeah the usual case in point abortion. The righteous indignation that wants to kill babies is astonishing when you see it in its proper light. If you understand God's purpose in ordaining marriage the righteous indignation in favor of destroying it to make homosexuals feel normal is also pretty astonishing. There are hundreds of such violations of God's Law in our "justice" system by now, that I just haven't been following enough to describe. But what little of it I do grasp is enough to explain that the reason we are having the problems we're having is that as a nation we've turned against God, -- not just "away from " God but actually against God -- which means He is turning against us. Political mismanagement, economic disaster, tolerated rioting and looting and burning in our cities, extreme weather, and as usual I'm coming short of anything like an adequate list. But you can fill in the blanks.

So how do we turn back God's judgments? Attempts to restore American institutions seem like a good idea if they could succeed, but as long as we've given rights and freedoms to violations of God's Law there's no point in restoring the institutions that uphold rights and freedoms.

In Chris Pinto's latest documentary, The True Christian History of America, he gives prominence to Samuel Adams' remark on signing the Declaration of Independnece, that "Now commences the reign of political Protestantism."

There is good reason to think that is really what the Founding of America was supposed to be, even more teelingly than Franklin's famous "A Republic if you can keep it," but the Protestant vision never caught hold as it should have done, and was soon undermined by hostile forces, so two and a half centuries later here we are with a govvernment that is anything but a reign of political Protestantism. What with the malevolence of the jesuits who worked tirelessly since the Reformation to destroy Protestant nations, and the malevolence of atheists who resent everything of God, and perhaps confusion about exactly what sort of republic we were supposed to be -- Protestant? Shouild have been, not based on the Enlightenment as is usually thougyht -- so keeping it was out of the question from the beginning. Certainly it was biblical Protestantism that made the nation great and prosperous. But restoring it now? Can't do it unless we roll back our national offenses against God's Law. And oh how they scream at the idea we might decide not to kill babies any more.

Weep for America, pray for America. But any real hope of restoring America seems futile.

Israel, "God's Clock," in Biblical Prophecy, From Desolation to Prosperity

Jan Markell's Understanding the Times radio show this week is given over to a presentation by Pastor David Reagan that outlines the history of the nation of Israel from God's founding through its abandonment of God and consequent punishments, to its reestablishment in the Promised Land.

He shows how it all fulfills biblical prophecy and is now the main sign that we are in the very last days of the planet. It's a dramatic story of unbelievable desolation of the land, not a tree left standing for almost two millennia, followed by the rebuilding and the greening of the land that has made it a prosperous modern state.

No Back to Normal Ever Again

This fallen world is a scary place, and getting scarier. We had some protection at least in America for a long time but that has been undermined to the point that some third world countries actually seem safer. it's all about the power of lies. I keep coming back to that. It seems to be the bottom line. I just posted on the Black Lives Matter lie and the Ivermectin lie. Both are life-or-death matters, both have murder in their heart.

I get asked why I'm so "negative," why I can't just be positive and enjoy life, smell the roses and so on. I think I may spend too much time smelling the roses if you want to know, since the world seems to me to be disintegrating before our eyes. I think of a story that was told on the Dark Horse podcast an episode or two ago now, or I think that's where I heard it, oh yes it was. Elie Wiesel wrote about a town in Poland where the Jews were denying the danger from Nazism even after they had rolled into town and been lodged in local homes. They kept smelling the roses as it were, telling themselves how nice the Germans were really, not like the rumors about their cruel intentions, how a nice German officer even bought his hostess a box of chocolates. Before they were all herded off to concentration camps.

That's how things feel to me now. Fueled by lying propaganda. Which of us will be the first to be herded off we can guess about, but it's not going to be just one category. "Quarantine" camps for some for starters perhaps. That seems to be the agenda of the CDC anyway, according to a document at their site. Forget history and it repeats itself, right? New category of victims, new cover story.

And we don't have an America to escape to, as Yuri Bezmenov, KGB defector put it in the eighties or nineties. He came to the West, many Jews came to the West. There is no longer a West to escape to.

This time around it is bigger than Hitler, it has a global source. That's why the End Times prophecies are so prominent right now. Not prominent enough perhaps since even many churches are ignoring the signs, but the signs are surely there and hard to avoid if you're paying attention instead of burying your face in roses.

The prophet Jeremiah spent a lot of time weeping over the destruction of his nation. When you know your nation is't going to come back to God but keep on coming under more and more destructive judgments you spend a lot of time weeping as it is battered into oblivion. It doesn't help that although unbelievers see it all coming down they have only their physicalistic evolutionistic explanations that accomplish nothing. Golly gosh, religion is just a cultural adaptation don't you know. We just need a rational answer to wrongheaded adaptations or something like that? Whatever, the real answer is never going to occur to them and they'd scoff at it anyway.

I may never again see some people I love because they are planning to leave the country. They don't see a way to fix it. I can't blame them but I worry that they're jumping from frying pan into fire.

I have God though. I have prayer. I'm extremely blessed. Even if they kill me I'm blessed.

Highly Credentialed Doctor ITells the Truth About the Suppression of Ivermectin

Dr. Paul Marik, who has a long list of medical and scientific credentials to his name, is interviewed in this video about the suppression of Ivermectin as a prevention and treatment for COVID. He is the founder of the FLCCC, one member of which is Dr. Pierre Kory who has also spoken out about Ivermectin -- and of course been banned from social media, as very likely can happen to this video as well. Maybe it will show up on Rumble or some other alternative platform.

Anyway, Marik gives the history of the discovery of Ivermectin's efficacy for COVID over the last year, how it has been used effectively for decades for parasitic diseases in 3.7 BILLION patients, which ought to make it quite clear that it is completely safe. Even if it didn't work for COVID, its safety record makes it reasonable to try it, but instead it is getting nothing but bad press and doctors are even persuaded against it although the literature supports it.

The question is why, and Dr. Marik gives the "Follow the money" answer since ivermectin is cheap and available while other therapeutics that are recommended instead are extremely expensive. I'm never completely happy with this sort of explanation, it seems some deeper forces must be at work to account for the aggressive globally successful campaign against it, but it is probably true enough as far as it goes.

Sheriff Tells the Truth About Black Lives Matter

A "hateful ideology" based on the lie that the police are systemically racist, that is provoking the murders of police all over the country.

Not that truth matters any more of course.

Too Much or Too Little?

It's hard to take, I know, and maybe I overdo it because I'm more worried that people won't see a danger coming when it is, than that we'll get overwrought when we don't need to be. And we all need a break. There are times when I can't stand another minute of this heaviness.

The Horrors Coming on the Earth

...And I'm not entirely sure any more that Christians won't go through the persecution part of it. Persecution isn't God's wrath and it's God's wrath the Church is to escape. Christians died in ancient Rome, even as torches to light Nero's gardens; Christians died throughout the Middle Ages for "heresy" according to Roman Catholicism, including all sorts of creative forms of diabolical tortures. Christians all over the world have been martyred under Islam for a long time now and it's still continuing. There is no promise that Christians are to escape any of these things. Just God's wrath, and I'm no longer sure when the Rapture is to occur in the events spelled out in Revelation.

Not too long ago I thought I would probably never be able to make much sense of the Book of Revelation, but after struggling with it off and on for a while now I can actually say it's coming together as a coherent communication, not that I fully grasp the message yet. I still don't kinow how all the parts relate to each other but I have more of a sense that if I just keep plugging away at it even that will eventually come together.

It feels SO close, the events of the end times, the events of Revelation. A scripture verse that comes to mind frequently these days is Luke 21:26:

Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth...

I don't know how many at this point may be anticipating some pretty scary things "which are coming on the earth" but I know there are some and I'm one of them. A daily diet of "news" that you recognize as lies is enough to create such an apprehension, and it's hard to understand why this isn't apparent to everybody.

Here's that whole passage:

25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; 26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. 27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

That's way bigger than America but there is no doubt that America is under our own judgments from God. Laws that violate God's law have been accumulating for decades at least, and they are loudly defended as righteous and Constitutional. The sad thing is that the end time developments are actually going to look good to some great number of people, just as anti_God laws look good to them. They'll love the Antichrist, they'll love doing what he tells them to do. That's what they've been doing already anyway. Those who oppose them they consider to be the evil resisters of their utopian vision for the planet. Gives me the shudders but that's the way things are polarizing these days: some shudder but others welcome it. The ones who shudder are going to have to choose death instead of the Antichrist. .

This is the patientce and faith of the saints. Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.

That is in Revelation 13 and again in Revelation 14 as the Antichrist's plans are spelled out to make buying and seeling a privilege of having his "mark," which has to be rejected by the followers of Christ, who will then die of starvation or other consequences of such deprivation. This starts at the midpoint of the seven-year Tribulation as I read Revelation and some think it will be very clear when that has arrived. I'm not completely sure. The passage in Luke reminds me awfully of Revelation 6 which is already well into the seven years. Yes I know the similiarities are considered to be merely the Tribulation casting a shadow on our time. I'm just not so sure of any of that any more. I want them to be right, oh how I want them to be right, I would like to go in the Rapture like...tomorrow..

Concerning America's dive into evil these days, there are unbelievers who see what's going on and try their best to resist and oppose it, and don't give up hope that it's possible. Some believers too I guess. I also want to think there's a way to get things back to normal and I'll hang on every shred of hope I find, and certainly do what I can to bring it about no matter what.

But knowing the Bible means that you know why it's happening and that none of the attempts to resist it are aimed at the cause of it so there's nothing we can do to stop it. In fact everything we try fails. The elections are rigged and all the work being done to expose it and correct it doesn't work. The bad guys have all the motivation and the strength while those who would supposedly be on the right side are weak and disorganized. This is all evidence that God is judging us. The lies of the media continue unabated. Legal and other efforts to get the truth out, to counter the censorwhip of the social media, to right all the wrongs we see so clearly, aren't working. They are thrwarted at every turn.

Believers are the only ones who know why. It's frustrating but we know why. I know unbelievers who keep thinking eventually we have to succeed, this or that court case, this or that election, this or that candidate, will get things going back in the right direction. I want to believe it. I really really really want to beleive it. I support all these efforts.

But there is this lump in the pit of my stomach that just isn't going away.

We're under God's judgment. Unbeleivers have no idea what that means, and even many believers aren't thinking along these lines, but it's the only think that explains why all our efforts to get back to normal don't work.

The only thing that would work is repentance, rolling back our violations of God's Law. But listen to their outrage at Texas' attempt to roll back abortion to the sound of a fetal heartbeat.

They can shut us up, but they can't shut up God. His wrath will fall hard and they will have no idea why.