The Restoreation Project

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a substack site where she pursues her vision of the restoration twe need in the West.  I'm certainly glad that's what she wants to pursue.  Also Jordan Peterson has a similar objective though I don't think he's got the accurate aim she ahas at what is needed.   And while they share important points as to what needes to be restored I think it's too fragmented to work very well as is, it needs a broader fraemwork.  

 ___Yes, the family, yes our institutins, but we can't restore these piecemeal , this wuld be autoaticlaly restored if genuine Christianity were restored, if the Bible were treated as the word of God it is and its teachings on marrige and parenting and loving your neighbor were taken to heart by the population.  Almost all the population, because tht's the way it was in the begining of the nation, sme ninety something perecent of the people were serious committed Christiants.  Even the framers of the Constitution appreciatd the need for Christian fomorality, ues even Jefferson who repudiated the supernatural aspects of the Bible.  

The American colonies had all been seriously Christian, even to naming Christ in their Constitutions.  When the federal Constitution was framed it was a betrayal of that Chrsitan spirt althoughj the spirit persisted in the people nevertheless, until of course the fallen naturue got the upper hand again and we lost it.  

If we have to sta somewhere without an actual revival of Christanity, then it should be with a massive emphasis on educating people in the principle sof the founding of the nation, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and as many of the letters of the founders or framers as you can get people to read or hear.  RwWe need to be steeped in that mentality,t he context out of which our rfreedoms and prosperity grew.  It can't come from anything else in this fallen world.  You can't transplant our benefits to other ntarions because they don't have the cultrtue al framework that promotes them and protects them.   We thought we could do it in afghanistantn.  We couldj't.  They don't have the mental set for it.  ____

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Restoring the West, Peterson and Hirsi Ali

 Well, I was wrong about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  She's not a Christian, \\.  She doesn't want to impose her own experience on others, she says.  She thinks others have equally valid spiritual experiences through other religions, Buddhism and so on.  

this is what she said in a discussion with Jordan Peterson recetly.  They are talking about the destruction of our culture and how to rsotr e it and tht is crucially important and I was hoping to tget some ideas from them.  Since it's my own biggest project and I don't know what to do about it.  I know what's needed but ho to bring it about, no.  And they don't either.  At least she does know tht the biggest problem has been wthe wholesale destruction of Christianity so tht it is Christianity in some form or other that needs to be resotred, and tht ids getting close but not close enough for me.

I thought maybe I culd get some spiritual strength through her thinking but now I don't think so.  too bad.

Peterson continues with his Jungian perspective and that just never goes anywhere helpful.  Silly stuff like how the sacrifice of Christ means we hve to go through sacrifice ourselves in some psychological growth project or other.  Poppycock.  

 I wants this post to be about the project of restoring the culture but now I think I have to start with ansers to them.  Neither of them has the true Christian perspective which is what is needed to restore the West, certainly America.  that's where Iknow we need to start, but almost in the same breath we need to restore the principles of the founding of America.  America above all other western nations is the jewel in the crown as it were and if we can't restore it all these gloomy prognostications we hear everywhere are going to happen.  As Trump says, if he isn't elected we are going to lose wour country, we will have no more country.  Well, we are all saying that but he kows it too.  I doubt he really knows what all is lacking either but at least he knows the political side of it.

Ayaan doesn't want to impose her own views, her own religion, on anywone else.  Well, that's fine, and nobody should do that, burt the roblem is that she is saying more than that, she is saying that you can get along without Christianity and that is not so.  You can get along up to a point in this life and nobody should ompose anything on you, yes, but Christianity is the rock bottom foundation of all the good that has come through the West and principally through America.  True Christianity, not just the trappings of Chtistianity.  

It was true Christianity that Toqueveille saw when he was here, that he credited with the benefits, the greatness of aAmerica.  While a half baked Christianity might help a little, it can't really restore what has been lost becaue thta was the producet of true belieivng faitrhtul Christian people's work and character.   

While it is is common to hear people like Dawkins say you don't hvae to be religious to be moreal, and I've gone along with that to some extent because I know human beings re born with a conscience and some moral sense, lately I've been coming to realize tht you really do need true Christianity for true Morality, for the kind of morality that could restore America, the kind of morality tht for instance means that a person's word is trustworthy and can be counted on.  That comes from fear of God which comes fro Christian belief.  You have to be able to count on your neighbor to have the moral restraint not to lie to you or steal from you, and we used to have that to a great degree even in my lifetime when you could leave your door open and your keys in your cr without fear.  In the sixties and seventies there was a sudden uptick in crime of all sorts.  My daughter's motor scotter was stolen more than onece, mycar was stolen, my camera was stolen.  Things like that happened after the Marxists liberated things as they like to think of it.  Crime is the first fruit of Marxism.

You can't get the kind of trustworthiness from a half baked Christainity that is needed to restore America.   

True spiritual revival is needed but God has to do that and it hasn't happened for decades of fervent prayer by many people.

Peterson may be right enough about how sacrifice must characterize our lives for community to function as it should and all tht, but tht isn't the sacrifice of Christianity and even if he's right as rfar as it goes ther is no way to get to the mentality that makes that sort of sacrifice acceptable to the members of the community without somethijg like a strong moral framework that they subscribe tyo.  You know, like the Ten Commandments for starters.  Otherwise you see what we see a lot of, people shirking commitments, evading responsibiltiy7.  how are you going to get the to embrace this life of sacrifice Jordan evisons?

It makes me sad to think he may actually understand what the real meaning of the Christianity sacrifice is and just blithely ignores it in favor of his psychologized version, but I feel he needs to hear it again.   Oin fact I think he needs to hear something about its miraculous framework to see how there is a real God behind it all, not some psycholgocial Big Principle.  That is, think about the passover nighntht in Egypt such t before moses leads the people out toward the Promised Land.  God orders a somewhat strange little ritual .  Kill a lamb and feed your household on it.  Paint its blood on the door posts of your house.  Be ready to leave at a moents' notice but stay inside until the call comes because the angel of death is going to come throughh and pass over your house if you obey all this while those who do not thathave the projection of this lamb's blood will lose their firstborn sons.  

They are ordered to commemorate this event every year thereafter too, by killing a lamb and d eating a meal and remembering how the angel of death passed over them and how then they could leave Egypt for the Promised Land.   they commemorate this even tot this day.

Those who have not come to know that Christ IS that passover lamb that saves them from Hell, literal Hell, and gives them eternal life in the Promised Land Can you grapple with history itself as a symbol producing "story
  Can you accept that when God told the Israelities to put the lambs' blood on their doors that He meant it to be a symbol of the death of the Messiah on the Cross that would take believers out of "egypt or this fallen world with its main highway to Hell into the Promjised Land?  Two thousand years before Christ, no, sorry more like fourteen hundred years before, the sacrifice that would save us all was written on the doorposts.  

When the limjtime came, it was a \\ the yearly commemoration of the passover event of the time of Moses,  Jesus ate with His disciples on the Preparation Day for the Sabbath, He told them that the wine they were drinking was His blood shed for them, and the breadk His body.  TGhey had no idea what He was talking about.  Then he went to the dross and died as "the lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world."  All prepared fourteen hundred years in advance.    that wasn't ridgged.  He couldj't have rigged that.  

Anyway that's what the sacrifice is really about Jordan.  he sacrificed Himself for us, it's got nothing to do with outr sacrifices, in fact othing we do can accomplish anything at all toward our salvation, scripture says this over and over nin many ways.  We are saved "without workdsks"  but you keep wanting to add wsorks, you keep wanting to make us hujan beings the author of our fate.  god says no, you can't, trust Me to do it all, rst in Me, it is nothing but pride to think you can do anything.  It is not o works"lest any man should boarst."    Becoeme as a little child, Jesus said.  Jesust trust wshat the scripture says and do it and stop trying to erect all those fantasical phyilosophical palaces for us to live ihn .

but anway.  If we want to respore aAmerica an I cetainly do, We need to elect tgrump but that woun't accomplish much unless we hve a Christian erevvial.  Trump can change a lot of thijgs but we need hearts to change.  We need liberals to recognize that they've been lied to and that they 've been conspiring unkjowingly with the death of their country which h was once the greatest and best nation erer.  That's what we need to find a way to bring about.    can't happen if we can't get the true Chrsitainity bakcki.

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No, Dawkins is Not Thinking Scientifically About Evolution, Natural Selection, Or Relgion religion

 

The perplexing Dawkins I had in mind in an earlier post is perplexing because although he convincingly comes across as a genuine seeker of truth, who really wants to know what is true and doesn't want to fall into the trap of accpeting anything just becaue he likes it or it is comforting and so on, nevertheless sometimes seems to do just tht.  That is,  I find a lot more of tht kind of thinking in his remarks than I do scientific thinking at some oints anyway.  

Just to start wsith the religious side of his thinkintg, he often seems to be saying that he rejects Christianity simply because he hates it.  The Old testament, he says, is a nasty bpiece of work, and sometimes he even goes on from there to say how could anyone believe that?  It's easy to get caught up in simply trying to point out to him that there were good rational reasons for some of the things he considers to be nasty and unworthy of beolief, , but that's to overlook the fct that he's not really being scientific when he makes such a remark, not really being wholly dedicated to the truth.  He doesn't like it.  At all.  And often sounds as if tht's his main reason for rejecting it.  Atheists often give similar reasons for rejecting it:  it's primitive, it's Stone Age, we've outgrown that sort of thing.  What does that have to do with whether it is true or not>  

Anyway.  Then there is the way he talks about natural selection as the way evolution proceeds freom oneme chagne to another, one species to another.  When Darwin came up with tht idea it was very creative and interesting.  I thought so when I read the Origin yers ago.  I thoguht Darwin was quite right about most of what he said, he was an elegant thinker and considered all the arguments against him and so on and so forth.  he makes a compelling case just be the mere logic of it, for natural selection as the driving force of evoltuionj.

But the problem is, for him and for Dawkins, that it remaisn only a logical and interesting idea.  Neither of them tries to trace out how it works in realityh.  Perhaps there is the excuse that it takes too much time and you can't spell out things over such long periods of time.  No, but surely can describe a mechanism, a way it would work if it works.  Which is what I've been trying to do when I try to imagine first what it hs to work on and how tht got there.  Has to be a gene or bunch of genes, have to gebe dgenes related to the same part of the anatomy tht is being evolved, like tht eye that evoltuionists like to imagine coming together from all the farflung parts of the taxonomic tree into one evolutionary lineage from primtiieve to complex.    How does each stage get creted in the first place in order to be seected?   

See, he really doesn't think about all that.  but that's what he has to think about, it seems to me, if he really wants to be scietnifc about this sucjbect.  Because otherwise all he's got is this assertion that it must be natural selection becaue it's such a logical idea.  Could it really work in reality just gets buried in that glow of seeming certainty.  That's not science.

So I just heard him in another interview conuecturing that the genome of every creture must show its history of previous evolutonary changes, the environments it's had to cope with and all of that.  But HOW it shows all that he doesn't even guess at.  Where in a given genome sdoes he see this for instance>  What in the genome can he point to that obviously had to have come down through the previous history of the animal's eovlution?  No, it remains a pleasant plausibiltiy.

I really would expect a true scientist to see that this is all they have for evolution.  Really.  But of course I'm expecting it  a hundred yeras later after it's been set in concrete as a fact, which it isn't.  

Do new genes get created and inserted into genomes?  At what rate?  Can that be shown or is it just a theory?  Surely you'd need new genes.  You can mutate old genes all you like and never get anyhthing outside the trait package of the species in which they occur.  variations on those traits, sure, but new traits?  Uh uh.  But they come back with assertions that ti is so and you are just stupidly not seeing how it must be so.  Just add millions of years of time and magically it will all come together for you.  We don't need to know HOW it comes together, we just know that with enough time it will.  Because natural selection is such a beautiful idea, so appropriate to thetask, etc etc etc.

actually it isn't and I have to repeat this heare too.  When Darwin was breeding pigions and thinking about domestic breeding as the model for the mechanism of evolution, meaning natural selection, he was assuming that change is change, that you coudlgogo from the poufed out chest of the pigeon to something other than a bird given enough timje, just by the continuing selection of traits as they pop up in the organism.  Buut the traits he was working with are already there, they belong to the bgenome oftha tspecies.  once they are there you can select for them.  That woujld be true in the wild too.  The traits that arleady belong to the creatioure, even new traits that turn ujp because of a new set of gene frequencies due to migration away from the orginal population, if the trait is there it is already in the genomoe itis part of the creature's geneit package  . ot os wjat ,ales tjat   it iw what makes that creature that creature, that species that species.  

Nothing ielse is going to turn up to select from than traits that are already part of the species.  Of it if does happen you have to say how it does and show how it does, you can't just assert that it does.  Because how we know that each creatuer ehas its own genome.  Its characteristics are all formed from bcobinations combint  combinations of those traits, the genes for those traits, the alleles for those traits, that are already there.;   For evolution you need something completely new and outside the creature's genome.  Don't just assume mutation can accomplish that.  Mutations works on what is alreayd there, it changes an existing gene, it doesn't have anythingelse to work on.  Where is it going to get that something else to work on?  

These are the questions the scientist, it seems to me, needs to me to be thinking about, and not just relying on a beautiful theory and calling it fact.

_Later Forgot___mention that Dawkins said he thinks the genome as it evolves would be like a palimpsest, a writing over as it were of the former information that has become irrelevant, but of course thta raises the uestionj again, the same question,   where does the information come fro to create this brand new genome?  How does it arise?  In what incredments?  At what point in the organism itself if tht is of any importance.  You are getting somet completely new, right?  You aren't just getting repurposed genes, and how could you anyway?  Every time you mtuate a gene, you gestroy the gene's function thta preceded the mutation.  You kill the old organism bit by bit if you suplant its genes with new materioal over and over and over, and you kill it even before the new geneitc code has been selected, much of which wouldn't be selected anyway , given the probabilties invovlved.    Already I think it out to this imossiblity .  Can Dawkins come up with a way it could work?_But he doesn't go in that direction, again he is apparently content to assume that evolution is true, that natural selection works as beautifully as he imjagines it does, so therefore it must be possible for a whole genoe to be gradually overwritten as it were by a completely new one.  Far as I can see you can't even get one gene to be successful overwritten by another let alone a whole genome with all its separate chromoseomes and thousand upon thousands of tgenes, keeping those which work I suppose and acquring rprecisely the ones you need o get a brand new organism that works as well as the previous one but is a completely new creature.   Isn't this ijust a cmonumnetla pip dream Mr. D?

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