Liberal Drift in the right Direction

I hope it's a good sign that RFK has endorsed tRUMP.  bRET wEINSTEIN ALSO SIAD HE'D BE WILLING TO FVOTE FOR tRUMP WITH rfk ON THE TEAM.  i HOPE THERE ARE OTHERS WHO WILL DEFECT FROM THE TOTALITARIAN JUGGERNAUT OF THE dEMOCRATIC pARTY WHICH IS GOING TO DESTROY aMERICA IF THEY WIN THIS ELECTION.  i HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO GE TMY FLYER TOGETHER, MAYBE TOO BIG A PROJECT FO RME AND TIME IS RUNNINNG OUT BUT i'M GLAD THERE ARE LIBERALS WHO SEE THE PROBMES WE ARE FACING AND IF MORE OF THEM DO THEN THERE IS STILL HPOE.

TGhinking About Diet, the Fall and Evolutiohn

 Two or three years ago I got sensitized to the fact that we are living in a fallen world, we are fallen human beings living in a fallen world.  I already knew that of course, it's standark Christian theology, but it hit me hard because of somje spiritual experiences I was going through mysef and I came away from those with a heightened sense of the fallenness of this world and of our own bodies.   

hrough the problems of the creation-evolution debate that the fact that we die which is the nimber one symbpto of fallenness is what people take for granted in the theory of evolution.  Death is just part of life, just a normal thing as people think of it who have no belief in fallenness or even anya awareness of the concept.   Bu in the biblical creatinist context death is unnatural, it's the producet of disobedience to god:  The wages of sin is death says the scirpture.  We die because we disobey God, which is what he told Adam and Eve would happen when they were told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   They disobeyed and began to die ritght away, starting with their spiritual connection to god Himself.

Every kind of disease is part of the deathk and every kind of calamity too.  It's all the result of sin whether direct or indirect, immediately related to our own actions or remotely conntected to somnething in the distant past we know nothing about.  We inherit our ancestors sins too.  

DNA would of course also be affected by the Fall.  It provides a different basis for explanation of how genetics works of course, for instance mutationjs make sense as the mistakes we know them to be when we aren't tryint to force them to be the cause of evolution itself.  They are concequences of the Fall, part of the deterioration process the world is undergoing as a result.  They may not do immediate damage but over time and especially if they accumulate in one place they are no doubt the cause of genetic diseases of all kinds.  I think they are also the caue of junk DNA.  I think the fall has killed that much of our genetic system, which originally would have been designed to provide protections and sttrengths to our bodies to make life easier in the physical world.  So much has been lost if this is the explanation that it would seem we were once of superhujan streth to compare us with what we have left to protect us inj this world.  

Lately I've been thinking about this carnivore diet, and in fact all the different diets we've heard about over the last few decades.  The standard diet is treated as poisoous, we need to cut out this or that to be healthy they dsay.  We know sugar is a problem and we eat too much of it, and then they pointed the inger at fat, and then at red meat, told us to eat whole grains and fuits and vegetables.  then we got variations on regional diets that emphasize different sorts of fats and plant footds.  Then we got Atkins and the ketogenic diets, meat is good after all, it's carbs that are bad, particularly the powderingy floury kind, sugards of course but also flour , rice, potatoes, bread, antyhign starchy.  that sort of faded away for a while but now we're hearing about this carnivore diet which seems like a ketogenic diet on steroids.  Only it isn't particularly promjoted for weight loss, it's been disocvered in many cases as a healer for various diseases.  So now meat is good for us, even the despised red meat.

Through the dietary changes I kept reminding myself that the bible has people eatig every kind of food.  Mildk and honey is how the Promised land was described, the land of milk and honey, so dairy which is often made a villain in toda's regimens, is OK in the Bible, and honey which is of course sugar.  God told Noah to eat meat after the flood so meat is good too, red meat, the meat of lambs and cattle particularly .  butter is good.  Abraham served his angelic guests butter along with their meat.  Some sort of meal or flour and oil seems to have been a stabple in blibcla times.  The women in the Elijah story of the nevernednging supply of those ingrediencets is a case in point.  No meat in that sortory.  She was gpoor.  But Elijah himself had been fed a "cake" with water when he was camped by the brook as the famine got underway.  This "cake" made with oil is mentioned many times.  And then Ezekiel has a meal of a mixture of grains and beans.  lentiles are eaten.    then we hear about the "dainties" served at the tables of the pagan kings such as Nebuchadnezzar though they aren't described beyond that.   Daniel and his friends rejected them and asked for "pulse" instead, p[romiseing ti twuld keep them healthy.  Vegetables ofsome sort we assume.  And it did keep them helathy as they trust God to protect them when they rejected the no doubt idolatrous meats of the king, meat sacrificed to idols that is which they wouldted to avoid.

In Jesus' time it seems to have been a lot of bread and fish, at least among  the disciples.    In any case the range of foods presented as normal food is pretty broad.  Why should we think of any of it being bad for us now?

Probably, I would guess, becaue the Fall is a progresive thing.  It gets worse as time goes on.  Sins accumulate and their consequences accumulate.  More genes are destroyed by mutations for instance so the bodies' natural protections keep diminsihing.

That alone woudl explain why some foods may not be good for us, or not good for some of us.  People with particular diseases through genetic mutations would have to avoid foods that tohers wouldh't who don't have those genetic problems.  Gluten is a problem for sonme now.  It's a perfectly good fod, wheeat that is, but somme people lack the ability to tolerate it.  Dairy is a perfectly good food but same thing, some of us can't tolerate it well enough.    

Animal meat no doubt contains mor nutriesnts than plant fopods being made of the same stuff as our own bodies, so it may be that it's an all purpose solution for people who have specific problems with other foods.  

Anyway.  these are the lines I tend to think aloeg these days when \\\\concerning diet.  I thik it would be a more productive directio for science to take in understnading how we need to eat for health, different people needing different kinds of foods and so on, but o course nobody thinks in terms of the Fall, we are sddlesd with this ridiculous evolutionary system intead.

NThe world is deteriorating too of course, and that means foods may also be deteriorating, but science can find ways of dealing with these problems if we focus on them in the right way.

ot to leve us with no hope here:  we have God who still rpvodes what we need and we can ask Him for help with all of it.

Dawkins and Ali on Her Christian Faith

 I mentioned in a post below somewhere that Dawkins responded to the idea that his friend Aayaan Hirsi Ali, and I have no idea how close I got iwth that spelling, who now calls herself a Christian after being an atheist  for years, is not really a Christian because she's too intelligent to believe all that stuff about the virgin birth and the resurrection and the miracles and so on.  

So I just now  am listening to a discussion between Dawkins and Ali in which he says the same thing and she tries to answer rthat she is indeed a Christian, and he does come around to seeing that she is although of course he cosiders it nonesense and says so.  

She's a new Christian and seems to be struggling to say what she actually believes, has to ut it in terms of different planes of perception in which the Christian miracles Dawkins disdains are true but in some kind of different way than we know things to be true normally.  This is rather confusing and disturbing.  i think it's because she hasn't yet let go of her scientific frame of reference and knows how these things are going to be heard by Dawkins and others so she doesn't yet have either the courage or the certainty to know that she does in fact believe these things in the same way we all believe anything to be true.  There is no other way to believe anythingis true.  The resurrection is an actual fact, so is the virgin birth, jesus reallyh is the Son of God.  God really did put Himself in the womb along with Mary's DNA to make a God Man, Jesus God from all eternity, now also fully Man.  And He did really rise from the dead.  He died on the Cross and came back to life in the tomb and talked with His disciples after that.    that is what you must believe if you are a Christian, and I think Aayann is struggling to recognize that she does believe that, she can't believe thst she believes it yet, or something like that.  She doens't think it's really possible to believe that sort of thing literally yet so although she knows she does belive it she has to couch it in some other language or terminology that removes it from the usual category of true things.

Dawkins is of coruse struggling to mjake sense out of her confusing way of talking about it.  He does say something I have to agree with, which is that the realityh of God as believed by Christians is far bigger and imore imortant than any story of person al comfort or morality based on the stories and so on.  Yes, he's right, ahnd I hnop;e she comes around to recognizing that the Christian miracles are true in the real sense of the word true so that Dawkins can at least know that's what is meant for sure not just by her but by all Christians.

Yes, Richard, the fact that it's comforting or has a high morality doesn't make it true, and Aayaan is struggling with the fact that she can't prove those thihgs true that you ogjvet to for that reason, so she wants to claim truth for them in some other dimension or plane of perception.  But the fact is she does beieve them to be true the way we all believe anytihing to be strue.  ShJesus really did literally rise from the dead, really did die, really did come backt to life.  SE

There is no proof inj the scientific scnece of course because they ese are historical facts and you cant prove historical facts the same way you p;rove scientific or pheyical facts which persist in the wold throughout timje.  Historical fact are one time events.  THE ONLY EVIDENCE WE HAVE IS TH EYEWITNESS EVERIDENCE.  and tghat is perfectly good evidence.  they saw the events that she can't show you.  They are written down, they ahve been written down for thousands of years.  You are wrong that there is no evidence, it's just that you refuse to acept eyewitness evidence, you insist on imosing your own prejudices on it.  You cany it can't be true simly because it seems outlandish to you no matter how many others claim to have actually witnessed it.  They are stuid, yuou are in the right.  that's all it is, Richard, you refuse to believe the testimony.  

Since we can't know these things firsthand the sway scientific facts might be known, we have to believe them and that is what faith is.  Fatih is the "evidence of things unseen"  because it is how we know these things, actually know them, by believing the terestimony to theml.  Jesus even let us have the example of "doubting" Thomas, to show us that the thing was true that he was refusing to believe simly because he had not personally witnessed it.  When he was literallly shown it by Jesus then he believed, but Jesus chided him saying those are blessed who belived the terisony.  And that's all we have who weren't even there.  Thomas was there and had the privilege of being shown the actual fact of Jesus having beein riased from the dead.  but we don't have that privilege.  What we have is faith in the tertimony of those who saw it, and faith in the Lord Jesus Himself for the promises He gives to save us for eternal life.

Eric Metaxas' Book Letter to the American Church

 I still think along the line of printing out flyers for distribtion to cars in shopping malls and under apartment doors and that sort of thing, because all the electronic avenues of speech are shyut down by evil forces these days, including even the postoffice although I wouldn't want to add the cost of postage to the project anyway.    Flyers under windshield wipres isn't perfect either of course since one can esily enough imagine zealous liberals running round ripping them off cars and tearing them up, but it at least it would tire them out in a way just canceeeling a you tube channel wouldn't.

The idea, again, is to try to get the truth to the half of the population who won't uotherwise get it because of all those blocked eavenues as well as the ingrained prejudice that keeps them from looking for the truth where it might be found.    

I did think of a way it could be done without needing billions of dollards, and that would be to distribute them in small barches, being sure to get them first to conservative sources who could make more copies and also distribute them in small batches, just a dozen or a hundred cars in the shopping mall lot by each participant.  The more people the better, the less strain on any one source and the less easy it would be for the enemy to tear it all done wisince it wouldn't be focused in any one place.  One parking lot might only get a dozen scattered here and there for instance at any one time.  Nobody can afford to get thousands of copies, let alone gather others to help with the work, but if it's donw by volunteers in amsmall batches and sporadic efforts it could accomplish quite a lot with less oranization.  Each person culd send a few to freidns across the country so that the same pattern would be getting repeated everywhere.

The truth about the political situation, exposing all the lies put out by the Democrats, against Trump for instance, and also how they are pretending to support the auses that the right is promoting these days, although they will just take them back when they have the power again.  Every lie to be corrected that you can think of.  I suppose there shoudl be a main text for the flyer, but then maybe that too could be just whatever people come up with.  

But I was just listening again to an interview Jordan Peterson did a while back with the Christian writer Eric Metaxas and was reminded that the Church is where turth should start.  The Church is the watchdog of society if it's doing what it should be doing, the salt and light.  And the Church is not doing what it should be doing, it has capitulated to the government manadate to shut down for the pandemic for instance, or most of them did.  As Metaxas points out in the interview that is to abandone the whole point of being the Church.  If we believe what we say we believe wesshould have th courage of lions in the face of every kind of threat to our ewellbeing, our livelihood, our reputation, our survival ofor that matter, becuase we should have the faith that God will protject us whenever we act according to what He would want us to do , which is always to put our own wellbieing on the line when truth fis at stake.  In this case the survival of western society is at stagke.  And Metaxas wrote his most recent book to the Church in response to what he strongly felt to be a call from God, to inspire the Church to be the Church and confront these forces of fevil.

I heard about his book some months ago but there's no point in my getting it since I can't read it, unless I have people to give it away to who would read it and frankly I can't think of any.  I haven't learned how to do the audio bversion of new books and the free audio versions aren't available for new books, only those past the date when they becomine public property.  

But I wanted a friend to take a copy to his pastor and he didn't do it.  That was months ago.  Metaxas saiys in this interview that it has been read and made a difference for many pastors alreayd so I'm happy to hear that at least.

I didn't give the title, did I?  Letter to the American Church is the book.  We need a huge upridsing of Christians to face down this tsunami of evil and such a book shouold be helpful but I'm aware of too many even now who say no we're just for teaching the gospel, not to get plitical.  Metaxas makes it very clear that that is anabandom ent of what the Church is supposed to be in thie world.

I don't understand why she denies cetainty about the persistence of her soul after death, becaue what Jesus promises us is eternal life.

The Tone of Evangelicalism

 I am often promoting Protestant or evangelical Christianity over catholicism , which of course I have to do because that's where the truth is, BUT even as I do so I'm uncomfortable with what I think of as the imageage it has in the public eye.  The telebvangelists of course who are a huge embarrassment, but even just the everyday average evangelical congregation behaves in ways that make me cringe.  

Whyu do they always have to sound like they are at a football game when something is said up front that they approve of, erupting into whistles and yhells and whoops.  God grief.  WAnd ehwn a speaker they like is brought onstage you get the same reception for him or her a Hollywood celebrity might get, all hyped up by the introducer of the person, put em together for  so and so and all that.  It couldn't be sounding more like a worldly event of the worst kind.  

I don't hear the Holy Spirit in any of that and it makes me wish I didn't have only evengelicalism to offer when I talk about the problems with other religions.  There doesn't even seem to be a particular denomination I could prefer either, mmy own favorites often carry on in the same tone, not always but enought hat the recommendation is muddied.

Catholic discussions I've herd online end to be quiet and serious and respectful and although they are rpomoting a pagan monstrosity of a religion I have to say I much prefer their general tone to that of evangelicalism.  

 

Meannwhile the World Godes Careening On

 I feel a need to apologize for not addressing either the poltiical situation or the prophetic much lately, and getting off on what must seem to be peripheral concerns at best  considering the sire straits the world is in at the moment.  I just want to say I'm not ignoring it in my own mind, just don't have anything very useful to say about it right now.  There's either too much or too little to say.  I feel hopeless and yet I keep hoping.  Maybe I'll have something more to say soon, I don't know, but I just had to get this much said for now.

Cheers.

Oh not that I think anyone is waiting for my pronouncmenets on these things, just that I'm remiss not to bring them up.

Diet, Religion, Philsophy, COnfusion

 After listening to so many different opinions on so many different subjects over the last few weeks, or even months by now, I lose track, It can become a sort of congested wad of stuff in my head that needs sorting out.   I'm talking about the interviews with Dawkins and Musk and Peterson, especially the carnivore diet and of course religion.  Tammy Peterson becdame a Catholic during her bout with cancer and her discovery of the diet practices that made the biggest difference for her health.  Dawkins grumbles about religion all the time, Musk kind of evades the topic, Peterson likes it but more as a pschological exercise or therapy, the diet the diet the dieit seems to work miraculously and I'm pondering it still.  Where do I start with this blob of stuff.

Well, the first thing I thought after writing that was how I can't afford this carnivore diet.  It's all well and good to say yes it's expensive but sickness is expensive too when you happen to be literlaly not able to afford it, period, whih is my situation.  I wouldnm't want to start out cold turkey anyway, as they say, I'd want to ease into it which would takene the edge off the expense as well as the dietary shock so its affordability may be in the end inconsequential anyway.  But it's a fact, and I'm not thinking of trying to eat steaks, or even steak at all ever, just fatty hamburder chicken, hotdogs perhaps and so on, and I still can't figure out how I could manage an entire month of eating nothing but those things .  But again , at the moment it's not a crucial element in myh decision as I'm going to start with the simple stuff, the ketogenic basics, uctting out the really bad carbs and going from there.  

I just heard an interview of tammy Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife, about how she arrived at her carnivorous diet and the specific eaways she's adapted it to her own particular needs.  She and her huasband and daughter together have quite a collection of immune deficiency problems that the carnivore diet turns out to be the best way of eating for all of them.  Very convincing testimony it seems to me, and inspiring.  as far as I know the only genetic disease I have is my maculary degeneration and although I think it might be helped in some ways by the right diet I'm not expecting a cure for that.  It's other conditions I have I hope would benefit, and I don't think I need the drastic solution of all meat, but I don'tr relaly know.  I'll have to give it a serious try, easing into it birt by bit and see what I find out.

Tammy's becoing a Catholic of course bothers me.  How did she choose that particular route?  She prays the rosary in the mornings, that's what Catholics think prayer its.  It's very distressing to a protestant to think Catholics think that.  At the intd of the interveiw her friend who is also a Ctholi prayerd ten times the prayer fromj the Orthodox Church that is familiar tro me from the time I was reading up on the mystics of that traitions.  Lord jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Ten times.  Repetition of these rote prayers is not prayer to me, but it had effects on the mystics, visions and clairvoandce experiences and that sort of thing.  Is that from God?  

Well, no.  Thanks to Watchman Nee's book on Soul Power I can now recognize that phenomena as psychic phenomena , not psirutual phenomena.  Ther is a big difference.  We are body, soul and spirit, and we are only fully spirit if we are born again, but people who are not born again can have experiences that they regard as spiritual thorugh "soul power" or psychic power.  Psyche is the word for soul, as pneuma is the word for spirit.  These are spcyhic powers.  Visions and claiboyance and the lieke.   If the person is not born again they are not coming from God at all, thoughj people who are born again sometimes have such experiences and may mistake them for spiritual also.  Spiritual means they are connected to God, through the quickened or regenerated spirutal faculty given to us at salvation.

Catholics don't talk about salvation or if they do it's not the way Protestants do.  Jesus is a spiritual guide more than He is a savior, even if He's called the Savior.  It's rather disturbing to think that there may be healings that are not coming from God, messages that seem to come from God or Jesus that are really coming from some other source.  I want to say hororay for Tammy that she's healed, but then I get the heebiejeebies thinking about her being a Catholic.

Salvtion comes from recognizing thta Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins in your place, Jesus the Son of God and perfect Man who alone could perform such a feat.  We are fiorgiven our sins because He is able to forgive sins.  Our sins are all paid for by His death and if we don't reckon ourselves dead and buried with Him we are not saved, we are still "in our sins" as scripture puts it, and not saved from Hell.  Which is of course a far more important blessing than any healing of our physical bodies in this life.

BBut so many people of the educated classes particularly consider the true Christianity to be intellectually untenable, and someone who chooses Catholicism is probably in that camp.  Jordan Petersonj is prbably influenced by such thinking, considering his Jungian views mor eintellectually defensible than the simpleminded tuff of evangelicalism or something like that.  Dawkins can go on and on about how stupid Christianity seems to him although he likes the morality.  As a truth claim he thinks it ridiculous.  Well, scripture has his nmber of course, decribing the gospel s a tubling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks.  In that frame of rejference Dawkins in a Greek,k which is the New Testametn equivalent of "Gentiles" in the Old Testament.  You are a Jew or a Gentile, a Christian or a "Greek".  Dawkins ins a Greek.  And so is Peterson.   The Greeks were very proud of their intellectual prowelss, their Athenian ponderings of the big questions , their eillusrtrious philosophers.   They considered the apostle Paul to be a puny little contender on Mars Hill as he tried to teach them about their "uinkhown God."

It's all such a perfet picture of the mentality that is the exact opposite of what jesus preaches to us, about how we must become as little children in order to inhertie the kingdom of God.  You must become as a little child even to believe that Jesus died for our sins of course, that that being born again which is the result of that self humbling to a little child is given onlyh when you give up all that pretense to sophsitication and intellectual highmindedness.  Yes, they think you very silly when you choose the true gospel, they think you stupid, intellecutally deficient.  Even if you had before that choisdce always enjoyed a respet for your mind, as I had, when you choose the lowely simple gospel you become an idiot in their eyes.  I had tht experience.  I lost a lot of friendss.  But I'd rather be a small child for jesus.

Dawkins goes on and on about a friend of his who can't possibly be a real Christian because she's too intelligent for tht.  She doesn't really believe all that foolishenss, that there is a an old man in the sky who hears prayers, that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the death.  And she probably doesn't, she just lieks the cultural forms of Christiansity as heeven Dawkins himself does, but to believe it, no, that's just beneath him, and possibly beneath her too, but I haen't heard her side of it, just his.  He's quite contemptuous of what CHristians elieve.  It's just too too silly to be believed.   The earth only six thousand hyearrs old?  Pretty silly I agree.  It made me laugh when I first heard it

Byt But I was laughing happilty ebecause I believed it and thought it very funny that we've been taught it's really billions of years old and how silly six thousand looks next sto such a n august number as billions.  

And by the eway we don't believe in a n old man in the sky, we believe that God is Spirit and pervades all creation, is everywhere at once.  Sometimes scripture pictures an "ancient of days" on a throne in the visions of a prophet int he OT, but that's because scripture isn't snobbish, it aims to save everybody from the very bright to the very intellecutally challenged.  Thew very bright are the elast amenable unfortunately.

Where was I?  Have I unraveled that intlelectual sticky mess I started out with ?

Oh I don't know, but I'm getting tired.