Tuesday, September 3, 2024
Restoring america
A Leftover Bit of Geological Evidence Against the Theory of Evolutio
Going back to a post to include somjething I left out isn't easy when it's been some time seince the post ws writen so I'm going to put here as a separate post just one small point I left out of the discussion of gthe geological evidences against evolution.
It's all about observing the physical facts about the strata or layers of sedimentary rocks found all over the world, in which the fossils are buried that are used to prove the idea of a fossil record of evolution from simple to complex. The strata themselve sare physical structures you can see and think about in terms of their phyhsical properties, but oddly enough that isn't much done that I can see by those who use them to prove an Old Earth and evolution through the fossil record.
I've made the point that they lie flat and straight across thousands of scquare miles which alone makes them useless as a representative of time periods since nothing could live on such a landscapte> first it has to be recorniizesd as a landscape, that that is what is implied by their use as markers for time periods of millions of years. theyh are rocks, they are of one sediment, they can't represent anything that was ever the surface of this earth.
Second I've made the point that they lie undisturbed in thier original horizontal form from bottom to top, just a placid stack of sedimentary rocks one on top of another. What this shows is that they can't be time periods on the usrface of the earth becaucause this planet is known to be very active with weathering and earthquakes and fovolcanoes and so on and so forther. Ther is no sigh of any such activity within the strata themselves aywhere. All that activity doews up acting UPON the strata whether in small or large chunks, as those forces batter and break and tilt and twist them . All as a unit, however large the broken unit may be. the Greand Canyon experienced none of that, only the pushing up of the land underneath which cut the canyon itself as I uinterpret it, but the upheaval wasn't enough of a jolt to break up the strata for at least the depth of a mile.
Now I want to point out just one liettle proof that the earth is not old by looking at the strata: that is that these layered walls wherever you find them, erode and conllect the products of the erosion at their bbase. You see this in the grand Canyon where the walls are all skirted at the bottom by such debris. And in Monument Valley where the huge buttes called Monuments also are surrounded at their bases by such skirts of debris. These skirts as I'm calling them, although I know there is a scientific terms for them that I can't remember right now, should be a measure ot he time that has elapsed since the monument began to exist. They've been eroding since all the other layers once part of were washed away and they were left standing alone on top of one of those layers that stayed intact. For some reason hunks of the layers were left standing as those monyuments. The same happened in South America on an even grander scale in the "tepui: gigantic buttes of a mile in thickness and fairly broad too, five of them in Venezuela as I recall, all made of sandstone in that case. They o must have such skirts collected around them as they've been eroding since they were carved out of the totality of the staraa and left standing separately there.
You'd think, and this is my oint, that if the Earth were really millions of years old, or billions, that theyse strata which in conventiaonal time analysises go back hundreds of millios of years, might ave eroded away down to nothing but dust, not merely accumulated these fairly substantial but nevertheless pretty paltry piles of debris around their bse. Millions of years for such a tiny bit of accumulated erosion? I think they've veven made some measurements of the rate at which the erosion occurs but I don't know the numbers, it just seems pretty obvious that hundreds of millions of years of erosion would have made a much larger pile and in fact would have completely obliterated the structures from which it is falling.
A few thousand years perhaps?
Monday, September 2, 2024
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.
thPeters\is blog:
faithswindow@mail.com
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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Explanatory note is at: _____Faith's Window: Contact Possibility (watchpraystand.blogspot.com)_
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Contact Possibility
Since I can't make use of the Comments section here, or use my email any more, I've been left without any way of hearing from anyone about my osts or antyhign selse for a long time, and it's been frustrating. Especially now when I'm getting into the evolution issues again where it would be very helpful to get some feedback.
I'm pondered many possiblityies including putting the phone number of an old cell phohne up, but that really is not a good idea so I scrapped that one. but then I realized maybe I could get a family member to keep an email account for me. We discussed it and now that's what I'm going to try. She started the account for me and is going to monitor it for me and read me any messages I get, read them over the phojne since she lives out of state. The idea is thta if it nees a response I'll dictate a mesage for her to write back to the person, or I'll answer it on my blog.
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Here's an email address for responses to this blog:
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Explanatory note is at: _____Faith's Window: Contact Possibility (watchpraystand.blogspot.com)_
Saturday, August 31, 2024
dAWKINS iS rIGHT aBOUT iSLAM
i WISH i COULD READ THE TITLE OF THIS INTERVIEW i'M LISTENING TO, A RATHER CHUBBY FACED GUY INTERVIEWING HIM BUT i CAN'T SEE HIS NAME OR THE TITL EOF THE INTERVIEW.
bUT dAWKINS IS ABOLUTLY RIGHT ABOUT ISALMA. I WISH HE DIDN'T ELIDE IT WITH cHRISTIANITY BUT i HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT HE'S TALKING MOSTLY ABOUT MIDEIEVEL "cHRISTIANITY" WHICH IS OF COURSE rOMAN cATHOLICISM WHICH USURPED THE CHURCH IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY, AT THE SAME TIME, INCIDENTLY;LY THAT iSLAM WAS GETTING STARTED IN THE eASTERN PART OF THE eMPRIE. tHE TWO RELIGIONS DO FORM THE TWO LEGS OF THE STATUE OF nEBUCHADNEZZARS DREAM DESCRIBED IN dANIEL tWO, THE TWO LEGS OF THE EMPIRE ITSELF REALLY AS THE bISHOP OF rOME REALLY DID INSINUATE HIMSELF INTO THE POSITION OF cAESAR IN SOME COCKEYEED FASHION. aND PRESIDED OVER SOMETHING HE CALLED THE hOLY rOMNAN eMPIRE, WHICH AS vOLTAIRE CALLED IT, WAS NOT hOLY, NOR rOMAN NOR AN eMPIRE AND SO MUCH FOR THAT. bUTG IT WAS THE REVIVAL O THAT EMPIRE IN SOME IMPORTANT SENSE, AND hITLER TRIED TO FOLLOW IT WITH HIS tHIRD REIGH.
BUT ISALM REALLY IS THAT EVIL RELIGION dAWKINS IS TALKING ABOUT. aND cATHOLICISM'S ATROCITIES HAVE BEEN PUT ON A BACK BURNER AS IT WERE FOR A S LONG AS pROTESTANTISM HOLDS OUT IN SOME FORM OF POWER, THOUGH UIT'S NOT LOOKING GOOD . pERHAPS WE WILL BE RAPTURED SOON AND THEN THE pOPE WILL SHOW HIS TRUE COLORS AS THE aNTICHRIST AND THEN THE COUNTDOWN WILL BEGIN TO THE RETURN OF jESUS cHRIST.
iSLAM WAS THE WORLD OF THE DEVIL THORUGH THE DEMON THAT CALLED ITSELF gABRIEL WHO TALKED TO mOHAMMED IN THE CAVE, BUT cATHOLICISM WAS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL IN OTHER WAYS, GRADUALLY INSINUATING THE PAGAN RELIGION OF GABYLON THROUGH rOME INTO cHRISTIANITY. THERE IS NO JSTIFICATION FOR MURDERING APOSTATES IN cHRISTAINTIY, BUT THERE IS IN cATHOLICISM.\\\\
iT'S TINE INTERVIEWER, HOWEVER HE IS, WHO IS THE SILLY ONE, THE WRONG ONE, IN THE PART OF THE DISCUSSION ABOUT iSLAM. HE ISN'T GETTING IT AT ALL. DAWKINS IS VERY VERY RIGHT IN THIS ONE PART.
hOW VERY NICE IT WOULD BE IF HIS GOOD FRIEND aYAAN hIRSI aLI COULD INFLUENCE HIM OUT OF SOEME OF HIS SILLY IDEAS ABOUT RELIGION.
i'VE LOST TRACK OF THIS POST UNFORTNATELY. i THINK IT WS ABOUT iSLAM AN dAWKINS BEING RIGH TABOUT IT?
wELL i'M GOING TO TAKE IT SOMEWHERE ELSE ANYWAY.
HE GOES ON IN THT DISCUSCION TO SAY HE DOESN'T WANT TO INDOCTRINATE ANYOE INTO ATHEISM, SAY IN THE SCHOOLS. gREAT. HE WANT SOT TEACH CRIMTICAL THINKING, HOW TO THINK THROUGH EVIDENCDE AND THAT SORT OF THING. wONDERFUL. eXACTLY WHAT i THINKI WE SHOULD BE TREACHING. aND i THINK HE HIMJSELF FAILS AT IT MONUJENTALLY AS I;VE BEEN TRYING TO POINT OUT.
TGHEN HE GOES INTO HOW RELIGIOUS aMERICA IS AND WHAT A BAD THING THAT IS AS IT SUPPOSEDLY PRODUCES PVERTY AND SO ON. BUT HE'S ABSOLUTELY OFF TRACK ON THIS ONE. aMERICA BECAME THE MOST PROSPEROURS NATION ON EARTH beca*se WE WERE cHREIRTIAN, AS tOQUEVILLE SAID. aMERICA IS GREAT BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD IS ATRIRBUTED TO toquevill, and I know it may not hvae been from him originally but it does express the point he ws making in his book Democracy in Ameri a. Chrtsitianity is THE engine that created America and I'm glad to thini we still ahve enough of it still left that there might be hope that we could revocvoer from the onslilaught of all the forces Dawkins would like to bring back against us. No. Christianity is the reason we prospered and the reason we are able to have such a free socieyt. As John Adams said our governemtn was made for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate for thte governing of ay other. yes yes yes. But we've been losing that religious charcter and that's a tragediy. becaue that could dump us right into the totalitarian grinder. As it looks like could happy with this coming election.
Dawkins needs to hera from his friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali about how America was founded on Christianity and all our benefits come from it, and that the cause of our success can't be attributed to anything else and can't be trans[lantedywhere else because it is built on Christian culture. Europe has some of th
\\ut unforutnately it has centuries of catholic totalitarianism behind it.
and is now getting overrun by Islam too, which could happen to us as well if we are unsuccessful at doing what needs to be done in this next electionj.