A Few Questions...

From the book, The Devil’s Delusion by David Berlinski,

A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions:

• Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close.
• Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close.
• Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close.
• Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough.
• Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough.
• Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good? Not even close to being close.
• Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences? Close enough.
• Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even ballpark.
• Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.

Berlinski does not dismiss the achievements of western science. The great physical theories, he observes, are among the treasures of the human race. But they do nothing to answer the questions that religion asks, and they fail to offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated.

“God is Missing”

(Nietzsche Had it Right)

An Endearing Story

Two little boys, ages 8 and 10, are excessively mischievous. They are always getting into trouble and their parents know if any mischief occurs in their town, the two boys are probably involved.

The boys' mother heard that a preacher in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys.  The preacher agreed, but he asked to see them individually.

The mother sent the 8 year old in the morning, with the older boy to see the preacher in the afternoon. 

The preacher, a huge man with a deep booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Do you know where God is, son?"  The boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open.

So the preacher repeated the question in an even sterner tone, "Where is God?! Again, the boy made no attempt to answer.

The preacher raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "WHERE IS GOD?!"

The boy screamed and bolted from the room, ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him.  When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?"

The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in BIG trouble this time!"  "GOD is missing, and they think WE did it!"

A Serious Truth

The reality of the matter is that God is missing and WE did do it!

The simple truth is this.  Religious ideas have lost their social significance in western culture.  Thus secularization has become the norm but not just any secularization.  It is a rather proactive even aggressive secularization!

Within Western Culture, when the individual chooses to hold some belief or another that is not agreeable to the culture, then something very interesting but very tragic happens.  More and more that culture seeks to stamp its standards upon that individual in an attempt to mold him into the cultural norm of naturalism and thus secularism. 

At one time religion had a seat at the table and a place in public discourse.  Now it is relegated to eating in the kitchen.  At one time ethical truth was that which was foundational to one’s life and the functions within the group.  It served stabilized however with secularization such is no longer so.  Even the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, though he sought to decimate Christian belief and compromise ethical thinking recognized that the outcomes of such thinking would be dire.

 “The greatest recent event – that ‘God is dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable – is already beginning to cast its first shadows. . . . But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension. . . . Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means – and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our . . . morality. . . .”

Nietzsche, in Gay Science at http://philossophy.wordpress.com/

category/philosophy/nietzsche/

Friedrich Nietzsche was right, and even during his lifetime he could see that without there being the influence of the Christian God, the shadows of moral degradation and missing civility were beginning to be cast over Western Culture.  It is interesting to note that Nietzsche spent the last of his years insane and silent.  The only time he broke that silence was to quote the Scriptures he had learned as a young boy.

"Farewell Uncle Sam"

RIP Uncle Sam (1776-2012)

***To those of other countries who read this blog, the focus of the following is upon a deeply divided America that I fear is headed for a precipice and a fall that is beyond the comprehension of her citizens.***

"Farewell Uncle Sam"

Sorry Uncle Sam, my condolences as it seems your demise is at hand. We and all who served you, salute you and all for which you stood.  

They were all there in the execution squad,

• Preoccupation with self interest over the national good,
• Not just big but now gigantic and intrusive government,
• A political class that is out of touch and considers themselves superior to us,
• A secularism that is intolerant of faith,
• Absent ethical standards not to mention decaying moral values,
• Abortion on demand,
• Economic redistribution through excessive taxation,
• Shifting blame in order to accept responsibility,
• Encouraging irresponsibility rather than accepting responsibility,
• A biased media that presents liberal editorial as news,
• Liberal education,
• A National Command Authority that not only does not like the military but disrespects the men and women who serve,
• Creating a victim mentality and thus victims where there were none,



Committee on Un-American Activities

• Class warfare,
• Revisionist history,
• Deception in the highest political offices in the land,
• Politics of personal destruction, and
• Of course there were others.

I am sorry to see you go from us. Before you go, please let me say a big thank you, I really enjoyed supporting you and serving in your military and supporting your citizens in other ways. You meant a great deal to me.  You gave me blessings that no other government has ever bestowed upon her citizens.

For a while there was hope as I watched you valiantly soldiered on even after you have been shot over and over again. But they finally got you when then attacked you with falsehood, environmental junk science, and other excesses.

I shall miss you but not for long for I am in that Medicare generation that will now face decreasing medical care and the same end as millions upon millions of the unborn.  

However, not to worry for the time tested adage, "You reap what you sow" will insure that one day "the chickens come home to roost."  What those special interest groups listed above fail to understand is that big and intrusive government will one day set its sights on many of them.

As it happened in the French Revolution so too it shall fall upon these special interest groups as well.  It will come as the very government in which they believed will intrude into their lives.  They shall then wonder what I did to deserve this?   

Should I still survive I will smile but remain silent.

My sorrow is for our children and grandchildren who will live in a socialist state with controlling, intrusive, government that bleeds them dry of hope and initiative. 

So farewell my friend, farewell. Or as we used to say when the country had a Navy, "Fair winds and following seas."

Your friend,
Alvie