Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Looking for some light reading? Then this book probably isn't for you. But, regardless, it is well worth adding to your collection.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) is a rare look into the sordid world of self-justification. It examines how decisions that are clearly wrong can be made by people and justified or even strengthened when events go belly up.

Take, for example, a cult that believed the world would end on December 21st and that they would be spared by being abducted by aliens at midnight on the 20th. Surely, you would think, when 12:01am rolled around, the faithful would be faithless. In a rational world that would be the outcome, but not in the surreal world of emotional illusions. By 4:40am, when it was absolutely clear to the most ardent of the faithful that the prophecy had failed, the prophet had another vision (what a surprise). And the vision was that the steadfast belief of the faithful (a group of about 30) had spared the Earth (the billions of us outside the fold). The "salvation" of the entire Earth lay with those 30 kind souls. Quite thoughtful, really. After this, instead of loosing momentum, the "faithful" then became more passionate and devoted than ever before.

Ah... I hear you saying, but I'm no freak. That could never happen to me. Yet this same mental mechanism, cognitive dissidence, works on numerous levels. Consider smoking. The consequences of smoking are inescapable and horrendous and yet still millions persist.

Moral of the story. Whether its alien saviours or a fag after a pint, Proverbs 21:2 still holds true, every man is right in his own eyes.

I've painted myself into a few corners over the years and got my feet dirty trying to get out of them... Mistakes were made by me...

Here's a few others worthy of note in this category...

The Lucifer Effect With a title like that, how can you resist?
Dont Believe Everything You Think is another...
A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives brings some humour and wit to the arguments

...so if you're stuck in the middle of the UK floods and a little bored, go to Amazon.com and order some of these. The military may not be able to get help to you, but Amazon will :)

Man created gods in his own image

There is no doubt that Christopher Hitchens is one of the more brilliant minds of our times. His incisive wit, depth of thought and ability to articulate what others would never dare consider is second to none.

His latest book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is challenging, to say the least, for a Christian minister to read, consider and enjoy. (You can read two chapters and the conclusion, here)

The Bible declares that God created man in his own image, however, there can be no doubt that man was not to be outdone by this and so man, in kind, set about to create gods in his own image. Hitchens book offers rich insights into the history of religion, so much so that there may very well be a fatwa declared against him by the Mormon church.

The conclusion, though, is predictable. What should we do when faced with such a tidal wave of irrational, irreverent religious possibilities? Refute them all. Throw the baby out with the bathwater and embrace atheism.

Is there an alternative? Is a belief in God possible without wallowing in the irrational, succoring on emotions and conscience? In the financial realm, when considering an investment move, the wise course is to conduct an impartial audit, to apply due diligence. Perhaps this is the solution.

Catholicism and the celibacy of priests and nuns would stand condemned by I Timothy 4:1-3 where forbidding to marry is accounted the doctrine of devils. In like manner, perhaps in the final analysis of our audit none of the various interpretations and factions would be left standing. But maybe that's not such a bad thing. Perhaps the problem hasn't been God, but misrepresentation. Maybe we would be left with what was originally intended, an actual understanding of both God and man.

I Thessalonians 5:21 says "Prove all things, hold fast to the good." Even in atheism, there is something to learn. Perhaps Mr. Hitchens would find a distilled and purified understanding of the Bible a beauty to behold.

Why are scientists atheists?

Why are scientists so dead-set against the concept of God?

They say, "we can't test the theory." But you can't test the string theory either, and you don't see mass revolts against that. There's absolutely no proof for the existence of Dark Matter except that we have a hole in our gravitational calculations and it just so happens that Dark Matter is a convenient way of filling that hole. Occam's Razor would suggest that when 99% of the universe has to be made up of Dark Matter for the our equations to return a result close to what we see around us, it's the equations that are wrong. Dark Matter is fairy dust.

Interestingly, if you adopt the fractal universe and the influence of electromagnetic radiation on large scale structures of the universe, the "need" for Dark Matter to make the equations work disappears... To my mind, the observational evidence for a fractal universe and the elimination of fairy dust are the two strongest reasons to consider fractals. But... that strays from the point.

Science has always been at the cutting edge of suggesting things it cannot prove or substantiate. It took almost a decade before anyone was able to find any conclusive proof about relativity and, even then, some of Einstein's predictions weren't properly tested until the late 1990s, almost a century after they were made. So I don't buy this, "I don't believe in God because I can't test Him" argument.

I love the image associated with this post. It shows the distribution of galaxies through space. The solid green curve you can see is the Great Sloan Wall. A hundred years ago, an image like this was unimaginable. Erwin Hubble would be astounded at how far we have come in such a short period of time.

So why do scientists feel threatened by the existence of God?

The Religion of the Secular Left

Those of us who believe in God well know the sneering disdain of the atheist political left. There are of course many kinds of atheists, but few are as self-righteous as the humanist left.

It's striking how religious the anti-religious left-wingers have become.

This stark irony is glaring in the recent bullying of the church by our Labour government. Having grown up in the church I see the worst characteristics of religion in the secular left:

1. Disagreement from the received wisdom is barely tolerable. All efforts are made to suppress dissent. Parliamentary time was not even allowed to debate new laws which will force Roman Catholic run adoption agencies to adopt children to gay couples. The view that "any loving stable relationship" is equal is above question to the elite left. In their arrogance, they smugly dismiss the accumulative wisdom of human history, heritage and design. They have no respect for the knowledge of the church which has been active in caring for orphans and the vulnerable long before the government took an interest. The liberal left's willingness to use children for this reckless social experiment is deeply shameful.

2. Those who dare to disagree are personally attacked. There has to be at least a character flaw, and probably a psychological derangement in anyone who deviates from the holy consensus. To suggest that children should be with a mother and father is tantamount to sacrilege. 'Homophobia' is the much thrown about accusation as though belief that marriage is between an man and woman, or disagreement with gay couples adopting is a mental illness. Actual phobias are real, and can be debilitating to the sufferer. Believing that children in need of adoption should be cared for by a married man and women is not a phobia, it's common sense.

3. Outrageous bossiness. The elite not only demand obedience of action, but obedience of thought. Not content with banning smoking in public buildings, every public building must display regulation signs forbidding the practice. Once again, churches are being made to display the signs. Nobody smokes in church! If the lefties had ever put their head in the door for a moment just to glimpse the heritage of their nation's principles, law, morality and values, they'd notice that no one is smoking in there. We don't need your damned bossy sign defacing the wall! The fashionable morality of the left may be a flash in the pan beside the enduring principles of the church, but those moral fads will be forced on all nonetheless.

4. Condemnation - for all are guilty. We're wrecking the environment, world poverty is somehow our fault, we're supposed to apologise for African slavery. We're even to blame for the shit-for-brains murderous rabble spreading their violence over the middle-east and the world. Your car is too big, your carbon footprint is too big, your arse is too big, you eat too much, waste too much... And fear - the Earth is too small, too warm, too full, too dangerous, and that's our fault too.

Jesus himself detested this religious practice of lording over people...
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

Jesus called them together and said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.

So many times I've heard Christians criticized for "pushing their beliefs on others". Religions certainly have been guilty of this, but no more so than today's political left. Jesus didn't put his energy into bossing others around. He taught and lived what he believed, and people were inspired to follow.

Jesus wasn't religious at all. He said "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It's the political left and this damned Labour government that has all the hallmarks of a constrictive religion.

Easter

Easter is on the horizon, and it's got me thinking about the impact of Jesus Christ's life.

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus Christ stood against religion, not for it. It seems almost anytime he healed someone, he upset the religious status quo. He confronted tradition, challenged dogma and exposed hypocrisy. Eventually, it was the religious leaders of his day that orchestrated his murder. I've often wondered just how welcome he would be today in the numerous churches that bare his name. Has anything really changed?

Anyway, here are some quotes about religion that I think Christ would approve of...

Steven Weinberg
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

Anais Nin
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”

Ghandi
“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”

Richard Dawkins
“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”

Stendhai
“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

Sinclair Lewis
“When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

Georgis Harkness
“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.”

And from an unlikely source, Larry Flynt
“Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.”

From what I read in the Gospels, Christ would agree.

Taking things too far...

A translation too far...

A "pictorial translation" of The Bible in Lego has been published on the Internet. Although it's all very cute and funny, it takes itself quite seriously and (not surprisingly) strays into the kinds of inaccuracy that cause the things of God to fall into disrepute.

For example, Jephthah is described as killing his daughter when to give someone as a burnt offering, in Biblical culture, meant to be dedicated to service in the temple (Romans 12 speaks of living sacrifices, not dead ones). Also, Judges 11:40 goes on to say she was visited (King James says 'lamented') for four days each year. It's pretty hard to visit someone that's dead.

Samson gets a raw deal in the Lego Bible, apparently he's a mass murderer. I guess that saying is true after all, one man's freedom fighter is another man's mass murderer/terrorist.

The Lego Bible is political correctness gone mad...

Aliens?

Why are Christians (especially) threatened by the possible existence of aliens?

Why can't there be life on other planets?

I've been recently reviewing such
astronomical details as The Great 
Attractor and the Sloan Great Wall,
things that just baffle the mind for 
their sheer size. If the known
universe (and The Great Attractor is 
unknown, we can see its gravitational effect, how it is attracting our 
galaxy at a phenomenal rate, but we have no idea what it is, while the 
Sloan Great Wall is probably only a small portion of the actual wall), 
but if the known universe was the size of the earth, pick up a grain of 
sand and look at it. That's still larger than our entire galaxy! Let 
alone our solar system or the Earth itself. We are a really, really, 
really small part of this universe.

For those of you that are Christians, think Psalm 8:3-4

I think most people would agree with the definition of an alien being a 
lifeform that does not originate from Earth. In that regard, the Bible 
is full of aliens. Think angels, devil spirits, cherubim, seraphim, etc.

OK, sure, these are all classes of spirit beings, not physical beings. 
But they're alive and they do not originate from the earth. Why does 
life have to be limited to just the physical realm. That's all we can 
investigate at the moment, but pause to remember, 100 years ago a 
wireless connection would have been witchcraft, flying to the moon was 
considered a flight of pure fantasy. Now days, no one blinks an eye at 
these concepts.

Is it egotistical on our part to assume or to insist that we are the 
sole intelligent inhabitants of this universe? Why couldn't God create 
life in some other galaxy (there's certainly plenty of them) or even in 
this one? It's His prerogative, not ours. Who are we to insist He 
couldn't have done that?

Deuteronomy 29:29 says the secret things belong unto the Lord our God. 
Perhaps the Bible is just silent on the subject and we've misread 
silence as a declaration of exclusivity on mankind's part. Perhaps He's 
taking the US nuclear warship policy, refusing to either confirm or deny.

Perhaps one day ET will return our long distance call... It would 
certainly lead to some very interesting conversations and comparisons 
between the development, culture, intellectual and religious paradigms 
of two previously isolated worlds... Rather than feeling threated, I 
think it would be fun. There would be a lot we could learn. Perhaps 
we'll be surprised by how different "they" are. But, given that the laws 
of science are universally applicable, perhaps we'll be even more 
surprised by just how much we share in common. And in the meantime, 
there's always Hollywood to stir the imagination :)