Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Another funny post by Steven Den Beste. Basically he posted a snapshot from a Canadian news paper that states “World’s two most wanted war crimes fugitives still evading justice”

Now lets evaluate this jewl of a headline. To be a fugitive, don’t you have to be on the run? Seems like they are being a little redundant. Lets say, far argument’s sake, they aren’t being redundant and we have these two criminals evading justice. Now lets say they are caught, therefore the first and second most wanted criminals are out of commission, what happens to the third and fourth most wanted? Well it seems to me that they are now first and second (lucky them!). There is always going to be “two most wanted.” This headline could be said any any time of year and will ALWAYS be correct. ALWAYS. I thought this was very clever.

Shalom

Original Post [UPDATE: Original post and comments are no longer available. sorry!]

Steven Den Beste wrote a great article today (7/15) about the differences between “can” and “may” – capibility and permission. More importantly, appearance and reality or form and substance. He relates the discussion to the war in Iraq and how the opposition often relies of the fallacies of form and will often ignore substance. Check it out, good stuff!

Shalom

Edit:
Also, check out this article called “Terror in the Skies, Again?“. Very interesting, indeed. Found from Lileks – you should read his commentary on the article as well – and Instapundit

Original Post [UPDATE: Original post and comments are no longer available. sorry!]

It has been a while since I have posted and I have a lot on my mind so I will try to get some of those things out now and possibly eloborate later.

I like Dennis Miller, I think he is funny, clever, tries to be honest with the people he is talking to, and isn’t afraid of being blunt. I saw his new show in CNBC the other day. It wasn’t as intense as his show on HBO, but that is to be expected. Miller is pretty conservative and I genearlly agree with a lot he says and often appreciate how he says it. His guest on that particular night was Jerry Jenkins who is co-author of the “Left Behind” series of fictional books dealing with the end times / second coming of Christ. I have read the first few books in series and did enjoy them. They aren’t the most well written books I have ever read, but entertaining none the less. I am genearlly not a big fan of “Christian fiction” but these books put an interesting spin on the book of Revelation. I don’t necessarily agree with the theology behind the books (meaning I don’t believe that the end times will have to look like it is portrayed in the series, but that is ok, it is a work of fiction.)

I had mixed feelings about the Miller / Jenkins interview. Both parties seemed very heartfelt in their questions and answers. Jenkins did to one thing that I was not very happy with: he stated that ALL Christians believe that this is how the end (Parousia) will look. That we all all be rapured up into Heaven etc etc… This is a preeminent belief of dispensational premillennialism – not necessarily ALL Christians. I have two qualms with this view. Firstly, I take issue with how the word rapture is used. “Left Behind” has the rapture taking all true belivers up to Heaven all to meet Christ before the 7 years of tribulation. I see the rapture as a gathering of the people of Christ as He returns (See 2 Thess 2.1-2, 1 Thess 4.14-18 also descirbe this gathering with Christ in the clouds.) The word “rapture” is basically from a Latin word translated from the Greek “episunago” meaing to gather together. Yes, it is true that the word “rapture” is never actually used in the Bible, but the concept IS there. My point is that the rapture of God’s people to meet with Christ is not necessarily going to happen right before the rapture, the concept of “episunago” is not actually found in Revelation. Secondly, I take issue with that idea that all Christians are going to leave earth and mett UP in Heaven and ramain there for ever. It is pretty clear throughout the Bible that at the Parousia it will be Heaven ON earth not some ethereal fluffy-cloud-land. Yes, 1 Thess 4.14-18 makes note of gathering up with Christ in the air. BUT, if you actually read 1 Thess you will see that Christ has already descended from Heaven at the time of this meeting. It seems that the fact that the concept of rapture will occur in air is more of a meeting point, a rally-point if you will, NOT the location of Heaven or where all true believers are going to hang out for eternity. If you only used this passage to figure out where Heaven was going to be and the end, you would not be able to make any assertions because Christ descended from heaven to meet us, the eventual location of Heaven would have to be ascertained in another manner – like other places in the Bible.

Other than that point I think the interview went well. Mill asked some very difficult questions of Jenkins. The eternal “Why should person A who is well educated, intelligent, and a really great person be damned to Hell just because he doesn’t believe Jesus is the Christ while person B who is not that bright chooses to accept Christ will make it into Heaven?” This is a hard question and the answer is even harder. Jenkins did a good job of not denying the Truth of God while also explaining it in a way that was not too harsh. I liked the fact that Miller was blunt with Jenkins about his own beliefs and did not seem to mock Jenkins for his. Miller honestly saw a passion and heartfult belief in what he was saying and seemed to respect that. At the end Miller jockularly stated that (loosely quoted) “we will see what happens in the end and if, as you are ascending into heaven and seem me down in the basement, put in a good word for me because I had you on my show.”

I hope the Miller continues to seek and ask honest questions and will come to realize that God is not about damning those to Hell that don’t follow Jesus, but is about saving those that do. If we are honest with ourselves we will see that we are sinful and really do deserve Hell. Even the “really nice” people mess up and sin, we all do. That is the nature of man after the Fall. It is only by God’s grace and mercy that we have another future available to us. God is the glass half full not half empty. God mourns for those that don’t follow the path to him and miss out on the eternity with him.

I have many more thoughts on that issue that will probably be saved for another time.

I would also like to say something here, because I really haven’t yet, about Michael Moore. I have not seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, not sure if I will. I wish people could see his films as they really are – opinion. People, not everything you seen in a documentary is fact, please remember that! Moore has an agenda and that is what he is pushing, nothing more. Please, please, please check out this blog (thanks Sal) for a wonderful discussion of Moore and one of his more recent opinion articles in the LA Times. This is WELL worth the read.

I always have more to say but it is almost 1 and I have to be up at 6, so I should go to bed. I look forward to any comments you all have! It is very strange, I never saw myself getting into the world of blogging, but here I am getting out all these different resources to give me fodder for my post. If nothing else, at least I am educating myself!

Shalom

[UPDATE: the original post and comments are no longer available at ModBlog sorry!]

This is a post I wrote in another forum:

Here is another article that I think you should all read. It is, again, a lecture by Michael Crichton. He says a lot of really good things in there that I really like and he said a few things that I did disagree with. Being a very rational, scientific person I liked that he pointed out that science and religion should not be the same but I did not like that he thought that they were mutually exclusive. I did think his analogy of Environmentalism to religion was somewhat fitting.

His article is about Environmentalism and how it is pretty off base. He parallels it with religions belief as it is based in faith and not fact (which is something that I don’t really agree with when it comes to Christianity as I think both fact and faith are extremely crucial, but his parallel still has value.) Here is something he said towards the end of the article:

How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There’s a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren’t true. It isn’t that these “facts” are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all—what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.

Now he is not saying that religion is bad in this article, he is saying the religion of environmentalism is bad.

I know it is another long article, but I think that both of his lectures are quite interesting and have a lot of great things to say and talk about. I like to read so I definitely enjoyed hearing his thoughts. I would love to hear what you all think about his stuff.

Here is the link

Now, I do believe not only that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but indeed they really are mutually inclusive. Although, while mutually inclusive, they are not the same and cannot be defined in the same terms. One thing that pisses me off so much about secular (and often Christian) writers/scientists/whatevers is that they either completely have Christianity and science at opposing ends of a big fight or they try to equate one with the other. Science supports Christianity (and the other way around) and that is an amazing thing and it seems people always want to either ignore it or not give it enough credit.

Hope you are listening!
Shalom

[UPDATE: the original post and comments are no longer available at ModBlog sorry!]

Yes, that is right, they do. Well, ok, maybe indirectly. This is actually a serious article (actually a lecture) by Michael Crichton. Everyone should go read all of this: Aliens Cause Global Warming.

I thought this was pretty insightful.

Quoted from somwhere else by a friend:
“I think that this is an excellent article and an excellent insight, but I also think that Crichton is overly optimistic about the past of scientific endeavor. Sientists are people, and people are not objective beings. Now, we can train oursxelves to be more objective, but at the very point that you begin to claim pure objectivity-which scientists have been prone to from the beginning of science-you betray a big ole blind spot. ”

Many of the topics raised I think are interesting things to research, such as the search for ET, but I think the problem that arises is that people become blinded by what they are looking into. Ideally we should all be completly objective, but it doesn’t always work like that. If someone starts to call themself completly objective (which I think a lot of really intense scientists often do, possibly evolutionists…. another issue completly) they are fooling themselves, the scientific community, and the (often ignorant) genearal public who have no reason to think the scientists AREN’T completly objective. It seems that policy can often come from those who consider themselves completly objective but really have no (or little) clue about what they are talking about. Science should be left to scientists and policy should be left to policy makers. The former should inform the latter but not the other way around.

Anyone read it and have any thoughts?
Shalom

[The original post and comments at ModBlog no longer exist! Sorry!]

I was reading sisterzion’s blog today (There is no God.) and it was dealing with questions coming from non-belivers. “What if you die and find out there is no God” was the specific question being asked. These types of questions are often used to get us to question our faith (which can be a good thing) and turn us to another path (which is often less good…). The annoying thing about these questions is not in “having” to explain your faith (because that can be a powerful witness) but in that the person asking cannot often answer the opposite question (ie. What if you die and find out there IS a God?). Generally it seems (yes I know, not always) that if you start to question someone’s religion (YES, religion) of non-belief you will often be labled a closed-minded Christian and therefore have no input or rational opinions on any matter from then on. Yes I know I am over stating things a bit, but you get the point.

This brings me the the issue at hand: being open-minded. This is an issue that I am very passionate about and can get very pissed off at people over. There seems to be a huge double-standard when it comes to dealing with beliefs. If you have strong beliefs in something that disagree with what I beleive, you are closed minded. Whereas whatever I believe in, I will always be open minded. You will only become openminded when you disavow what you hold to be truth and start believing what I hold to be truth. Again, I know I am overstating things, but it is to make a point.

It seems that the only people that are always open-minded are those who say they don’t really believe in anything, which, to me, is a crock in itself as in order to not believe in ANYTHING, you are placing belief and trust and faith in that. (You may take note here that I am not the most PC person in the world. I will genearly tell it like it is and I am sorry if that offends you, I generally think people are too sensitive and just need to be real with themselves and others.) The moment anyone has any conviction about anything, they are immediately branded as closed-minded (this doesn’t just apply to Christians). What non-Christians need to understand is that just because we have strong beliefs in something, that doesn’t mean we will not listen to anything else. And just because we believe you are wrong, just as you believe about us, that does not mean we are passing judgement on you. The world is a depraved place, Christians and non-Christians sin, that is the result of being a fallen people. We are taught to love the sinner and hate the sin, if a Christain is not doing that than they have issues to deal with on their own. Now just because I am not passing judgement doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want you to question what you believe, just as you would do to me.

Truth is NOT relative as much as many would like to believe, and they are completly free to believe it, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t wrong. Being open-minded doesn’t mean that everything has to be valid and true, it means that you respect that others hold different beliefs. Yes, I pray that my non-Christian friends would become Christian because I know it to be truth. You may disagree with that, and you are free to do that, you may still be wrong. You can just as easily say the same thing about me, I could be wrong, but if you were to tell me that I have to change my beliefs because I don’t allow for other truths, you would be the closed-minded one. To truly be open-minded you have to allow for the fact that others will have different beliefs and that is fine. I still think I am right, as do you. Many people would love for truth to be relative because that way you don’t have to tell people they are wrong, it would be very nice, but unfortunately, I don’t believe that is the way things really are. I guess we shall see in the end.

Ok, I think I am starting to ramble a bit, once again. I am sure there are things I meant to say but forgot. I am sure I will remember them sometime..

Shalom

[UPDATE: the original post and comments are no longer available at ModBlog sorry!]