Wonderful Matters

I found out about a new word the other day. Never heard of it before, and somewhere, I think it was on my Google page, there it was. Heuristics . Apparently this is the practice of joining with others to bat about some thought or idea or concept with the intention of arriving at a firm understanding of it. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but that's the idea I got. Came from the same Greek word that's in Archimedes' "Eureka!" What a totally cool thing to do! Heuristics. I must say I'm all over that. I revel in engaging others about vital issues, critical topics, all of that. Let's do it! The problem I have is when people don't want to do that. Sadly, at least what I've seen, very few truly want to do that. Oh many say they do, but they don't. When you get into the meat of something, most people get far too uncomfortable. It's not even that they don't want to do it, but get downright nasty for even venturing a bit too far into heuristi...

I enjoy browsing in bookstores, but I have a peculiar distaste for them because of this weird concoction of feelings I get every time I'm perusing the stacks. On one hand I see so many fine books I will never have time to engage, and on the other hand there is so much crap mixed in there that makes it quite daunting to distinguish the two. I usually leave with a heavy sigh on my breath. I shouldn't be so cynical. Some people put a lot of work into that crap, and that has to be commendable. Anything an individual says is worth noting one way or another, I'm sure. Even learning of the wretched things the World puts out can be edifying in some way. As I was peeking around at the newest offerings table, my attention was drawn to a title by Michael Lewis called The Real Price of Everything . I was even more intrigued when I went to pick it up and saw that it was quite the tome, weighing in at 1472 pages I saw on Amazon. Wow, I initially thought, what a masterpiece. This much of ...

In and around all the attention given to a seminal event--"Super Tuesday"-- in the long selection process for the next American Caesar, the news broke that actor Wesley Snipes was acquitted of major tax charges against him. Snipes tried to use the 861 argument to avoid paying taxes, and in response some mainstream anti-tax-protest pundits went into their typical hyperventilation mode to firmly remind us that we do indeed have tax liability. One of them was MSNBC’s John Schoen, who in his short piece dated February 3rd used the following adjectives and epithets to describe his conception of tax protestors and their movement: “delusional nonsense,” “comical collection,” “myth,” “non sequitur,” “misinformation,” “out of touch,” “crazies,” “kooky,” “ridiculous,” “absurd fairy tales,” “twisted,” “giant oak of nonsense,” “inanely creative theories,” “amusing,” “frivolous drivel,” “like-minded lunatics” I selectively pulled them from the piece to highlight the fact that I think he w...

I look over the Los Angeles Times frequently just to see what the World is talking about. You may have seen quite a few references to it in this blog, but that is only because I live in the Los Angeles area and it is the top paper of the area, a prominent System mouthpiece along with the New York Times and Washington Post to keep us abreast of all the things we're supposed to do to be good World inhabitants. Today I noted a couple of things from that mouthpiece that add more profound evidence for the nature of the World in distinct contrast to the Kingdom, the place where God calls us to love one another authentically. I want to start with Tom Petruno's column titled "Fed needs you to take risks despite chaos." He goes into all the yabba-yabba about how lower interest rates may be good for borrowers but is lousy for investors, he puts out some numbers-- yeah yeah, anyone who pays a rats nard of attention to the market knows all this. His main point is that for the eco...

Recently I came across two articles that I wanted to share with you. The first is called "The Lima Bean Gospel," written by a Presbyterian minister who laments the impotency of the church today. He points out that those given over to postmodern sentiments consider Jesus and the gospel no better than lima beans, just a thing those people have over there. He does an eloquent job of making the case, but the problem is that this is nothing new. For eons I've seen desperate resignation from all the Christian faithful about how irrelevant "the church" is. It always seems to come from people who've gone into Christendom bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and then when they see what's really happening they write things like this. That second piece is Bob Burney's Willow Creek Confession , in which he explains how Illinois megachurch Willow Creek Community Church comprehensively evaluated its "seeker-sensitive" model and found it woefully lacking in maki...

My latest webzine home page piece addresses some of the absurdity of the Darwinist world view. Sometimes I wonder in these endeavors if (a) I'm offering something new to the conversation and (b) if I'm fully giving honor to the One Who Is Truth, Jesus Christ. I say this because as I review my latest piece I think that (a) I'm just rehashing all the stuff most Christians already say is truly silly about Darwinism, and (b) I make a case for God but that case may be shrugged off because so many believe in "God" anyway so what'm I really saying after all? As I think about it I've found that (a) I do offer some ideas no one is talking about, namely that Darwinists must by nature be absolutely blind to what is true as they are beholden to the one who was sent out of the presence of God in Genesis 4, and that (b) I make clear that God of whom I speak of is the Jesus Christ of Scripture, not some nebulous "whatever you want to make him" kind of God. But...

Prepared for what space alien robots will first tell you when they zip down from the skies? Remember what that is? For review: "Take us to your leader." Turns out they won't have much trouble finding them because the leaders of the World System are also robots, in a sense. They don't know anything about what makes an earthling truly human, that's for sure. To find out what I mean, my latest webzine home page piece gets into it, with a bit of the Darwinism debate as a pretext.