Monday, November 10, 2008
Discovering God by Professor Rodney Stark
Rodney Stark
• Rodney Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He grew up in
• Discovering God is a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age. Sociologist Rodney Stark surveys the birth and growth of religions around the world—from the prehistoric era of primal beliefs; the history of the pyramids found in Iraq, Egypt, Mexico, and Cambodia; and the great "Axial Age" of Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, and the Buddha, to the modern Christian missions and the global spread of Islam.
How do we know what the Ancients Believed?
• The Tel’s or mounds of cuneiform tablets from
TIME LINE
• -200,000 B.C.E Ceremonial burials
• -10,000 B.C.E. Altars and Idols
• -4000 B.C.E
• -1400 B.C.E. Akhenaton, monotheism
• -1300 B.C.E The Exodus from
• -1000 B.C.E Kings David and Solomon, the first
• -900 B.C.E Elijah
• -800 B.C.E. Isaiah (1st), Founding of
THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E
• Zoroaster in
• Pythagoras and Orpheus sects founded in
• Upanishads in
• Jainism perfected in
• Buddha founds a new faith in
• Lao Tzu founds Taoism in
• Confucius founds a new Religion in
THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E
• Jews taken in captivity to exile in
• The first
• The Jews return from exile and build the second
• The
THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E
• Early Religion demanded sacrifice to the Gods to propitiate their anger and obtain their favor. Worship was a foreign concept.
• The Gods were previously viewed as immortal beings but not Omniscient, Omnipotent, nor especially nice.
• No link existed between religion and moral conduct.
• The revolutionary religious outlook that appeared in the Axial Age was that religion was rendered ethical . God was now seen as demanding that we live a moral life.
THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E
• During the Great Axial Age the idea rapidly spread the we earn our fates by our behavior, thus the connected concepts of sin and salvation had been discovered.
• Hinduism, Greek Orphic and Pythagorean Mysteries – the “good” are reborn to higher social status and vice versa
• Buddha – A moral code of conduct for followers.
• Jews and Zoroastrians developed strongly held views of Sin and Salvation at this time
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPT OF SIN
• If God and his Creation are Perfect, how do we explain the existence of evil?
• All of the major religions are dualistic. They assume the existence of lesser spiritual beings such as Satan, Angels, Demons, Cherubim and Seraphim, and etc. who exist and operate only within God’s authority.
• Satan is not God’s equal but he is stronger than any
• Jesus put it this way “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand”.
• Origen wrote: “ We teach about God both what is true and what the multitude can understand. The written revelation in inspired scripture is a veil that must be penetrated. It is an accommodation to our present capacities that will one day be superseded”.
• Augustine wrote: “since God is incapable of either error or falsehood, if the Bible seems to contradict knowledge, that is because of a lack of understanding on the part of the servant who recorded God’s words”.
Stark’s Criteria for Divine Revelation
• “Christianity epitomizes revealed religion and offers a substantially more nuanced vision of God --- and presents a more comprehensive doctrine of salvation.”
• “Real Science arose only once: in Europe, not in
• By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology based on excellent observations of the stars, but only in
• Most non-Christian religions do not posit a Creation at all: the universe is eternal and while it may pursue cycles, it is without beginning or purpose, and most important of all, having never been created, has no Creator. Consequently the universe is thought to be a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary”.
• “In contrast, based on their commitment to Judeo-Christian theology, Europeans assumed, not only, that the universe was created, but that its workings are logical and consistent, thereby being susceptible to reason and inquiry.”
• “Consequently, science arose only in Christian Europe primarily because only Europeans believed it could be done and should be done.”
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Economy Crash - Domestic Terrorism??
The market crash has lots of reasons but the severity was probably greatly increased by what appears to be deliberate acts of domestic terrorism. Here is the press release by the Government Regulating body:
"The OTS has determined that the current institution, IndyMac Bank, is unlikely to be able to meet continued depositors’ demands in the normal course of business and is therefore in an unsafe and unsound condition. The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York. The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.
"The OTS has determined that the current institution, IndyMac Bank, is unlikely to be able to meet continued depositors’ demands in the normal course of business and is therefore in an unsafe and unsound condition. The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York. The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.
"This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis," OTS Director John Reich said. "Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process."
Democratic Senator Schumer released the letter to the public with full knowledge that a run on the bank would be started. This was no accident and may have been a signal to other Democratic radicals in the Investment Business such as George Soros to begin a rumor campaign combined with short selling which created the maelstrom we have just witnessed.
Who is George Soros? Wikipedia has this info:
In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003,[26] Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it," and many continue to state this as Soros's position even after Soros clarified the statement in a Q&A session at the end of his March 3, 2004 address to California's Commonwealth Club.
Currency speculation
On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros became immediately famous when he sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds, profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.
Finally, the Bank of England was forced to withdraw the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and to devalue the pound sterling, and Soros earned an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England."
The Times of Monday, October 26, 1992, quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
According to Steven Drobny,[14] Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position," in accord with Druckenmiller's own research and instincts.
In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Later, he called Soros a moron.[15] Thai nationals have called Soros "an economic war criminal[16]" who "sucks the blood from the people".[17]
Public predictions
Soros' 2008 book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, describes a "superbubble" that has built up over the past 25 years and is now ready to collapse. This is the third in a series of books he's written that have predicted disaster. As he states:
I have a record of crying wolf…. I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times . . . the wolf really came.[18]
He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong… I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.[18]
Insider trading charges
In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but did later buy a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading as defined under French securities laws and fined him $2 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.
Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.[19]
His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006.[20] In December, 2006 he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14 year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing. "
Schumer, Soros and fellow radical Marxists may be directly or indirectly responsible for the crash of our economy and should be investigated. It looks to me like the elite Eastern Democratic power brokers decided to destroy the economy to ensure a Democratic victory. O'bama's impending victory is forever tainted with the stench of Acorn, Ayers and Soros.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Time to Pay the Piper
We've been had by Washington again. The Eastern Financial Establishment lead by the Harvard School of Business has spooked the elected sheep into spending $700,000,000,000 on top of $300,000,000,000 to keep the Eastern Elite's power and life style from cratering. The result will be decades of stagnant economies and stagnant middle incomes to pay for all of this. It is true that a depression would affect more than the blessed few but the bail out only protects those blessed ones. It's time for all of us to save our $'s and cut our spending, especially on energy. It can be done. Public transport does work and we all need to use it. We can cook at home rather than eat out. When was the last time you saw a suit carrying a lunch pail? You are going to see it soon. Greenies, be prepared to be blamed for all this. In truth you should get a little blame, but the NAFTA people and the Unions deserve more of the blame. The only way that wages could be held in so high was for our foreign policy to be strict isolationist. Instead we encouraged exports and cheap imports which resulted in deflation of American manufactured goods and the copying of American exports without regard to patents and copyrights. The ONE WORLD pushers have reduced American wages and productivity to that of the rest of the world and now we are going to be suffering for it for a long time. Textiles, Tools, Cars, Electronics - all American inventions stolen from us. Our Universities are complicit because they welcome foreign students whom they charge exorbitant fees knowing that their goverments foot the bill. These students then become the competitors of American industries using the knowledge developed by Americans with American money. It is no wonder that our standard of living is falling we are not getting ahead. It is time to close our borders, expel the illegals, and stop exporting our best and latest models. We need to develop our own communication and computer chips. It is widely thought that the Asian produced chips have a built in "bug" known as a back door that will allow not only snooping via the web or wireless, but will be used to blackout our communication, TV, Cells, and Satelites, in event of a war. Not a pretty thought that we would be defeated and not even know it for days or weeks.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Science and Religion
The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.
In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."[1] (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
Faith can be very very dangerous and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grevious wrong. (Dawkins, The God Delusion)
Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification. (Dawkins, The God Delusion)
Commentary:
I believe that a true scientist seeps a totally open mind. As a Geophysicist, I was trained to consider all evidence and competing theories. I know that Science cannot prove anything by force of reason. The motto of Science is “Suspended Judgement”. There are always other possible explanations. Occam's Razor is a nice guidepost but not infallible. Many in the Biologic Sciences seem to fall for the "50 Million Frenchmen can't be wrong" argument. My Statistics teacher made a strong point that rejection of the Null Hypothesis with a high probability is pretty weak given that the CONVERSE of the Null Hypothesis is NOT PROVED! The true Scientist must be Agnostic about both Science and Religion because to take sides implies the closing of one’s mind to other possibilities.
One of Dawkins implications is that the science of Evolutionary Biology is so well developed, that its conclusions are unassailable. This is quite interesting given that reproducible experiments in this field are not possible and the entire theory is reduced to a thought experiment. That said, I will admit to believing in Evolution as the most plausible theory out there but some form of Intelligent Design or guidance is not ruled out either. (pwj)
Dawkins has written some pretty radical accusations about Christians that should be answered quickly and well. Many of his accusations are based on clear abuses by out of control “Christians” in name only. One of my Baptist friends defined the problem of the Christian as “hating Sin but somehow managing to Love the Sinner”. We often fail in this regard but that doesn’t make us and evil breed, just Sinners trying to find our way. (pwj)
I am concerned that Christians are already being persecuted in Academia and the Political arena. Dawkins readily admits that a hatred for President Bush was his motivation for writing the book. If he has his way, Christians may be taken to the insane asylums and given drugs to make them forget their faith. This is precisely what happened in the Atheistic
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Global Warming - A Disastrous Misunderstanding
To the Glacial and Quaternary Geologist, it is known as an interglacial period. It has happened before at the end of each Glacial period. It has happened before man was invented and lived on Earth. The Earth came through it each time with only modest changes in its Geology and Biology.
Some would have us believe that warming is a new and unique phenomenon - it is not. Some would have us believe that it is the product of human activity. If that were true then this would never have happened before - but it has - several time in recent Geologic history.
Some would have us believe that CO2 is responsible. This is a result of studies of the planet Venus that concluded that its heat is due to the greenhouse effect. To extrapolate those results to the Earth requires some pretty heavy assumptions and is the stuff of interesting debate but not conclusive evidence. Certainly not strong enough evidence to reduce society to the stone age again as is being touted by some zealots.
THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS: We cannot expect to actually control CO2 production by humans when we cannot control their reproduction or any other substantial aspect of their lives. The current trends will continue and accelerate in spite of all efforts.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP OURSELVES: The lessons of Katrina and Rita are clear - Build Levees, Raise houses, move towns, develop civil defense - oops! homeland security plans and facilities, stockpile resources, invest in the future.
Some would have us believe that warming is a new and unique phenomenon - it is not. Some would have us believe that it is the product of human activity. If that were true then this would never have happened before - but it has - several time in recent Geologic history.
Some would have us believe that CO2 is responsible. This is a result of studies of the planet Venus that concluded that its heat is due to the greenhouse effect. To extrapolate those results to the Earth requires some pretty heavy assumptions and is the stuff of interesting debate but not conclusive evidence. Certainly not strong enough evidence to reduce society to the stone age again as is being touted by some zealots.
THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS: We cannot expect to actually control CO2 production by humans when we cannot control their reproduction or any other substantial aspect of their lives. The current trends will continue and accelerate in spite of all efforts.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP OURSELVES: The lessons of Katrina and Rita are clear - Build Levees, Raise houses, move towns, develop civil defense - oops! homeland security plans and facilities, stockpile resources, invest in the future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
