THE REAL MIRACLE

This marvelous thought is from my wonderful wife, Diana. Consider the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Most discussions that I have heard involve a magical increase of the amount of food to the point that 5,000 were fed and satisfied. This may be the explanation, but a more logical and much more meaningful explanation is that the people that were there had heard Jesus speak of loving their neighbor and taken it to heart. Thus, Diana envisions people sharing food that they at first had hid, or passing the loaves and fishes on so that there would be food for their neighbors, and etc. The miracle becomes one of divine inspiration rather than magic. We think the latter is a more modern explanation.

Towards an Sensible Energy Policy

So far the Obama administration's energy policy has been a mishmash of silly to dangerous radical left ideas which were fostered by lobbyists for Wind, Ethanol, Nuclear, Solar, and Karma. These ideas are all far less than half baked (.001%). Their problem is that they generally have absolutely no concept of the size and cost of the Energy Infrastructure that they hope to replace with their little hope-child. Don't get me wrong, I really believe in hopes and aspirations - that is what America is all about. It is just that Obama, as inspiring as he is, just cannot do it for them. It also cannot be done in a short time. It took decades for the current energy infrastructure to be developed and tens of trillions of $. Most of Obama's stated policy and unstated policy will only make energy more expensive and less available thereby lowering our standard of living to that of his beloved Kenya.

Some Sensible and Do-able policys that Obama could enact tomorrow and have a positive effect on the Energy problem and the general economy

1. Put a $20-40 tariff on all imported oil. This will have a number of beneficial effects immediately.
a It will raise petroleum energy costs and therefore cut usage which will improve all types of pollution including CO2. It will also create a significant revenue stream for the Government.
b. The price increase will carry over to domestic production which will stimulate investment in exploration and production of American oil. This will produce many new jobs and new tax income for Governments.
c. The increased price of energy will provide the economic conditions for Alternative Energy to develop as a lower cost competitor to petroleum based energy.

2. Open all of the US outer continental shelf to petroleum exploration and production. This will immediately produce tens of thousands of high paying jobs and the sale of leases will produce a large yearly windfall of revenue for the government . As oil is produced, it will produce both new jobs and a significant revenue stream for the Government.

3. If a billionaire can create economic space travel that can compete well with NASA by simply offering a $10 Mil prize, why can't the Obama or the Gorical use similar carrot techniques to produce new and better energy generation technology. I know the answer. The Obama's and the Gore's of the world get their kicks from blaming others for the situation and want to punish those whose success has made them both jealous and guilty. GET OVER IT.

4. If wind and solar are being held back by insufficient power line infrastructure then this is truly a job for BIG GOVERNMENT. Does anyone remember the REA (rural electrification association?). When we wanted to get electricity to the Farms and Ranches, it took a big effort, but we got it to them eventually. Now we have the problem in reverse. The Farms and Ranches could produce huge amounts of electricity for our cities but the infrastructure is not there. Warren Buffet has said that alternative power generation will be the salvation of our languishing rural communities and put them in the forefront of job generation and income production once again. HOORAY

5. Isn't it time that the Snail Darter Minnow took a back seat to Hydroelectric power and water control by means of dams. We have let the interests of a few loud lobbyists for obscure animals hold up the development of much needed water and power resources. California and some other states are running out of water because we aren't capturing it and controlling its use as we should. Aquifers are being destroyed by over-pumping of wells. aquifer recharge through a system of Dams is a do-able remediation for overworked aquifers. Our population has grown to the point that wild life protection is not feasible in many areas. Anyone who has visited China understands that our land use must be engineered.

6. You've hired a Nobel Physicist as Science Advisor. Why not let him work on the problems of Nuclear Power Generation and Nuclear Waste Disposal instead of letting him embarrass himself with naive and half baked statements about the Global Warming controversy. For one thing this would allow him to be PROACTIVE rather than REACTIVE and second, it would be an excellent use of his talents. As he well knows, Nuclear is the long term answer to our energy needs. Nuclear can provide infinitely expandable energy and can be as safe as we want to engineer it to be. He also knows that the answer to nuclear waste disposal lies in the development of the technology to use it in the generation of even more power. LET THE MAN WORK!

7. Since the Obama regime is so big on new taxes, how about using a little economic common sense in designing the tax code. Accountants and Tax Lawyers are necessary but the current tax code is way too complex making it necessary to spend too much of the GDP on non income producing activities such as tax a$$ covering. How about simplifying the code so that ordinary people can fill out their business and personal tax forms with confidence.

* MR. Obama, if you really want to end this recession then start talking to Business Leaders as equals and stop using the press to fry them in public. Business has to lead us out of the recession and your choices are: LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. It is time to stop the anti capitalist demagoguery.

Comrade Obama

Well, now we know what Obama's plans for us are. It is back to the back breaking and spirit breaking taxes for those of us that work. The promise of taxing the rich is now defined for us at the level of $75,000 joint income. His stated goals are to spread the wealth to all of those poor folks who never finished high school, never went to trade school, never learned to read or write and wasted their lives on drugs and alcohol. Those poor dears will swamp our medical facilities when universal health care gets implemented and those of us that have paid for our own health insurance will see our available health care greatly diminished. It will be like England and Canada where long waits for service end up with a Dr. x?.";*7% who was educated offshore and is barely able to speak English.
THE OBAMA PLAN:
1. He will try to break the back of the hard working middle class by taxing them to death. He is jealous of anyone who is successful and hard working
2. He will spend the tax money on the lazy class. He will pore funds into school systems that are totally uninterested in education of children. Teachers Unions will see to it that very little of the $ gets to the children. The winners are the Union power structure and the Principles and Administrators who inflate their salaries and self importance while the children languish.
3. He will pore money into the transportation infrastructure to pay off his debts to the construction, auto, and truckers unions.
4. He will pore money into alternative energy projects that will enrich certain political lobbyists. Alternative energy expenditures will not make energy crisis go away and it will cost a fortune and return a dime's worth of energy. Alternative energy will produce new and serious pollution problems as well. Efficient Solar requires rare metals that we will have to import and are a problem to dispose of after the solar cell is discarded.
3. He will pass laws that make dissent impossible (fairness doctirne). Obama can't seem to stand up and fight in a fair fight. The police state is already forming up in the name of equal rights (for the "right " people).
4. He will pass laws that force every worker to pay dues to and vote with the unions. Goon squads will enforce the rule that you vote the union way or else. This is the way it has been done in Chicago for over a century and this is the politics Obama knows and intends to use.
5. He will use front men to scare the public into compliance with his every scheme. Look at the radical statements about global warming f0r the model of 21st centure fear mongering. Thousands of eminent scientists have publically expressed their doubts about the degree of human impact on the climate. The Obama-Gore axis power dismisses them without any thought. of The use of the BIG LIE was developed by Stalin and used very effectively to control his unrully peoples in the Soviet Union. We should all be reading Alexsander Solzenitzen books (The Gulag Archepeligo, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,....) now to get a good understanding of what Gulags are and how OBAMA intends to use them.

OBAMA has the strong support of the Eastern Financial Intelligentsia. It is they who have benefited from the BAIL OUT. It is curious that BUSH (an ivy leager) and OBAMA (an ivy leager) should see eye to eye on bailing out their buddies at the big wall street firms. They keep trying to make us believe that if the wall street banks go down, then the world economy goes with it. Out here in the middle west our banks have money to lend and are still doing so. How can this be if wall street is bankrupt? The answer is that certain groups are being protected by the gorernment and as such are insiders. Our tax payer money is being stolen from us right under our noses by the very elected officials who have promised transparency.

Discovering God by Professor Rodney Stark

Discovering God

The Great Revelations of the 6^th Century B.C.E.

Rodney Stark

• Rodney Stark is an American sociologist of religion. He grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota in a Lutheran family. He spent time in the U.S. Army and as a journalist before pursuing graduate studies at The University of California, Berkeley. After teaching at the University of Washington for 32 years, Stark moved to Baylor University in 2004. He is an advocate of the application of Rational Choice Theory in the sociology of religion. One of Stark's hallmarks is writing with respect about the religions he studies.

Discovering God (review)

• 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?

• Ceremonial Burials with “stuff” needed in the afterlife

• Altars, Implements, and Inscriptions

• The Bible, and other ancient religious books and traditions

• The Tel’s or mounds of cuneiform tablets from Sumer that contain detailed instructions on religions ceremony.

TIME LINE

• -200,000 B.C.E Ceremonial burials

• -10,000 B.C.E. Altars and Idols

• -4000 B.C.E Sumer, professional priests

• -1400 B.C.E. Akhenaton, monotheism

• -1300 B.C.E The Exodus from Egypt

• -1000 B.C.E Kings David and Solomon, the first Temple in Jerusalem

• -900 B.C.E Elijah

• -800 B.C.E. Isaiah (1st), Founding of Rome

THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E

• Zoroaster in Persia founds monotheistic religion

• Pythagoras and Orpheus sects founded in Greece

• Upanishads in India Revolutionize Hinduism

• Jainism perfected in India

• Buddha founds a new faith in India

• Lao Tzu founds Taoism in China

• Confucius founds a new Religion in China

THE GREAT AXIAL AGE -600 TO -501 B.C.E

• Jews taken in captivity to exile in Babylon

• The first Temple Destroyed

• The Jews return from exile and build the second Temple in Jerusalem

• Isaiah (2^nd), Jeremiah, and Ezekiel

• The Roman Republic is established

• Mayan Civilization and Religion arises

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 Man.

Divine Accommodation

• God’s Revelations are always limited to the current capacity of humans to comprehend

• God is forced to resort to “baby talk”

• 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”.

Divine Accommodation

• 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”.

Divine Accommodation

• Stark: “Hence it can be argued that if religions have much in common, that is to be expected because each is based on revelations, variously accommodated and interpreted, from the One True God.”

Stark’s Criteria for Divine Revelation

• God must “reveal himself” as opposed to discovery during deep meditation or drug induced trance.

• God’s revelation must have consistency over time and distance

• Revelations must show increasing complexity over time as dictated by man’s increased intellectual abilities

Christianity and Science

• “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 China, Islam, India Ancient Greece or Rome. All these societies developed elaborate systems of alchemy, but only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry.

Science and Christianity

• By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology based on excellent observations of the stars, but only in Europe did astrology lead to scientific astronomy. Why?

• 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”.

Christianity and Science

• “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.”

Science and Theology

• Stark: “I find it more rational to regard the Universe itself as the Ultimate Revelation of God and to agree with Kepler that in the most fundamental sense, Science is Theology and thereby serves as another method for the discovery of God”.

• Tulane Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, Frank Tipler, agrees. (The Physics of Immortality)

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.

"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.

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.

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 USSR and led to the murder of more than 20 million Christians and imprisoning of even more in insane asylums. It is all described In sad detail in "Gulag Archepeligo" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn which won him the Nobel Prize in 1970. More to come (pwj)