Careful Thought

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the heavy hitters of the so-called Age of Enlightenment.  He was also pretty much an idiot.  Here’s what he has to say about Christianity:

“True Christians are made to be slaves, they know it, and they are not concerned by that: this short life is too unimportant in their eyes.”  [ The Social Contract , 4.8]

His sarcastic point was that true Christians - those who live a life of Christ-likeness -  have the silly notion that this world is not their home.  To Rousseau’s mind, Christians need to loosen up and be more involved in the daily hedonistic pursuits of the world.

Hmmm.  I’m not buying it.  A major critique of modern/post-modern Christianity is that we are too loose and too involved in the world.  I’ll accept that we should be slaves, though as Paul says (Romans 1:1; Jude 1:1, Titus 1:1), “I am the bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.”  That’s not a bad thing.

Rousseau and others reject the very idea that any man is or should be subservient.  Talk about the creation shaking its fist at the creator.  My prayer is that God would show me what it means to be a bond-servant of Christ, called as an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God.  That beats being a slave to the world any day.

Tags: bond servant, faith, philosophy, Rousseau, slavery

“My proposal then is, to leave the liberty of the Press untouched, to be exercised in its fullest extent, force and vigour, but to permit the liberty of the cudgel to go with it pari passu . Thus my fellow-citizens, if an impudent writer attacks your reputation, dearer to you perhaps than your life, and puts his name to the charge, you may go to him as openly and break his head.”
Benjamin Franklin, from The Federal Gazette , September 12, 1789

(HT: Nihilist in Golf Pants )

Tags: Ben Franklin, freedom of the press

(HT: Day by Day )

If you’re a conservative, would you vote for Obama (or Hillary) if you thought the Republican party had abandoned its conservative roots?  Would an Obama presidency guarantee a Republican victory in 2012?

Tags: conservatism, Day by Day, politics

More evidence. Global whining. It’s cold outside. Yawn.

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

Tags: global whining

Sometimes the irony is the best part.

Norway’s biggest quake hits Svalbard archipelago

OSLO (Reuters) - An earthquake of 6.2 magnitude — the biggest in Norwegian history — jolted the thinly populated Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic on Wednesday night, the Norsar seismic research institute said on Thursday.

Norwegian media reported no one was hurt by the quake and no damaged had been reported in the islands, about 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole.

“This is the biggest earthquake on Norwegian territory in history,” the institute said in a statement.

“The earthquake happened at sea about 10 km below the surface, and was felt strongly in (the town of) Longyearbyen.”

Norsar said it registered several aftershocks, and predicted there would be more.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other leaders will be in Svalbard next week for the official opening of a seed vault which will store frozen crop seeds from round the world in case crops are wiped out by a future disaster.

What a shame if the global warmenist fear mongrels save-the-planet efforts were destroyed by the planet.  Who says mythical earth goddesses don’t have a sense of humor?

Tags: earthquake, global whining, svalbard

I’m continually amazed at how far people will go not to recognize the hand of God.  The title of this piece from Discovery News pretty well describes the secular view of creation - it’s all just random, ‘lucky’ accidents that gave us a habitable planet.

Plate Tectonics: Earth’s Lucky Geology

Jan. 11, 2008 — Four decades after the rise of the great, unifying theory of plate tectonics, geologists are still scratching their heads over a lot of the details.

Unanswered, for instance, are basic questions like how the shifting and colliding of plates got started, what keeps plates moving, why other planets in our solar system lack plate tectonics, and how important all the geological turmoil might be to the evolution of life.

“We didn’t get it all right the first time, so let’s ask the questions,” said geologist Vicki Hansen of the University of Minnesota at Duluth, referring to the fact that despite decades of work, many mysteries remain.

Hansen recently stirred the pot with a controversial hypothesis published in last month’s issue of the journal Geology . Meteorite impacts early in Earth’s history, she suggested, created the first rifts in the crust, jump-starting plate tectonics.

Prior to the 1960s, geologists were hard pressed to explain such basic things as how most mountain ranges formed and why volcanic regions and earthquakes were clustered in certain parts of the planet. Plate tectonics put these phenomena, and many others, into a single, unified framework.

That framework is an Earth with a rocky crust divided into plates that are moving, rifting, colliding and overrunning each other. It finally made sense of a previously nonsensical geography and is now recognized as one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century.

Hugh Ross from Reasons.org understands that it’s no accident, and that plate tectonics is a necessary part of God’s Creation if we are to have a stable, habitable planet.

Two known mechanisms were involved in the delicate process of gradually removing greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere as the ancient Sun brightened: (1) a continuous supply of exposed-to-the-atmosphere silicates (compounds containing silicon, oxygen, and metals that comprise more than 90% of Earth’s continental crust); and (2) a continuous burial of carbon-rich organic matter.

In the presence of liquid water, silicates gobble up (chemically react with) carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forming carbonates and sand in the process. (See figure.) Bringing these silicates into contact with the atmosphere, where they can do their part in carbon dioxide reduction, requires a balanced cycle of crustal uplift and erosion. First, efficient plate tectonics must help create silicates, then push them above the ocean forming islands and continental land masses. Then, erosion must “plough” the crust so that more silicates are constantly brought into contact with the atmosphere.

This sounds like ‘intelligent design,’ but Ross is not a fan of ID as advocated by William Dembski and the Uncommon Descent crowd, because Dembski argues for a generic cause behind ID without explicitly stating that God is that cause.  Ross makes no bones about God being the Creator.

Tags: creation, faith, hugh ross, intelligent design, plate tectonics, science

Nuff said.

(HT: XKCD by way of RubeRad )

Tags: blogging, cartoons, XKCD

Tags: fishing, Lake Mead

Beloit College prepares an annual listing of facts and events that affect the worldview of its students.  As I look at the lists, I’m amazed at how quickly times change; events that were foundational in my life have little or no meaning to kids growing up today.  Either that, or I’m getting to be a cranky old fart.  Here’s a selection of Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2011 .

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

• What Berlin wall?
• Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
• Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
• They never “rolled down” a car window.
• They have grown up with bottled water.
• Pete Rose has never played baseball.
• Rap music has always been mainstream.
• Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
• “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
• Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
• No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
• Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
• U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
• They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
• Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
• Fox has always been a major network.
• Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
• China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
• Time has always worked with Warner.
• Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
• The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
• MTV has never featured music videos.
• The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters. 
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
• Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

My kids ask why I say ‘dial a phone number.’  What else?

Tags: beloit college, class of 2011, mindset list

“Therefore Pilate said to Him, ‘So You are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’”  ( John 18:37  NASB )

Why did Jesus come into the world?  There are a lot of reasons given in Scripture, but probably none as straightforward as this, in His own words:  to testify to the truth.  And those who belong to Him know his voice and listen.  Those who don’t, don’t.  If you accept that His words are true, you are thereby set apart from the world and can expect a steady ration of crud from those who deny the truth of who He is.

Tags: faith, truth