The Greens and I

This is a facebook post from a yeart ago, a sketch of my position which i may elaborate on if I see fit:

Given that global warming has ceased and was not caused by men, and given that the science saying so is valid despite the cries of those opposed to it, given all these things I have lost all respect for the so called Greens. Green does not mean a party that respects human life or people because after all the Nazis were green. They were even anti smoking long before anyone else .

Green is an agrarian fantasy which conveniently overlooks the lives of those who lived in pre industrial societies which were nasty, brutal and short. Indeed the earth can only support the population it now has because of industrial and post industrial technology. This Malthus was dimly aware of when he predicted doom without knowing what industry and science could do. Agrarians must necessarily want to reduce the population by 90 percent, back to a level that is "sustainable" in agrarian terms.

So, as one critic said, they are melons: green on the outside red on the inside, or they are green as they are too yellow to call themselves red. Naturally I deplore any political party, in my country the the NZ Labour party, wanting to get into bed with such dangerous dreamers just as I deplore the self righteousness of the Green saying that those who care for the environment must therefore green.

Why do I take them to be genocidal as well as fantasists? The technologies touted by them are inefficient. They deplore fracking and despise nuclear technology, which is , like it or not the only way to produce cheap energy in abundance. And note: the increase in lifespan cm can be directly linked to the increase in energy production. So they must therefore want to reduce he population by a great amount. Think about it. Do you want to return to the medieval period. a peasant in a mud hut dead before the age of 40?

I find it very revealing that the founder of Greenpeaces, one of the few Patrick Moore's to achieve prominence - and not to be confiused with the astronomer, left the  movement in disgust  as it had become anti human, regarding man as a plague on the earth.

As to why I hold that Global Warming is not man made and has in fact stopped there is a host of evidence out there on the net for any who cares to google the subject .

I have come to the conclusion that any movement which has become mainstream enough to be noticed by politicians and religious people is already debased. I have sympathy with those who fear pollution. But carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant. And Global Warming is a separate issue fmro pollution. Thus the conservationist message has become mainstream and given its full embrace of the absurdity which is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, it is debased.

Do you want to be taxed into the stone age, to dutifully cut carbon dioxide emissions in the devout superstition that it is a poillutant, only to have a volcanic eruption spew forth more CO2 than man has ever produced in his entire history?

By all means tackle environmental issues, but let us not be sidetracked by pseudoscience and what amounts to bad faith religion which  relies on fallacuious appeals to authority and seeks to defy science itself by silencing dissent rather than rationally refuting it and subjecting itself to skeptical scrutiny.

Those who hold that globsal warming continues and was man made show all the hallmarks of bad faith

Reflections of NZ's National War Memorial Day

In my country today, 25th April, is our national war memorial day. Much patriotic claptrap will be spouted which I wil studiously ignore if I notice any at all. Below are some of my reflections on it all

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When footsoldiers in a gangland turf war are killed no one thinks to honour them. But when the gangs are nations though the quarrels between them are no less absurd than the former  and moreover the violence is infinitely greater we are expected to roll over and call these dead heroes. Not me. It is blasphemy to liken the death of those engaged in the criminal enterprise which is war to the sacrifice of Christ; and it is idolatry to subscribe to that empowering vice of war, patriotism. The nations will be done away with on the return of Christ but each individual will still exist, either with Him or in some other realm. As C S Lewis said. when human souls outlive nations which is more valuable? And until then they are, as Isaiah the Prophet said, merely drops in the bucket. Indeed nations were created after the Tower of Babl incidient as ameans to keep human energies dissipated  lest in uniting real evil walk the world, which will happen in the days of the Antichrist

I am a good citizen only because my God, Jesus Christ, would have me refrain from discrediting His ongoing work by bad behaviour on my part. No nation has the right to claim my heart and mind and as nations have become a religion substitute I hold that the giving of my heart and mind to a nation is the sin of idolatry. The nation that I am merely a member of my accident of birth - my citizenshup is in heaven and  I am a foreigner on this earth (scripture reference to be offered..)  the world will only receive my outward conformity, until they require that I openly defy the Law of God and then they have  a problem. But not me. So l will not be partaking in orgy of self congratulation which is Anzac Day. The fact is when they say "lest we forget," in investing the whole event with an air of sacred sacrifice, honour and loyaliy they have already forgotten the true lessons of war - the squalor, the filth, the obscenity, the utter stupidity and the waste. Thus having not ony forgotten but wilfully ignored the true lessons of war they will of course happen again

My Political Progress

I started life as a Leftist and continued as such for the bulk of my life.

I recently came across as Black American conservative by name of Thomas Sowell. He made a lot of sense but of course what was unsaid, as with all political pundits, is what shows his error - and this on both sides. That is to say each side is very good at pointing out the errors and abuses of the other, but nary a word about their own. Yet I am a generous man: when two sides call the other names I will agree with everyone so see both as being as bad as the other.

But I must agree with Sowell that the function of government is to enforce contracts and maintain civil order. In parenthesis I would add that I at this time regard Welfare as a device for maintaining order. Starving people do riot. Let us not be so deluded as to think that Governments act out of compassion.  Bread and Circuses was always the means and the motive. Nanny State is really Big Brother in drag.

Yet I hold that  anything more  than the above listed as functions of government, being social engineering, is coercive, verges on totalitarianism and is arrogant as well as presumptuous insofar as such measures were decreed by the Left and not the people at large. For in trying to make Man good the Left can only corece Man into being - ie pretending to be - what he is not.

So my enchantment with the Left is breaking down. This video of Sowell did not cause this, but only aided it. I have come to the conclusion after decades of religious legalism that law does not work, indeed excessive legislation is a symptom, not the cure, of the lawlessness it covers

So before any think I am becoming a Rightist, to either condemn or applaud,  let me assure you, the enchantment with Sowell broke when I saw a video of him saying Obama was a Leftist. Being Bush-lite the self styled Great White Hope was nothing of the sort.

And even if I see the Left as Looney - increasingly so - I am not about to join the opposite faction that is bent on imposing its will. I will move to what I increasingly view as the proper christian line- apolitical, the Church standing outside the process and rebuking it prophetically - both side - if the Holy Spirits leads

The Problem of Evil

Some time ago I responded to the question of the problem of evil  by rebuking the implicit self righteous of  the very raising of it. This position I still hold. But the implication may have been gotten that I had no answer to the problem of evil itself, or that I was avoiding the question. This is not the case, so I give an answer here, from a previous post elsewhere.

FWD

the question of why a good God allows evil like the Holocaust came up on an Arts and Letters Daily web page. This was my reply

I will answer the question as to why a good God allows the evil. But the answer is not acceptable to modern man. Man is evil and in rebellion to God. Therefore if necessary God will let man drink the cup of his own rebellion to the bitter dregs. God allows us freedom, and in our depravity we abuse it to promulgate holocausts and the vile like thereof. Most questionings arise, in my opinion from self righteousness. When the Biblical answer is that evil people abuse each other constantly, and respond with hatred to such, or feign forgiveness, and when we are all evil, we cannot blame God for our refusing to seek Him and repent of the very evil he will permit us to enact to its bitter endpoint as a means of showing to us who refuse all other rebuke what we are really made of. With the Holocaust the genie of human nature as it really is was let out of the bottle. This is Man at his most naked. We are this way for we are in rebellion to Him. Do we complain about the freedom we abuse? Do we expect him to magically stop us every time we break his Law even down to the smallest flickering of lust after my neighbour's wife? Or do we seek Him to acknowledge that we abuse the freedom that is intrinsic to His purpose.

We want to reject God, so he will let us go to the endpoint of this that some may see the vileness for what it is and cry to Him for mercy

Some truths hurt not because they are painful in themselves , but because we absolutely refuse them.

END FWD

I will amplify here further

This  above speaks of evil that men ourselves do. As to natural disasters and the general decay and fallenness of the earth, where they are not direct judgements  (itself a notion that modern man finds offensive) I hold them to be indicators that something is amiss and that man should seek for answers. For were the earth still a paradise  we would take this state as some kind of divine endorsement of our behaviour. So we long for peace and have stress and decay. Our inner discontent - for what greedy person is ever content? - is mirrored by decay in the creation, that we may know that our inner discontent is of some real basis.

Thus where evil is disaster or calamity, or even the fact that the gloss is taken off the creation, this God is the author of, as it says in Isaiah 45 - for he is the author of this kind of evil, and He does it to spur men to seek Him. Where we would rest in ungodly rest He would allow discomfort to prompt us to seek them, but he only tears to heal and would amplify our restlessness  that we seek the Sabbath rest of Christ.

Evil is not a problem which disproves the God of Israel. It is the sins of men let to go to their bitter fullness that some might repent, or it is the cursing of the earth that we may know something is amiss  where depraved consciences might think otherwise.

Thus it is only a depraved conscience that blames God for evil for it refuses the freedom of will He hold in such deep esteem that he would damn those who in freedom refuse his grace for the final time  rather than force a phony repentance

Creation Science and Heresy

First off let me say that I am absolutely not saying that Young Earth Creation Science is heresy. Although some people I respect are convinced that the Earth is millions of years old and that this proposition is compatible with a literal scripture I am not one of them and never was able to be.

But time and time again I have seen creation scientists, in arguing for a young earth, slip into rank heresy

For example, one scientist here is speaking of his atheistic youth

"I did not need a creator so I did not need to obey his laws," he said

 I was aghast, for  with this opening  statement he shows that though his science may be brilliant his theology is not. This is so  for NO ONE OBEYS the Law of God. And why is this? In the letter of James in the New Testament  it says that  he who breaks one commandment breaks all, so only the sinlessly perfect obeys the Law. So he is claiming to be sinless and perfect?  Clearly not. Scripture denies this also. It says that if any claim to be without sin he is a liar and the truth is not in him. The letter to the Romans says in plain language that no one is justified by works of law. I submit that the letter to the Galatians, by St Paul the Apostle, the same author as that to the Romans says that by works of Law no flesh is sanctified either, but not in exactly the same form of  words.

The Law shows we are dead. It does not impart life. So a creationist scientist tells is he needs to obey God's laws?

If this man needs to obey God's Laws to be saved, or even to only live the Christian life  he risks being irretrievably damned for no one does or can obey the Law. And to attempt to do so is to deny Christ, forsaking Him for  for the Law - an error so egregious that Paul rebuked the Galatians as fools  where he actually praised the Corinthians for their gifts when members  of that assembly were given to drunkenness  at communion dinners and even worse, there was one case  incest with his step mother.

Another example of this kind of heresy was when a man lecturing in creationism was speaking of driving down a coastal road in my own home country. The sea was on one side, snow capped mountains on the other.  He spoke of the glorious beauty of a clear and wonderful summer's day. But did he thank God for this sheer delight? He did not. He had to stop himself, he had  to tell himself that the creation is fallen. What is this if it is not ingratitude for the gift of God? There is evidence of fallenness all around. To ignore the testimony of the love of the Father in the beauty of  Creation is to downgrade matter and the Creation which I hold is part and parcel of the mind set that formed the gnostic heresy.

Another example is when a creationist, at the end of a brilliant lecture about how genetic entropy demolishes  the very posssibility  of evolution,  gave his own account of the cursedness of creation because of Adam's sin. He said that as Adam had sinned he had lost his dominion over the earth which passed (note the passive language) to Satan, and so Satan it was who cursed the earth. But the psalms make it perfectly clear that the Earth is the Lord's and every thing in it,  and not only that  but that it always has been so.  It was God who cursed the earth because of our sin.

When a creationist berates theist evolutionists for not taking the words of Genesis literally as to the age and sequence of creation it is rather rich when he denies that it was God who cursed the earth when that is plainly and literally said

To deny this is to show that they cannot believe in a God who is both love and  the author of calamity or judgement. And I have seen this time and time again. We carnal minds hold one or the other, were we to be honest about what we really believe, something else we disincline to. So such a  faith in God's love, love as indulgence logically sidstepping the wrath and the cursing God does is a straw man, for Isiaah 45 makes it clear that God is the author of both good and evil, though in this instance evil means calamity and judgement, not the moral evil we now call sin. Such a view, which is common in pentecostal circles for i saw it there with my very eyes many times,  is also gnostic in that it gives too much power to Satan, over playing the fact that he is the god of this earth. This  kind of thinking tends to dualist heresy.

The final example I would cite is a website and ministry I no longer support for though I agree with it science I find its tending to the errors aforementioned troubling but even worse its arrogance. They show by this that thy are puffed up by their knowledge. Creationism is not a stick to beat evolutionists with. It is even worse when they claim that what is in fact quarrelling over words, something At Paul rebuked and forbade,  is a godly means of responding to challenge. They can call it challenge/riposte model all they like. To respond with ridicule and sarcasm is always sin except one is led prophetically to do it, but to be in a position to claim such a leading is to have repented of an immense amount of sin, so much so as to be able to claim to be dead and buried with Christ. No one I know has such fruit as to rightly dare to claim this, and I certainly would not dare to. Moreover such is what common sense says it is, minus a leading by the spirit they cannot claim: tt is ego competition from boys of all ages who refuse to back down from a fight. Thus it is pride, idolatry and sin

Let us not be too excited by creation science. At best it returns us to the level of the Pharisees who were, it must be remembered,  the closest to Christ in terms of doctrine at that time. But they earned the greatest rebuke. Although I agree with creationists that Genesis is the logical core of what follows, and that without it  the gospel is compromised, what is built on genesis is not the same things as a literal genesis itself. We are saved b y our faith in a real and living person, not by our doctrine of origins

It troubles me that Creation Scientists pay so much attention to proving evolution false that they show an ignorance of what the Bible actually says about other matters. I have seen this quite often - heresy from creationist scientists -  and  hope to have demonstrated it by example here,

But it  does prove to me that even creationism can  and has become an idol. For what good is the most solid creation science  if as a legalist one has fallen into the heresy of the Galatians or if in over emphasizing the fall one falls into a gnostic like attitude to creation?

There is more to Christianity than creationism. They forget this at their peril

The Most Astute Commentary

Many years ago, long before there was an Internet and we got our magazines in bookshops or news stands. I saw a cartoon of a man in a line of people queuing up to kiss the backside of a statue. And he was saying to his fellow next in line "you know, this is the part of paganism I really hate.

This is one of the most astute commentaries of paganism I have ever seen.

For regardless of whatever licentiousness pagans might think they can get away with there is a humiliating consequence - hence kissing the backside of an idol

I wish I had thought of it, but as I had not so I can dare entitle this piece as I have, for I am not speaking of anything I invented

Of course when Christians churches treat God Almighty like a pagan godling they show themselves as pagans so come under the rubric of this cartoon. What is even sadder is that insofar as they think they cannot  get away with sin, namely the legalists, they have the misery without the licentiousness, the bondage without even the false liberty, so, as Jesus said of the Pharisees, they are worse than the harlot and the money lender for they are further from the Kingdom of heaven than these

They do this when they think that God is corrupt enough to be brought off by our bribes or stupid enough to fall for our deliberate flattery. Moreover our gifts and praises  become bribes and flattery when done under compulsion for fear of loss or punishment. So we who do or have done this are pagans.

It makes no difference as to the name of the pagan idol we do these things to, but be assured be blasphemy is enormously enhanced when we worship Jesus Christ as said idol.

Considerations on the Dynamic of Belief

I said something online and was accused of historical revisionism, this by a revisionist, and also arrogantly and abusively.

I have been pondering what it means to believe something for some considerable time now. I now see the belief is a matter of choice, that people do in fact choose what to believe and the idea that men are so honest as to be constrained by facts and evidence is naïve nonsense.

It is as if a switch clicks in the head of someone and when it does they have chosen to believe. The thing is it is only after this that evidence is marshalled. However if the belief is false  such a person, now deluded, will not let the paucity of facts, or the abundance of facts refuting his stance get in the way. So these are denied  with al the passion. What matters is the personal sense of safety and security  insofar as it pertains to worldview.

Thus the facts that the Signers of the US Declaration of Independence despised the mass of people and designed the Electoral College to exclude them, that they were Deists not Christians, and founded a State resolutely not based on the Christian faith. as the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli clearly stated, and for all their empty rhetoric about the evils of slavery they were slave owners - invoking these plain facts is to bring down unholy fire from those, usually of the Religious Right, who accuse us of being historical revisionists when they themselves have breached the  ninth commandment and tell lies about American history.

Thus it is as personal considerations rule the issue that when something is believed all too often any matters of fact that might refute the belief are themselves denied without observation.

Given this there is absolutely no point in even attempting reasoned discourse for there is nothing on which to reason when matters of fact have already been selected not on the basis of evidence or observation but according to their usefulness in confirming the prejudice, for prejudice it is when it comes before observation and indeed  trumps it.

Education systems have not overcome this because this is a moral issue and education is powerless to deal with moral issues. Yet Man calls himself Homo Sapiens - man the Wise. This last is the biggest misnomer in history when reason is rejected for shibboleth and facts do not judge the belief but are judged by the belief.

There is no almost intellectual integrity to speak of. So there is no point in seeking to appeal to it. Moreover if we cannot see that this is in part why we are doomed then our doom is utterly certain. Man may enjoy his empty tribalisms and superstitions - and this modern age has its own superstitions. Indeed man must enjoy them for he has forsaken anything else.

What distresses me deeply is that even with my best and oldest friends some issues are now no go zones .  I know that there is not enough love on this  woeful and  fallen world to agree to differ in a civilized manner. All that phrase means is "treat the issue as a  no go  zone. . .

And when I realize that I am not necessarily immune to these things I can only fall into blank despair.

Or cry to the Lord knowing that this is merely another example of the carnal mind, sunk in lies.  I am also forced to concede that except for those very few who will acknowledge this and repent of it, for scripture said if any would be wise let him become a fool - ie acknowledge he is a fool, that this will only get worse.

For it is this darkening of the mind whereby Man will be primed and ready to accept the reign of Antichrist when he comes that is so necessary to this malign and prophesied event.

God have mercy on us who know we are carnal minded, and alos on those who think they are not