Exploring the Train of Cause and Effect

This should be the long awaited lead article for this blog for a while.  The Dallas Cowboys just kicked a 62 yard field goal.  Meanwhile the Chargers are stalling out against the Bengals.

Christians are not entirely honest about the grounds for their belief.  And this is logical to them since Faith for them is the primal moving force to them rather than Fact.  There is a saying that "If you look at things differently, the things you look at - Change".  I being an Objectivist have never bought into this argument.  While you may debate this when it comes to human beings, carried to its logical conclusion it would apply to God Himself.  If you look at God differently, He will change.  This is contrary to the teaching of both scripture and Calvinism who declare "I am Jehovah God; I don't change".   The whole idea of Faith being the "first mover" in your "salvation" is unsound on another count.  It would mean that the blood of Christ takes a back seat to your Belief that it is true.   So what is the proper "train of cause and effect".  You see train diagrams in some of these religious books and pamflets.   The primal force, the engine of the train- - is Fact.  Did it happen?  To justify this fact you point to Circumstances, which is number two car on our train.  This is followed by your feelings ABOUT these circumstances.  Then after developing feelings on something, this evolves into Faith.  Adolph Hitler is said to have repeated the phrase "Unshakable belief" too much.  If Faith saved the day we would be doing our Sieg Heils even this day.  But we aren't.   Faith is certainly something we develop in a good friend or a life partner.  Then the final car on this train of causality is Action.  You can tell a person's faith by his Actions ON that faith.  You can tell a person's feelings by what kind of faith he has.  And most likely you can probe the circumstance of a man's life to glean how he GOT those feelings.  And finally as with a criminal court, you can look at the circumstances of the case and determine the FACT of either guilt or innocence.   People say they don't like "circumstantial evidence" and yet I deem ALL evidence to be "circumstantial" in one way or another.  You would not vote a person guilty if you were only sixty percent sure of their guilt.  There was a case on Dateline last Thursday involving a boating accident that the police and coast guard believed was murder.  While I believe that murder is the "best" explanation for what happened, I do not believe it is the ONLY explanation for what happened.  This is the point you have to arrive at if you are going to vote out the death penalty for an individual.   In like manner if you are going to have a rock solid "unshakable belief" that Jesus is the messiah and your own personal Redeemer, you better have certainty beyond a "reasonable doubt" shouldn't you?   But I have come up with a way of short circuiting the whole process.  I guess it goes back to an "experiance with God" I had a couple of Sundays ago listening to Joel Olsteen.  He spoke of "The God who pulls strings" and he God who "makes things happen".   You see, God can do what he wants.  He can call jobs "completed" even if you yourself have done little to now work on them.  (Selah)  You can't say that "God doesn't have a right to lay the Christianity trip on me unless the Gospels are solid historical fact.  Well, God doesn't take instructions from you.  As a Calvinist I believe God is in control of everything.  He determines what is true and false and what is right or wrong.  If God says it's going to happen then it's going to happen.  This is why both good and evil happen in the world.   What I thought was unfair about Calvinism is that he appears to give you no choice.  But what if he did give you a choice.  Suppose God said that "everyone who does three hand springs off the Huntington Beach pier and then plunges headlong into the ocean will be saved", you now have a choice.  You can choose to either do it or not do it knowing your choice affects your salvation.   So I would propose a theory that you have a choice to believe in the POWER of Christ.  As the church hymns say "There is power in the name of Jesus".  Never mind how he got there.  God PLACED him in that position of authority.  Therefore you now have a choice.  It's my theory that most times if you are given the choice, it's better to make friends with powerful people rather than be enemies.  Jesus even states this in one of his more contraversial parables.  It's called "Knowing which side of the bread its buttered on". 

I have stated that the name of this "God" I believe in is Alcyonne of the Pliades, one of the Seven Sisters up in the heavens.  But it hit me last week that previously that Alcyonne was pro Japanese in the World War II.  At least the Lanians, one of the Seven Sisters is pro Japanese.  So how can this be since the Japanese lost the war.  Well it's my contention that if God favors the preservation of life then the Atomic Bomb may have cut short the slaughter of all concerned and shortened the War by months and maybe more than a year.  It also struck me that Japan and Germany have prospered since World War II while the Jewish bretherin on the other hand, have continued to be discriminated against by all nations and even right here in the good old USA.  As to the identity of Jesus, I have had a theory as to "just what happened" that sent Jesus to the cross.  Some may (and have) questioned how a Jewish crowd could be shouting "Hosanah"s on Sunday and saying that Jesus should be put to death on the cross on Friday.  What could enrage a mob of people like this?  If you have read the Gospels there is no explanation for this sudden turn of behavior.  As a Jew I would imagine that these verses are a source of consternation.  But then I came up with an alternate explanation.  It's kind of like that murder case I was talking about.  Maybe a big wave sunk the boat.  Maybe it was some kind of flook accident where the lady tripped and hit her head and lost her balance and fell off the boat.  Maybe it was a flying shark that swallowed her whole.  Maybe she was abducted by space aliens.  Then never found the body, which brings up one person's theory that the woman faked her own death.  These are all reasons not to vote guilty.  Here in the gospels we too have an alternate explanation.  It was Judas who was crucified on the cross and Jesus went Scott free.  Somehow this little switcheroo was lost in scripture.  I like explanations that Answer more questions than they Raise.  Here I have the answer tothe three hours of "darkness".  It was a partial eclipse of the sun on November 24 of 29 AD in Jerusalem.  They were concerned as early at three PM about bodies being left out on the cross because the sun sets a lot earlier in the winter time.  This would explain the fire they built in the night. It was cold.  (In Jerusalem I'm sure it gets cold most of the time at night).  And it would explain the whithering of the fig tree.  It was simply losing its leaves because the weather was turning cold.  I don't have all of the details.  This is an "alternate explanation" in progress.  It could be that Jehovah God may have told Judas to betray Jesus Christ, but in doing so he would have the blood of an innocent man on his soul.  He would have to die instead.  The Bible says "If anyone sheds innocent blood, then his own blood needs to be shed to atone for it".  or something like that.

My point is that you can't stop people from thinking.  But God may not care how closely you have studied scripture or whether every fact is absolutely true.  I think there are "glosses" in scripture.   I think the line about the prohibition of marrying a divorced woman- - was added.  It doesn't sound like Jesus.  Also the line about  how you go about kicking members out of the Church.  And there is the line about "Go ye into all the world making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit" is probably a textural embellishment.   But in the end it doesn't matter is Christ is already seated in heaven judging you and me.  This is just something to think about it.

My Holiday Reform Act of 2018

There is another posting in the pipeline from last Thursday and hopefully we'll get to that one either later today or early tomorrow.  But now let's talk about how this is John Lennon death weekend.  The 38th anniversary of his death was last night, December 8th.  They are playing all of the John Lennon favorites today on "Breakfast with the Beatles".  Don't push me or I'll declare John Lennon's death day as another Federal holiday.  Here is our proposal.  Christmas and Newyears will remain unchanged.  We're moving Martin Lither King Day from his birthday to the day he was shot in Memphis on April 4th or as near to the holiday and not have it fall on a weekend.  It's a more memorable date and it will be easier to do marches rather than in the dead of winter.  I will leave President's Day untouched.  They had that "US Presidents" song sung to the tune of "Ten Little Indians" and it was done while Obama was President.  Let's leave that song untouched.  We then come to Memorial Day, which is also unchanged.  I plan to move Daylight Savings Time back to the first Sunday in April like it was for twenty years from 1987 to 2006.  This will bring that needed lightness to the mornings because the mornings are too damn dark otherwise.  I'll leave the Fourth of July untouched as well as Labor Day untouched.  We move to Thanksgiving, which I am moving to Columbus day as the second Monday in October.  I'd like to rename this holiday indigenous people's day and it should be a day when we give thanks to the indigenous people for having slaughtered them all and stolen their land.  This same weekend we are going OFF daylight savings time and returning to standard time.  This once again will bring a little sunshine into those dark late October mornings around here and even worse in the rest of the country.  There will be no Thanksgiving holiday in Nocember but we don't need it anyhow because we're already celebrating Christmas and the spirit of the holiday is over-shadowed.  Then I want to make Election Day a holiday on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  I would keep Veterans Day but rename it back to the original Armistice Day to reinforce the desire for peace in the world.  I think we've covered them all.  I thought of making Superbowl Sunday a holiday but reconsidered. 

On Friday Thom Hartman wanted to remind us of the deeds of the Bush Crime Family.  It's funny how the reporters fawned all over George Bush 41 with praise normally reserved for some religious figure such as Ghandi or the Deli Lama.   Nixon and Howard Hunt are connected with the Kennedy assasination but there aren't any established links of the Bush Crime Family to that one.  Trump was very awkward at the Funeral on Wednesday because he's so used to being the center of attention in all media matters.  Bush 41 did have some minor role in Watergate.  The whole klan is one of privilege and special treatment by the laws of our land.  The best thing you can say about the Bush family is that neither Bush 41 or 43 was near as bad as Donald Trump.  That's not saying much.  If you want to read more on my thoughts about George Bush 41 just read the posting right below this one. 

President Bush 41 Dies at age 94

George HW Bush died last night.  They interrupted a program to announce it when I was half asleep.  Bush was 94 when he died.  Barbra died eight months ago and they say that a husband often follows a wife or spouse within a year of their death.   He wanted to know (in the afternoon) whether he would see his dead daughter as a child or as a full grown adult.   President Bush was the last veteran to serve as president and the last representative of “the greatest generation” and the last war hero in WW II.   He was a young pilot.   President Bush is best known for Opporation Desert Storm and how he showed restraint during this war and called off the invasion after only four days of ground activity in late February of 1991.  However he was also known as the last “new world order” president.  He “opened up China” all right, but only to offer them “most favored nation” status at a time in the spring of 1989 when China was most cracking down on civil liberties.  He was an ambassador to China and had that “China connection” while running for CIA chief.  I remember writing Stewart Mc Bernie a letter around November of 1975 in which I opined that Nixon should have kept on Willian Colby as CIA chief because I didn’t really trust this new guy.  Of course there was a lot of UFO stuff floating around in the fall of 1975 and I have discussed this on blog postings.  Of course HW Bush failed to get re-elected primarily because he had mis-managed the economy so bad.  There was this extended period of economic malaise that began in the second half of 1990 and was still lingering in 1992.  And Bush 41 also drove up the deficit sky high.   Bush was kind of “deep sixed” as vice president under Reagan but he is celebrated now at the Reagan library.  

There was a bad earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska yesterday morning about nine thirty our time.  This should have been seven thirty their time but strangely they are now only an hour behind us.  The sun had not risen when the earthquake struck just seven miles away.  But the impact was worse than Northridge even though it was just 7.0 and only .2 higher than Northridge.  This is because of the liquefaction that plagued the soil around there and all sorts of roads buckled.  The airport was unusable and the incoming flights had to be aborted at the last minute.  There was one CBS studio that suffered extensive damage with tapes falling off the shelves and light fixtures and portions of the ceiling falling down on people who had to duck under their sturdy desks.  This building was built up to code.  Of course the days are a lot shorter in Alaska than they are here this time of year.   At 7.0 this was too small to set off a Tsunami, and the alert was canceled after a few minutes.  President Trump has offered a very affirmative tweet saying God bless everybody and stuff.  This may be because Alascans are Republicans.  Sarah Palin’s parents house suffered damage there in Wassilla.  (sp?)

. This morning Chris Matthews showed a map of the states from left to right and there have to be 25 Democrats who are thinking of running for president in the Democratic Party right now.  They'll have to have three tiers of debates.  People around President Trump continue to turn against him   Michael Koehn has pled guilty to certain charges such as collusion with Russia.  I think it's more than a matter of building a Trump Complex in Russia.  For that matter it's more than whether talk was termanated in January or June of 2016,  We don't know whether talks went on with Russia after this.  We assume it did.    Trump has hated Koehn for months now and considers him a traitor.  Meanwhile Paul Manifort has balked and refused to cooperate with the government. Of course dangeling that presidential pardon out there changes one's whole perception.  He doesn't want to desert Trump; if there's a get out of jail card free in his future. Two days ago the government accused Manifort of lying and have hard evidence that he is indeed lying.  Manifort says “I’m not going to lie just to shorten my sentence”.  But what has really happened is that Manifort instead of giving information had been getting information from the government about what information they’ve got against Trump, and Trump can readjust his strategy accordingly.  Meanwhile the China deal has been discussed and Trump thinks all these terrifs that are crippling the economy now- - - are a good thing.  Of course you can tell when Trump is lying when you see his lips move.  Meanwhile you have Melonia and the flaming red Christmas trees in the east wing of the White House.  If the First Lady loves then then all of Trump’s supporters love them even though images of “The Shining” are evoked. 

.  This is Friday November 30, 2018 and it’s St Andrew’s Day.  It’s semi-officially known as “rapture day” in the Federation.  The psychedelic vibes were at their maximum peak on November 30^th of 1967. Advent is the start of the Church year and both the Jews and Christians start off this period by lighting candles.   I wanted to mention how my view of the extra terriestrial world is one of pluralism.  But there is an god, an AXIS that turns the universe according to Federation theology.  We can call the Seven Sisters or the Pliades "God" and Alcyone is their chief.   However unlike what the astronomers say, it's actually the dimmest star of the seven sisters that is the Ruler.   So it's pluralism with a god who calls the ultimate shots as to what happens in this Universe.  It’s ten to nine and KNXT news is on.  I had on Frangela for a while from Stephanie at eight and then I switched to Nancy Pelosi and her press conference today.  This morning I got up at five minutes to five.  This is when I first woke up.  I didn’t wake up for any bathroom breaks during the night  I didn’t shower.   I wanted to mention the rock compelations the Federation has done.  They started them in September of 2004 so there was a fourteen year run of compelations.  There will be no changes to "The New Normal" out in July despite what we hinted at on a recent posting.  However there may be another compelation of songs out from the early sixties.