Posts

Posted on

Shame

I’ve blocked out the offensive word in the child’s placard.  How a parent could do this to their young child escapes me.  As Wire-cutter might suggest:  “straight up white trash’.

Posted on

Distinctions

“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”

– Thucydides

Posted on

Sagan: We are Wanderers

This is a great little piece that provokes thought.  I choose to overlook the reference to natural selection that occurs (oddly I might add) near the middle of the narrative.  How Carl could compose this without seeing the presence of God in man’s long journey  escapes me.

Posted on

Roll Tide

Alabama scored a 76-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage and racked up over 600 yards of offense, as the Crimson Tide cruised past Arkansas, 65-31. Tua Tagovailoa had another big day, throwing for 334 yards and four touchdowns on only 13 pass attempts. Damien Harris rushed for 111 yards and a pair of touchdowns, while Jerry Jeudy caught four passes for 135 yards and two scores in the win.

Posted on

Moderating

Looks as if things will turn more seasonal later in this week. Will take some time away from the daily chores on the farm to coax a few catfish into the boat !

Posted on

A Guarantee of Freedom

“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. … the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

– Sen. Hubert Humphrey

Posted on

Contending with Human Passions

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

– John Adams

Posted on

How ‘Truth’ is Shaped.

Of the roughly three hundred bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicea, two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed that condemned Arianism.  Emperor Constantine also ordered a penalty of death for those who refused to surrender the Arian writings, his words:

“In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offence, he shall be submitted for capital punishment.

Emperor Constantine against the Arians

Posted on

Carry Logic–Feeble Mind

“To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.”

– Ted Nugent

Posted on

Einstein on God

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist [one who believes that God’s divinity is manifested in all of Creation]. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.

May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God.

We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. 

I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.” –

Albert Einstein