Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Latest attempt to get Google to WORK


If you see writing here, then Google finally condescended to GIVE the blogging service it claims to be giving. I'm trying to record here a thought I've long had.

There's one problem with the currently popular preference for saying "He made good choices" or "He made bad choices." This way of talking can come across as if you're saying that the person DIDN'T KNOW WHAT he was choosing between -- as if he was presented with two closed boxes and could only guess what was in them. Now, many decisions in life ARE made, even HAVE TO be made, on a blind guess.... but not ALL decisions. There are also cases when a person DESIRES IN ADVANCE to do wrong, plans it and looks forward to it. In those instances,  there is no accidental "mistake" involved, but rather intentional wrongdoing.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Truth About Calvinism

Calvinism arose in resistance to arbitrary tyranny by the Church of Rome. Calvinists then proceeded to imagine God as _also_ being arbitrarily tyrannical. We read in Matthew 22:14 that many are called, but few are chosen. A perfectly sufficient explanation for this is that most _refuse_ God's invitation by their own will; but for Calvinists, that explanation doesn't seem to make God "sovereign" enough. Obsessed _only_ with God being  powerful and invincible, Calvinists base all their thinking on His power and control; then they say that _anything_ they imagine Him doing _must_ somehow be good-- which, of course, is the same thing that trembling lackeys will say about any _human_ tyrant. So they insist that God entirely _forces_ people to refuse or accept His invitation, without _them_ ever having any say about it. Yet, in language which their own  doctrine renders meaningless, they still _claim_ that He's calling to everyone. Of course, if God unilaterally _makes_ most people reject Him, He _isn't_ calling all people, He's only pretending to. In order to protect their morally-bankrupt ideas from being challenged, Calvinists will say, "It's a mystery, and the argument will never be  resolved in this world." What they really _mean_ is that they want NON-Calvinists to shut up, while the Calvinists keep right on preaching micro-predestination as aggressively as ever.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Are We Functioning?

As of this entry, I am very close to completing Volume One of the Eliot Granholm  saga. This introductory novel, set in the years 2166 through 2168, is titled "Journey of the Grey Eagle." Eliot Granholm is a pediatric surgeon, and the VERY LAST Christian on Earth (although by this time the planets Mars and Mercury have been colonized, and Christians enjoy freedom of religion and speech there). What prevents Eliot from simply being stomped on like a bug is the fact that he acquires superhuman powers. Sort of like a kinder, gentler version of X-Man Wolverine escaping from the experimenters.