Category Archives: Blog

The Basis for Heresy

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This is the basis for a heresy claim made by YEC people. Well, one I know (Richard Swindell). I am trying to understand their (his) argument. In his first argument here he gives an example of Jesus referring to a well known (well known to the Jews) event in history and calls it a statement about science. He then draws a conclusion. He also concludes that anyone who interprets differently is calling Jesus a liar. Thus they deny the divinity of Jesus and are therefore heretics. It seems like that is his logic.

Richard Swindell says,

Whenever the Bible makes a statement with respect to science, it speaks with perfect accuracy, since it is the Word of God and the words of God.

Billy (Graham) was a man of God. Doesn’t mean he was right about everything.

If the world is billions of years old, and Genesis 1-11 is mytho-history, then Jesus was either too ignorant or stupid to have understood billions of years and evolution or progressive creation, or He thought the people were too ignorant or stupid to understand it, so He deliberately spoke as if Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 1-11 was actual literal history at least 15 times.

If your Jesus is Lord, and the One through Whom the Father created all life and the Universe but ignorant or stupid about how and when it happened, or is a deliberate deceiver, He is not the Jesus of Scripture.



He gives some examples to Andy Witt:

Andy Witt Matthew 24: 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;

39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Matthew 23: 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

If Cain and Abel were real, so was Adam, real.

A few general examples:

Matthew 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25—mankind is in the image of God.
Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51—Jesus references Abel as a historical, righteous person, and the first of the martyrs.
Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–27—Jesus compares His coming to the time of Noah’s Flood.
Matthew 26:52—Jesus references Genesis 9:6 when he says “Those who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
Mark 13:19—Jesus references God creating the world.
Luke 10:19—Jesus gives the disciples authority to tread on serpents.
John 8:44—The devil is a liar and a murderer ‘from the beginning’

Andy Witt

Richard Swindell none of these statements require reference to history. For instance, Mt 24:38-39 is making a literary reference to help us understand the coming of the Son of Man; this is true regardless

Wayne K Dawson

Andy Witt Yeah, it doesn’t take rocket science to understand that someone could be poetic and turn to popular knowledge to make a point. We do that all the time. This kind of arguing about whether Jesus was ignorant or lying or not reminds me of what happened to Sisyphus. … for example.

Steven Robinson

Robert Lindberg in case you don’t understand the Scriptures, Jesus was “God incarnate”, i.e., God in human form. Jesus KNEW who he was and his only “limitation” was being in human form, having flesh & blood, etc. JESUS was there at Creation!

Hence, Jesus knows the REAL history. IF you don’t accept that Jesus is God, or that God doesn’t exist… then your comments are totally irrelevant.

Richard Swindell

Andy Witt Do you believe the flood killed every human being, and every living thing with breath in its nostils that lived on land, as Genesis tells us and as Jesus believed.

Or do you believe in many local floods?

Andy Witt

Richard Swindell How many years after the Flood did it take for the three sons of Noah to repopulate the entire world?

Robert Lindberg

Steven Robinson “Hence, Jesus knows the REAL history. IF you don’t accept that Jesus is God, or that God doesn’t exist… then your comments are totally irrelevant.”

That doesn’t seem to be the issue. People are making similar comments about Billy Graham, because he said about what I said. The real issue here appears to be NOT whether one believes in God or in Jesus, but rather whether one believes in Ellen White.

OK, after looking at the scriptures he quotes I realized Richard is not making a valid argument. His hermeneutics are flawed.  Later I may go into why they are flawed.

This is mind draining and soul draining to me. It is such an impediment to faith. A stumbling block.

Return of the God Hypothesis

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An interesting review I saw on amazon.com

“A comprehensive and lucid argument for theism as the best explanation for the scientific evidence. Stephen Meyer has a true gift for conveying complex concepts clearly.” — Dr. Robert Kaita, former Principal Research Physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

“A meticulously researched, lavishly illustrated, and thoroughly argued case against the new atheism. Even if your mind is made up—especially if it is—Meyer’s refreshing take on the origins of the Universe is a joy to read. You may not come away convinced, but you’ll be richer for the journey.” — Dr. Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego, and author of Losing the Nobel Prize.

“Scientist and philosopher Meyer has discussed intelligent design previously but has not gone as far as he does here in terms of making the case for God. He does so citing new evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology, especially as it applies to DNA research. Meyer knows how to take readers’ hands and lead them through the history before showing how new discoveries can be used to undermine the cases made by anti-design theorists such as Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and even Bill Nye the Science Guy. Agree or disagree, there’s lots to ponder here.” — Booklist

“Meyer’s book is a masterclass, lucidly exploring every alternative from multiple points of view, while persuasively showing that the God Hypothesis is the best explanation of our finely-tuned, information-rich universe. It does irreparable damage to atheist rhetoric.” — John C. Walton, PhD, DSc, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Research Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews

“No one in my experience can explicate such complex material with the grace and clarity that seem so effortless to Stephen Meyer. With meticulous rational analysis of the latest discoveries in cosmology, physics, and biology, Meyer confirms a truth ideologues find too frightening to consider. Their ad hominem attacks on his brilliant work, confirm its importance.” — Dean Koontz, New York Times #1 bestselling author

“Reviewing all relevant evidence from cosmology to molecular biology, Meyer builds an irrefutable ‘case for God.’ The logic throughout is compelling and the book almost impossible to put down. A masterpiece. Easily the best, most lucid, comprehensive defense of the ‘God hypothesis’ in print. A unique tour de force. ” — Michael Denton, M.D., Ph.D., former Senior Research Fellow, Biochemistry, University of Otago, Author, Nature’s Destiny

“More than 400 pages of straightforward, engrossing prose, close reasoning, intellectual history, and cosmology, all in the interest of asking the most important questions about existence itself. An astonishing achievement.” — Peter Robinson, Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and former White House speechwriter

“With this book, Stephen Meyer earns a place in the pantheon of distinguished, non-reductive natural philosophers of the last 120 years, from the great French savant Pierre Duhem, through A.N. Whitehead, to Michael Polanyi…A profound, judicious book of great value bringing to bear advanced, scientific expertise and philosophical, integrative wisdom.” — Dr. Michael D. Aeschliman, emeritus professor Boston University, author The Restoration of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism.

“Meyer masterfully summarizes the current evidence from cosmology, physics and biology showing that the more we learn about the universe and nature, the more relevant the ‘God hypothesis’ becomes.”  — Dr. Anthony Futerman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Biochemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

“This book makes it clear that far from being an unscientific claim, intelligent design is valid science.” — Brian Josephson, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Society Nobel Laureate in Physics

“When you don’t understand living systems, ignorance permits discounting a Creator.  But when the scientific details are thrust upon you, you’re forced to ask: How on Earth did that happen? Thus, the God hypothesis returns.  Stephen Meyer convincingly drives the point home: How could it be this way?  Only God!” — James M. Tour, Ph.D., T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Nano-Engineering, Rice University.

“Stephen Meyer is a genuine renaissance person.  His work tears down many purported barriers between science, philosophy, and religion.  An important book of both breadth and depth.” — Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry, Director, Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia

“Dr. Meyer does a superb job in accurately describing the physics and cosmology that show the universe had a beginning. He also convincingly shows that quantum mechanics will not eliminate a cosmological singularity.” — Dr. Frank Tipler, Professor of Physics, Tulane University; Co-Author, The Anthropic-Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press)

“A truly superb analysis of the relevant evidence.Stephen Meyer convincingly demonstrates that the God hypothesis is not just an adequate explanation for the origin of our fine-tuned universe and biosphere: it is the best explanation.” — David J Galloway, MD DSc FRCS FRCP, Honorary Professor of Surgery at College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences University of Glasgow; Former President, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

“A pleasure to read, [Meyer’s] inviting voice brings light to bear on complicated and profoundly influential subjects. With this abundantly rich book, Meyer completes a compelling trilogy which refutes the prevailing materialism of the intelligentsia.”  — Terry Scrambay, journalist and reviewer for New Oxford Review

“I commend Meyer’s book to those who believe science and religion are in conflict, and indeed to anyone seeking answers to the ultimate questions.” — The Claremont Review of Books

What Historians Do

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I got this from John Fea’s book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation. It applies to what I am doing in my own historical research. After listening to him I started changing my approach to my research. of course this was also affected by Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. Because of Mills I had already started doing genealogy completely differently than other genealogists I know. I had started to think like a lawyer in terms of legal proof. But I also started to think like a scientist by demanding an explanation for why events took place. What were the underlying causes of events? This soon became more fascinating than the facts of genealogy. I find myself wanting to write a history book about the lives and migration paths of my ancestors.

Then I picked up Fea’s book and this reinforced my realization that I was woefully underprepared to understand my own past! I had not taken enough history courses in college to know how historians do anything. Well, Fea helps with that a bit. Let me share some of his ideas, below.

Fea is quoting Historians Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke. He says there are 5 C’s of Histororical Thinking.




1. CHANGE.

Historians must see change over time. While some things stay the same over the course of
generations, many things change. The historian’s task is to chronicle these changes. As historian
John Tosh puts it, “There may be a gulf between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ but that gulf is actually
composed of processes of growth, decay and change which it is the business of the historian to
uncover.”

2. CONTEXT

Historians must interpret the past in context. They examine the documents of the past in
light of the time and the place in which they were written. Words ripped from their cultural and
chronological context provide useful material for the compilers of quotation books, but they are
useless to the historian. The words of the founders, for example, must always be interpreted from
the perspective of the eighteenth-century world in which they were uttered or written. There is a
wide chasm that separates the past from the present. Context helps us to realize that more often
than not people in the past do not think and behave the same way that we do.

3. CAUSALITY

Historians are always interested in causality. I remember a few years ago when the talk
radio host Rush Limbaugh announced that “history is real simple. You know what history is? It’s
what happened. Now if you want to get into why what happened, that’s probably valid too, but
why what happened shouldn’t have much of anything to do with what happened.”8 Limbaugh
could not have been more wrong about what historians do. They are not only interested in facts,
but always ask why a particular event in the past happened the way it did.

4. CONTINGENCY

Historians are concerned with contingency. This is the notion that “every historical outcome
depends upon a number of prior conditions.”9 Contingency celebrates the ability of humans to
shape their own destiny. Every historical moment is contingent upon another historical moment,
which in turn is contingent upon yet another moment. Historians are thus concerned about the
big picture—how events are influenced by other events.

5. COMPLEX (History is complex.)

Finally, historians realize that the past is complex. It often resists our efforts to simplify it or
to cut it up into easily digestible pieces. Most students of history are exposed to the past through
textbooks that offer rather straightforward narratives of how a particular era unfolded. While
often necessary for overviews and syntheses of the past, textbooks often fail to reveal that the
past can be messy, complicated, and not easily summarized in a neatly constructed paragraph or
two. Once again, the debate over whether America is a Christian nation is instructive here. On
one hand, the opponents of Christian America draw the conclusion that just because the
Constitution does not mention God then it must hold true that the framers did not believe that
religion was important to the success of the Republic. On the other hand, defenders of Christian
America conclude that if the founders were people of Christian faith, then they must have set out
to establish a uniquely Christian nation. Logicians call these assertions “non sequiturs.”
Historians would argue that those who draw such conclusions lack an appreciation for the complexity of the past.

6. CONSTRUCTION.

OK, that leads to Fea’s CONSTRUCTION

The task of historians is to use these five Cs to reconstruct the past and make their findings
available to the public. Historians make the dead live. They bring the past to an audience in the
present. If we think about the vocation of the historian in this way, then we must distinguish
between “history” and “the past.” The past is the past—a record of events that occurred in
bygone eras. But history is a discipline—the art of reconstructing the past.

References provided by John Fea:

1). Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke, “What Does It Mean to Think Historically?” AHA Perspectives 45: 1 (January
2007). Accessed at http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0701/0701tea2.cfm.
2) John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2006),
3) Gary Nash, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Vintage, 2000).
4) Andrews and Burke, “What Does It Mean to Think Historically?”

OK, that’s enough for now. I have to actually apply these 5 or 6 “C’s”, and re-visit the topic later after some experiences in tracing my family’s past.


Stonehenge Standard Time

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You may have noticed the Stonehenge Standard Time post circulating, right? So, what am I to do with the mini-stonehenge in my family’s ancient back yard in Stanton Drew, Somerset? It doesn’t get as many visitors, (except for wannabe druids), but how do the cows deal with daylight savings time? Are they sleep disturbed certain times of the year?

Shadow Banning

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This came from a recent discussion about blog sites not being able to be posted on facebook and seen in the facebook browser.

Susan Lambeau, Looking at the facebook post in a browser if you click on the picture it launches a new browser window (the default browser of your system) and goes to https://phys.org/news/2023-12-theory-einstein-gravity-quantum-mechanics.html which is the URL of the article at phys.org. But using the facebook app what happens is you cannot get to phys.org. Instead Facebook generates a new web page that looks like the page at the above URL and send you to there, but inside the facebook app.

The implication here is facebook can censor the content. If they don’t want someone reporting on adverse side effects, for example, they can ban that.
Legally they can do that because they own the content on their website. They do not own the content on outside websites.

Even if you put the URL “https://phys.org/news/2023-12-theory-einstein-gravity-quantum-mechanics.html” on your facebook post people using the app will not be able to see the URL. They filter it out and re-write the display that is rendered.

This is important. Why? Well, for example, there is a recent scientific paper published in Canada about contamination level of DNA fragments in Pfizer covid vaccines. Facebook will not allow discussion of the paper. You cannot post the paper. You cannot post a link to a website talking about the paper either. They just remove your post. Sometimes they warn you not to try doing it again. The information is suppressed. This is one of the reasons people blog – to avoid censorship.

One of the side effects I recently noticed was it is not possible to get to a certain blog on medium.com where there are book reviews of books on science. The owner puts the link on her facebook group but facebook app users cannot get to the site to give feedback to the reviewer.

Really old people who still have computers and know what a browser is are slightly better off. But the new gen-alpha audience is totally locked into phones. Even my 40 year old daughter in law does not know what a browser is. And her kids have never seen a computer.

I think there is a word for this. I have heard it called “shadow banning”. The idea is to prevent unauthorized information from being viral. Or being capable of being viral.

So if a research scientist or an MD wants to say something that is “forbidden” she may be subject to shadow banning. Was there much of that happening during the lockdowns? You tell me!

When I travel I usually do not access facebook from a computer, but use a phone. I miss being able to copy a URL to paste into a note for later retrieval.
for example, the book review site. I had to ask the owner to message me the URL.

I hope this helps explain some of my concern. I want an open world wide web, not one that is controlled by a coalition of big tech that chokes off information.

Thanks!

Todays YEC Rumors

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A friend posted this:

I wrote to her the following:


My friend David Rhoads tells me the YEC people claim the laws of physics change (when it is convenient for their viewpoint). I dont know if thats true. It seems to be. He has studied this for years. So, let us assume its true. God changes the laws of physics. OK, so then tell me why God cannot tweak the DNA of 100 organisms in a species to cause 50 reproducing pairs to suddenly exist to make a new species?

If God can and does change the laws of physics WHY cant he spawn a new species every day of the week?

Keep in mind the YEC claim is that the ENTIRE COSMOS had the laws of physics changed the first few days of creation and also changed the day Adam sinned.

Their claim is the speed of light everywhere changed.

Well, thats waaaaaaayyyyyy bigger of an effect on the universe than making a new species would be on tiny little earth.

So I am having a hard time understanding why god cannot do macroevolution.

I dont believe in naturalistic macro-evolution. I believe in theistic-macro-evolution. So to me what we seen in the natural world and what we see in the bible is One-Seamless-Truth.

So….”Evolution requires a lot more faith than the Creator view”… why do the YEC people limit God’s power? They believe God cannot do evolution. He is constrained to only being able to do creative acts at the beginning. Even if it means he changed all the physical laws of the universe. But during history? Oh, well, he is not allowed to tweak biology.

So I think this evolution versus theology idea seems to be a false dichotomy invented in the middle of the 19th century.

If we believe God can heal people and can resurrect people, why cant he make new species? I don’t get it. I used to go visit Henry Morris at his school in San Diego. I believed his world view. But now it doesnt make any sense.

On Cosmic Origins

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LINK TO THIS POST: https://randomraindrops.com/2023/11/30/on-cosmic-origins/

Image of LINK TO THIS POST

On cosmic origins, Sy Garte says on page 52 of his book The Works Of His Hands,

“The third possible solution, one that is not commonly considered to be within the realm of science, is that God created the universe in a way that allowed stars, planets, and us to exist. While scientists typically reject any supernatural explanations, it must be said that the God hypothesis is not any more removed from testing or scientific confirmation than the multiverse. Therefore, a rational thinker is free to choose between two equally plausible and equally non-provable ideas. I now choose God.”



Let me pull out the two conclusions.

1. THE GOD HYPOTHESIS IS NOT ANY MORE REMOVED FROM TESTING OR SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION THAN THE MULTIVERSE.

2. THEREFORE A RATIONAL THINKER IS FREE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO EQUALLY NON_PROVABLE IDEAS. I NOW CHOOSE GOD.

Lets look at how Sy leads up to the third possible solution and his conclusions. Lets see what he says about the other two logical possible solutions.

Sy Garte On Cosmic Origins
Starting on page 49 of his kindle book The Works of His Hands Sy says the following about “Fine Tuning in Cosmology”



“What I learned about chaos and complexity helped remove my faith in materialism, rationalism, and the other philosophical reasons I started out with for not believing in God. But I also learned something that was more radical—something that actually made me think of a Creator God as a rational idea, or at least as rational as any alternative. This lesson did not make me a theist (that is still to come), but it did suggest a positive reason to believe rather than merely taking away reasons not to believe. That lesson was the fine-tuning of the cosmological constants.
Most physical laws include arbitrary constants that cannot be derived from theory but can only be measured experimentally—they simply are what they are. I will discuss the unsolvable mystery of the physical constants as an example of a hard limit on what we can discover through science in chapter 8. But for a small subset of these constants, the mystery has even greater significance. These are the cosmological constants—the constants related to how the universe was initially formed.
There are anywhere from six to about twenty of these numbers (depending on different interpretations), and it turns out that their values are highly fortuitous. If they were at all different (in some cases by extremely small differences), our kind of universe couldn’t exist, and neither could we.
According to modern physics, there are four forces that underlie all the physical laws of the universe. Two nuclear forces, the strong force and the weak force, govern interactions between particles within the atomic nuclei. At the other end of the scale of object size, interactions between large bodies such as stars, planets, and galaxies are dependent on the third force, gravity. Finally, magnetic and electrical forces between atoms and subatomic particles are different aspects of the fourth, the electromagnetic force.“



Ok, so far so good. I think we need to come back to this “unsolvable mystery of the physical constants”

The great goal of modern physics has been to find a unified theory that can integrate all these forces with each other and show how each force is related by some logical mathematical formulation to all the others. Some progress has been made. The weak force and the electromagnetic force have been shown to be interrelated; at a very early stage in the history of the universe (within the first billionth of a second of the start of the big bang), these two forces were actually one.
The relative strengths of the four forces are determined by specific equations that include some of the cosmological constants. Martin Rees, the distinguished British astronomer, writes in his book Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe that these four physical constants (and two others) need to be exactly the values they are, or the universe would be radically different than it is. Changes in any of these constants would make stars, planets, and life impossible.
The fraction of the mass of two hydrogen atoms that is released as energy when they fuse to produce helium is 0.007 (0.7%). That is the source of the heat produced in the sun and in a hydrogen bomb. It is the amount of mass (m) that is converted to energy (E) in the famous Einstein formula E = mc2, and it is a direct measure of the strong nuclear force. If the strong force had a value of 0.006 or less, the universe would consist only of hydrogen—not very conducive to the complexities of life. If the value were greater than 0.008, all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang, and there could be no stars, no solar heat—again, no life.
As Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put it in their book The Grand Design, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.”2

There are three possible solutions to the mystery of fine-tuning of the physical constants. One is that there is in fact a good theoretical explanation for these constants, and it will turn out that they had to be exactly what they are. This explanation would most likely be derived from the long-sought “theory of everything,” which will connect gravity to quantum physics and answer all questions. However, the theory of everything has so far been elusive. The latest disappointing results from CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, cast further doubt on these expectations.3
Another possibility is that there are or have been an infinite number of universes. We happen to be in this one because this is the only one out of billions or trillions, each with different constants and characteristics, that we could be in. The multiverse theory is favored by many physicists, but it has the problem of being unprovable, since information cannot travel between universes.

Lets re-iterate the three possible solutions.

1. THEORY OF EVERYTHING (that connects gravity to quantum physics and explains everything)
2. INFINITE NUMBER OF UNIVERSES (unprovable)
3. GOD (unprovable)

Bonhoffer On Stupidity

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Bonhoeffer is being used to call Trump evil.  This was said to Jeff Greenberg.

Quoting Dean Ohlman:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian. Penning this sentence ten years after the accession of Adolf Hitler to supreme power, these words reflected tough lessons soaked in blood. Bonhoeffer formed part of a small circle of resistance to the dictator in Germany, risking his life for an ideal.
It was a dark time in his homeland. Total war had engulfed the world, and a totalitarian regime was controlling the country. Bonhoeffer pondered how this came to be. He thought about the nature of evil, but came to the conclusion it was not evil itself that was the most dangerous enemy of the good. Rather, it was stupidity.

For you can fight against evil. Evil gives people a queasy feeling in the stomach. As Bonhoeffer continued, “evil carries with itself the seeds of its own destruction.” To prevent willful malice, you can always erect barriers to stop its spread. Against stupidity you are defenseless.

“Against stupidity we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use. Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied. In fact, they can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make them aggressive. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jeff Greenberg replies: 

Harsh but true! Pray that this demonic force will indeed be imprisoned and no longer a threat to Life.

What price piety is paid by these slanderous  ultra-left “Christians”?   Its a case study in hatred in the name of Christ. That is what Jeff Greenberg just came to mean to me.

Genealogy Note Nov. 2021

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Ever play the message passing game in 3rd grade?

The teacher puts the whole class in a circle . “Emily”, she says, ‘I am going to whisper you a secret.” She whispers in Emily’s ear. “Now you tell Rachel”. Emily whispers the secret in Rachels ear. Rachel tells Aaron. Aaron tells Bob, And so on. It gets to the last kid in the circle, Tommy. Tommy says it out loud to the class. The teacher then says what the original secret was. Which of course isn’t very much like what Tommy just pronounced. The point is the message morphed by being passed from person to person.

Is this an aspect of hearsay?

Regardless, message passing doesnt work. Well, not very well.
This is why genealogists look for eyewitness reports of events, meaning they saw the event and recorded it at the time. The witness must have been at the place and at the time.

That is what a PRIMARY SOURCE consists of.

Gravestones are not primary sources, BTW. The people doing the burying are not witnesses to the birth and are not recording it.

A census record and a death certificate also are not primary sources. We do contrive a lot of birth dates from these documents, but these are contrived. And subject to error.

My wife’s family members keep asking me to do genealogy for them. They want me to interview witnesses, obtain documents, figure it out, and document it. They keep asking and asking and asking. I get quixxed about it and my wife gets quizzed about it like they are actually interested.

I say to them “feed me notes, documents, letters, records.” Communicate with me. Dont pass rumors and messages to my wife.

They to a person steadfastly refused to even lift a little finger to go along with this. And tell me I am supposed to do it all for them.

I am now telling them NO. Stop talking to me about this if you are not willing to help. You are wasting my time.

WYSIWYG Book Layout

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Factors of choosing an authoring tool. What you see is what you get. WYSIWYG.

So, if you use 3 columns of text you have the opportunity to design left-right pages so graphics can be centered or be offset towards the spine or towards the outer edges.

When starting a chapter I try to use the left page as a full page photo, the chapter title and half page of text are on the right side and that is page 1 of the chapter. Afterwards each facing page spread has a left-right character.

I want my editor tool to show this. I want the text to flow around the photos and images.

I have a thing about “creating”. I do not just write long pieces of text. I want pictures, graphics, artwork, maps, diagrams, tables, and more. It must produce a PDF. I want to see what the PDF looks like in near real time. I do not want to hire a layout person for $000’s to create the final product for me.
That would be like a blind man hiring a sculptor. I am doing sculpting, not authoring.

Cancel Your Own Self Westerner.

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Chief Ish-Tak-Ha-Ba. Remember that name!!! It means “Sleepy Eyes”. And the high school in Sleepy Eye Minnesota carries the name “Indians” in honor of their namesake, who died in 1859 and whose remains are buried under a large granite monument in town. Four years ago his great-great-great-great granddaughter donated his pipe to the Sleepy Eye historical society in a ceremony that drew press attention.

Meanwhile, at Mahnomen, Minnesota public schools, the schools logo looks like a dreamcatcher with the word “Indians” across the top. They consider it is done with a sense of pride. The majority of the population is Indian and they like it – it gives them a sense of pride.

BTW, I am part Cherokee. So I like this idea. Lets celebrate some native American heritage.

Let us not forget the Warroad, Minnesota Warriors, who have a special logo designed by native american students that shows an indian warrior’s face with two feathers. I say “bravo” for them. Its about time!

So its ok to use these logos if the people whose culture is represented actually want them. The politically correct just dont want them used if the people dont happen to have a background in the heritage. In that case its considered offensive.

But in Washington State, the mascot “Vikings” now has to be changed because the “offended” dont feel included in Viking heritage. I KNEW IT! I KNEW VIKINGS would be considered politically incorrect. And it is! But in this case you cant have innocuous because someone ISNT represented by the mascot.

The PC are offended if you name something they think is about them, and the PC are offended if you DONT name something that is about them. Soon, absolutely all speech in America will be censored by some minority that is offended. So the Seattle Pina Colada Blenders will be banned because the non-drinkers feel offended that their culture is both not included and too included to be allowed.

America has gone nuts, and free speech is getting shredded by the lunatic left.

I’m also Irish, and I shudder to think the non-Irishmen wont be allowed to celebrate anything Irish because either the Irish didnt give permission or the non-Irish feel left out. It a way for the PC to extinguish recognition of Irish culture. Its coming.

Interesting Question about Realty Income (O)

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One of the reasons why Realty Income used to trade at a premium valuation is because it was highly specialized and it had achieved a great track record in its niche. But now it is stepping out of it. Last year, it started investing in casinos Then, it invested in vertical farming.After that, it acquired Spirit Realty Capital (SRC), which significantly expanded its industrial property portfolio. Now, it is investing in data centers… What’s next? Is there anything Realty Income wouldn’t go into?