1 post tagged “philosophy”

As a society, we value education.   Enough so that we have made education available to everybody completely apart from financial costs.  I believe this has resulted in a devaluation of education among the recipients.  Had schools been a privelege to me and my generation rather than a given, we would have taken the opportunities we were afforded much more seriously.  As it was, I felt I was being force fed.  My parents disaggreed, largely because they did not get complete education.  The more I learn about the application of agenda into our educational programs, the more I believe we are being force fed misinformation.  This is one of the myriad reasons I advocate vouchers or school choice.  If this school is doing a lousy job, I get to choose a better school just like I get to choose a better hamburger joint or auto mechanic.

I am a religious man but I have avoided arguing politics and judgment from a religious perspective simply because of the current bias against Christianity in the Western cultures.  On this topic, I believe this is not possible because there simply is no better source for wisdom than faith in God.  There is only one path to wisdom.  There is only one path to understanding the benefits and consequences of world views.  The rest are condemned to continuously circling around false assumptions because; all men reason in a circle, or begin by assumptions. Their knowledge and wisdom depend on their assumptions. The God-rejecter begins by assuming his ideas and those of the fools before him are intelligent and rational. He begins by assuming he has made great advances in the twenty years since he was in diapers. The righteous man begins by assuming faith in an infinitely wise God, Who has revealed truth and wisdom in Scripture. He begins by thinking he knows nothing at all and needs the help of Another. 

The other you choose should be based on their fruit.  I'll come back to this thought in a moment but I wanted to point out the carnal mind and its motivation.  The reason the carnal person tears down the reputation of the good and builds up or covers up the reputation of the evil is they are biased by their desires for their own particular brand of evil and align with other brands of evil to overcome the majority's good judgment to protect their access to their favored brand of evil.  Ergo, the Liberal elite college professor who denies the existence of God aligns with the Hezbollah terrorist who targets and kills innocents in the name of Allah.  Its insane and the professor denies it, but his deeds reveal him.  His fruit is supportive of Hezbollah and destructive to his own country and ideology.  Carried out to its logical conclusion, his course would end in submission to Islam and Allah as described in the Qu'ran.

Back to the fruit of faith.  If the fruit of belief in God is the Taliban, Hezbollah, Fatah, and the hundreds of other mainstream organizations which openly and proudly present their blood lust and domineering control of the population as the will of Allah, you might want to consider the consequence to you personally and those you love if their ideology is employed everywhere.  If the fruit of faith is an environment which welcomes other ideologies and fights for equal opportunity for all, even for countries other than its own, then you might want to consider the Source of such an ideology.  Perhaps someone can recall a civilization and ideology which welcomes other cultures to enter their arena of ideas, not just for purposes of debate, but always looking for the better to employ in their own society, but I can't recall one.  Perhaps someone can recall a society in history which bleeds for other cultures without expectation of payment or profit, but I can't recall one.  Certainly, it isn't Islam.  Islam has been imperialist, expansionist, and violently militant from its inception and continues to be today in 44 nations around the world so they can bless the people with 'morality' by chopping off the heads of anyone who refuses to submit to their authority.  Pardon me, but that isn't religion, that is a theopolitical movement to advance a government and the power of its leaders.  Come to think of it, wasn't it the U.S. (a predominantly Christian culture) which went to war in Bosnia to protect Muslims from the Christians engaging in ethnic cleansing?

As for the faith of non-faith, what is its fruit in recent history?  Nazism, Communism, Maouist, Taoist, etc., have all been the sources of the greatest bloodletting in history, even more than all three major religions combined.  All of them stem from the Marxist ideology of eliminating faith in God.  More than 100 million lives lost in the last century alone.  The thing that sets Christianity apart from all the rest is its self correcting nature.  It was the Christian which drove the anti-slave movement.  It was the Christian which corrected the witch trials and the inquisition.  You name the ill in Christianity from history and just know that it was Christians which corrected the wrongs.  Not only that, but in the last century it was predominantly the Christian cultures which corrected the ills of the anti-God regimes of Nazism, Communism, Taoists and eventually pressured the Maouists to some degree of morality and value for human life and self will.  This continues even today and it is predominantly the Christian culture which is exerting some control on the bloodlust of the Islamists.

Let God be true.

This is a crucial proverb, for the rest are wasted without fearing the LORD. Solomon put it first! The basic foundation for learning is to fear God (9:10); but fools reject wisdom and instruction, for they are proud and selfish without regard for God. They love their own opinions (26:12). Rather than search for truth, fools simply want to promote their own thoughts (18:1-2). But you cannot even start learning without the true fear of God.

Who is the LORD? He is Jehovah of the Bible, the great I AM THAT I AM (Ex 3:14; 6:3). He created the heavens, earth, seas, and everything in them in six twenty-four hour days. When He came as a man 2000 years ago, He was named Jesus (Is 7:14; 9:6; Matt 1:21-23; John 1:1,14). Jesus Christ is Jehovah! And He is coming soon with His mighty angels in flaming fire to destroy His enemies (II Thess 1:7-11; I Tim 6:13-16).

The fear of God is an affectionate reverence for Him and humble submission to His word. Fearing God is loving His commandments and hating evil (8:13; 16:6; Ps 111:10; 112:1). Fearing God recognizes Him as the First Cause and Last End of all things (16:4; Rev 4:11)! It knows His forgiveness and seeks to please Him (Ps 130:3-4). A man fearing God trembles humbly at His word (Is 66:2). It is the whole duty of man (Eccl 12:13-14).

Natural men, who do not fear God, are fools (Ps 14:1; 36:1; 58:1). Their reasoning processes are perverse, for they reason in a circle from their own conceited ideas (Rom 1:20-23; I Tim 6:3-5,20-21). Spiritual men, who do fear God, are wise and reasonable, because their thoughts begin with faith in a Creator God (II Thess 3:2; Heb 11:3,6). The fool begins his thinking with thoughts of other fools, the believer with the words of God!

All men reason in a circle, or begin by assumptions. Their knowledge and wisdom depend on their assumptions. The God-rejecter begins by assuming his ideas and those of the fools before him are intelligent and rational. He begins by assuming he has made great advances in the twenty years since he was in diapers. The righteous man begins by assuming faith in an infinitely wise God, Who has revealed truth and wisdom in Scripture. He begins by thinking he knows nothing at all and needs the help of Another.

The fool cannot prove his theories. He calls hallucinations like evolution to be science, but he has never observed evolution, duplicated it in a laboratory, or adequately defined it. He is a fool! And his so-called science is merely a fable (I Tim 6:20-21). The believer knows the Bible is absolutely true internally and externally: but he cannot and will not prove it to the fool, because the fool is missing the essential factor - faith (II Thes 3:1-2).

Consider faith closely. The fool has faith - belief and trust - in himself and his other fellow fools. It takes more faith to believe man came from chaotic gases and baboons than it does to believe man came from an intelligent Creator. The fool has faith, but it is faith in man's hallucinations! The fool has faith in lies, which is self-deception! The believer has faith in God and His word (Heb 11:1-6), which is self-instruction (15:33)!

How did man originate? The fool says a big bang of chaotic gases formed order, design, beauty, life, and the ability and laws to reproduce and preserve them. The man who fears God knows the fool is a fool, because only an idiot could imagine such nonsense, and only the insane would say it! As a humble child trusting God, he cries, "The Emperor has no clothes!" He knows God made man from dust and breathed into him the breath of life.

Evolution is the result of God-hating and sin-loving minds given over to the devil, and it is God Himself Who blinds these fools to worship baboons as their ancestors (Is 44:9-20; Rom 1:20-23). Their "think tanks" today are to smoke hallucinogenic substances and see who can win the day by coming up with the most outlandish explanation for a thing! Do you doubt this accusation? How do you think they say the big bang was 14 billion years ago? They do not even know what men were doing on earth 4 thousand years ago!

The blessed God blinds men who are not thankful to Him for what they are and have (Rom 1:20-23). When they give more glory to the creature than to the Creator, He gives them over to a reprobate mind to do very inconvenient things like sodomy, abortion, child rebellion, rap, bestiality, Picasso, and same-sex marriages (Rom 1:24-32). Jehovah, the LORD, has committed Himself to destroy such men (I Cor 1:19-20; 3:19-20).

How did the seven-day week originate? Did Neanderthal man decide he was tired after working six days and needed the seventh for rest? The movements of the sun give us seasons and years and days, and the moon gives us months, just as God declared (Gen 1:14-19). Where did the week originate? By God's revelation (Gen 2:1-3; Ex 20:8-11)!

How did morality originate? Is adultery wrong? If not, why is polygamy wrong? If not, why is prostitution wrong? If not, why is pornography wrong? If not, why is bestiality wrong? If not, why is pedophilia wrong? How do you reason, fool? Did the caveman of your theories want to protect the woman and give her a loving and secure life in a monogamous relationship of two adults? Or did the blessed God ordain marriage?

Consider how an evolutionist reasons. He laughs at sexual abstinence and virginity, while pulling very small infants apart limb by limb with a suction abortion. He sues farmers for housing chickens in safe cages with constant food, water, and vitamins; but he viciously defends the so-called right to rip an unborn child to pieces! And they call this knowledge!

Fearing God is the beginning of knowledge ... about religion! If it were not for God and His Bible, men would still be sacrificing their wives and children in fire to make peace with their idols, as is still done in India today! They would still be cutting and painting themselves to make peace with the Great Spirit and go to the Happy Hunting Ground.

Fearing God is the beginning of knowledge ... about government! If it were not for God and His Bible, men would still worship their emperor as god, like the Egyptians of old and the Japanese of yesterday. Benevolent government was ordained in the Bible, and it is only widely enjoyed in nations that have been havens for Bible preaching. In all other nations, the peasants are used to satisfy the appetite for luxury of the ruler.

Fearing God is the beginning of knowledge ... about history! Most historians today write history to further a social agenda, and those that write honestly have little data anyway. As foolish man discovers that the Bible accounts of ancient civilizations are true, the same men outlaw the Bible in schools, lest the children have truth at their disposal. Consider the recent discovery of the Hittites that the Bible had described for 3,000 years.

The Bible has all the answers from the origin of the universe to what to do with your foolish child, from the origin of death to the cure for it, from perfect rules for marriage to the eternal state of the wicked. Fearing God means that you believe and trust His word, which gives you insight and answers for all the questions of life, while the evolutionist fool can only speculate about new ideas on the age of the big bang.

Fearing God means you do not fear man, which brings pressure to compromise (29:25; Jer 1:8,17). Peer pressure of elementary school students or academicians in your professional field cause men to accept traditional ideas or politically correct theories. It is time for the child to cry again, "But the Emperor has no clothes!" The fear of God saves a man from this bondage, for such a man despises all human opinions (Ps 119:98-100,128).

Where does wisdom originate? In the fear of the Lord! God opens men's eyes, ears, and hearts to truth and wisdom (I Kgs 3:5-15; Jas 1:5). God opens their eyes to His word (Ps 119:18). God shows them His secrets (3:32; Ps 25:14). And they fear no man (Heb 13:6). Wisdom cannot be found anywhere in the universe, but in the fear of God (Job 28:12-28)!