Jesus and Godel’s Theorem by Richard Bledsoe (Re-blog)

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Here is a thought provoking article written by Richard Bledsoe on Theopolis Institute….

Jesus and Godel’s Theorem

“Religion” is an attempt to create or build a tower with a top, or to build a temple that is self-contained. The story of The Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is the story of mankind’s attempt to create a world that is self-contained and does not need God. All ancient pagan temples were renewed attempts to complete the Tower of Babel. These were termed “ziggurats,” and were viewed as connecting points, or umbilical cords between heaven and earth. Heaven and earth were in the ancient pagan cosmology, part of one eternal entity.

The Temple in Israel was purposely built with a similarity to the ancient ziggurat, and as an answer to the ziggurat. It was built on the top of a mountain, and was a “connecting” place to the God of Israel. But the God of Israel was not encompassed or contained within it, nor was His liberty compromised by it, as were pagan gods by their temples. Never-the-less, Israel was constantly tempted to believe that their temple was like the temples of the nations. The destruction of Shiloh, the capture of the Ark in Samuel’s time (1 Samuel 4), and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (2 Chronicles 36:15-21) contradicted Israel’s constant temptation to “religion”. The theology of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark is quite accurate. The Nazis, like Israel at Shiloh, believed that possession of the Ark entailed possession and control of Jehovah. In this they were wrong.

Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen says that the destruction of Herod’s Temple in 70 A.D. was in principle the destruction of all temples. The last 20 centuries of Christian history have progressively undone one temple after another. But, Christians themselves are tempted to new temples. Byzantine was an attempt to recreate on a Christian basis, at least a partial “ontocratic” or self-contained church/state, to use van Leeuwen’s terminology. The Roman Catholic Church has constantly been tempted in this way, and Protestant sectarianism is guilty in these ways as well.

Hopefully, it is increasingly clear that there is no top to the towers of this world, as we saw demonstrated in the 20th century when we saw all of the great ideologies fall. This opens the door to nihilisms, but also makes more clear than ever that it is only the Sovereign Triune God who is the I Am that I Am, and I Will Be that I Will Be. Only He is self-contained.

The modern city, and indeed, the modern world as a “global village,” is a “tower without a top.” Religion is done for. Bonhoeffer glimpsed this possibility in what he termed a “religionless Christianity. The story of The Tower of Babel sets the theme for all of God’s redemptive work in history. Fallen man’s idolatrous desire is to make for himself a self-contained world of complete adequacy.

When Carl Sagan says, “The Cosmos is all there is, or all there ever will,” he is stating the sentiments of the builders of the Tower of Babel. For them, the upper emporium was the realm of the gods, but it was by human effort and construction, a reachable realm, and that was itself a part of one cosmos. As one moved up the tower to the realm of the gods, one’s own being could also be “divinized”. Man’s being was potentially divine, given the right techniques and methods, amongst which “tower construction” was foremost. But God frustrated them and left them off with an incomplete tower, a tower without a top.

Click here for full article (2400 more words)

BS’rs vs Liars

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A liar is someone who knows that what he’s saying is not true, and he wants to deceive you for his own personal gain and/or to protect himself. He doesn’t necessarily want his lie to be true. He just wants you to believe it so that he can get on with his plans.

A bullshitter, however, while not speaking the perfect truth, wants what he’s saying to be true, and he wants you to want it to be true as well. He will over exaggerate his statistics to make things appear to be better, or more worthy of praise, than they really are. He knows it’s bullshit, he feels it inside, but he convinces himself it’s true just long enough to blurt it out. He hopes that you won’t look too deeply into what he’s saying, and he knows most people won’t.

Thomas Sowell Quotes #8

“[U]nder any movement or set of collective beliefs, a feeling of being on the side of angels can be a dangerous self-indulgence in a heedless willfulness that is sometimes called idealism. This kind of idealism can replace realities with preconceptions, and make the overriding goal the victory of some abstract vision, in defiance of reality or in disregard of the fate of fellow human beings. The symbols of the preconception can become goals in themselves.”

~from Wealth, Poverty and Politics, page 420

In a vision driven group, “buying into the vision” is seen as more virtuous than actually doing something useful. Even those in the group who aren’t doing anything, or who are doing things poorly, will be held in high regard if they “get a hold of” and celebrate the vision. Conversely, those who may be doing productive work which is good for others, but show little enthusiasm for the vision, will be seen as dangerously independent and not “team players.”

Further reading: Shop Class as Soulcraft (Brief Book Review)

Thomas Sowell Quotes #7

“Moral condemnation is not causal explanation, despite how often the two have been combined in a politically attractive package. Despite the tendency of political, and especially ideological, explanations of economic disparities to combine moral and causal factors, the reason so many mountain peoples [for example] around the world have been poor has not been that others went up into those mountains and took away their wealth, but that the mountain peoples seldom produced much wealth in the first place…

“…it is staggering that some people imagine that they can take on the [large] task of righting the wrongs of the past, committed by people long dead, without igniting dangerous new hostilities among the living.”

~from Wealth, Poverty and Politics, page 271-272

Progressive Conservatism

I think the best definition of Conservatism is this: The conservation of the progress which has already been made. And when I write “the progress which has already been made” I’m not just referring to the last thirty years; I’m referring to the last five hundred years. When talking about individual people, thinking in terms of decades is fine, but when we are talking about civilizations, we must talk of centuries. Think of what the western world was like before the Great Reformation, and compare that to today. Would we ever want to go back?

Yet, it would seem some people in the western world today really do want to go back. Read this article entitled Want Equality? Curtail Free Speech. Yes, some useful idiot actually wrote that. Now, these morons would call themselves Progressive, but when one writes, “Our Government should look to criminalise not only Islamophobia, but racist rhetoric and the criticism of feminism and LGBTQAA+ rights,” that’s anything but progressive — it’s regressive.

In Canada, a motion (M-103) was passed recently which directs the government to investigate and act against Islamophobia. Now, when I type that word, Islamophobia, on my computer, my spell-checker red flags it. Why? Because it’s not a real word. And that is the problem with M-103 — it uses a term which is not properly defined. What exactly is Islamophobia? If we break the word down and define the parts, it means: an irrational fear of the ideas of the Islamic religion.

When I encounter those who defend M-103, every time I find that they are unable to distinguish the idea which is Islam from the followers of Islam (Muslims). That’s an important distinction — one is an idea, and the other is a group of people. If we want to live in a free society we must be able to criticize ideas. Martin Luther created a freer society when he openly criticized the state of Christianity in his day. It was not easy for him to do that, and because he did, we now live in a society where we are free to criticize. But, for how long?

Listen to Canada’s Heritage Minister defend M-103 in this video. She only gets confused…

Another good example is the exchange between Ben Affleck and Sam Harris on the Bill Maher show…

Once upon a time there was a political party in Canada called the Progressive Conservatives. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s actually a very good term. Progressive conservatism is the idea that, while we do want to progress socially, we do not want to do so at the expense of the progress which has already been made. What has made the western world the best society to live in so far in human history? Where does our wealth come from? What economic system has allowed us to become so wealthy? (Hint: free market capitalism.) Where do our freedoms come from? What system of government has allowed us our freedoms? (Hint: a system in which the rights of the individual are elevated over the group.) We need to conserve those things and protect them from those who would dismantle them while trying to create their utopia in which no one will ever be offended.