The beginning

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This verse gives us the ultimate foundation for the Christian life. The Lord Jesus Christ told us that we should deny ourselves if we want to follow Him and this verse supports His words by reminding us that God must be "in the beginning", that is, He must be first in our thoughts and deeds. This also tells us that God was there before everything began. There is nothing that exists without God or His creative genius and He is completely independent of everything that He has made while everything is completely dependent on Him. God made everything but He has a special purpose for the earth. This verse also defines some Bible words: "God", "beginning", "created", "heavens" and "earth".

If you would like to find out more about God's grace at the beginning you might like to visit http://www.lulu.com/content/799024 and buy a copy of my book "The Scarlet Thread".

Self Indulgence.

The major problem facing the church today is the glorification of self indulgence. Revelation 2: 4, 5 reminds us that when the church abandons its first love then it will lose its candlestick. This is the reason the church seems to have lost its relevance today. The message is still relevant but the church has replaced self denial with self indulgence and they are no longer distinguishable from the rest of the world. I suppose at least self indulgence has led to the love of money so that the church is now making lots of money, even though they are no longer satisfying their brief by keeping the great commission.

John 3: 16

Consistency in Court

The US supreme court has chosen to interpret the section of the constitution dealing with freedom of religion as freedom from religion and that is their job. I don't have any problem with the court refusing to allow schools to teach Creation or any other religious stories of the beginning. However, they are entirely inconsistent when they allow Evolution to be taught in schools. This is, after all, as pseudo science based on articles of faith that are not universally accepted. If the court wishes to retain the appearance of consistency and integrity they should ban the teaching of every religion in schools.

No communication

There is a kind of person with whom communication is impossible; the emotional bully.

When you try to to inform them they make one of two assumptions:

You are asking them for permission so they immediately say “No”.

You are inviting them to debate the issue so they immediately tell you what is wrong with your idea.

Hence: no communication.

Christian Psychology

The term Christian Psychology is an oxymoron. Psychology is a religion of self indulgence while Christianity is religion of self denial. The intersection of these two sets is null. When people try to synchretise these two religions self indulgence will always wins out. People who go the self denial pathway are able to eat each day from God's abundance and enjoy His goodness without restriction. People who seek self indulgence will always feel empty because who can control the times and the future but God?

Proselytising

What is proselytisation? Is it the person who has a religious bent trying to persuade people to change their belief to follow his? What about the person who joins a group that is satisfied with their beliefs and then tries to enlighten them? Is that kind of person proselytising? Yes they are! The enlightened are just as strong on proselytising as the fundamentalist, except the enlightened despise the fundamentalist as ignorant.

Who is allowed to think?

It is time for us to have integrity about what other people think, if they don't come up with the same conclusions as we do. At least we have to allow them the benefit of logic. Different people will come up with different conclusions depending on their different experiences but we should respect the fact that they can think.

See what we think

There was a time, spoken about in john 6, when the Lord found that some of His followers were leaving Him. He asked the disciples if they wanted to leave Him too but Peter said "where else can we go? you have the words of eternal life." The pressure of the enlightenment today is to force the church to abandon the words of eternal life for their broken vessels. They say that Christians are bigoted and narrow minded but they don't want to let anyone make conclusions other than the ones they have made. We all have to look at the evidence ourselves and make decisions ourselves. Do we want these "enlightened" people to tell us what to think or do we want to look at the words of eternal life ourselves and see what we think?

Spiritual children of the enlightenment

Everybody has the ability to choose what they think. In fact, that is one of the only true rights that we have. However, the spiritual children of the enlightenment seem to think that unless we think the same way as they do and we come up with the same conclusions as they do then we are wrong. They are the intellectual nazis who want to keep control of everyone's minds.

Survival of the Fittest

Darwin's theory was based on the concept of the survival of the fittest. There are many species that mate for life. In this case does each male or female look for the fittest or the most appropriate? When there is a battle for mating among some species the male exhausts himself during the rutting season and often dies during the next winter. Does this mean that he is the fittest? He may be the fittest physically but is he the fittest in terms of survival instincts?

Is there any consistency in this world.

One of the big contradictions of the "Enlightenment" has to do with free choice. We are all gifted with the ability to choose although some people lose this gift by the things other people do to them. Most enlightened people claim to believe in choice and even fight wars to give others the benefits of choice, often called democracy. However, these people fail miserably because they don't allow other people to choose what they think and come up with different conclusions. These intellectual nazis persecute people who come up with different conclusions to theirs. Is there any consistency in this world?

Believing a lie

Why should we slavishly stick to a theory that has become a religion? What's wrong with intellectual integrity? Why can't a person believe in something that the "experts" accept? If they are wrong then the whole world is expected to believe in a lie.

Matters of faith.

I suppose it wrong to question the mechanics of something you don't understand, especially when it has to do with meiosis. After all this is accepted fact. Sometimes you just have to believe with matters of faith.

Technical details

If your theory can't explain all the technical details in the scientific process then it becomes faith. The first thing school children are taught about the scientific process is that it should be repeatable. We look at the evidence and then try to explain with an hypothesis. After that we test the hypothesis and change it so that it fits the new data. If a theory can't explain our observations properly it should be changed or even rejected for a better explanation of the facts. As long as people cling to a bad theory they are in the sphere of faith, that is, religion. Why do the US courts support one religion but refuse to support any other religion?

How many gates are there?

I would find it much harder to believe that meiosis evolved from mitosis many times than that it just evolved once, in fact it would be much easier to believe in God than to believe in this impossibility. On the other hand, we end up with a log jam at the one place were meiosis evolved and it means that every sexually reproducing organism has to go through this gate. We have to have this gate very early in the evolutionary history so all these organisms can get through it. However, there are both animals and plants that reproduce asexually. We must then postulate that there are two gates, one before the meiosis gate and one after the meiosis gate, to evolve from the plant kingdom to the animal kingdom. This is getting very complicated and even supersititious.

Did it only happen once?

What are the chances that two episodes of meiosis would occur at nearly the same time so that they could then be involved in sexual reproduction? Did mitosis evolve into meiosis once or many times? Surely you have to be able to believe anything if you believed that this could occur many times. However, if it only occurred once there would be a huge blockage in the evolutionary tree because there are both plants and animals that reproduce sexually. So did the sexual and asexual branches divide after this miraculous event?

Meiosis

How did meiosis evolve from mitosis? Did this occur twice or were the first examples of sexual reproduction hermaphrodite?

Civilisation and Evolution

Orundellico, Jemmy Button, grew up in Tierra del Fuego and belonged to the Yaghan people. Captain FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle took him to England after taking hostages in 1830. They returned to their homeland on the Beagle when Charles Darwin made his famous voyage. When he returned to his homeland he took up the habits that he had learned as a child and gave up the habits of a cultured English gentleman. Darwin was disgusted and stated that this happened because these people were closer to the apes and unable to appreciate the true benefits of civilization. Poor Jemmy, he just preferred his own culture and habits to those of his kidnappers.

Charles Darwin

This year the world celebrates the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's major work and the 200th anniversary of his birth. Charles Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle and the work he did after that has certainly changed the world in many ways. However, Darwin's theories only affected Europe and didn't do much in Africa or Asia. That represents more than half the world's population. Darwin certainly changed the way many people think but did he actually change the world? If he did change the world, was it for good?

Sydney Easter Show

We went to the Royal Easter Show yesterday. It was a splendid day without any clouds, clear and not too warm. We saw professor Marie Bashir, the governor of New South Wales, open the show. She truly is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. If you can get to the show it is well worth the entry price.

When

At some time in their life a person wants to have structure so that they can feel secure. If this structure is not provided in their cultural context they will establish a cultural context of their own and join a gang. In these circumstances the people involved want to get to the top at some stage so they will try and take over from the leader or move out and establish their own new gang.

What is justice?

In the last few weeks we have seen an example of injustice on a massive scale. On of the basic issues with justice is that a person is only punished once for a crime. However, some sports administrators have a higher opinion of themselves than they ought to have. Nick D'Arcy has faced the Australian courts and been convicted for a crime. The sentence was given and will be carried out. However, the sports administrators seem to believe that they are above the Law and have decided to give him a third punishment for one offence. This is sanctimonious intellectual Nazism at its worst. I say we should sack the administrators and appoint people who are more concerned about the athletes and the sport than their own opinion of themselves.

Make our own rites of passage

In a society with no rites of passage there are many people who want to have the security of earning their right to be a full, participating member of the group. In order to this these people develop their own rites of passage and their own strict set of rules. This will give them the security they need even though some may later rebel against this security and try to establish a new group with themselves higher up the participation ladder.

Illegal gangs

Why do people join illegal gangs anyway? Some people don't join gangs but they join clubs or other organisations, does this serve the same purpose and joining gangs. The answer is yes. We all want to have some kind of security and this comes from knowing who we are. In a society that is deeply concerned with every persons rights we have forgotten the deep need that everyone has to belong. Belonging to one group is seen as interfering with someone else's right to be who they want to to be. However, we all want security and we seek to define ourselves by the company we keep or the organisation we belong to. Illegal gangs have well defined rules and everyone knows who they are are and they feel secure.

Faith

How does a person without an anchor for their soul survive life without destroying themselves? The only answer is through faith. We must believe in something and work towards satisfying that faith. Faith will take a person a long way but faith can also destroy a person so make sure that you have faith in something sound. Faith in Christ has already stood the test of time so that is sound and not destructive. There are people who try to combine faith in Christ with something else like self love and that is destructive.

More on Anchors

The most effective way to deal with binge drinking and the other problems caused by people who don't have an anchor for their souls is to give them one. This is best started when a person is young but can happen at any time in their lives if the conditions are right.

Waiting for the binge

Binge drinking is something that allows a person to forget for a while and then get on with their lives. They can look forward to the weekend or whenever when they can anaesthetise their souls for a while and forget how painful it is to be alive. After the weekend they can recover from the effects of the binge and then survive till the next binge by looking forward to the next "good time". There is a problem with this lifestyle because people can do things that they won't recover from during the binge, things that will ruin the rest of their lives.

Anchors for the soul

Every person needs to know who they are and where they fit in their society. These things are taught to children as they are growing up. In primitive societies children have to complete rites of passage before they can become adults. In many modern societies there are no rites of passage. When a child reaches the age of two they realise that they are different from the rest of the world and they need to find out where "I" stops and the rest of the world starts. This process continues on into adulthood. A child who learns where "I" stops then feels secure because they know their boundaries and they can define themselves. A child who has boundaries will have an anchor for their soul. Children without these anchors will feel significant pain and this pain will keep with them throughout their lives unless they can find a true anchor. This leads to the need to anaesthetise the soul.

More on binge drinking

What purpose does binge drinking serve? In the days of drovers they would be out on the track for months at the time and weren't allowed to drink but when they came into town they would have a huge binge to catch up on the all the alcohol they had missed. They said that they developed a powerful thirst after a long time. However, some people have binges every week these days. How does a person develop a powerful thirst in just a week? Binge drinking has nothing to do with developing a powerful thirst, it is all to do with forgetting. When a person is drunk they can't remember the pain of their circumstances and that feels good for a while. The need to forget is so pressing that they are willing to risk the consequences.

Binge drinking

Alcohol and other drugs become problems because they are an anaesthetic for the soul. Many young people binge drink today because they want to forget the pain of being alive. This is actually the pain of never really having been allowed to define themselves within their own context. However after a binge all the pain is put on hold for a while.

True Justice

How can we define true justice? Many lawyers will say that they are the only ones to define justice and to say how it should be applied. There is an arrogance among this crowd because they believe that they are the only ones who understand the issues. However, everyone in society is affected by justice and they are hurt when justice is not applied justly. It is best if there is retribution first, a crime must be punished by a fixed penalty. But, how can we keep the prisoners under control if they know they are going to have to serve the full term, you may ask? Well this is where rehabilitation comes in. Prisoners need to show that they have been rehabilitated before they can be released, even if they have served their full term. Instead of subtracting time, that is, softening the need for retribution, for good behaviour time should be added for bad behaviour.

Retribution

The basic law of the universe is that of sowing and reaping, action and consequence. When a group of people live together in a society they have to have some rules to make sure that they can all live together in relative peace. If there are no laws then each person will live entirely for themselves and the entire society will break down. When there are rules it is important that people understand that there will be some sanction if the laws are broken. There are great advantages to being part of a group but a person must recognise the value of being part of the group or be excluded. This means that if a person breaks the rules there must be some sanction taken out against the person so that the group will not break down. This sanction is retribution. Without retribution there is no incentive to obey the rules of the group and the group will self destruct.

Rehabilitation

When a person commits a crime they need to be rehabilitated. That is, they need to be brought into a condition whereby they are suitable to live in society again. If the only goal of punishment is rehabilitation then no person should be given any fixed term of imprisonment. They should all be sent to prison until they are rehabilitated. The question then becomes, how do we know when a person is rehabilitated? Can we be sure that a person, who is rehabilitated, will not re-offend? If we cannot be sure then is the person rehabilitated and should any person be allowed to leave prison if that guarantee can not be made?

The deterrent effect 3

If the deterrent effect means that one person is being punished so that another person will be afraid to commit the crime then the deterrent effect is unjust. If the deterrent effect means that the punishment is so severe that anyone is afraid to commit the crime then the deterrent effect is just. However, if the law is not enforced by exacting the full penalty then the deterrent effect falls flat and the enforcers are unjust.

The deterrent effect 2

Does the deterrent effect mean that one person is being punished to discourage another person from committing a crime? On the other hand, it may mean that the punishment has been designed to be severe so that any person committing a crime will think twice so that they don't have to experience the punishment themselves.

The deterrent effect

The deterrent effect is meant to stop other people from committing a crime. They see the punishment that is a consequence of the crime and then are deterred from committing that crime themselves. Is the deterrent effect true justice or not?

Abortion 6

If we want to live by the WWJD rule then we can look at the Bible and find out what Jesus did, as mentioned earlier in this blog. In John 8 we find that Christ is confronted by a situation of sin but He dealt with it in His own way. At first He asked that a person without sin cast the first stone; that was too much for the accusers. When all the accusers left He forgave the woman and asked her to stop sinning. Do all the abortion critics claim to be without any sin? Have any of these men or woman not looked at another person in lust?

Abortion 5

How deep and dark must be the torments faced by a woman when she has to decide what to do with a new relationship that is entirely dependant on her. Even though this relationship is inside her body and she has complete control over her body, her hormones and consequent emotions are working towards sustenance and not destruction. Let's counsel these women about the relationship issues and not the rights issues. But let's not criticise or condemn them.

Abortion4

How can any man judge a woman who is faced with the dark torments of ending a relationship of total dependence that is growing inside her? Often the woman hasn't been properly counselled as to the pain of the bereavement but she will still feel it. This is always a time for compassion and respect.

Abortion 3

There was a campaign for a while where young people wore wrist bands saying WWJD, meaning what would Jesus do? Somehow this was meant to make them think about their actions. However, there are many instances where we already know what Christ did, they are recorded in the Bible. What would Christ do if He met a person who had recently been bereaved. We know that He would weep with them. Christ would treat a woman who has just been through a bereavement with compassion. He would be compassionate with a woman who had just had an abortion. Even with a woman who is going through the deep torments of having to decide whether she is going to terminate a intimate relationship or not.

Abortion 2

Every woman who has had an abortion should be treated with dignity, respect and compassion. She has just been through a bereavement, having been deprived of a relationship. These facts so not change even if the woman voluntarily had the abortion. Christians should be the first to show love to the bereaved woman.

Abortion 1

There are many arguments about when a foetus actually becomes an individual person. This affects your view of abortion. However, at the moment of conception, or perhaps implantation, a new relationship comes into existence. There is a physical relationship of dependance and an emotional relationship that begins between two distinct sets of DNA when the new DNA comes into existence.

The doctrine of self indulgence

Children need to know who they and where they fit in the world. If they don't they will never be secure in themselves, become angry and targets of destructive habits. The doctrine of self indulgence teaches us that we can always blame someone else but that means we can never help ourselves. It is time to realise that I am responsible for my thoughts and that I am what I think. 

More on Consequences

Every time we allow children in schools to do things without experiencing consequences we are destroying their concept of reality. Adults are meant to contribute to society not be supported by society. As just society will support those who are genuinely in need but a decaying society will allow people to believe that society owes them support when they are unwilling to accept the consequences of refusing to contribute.

Consequences

The basic Law of the universe is sowing and reaping or action and consequence. In spite of this, we teach children that they can insulate themselves from behavioural consequences while they are still in grade school and then we spend a lot of time trying to work out how to deal with the problems that occur when they live as though there are not consequences when they do whatever they want to do. We even introduce them to drugs at an early age to continue to insulate them from the consequences of their actions.

How do children define themselves?

In the 1960s experts in education decided that they didn't want children to feel bad about themselves so they didn't force children to reach certain standards before they could progress in their education. This didn't help the people they wanted to help but took away the rites of passage from the other children. Many of these children are now angry because they have not been allowed to define themselves and now they set up their own rites of passage. They do things like graffiti to define themselves and prove that they are adults or they try to stop the pain inside by binge drinking, drugs and gang warfare.

More Rites of Passage

When a child reaches the "Terrible Twos" they seem to get into a lot of trouble. At this age they realise that they are not continuous with the rest of the world. They try hard to find where "I" stops and the rest of the world begins. It is important to give the child strong direction at this stage so that they are able to define themselves in the world. If the child doesn't learn where there boundaries they will always be angry and when they grow up they will be insecure because they don't know who they are. Rites of passage are part of this important process and they a child will grow up to have an anchor for their soul.

Rites of passage

Every primitive society has rites of passage where a young person has to perform certain tasks to qualify as an adult. What rites of passage does our society have?

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Pain

How do we prove the existence of pain? There are certain physical symptoms that are displayed when a person is in pain but each of these symptoms can be displayed under other conditions. A person who has not experienced real pain will not believe that it exists. Some people today want to say that we cannot demonstrate the existence of God if we refer to experience but they still believe in pain. Is this an inconsistency?

Entropy

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the entropy of an isolated system that is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time until it reaches a maximum value at equilibrium. If it takes more energy to go up the hill using the longer way, as established yesterday, then where does the energy come from to drive evolution? It must come from an external source. What is this external source? It requires faith to believe in some source for this energy. Any theory of origins requires faith and cannot be proved.

How much energy?

 I live at the bottom of a hill and like to ride my cycle. If I turn right I have a short steep climb to get to the top of the hill. If I turn left I have a long gentle ride to get to the top of the hill. It doesn't matter what way I go I still get to the top of the hill and have to come down again. At the top of the hill I have the same amount of potential energy no matter what way I go. I can get to the top in less than five minutes if I go the short way but it takes twenty minutes if I go the long way. It actually takes more energy to go the long way than it does to go the short way. Richard Dawkins would have us believe that it takes no energy to go the long way; at least, that is his argument concerning the gradual development of modern species. It always takes energy to go uphill no matter what way you go.

Exploitation

Huge wealth can only exist alongside an impoverished, exploited hinterland. However, exploitation debases the exploiters. It is time to look to the exploited and seek to help them and then we will find recovery from the global financial crisis. If you want to find out about exploitation you can read Gulf, available right now from jamesmcnaught.com.

Faith and the Past

How do we know if something from the past is true? We must look at the evidence and interpret it by faith. But, faith belongs to religion not pure science. Why do the United States courts favour one kind of faith over another? Visit jamesmcnaught.com if you want to read more about some of these topics.

Religious Freedom

Everything that we know about the past requires faith. We see the data but we must interpret it and we must believe the conclusions by faith. While I have no problem with the US Constitution forbidding the teaching of Creation in schools I struggle with the fact that they support the teaching of other faiths under the so called banner of faith. Surely this is a massive inconsistency! You can visit jamesmcnaught.com if you are interested in topics like this.

Intellectual Integrity

The world is full of people who tell us that we are foolish if we don't believe what they believe. However, we are all gifted with the ability to choose. The wise person chooses what to believe and they accept the full intellectual consequences of their faith. Pure science is all about taking measurements and then interpreting them; thesis, antithesis and synthesis. As soon as a scientist tells you must accept his interpretation of the data he ceases being a scientist and becomes a priest in a system of faith. Reclaiming the Bible from the "Enlightened" examines some of these issues and comes up with surprising answers. Why don't you visit jamesmcnaught.com to find out more?

Middle East

What is life like in the Middle East for women? Blood Money examines how some Australian nurses live in Azzizistan and their frightening experiences. The experiences of a Filipina who has gone there to work so that she can feed her family back home are also examined. The experiences of these people ring true but are hard to believe. You can visit jamesmcnaught.com to find out more about Blood Money this could change your attitude entirely.

Drought and Flooding rain

Dorothea Mackellar wrote about drought and flooding rain in her wonderful Australian poem. Right now we are experiencing these issues in Australia. There are fires, a result of drought and failure to burn off in the cooler months, in Victoria while Queensland and part of NSW are affected by a heavy monsoon causing floods. If you would like to read about Australia and its extremes why don't you visit jamesmcnaught.com, you could read Gulf or Sinking Sand to get some insight into this wonderful land of extremes.

Inflation

How does inflation get out of control? Increases in inflation always follow periods of greed. Often this greed is encouraged by the government but the worst kind of greed in the greed of the jealous. Inflation will only be cured when there is no longer any greed. The Inflation Makers looks at greed and how it can cause destruction of the economy. Serious inflation will lead to deflation and even depression. Keep visiting jamesmcnaught.com to get an update on the progress of this novel.

Confidence

What is confidence anyway? Walt Disney and Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their businesses during the Great Depression and these businesses are still going strong today. It is time for us to have faith in our systems and get back to work. The Inflation Makers is a novel, soon to be released that gives everyone cause for hope in the Global Financial Crisis. If you would like to find out more you can visit jamesmcnaught.com for more information as it becomes available.

Greed

The Global Financial Crisis is the fruit of greed. Greed of this kind takes about fifteen years to work its way through the financial system. We can only solve this kind of problem through self denial but this is hard in a world gone mad on self indulgence. The Inflation Makers a novel by James McNaught that will be ready for release soon looks at the disastrous consequences of greed. You may like to visit jamesmcnaught.com to read books by James McNaught.

Greed

This Global Financial Crisis is a product of greed. This kind of greed takes ten to fifteen years to work its way through the system and then everybody pays. The big problem with greed is that most people aren't really greedy but we all have to pay the price. The Inflation Makers looks at greed and how the problem can be solved. If you would like to find out more why don't you visit jamesmcnaught.com and wait for more information, the novel is being finalised right now but in the mean time you could read some other books.

Global Financial Crisis

Everyone is concerned about the GFC these days and there are many problems with toxic debt. However, the major issue is about confidence. The Inflation Makers is a new novel that looks at the world in a global financial crisis but the world is saved by a wise, African American President.  This novel will soon be available on the net and from book stores. You can go to jamesmcnaught.com for a look at some other books as well.