Extracting positive mental stimulus from metaphorical language by means of reduction to equivalent scientific terminology

Dear Ms. McCaleb,
   The submitted article failed to meet our standards for clarity and, more egregiously, failed to adhere to standard scientific principles of evaluating evidence; however, I believe there may be merit to your findings, so I have rewritten your paper to conform to our elevated standards.
Sincerely,
Kris McGary


P.S. Image below illustrates parallel paragraphs.


At 0000 GMT minus 5 hours (Central Daylight Time)
We inferred that the scale of the universe encompassed many orders of magnitude.

The photon stream from the nearest star arrives after reflection from the largest satellite of Homo sapiens native planet while being stochastically interrupted by stratospheric accumulations of condensed water vapor and lateral outgrowths of woody angiosperms.

The retinal stimulation excites a neural path activating the prefrontal cortex leading to a coherent neuronal firing pattern that correlates with the mental activity of processing ancient symbolic patterns pertaining to the corrupted state of Homo sapiens. Simultaneously, earth passes through the vacuum of space. We subjectively report cognitive dissonance about the positive moral value of qualia of an aesthetic nature.

The deceased do not ambulate as a consequence of the above reported cognitive activity; however, the viable  do.  The process of all material objects reorienting into a higher state of entropy leads to an attempt at vocalization, which is impaired by a non-standard cognitive state.

Thoughts for my sons

Dear Madigan and Declan,

I love you both so much. The past year with you, Madigan, has filled my heart with so much joy at the opportunity to be your dad. The time has flown by so fast. Declan, I can't wait to meet you face to face. You both have retaught me that each life is so very precious and that life happens very fast, especially when you are not looking. In my next few blog posts, I hope to share with you lessons that God has taught me through His Word and illustrated in my life. They may not be the big things that stand out in Scripture (e.g. Creation, Fall, Redemption in Christ, and the hope of Glory), but I hope they will encourage you to walk faithfully with our Lord in your own way as God illuminates the meaning of His Word in your life. I have been thinking about writing these things to you for sometime, since I am forgetful and have no guarantee of the opportunity to teach them to you at an age when you will understand.

The first passage that has meant a great deal to me is Proverbs 27:10:

Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.

This passage is very true! I come from a very geographically spread out family. My uncles, aunts, and cousins live on at least three continents at the time of writing this. They are serving the Lord faithfully, which is very great blessing, but it does make family a challenge to keep up with even though they are very loved. I suspect that your own uncles, aunts, and cousins will live a great distance from us as you grow older, but for now we are very blessed to have Aunt Virginia and Aunt Lisa living with us. Keeping up with family is part of life, but it is very important that you make friends with your neighbors, wherever you live. I don't know what our culture will be like in the future, but, right now, turning neighbors into friends is hard work because society encourage to live such separate lives. Your mom and I are trying to overcome this challenge by hosting High Tea, which I hope you'll be able to remember.

The value of friendship has always been challenging to me, since we moved a lot growing up so there was very little opportunity to develop friendships that lasted. Shortly after your mom and I married we moved to Austin, TX and found some of the best friends of our lives through our small group. Those friendships were not easy to form because being honest about life with others can be painful and scary, but we've never make a better investment of time and energy in our lives. The rewards of these friendships are hard to communicate, so maybe we'll just have to show you the photo galleries of our times together. Those friends were very painful to leave, but worth every tear and more.

This verse is also the biggest reason that both of you were born in Nashville. When your grandmother, Mama Lynn, died, it taught me that I could not effectively help family from a distance, so I found a job that God provided near home. He made it clear that I could help family and serve Him effectively in the calling He has given me. Sometimes you have to choose God over family to remain faithful, but sometimes He provides a way to do both, if we are paying attention. While in Nashville with family, we didn't stop pursuing friendships. We found them because we knew we needed them and looked for them. And, God has provided them and we are learning new things for they are very different kinds of friends from the ones we had before.

There are other passages in Scripture that teach us to serve God where we are first and then serve Him elsewhere as He provides the opportunity. I'll just mention two briefly, but you'll have to look them up, Acts 1:8 and 1 Corinthians 7:24. There is a popular slogan at the time I post this blog, "Think globally, act locally", but faithful Christians have always known and done this throughout history. Just remember the example of the family you come from.

Love,

Dad

P.S. When you are in your early teens, you need to read a chapter from Proverbs every day each month for at least a year (e.g. Prov 15 on the 15th). Proverbs 1 explains why, so go read it first!

Girls are named more creatively than boys

Interesting site: http://howmanyofme.com/info/

Of the top 10 most common first names (according to the Census Bureau), 9 are male names and Mary is the only female name on the list. I guess that this is because parents are more likely to name their sons something typical and put more imagination into naming their daughters. However, it could be that boys are more likely to be named after family members, which would also reduce the variation.

I wonder if first names are diversifying over time. It would make getting your own domain name a lot easier. James Smith's are really out of luck (the most common first and last names respectively)

HT: Yobany

Sometimes you can see the train wreck coming

Spencer Williams just published an article that I highly recommend reading. Here is an excerpt:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

. . .

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it.

No man can serve two masters

A recent article from University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox was published by the Witherspoon Institute.

In it he says:
A recent study of 33 countries around the world by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington, indicates that there is an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity. Specifically, they found that countries with larger welfare states had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, had higher rates of citizens indicating no religious affiliation whatsoever, and their people took less comfort in religion in general. In their words, “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

read full story here

My reaction:
Correlation does not mean causation. Perhaps a lack of religiosity causes people to want (or tolerate) bigger government. Or, maybe, big government encourages loyalty to the state at the expense of others. Or, perhaps a third factor (e.g. a general decline in personal responsibility) encourages both. I think the pattern that emerges is the same one seen repeatedly in the Old Testament, where people become wealthy, comfortable, and lazy. They fail to practice their own dominion under God (as commanded in Gen 1:26-28) and think it better to have others rule over them (1 Samuel 8:6-7).

Unfortunately, the current "mega"-churches of the U.S. tend to reinforce this trend, because they often have very hierarchical structures than discourage active involvement of members. This is in contrast to what happened in Acts when the apostles urged the church to select (i.e. vote) for deacons, who would actually decide how money was spent. Without experience in the give and take of a local church, people do not develop the skills necessary to be actively involved in the civic community. It was the strength of congregational churches that provided the U.S. at its founding with a large fraction of the populace that wanted liberty for the purpose of following God. The typical modern church infantilize its members by spoon-feeding them tiny bits of doctrine and huge dollops of fluff (aka "application"). The Roman Catholics in particular are really great at this. (e.g. "Don't know how to pray? Here, have a necklace with some beads on it. Recite these prayers, it will teach you spiritual discipline.") This type of extra-biblical teaching saps the typical member of the strength to practice what is taught in Romans 14:4-8 (to follow their own Scripture-based convictions rather than the teachings of others).

The only way to remedy this is for families to teach their children to rule the world as God intended and to obey Him rather than man (Acts 4:19). Parents that require their children to obey simply because they say so end up with children who are incapable of obeying God. Parents must always point to God in all things, not themselves (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

HT: Justin Taylor

There is an alternative?

From Marvin Olasky's recent article in World magazine, in response to Tim Keller's theme on the prodigal son:

"What's rare on television and in life are third brothers who, because they know deeply that the Father loves them, have love for and patience with both elder and younger brothers. Third brothers, knowing they have been forgiven, are not prideful."

"Third brother politics is also different. The Founders fought for both liberty and virtue: Elder brothers tend to forget the former, younger brothers the latter. Third brothers know that we can never have enough laws to banish sin. They tell the truth but do not rant at abortionists and gay rights activists. They control their tongues and lungs not because killing babies and killing marriage is right, but because their goal is to change hearts. "

Read the rest here

Liberty and church

Watch the following video by the economist Milton Friedman. Or, if you are pressed for time, just jump down to my comments below



Friedman mentions that, historically, the vast majority of people have lived lives of misery under abusive authority. Liberty is the exception in history not the norm. However, the 19th century America demonstrated the greatest degree of liberty ever observed. However, Friedman does not explain how the greatest expansion of liberty that the world has ever seen came about. I suspect that one of the greatest contributing factors is the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer and its expression in congregational churches. (Priesthood: all believers have direct access to God through the sole mediation of Christ. Congregational churches: policy and leadership is provided by all the members, rather than by a few special people.) I think the congregational style of church governance is a fairly natural outcome of a robust belief in priesthood of the believer. When churches practice this form of actively involved governance, it emphasizes the individual responsibility of each believer for the health of the church. This, in turn, trains a population of people who can be trusted to make wise civic and governmental decisions, because they have had practice at a very local level with often immediate feedback about what works. It also trains people for leadership (e.g. deacons) that can go on to be political leaders. Many of America's founding fathers had active involvement in their churches.