Wow that needs to be shared. There’s at least one video with Jon Stewart saying similar things on his show. The movie Vaxxed even showed in theaters. Robert DeNiiro was sympathetic. Someone got to them … Leonard Lopate, too, well before he fell victim to cancel culture, said on his show in the early 2000s that his son became autistic shortly after a vaccine and he made the connection, I don’t think he ever recanted.
Tl;dr answer = incentives. The most educated are particularly susceptible, for they have the most to lose if toed the wrong line the Ministry of Truth doesn't approve 🤷 H/t cat, [very] bad cat ↓↓
🗨 they fear being wrong alone far more than they prize being right.
Being a former Democrat and knowing many who remain on the bandwagon, I think most of them really do believe the propaganda and have no idea there’s any other reasonable viewpoin. if you explain it to them, some of them will listen a bit and others will attack. The ones who listen only listen once, then pretend the conversation never happened.
Last night I read this interview with RFK Junior, and he explained some things about the capture of the Democratic party:
“Just briefly on the vaccine issue, it used to be, even in 2018, Republicans and Democrats were evenly divided on that issue. You could go to Democrats here in Sacramento and talk to them about it. And what happened was, Obama needed the pharmaceutical companies on board for Obamacare. And so he made the deal that, OK, we’re not going to negotiate over drug prices and Medicare if you support Obamacare. Because he didn’t do that, that was selling his soul to the devil. But if they didn’t do it, they couldn’t have passed it. And pharma signed on to Obamacare, and suddenly it became permissible for pharmaceutical companies to donate to Democrats. And before that, Democrats can only get money, big money, from unions and from trial lawyers. But there were no companies that they could get it from.
Suddenly the Democrats were all getting money from pharma, in fact, most of the money. And it’s now the biggest industry in the world.
And then Trump runs, and says three times during that campaign, “I think vaccines are causing autism.” So then it became a Trump issue. And they put it in the same dumpster that you put his climate change pronouncements.”
Trump got $1M from Pfizer for his inauguration ceremony. 🤔🤔
Then Trump hired Alex Azar - for SecHHS (whilr under investigation @ Eli Lily re:insulin prices) and Scott Gottlieb - for FDA Director (Pfizer board member and Illumina, Inc board member) who then squashed the Vax investigation committee idea. BGates also told Trump to drop the idea of looking into vaccine safety. "Don't do that, that's a dead end".
I couldn’t make it through the Jan 2023 Scarborough video. Do people really watch this stuff? It’s so discouraging, the way the world has changed from people having different opinions, to if your opinion is different than mine, then I’m right and you’re wrong. And on top of that, I’m going to ridicule and censor you. Frightening and infuriariting.
"In the end all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural sciences" - Søren Kirkegård, 1813 - 1855 Here, he is dissing corrupt scientists, not science. I have put the full quote at bottom for context.
Also, per Russian philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev "If God doesnt' exist, then man doesn't either." Joined by fellow Russian Dostoyevski in Brothers Karamozov "If there is no God... everything is permissible." Swiss theologian/philosopher Francis Schaeffer once wrote that there are things we can do, and things we should. We have abandoned the latter constraint... .which is pretty much what Joseph Mengele, Dr. Karl Brandt, and Shiro Ishii of Japanese unit 731 did.
But as Dr. Donald MacKay discussed in his debate with BF Skinnner a few decade back, there is more to man than machine. He called in "nothing buttery" (man is nothing but a complex stimulus response mechanism). CS Lewis talked all about how this will end up in his prescient, under-read book, That Hideous Strength. This will not end well. And any philosophy that erects, Babel-like, a fist against God and His laws will ipso facto result in death. Think The Black Book of Communism, Courtois, et al, Harvard Univ Press, which says the left murdered 100 million last century in its quest for utopia. The late Dr RJ Rummel, Univ of Hawaii (I know, tough job, but SOMEONE had to do it, right? put the number as high as 170 freaking million https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
Yeah, fasco-Marxism (fascism and Marxism, of course, are cousins; and the non-Einstein brownshirts at Antifa ought to learn that Nazi stands for National SOCIALIST German Workers Party which adopted explicitly socialist planks at its first convention - and I do this from memory - Feb. 20, 1920 in Munich
-----------------------
Full quote: Almost everything that nowadays flourishes most conspicuously under the name of science (especially as natural science) is not really science but curiosity. In the end all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural sciences… But such a scientific method become especially dangerous and pernicious when it would encroach also upon the sphere of the spirit, let it deal with plants and animals and stars in that way; but to deal with the human spirit in that way is blasphemy, which only weakens ethical and religious passion. Even the act of eating is more reasonable than the speculating with a microscope upon the functions of digestion… A dreadful sophistry spreads microscopically and telescopically into tomes, and yet it the last resort produces nothing, qualitatively understood, though it does, to be sure, cheat men out of the simple profound and passionate wonder which gives impetus to the ethical… the only thing certain is the ethical-religious
I fear that, even with God, all things are permissible. At least, that's what I see when I look at human and natural history. People have done detestable, miserable things to one another, and nature itself is full of horror. From the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, to the annihilation of the Neanderthals, to brutal waves of Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Greek, Arab, Mongolian, Aztec, Spanish, French, British and Japanese conquest, to the brutal murder of Jesus himself, to the Black Plague and the Spanish Flu, to dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, to the 20th century's numerous genocides, what exactly is impermissible?
Wow! What an incredible post! Thank you... very perspicaciously put. Yes, theodicy, which is the issue of God vis-a vis the problem of evil that appears inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, is perhaps THE most important question.
Now... of course probably can't cover this off here (only so many characters allowed in a post!) but there is, in fact, brilliant thinkers that have grappled with this, and come out with answers that are both intellectually AND morally sufficient. Let me start with CS Lewis. You are obviously a brilliant person (most people don't know, e.g., about the Chixulub impact... tho I would contend that if there only bacteria around, that would not be a moral issue), but, mon ami, let me ask you: WHY does this evil bother you? From WHERE did you get the idea that all this evil fails to meet some standard? WHERE did you get that standard from? How do you know anything at all is "evil?' If there is no God, "whatever is, is right." There is no God? Then all this is just, as Dawkins says, DNA dancing, meaning nothing, until the sun burns out.
One problem with all this is that we intuitively know this is simply wrong. But how? Why do we feel that way? Why SHOULD we feel that way to begin with?
As a matter of fact, the Bible explicitly discusses this issue, about how, where and why evil came; moreover, it discusses what to do, what to think, and how to live with the existence of evil (hint: it is CHRISTIANS alone who started hospitals - there are no Atheist Memorial Hospitals that I have ever seen! - Christians who rescued unwanted kids from dung heaps in 200 AD Rome, who, under people like Wesley, Wm Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe stopped slavery, Christians like Martin Luther King who took Jesus as his prime exemplar.
Now, let me point you to some thinkers on this subject: CS Lewis, who was called the most brilliant man at Cambridge ,and a former atheist (died the same day at JFK) has two books on this, The Problem of Pain, and Mere Christianity. Have you read either? Of course, if your concern is valid, you will want to review thees. Dr. John Lennox, professor emeritus of math at Oxford, has a number of talks on this on Youtube. Just look him up and due your due diligence. These are not intellectul lightweights.
There are many great thinkers who became Christians after wrestling exactly with the above, all agnostic or atheist: philosopher CEM Joad; famed journalis Malcolm Muggeridge; perhaps THE top philosopher in the world, who died recently, and whom I had to read at university, Anthony Flew , became at least a believer in God during conversations with Dr William Lane Craig (or think of others alive now, such as Gary R. Habermas, Terry L. Miethe. Philosoopher Dr JP Moreland, with degrees in chemistry, and I believe his PhD was in philosophy from USC, discusses his PERSONAL take on the existence of evil in his short book Finding Quiet. You see, theodicy isn't some abstraction (although it is that too); rather, it is all very **personal** too. Thankfully, while we may not get all the answers we want, we have what we need to believe and trust, until, as St Paul says, we will know in full, even as we are known (by God). God also gave a witness in the resurrection of Christ. Is this valid? Well, here is a, what is called in philosophy, a point of falsification - something can't be proven true, unless there is a point where it can be false. I suggest you look into this. Chicago Tribune legal editor and Yale trained lawyer Lee Strobel did this - he was OUTRAGED when his wife became a Christian, but before he dumped her, he wanted to prove she was nuts. So he investigated. And a couple years later wrote The Case for Christ... as a Christian.
You see, mon ami, I, like you, am busy. I have better things to do. But I, too, was once questioning, and in my own darkness. But someone cared... and I had the intellectual honesty to question my questions... and I became a Christian.
I would submit to you that, yes, our communication here might all just be a "coinky-dink"; but just perhaps God is answering your unspoken prayer by us meeting here "by chance." If there is a God; if Christ did indeed resurrect, then that is, ipso facto, the greatest news ever, hands down. IMHO, that proposition is at least worth exploring, and trying to falsify or not.
I am at Att Viska on substack if you want to communicate further.
Sorry for any typos or solecisms above. My typing and proof-reading are proof indeed that this world is fallen!
We have an all knowing, all powerful, loving God who has, on a certain number of documented occasions, been known to intervene in human history. But this same God not only allowed his own only son to be murdered, but also allowed early Christians to be martyred again and again. God oversaw all of that torture and murder without stopping it. It's documented right there in scripture. Furthermore, human history in the secular literature documents huge numbers of atrocities and miseries which that same all powerful God has overseen without preventing.
That's the world we live in, atheists, Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. That scares the shit out of me.
Theodicy is the biggest issue, as you note, and say so well. But recall, that if there is no God, you literally have not basis to say anything is right or wrong; whatrever is, is right, ipso facto. Yet, we KNOW something is not right. **How** do we know that? How do we know something is crooked, unless we have an idea of "straight."
The issue of God's Son being murdered is, if one understands the Trinity, is really a non-issue, for there is always a unanimity of will within the godhead. It is definitely not like God murdered, or let be murdered His Son. Jesus clearly went of His own clear volition, willingly, to die for our sins. And its not that we are just sinful and need His help to try harder; rather, we are completely dead, and need Him to give us life.
And yes, you are very, very right about the warts and evil Scripture documents. In fact, the Bible was WRITTEN for that very reason - HOW the world got this way, and what God has done to resolve it. Some of it is indeed a mystery - as you so perspicaciously say, 'it scares the shit out of me." And it should. Sin is not some trifling thing. Last century, per Dr. RJ Rummel, Univ. of Hawaii, perhaps up to 170mm were murdered by mostly leftist gov'ts.
Interestingly, whenever possible, Christ's body on earth, aka the church, DOES prevent atrocities all the time. Babies in pre-400 AD were often thrown on trash heaps if not wanted. Christians would rescue them. Women were chattel. Christ had them as His followers, and people like Susan B. Anthony were Christians. Who stopped the evil of slavery? William Wilberforce, John Newton, and in the US, abolitionists were virtually all motivated by love for Christ and His creation. And I'll bet you have never seen an Atheist Memorial Hospital. It was Christians who started ALL the first hospitals in the name of Christ.
I also think it is not valid to question pain in someone else's stead. E.g. Joni Eareckson, who became a full quadraplegic at age 17, now pushing 70. Read her books if you want to understand how God redeems evil. Philip Yancy has a great book Where is God When it Hurts, also helpful, and CS Lewis, called the most intelligent man at Cambridge by some, was an atheist for the very reason you note... until he realized, as noted above, that you simply cannot be intellectually consistent and say that. You must necessarily say, if there is no God, whatever is, is right. Period. Lewis has a two good, short books on this, The Problem of Pain, and The Abolition of Man. If you are serious, pick them up. Not long to read at all, very readable.
Or go on Youtube and listen to Dr. John Lennox, professor emeritus of maths at Oxford Univ. who discusses this, among other things.
This is an issue - and all the worse when one has had horrible, HORRIBLE evil things done to one, as I myself have - that is THE question we all have to answer. But God has not left us alone to figure this out. To wit: **Why** would a stranger like me care enough to take time in my busy day to respond to you, when I have a LOT of other stuff to do? Seriously.
Perhaps God is seeking you.
But these posts are not the way to carry on a long conversation, of course. But start with Joni Eareckson's books, the two CS Lewis books (or Mere Christianity is a massive classic), and Yancy. Lee Strobel, legal editor for the Chicago Tribune and Yale Law School graduate had similar questions, and when his wife became a Christian, he was OUTRAGED, and was going to divorce her. But first he wanted to put a stake through the heart of her faith; but as he was intellectually honest, he wanted to research it all. Unfortunately, he ended up becoming a Christian ("unfortunately" is tongue in cheek!) Similarly, CS Lewis said when he became a Christian he was the most reluctant convert in all of England
Dostoyevski, to me helpfully, wrote:
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Anyhow, just some thoughts. I am please to communicate further with you if you wish, but I would encourage you to read some of the books above - again these forums don't lend themselves well to these types of discussions. But I am at Att Viska on substack if you want.
Worst case, there is no God, but you just picked up some interesting historical info by reading some famous books, right? I mean, what else does one do instead? Watch Wheel of Fortune? :-)
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I had no idea Scarborough said this kind of thing 18 years ago. Nowadays, if I happen to see an excerpt of his show, it seems to have degenerated into a one-dimensional, deceptive, childish, simple-minded, political cheerleading session. Perhaps continued injections of thimerosal have diminished his brain's capacity for analytical thought.
I can say with the utmost certainty that I know more about immunology than my doctor because when all this went down, before the transfections came out, I started reading about this stuff. I wanted to know why, if coronaviruses were so deadly, there was no vaccine already developed. That curiosity kept me healthy and free from transfection.
These pinheads have no curiosity yet think others are stupid. There's a word for that - arrogance.
What happened is all the paychecks that buy beach houses and Ferrari’s….. the vast majority of our press are literally demonic as far as I can tell. Jake Tapper was outed as having a jump the shark moment on vaccines as well. He was going to run a story and canceled due to pressure from above and he never looked back. These people are doing so much damage to society. They should be locked up. Have an honest conversation for f*cks sake.
I never watched morning Joe before. I just watched a few minutes of that second YouTube. I cannot believe the vitriol that that guy spews out of his mouth. It is unbelievable. I hope he continues to get ALL the boosters, that’s all I can say.
He doesn’t want to be fired like they did to Tucker Carlson because for him it’s career ending. Tucker did not sell his soul to the devil and people love him for it. He is in high demand. On the contrary, Any old Joe can, and it does appear, sell out. That is not anything decent people will respect or defend when it all comes down.
This Joe is absolutely out of control, making voices, calling stupid openly to the audiences, this is the power of pharma money, this is comparable to what happened in Nazi Germany, regular people turning to monsters since everyone has become one, today it's worst cause there's no ideology, is just money.
So what happened to Joe Scarborough? Joe is now part of an organization that, for its continued existence, depends on pharma revenues.
Scarborough, and his Brzinkski daughter Deep Stater sidekick are literally intellectual and moral embarrassments.
Yes, thank you, and the president's head can be seen to move violently forward - or words to that effect. And who exactly is that sitting beside him?
Joe went full fascist during the Trumpenstein years.
"The press is our chief ideological weapon."
—Nikita Khrushchev
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”
- Vladimir Lenin
,
“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”
- Richard Salant, former head of CBS News
-----------------------------------------------
MSNBC. Mostly Stupid Nitwits Broadcasting Cant (cant means "lying jargon" folks)
Why anyone would choose to watch a modern day broadcast Der Sturmer (Goebbels' Nazi propaganda rag) is beyond me.
Wow that needs to be shared. There’s at least one video with Jon Stewart saying similar things on his show. The movie Vaxxed even showed in theaters. Robert DeNiiro was sympathetic. Someone got to them … Leonard Lopate, too, well before he fell victim to cancel culture, said on his show in the early 2000s that his son became autistic shortly after a vaccine and he made the connection, I don’t think he ever recanted.
Tl;dr answer = incentives. The most educated are particularly susceptible, for they have the most to lose if toed the wrong line the Ministry of Truth doesn't approve 🤷 H/t cat, [very] bad cat ↓↓
🗨 they fear being wrong alone far more than they prize being right.
Being a former Democrat and knowing many who remain on the bandwagon, I think most of them really do believe the propaganda and have no idea there’s any other reasonable viewpoin. if you explain it to them, some of them will listen a bit and others will attack. The ones who listen only listen once, then pretend the conversation never happened.
Last night I read this interview with RFK Junior, and he explained some things about the capture of the Democratic party:
“Just briefly on the vaccine issue, it used to be, even in 2018, Republicans and Democrats were evenly divided on that issue. You could go to Democrats here in Sacramento and talk to them about it. And what happened was, Obama needed the pharmaceutical companies on board for Obamacare. And so he made the deal that, OK, we’re not going to negotiate over drug prices and Medicare if you support Obamacare. Because he didn’t do that, that was selling his soul to the devil. But if they didn’t do it, they couldn’t have passed it. And pharma signed on to Obamacare, and suddenly it became permissible for pharmaceutical companies to donate to Democrats. And before that, Democrats can only get money, big money, from unions and from trial lawyers. But there were no companies that they could get it from.
Suddenly the Democrats were all getting money from pharma, in fact, most of the money. And it’s now the biggest industry in the world.
And then Trump runs, and says three times during that campaign, “I think vaccines are causing autism.” So then it became a Trump issue. And they put it in the same dumpster that you put his climate change pronouncements.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/robert-f-kennedy-jr-interview-david-samuels
Trump got $1M from Pfizer for his inauguration ceremony. 🤔🤔
Then Trump hired Alex Azar - for SecHHS (whilr under investigation @ Eli Lily re:insulin prices) and Scott Gottlieb - for FDA Director (Pfizer board member and Illumina, Inc board member) who then squashed the Vax investigation committee idea. BGates also told Trump to drop the idea of looking into vaccine safety. "Don't do that, that's a dead end".
I couldn’t make it through the Jan 2023 Scarborough video. Do people really watch this stuff? It’s so discouraging, the way the world has changed from people having different opinions, to if your opinion is different than mine, then I’m right and you’re wrong. And on top of that, I’m going to ridicule and censor you. Frightening and infuriariting.
Hi Joomi,
That is quite interesting indeed.
Good to know, thank you for sharing!
Thank you Joomi.
"In the end all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural sciences" - Søren Kirkegård, 1813 - 1855 Here, he is dissing corrupt scientists, not science. I have put the full quote at bottom for context.
Also, per Russian philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev "If God doesnt' exist, then man doesn't either." Joined by fellow Russian Dostoyevski in Brothers Karamozov "If there is no God... everything is permissible." Swiss theologian/philosopher Francis Schaeffer once wrote that there are things we can do, and things we should. We have abandoned the latter constraint... .which is pretty much what Joseph Mengele, Dr. Karl Brandt, and Shiro Ishii of Japanese unit 731 did.
But as Dr. Donald MacKay discussed in his debate with BF Skinnner a few decade back, there is more to man than machine. He called in "nothing buttery" (man is nothing but a complex stimulus response mechanism). CS Lewis talked all about how this will end up in his prescient, under-read book, That Hideous Strength. This will not end well. And any philosophy that erects, Babel-like, a fist against God and His laws will ipso facto result in death. Think The Black Book of Communism, Courtois, et al, Harvard Univ Press, which says the left murdered 100 million last century in its quest for utopia. The late Dr RJ Rummel, Univ of Hawaii (I know, tough job, but SOMEONE had to do it, right? put the number as high as 170 freaking million https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
Yeah, fasco-Marxism (fascism and Marxism, of course, are cousins; and the non-Einstein brownshirts at Antifa ought to learn that Nazi stands for National SOCIALIST German Workers Party which adopted explicitly socialist planks at its first convention - and I do this from memory - Feb. 20, 1920 in Munich
-----------------------
Full quote: Almost everything that nowadays flourishes most conspicuously under the name of science (especially as natural science) is not really science but curiosity. In the end all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural sciences… But such a scientific method become especially dangerous and pernicious when it would encroach also upon the sphere of the spirit, let it deal with plants and animals and stars in that way; but to deal with the human spirit in that way is blasphemy, which only weakens ethical and religious passion. Even the act of eating is more reasonable than the speculating with a microscope upon the functions of digestion… A dreadful sophistry spreads microscopically and telescopically into tomes, and yet it the last resort produces nothing, qualitatively understood, though it does, to be sure, cheat men out of the simple profound and passionate wonder which gives impetus to the ethical… the only thing certain is the ethical-religious
I fear that, even with God, all things are permissible. At least, that's what I see when I look at human and natural history. People have done detestable, miserable things to one another, and nature itself is full of horror. From the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago, to the annihilation of the Neanderthals, to brutal waves of Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Greek, Arab, Mongolian, Aztec, Spanish, French, British and Japanese conquest, to the brutal murder of Jesus himself, to the Black Plague and the Spanish Flu, to dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, to the 20th century's numerous genocides, what exactly is impermissible?
Wow! What an incredible post! Thank you... very perspicaciously put. Yes, theodicy, which is the issue of God vis-a vis the problem of evil that appears inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, is perhaps THE most important question.
Now... of course probably can't cover this off here (only so many characters allowed in a post!) but there is, in fact, brilliant thinkers that have grappled with this, and come out with answers that are both intellectually AND morally sufficient. Let me start with CS Lewis. You are obviously a brilliant person (most people don't know, e.g., about the Chixulub impact... tho I would contend that if there only bacteria around, that would not be a moral issue), but, mon ami, let me ask you: WHY does this evil bother you? From WHERE did you get the idea that all this evil fails to meet some standard? WHERE did you get that standard from? How do you know anything at all is "evil?' If there is no God, "whatever is, is right." There is no God? Then all this is just, as Dawkins says, DNA dancing, meaning nothing, until the sun burns out.
One problem with all this is that we intuitively know this is simply wrong. But how? Why do we feel that way? Why SHOULD we feel that way to begin with?
As a matter of fact, the Bible explicitly discusses this issue, about how, where and why evil came; moreover, it discusses what to do, what to think, and how to live with the existence of evil (hint: it is CHRISTIANS alone who started hospitals - there are no Atheist Memorial Hospitals that I have ever seen! - Christians who rescued unwanted kids from dung heaps in 200 AD Rome, who, under people like Wesley, Wm Wilberforce, Harriet Beecher Stowe stopped slavery, Christians like Martin Luther King who took Jesus as his prime exemplar.
Now, let me point you to some thinkers on this subject: CS Lewis, who was called the most brilliant man at Cambridge ,and a former atheist (died the same day at JFK) has two books on this, The Problem of Pain, and Mere Christianity. Have you read either? Of course, if your concern is valid, you will want to review thees. Dr. John Lennox, professor emeritus of math at Oxford, has a number of talks on this on Youtube. Just look him up and due your due diligence. These are not intellectul lightweights.
There are many great thinkers who became Christians after wrestling exactly with the above, all agnostic or atheist: philosopher CEM Joad; famed journalis Malcolm Muggeridge; perhaps THE top philosopher in the world, who died recently, and whom I had to read at university, Anthony Flew , became at least a believer in God during conversations with Dr William Lane Craig (or think of others alive now, such as Gary R. Habermas, Terry L. Miethe. Philosoopher Dr JP Moreland, with degrees in chemistry, and I believe his PhD was in philosophy from USC, discusses his PERSONAL take on the existence of evil in his short book Finding Quiet. You see, theodicy isn't some abstraction (although it is that too); rather, it is all very **personal** too. Thankfully, while we may not get all the answers we want, we have what we need to believe and trust, until, as St Paul says, we will know in full, even as we are known (by God). God also gave a witness in the resurrection of Christ. Is this valid? Well, here is a, what is called in philosophy, a point of falsification - something can't be proven true, unless there is a point where it can be false. I suggest you look into this. Chicago Tribune legal editor and Yale trained lawyer Lee Strobel did this - he was OUTRAGED when his wife became a Christian, but before he dumped her, he wanted to prove she was nuts. So he investigated. And a couple years later wrote The Case for Christ... as a Christian.
You see, mon ami, I, like you, am busy. I have better things to do. But I, too, was once questioning, and in my own darkness. But someone cared... and I had the intellectual honesty to question my questions... and I became a Christian.
I would submit to you that, yes, our communication here might all just be a "coinky-dink"; but just perhaps God is answering your unspoken prayer by us meeting here "by chance." If there is a God; if Christ did indeed resurrect, then that is, ipso facto, the greatest news ever, hands down. IMHO, that proposition is at least worth exploring, and trying to falsify or not.
I am at Att Viska on substack if you want to communicate further.
Sorry for any typos or solecisms above. My typing and proof-reading are proof indeed that this world is fallen!
We have an all knowing, all powerful, loving God who has, on a certain number of documented occasions, been known to intervene in human history. But this same God not only allowed his own only son to be murdered, but also allowed early Christians to be martyred again and again. God oversaw all of that torture and murder without stopping it. It's documented right there in scripture. Furthermore, human history in the secular literature documents huge numbers of atrocities and miseries which that same all powerful God has overseen without preventing.
That's the world we live in, atheists, Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. That scares the shit out of me.
Theodicy is the biggest issue, as you note, and say so well. But recall, that if there is no God, you literally have not basis to say anything is right or wrong; whatrever is, is right, ipso facto. Yet, we KNOW something is not right. **How** do we know that? How do we know something is crooked, unless we have an idea of "straight."
The issue of God's Son being murdered is, if one understands the Trinity, is really a non-issue, for there is always a unanimity of will within the godhead. It is definitely not like God murdered, or let be murdered His Son. Jesus clearly went of His own clear volition, willingly, to die for our sins. And its not that we are just sinful and need His help to try harder; rather, we are completely dead, and need Him to give us life.
And yes, you are very, very right about the warts and evil Scripture documents. In fact, the Bible was WRITTEN for that very reason - HOW the world got this way, and what God has done to resolve it. Some of it is indeed a mystery - as you so perspicaciously say, 'it scares the shit out of me." And it should. Sin is not some trifling thing. Last century, per Dr. RJ Rummel, Univ. of Hawaii, perhaps up to 170mm were murdered by mostly leftist gov'ts.
Interestingly, whenever possible, Christ's body on earth, aka the church, DOES prevent atrocities all the time. Babies in pre-400 AD were often thrown on trash heaps if not wanted. Christians would rescue them. Women were chattel. Christ had them as His followers, and people like Susan B. Anthony were Christians. Who stopped the evil of slavery? William Wilberforce, John Newton, and in the US, abolitionists were virtually all motivated by love for Christ and His creation. And I'll bet you have never seen an Atheist Memorial Hospital. It was Christians who started ALL the first hospitals in the name of Christ.
I also think it is not valid to question pain in someone else's stead. E.g. Joni Eareckson, who became a full quadraplegic at age 17, now pushing 70. Read her books if you want to understand how God redeems evil. Philip Yancy has a great book Where is God When it Hurts, also helpful, and CS Lewis, called the most intelligent man at Cambridge by some, was an atheist for the very reason you note... until he realized, as noted above, that you simply cannot be intellectually consistent and say that. You must necessarily say, if there is no God, whatever is, is right. Period. Lewis has a two good, short books on this, The Problem of Pain, and The Abolition of Man. If you are serious, pick them up. Not long to read at all, very readable.
Or go on Youtube and listen to Dr. John Lennox, professor emeritus of maths at Oxford Univ. who discusses this, among other things.
This is an issue - and all the worse when one has had horrible, HORRIBLE evil things done to one, as I myself have - that is THE question we all have to answer. But God has not left us alone to figure this out. To wit: **Why** would a stranger like me care enough to take time in my busy day to respond to you, when I have a LOT of other stuff to do? Seriously.
Perhaps God is seeking you.
But these posts are not the way to carry on a long conversation, of course. But start with Joni Eareckson's books, the two CS Lewis books (or Mere Christianity is a massive classic), and Yancy. Lee Strobel, legal editor for the Chicago Tribune and Yale Law School graduate had similar questions, and when his wife became a Christian, he was OUTRAGED, and was going to divorce her. But first he wanted to put a stake through the heart of her faith; but as he was intellectually honest, he wanted to research it all. Unfortunately, he ended up becoming a Christian ("unfortunately" is tongue in cheek!) Similarly, CS Lewis said when he became a Christian he was the most reluctant convert in all of England
Dostoyevski, to me helpfully, wrote:
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Anyhow, just some thoughts. I am please to communicate further with you if you wish, but I would encourage you to read some of the books above - again these forums don't lend themselves well to these types of discussions. But I am at Att Viska on substack if you want.
Worst case, there is no God, but you just picked up some interesting historical info by reading some famous books, right? I mean, what else does one do instead? Watch Wheel of Fortune? :-)
Good observation. If there were no value in suffering, these things would make no sense.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I had no idea Scarborough said this kind of thing 18 years ago. Nowadays, if I happen to see an excerpt of his show, it seems to have degenerated into a one-dimensional, deceptive, childish, simple-minded, political cheerleading session. Perhaps continued injections of thimerosal have diminished his brain's capacity for analytical thought.
I can say with the utmost certainty that I know more about immunology than my doctor because when all this went down, before the transfections came out, I started reading about this stuff. I wanted to know why, if coronaviruses were so deadly, there was no vaccine already developed. That curiosity kept me healthy and free from transfection.
These pinheads have no curiosity yet think others are stupid. There's a word for that - arrogance.
Not too mention that vaccine failure is causing the old and extinct viruses to return.
What happened is all the paychecks that buy beach houses and Ferrari’s….. the vast majority of our press are literally demonic as far as I can tell. Jake Tapper was outed as having a jump the shark moment on vaccines as well. He was going to run a story and canceled due to pressure from above and he never looked back. These people are doing so much damage to society. They should be locked up. Have an honest conversation for f*cks sake.
I never watched morning Joe before. I just watched a few minutes of that second YouTube. I cannot believe the vitriol that that guy spews out of his mouth. It is unbelievable. I hope he continues to get ALL the boosters, that’s all I can say.
Joe's wallet got fatter - that's what happened.
He doesn’t want to be fired like they did to Tucker Carlson because for him it’s career ending. Tucker did not sell his soul to the devil and people love him for it. He is in high demand. On the contrary, Any old Joe can, and it does appear, sell out. That is not anything decent people will respect or defend when it all comes down.
Having a look at Joe's pay stubs might give us an answer.
This Joe is absolutely out of control, making voices, calling stupid openly to the audiences, this is the power of pharma money, this is comparable to what happened in Nazi Germany, regular people turning to monsters since everyone has become one, today it's worst cause there's no ideology, is just money.